But on a grand scale, where everybody knows that everyone is getting the same amount of free money, the market adjusts accordingly, within minutes.<p>You can give 20 people $100 each to spend as they see fit, and it wouldn&#x27;t affect the price of a Happy Meal.  But if you give 100000 people $100 each, you can bet that the price of that food is going up a bit, just because more people can more easily afford a higher price.<p>Subsidy affects market equilibria differently than using the same amount of resources to lower costs or increase supplier firms, or do industry-advocacy advertising.