Printing money is like having a cookie jar. If you take more cookies than you put in, your friends might not want to trade with you anymore, they'll think the cookies aren’t as special.
Imagine you're at school and everyone has 10 cookies. You print 10 extra cookies for yourself. Suddenly, you have more cookies, but all the others still have only 10. That makes your cookies worth less because there are more of them around, that's inflation!
If you keep printing more and more cookies every year, soon everyone will think cookies aren’t valuable anymore, just like money.
Examples
- Printing extra dollars for a birthday party makes everyone’s dollar worth less
- When a teacher prints too many quizzes, each quiz becomes easier to pass
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See also
- What is Quantity theory of money?
- Why Can't We Just Print More Money?
- How Did Money Start and Why Do We Still Use It?
- How Does INFLATION, Explained in 6 Minutes Work?
- How Does a Coin Become a Currency?