It seems incontrovertible that inflation is caused my too much money chasing too few goods.  The controversy is how does an economy arrive at such a scenario and how does an economy recover balance once it's arrived (yes power and expectations play a role in unbalancing the economy).  The pandemic weighed significantly on supply, but government policy concurrently supported demand.  By Dec 2020/March 2021 it seemed clear that further demand support was no longer necessary, but both Trump, Biden and Congress poured money into an economy with low unemployment and no impending signs that there were workers on the side who would return to work to put the necessary supply in place (and even if they did, it was unclear what supply that $2.6T would consume).The forces of the market (raising the cost of money to reduce demand) is one tool (but also weighs on supply), government policy (wage & price controls) another, but both do have the impact of "lowering the excitement of the game".The government/federal reserve can always push down (and up) demand by printing money, but they cannot create supply, so the ultimate tools the government has must, by logic, impact demand.   Impacting demand means making people actually poorer, or feeling poorer, so they either can't or won't spend.  That is politically very uncomfortable which is why inflation is such a difficult problem.

It seems incontrovertible that inflation is caused my too much money chasing too few goods.  The controversy is how does an economy arrive at such a scenario and how does an economy recover balance once it's arrived (yes power and expectations play a role in unbalancing the economy).  The pandemic weighed significantly on supply, but government policy concurrently supported demand.  By Dec 2020/March 2021 it seemed clear that further demand support was no longer necessary, but both Trump, Biden and Congress poured money into an economy with low unemployment and no impending signs that there were workers on the side who would return to work to put the necessary supply in place (and even if they did, it was unclear what supply that $2.6T would consume).The forces of the market (raising the cost of money to reduce demand) is one tool (but also weighs on supply), government policy (wage & price controls) another, but both do have the impact of "lowering the excitement of the game".The government/federal reserve can always push down (and up) demand by printing money, but they cannot create supply, so the ultimate tools the government has must, by logic, impact demand.   Impacting demand means making people actually poorer, or feeling poorer, so they either can't or won't spend.  That is politically very uncomfortable which is why inflation is such a difficult problem.

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