Everyone who understands American economic policy knows that the currency is being slowly devalued on purpose. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is common knowledge. The inflation target is always greater than 0. This is in part because of the perceived risks of deflation -- better to be on one side of the line than the other -- but also, generally, the point is to encourage people to spend or invest rather than passively save, because spending and investment grow the economy.

To a libertarian this is one of the most oppressive things about the way the government works currently ... it forces everyone to work more than they would ideally have to, in a sense. (But I say "in a sense" because if the economy were at a much less active level as "normal" maybe everyone would have lower quality of life. I don't know.) If you ever wondered why Ron Paul dislikes the Fed so much, well, it's because of reasons like this.