[anythingdude321]

this is a reference to a famous Milton Friedman quote "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon" — of course this is a tautology, but he didn't mean the trivial version when he said it, but rather he was making an empirical claim.

in this piece it looks like the author is making the tautological version of the claim, by following up and describing it as "a function of money printing" — which is obviously true it is a function of money printing and several other things

[lottin]

To be clear, inflation is not a function of money printing. For example, under metallic standards (so no money printing), countries would experience inflation or deflation as a result of trade imbalances (because a trade deficit leads to a net outflow of precious metals, and vice-versa).

[anythingdude321]

metallic standards often had debasement (that's why it's called debasement). but also no one is arguing that inflation is a function of ONLY money printing, but no one can argue that money printing is not one of the inputs that determines inflation