it is only recently that it was hard to match inflation in a bank account, and the reason for that has more to do with the unique failures of central banks over the last few years than the generalised problems that people here want to assign to all central banks everywhere, throughout time.
Well, that's just it. The recent failures of central banking over the last few years were not only not unique, they were entirely predictable from the moment the central banks shed the discipline of the gold standard and thus gained the power to inflate. That is what happens to all fiat currencies. It always has. Just because we are finally starting to see the fatal imbalances in the system accumulate to a visible level, doesn't mean that those imbalances were not there from the start. They were, and I believe that you are smart enough to understand that. The cognative dissonance that you are experiencing within this forum is not a unique affliction. Most people very much desire to believe that the society that they live within is a predominately honest one, and that the image that it presents to us is not fraudulent. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but what you have been told since you were a child, what your parents believed, and what you believe about the best intentions of those who command these vast monetary systems is a lie.