3 ms·

Currently new money is injected into the economy via the banks. The hope is that banks lend out the money to create new jobs. But that route is increasingly dif

by ww520 7y ago

Currently new money is injected into the economy via the banks. The hope is that banks lend out the money to create new jobs. But that route is increasingly difficult because more money goes into assets to inflate them instead of creating jobs and services. UBI is another way to inject money into the system, giving it to the people who would most likely spend it, creating demand and this spurring the economy.

mindslight 7y ago
Exactly! I do agree that UBI is a step up from only giving handouts to the financial industry. However, they're both from the same vein of continually creating new money to sustain ever-growing price inflation. A policy which is utterly nonsensical in the face of rapid technological progress where most prices should be continually trending downwards like we see for computing technology itself. Insistence on continual inflation is precisely what has created the current rent treadmill most everybody is on, via only being able to pay interest-rent on skyrocketing assets. A real alternative would be to simply stop printing all that money in the first place, let interest rates actually rise, curtail much of this speculative waste-investment (eg the VC's paying to put electric scooters in rivers), and let workers actually get ahead by saving and not having their wages erode. Ideally workers could save up enough to demand lower working hours, but inflationism has gone on for so long its disastrous results need to be addressed directly - eg redefine "full time" employment to be 25 hours a week, with overtime after that (it should have been directly halved to 20 after dual-income households became the norm). Of course this itself would do nothing immediate to help the poorest members of society. Some balanced-budget UBI would still certainly help them, and should not be ruled out. But we need to untangle the problems of the poor (which can be solved by direct help), with the problems of the working class (who actually have income, but it's being vacuumed up by rent-seekers).

by ww520 7y ago

mindslight 7y ago

Exactly! I do agree that UBI is a step up from only giving handouts to the financial industry. However, they're both from the same vein of continually creating new money to sustain ever-growing price inflation. A policy which is utterly nonsensical in the face of rapid technological progress where most prices should be continually trending downwards like we see for computing technology itself. Insistence on continual inflation is precisely what has created the current rent treadmill most everybody is on, via only being able to pay interest-rent on skyrocketing assets. A real alternative would be to simply stop printing all that money in the first place, let interest rates actually rise, curtail much of this speculative waste-investment (eg the VC's paying to put electric scooters in rivers), and let workers actually get ahead by saving and not having their wages erode. Ideally workers could save up enough to demand lower working hours, but inflationism has gone on for so long its disastrous results need to be addressed directly - eg redefine "full time" employment to be 25 hours a week, with overtime after that (it should have been directly halved to 20 after dual-income households became the norm). Of course this itself would do nothing immediate to help the poorest members of society. Some balanced-budget UBI would still certainly help them, and should not be ruled out. But we need to untangle the problems of the poor (which can be solved by direct help), with the problems of the working class (who actually have income, but it's being vacuumed up by rent-seekers).