This needs to be stated in more ways. Credit cards themselves encourage inflation (credit card fees, offset payments, lack of savings to pay for goods). And those same rewards programs are paid for with merchant fees, further encouraging price inflation.

Yes! We should simply make credit card rewards illegal in a more direct way. Effectively, people with low-paying rewards cards—and people paying in cash—are subsidizing people with high-paying rewards cards.

In other words, credit card rewards are yet another wealth transfer from poorer people to wealthier people.