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The reason there are no conditions for these recipients is because this is a small, controlled experiment, with outside resources. If you expand this experimen

The reason there are no conditions for these recipients is because this is a small, controlled experiment, with outside resources. If you expand this experiment to include the entire population, then each recipient has to meet the condition of welcoming expansion (inflation) of the money supply, each time they receive a payment (unless each recipient is also taxed 100% of what they receive each month). Inflation comes at the expense of savings, and also discourages lending (since the money repaid will be worth less - e.g., Weimar Republic, Zimbabwe, et al). Given the aforementioned circumstances, if you are a saver (with money to lend) OR a borrower (e.g., attempting to grow a business), then you have to accept that these activities will be economically discouraged by the inflationary effects of this income payment system. Only economic inactivity is rewarded (e.g., folks who retire without savings, folks without a job, etc.) without conditions. This is all axiomatic and completely provable with syllogism alone, except for in one scenario: new wealth is discovered (free energy, manna from heaven, altruistic robots, etc.).

dwaltrip 7y ago
Nothing is axiomatic in economics. It's not a hard science -- there is too much complexity for us to create highly accurate models yet. It's not proven that UBI will cause inflation uniformly across the board. You can make argument that this will happen. But it is simply wrong to state that it is an obvious mathematical derivation. And once again, the potential systemic impacts of the policy that you are describing are not the same type of thing as a condition that an individual must meet to receive the payment.
stallmanite 7y ago
Why is it that massive handouts in the form of quantitative easing over the past decade are fine but giving money to poor people will lead us to an instant Zimbabwe/Weimar situation?
- gonational 7y ago
  Being against personal welfare and being against corporate/bank welfare are not mutually exclusive. Nobody that I know, is OK with giving out corporate welfare or quantitative easing of any kind. Certainly, I’m not.
  - thawaway1837 7y ago
    Well, the point is not whether you’re ok with it or not. The point is why did the massive amount of quantitative easing not lead to Zimbabwe, since there is very little difference between that and giving handouts to poorer people. Basically, QE completely undermines your claims about “handouts = Zimbabwe”. If you really want to know what caused Zimbabwean hyperinflation, it was the fact that Mugabe took land from people who knew how to use it productively to grow produce and rear livestock, and gave it to people who didn’t know how to do that. IOW hyperinflation happens when the money supply exceeds the productive capacity of the economy in question. If the productivity of the economy grows then the money supply can be increased without causing hyper inflation. If there is slack in the labour market, potentially caused by the money supply being too low, the money supply can be increased without hyper inflation simply because because the increased output matches the increased money supply.
thawaway1837 7y ago
Very little of what you’ve typed out is actually correct. 1 - Creating money out of thin air does not necessarily lead to inflation. How do we know this? Because Europe and the US created a ton of money out of thin air after the financial crisis but were unable to meet their already historically low inflation targets. 2 - Inflation isn’t always hyper inflation. You’ve mentioned the 2-3 countries that have experienced hyper inflation in the past few decades. You’ve ignored the fact that nearly every other country in the world, including the richest countries in the world, have been experiencing inflation every year for several decades. A certain amount of inflation is a good thing. In fact, the only major economy that has experienced deflation for any sustained period of time over the last few decades was Japan, and that was a massive concern. 3 - Inflation helps lending. In fact, deflation on the other hand discouraged lending. Inflation means that in order to retain the value of the money you’ve earned, you have to invest (I.e. lend). In deflationary scenarios, the value of your money goes up simply by virtue of sticking it under the mattress. Hyper inflation is a completely different situation, and the lack of lending there probably has a lot more to do with the fact that there are no economic opportunities in a country whose economy is so bad that it’s suffering from hyper inflation. 4 - How in the world is inflation benefiting people who don’t have money (retired folks without savings, or folks without jobs). Inflation means that whatever money they do get (by begging?) only buys them less than it would have without inflation. You clearly know very little about economics, and your insistence that this all axiomatic indicates you’ve likely not even done a cursory study of macro economics, but are convinced whatever you’ve concluded from certain basic principles is obviously correct, even if it diverges from what the entire academic (and investment and government, for that matter) fields say about those situations.
- gonational 7y ago
  1. e.g., quantitative easing is literally described as “an unconventional form of monetary policy, it is usually used when inflation is very low or negative” - just because we are not able to meet a specific inflation target does not mean that creating money does not the create inflation… this is some of the most basic monetary economics stuff 2. At what point did I state that inflation is always hyper-inflation? It is perfectly appropriate to bring up hyper-inflation in a conversation about money creation where the money would be created at a rate of no less than $335 billion per month (e.g., UBI of $1,000/mo), which would be the greatest expansion of money supply, in PPP terms(and 25% expansion of M2 per year), in planetary history. 3. Pray tell... if the inflation is due to an increase of the money supply at the inter-banking level, then of course loans are easier to be had. If you already have loans, then of course you are in a great spot when inflation ramps up. If you’re trying to get a loan and the money supply is increasing at 25% per annum, you will likely need to be lent money at a rate higher than what usury laws allow... 4. Never said that either. What I said is that those people are the only ones that will benefit without condition, because inflation does not affect them (other than price stickiness in their assets, if they choose to sell them - they can also thank money expansion for this, one of the known failings of New Keynsianism) Pertaining your last point about the divergence of my thinking from the boundless wisdom of academics... Don’t fall for the college tribe common look no further than Paul Krugman for an example of how Neo Keynesian economics will lead you down a path of endless failure (search for his predictions - as we know, predictions are the best way to test a theory). New Keynesianism economics will go down in history as the single failure that collapsed the Occident into an inescapable swamp of debt. You sound like you’re in junior high or early high school, so you still have time; trust me, do not waste your time studying economics in college. And if you do, at least seek out some place that teaches Austrian School economics at least from a historical perspective (like Booth). Hey there :) no need to reply if you don’t want to; I already know you read it all

dwaltrip 7y ago

Nothing is axiomatic in economics. It's not a hard science -- there is too much complexity for us to create highly accurate models yet. It's not proven that UBI will cause inflation uniformly across the board. You can make argument that this will happen. But it is simply wrong to state that it is an obvious mathematical derivation. And once again, the potential systemic impacts of the policy that you are describing are not the same type of thing as a condition that an individual must meet to receive the payment.

stallmanite 7y ago

Why is it that massive handouts in the form of quantitative easing over the past decade are fine but giving money to poor people will lead us to an instant Zimbabwe/Weimar situation?

gonational 7y ago
Being against personal welfare and being against corporate/bank welfare are not mutually exclusive. Nobody that I know, is OK with giving out corporate welfare or quantitative easing of any kind. Certainly, I’m not.
- thawaway1837 7y ago
  Well, the point is not whether you’re ok with it or not. The point is why did the massive amount of quantitative easing not lead to Zimbabwe, since there is very little difference between that and giving handouts to poorer people. Basically, QE completely undermines your claims about “handouts = Zimbabwe”. If you really want to know what caused Zimbabwean hyperinflation, it was the fact that Mugabe took land from people who knew how to use it productively to grow produce and rear livestock, and gave it to people who didn’t know how to do that. IOW hyperinflation happens when the money supply exceeds the productive capacity of the economy in question. If the productivity of the economy grows then the money supply can be increased without causing hyper inflation. If there is slack in the labour market, potentially caused by the money supply being too low, the money supply can be increased without hyper inflation simply because because the increased output matches the increased money supply.

thawaway1837 7y ago

Very little of what you’ve typed out is actually correct. 1 - Creating money out of thin air does not necessarily lead to inflation. How do we know this? Because Europe and the US created a ton of money out of thin air after the financial crisis but were unable to meet their already historically low inflation targets. 2 - Inflation isn’t always hyper inflation. You’ve mentioned the 2-3 countries that have experienced hyper inflation in the past few decades. You’ve ignored the fact that nearly every other country in the world, including the richest countries in the world, have been experiencing inflation every year for several decades. A certain amount of inflation is a good thing. In fact, the only major economy that has experienced deflation for any sustained period of time over the last few decades was Japan, and that was a massive concern. 3 - Inflation helps lending. In fact, deflation on the other hand discouraged lending. Inflation means that in order to retain the value of the money you’ve earned, you have to invest (I.e. lend). In deflationary scenarios, the value of your money goes up simply by virtue of sticking it under the mattress. Hyper inflation is a completely different situation, and the lack of lending there probably has a lot more to do with the fact that there are no economic opportunities in a country whose economy is so bad that it’s suffering from hyper inflation. 4 - How in the world is inflation benefiting people who don’t have money (retired folks without savings, or folks without jobs). Inflation means that whatever money they do get (by begging?) only buys them less than it would have without inflation. You clearly know very little about economics, and your insistence that this all axiomatic indicates you’ve likely not even done a cursory study of macro economics, but are convinced whatever you’ve concluded from certain basic principles is obviously correct, even if it diverges from what the entire academic (and investment and government, for that matter) fields say about those situations.

gonational 7y ago
1. e.g., quantitative easing is literally described as “an unconventional form of monetary policy, it is usually used when inflation is very low or negative” - just because we are not able to meet a specific inflation target does not mean that creating money does not the create inflation… this is some of the most basic monetary economics stuff 2. At what point did I state that inflation is always hyper-inflation? It is perfectly appropriate to bring up hyper-inflation in a conversation about money creation where the money would be created at a rate of no less than $335 billion per month (e.g., UBI of $1,000/mo), which would be the greatest expansion of money supply, in PPP terms(and 25% expansion of M2 per year), in planetary history. 3. Pray tell... if the inflation is due to an increase of the money supply at the inter-banking level, then of course loans are easier to be had. If you already have loans, then of course you are in a great spot when inflation ramps up. If you’re trying to get a loan and the money supply is increasing at 25% per annum, you will likely need to be lent money at a rate higher than what usury laws allow... 4. Never said that either. What I said is that those people are the only ones that will benefit without condition, because inflation does not affect them (other than price stickiness in their assets, if they choose to sell them - they can also thank money expansion for this, one of the known failings of New Keynsianism) Pertaining your last point about the divergence of my thinking from the boundless wisdom of academics... Don’t fall for the college tribe common look no further than Paul Krugman for an example of how Neo Keynesian economics will lead you down a path of endless failure (search for his predictions - as we know, predictions are the best way to test a theory). New Keynesianism economics will go down in history as the single failure that collapsed the Occident into an inescapable swamp of debt. You sound like you’re in junior high or early high school, so you still have time; trust me, do not waste your time studying economics in college. And if you do, at least seek out some place that teaches Austrian School economics at least from a historical perspective (like Booth). Hey there :) no need to reply if you don’t want to; I already know you read it all