Will the Government Ever Stop Printing Money? (2024)

Will the Government Ever Stop Printing Money? (3)

Every time the Federal Reserve creates more dollars, inflation occurs.

Increasing prices for food and gas is often described as inflation, but inflation is best thought of a different way:

As more dollars are printed, the value of each one decreases.

It makes sense - if something is very abundant, people perceive it to have less value.

For example, Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ jacket is one of a kind. Because there’s demand and the supply is limited to 1, the value is very high. In fact, the jacket (a piece of leather) sold for $1.8 million in 2011.

As dollars become more abundant, they lose value

Will the Government Ever Stop Printing Money? (4)

The chart shows the supply of US dollars over time. As you can see, it goes up exponentially. This means the value of every dollar is being diluted exponentially.

I go more in depth on why the US hasn’t seen higher inflation here.

1. Government Power

If you have the power to print money, you have a huge advantage over everyone else.

Instead of earning money like everyone else, you can simply print dollars and externalize the cost onto everyone else through inflation. Because we aren’t on a gold standard, there’s no limit to how much money they can create.

The Federal Reserve prints money through a process called “Open Market Operations”. I definitely recommend you read up on it.

2. Modern Monetary Theory

The monetary system is run by Keynesian economists who believe in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).

Keynesian theory and MMT are complicated, but the idea is that the government should print money in order to hypothetically stabilize the economy.

Will the Government Ever Stop Printing Money? (2024)
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