I disagree. So should every decent economist. Currency loses value. Money doesn't. There is a subtle difference. If you use the "time is money" principle it becomes clearer. Currency treated like money doesn't either, it accrues interest or is spent, either on capital, which increases in currency value, like land, or consumption items which decrease in both money and currency value, like houses, but (deployed efficiently) generate profit, like trucks or railway lines, or rent. The reason why the $1000 doesn't buy as much now is because there is something called a money supply, or M3, the rate of increase of which is determined by a combination of CPI and increase in demand due to there being more people to spend the currency, and to the ones already in the mix getting payrises. M3 should always be higher than CPI (which is not inflation but most people call it inflation), the difference between the two is actual inflation, the amount of currency available per unit of demand. Supply and demand then dictates that the currency buys less units of things on the supply side, which in theory prevents something called deflation or stagflation. It's all a big confidence trick that plays on human nature and psychology in order to prevent recessions, which are genuinely not good. People think they have more money and that it's going to buy less if they dont spend it, so they spend it rather than wait for their money to increase in value, which is what would happen if M3 didn't go up fast enough, ie. Prices go down.