Yea, but let's metaphor the boogey man issue to driving a car. When you drive, you're often avoiding collisions. Mostly passively. If you drive faster than the car in front of you, you will crash. If you dont brake at a red light, you will crash. Most people dont crash most of the time because they respect the threat. You cant just go, "you know, I haven't crashed in 5 years. I dont have to brake at this red light." Sure, inflation issues aren't that prevalent in the past few decades. Doesn't mean you stop assuming it's not a possibility. You do things to avoid it. The longer you do that, the longer you avoid problems. You cant stop your precautions just because it's been a while, then whine why the problem reemerged.

I never said it’s no longer a possibility. Just that for every news event that happens, there is an immediate chorus of “inflation!!!!” no matter the circumstances. Some economists argue that there is indeed considerable inflation right now- except it’s in financial assets owned mostly by the wealthy, like the stock market trading at high P/Es, housing (inflated in multiple countries, not just the US due to easy credit). There was also a headline recently that VC investing is record high at the moment. So there’s inflation, just not in consumer staples.

The reason it is so feared is because it's next to impossible to contain once it starts without causing massive economic hardship.

In fact, the Fed could likely do next to nothing about inflation with our country's current debt levels.

Even at a historically average rate of 8%, our federal government would either go bankrupt, cut most spending, or massively raise taxes, causing a severe economic retraction. (Our $26T in debt would require half of the entire federal budget to service our debt at such rates.)

Many of our largest corporations would also fold, unable to service their massive debts. It'd be a disaster.

That's why people fear runaway inflation, even if it hasn't been a problem for several decades. Once you can identify it as a problem, it's too late.

Isn't it why Japan, Europe and now the USA have 0/negative rates? The government literally makes money to borrow money. They can't default with negative or zero rates. They are basically being bailed out by the "economy".

It's sensible to be afraid of hyper-inflation. At some point the economic actors are going to be fed up with it and off-load their investments.

>The reason it is so feared is because it's next to impossible to contain once it starts without causing massive economic hardship.

What's the process for containing inflation, and what's its mechanism of action?