[username90]

> In the most broad terms, the only difference between realising bonds and simply printing the money is the lag time.

Another significant difference: Printing money transfers wealth from the rich to the poor, borrowing transfers wealth from the poor to the rich. So countries which cares for their poor and low corruption among politicians see low government debt rates, while countries like USA where politicians are very close to rich people just continues borrowing forever.

[emteycz]

99% rich people store their wealth in assets - which are not affected by inflation at all (in fact, the value appreciation often beats it - even during a pandemic). Only the poor people have to store their wealth in cash because they don't have enough of it to buy a diversified range of assets, and the short term risk is unbearable to them (while rich people will simply hodl a little longer). Additionally, poor people usually don't have the means to renegotiate their salaries often enough to keep up with inflation, much less to beat it.

[username90]

The government printing bills that they then buy stuff with for the poor transfers those things from the wealthy who owned it in the first place to the poor people who got it. As the poor gets more money demand for stuff they buy increases which raises prices and leads to inflation, meaning that said inflation is a direct result of the original wealth transfer and therefore can't possible be a reverse wealth transfer as you described.

On the other hand if we do the same thing with borrowed money demand for goods for poor people will still increase, prices will still go up, just that now it all has to be paid back in taxes or other transfers in the future. So the main effect is that poor people now pay more for goods they pay for with borrowed money and rich people got both interest from the governments loan and can sell their goods to the poor for more.

[emteycz]

All prices (but not wages - in case of low income people) are rising with inflation. The rich don't store value as currency, so there isn't any transfer of value because they don't own this kind of asset, just like inflating dollar does nothing to my euro holdings. Actually, since the only thing rich people own that's denominated in currency is debt, rich people get richer thanks to inflation. Inflation is making it worse for poor people; rich people would have stopped it a long time ago if it made them lose value.