Again, it's two rather simple questions...
1. Have we been printing a lot of money?
2. Has the economy grown enough to keep up with the printing?
If the answer to #1 is no....you really don't need to be concerned about #2. If it's yes, and it is, then the lack of economic growth is a problem.
Here's a simple analogy...
If I flood the apple market with apples, yet the demand for apples doesn't increase, what happens to the value of the apples?
It's the same with our dollar. We've got a lot of printed money, but the economy is nowhere near catching up at the rate we need it to.
#2 is the wrong question. Question #2 should be: Has the economy been able to accommodate the increase in money?
The answer to that question is yes, in large part because (as far as I understand things) of where that money has gone.
Inflation is affected by a lot of things, including economic growth, but it's ultimately a measure of consumer prices. We've been printing money for quite a while, but it's only in the last few months that we've seen anything resembling the inflation that we've been long warned about. Until recently, that money we've been printing hasn't been going into the consumer economy; it's been going into the bond market. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because it helps grease the skids so-to-speak, but it's sufficiently removed from the consumer economy that a big round of quantitative easing doesn't move consumer prices much.
But to use your original question, has the economy grown enough to accommodate that money: I’d say obviously yes. The stimulus money
has gone into the consumer market and has been intended to be a bulwark against the economic
contraction that the pandemic otherwise would’ve caused. We had two quarters of negative gdp growth and a very quick rebound to positive growth.
Another way of putting that is the right was correct to think printing money would lead to inflation. The left was wrong about how strongly the economy would recover.
No, that's not another way of putting it. The right wasn't correct. You can look at the CPI data and see what sectors are contributing to this recent inflation. Printing money doesn't lead to spikes predominantly in the oil and used car markets. Either way, inflation is one indicator of a strong, growing economy. If you want a quick rebound, you’re liable to get some inflation.