Inflation is not simply goods costing more, it is money being worth less. If there is a major supply chain disruption and thus a scarcity of some good like say

Inflation is not simply goods costing more, it is money being worth less. If there is a major supply chain disruption and thus a scarcity of some good like say lumber, the price increases because what lumber remains is legitimately more valuable. As soon as the supply chain returns to normal and there is an abundance of lumber, that lumber will lose its value and the price will fall back down again. Anyone continuing to sell overpriced lumber will be outcompeted. The only thing that's weird is that everything has become more valuable because everything has become more scarce because every supply chain got hit at the same time. You don't have people avoiding high lumber prices by switching to steel because the steel prices have likewise increased. If you want to build a house right now, you're going to have to build it out of something rarer than you had to 2 years ago. Normally people would just not buy the house, and then construction companies would have to fire people and sell off assets, which would reduce their capacity to build homes even after lumber prices fell back down. But with the injection of cash the demand is maintained and the builders are able to weather the storm. Now it's possible and indeed likely that the amount of cash injected is not exactly the right amount to maintain business as usual - there likely will be over production of certain high demand goods which will create a glut in the market after supply chains return to normal, and at the same time workers hired to do these superfluous tasks will be laid off when demand falls after the money printers stop. Cheap goods and higher unemployment mean lower pressure on increasing wages. Further, companies who invested too heavily will either be bought or sell off their assets for pennies on the dollar, leading to increased consolidation. To finance this expansion, odds are a lot of financial assets purchased now will be offloaded. When the dust settles people may see a legitimate decrease in purchasing power, but this change is still far off in the future and will be much less acute than the current situation.