Do a thought exercise with 100 people in a room representing everyone w USD in 1913. Let’s say each of them has $1,000. Let’s call one of those 100 people “the chosen one” who happens to have direct ties through contracts with the Big Guy to newly minted money. At this point in time there are $100,000 in circulation. To reduce this purchasing power by 95% the money supply would need to grow by 100/5= 20x. That would put the total in circulation at $2,000,000. Let’s say though that all that printed money just went to “the chosen one” or TCO for short. So now TCO has $1,901,000 and everyone else still only has $1,000. But here’s the main point…. TCO has about $95,050 ($1,901,000/20) purchasing power in the original 1913 money. And everyone else has $50 ($1,000/20) purchasing power in the original money. And this is the wealth transfer. TCO stole everyone else’s purchasing power.

Don’t look at “what happened to my purchasing power?”, but rather ask “who has my purchasing power now?” There are only a few ways to create value, most of which come from the sun, or our brains (which are ultimately fueled by the sun growing plants, that get eaten by animals which we go on to eat). So almost all value on earth comes from the sun growing everything or giving us power to draw out natural resources, and run our vehicles and machines.

Everything else is not a creation but a transfer. It does not vanish or evaporate. Someone has this money now.