All the input costs have increased, dramatically. They then have to charge more downstream. The additional costs are then going to be absorbed the the consumers (other businesses and end customers).
The consumer has been given super cheap loans or checks in the mail and can now afford an increased expense.
Now everything costs more - inflation.
Note: much of the money went into game stop, amc, crypto, etc and didn’t necessarily go towards more production.
However, free money won’t be available forever. Will wages rise? Not necessarily as fast, especially with high transportation and raw material costs. So wages likely won’t rise as quickly.
Due to the higher input costs, many businesses will have to close, further suppressing wages.
At the end of the day, we could have stagnant wages, lower adjusted gdp, with increased inflation.
Now, to your point — it’s possible businesses stay open and even expand, increasing wages. You’ll still see inflation, just no depression. However, that doesn’t seem likely given these price increases in raw materials, transportation, etc seem to be increasing and there’s no addition release of capital on the consumer side.
Finally, if the FED tries to decrease inflation it’ll reduce economic growth. The treasury also cannot sell more bonds on the open market with these decreased interest rates — no one is willing or can buy enough. At the end of the day, we will have trouble not printing money to cover the debt — increasing inflation. I don’t think there’s a method of not printing our way out of debt.
No one knows for sure, so I feel all discussions have their merits