> people have a baseline of goods they must consume for survival (housing, food etc.), and once that baseline is reached spending does not fall further

Oh boy, do I have news for you. It is in fact possible to run out of money, and in a deflating economy with no jobs you can't just go out and earn more. It puts peoples' collective backs against the wall -- at which point they decide to fight like cornered animals rather than die in a corner, and things get nasty.

Inflation crises are awful, but when you run out of money there are jobs and you can get more and this generally prevents them from turning into bloodbaths. This is why we collectively decided to err in this direction.

Weimar Germany is the perfect example. Did it suck? Yeah. Savings were incinerated, everyday activities became market speculation, the memes are all true -- but it happened under nearly full employment and once the root causes were addressed everything largely simmered down. This is in stark contrast to the deflationary shock of the Great Depression later that decade which propelled the Nazis into power and led directly to WWII.

99% deflation doesn't happen because people start killing each other long before then.