Would love actually some in-depth discussion of this topic, because it's crucial to the question: how would a economy with Bitcoin as a leading world currency would look like?
Inflation is necessary to maintain a healthy & stable economy. It encourages spending & investment by reducing the value of money over time. This stimulates economic growth & prevents stagnation.
Yep, that's the traditional Monetarist explanation supported by major schools of Economics. But is it correct?
@kryptqnick has mentioned the case of Japan, which has had often zero inflation or even deflation during long time stretches [1], and that despite of having invented the Quantitative Easing "money printing" method which is now used across the world. And they're doing quite well: while economic growth is not exorbitant the country is also not in a permanent depression, and is often seen as a technology leader. [2]
That brings us to the question: would a Bitcoin world currency, deflationary by nature, bring us to such an almost steady-state, low-growth economy like Japan?
By simple logic we could think that a deflationary economy could boost productivity and thus better incentives to increase wealth, because to make profits you can't rely on inflation as "helper" but instead need to be a "productivity leader" in your market. As consumers would not accept higher prices like in an inflationary economy (where companies often try to find creative ways to justify price increases) your only chance to compete is to reduce costs, and thus increase productivity and lower resource usage.
It's interesting that while we could thus imply that Japan's near-zero-inflation economy could lead to a high productivity this is actually not true -- Japan has the lowest labour productivity of the G7 nations. [3] There seems however also to be related to a rigid culture in some sectors like services, while manufacturing productivity seems to be growing at a good pace. [4] So this particular problem is perhaps not related to Japan's zero inflation rate.
I also found this interesting Investopedia article about deflation in Switzerland [5] with this conclusion:
[...] good deflation occurs when the aggregate supply of goods outstrips aggregate demand. This can be the result of advances in technology or improved productivity. Bad deflation occurs when aggregate demand falls faster than any growth in aggregate supply.
So I can imagine that basically "good deflation" can happen in a "Bitcoin world" if the economic actors manage to keep productivity growing.
[1] They had actually some years with moderate inflation rates, mostly below 1% but with a few peaks between 2-3%, but on the whole we can say that the average rate since ca. 1999 is close to zero, as you can see
here.
[2] As you see
here, Japan's economic growth is mostly positive - the average is in the low single digits but there were peaks of up to 9% as recently as 2009.
[3] See
here for 2020 data.
[4] See [https://medium.com/@kiyoshimatsumoto/japans-low-economic-productivity-1e41d1f7ca29]here[/url].
[5] See
Can Deflation be good?