Yes, except for all the businesses that were destroyed in between it was just fine. Do you think it's easier to attract investment in an environment experiencing wild swings of feast and famine or in one like we are experiencing today?
Since the US went off the gold standard, every year, we've had inflation, and no corresponding periods of deflation, so the dollar has, although in a much more stable way, lost value every single year
And we've become the richest nation in history with the worlds largest and most vibrant economy.
Inflation since 1981 has averaged about 2% a year. I'd say the Fed has been doing a pretty good job over the past 25 years. All one needs to do is look at our GDP growth, the number of people we employ, rising incomes, increased household wealth and the amount of capital pouring into our economy for proof.
Deflation is much worse for lots of reasons. I'd much rather have 2% inflation than deflation of any sort.
Do you ever envision any end to inflation, dollar depreciation/devaluation, or does do you see it just going forever?
321 "there were certainly more wild swings, there were periods of deflation and inflation."
Most people would not describe years of double digit inflation followed by years of double digit deflation as being "very stable". Even the idea that it "would average out to a very flat line of total inflation from 1850-1970" is goofy. In the first place, it's a flat line only if you ignore the points in-between. In the second place, it's not even a level line unless you very carefully pick some day in history with the same gold price as some particular hand-picked day a century later.
This kind of data distortion would only be useful for fooling oneself or for defrauding a prospective gold buyer --which imho is a lot worse than being "slightly deceptive"..