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You may think so, but it's not. Imagine a scenario like this. - There's 10 units of wealth in the world
- There's 10 units of currency in the world
At this point, 1 unit of currency corresponds to 1 unit of wealth. But what if someone presses a button and conjures up 10 units of the same currency into his own bank account? - Still 10 units of wealth in the world
- Now there's 20 units of currency in the world
.. So now, after someone printed money for himself, 1 unit of currency only corresponds to 0.5 units of the wealth available in the world. So everyone who holds that currency just lost half of their purchasing power, which is kind of bad. But the guy who printed money doesn't give a fuck - his share of the total purchasing power went up from zero to five, after all, while everyone else's dropped.Of course, this is grossly simplified, and possibly partially wrong/inaccurate etc, but you get the idea, right? We really do lose purchasing power when more currency goes into circulation. Besides, we haven't even touched the effects of zero interest rates, borrowing massive amounts of money that will never be repaid, economic stagnation, an ever larger portion of the national tax revenues going towards paying interest on the ever more massive debts, and so on.. It's all bad, and it's all something that: 1) we do not want to happen, and 2) would not happen in a free market (with a market-chosen currency etc). But don't take just my word for it: http://mises.org |