ELI5 Why can’t we just print more money?

Imagine money is like tickets at a fair.

Each ticket lets you ride rides, buy snacks, or play games. The rides and snacks are real things. The tickets just help decide who gets what. Now imagine the fair has 100 rides and snacks total. At first, there were 100 tickets. One ticket usually gets you one thing. That feels fair.

Now imagine the fair owner prints 1,000 more tickets, but does not add more rides or snacks. Suddenly there are way more tickets chasing the same stuff. People start offering more tickets to get the same snack, because everyone has lots of tickets. Soon one snack costs 10 tickets instead of one. Nothing got better. The rides did not improve. Snacks did not multiply. Prices just went up. That is inflation.

Printing more money works the same way in real life. Money does not create food, houses, cars, or doctors. Those come from work, time, skills, and resources. If the amount of money grows faster than the amount of real things, each unit of money becomes less special. It buys less than before. You might think people would feel richer if everyone had more money. At first, it can feel that way. People spend more. Businesses raise prices because they see more money coming in. Soon rent costs more. Groceries cost more. Wages try to catch up but often lag behind. People end up stressed, not richer.

There is another problem too. Trust. Money works because everyone believes it will hold value tomorrow. If people think money will keep losing value, they try to spend it fast. That makes prices rise even faster. In extreme cases, money becomes almost useless. History has examples where people needed wheelbarrows of cash to buy bread. Printing money can be useful in emergencies. During a crisis, governments may add some money to keep things moving. The key word is some. It has to match what the economy can actually produce. Think of it like adding oil to an engine. A little helps it run smoothly. Too much floods the engine and breaks it.

So we cannot just print more money because money is a measuring tool, not magic. Making more rulers does not make a table longer. Making more money does not make the world richer. Only creating more real goods and services does that.