You are viewing inflation narrowly from a worker perspective. Inflation is there to also spur economic activity in a way that encourages people to keep their cash moving and invest their money in a similar way to how companies start losing out if they slow down and rest on their laurels (e.g. stop innovating or growing). In any other case people would just start hoarding their cash. So it’s a way to keep the economy chugging just like purposefully keeping a couple of percent of unemployment always there (even if full total employment would be possible). It tends to keep people on the edge, active and moving.

But there are other useful reasons for inflation too. It enables stable expansion of currency and funding of deficits, money printing and overall economic expansion (or funding of wars for political ends) despite all the inconsistencies when allocating this added money supply, and particularly the outright morally bankrupt socialistic rescue of large ”systemically important” banks etc. The same governments that create and manage the money supply may also introduce millions of large deviations and problems with the price formation on goods and services or investment such as IRA sucking the world dry to get all the investment and manufacturing capacity back to the US.

It’s a complex topic, but you have to keep in mind that central banks are the mystical force that keeps this whole game running. If you corrupt this system too much it tends to fail and I’d like to remind that the US Fed is the third central bank attempt in the US alone. It’s just crazy how it is all set up this way and people remain fascinated by it.

In the end it comes down to trust and military firepower and compulsion (as well as tax collection in that currency, i.e. legal tender) to keep everything legitimate and workable… I could go on and on but you get the point. You are just a cog in the machine, so don’t worry too much if your salary buys you a tad less than before, we gotta work with it somehow and that’s the intention. If you upskill and work hard enough, you can ask for more salary. Or if you’re closer to the source, then you have have nothing to worry about (govt. contracts, even something like large venture capital during the zero interest rate time, or just close and cozy with banks).