Market forces amount to "the price is what people are willing to pay." You dump a bunch of paychecks in the bank accounts of every american for 2 years, they're

Market forces amount to "the price is what people are willing to pay." You dump a bunch of paychecks in the bank accounts of every american for 2 years, they're willing to pay more. All these arguments about the price going up due to money printing vs due to price gouging are a red herring. Whenever money is printed, capital gets soaked up by someone. When it's given to banks, they employ economists, so they soak up as much as they can. When it's given to regular people they thank their lucky stars that they can now afford what they're about to run to the store to blow it on, the people selling the things they want profit. Debasing the money always hurts the little guy, no matter whether he's the recipient of the newly minted money or not.