I'm fine with the US Government printing money when it makes sense to, such as during an economic downturn. However, since 2016, generally regressive federal tax policies without commensurate spending cuts during an economic boom have un-necessarily increased the national debt.
(To be clear: I don't think we should have been cutting social spending. But we definitely should not have been giving huge tax breaks to the most wealthy.)
Got it thanks. And you think that’s something to be concerned about because the ability to print money is reduced by every bill printed and thus should be used modestly / wisely?
I don't think anybody knows how much money the US can 'safely' print. My guess is that we can print quite a bit more, but who knows.
So to answer your question: it's likely that the future probability of safely printing money goes down as more money is printed, thus making that ability a scarce resource.
My intuition is that the federal government giving additional money to the wealthy (as it has done since 2016) is of less marginal value to society than retaining the future ability to print equivalent additional debt.
I'm not necessarily defending past or present fiscal policy. I'm pretty concerned about this stuff as well.