to get the bread, and we'll probably each bid every last penny of that $100 extra to try and get it, but ultimately the bread will still go to the same person. Nothing about the scarcity of the bread or what we are contributing to society to buy the bread has changed, only how many pieces of paper we are using in lieu of directly trading my labour for what I want to buy (that is, baristas don't make coffee at the grocery store for a couple hours to pay their bill. They work at Starbucks and the grocer can stop by and use some of their own money to buy a coffee if they want one). So simply handing out more money will not ultimately address poverty itself. However, it can be used as a tool to influence certain behaviours that might have positive effects on the economy. For instance, an increase in the money supply can decrease interest rates, which can boost domestic consumption due to a low cost of borrowing. With increased demand, suppliers will likely hire more people to meet that demand, further boosting consumption as people get back to work. Note, this assumes that people will increase demand in the face of lower costs of borrowing and that the demand will lead to domestic employment (if the increased demand is for, say, foreign produced video games downloaded off of Steam, then there will only be a slight increase in domestic demand for internet bandwidth). Usually