Why do governments not seek to eradicate inflation completely?

Question

Perhaps because to do so extreme contractionary monetary policy would have to be used, severely damaging aggregate demand and consequently, economic growth?

Is that right, and/or are there better reasons?

@Mike:
I meant 'damaging economic growth' although you may have interpreted it this way before you made your point. What I suggested with this point was just the first response to the question that occured to me, and I'm not attesting in any way that it's even remotely accurate. I just thought that the government, even when controlling inflation, would still want economic growth to continue.

...and that putting in place huge interest rate hikes would jeopardise this entirely.

Answer 1

Deflation is bad for the economy so Central banks error on the side of inflation. The US in the 1930's and Japan in the 90's were deflationary economies. After 9/11 the fed was afraid we would suffer deflation and so lowered the interest rate to 1% to prevent it from happening. If there is deflation monetary policy become ineffective because the real interest rate will always be greater than zero no matter what the nominal rate is.

Answer 2

maybe im not reading right but you said "and consequently, economic growth" but isnt that a benefit of controlling inflation?

Answer 3

it's not possible.