If you take money out of the equation and just consider that we have a large pool of labor to make use of, government's purpose in spending on projects is to allocate some of that labor towards long-term goals that no company would involve itself in as the pure profit potential is too risky, distant, or difficult to capitalize on.
If you have a large 401k on the other hand it deflates the value of your retirement savings. You may have to work in old age.
When the value of today-money goes down, the value of tomorrow-money goes up relatively. That explains why tech companies and speculative investments do well during expansionary monetary policy. It aslo explains why advertising and brand become so important. Because if the value of money goes up in the future, then the value of each customer will also go up; even if you have to make a net loss today to pay for advertising to get those customers.
Two things:
* Poor means less access to more expensive debt. Rich means more access to cheaper debt.
* Rich means one can use debt leverage to grow one's assets. How does that influence the value of necessities for the less rich...?
TIPS also provide a way to hedge against inflation in retirement funds.
Except in cases with extremely high inflation most contracts are not inflation adjusted. By the time a company is paid the merchandise sold is worth significantly more in fiat terms. In high inflation an entity is loathe to trade assets for dollars and so the economy will slow.
This is not a criticism of current fed policy with respect to its relatively low inflation targets. While the effects I mentioned still occur, they are vastly outweighed by other concerns at low inflation levels.