With all of the helicopter money being dropped on the American economy, one would think that the inflation engines would have, by now, revved right up and that inflation would be thereby occurring in the natural order of things, because when there is an excess of money that suddenly appears out of what is essentially the clear, blue sky, and there are a multitude of people that have their needs and their desires to fulfill, then all that money chasing goods that are either limited in supply or that take some amount of time and logistics to create, are going to necessitate the price of those goods, increasing, because all that newfound money is in theory, chasing a limited supply of goods.
Yet, inflation has been relatively quiescent in America, and this has been the case for a number of years, though there are those items such as education and healthcare that are the outliers in regards to inflation, as these have each gone up noticeably in recent times. However, for the most part, and certainly on what the government measures as inflation, the inflation rate has remained below 2.5% since 2010, with the sole exception being 2011, when it was just above 3%. All of this seems to suggest, that the government can somehow run up massive deficits of not just hundreds of billions, but even three trillion or beyond, in a single year, without suffering the ill effects of dollar debasement, and hence thereby its corresponding inflation.
The answer to this conundrum is that the richest of the rich, and the most powerful of the powerful, have gamed the system, so that monies being created, first pass through the very hands of the people and institutions that don't really need the money, and are hesitant to invest their unearned money into industries that actually are employing people and creating things. Instead, they are risk averse, and with the cost of money approaching near zero, for those of stellar credit rating, they find that the easiest course to thereby take and the most prudent course, is actually one in which the monies so being issued is passively invested into equities or similar.
This, thus signifies that the very people that have a real need along with a burning desire and would surely spend "free" money being provided to them; represented by all those that are without any substantial material assets as well as by all those that are struggling paycheck to paycheck and would not mind being able to buy those things that they have been precluded from buying because of budgetary concerns, are actually the last in line to receive any portion of that helicopter money and the proportion that they thereupon receive isn't enough to make any material impact to the economy, or give reason for businesses to crank up their engines; indeed, not a whit.
The bottom line is that when newly minted money is primarily distributed to those parties that have no real need to spend such or to expand their businesses with such, then that money is not going to be spent on buying material goods, but rather is simply going to find some reasonable conduit so as to invest those monies, instead. This means, that helicopter money as implemented does not do much to jumpstart a sluggish economy, and neither is it inflationary for most goods; though it does provide a very nice boost for the equity markets, for that is often the chosen vehicle for those monies that are put to use, but not ever spent.