No, it's not the same. If you have 11 people, one of them has 10 units of money, the rest have 1, then there's 20 units of money ($) in the system. Let's also a

No, it's not the same. If you have 11 people, one of them has 10 units of money, the rest have 1, then there's 20 units of money ($) in the system. Let's also assume you have 100 units of resources (R) that people can buy. So $1 is convertible to 5R. Now you print money and give everyone $1. There is now $31 in the system, so $1 can buy 3.22R. However, the purchasing power of the people who had $1 now increased from 5R to 6.44R. The purchasing power of the 'rich' guy decreases from 50R to 35R. Or you can take money away from the 'rich' and redistribute it. That also has some effect on prices because of other reasons (changes the consumer baskets). But as you can see, money printing is basically tax on cash reserves.