Price changes of this nature, if they are unanticipated, lead to a different distribution of wealth and income than people had banked on when they made their contracts. Usually, this is disruptive to the economy (not to mention unfair). This is a problem of exactly the same nature as those which arise with inflation, except in reverse.
In fact, the profitability (the ratio of current profits to sales) of nonmanufacturing firms has been on an increasing trend over the past few years (Chart 10).