You have to start with Hobbes. “Natural” is not necessarily good. “Natural” is the war of all against all, a massively multiplayer iterated potentially plus-sum prisoners’ dilemma. Governments are instituted to overcome “natural.”

As Ms. Reiff observes, “natural” is risk-averse. OK, let’s overcome that by slanting the playing field toward spending and away from saving. The kind of inflation favored by government seeks to do that. Planned inflation is just another “coordination” strategy, the thing that makes governments worth the trouble. It’s a good thing, like any law that restrains any “natural” tendency.

There is nothing “cosmetic” about the benefits of elevated economic activity. Those are real people with real jobs enjoying real outputs because they and their neighbors buy what the other is selling. Excess capacity is like Poor Richard’s lost time; it is never found again. Inflation squeezes out excess capacity before it drives up prices. Then, everyone who has the bargaining power, gets a raise to cover the inflation, and those who don’t, undergo what economists like to call “price discovery,” the free market’s way of “keeping it real.” Closing the negative output gap — the excess of potential outputs over actual outputs — is inflation’s highest benefit, and it’s way more than “cosmetic.”

Modest inflation does not turn off savings, but savers must spend their savings on capital goods or lend them to someone who will. Otherwise, they have to pay the “excess capacity” tax imposed on those who sell something and then fail to keep the barter chain going by buying something. This sort of “demurrage tax” has been around for centuries. Usually, it’s subsumed in inflation, but when there is no inflation, the tax is made explicit. Negative interest rates, anyone?

From a macro standpoint, there is no argument worth making against modest, predictable inflation. It enables more people to enjoy more things without eating their seed corn. It is as brilliant a technological solution as fire, something that, too, brings the “cosmetic” benefits of warmth and light. Sure, it can certainly mess things up if it is not handled correctly, but we’ve agreed that runaway inflation is not what the government wants, so that’s not an argument against modest, predictable inflation if we can get it.