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Relative scarcity is a necessity for any currency.

• kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
  The previous commenter thought he could get away with omitting “/s” and has been proven wrong.
• peakaboo 5y ago
  Of course but you could give people some free money nevertheless and it would make the world a better place. What do you think would happen if you gave 1000 dollars to each person in America every month? I think a lot of good would come from that and not much bad.
  • secondcoming 5y ago
    A loaf of bread would cost $100
    • atdrummond 5y ago
      A UBI doesn’t necessarily result in inflation. The later is a combination of monetary policy and expectations. UBIs can be paid by means other than printing money.
      • dragonwriter 5y ago
        > A UBI doesn’t necessarily result in inflation. The later is a combination of monetary policy and expectations. All fiscal policy is monetary policy; government spending its own fiat is money creation. UBI is expansionary monetary policy. (Of course, it can be offset with money destruction, e.g., taxation.)
      • AnthonyMouse 5y ago
        They're also the best (and possibly only equitable) way of distributing money that you're going to print anyway for e.g. economic stimulus.
      • rzz3 5y ago
        Yes, providing money without any attached good or service or unit of value definitely won’t cause inflation/s WHAT?
        • atdrummond 5y ago
          Huh? Do you think welfare transfer payments cause inflation?
        • zhoujianfu 5y ago
          The thing is, inflation caused by printing money AND distributing it directly and every to all people is fine… it’s just the most efficient / progressive wealth tax! Even if (printing and then) giving everybody $40K/yr caused, say, 40% inflation, anybody making under $100K/year would be better off. You actually wouldn’t need any taxes if the government just printed all money it needed, hopefully most of which is in the form of direct checks to all residents/citizens.
          • gruez 5y ago
            >it’s just the most efficient / progressive wealth tax! no, it's not a wealth tax. it's a cash tax. if you printed money and caused 100% inflation, that'll just cause every scarce asset (eg. houses, stocks, gold) to double in price. Since the rich hold most of their wealth in assets, not cash, I doubt it will be fair or progressive.
            • astrange 5y ago
              Stocks aren't scarce assets. They're infinitely dividable, so the price per share going up doesn't cause them to be harder to buy. This used to be true before we had computers and free fractional share purchases of course. Houses aren't really either, it's the land that is. Thanks Henry George.
              • gruez 5y ago
                > Stocks aren't scarce assets. They're infinitely dividable, so the price per share going up doesn't cause them to be harder to buy. That doesn't make any sense. Stocks ultimately represent ownership in an enterprise that consists of people, equipment, and intellectual property. Those are scarce. Just because the ownership units is infinitely divisible, doesn't mean they aren't scarce. If people only bought stocks so they could hang a fancy certificate on their wall, you'd be right. But people don't do that, they buy stocks to get dibs on a certain fraction of future production. That's the scarce part. >Houses aren't really either, it's the land that is. Thanks Henry George. 1. seems like a nitpick? When people talk buying "houses", they generally talk about buying the combo of house + land it sits on. 2. houses are still scarce[1]. we can't will infinite houses into existence. they're more plentiful than original picasso paintings, but that doesn't make them not scarce (at least according to the economic definition). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity
      • anamax 5y ago
        If everyone has $1000 to spend on bread, bread seller can charge $1000 without losing sales.
        • atdrummond 5y ago
          Only if there’s a bread cartel. Otherwise it’ll sell at a much lower equilibrium price, as anyone who can undercut him will take all his sales while still profiting (as marginal cost of additional bread production is well below $1000).
          • anamax 5y ago
            There's always a bread cartel. In this case, what fool would make bread when they can get $1000 by sitting around and smoking weed?
    • ant6n 5y ago
      True. Since once there will be a UBI, the demand of bread will go waaaay up. People will eat 100,000 calories a day.
  • sombremesa 5y ago
    > I think a lot of good would come from that and not much bad. Here something that'd happen - the homeless in encampments would get hoovered up by slumlords who put them in squalor and consume their $1k checks. Poor people would have more children because each child = $1k/mo, even if they have to wait 18 years. Abduction would be easy - the ransom pays itself over time. Fraud would be rampant. The ultra poor underclass who are undocumented would still get nothing, further exacerbating the divide.
    • atdrummond 5y ago
      Not a single legitimate theoretical or experimental economics research paper supports these extreme claims for the effect of a UBI.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    • SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
      “ Abduction would be easy - the ransom pays itself over time. Fraud would be rampant.” Do we have any evidence that abduction and fraud is rampant in countries in Western Europe, known for the very generous social programs? Are they exploding with poor people having kids??? Is it dangerous to live in, idk, Sweden because someone is gonna kidnap you for your social bux? I’m genuinely asking because the notion of rampant abducting and child having hasn’t happened in countries I know of with very generous social programs.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    • tonguez 5y ago
      Your first sentence is grammatically incorrect and incoherent. "Poor people would have more children because each child = [$$$]" A lot of poor people already do this for this exact reason. "The ultra poor underclass who are undocumented would still get nothing" Should a person be allowed to enter Japan, refuse to leave and then demand the Japanese people pay them $1k a month?
  • opinion-is-bad 5y ago
    That’s not free money; it’s money taken from people under threat of violence.
    • SantalBlush 5y ago
      Not agreeing with the parent comment, but I fail to see how printing money and distributing it involves violence.
      • thaumasiotes 5y ago
        The USA actually does have laws against creating anything that might be interpreted as competing with the official currency. This is the most likely avenue for violence to come in, as people try to resist devalued money by using substitutes.
        • SantalBlush 5y ago
          Holding crypto is legal in the US, so again, I fail to see how this involves violence.
        • nradov 5y ago
          There are generally no laws in the USA against creating and using alternative currencies. I can buy and sell using Euros or Monopoly money or whatever if I can find a willing counterparty. However, if those transactions are taxable then I have to report them at the US Dollar fair market value equivalent and pay any taxes due in US Dollars. And if someone owes me a debt I am required to accept US Dollars for settlement.
          • thaumasiotes 5y ago
            > There are generally no laws in the USA against creating and using alternative currencies. This is not correct. If you try minting coins, you can be shut down. You can buy and sell using whatever you want, yes. There aren't laws against using alternative currencies. But there very much are laws against creating them.
  • est31 5y ago
    I'm in favour of UBI, but note that it'd require extremely strict immigration policy as well as good enforcement of it, which is generally something the left very much dislikes. As already seen with covid aid, people wouldn't work in low wage jobs any more. This would lead to inflation or disappearance of some amenities. E.g. you might have to put your groceries into your bag yourself, or might have to pay a dollar extra for that service. This isn't something negative though, just a neutral change I guess. It would help a lot of poor and suffering people, but note that even in countries with good unemployment benefits, homeless people still exist.
    • dragonwriter 5y ago
      > I'm in favour of UBI, but note that it'd require extremely strict immigration policy as well as good enforcement of it What do you mean by “strict” and why is this inaginee5 to be necessary? Note that UBI is usually envisioned with a defined population but the absence of means or behavior testing within that population, either “citizens” or “citizens and LPRs” or “citizens and aliens with work authorization” or “citizens and aliens with satisfactory immigration status in a specific set of visa categories based on basis and duration” would all be valid populations, with wildly different impacts on the viability of UBI with any given immigration policy. > I'm in favour of UBI, but note that it'd require extremely strict immigration policy as well as good enforcement of it, COVID aid isn't like UBI, critically, key parts of it (enhanced unemployment) are conditioned on absence of work or reduction of it below pre-benefits levels, and thus forces people to choose between benefits and work. This is the kind of incentive with means tested benefits that UBI is intended to fix.
      • est31 5y ago
        To your first point, regardless of which class of people you consider for UBI inclusion, even if you only consider citizens of the USA, it will have a tremendously attractive effect for billions of people around the globe. Even now quite many people want to immigrate in to the USA and the USA has multiple systems designed to keep them out, but UBI will make this way worse, which is why I said that enforcement needs to be very strict. Plus I'd say it would be even more unfair for the undocumented immigrants than it is now because they would not get any UBI. But if you gave UBI to the undocumented, way more people would attempt to become undocumented immigrants, by overstaying their visas, etc. Which then probably will lead to you having to issue less short term visas, or actually deporting undocumented immigrants.
  • elzbardico 5y ago
    Where did it came from? From taxes? Then ok, it probably would work. Now if it came out of thin air, right from the printing presses, a whole lotta hurt of inflation