What would happen if a country printed $1,000,000 for every citizen?

Some serious inflation, that’s what would happen.

Currency would devalue to nothing, instantly.

@Patty_Melt is correct. The price of eggs is based on how much people can pay.
If everyone is a millionaire, prices would be much higher.

During the California Gold Rush, when the miners all had gold, an egg was $100.

You can print it with no consequences beyond the expense and resources put into its manufacture and storage. It’s when you place it in circulation that the troubles ensue. And when you consider it, there might well be a million dollars of U S currency in circulation NOW per U S citizen. If you don’t have YOUR million, perhaps it’s time to consider the distinction between “for” and “per”. Then think on what happened to your cut. SOMEBODY has it.

Upcycled money crafts would be trending on Pinterest and Etsy.

Let’s see….. 330,000,000 x $1,000,000 = $3.0 x 10^14 or hyper inflation. Or $10K for a loaf of bread.

It depends on how productive the economy is. If the economy was producing at that rate nothing would change, if it were producing more, then you’d have deflation, less: inflation, much less: hyper-inflation.

@gorillapaws So do you think our current economy can handle suddenly printing $330 trillion?

With nothing of value to back it, like gold or silver, the money would be worthless. If it was worth anything, the more bills you printed, the less it would be worth.
At the end of WWII, Austria had such a problem. They were printing one million mark notes so fast they could only print them on one side and a grocery sack full was needed to purchase a loaf of bread.

@gondwanalon The question never specified which country, at which time. The dollar amount specified is arbitrary. For example, if you had a simple economy with $100 in circulation and 100 hammers, all hammers would be $1. If that economy produces an additional 100 hammers (total of 200) but doesn’t increase the money supply, each hammer is now worth $0.50–deflation. The money supply needs to keep pace with the total production.

@gorillapaws You ignore the velocity of money. If there were 100 hammers at $1 per, and only $10 in circulation, 10 people could buy a hammer today. Then ten people who now have dollar after selling a hammer can go buy a new hammer. Do that for ten days, and 100 people have a hammer they paid $1 for.

MV=PQ money supply times velocity of money equals Price time Quantity. Increase the money supply by giving everyone a million and price will skyrocket causing massive inflation.

Number estimates vary but this Covid situation has caused the US to borrow ~$3T to stay afloat. (It is probably more, or might be less but for easy math let’s say that is the number.)
Since the population in the US is ~300M that means the US has borrowed and effectively printed $10,000 per person during this crisis. We’ll see how it affects inflation when true consumer price index numbers are released.

@zenvelo I was trying to keep the example simple. Yes there are other variables that increase the money supply, but it doesn’t change my overall point. The growth in the money supply (including all variables) needs to match production, otherwise you have inflation/deflation. It’s theoretically possible to have an economy booming so crazy in a hypothetical country that they could print $1M per person and still have deflation. The point is that the printing amount needs to be relative to production.