"wealthiest 1 percent of Americans control 35.6 percent of the total wealth of the country"
"the top 1 percent of income earners took home 17.67 percent of the total income"
http://money.howstuffworks.com/one-percent-control-third-of-...
In other words, there is one guy with $1mm in the bank and 99 people that make $50k per year. Which is more important to you if you make and sell stuff?
The guy with $1mm in the bank could theoretically buy $1mm worth of your stuff but after that he'd be out of money. The 99 people who make $50k a year collectively could buy just under $5mm of stuff EVERY YEAR. So while the guy with $1mm has more power from any one instant to another, everyone else has a lot more power over any longer time-scale.
The reason so many are unemployed, after all, is that it takes fewer people to sustain a given 'standard of living', right? So now, with our free market, those unemployed drop into poverty since their bank account of imaginary points goes to zero.
Put points back into those bank accounts, and what happens? Those small tallys are not going to affect what the big folks are doing with all those trillions.
The value of money is directly derived from its purchasing power. If you can't buy anything with money, it's worthless.
The point is that the vast majority of the money in the US is in flow, not tied up in the rich 1% bank accounts.
So if 95% of people suddenly have 2x cashflow (on average, let's say) then prices should roughly double within a fairly short period of time. We won't suddenly have more gasoline or milk or beef or whatever if everyone has twice as much money every month. So more money chases the same amount of goods and prices rise. This is really simple economics.
Would doubling the price of everything erode the purchasing power of the rich too? Yeah, absolutely. At least for all the money that they have tied up in cash. But considering that the FDIC only insures you up to $250k I suspect that most wealthy people are going to have their money in assets like stocks, bonds, and real estate. Real estate prices will definitely rise and I suspect that the other asset classes will go up in price too.
There might be a period of a few weeks to a couple of years where people actually do get more stuff before the prices start to rise. But with how just-in-timed everyone's supply chains are these days it's not as though it would take 20 years for everyone to catch up to what's happened.