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Maybe (political) conditions have changed enough so that it can't happen again, but the whole of the 19th century was a period of long, slow deflation. So I'm not sure inflation is inevitable.

Slow deflation is tolerable, like slow inflation, but a deflationary cycle is more disastrous than any form of inflation besides hyperinflation. Deflation, besides meaning that tomorrow's price will be smaller than today's (leading people to defer purchases, which means more deflation) also means that the value of debts increases. If that increase is more than small, it results in a lot of bankruptcies, and those bankruptcies reinforce the deflationary cycle. Our governments now know how to bring inflation under control. The methods may be painful, but they are well-known. The failure of Japan to stop deflation after 10 years shows that governments do not yet know how to bring a deflationary cycle under control.

We only have deflation in the goods sector of the US economy, services have plenty of inflation. And we all know why we have goods deflation: importing of manufactured goods made by ultra low cost labor overseas. In addition, productivity increases within the US allow companies to deliver goods at lower costs. In Japan, they have a totally different scenario, their deflation is mainly caused by lack of demand, they have done nothing to foster an internal economy of their own. Japanese people buying goods and services inside their country. They thought they could export their way to prosperity, it worked for a while, but China is killing them. For Japan to fix this, they need a cultural change. In the US, everyone loves to consume, its not a problem.

Maybe (political) conditions have changed enough so that it can't happen again, but the whole of the 19th century was a period of long, slow deflation. So I'm not sure inflation is inevitable.

At least in the US, and I suspect throughout the world currency was backed by gold. This limited the treasury printing presses. In the 1930's the gold backing was removed, and that makes inflation inevitable.

Inflation is not a new trend. The Roman aureus started out as nearly pure gold, centuries later it was less than 1% gold. This is the best they could do without paper money.