I believe current inflation rate has less to do with printing money and more to do with shortages and low supply of goods due to shutting everything down for a year. A 3% to 4% yearly inflation rate is okay by me. Wages and stock prices will go up too.
I believe it's a product of both. In other words, you're also right.
We are inflating the circulating amount of US dollars and giving a good chunk of that to people that spend as if there is no tomorrow. This results in an increase to the velocity of money, which will cause prices to rise.
To your point surrounding shortages and the low supply of goods, I think that further compounds the problem. The portion of our labor force that's been put on ice, let go or yet to be reinstated is causing a shortage in the supply of both goods and services. As a result of this, both goods and service are more scarce, which in turn makes their limited supply more expensive. Just in April alone, the jobs report showed that only 266,000 jobs were created which was less by about 750,000+ than the low end amount that they were hoping for.
So, I think both points are right because:
Less goods and services + a lot more available currency pumped into our circulating supply = inflation with a translation that amounts to the base PRICE of hard assets (stocks, real estate etc) and basic consumer products to increase.
The silver lining to increasing inflation is that our labor is also an asset, an asset we trade for CASH. Inflation will cause the price of all assets to increase and the cost of our labor will increase to account for the increased cost of attaining all other assets we usually attain with a lower rate of pay. This phenomenon will greatly benefit those with accrued "good" debt (mortgages, private loans etc) and certainly be useful with those that have "bad" debt (credit cards etc).
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