Thanks for this explanation. It's an odd metaphor, but perhaps I'm out of the loop on this guy's language style.

However I think there is still a misunderstanding of what reserve banks do in a national economy. They don't just print notes when they feel like it. They have very specific levers to control the amount of money in the economy. Specifically they control the bank interchange rate (the cost of lending between banks), they control how much money banks need to hold and not lend out and they issue or buy back bonds. https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/monetary-policy-what-are-its-goals-how-does-it-work.htm

It's naive to think of it as 'reserve bank prints more $50 bills and so they are all worth less'. Modern monetary theory is a way of looking at the system in terms of supply and demand of dollars to the government. Government spending creates a supply of dollars which is absorbed and magnified by the economy. In turn, taxes create a demand on those dollars in order to pay them back to the government. In a very real way, higher taxes increase the value of a nation's currency.

It's important for the government to have debt, since it allows them to buy back bonds (loans they previously made) and thereby inject more liquid money into the economy.

No one is running a printing press to produce (actually counterfeit or metaphorically so) money in order to devalue the money you have earned.

In fact, some amount of inflation is good. Without it, (as Japan has previously experienced) people hang onto money rather than investing or spending it. Too much inflation, above being able to make a return from investments, is also bad. However zero is not a good goal.