In the United States, the government education system does a poor job of teaching math, logic, and economics. For example, with help from the popular media, politicians are able to get the masses to believe inflation is caused by rising prices. This is exactly backwards.
Rising prices are caused by inflation. Inflation is caused by an increase in the money supply. While most definitions I found via internet search also reverse the cause and effect, I did find a halfway decent one at dictionary.com:
a persistent, substantial rise in the general level of prices related to an increase in the volume of money and resulting in the loss of value of currency
Merchants and manufacturers do not cause inflation. Government does. The "stimulus" checks created by American politicians have given us a great object lesson in how this happens--if only people would think and learn from it! Government magically creates money in people's bank accounts without any real wealth to back it up. Everyone runs to spend that money. Merchants can/must raise prices or run out of merchandise too quickly. Demand outpaces supply.
One of the worst effects of inflation is its effect on savings. Retirees are hit hard as their fixed incomes cannot keep pace. The worst effect of all is the subsequent government reaction to this: price controls causing shortages and cost-of-living increases to government pensions/salaries causing even more inflation.
Why do the "experts" in government do this? Because it is expedient for them. They get to spend money buying votes while insulating themselves from the bad effects of the misery they caused to their witless voters. Those who see through their treachery are dubbed "greedy" (I think psychologists call that "projection") and hated by the masses because in a world living a lie, the truth tellers are the enemy.
Centralization is the enemy. In theory, it is efficient and would be the best system if men were perfectly good. However, men are not. The best defense of freedom comes from distributed power and billions of free transactions among free people. The market itself has no bias. Like math, it is what it is. It doesn't care what the trader looks like or believes. Give me the invisible hand of the market over corrupt politicians any day.
HODL, y'all. And make sure you have some food and other supplies stored against the Weimar-style inflation to come in fiat money in the USA.
