How is your life impacted by the FIAT money system

It was essentially zero under the pre-Fed gold standard (the years between the Civil War and the creation of the Fed). Gold was approximately $20 per ounce for decades before 1913.

If the money supply remains stable, prices will slowly and gradually decline as the supply of goods and services increase relative to each unit of money.

Although one might be tempted to call this "deflation," it would not be. Inflation and deflation are properly relative to the supply of money itself, not any consequent effects on the prices.

 

Billwald, you know that inflation is not a natural product of market economic activity but rather a voluntary tactic by central governments to transfer wealth to themselves and their constituents, right?

Inflation in different forms has existed throughout history and has always been a direct result of central authorities wishing to manipulate the money supply to obtain for themselves a form of taxation. Kings have practiced this through coin clipping or metal debasement and have claimed this right as "sovereignty." Study the history of the Roman Empire and its economics. You will see that leaders who tried to force coin debasement and price fixing created the illusion of wealth upfront but poverty down the road. They would blame their own fallacies on "greedy merchants" for rising prices, but the problem was the increasing supply of money where the larger percent of the pie was being indirectly transferred to the kingly aristocracy. Some leaders attempted to remedy the problem with price fixing tactics, rationing, and mandatory careers (one had to follow the same occupation as one's parents). Such measure exacerbated the problem because they stifled economic growth in the face of inflation, leading to hyperinflation.

Too many economists remain baffled at the fall of Rome and treat it as a great mystery. The fall of Rome was unequivocally an economic phenomenon similar to how other great empires fell when they were safe from conquest. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.