Mild inflation does not discourage saving, it discourages saving the actual currency, which does nothing for the economy. It encourages saving in the form of investment, which stimulates the economy.
If my dollars were guaranteed to get more and more valuable over time, why would I spend them (more than absolutely necessary) or invest them in economic ventures? This is why deflationary currency is bad.
Many still spend in a deflationary environment, they just do so with far more care about the product and it's longevity.
People will invest also, though only with a expected return greater than deflation gains.
Instead the status quo is being forced into overvalued equities or real estate investments. There's no real option to be a saver in the western world anymore.
A currency is important only because it is a medium of exchange. A currency is actually working well if it is slowly decreasing in value, because if it does not then people will hold onto it and not use it, thus making it a commodity. In the longer term, what happens is that people will switch to another method to transfer value, and your currency then becomes worthless as the reason for it storing value is removed.
This is one of the reasons why a deflationary by design cryptocurrency is so dangerous. It seems intuitive in our current thinking to increase value by design, but actually this can have dusasterous consequences. Japan, for instance, has had massive problems with deflation and eventually had to work to counter this for their economic health.
Obviously rampant inflation is dreadful, but that’s not what we are talking about here. Low underlying inflation is, somewhat ironically, an excellent indicator of a healthy economy.
I know this is the commonly accepted reason why inflation is good and deflation is bad. But isn't this just coercion? Here's your paycheck. You better go out spend it like a good consumer because we're going to ensure its value is going to slowly erode over time.
Modern man already needs to buy and sell things to survive. It's not clear to me why his currency needs to further promote this behavior.