[mgolawala]

I am not an economist, but here is my theory on the whole thing (would love to hear if there is a flaw with this reasoning!):

The fundamental problem is that a wealth of a society is determined by its productive capacity. A society with more homes, more cars, more phones, more food, more clothes, more university classrooms, more hospitals and doctors, more medicine, (you get the picture)... more good and services is wealthier.

A society with more dollars but without the corresponding increase in all of those things is no wealthier.

You can magic up trillions of dollars and hand them out to each and every individual currently alive in the US or for that matter the planet. Give each person a billion dollars. You still would not suddenly end poverty, or hard ship or hunger or anything else.. that money is still used to buy the goods and services which are being produced at the same rate as before.

When we distributed trillions of dollars over the last couple of years while simultaneously having lockdowns for covid, we not only added money to a system without adding corresponding productive capacity. We did the opposite.. we reduced the number of homes being built and maintained, we reduced the number of clothes being manufactured, we reduced the amount of education we provided, we reduced the amount of health care provided, we reduced the number of vacations and restaurant meals that were provided, we reduced the number of cars being made (you get the picture)... we created a backlog of unmet demand.

The prices would likely have gone up even without the money printing due to this backlog of unmet demand, the additional money in the system just made the price rises bigger.