Why can't the US government just print out money on paper, so that we would have more money?

Answer 1

Because that's called inflation.
You would have more money but you also would
have to pay more.

Answer 2

If the government did that, then the money would become less valuable, and prices would go higher. The new money wouldn't really help anyone.

Imagine that you owned a store where you sold computers. Let's say you sold them for $500 each. Suddenly, the government printed huge amounts of money, and everybody had enough to buy 2 or 3 of your computers every day. With so many people coming in to buy your tv's, it would only make sense to raise the price.

This same thing would happen all over the economy, for every product. Eventually, the prices would rise to match the increase in the money supply, and there would really be no difference than before. The only way to really increase people's wealth is to make it easier to produce goods. Printing paper money doesn't make it any easier to create new tv's.

Answer 3

Because then the value of each dollar would be worth much less. Inflation would run rampant because our money (which there would be plenty of) would not be worth as much compared to the rest of the world's currency, and because everyone would have whole slews of money, people would charge exorbitant prices.

P.S. The government does print more money, but the general amount of money in circulation every year is fairly constant. The reprinting is just to replace old, worn out paper. So what's causing inflation now isn't excess money being printed, it's just general economic factors and competition against other countries.

Answer 4

It's not the amount of money.... International treaties determine what money is worth in other countries. For example, a low dollar compared to the Euro makes our goods cheaper for Europeans to buy. A higher dollar would make them more expensive.

The government could print out more money, but foreign debts, like what we owe China are not in dollar sums but in percentages adjusted for inflation. So printing more money would do us absolutely no good. It would, as others have pointed out, just cause inflation.

Answer 5

Because if you print more money, the value of the money decreases, which means you need more money to buy the same thing.

For example, if a loaf of bread costs $1, and the government prints extra money, $1 might not equal $1 anymore, since money is more common. It might only equal 50cents. Which means that in order to buy a dollar's worth of bread, you'd need $1.50

This is a very simplified version, but take a look at Zimbabwe, where a loaf of bread costs about $14K

Answer 6

We are not allowed to print more money, than we have in gold or silver resources in the US Treasury. You can call it inflation, you can call it undervaluing the dollar, but they started out (the founding fathers) printing dollars as a form of debit paper. They discovered if they couldn't cover the paper with gold or silver holdings, than the paper was fairly valueless.

Answer 7

because it would be soo easy to make counterfeits, like 12 year old liks could do it prolly. then government would go bankrupt and the world would end as we know it, and thats if we're lucky. AHHH!!! haha i don't wanna think about it.... why do you think the government is always adding seemingly useless things on the new bills? - to make it harder and harder to counterfeit. it's a huge busines counterfeiting, and theres like literally billions upon billions of dollars floating around that the U.S never made. yeahh nuff said : p

Answer 8

This is called inflation. It results in the value of the dollar (compared to other currencies around world) to plummet. In the end, we end up having to pay more for things like gasoline. It's a vicious cycle.

Answer 9

Whatever is printed up needs to be backed by gold and silver.

Answer 10

Read about Germany pre-ww2

Answer 11

They do, billions every year. That's what fuels inflation and why our deficit/national debt needs to be reigned in.