Moskau50 t1_j2emzcu wrote
Reply to comment by ss89898 in ELI5: If money today is all digital, why can't all the countries governments just go on the computer and add like five more zero's to their account and fix everything? Same principal is 100 years ago too I guess, why not just print more cash? by ss89898
> Like who is the police in all this?
It's not that there's an agency that tracks the amount of money and the "value" of goods and services and runs around changing prices to match. It's that, if you have more money, you're more likely to spend it, which means you'll accept a higher price on items. Since you're willing to pay more, companies will raise prices to match. That's what causes inflation.
Repeat this millions of times because all that extra money you spent means everyone else has more money, so they are willing to spend more, which means companies can raise prices, and the cycle continues until you're at new "stable" prices that are simply higher than the original prices, roughly proportionally to the extra money that was injected.
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