Lowering the value of the currency...has a favorable influence upon effectual demand. But currency cannot always go on sinking in value, otherwise its power as a medium of exchange would altogether cease; and its recoil is attended with calamities which far more than counterbalance the advantages which accompanied its descent.
This recoil is precisely that which the practical statesman should endeavor to prevent. After the currency of a country has been depreciated for a certain time, and rents, wages, and prices, have been adjusted to the new measure of value, a restoration of the former standard violates the spirit of all existing contracts, and occasions an entire derangement of the market. In all such cases, policy and justice alike require, not that the currency should be raised to the level of the ancient standard, but that the standard should be lowered to the actual level of the currency.
- Robert Torrens
Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.