Store shelves would be empty and businesses would shutter. There’d be less to buy. Banks would hold on to money instead of lending to productive businesses.
Deflation causes the production of goods and services to become more expensive in addition to slowing down the velocity of money. Hence, businesses actually go bankrupt (as in liquidated, restructuring becomes far more risky), productive capacity sits idle, unemployment rises, consumption slumps further, remaining businesses become even more distressed, all of which leads to a complete collapse in confidence in the marketplace. In turn, individuals and businesses are encouraged to hoard money, which only leads to further slowdowns in the velocity of circulation, making money even more scarce, etc.
In such an environment, businesses undergo brutal competition for a shrinking pool of money. Simply servicing current debts and operating expenses becomes difficult. Taking out new loans and/or investing capital into such businesses is nothing short of insanity. Even if a business could raise prices the inability of consumers to pay could easily result in a net loss.
The economy is built on the velocity of money. There's a reason why Bush called on Americans to spend money in the aftermath of 9/11, the system really can't cope with a significant slowdown in spending, even if only for a few days.
What if the deflation is caused by continuous improvement in productivity, as was the case for semiconductors? It seems like in that scenario, the continual decline in prices is more than counterbalanced by a continuous increase in production volumes, resulting in profits for manufacturers despite precipitous decline in the price of the products they sell. Moore's law didn't cause investment in semiconductor fabs to dry up; just the opposite. What if that happened to all sectors at once?
Productivity/efficiency driven deflation is almost always a good thing. The problem is when deflation is being driven by the scarcity of money or some other unsustainable mechanism
If all the stores did that, and people would actually buy goods at those prices, you'd be in an inflationary economy, not a deflationary one.
What do you think inflation is? It's a reduction in the value of money, relative to goods. You can't say that the solution to the problems of deflation is inflation. (I mean, you can, that is my whole point... but it fully undermines the original argument.)
