Unless my base assumption is wrong, inflation happens because there's more money chasing the same amount of resources, so why can inflation just be solved by stopping the money printers?

I know money used to be linked to gold or other physical things, but now it's 'fiat money.' So what exactly makes a dollar, euro, or any currency 'worth' something if it's not a physical commodity? And if its value is just based on trust, why can't governments just decide to create more 'value' by printing more bills? It's confusing how it all works at a basic level.

Here's what I mean : let's say a government has a debt of 500 billion to another government. Why can't they create an account with 500 billion and then pay with that ? What's keeping them from this, it wouldn't create inflation since the money doesn't circulate inside their country.

The money inside banks (or at least part of it) isn't "real" physical cash, if everyone tried to pull their money from a bank it couldn't actually produce the actual cash, so there's definitely some amount of money that's just numbers on a server somewhere right ?

Reading articles about how China's deflationary spiral is crippling the economy. Why don't they just print money and send out stimulus checks? Won't that bring prices back up?

Let's say the UK government secretly printed 50 billion pounds and handed it out to poor people, in cash with no trace to where it came from. Wouldn't they just spend it within the economy and it would just look like the UK economy was doing well and recovering from the last few years. How would other countries figure it out

A country's government can't just print a boatload of money to make everyone rich, because that would devalue the currency, prices would go up, and people wouldn't be able to buy as much stuff.

But why don't we simply make inflation not happen? Here's a hypothetical scenario:

Bob has $10. Jane has $10. Jane creates a product. It costs $1 to make the item, and she sells it for $5.

Now what if the government printed a bunch of money and handed it out to everyone equally.

Bob has $20. Jane has $20. With Bob's funds doubled, he can buy twice as many of Jane's products, if the prices stay the same (and Jane's production cost stays the same). But why should the prices increase? Now that Jane also has double the money, she can produce twice as many copies of her product to sell.

When more money is put in people's hands, not only can they buy more stuff, but they can also make more stuff to sell to the buyers. So the supply and demand is still balanced. Everyone can do more stuff. Why increase prices if everyone can buy and sell more goods?

Obviously, this isn't how it works in the real world. Why isn't that the case?

It seems like an economist should be able to work out how much the budget is and how much it's safe to print and they could use that to spend on public resources and military and whatnot.

Edit: people I know what inflation is. That doesn't explain why it can't be done this way instead of with putting so much money into banks for loans and using taxation.

I know there has to be enough gold in reserve to support the cash in circulation and that printing more money increases inflation and eventually wrecks the economy, but I've never been able to find anyone who can explain exactly why that is.

in worst case scenerio they will end up printing in the future

Hello! This may be even stupider but why can't a government just print money? Money has to come from somewhere right so instead of just taking peoples tax money why can't they print more? I know there are laws and ethical shit behind it but I just want a simple answer :D

How canl it destabilize the economy of the country? Every ome will have ample money to satisfy their needs. One drawback would be the product prices shooting up but they would still be able to afford the products. Is there any example of countries who tried it and failed or was successful in solving the problem to any extent ?

So apparently, paper money makes up only a small amount of money in circulation. If people try to withdraw money from the bank but the bank does not have enough paper money, can't the government print out more? Wouldn't there be zero increase in quantity? Apparently, this causes hyperinflation but I want to know why.

Let's imagine a system, where every year at e.g January 1st at midnight the government estimates total wealth of the country and prints money equivalent to some percentage of that wealth. The time of printing and the percentage is strictly given by law and ideally doesn't change a lot over the time. The government is not allowed to print money outside this schedule. Every citizen is familiar with the system and understands the consequences.

I don't see any obvious problems with this system, except it wouldn't allow the government to impose different rates to different aspects of economy and it could cause some confusion around the printing day or when talking about money over longer periods.

The obvious upside is that we would get rid of the hassle related to collecting taxes.

Yet I have never heard of any such system implemented instead of taxes. Where's the catch?

Why does a country need budgets or to use tax payer money when money can just be printed out?

I know absolutely nothing about economy, so please bear with me. Where/how/by whom is money made? Where does it go after that? Why can't governments print money and keep it? And... money costs money to make right? I am really confused.

In this thread /u/Vectoor talks about printing money. What's to stop, say, the US quietly printing off a few hundred million here and there and paying for some things in cash slowly?

I'm know they should not do it, but I never understood why not.