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>Nope, I didn't miss it, because it's not relevant. Giving money to poor tenants ends up in the pocket of landlords. Letting poorer people buy iPhones ends up i
by scythe 5y ago
>Nope, I didn't miss it, because it's not relevant. Giving money to poor tenants ends up in the pocket of landlords. Letting poorer people buy iPhones ends up in the money of shareholders and is realized as an increase in Apple stock price, etc.
That's a little extreme. It's fair to argue that giving money or benefits to poor people may not directly reduce inequality. More importantly, since progressive taxes do reduce inequality, it follows that the same level of spending with lower tax rates results in higher inequality than the spending with a balanced budget up to inflation.
But it also has positive externalities, such as improved public health. By contrast quantitative easing, almost by definition, has minimal externalities, although I'm partial to the argument that subsidizing real estate prices tends to increase inequality. These externalities disproportionately accrue to the poor because rich people tend to manage their personal environments in a way that insulates them from the winds of the societal landscape. Sometimes these are not easy to account for financially but that does not impugn their value.
So deficit spending on the war in Afghanistan, for example, is probably worse for inequality than deficit spending on education.
- Ericson2314 5y agoYeah really simply, if absent enough taxes, money "pools" to the rich and doesn't keep on circulating, that also means the rich aren't spending it. By definition. If so....then what's the problem? One possible answer is "well, the Rich have more risk tolerance, so they can just summon a catastrophe to improve their relative standing in a negative-sum situation with little pain" I think that's a fair argument. Do MMT, and the rich try to sabotage undoing global warming so they can rule the roost in some max max situation sure. But such analysis means we have to broach Solvency vs Liquidity as PP didn't want to. A UBI-empowered workforce can also more and safely easily go after the rich with pitchforks and shear numbers, strike at the plants that arm their body guards, not treat them when they are sick in the hospital. Keynes and Marx disagreed on many things, but did agree on C-M-C vs M-C-M. In regular-enough times, firms are slaves to nominal values: boost aggregate demand and they will not be able to able to boycott and resist. But also, workers are not slaves to rich people's unspent inert savings if empowered by means external to private emplyment. "Nominal dollar power" works better on the former than the latter.