You've always been a little bit confused as to why the government doesn't just print and hand out money when a country's in horrible debt/recession, amirite?

I think that's called inflamation or something because they're handing out more money than they actually have. So that's why they don't do that. But yeah, I don't understand either why they don't just give some sort of aid to those who need it.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Inflation.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Oh. Haha sorry. A total brain fart moment :)

by Anonymous 13 years ago

HAHAHAHAHAAH fail. inflation, not inflamation.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Well, at least she had the right idea. And she understands.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

The more money there is, the less it's worth. Like what happened in Germany after World War I; the government tried to make up for all it had lost in reparations by printing a bunch of money, but the money ended up meaning almost nothing. People would have wheelbarrows full of paper money just to buy a loaf of bread, and by the time they got to the market, the price would have gone up. Horrible inflation. So yeah, they can't just print and hand out money.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

exactly

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I understand that it's inflation... but I have a really hard time understand exactly WHY it happens like that..

by Anonymous 13 years ago

(But,seriously?): There are a lot of rocks, so they're not valuable. There's not a lot of diamonds, so they're valuable. I mean, you can pick up a rock off any sidewalk, so if it became the same with a dollar, our economy would be screwed.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

that was the best way I've ever heard (seen?) it explained, thanks! :D I was miserably confused before :P

by Anonymous 13 years ago

The paper money is representative of the gold the country owns. So the more paper dollars we have, the less each is worth, unless we actually get more gold.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

No. The gold standard hasn't been in effect for the last 77 years or so. http://goldprice.org/buying-gold/2007/12/dollar-backed-by-gold.html

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Still confusing.. maybe I am just a tad slow though. Haha

by Anonymous 13 years ago

It causes a HUGE inflation. I think that's what happened to the south during the Civil War. It's just a mess. Don't do it.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Actually that's what Obama's stimulus package did.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

dum dum dum dum dumb

by Anonymous 13 years ago

wow. i really wonder what people are thinking. money is a representative of gold, so without gold, paper money literally has no value.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Not quite. http://goldprice.org/buying-gold/2007/12/dollar-backed-by-gold.html

by Anonymous 13 years ago

the money has to be worth something IE: They need to find more gold

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Woooow. *fears for future of country more than normal

by Anonymous 13 years ago

that also happened in the revolutionary war. i understand that the amount of money each country has is representative of how much gold they own, but does that still apply even when the US isn't on the gold standard anymore?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

The more of something you have, the less it's worth. For instance, the value of the dollar has dropped about 20%.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I hope that whoever posted this is under the age of 13, otherwise this is just sad.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

(Well am I?): Our Social Studies classes just tell us it happens, not why, alright? haha, yes I realize how dumb I am now.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

thats called inflation. if you were educated you would know that.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Um... That would actually make the economy worse, my friend. The more money that's out there, the less the dollar is worth...I think. Don't hold that to me, I'm only young still.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Hyperinflation: making money worthless. If you make more money, there's more in the country--take, for example, exchange rates. American stuff costs "less" than Canadian (ie prices on the back of books, etc) but that's because for every $14.99 in American money, there was $17.99 or whatever in Canadian money. Like a fraction. So now, American stuff actually does cost less than Canadian because our government has about as much money in circulation as theirs or something along those lines. But basically now, you can't go to Canada ans get as much Canadian money as you could before for the same amount of American money. Does that make sense?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

what a retard.. thatd make the economy worse!

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Wowwww, you're so smart OP!!

by Anonymous 13 years ago

The really sad part about this is that about 130 people agreed with the OP, amirite?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Tsk, tsk, Someone didn't pay attention in Economics or History, now did they?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I didn't have any of these classes that actually described this..

by Anonymous 13 years ago

(but,seriously?): Well by 9th grade Econ or 10th grade World History, it'll become clear.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Maybe I'll understand next year in 10th grade then.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

(but,seriously?): I had a class that briefly discussed this in 6TH GRADE. At public school. Not in great depth, but we covered the whole 'more money= less value' idea. Wow...

by Anonymous 13 years ago

9th Grade: Global studies 10th grade: Global studies 2/ AP World/ AP Euro in a lot of public schools the first chance for people to take econ is 11th grade but it is briefly in 8th grade curriculum.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

they cant do that becasue they dont have the money to do that. how much gold you have in your country represents how much money you can make and right now theyre not really finding much gold

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Maybe you'll understand this: If we give everyone a diamond ring just because we can, it makes diamond rings less valuable, because everyone has them.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

that's actually a really good way to put it.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Heh. Thanks.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Hmm, that did help.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Impossible, that would cause an even larger economic crisis. Every dollar bill that was ever printed has a value of perception. This would become a little clearer if the U.S. backed up their money with gold, but we don't. The more bills you print, the lower the value.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Inflation: the more money you print, the more it becomes worthless. It is quite simple and although I understand some people's confusion, it REALLY isn't that hard to understand.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I am not encouraging the idea of inflation, but....who's going to know if the government printed $10,000,000,000?? Honestly...do we know exactly the amount of dollar bills out there? Even with the every few periods we take the old crumpled bills, and REPLACE them with new ones. (Still maintaining the same amount/worth of physical bills), we still don't know a solid number, do we?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

The printer they use to make them automatically gives them a code and accounts for them, that's what the complicated number on the bill is, so I'm guessing somewhere they keep track of all of that and they keep track of how long one has been in circulation.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I was but then my 7th grade teacher told me why. :] Thanks, Mr Grable! :D

by Anonymous 13 years ago

obviously this person doesnt know a thing about economics If the government was to print all that cash, then the VALUES would drop, since everybody would have it. For example, in the 1900's, one dollar used to be quite alot of money, but nowadays, since most ppl have it, its not alot of money, because the value of a dollar dropped

by Anonymous 13 years ago

This is why you need to take some kind of intelligence test before entering the internet.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Umm, I was confused. And a lot of people agreed with me, even if a lot also disagreed. So why don't you get off your high horse?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

do you understand the concept of inflation

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Overuse would do that but I feel like if we just printed a little it wouldn't have too horrible of an effect. We're creatures of habit, it's not like we're suddenly gonna start buying a candy bar for $1.37, it's gonna retain its usual $1 price. The trick is giving it to the right people cause you're right- if everyone has it, its not valuable anymore. Idk the concept of fake-it-till-you-make it would be the easiest way to fix the economy, cause if people would spend money like it wasn't a problem, it wouldn't be. But the media played it up enough to scare people into hoarding.. That's why handing out money wouldn't work, since people are going to be smart and put it into savings... until it loses its value. The other problem is that the careless consuming of natural resources is catching up with us. There's this one quote, "Only when the last tree has died, the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught, will we realize that we cannot eat money." [cont]

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Meaning that money’s only valuable when there’s something to back it up, otherwise it’s just a number in a bank account. No matter how well off the economy is, it’s doomed to crash when we run out of the resources backing up the value of money. But, in my opinion, the best way to fix the economy right now would be to get people to spend more on services. To somehow develop a desire/need for workers. We have a ton of jobless workers right now & a low amount of resources. :/

by Anonymous 13 years ago

To everyone calling OP dumb did it ever occur to you that maybe they haven't learned this in school yet and that they have a different curriculum than you did. I didn't learn Economics until 10th grade and we only briefly touched on inflation. Anyway the reason we can't just print money to get out of a recession is because of the law of scarcity. As other people have said if there's a lot of something out there it becomes worthless. The more money we print the less it's worth and the more money we need. Also to people saying our money is backed by gold it's not anymore. The dollar is only powerful as a currency as long as people believe in it. Once people start losing faith in the dollar it loses it's value.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Thank you ! This is exactly right. I have NOT learned this yet. And I clearly understand now, and just because I am slightly uneducated in this particular subject does not make me dumb, thanks.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I don't care how old you are. if you can't understand a basic concept you should not be claiming ignorance. you should research it! such a new concept.....ugh.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Basic maybe to you.. but I honestly don't spend my free time researching endlessly before I post something on a site that is basically a form of entertainment.

by Anonymous 13 years ago