>This article over and over describes inflation as a tax or destruction, without backing those claims up

Inflation due to money supply increase being like a tax is a fundamental economic result that doesn't need to be rehashed. If you were to counterfeit a trillion dollars and spend it, what happens? You get more things, reducing the remaining supply of things, and everyone else has the same amount of money but chasing a smaller amount of things, so their purchasing power per dollar goes down. It acts as a wealth transfer from other currency holders to yourself. The same applies if the government creates money, but in that case it's called a tax because wealth transfer to the government is termed taxation.