One could easily make the argument that deflation is worse though. Look at Japan, stuck in a deflationary spiral since the 90's. How's that preferable to mild, controlled inflation? They've seen billions in lost GDP, unable to jump start consumption.

Because there are two kinds of deflation, one quite harmful and one quite beneficial.

One kind of deflation is associated with the deflationary spiral, and is caused by previous instances of high inflation. The way this one works is thus: the state engages in monetary printing to jumpstart the economy (ie: monetary inflation). This creates uneconomic bubbles in various parts of the economy which mask the looming recession using boosts in some sectors of the economy now being propped-up by government spending (ie: Keynesianism).

When that government money tightens up, it's discovered that these bubbles were uneconomic and they begin to fail.

Which causes the government to create monetary inflation to prop them up.

Because they are bubbles created by inflation, if that sluice of money is cut off, to those industries that are bubbling it looks like a lot of their demand has dried up and they're forced to lower prices--ie: catastrophic deflationary spiral. However, a deflationary spiral created by previous monetary inflation.

If left alone the economy will naturally produce a few percentage points of growth in the form of normal price deflation over time, not catastrophic deflationary spirals. We experienced this from 1850 - 1900 in the US.

So deflation caused by central-bank bubble creation is horrible, yes. But it's also avoidable by taking a laissez-faire approach in the first place, and many times when that policy was followed we has short and quick recessions that turned into fantastic growth thereafter.

The inflationary policy of the government stems from wanting to avoid the pain of a recession, yet an economy is a living and dynamic process which has both profits and losses. Trying to avoid the losses just kicks the can down the road to create a sharper recession later on.

Failing and uneconomic businesses should be allowed to fail and their resources directed to those who can put them to better use. This is prevented from happening by continually feeding them credit, to the point where all these companies can barely survive unless fed zero interest rate loans--and that's where we're at today.

However at zero percent, the can cannot be kicked down the road anymore.

That's why they're talking now about negative interest rates and abolishing cash. They can force people to pay negative interest rates only if they abolish cash.

Instead of letting the economy rebalance itself naturally they're going to try to abolish cash. It would be hilarious if it weren't so sad and destructive. If you put this in a novel people would call it the most amazing fiction, yet here we are.