New money doesn't reach everyone at once. Choose how much is created and where you stand — then watch what happens to what your money can actually buy.
Two choices. One consequence: your real purchasing power — what your money buys after prices adjust.
If new supply follows a fixed, published schedule that no one can expand on demand, there is no discretionary "print" event to redistribute — so this particular gap between positions doesn't open up from money creation. That removes one lever. It does not remove every tradeoff: a money that can't expand in a crisis has no lender-of-last-resort to cushion a shock, its price can swing sharply, and holders bear that volatility instead. The honest comparison is lever-for-lever, not "one is simply better."
This is a transparent stylized model, not a forecast. It isolates one mechanism — uneven, timing-based pass-through of new money — and holds everything else constant. Real economies also move with productivity, demand, policy, and global forces. The multipliers below set the direction and rough magnitude the historical record supports; they are not precise predictions for any specific year.
For money growth m, the general price level rises by P = m × 0.5 (broad prices have historically risen less than one-for-one with M2, because output grows and money velocity falls). Each position's nominal resources change by m × β, then real change is (1 + m·β) / (1 + P) − 1.
β = 1.8 — Asset owner. Asset prices have risen faster than both wages and CPI across the QE era (S&P 500 and median home prices vs. CPI, 2008–2024; FRED / BLS).β = 1.0 — Mortgaged homeowner. Home value tracks roughly with money growth, and fixed-rate debt is repaid in cheaper dollars (a second, separate benefit not shown in the bar).β = 0.4 — Wage earner. Real median wages have been roughly flat for decades while asset prices climbed (BLS / St. Louis Fed).β = 0.0 — Cash saver. Cash earns little or nothing in nominal terms, so prices rising erode it directly.Sources, dated, verify before relying on them: FRED M2 Money Stock · BLS Consumer Price Index · Minneapolis Fed purchasing-power calculator. This is education, not financial advice.