>One is a question for economist types -- why is there
>a secular increase in inflation over time?
Depends on what you mean by over time. Here's the average U.S. consumer inflation rate for various periods:
1800-99 -0.6% 1900-40 1.5% 1945-73 3.3% 1973-82 8.8% 1982-2004 3.1%
The 19th century includes a severe Civil War inflation, averaging 21% from 1862-4. But much of the century was characterized by flat or falling prices. After WW II, we had a Golden Age period of low inflation, an inflationary spike in the 1970s, and a return to Golden Age levels of inflation. (The average since 1992 is even lower - 2.5%.) The right has a point about the 19th century - small government and a gold standard can lead to stable prices (and also lots of financial crises and depressions, which characterized about half the late 19th century). But recent experience has shown that deflation can return in a modern institutional environment - e.g. Japan through the 1990s, and the near-miss the U.S. saw in the last couple of years.
Doug