Realistically? It doesn't make a pinch of s#!+'s worth of difference what the inflation/deflation rate is, as long as one is active in the economy.
Prices go up, wages go up. Prices go down, wages go down.
Where it does make a difference is when some fixed dollar amount is used as the standard for judging economic success. A fixed poverty line, or arbitrary earnings level to be upper class end up having little to do with one's comfort level or purchasing power.
I think the definitions we use for poor, middle and upper class are fatally flawed in their underpinnings. We sort by "wealth" as if it can be measured by little bits of printed paper, or hordes of ones and zeros in a bank's computer.
There are really only two classes:
People who earn their living by the sweat of their brow, and
People who live on the labor of others.
Note that the last group includes the richest and the poorest among us. The poorest live on transfer payments, money seized from those who earned it and given to those who didn't. The richest, by organizing and paying others to do the labor, and taking their due from the a part of the value they add by enabling their employees (or the people they invested in) to make a better living.
The richest, by organizing and paying others to do the labor, and taking their due from the a part of the value they add by enabling their employees (or the people they invested in) to make a better living.
Wow, Marx would be proud.