I can't do this topic justice from memory, but you seem to be genuinely interested, so I'll say what I can.
It seems related to the petrodollar system. This is where the world uses USD for energy (OPEC only sells oil for dollars). This forces countries who need oil to acquire dollars. However, there's a problem with that: a limited supply of dollars. How do we fix that problem? Use a fiat currency (not backed by something tangible) that allows us to print more money as necessary. How much more should we print? The target is 2% inflation, so that much is what the experts in this topic think.
This petrodollar system does a lot more than just force us to have inflation. The subject from here becomes more and more complicated, because monetary systems are highly complicated. There's a lot going on in the US fiscal policy, and the impacts vary from very good to very bad, depending on your perspective. It's in fact so complicated that I can imagine for every perspective there are good parts and bad parts of our monetary system.
There's a lot of talk in this thread and on the internet in general, especially around cryptocurrencies, that is massively oversimplified and doesn't pay any mind to the fact that, like any other field, there are many very intelligent people working to solve very difficult problems. If a monetary policy can be summed up in one sentence, it's probably not a good policy.
It seems related to the petrodollar system. This is where the world uses USD for energy (OPEC only sells oil for dollars). This forces countries who need oil to acquire dollars. However, there's a problem with that: a limited supply of dollars. How do we fix that problem? Use a fiat currency (not backed by something tangible) that allows us to print more money as necessary. How much more should we print? The target is 2% inflation, so that much is what the experts in this topic think.
This petrodollar system does a lot more than just force us to have inflation. The subject from here becomes more and more complicated, because monetary systems are highly complicated. There's a lot going on in the US fiscal policy, and the impacts vary from very good to very bad, depending on your perspective. It's in fact so complicated that I can imagine for every perspective there are good parts and bad parts of our monetary system.
This is an excellent write-up from Lyn Alden (very good financial writer) on the petrodollar system and it's impacts: https://www.lynalden.com/fraying-petrodollar-system/
There's a lot of talk in this thread and on the internet in general, especially around cryptocurrencies, that is massively oversimplified and doesn't pay any mind to the fact that, like any other field, there are many very intelligent people working to solve very difficult problems. If a monetary policy can be summed up in one sentence, it's probably not a good policy.