The reasons that governments and their economists don't like the gold standard is that it forces them to live within their means. On a fiat money system governments can print more money and thus implement the invisible inflation tax. The real problem with inflation is that it disproportionately hurts the poor who have no way to protect themselves. The rich on the other hand can always move their money into real goods to protect and even profit from the inflation.

Their were some problems with the gold standard and A.E. Fekete has written some articles on real bills to try to address these but the problems with the gold standard were nothing in comparison to what we are facing now.