hexi

The wealthy don't just put it under the mattress.

If they do some big ego projects, the people they hire take that money and increase their own consumption.

If they park it in investments, some company takes the capital injection and increases their spending.

All that money chases labor, and labor can be reapportioned to meet different needs. A billionaire can buy a slightly bigger yacht with their share of the Fed printing. That bigger yacht needs a little more labor, and someone ends up building more cabinets for the interior rather than building housing for the poor.

The billionaire doesn't blame themselves for inflation, and someone at the bottom can't figure out why suddenly a full time job doesn't pay for housing. But that Fed decision moved labor from benefiting the poor, to benefiting the 1%.

. The fed printing money created more liquidity, but that doesn't directly create inflation which is the rise in prices of goods and service. That's done by people who control pricing which are the business owners.

It absolutely affects inflation because there's more money chasing the same number of goods/services.

If business owners don't raise their prices at all, the real price of those goods would drop, because each dollar is worth less when you pump up the money supply.