I link to this not because I think anyone else will find it interesting (I don’t), but because I’d like to highlight a relatively common analysis mistake.

The fact that less than 10% of the US debt is TIPS doesn’t mean that the rest of our debt is nominal. $2.5 trillion in debt is held by social security. The obligations for those trust funds are indexed to inflation, which has roughly the same impact as treating the held bonds as TIPS. This impacts the ability to use inflation as a means of reducing our debt/GDP ratio. Social Security obligations are important.

There are other issues, such as the fact that certain businesses tend to perform better in periods of higher inflation than others, that foreign creditors may respond negatively to perceived attempts to use inflation as a means of dealing with debt, hampering future deficit spending, or that inflation itself tends to act as a regressive tax, disproportionately reducing the wealth of the middle class while preserving much of the wealth of the rich. These latter problems are not intended to be addressed by the linked article, but sometimes they should be considered by those in charge of pulling the macroeconomic levers.