Every government-issued paper currency in history has collapsed. Every single one. Rome debased the denarius until it held almost no silver. Weimar Germany printed the mark into oblivion by 1923, destroying middle-class savings in under four years. The Continental dollar, the French assignat, the Zimbabwean dollar, the Venezuelan bolivar. The list runs long and the ending never changes. Central banks manage fiat currency to fund government spending that tax revenue cannot cover, not to protect your purchasing power. Inflation is a tax. Every dollar created without corresponding production transfers purchasing power from savers to first spenders, which is always the government and its connected institutions. The dollar has lost over 97% of its purchasing power since the Federal Reserve opened for business in 1913. That loss did not happen accidentally; the Fed ran the printing press, and you absorbed the damage. Defenders will argue that modern central banking is more sophisticated than Weimar. The math remains identical: spend beyond revenue, monetize the gap, dilute the currency. Sophistication only determines the speed of the destruction. No fiat currency has ever survived indefinitely. Not one government has voluntarily relinquished the power to inflate. Given those two facts, the current dollar's long-term trajectory requires no guesswork.