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Given the nature of fiat currencies, taxes are irrelevant except as a means to control inflation by removing excess circulating currency. Moreover, a certain qu

Given the nature of fiat currencies, taxes are irrelevant except as a means to control inflation by removing excess circulating currency. Moreover, a certain quantity of currency in circulation leads to inflation only relative to a given capacity to produce goods and services. Given that our economic system sees only very limited inflation, and can quickly ramp up production further, your arguments seem mostly strawmen.

stephengillie 10y ago
Removing excess currency is entirely the point - our economic system sees very little inflation because we have a tax infrastructure consuming part of the money supply. Not all services can scale infinitely, so you will always have scarcity - and you can always use FOMO and other game mechanics to introduce artificial scarcity into infinite systems. Some goods and services will always be more inelastic than others, and so inflation will start there and spiral out of control, as those producers monopolize markets.
- SubiculumCode 10y ago
  Well many do not recognize that taxes are a mechanism for controlling inflation, so this point was not targeted at you, obviously. I suppose that my previous comment's wording could be construed as assuming we couldexist in a post-scarcity economy. That was not intentional. However, universal basic income does not require a post-scarcity framework to be workable, and the claim that universal basic income will cause inflation to 'spiral out of control' is left unsupported. Money is currently created out of nothing through the banking system, and the FED controls inflation just fine through various mechanisms e.g. setting interest rates. Basic income proposals can have similar inflation controlling mechanisms e.g. tie payouts to inflation rate or changes in tax rate. In any case inflatuon caused by basic income could be offset by increasing the fed interest rate which is currently near zero.

stephengillie 10y ago

Removing excess currency is entirely the point - our economic system sees very little inflation because we have a tax infrastructure consuming part of the money supply. Not all services can scale infinitely, so you will always have scarcity - and you can always use FOMO and other game mechanics to introduce artificial scarcity into infinite systems. Some goods and services will always be more inelastic than others, and so inflation will start there and spiral out of control, as those producers monopolize markets.

SubiculumCode 10y ago
Well many do not recognize that taxes are a mechanism for controlling inflation, so this point was not targeted at you, obviously. I suppose that my previous comment's wording could be construed as assuming we couldexist in a post-scarcity economy. That was not intentional. However, universal basic income does not require a post-scarcity framework to be workable, and the claim that universal basic income will cause inflation to 'spiral out of control' is left unsupported. Money is currently created out of nothing through the banking system, and the FED controls inflation just fine through various mechanisms e.g. setting interest rates. Basic income proposals can have similar inflation controlling mechanisms e.g. tie payouts to inflation rate or changes in tax rate. In any case inflatuon caused by basic income could be offset by increasing the fed interest rate which is currently near zero.