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Yes. The money isn't coming from my pocket our yours. It comes from a Central Bank punching keys --literally in the case of America's Federal Reserve-- on a key

• cft 6y ago
  Then why not pay everyone, not just restaurant workers? And as much as one needs or wants?
  • Filligree 6y ago
    Because then the work wouldn't get done. Some work still needs to get done. Society won't work if everyone sits on their bum for a year, pandemic or not. Among the jobs which need to be done, however, there are no restaurant workers.
  • dlp211 6y ago
    For the same reason that a tourniquet is not a long-term solution to a severed artery. It is a short-term solution to a specific problem and it has a shelf life.
• voisin 6y ago
  This is a terrifying and yet all too common view. When the central bank punches keys and creates money out of thin air this DOES come from your pocket and mine, but in a way that is not entirely as obvious as the way other costs are. It reduces the value of what was already in our pocket via inflation. The money in our pocket can no longer buy the same amount. That’s a cost. God I wish we would go back to the gold standard so that the cost of government expenditures would be more obvious to the general public via payment from increased taxes or from allocation away from some other government expense. Instead, people are left thinking the government could magically solve all of our problems by printing more money, but for some reason doesn’t because it doesn’t care.
  • OpieCunningham 6y ago
    It’s “all too common” because it’s how most 1st world economies work (though to be fair: your fear-based view and false belief that it is anomalous is the true “all too common” viewpoint). Case in point is the US that has been running deficit budgets for decades - and yet it still exists! It is still an economic power house! The general disconnect is that nearly all discretionary spending is directed towards the military, which somehow eludes all those who ask the question “but how are we going to pay for that?” whenever anyone proposes providing money to people who definitively need it.
    • voisin 6y ago
      I am unclear on your first sentence and bracketed section. My point was that people generally share the view that printing money is without cost and that this is incorrect. The government cannot magically print money and provide goods and services without cost, via future tax increases or inflation. There’s no free lunch.
      • OpieCunningham 6y ago
        The cost is so low as to be non-existent. The downsides of printing money are effectively nil. If this were not true the modern global economy would have died out decades ago, when printing money became the primary method of commerce. Your concern here cannot rationally be a concern for printing money, a ship that sailed long ago. So I’d have to assume your concern is how the printed money should or should not be used. And in this case you were replying with concern to a post that recommended using printed money to pay high-risk people a sustainable income when their jobs should be furloughed. But instead of making a case as to why high-risk people should continue to sustain high-risk, you instead want to falsely claim printing money is significantly detrimental.
        • BryanBigs 6y ago
          If this is true then why do any of us pay taxes? We could just print all the money we need.