Yes. That's exactly right. The Fed has a mandate to promote maximum employment. But employment isn't the only (or even the best) way to provide people income

Yes. That's exactly right. The Fed has a mandate to promote maximum employment. But employment isn't the only (or even the best) way to provide people incomes. In the last post I wrote on my blog before I came up with this idea, I was complaining about the Fed's employment mandate: http://www.suncho.com/blog/20150326_morality.html http://www.suncho.com/blog/20150326_morality.html But that's far from the only reason that the Fed won't provide a basic income. Another reason is that the Fed doesn't have the facility to do it. The way the Fed normally injects money into the economy is by buying assets from the banks. Normal people don't have the kind of assets that the Fed would want to buy, and poor people might not have any assets to speak of at all. So, in the U.S., at least, you'd need this kind of multiple-step approach. The basic income would be fiscal spending funded by Treasury borrowing (issuing bills/notes/bonds). The banks would buy the Treasury debt and then the Fed would offset things by buying the Treasury debt from the banks. That's a complicated process. You have to get a bunch of different parts of the government to all play nice with each other. And it goes against what most politicians and economists think should be done anyway!