Potatoes And Bricks

>>"If you print more of it you don't increase wealth."

Exactly. You only change prices.

Here's a simple way of looking at it.

 A potato farmer and a bricklayer are neighbors. For thirty years they do business without money. The farmer trades potatoes for brick walls on his property.

Then, a bank appears in town, and  paper money is introduced into the economy. The residents begin using it to conduct commerce. Instead of the bricklayer promising to build a wall on Friday for the supply of potatoes he received on Monday, the potato farmer sells his potatoes at market on Sunday, takes cash money in payment, and then, when the bricklayer comes to build the wall on Friday, he pays the mason cash money for the wall out of what he earned at market.

This is how paper money serves the economy. We don't have to pick up and carry the potatoes at the same time we build a wall. We take paper money in its place, which we can spend on potatoes at a later date.

If the bank inflates the money supply , this increase in paper money will change the prices of potatoes and brick walls. But this inflated money supply cannot make the farm produce more potatoes, or make the bricklayer make more walls. It only changes the prices attached to the goods and services. The wealth of the community is a product of human endeavor. The paper money cannot change that wealth equation.