5 ms·

That sounds good, but how does it play out? We could maybe afford to pay everyone $10K/y for a few years, especially now that we're printing money like crazy.

That sounds good, but how does it play out? We could maybe afford to pay everyone $10K/y for a few years, especially now that we're printing money like crazy. And we'd just let companies go bankrupt and the economy as we know it seize tight. Businesses would generally be wiped out, and your mom-and-pop outfits that worked their entire lives to build something would be on the dole like the rest of us. With the private economy gone, the government could run "essential" industries. It could probably do an okay job of allocating talent, I guess. It's kind of like turning a firehose on an overheating server rack. It might work...

cmendel 6y ago
10K? What are you talking about? We blew 30 Trillion! in a month! With that we could give every person in the USA 90K!
- downerending 6y ago
  That was just a for-instance. That said, the $30T probably hasn't actually been expended. Rather, it was used to buy assets that are likely worth less than $30T right now. How much less? Who knows. My guess, though, is that the Fed (or Feds) will eventually recoup most of that. When you give peons like us $10K, you don't get any of it back, except in taxes. I'm not that knowledgeable on the subject, but I do know that when given a choice between keeping your seed corn dry and eating it, you need to think very hard about what you're doing.
  - cmendel 6y ago
    >When you give peons like us $10K, you don't get any of it back, except in taxes. Where do you think it goes exactly? This might help explain our disconnect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money
    - downerending 6y ago
      I was specifically addressing the idea that $30T was given to companies. This simply isn't correct. A better analogy would be if the government decided to "give" $90K to each homeowner in return for a $90K share in their home equity (valued according to some plausible marking). That's very different than simply giving them $90K with no strings attached. Certainly something is being given, but it's not worth anything like $90K.

cmendel 6y ago

10K? What are you talking about? We blew 30 Trillion! in a month! With that we could give every person in the USA 90K!

downerending 6y ago
That was just a for-instance. That said, the $30T probably hasn't actually been expended. Rather, it was used to buy assets that are likely worth less than $30T right now. How much less? Who knows. My guess, though, is that the Fed (or Feds) will eventually recoup most of that. When you give peons like us $10K, you don't get any of it back, except in taxes. I'm not that knowledgeable on the subject, but I do know that when given a choice between keeping your seed corn dry and eating it, you need to think very hard about what you're doing.
- cmendel 6y ago
  >When you give peons like us $10K, you don't get any of it back, except in taxes. Where do you think it goes exactly? This might help explain our disconnect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money
  - downerending 6y ago
    I was specifically addressing the idea that $30T was given to companies. This simply isn't correct. A better analogy would be if the government decided to "give" $90K to each homeowner in return for a $90K share in their home equity (valued according to some plausible marking). That's very different than simply giving them $90K with no strings attached. Certainly something is being given, but it's not worth anything like $90K.