I'm keen to read the book suggested by the previous commenter and have my view challenged but my current understanding is that money printing plays a major role

I'm keen to read the book suggested by the previous commenter and have my view challenged but my current understanding is that money printing plays a major role due to incentives. People are far more willing to spend large amounts of other people's money on frivolous things than they would if it was their own money. Also, the ability for a government to create large amounts of money on demand allows them to spend on destructive activities which can create opportunities for certain connected people in the private sector. Price discovery in the markets cannot work if one party has a theoretically unlimited amount of currency. It just devalues the currency. If the government knew that the budget was limited and they only had x amount of money to spend that year as an absolute maximum, they wouldn't be sending it to foreign countries as foreign aid.