My roomate recentely brought up a question that I couldn't answer. I may be stupid, but he said with us being trillions of dollars in debt, why don't we just print out more money to get us out of debt? I was stumped. Obviously this isn't possible, or all Countries would be rich, but what answer can I give my roomate? Thanks

the more money you print, the less it is worth.

printing more money doesn't give you more assets - they are like IOU's from the government, and we already have more IOU's out there owed to other countries than we could ever pay off.

Okay, that definitely makes sense. Thanks for explaining that Robyrob. I'll let my roomate know.

Everytime new money gets printed, the dollar gets inflated. Gold is the standard accepted throughout the world as a common means of barter. The money is only worth the gold we have to back it up. And we only have so much gold in reserves here in the US and no more. When we start to print more money, and our gold reserve remains the same, the money becomes worth less. Also when prices increase, and the value money falls, you get inflation in return.

I wish they were such thing as money tree my dad said they wouldn't be any trees left if their was money tree I know I would pick thousand of them all the time

Thanks for the replies guys. I will try to read the responses to him, or atleast briefly explain it as best I can. Appreciate the responses.