[sweeps]

Here's another example that might help. Let's say the U.S. Mint went on a tear and printed a bunch of money and gave every citizen $1 million. You'd think, great, let's start spending. Well, unfortunately every one else would be thinking the same thing. No one's going to work for what they were making before, so they quit or at least demand much, much higher wages. But stuff still has to get done -- you still need janitors, babysitters, road construction crews, TV repairmen, garbage collectors, etc. So companies - and ultimately you - have to pay much much higher prices for these services. This causes prices of goods and services to rise, essentially making the whole thing a wash over the long term.

This is basically how inflation works (but of course not quite as dramatically as my example above).

To complicate matters, this is demand-pull inflation, as opposed to cost-push inflation. When oil prices rise, for example, the costs to business increase without an increase in consumer demand. In that case, prices go up because of a drop in supply.

Again, it all comes down to supply and demand.