4 ms·

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
        astrange 5y ago
        Well, the other reason stocks aren't scarce is that the company can print new ones. You'd expect this to reduce valuation and therefore have shareholders oppose it, but in practice that doesn't seem to happen lately. > If people only bought stocks so they could hang a fancy certificate on their wall, you'd be right. This is highly underrated as a reason. What's the fundamental improvement in Gamestop and Tesla causing their stock price to go up this year? See https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-10-25/elon-musk-makes-tesla-hertz-and-bitcoin-memes-go-up https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-10-25/elon-m... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme_stock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme_stock > 1. seems like a nitpick? When people talk buying "houses", they generally talk about buying the combo of house + land it sits on. Many people don't seem to understand how to separate them, leading to beliefs like "luxury apartments cost more because they have granite countertops" and "gentrification can be prevented by not building new buildings". You can't build houses forever, but you sure can build many more of them than the US does right now.
  - burntbridge 5y ago
    Prices only go up if the demand approaches or exceeds supply. If there is capacity in the system all is good, more jobs. This is how Franklin D. Roosevelt brought an end to the Great Depression (spending money I mean not UBI) If the economy is running at capacity and you wanted a UBI taxes would have to increase to prevent inflation. This would end up being wealth redistribution.
- 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.

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
        astrange 5y ago
        Well, the other reason stocks aren't scarce is that the company can print new ones. You'd expect this to reduce valuation and therefore have shareholders oppose it, but in practice that doesn't seem to happen lately. > If people only bought stocks so they could hang a fancy certificate on their wall, you'd be right. This is highly underrated as a reason. What's the fundamental improvement in Gamestop and Tesla causing their stock price to go up this year? See https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-10-25/elon-musk-makes-tesla-hertz-and-bitcoin-memes-go-up https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-10-25/elon-m... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme_stock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme_stock > 1. seems like a nitpick? When people talk buying "houses", they generally talk about buying the combo of house + land it sits on. Many people don't seem to understand how to separate them, leading to beliefs like "luxury apartments cost more because they have granite countertops" and "gentrification can be prevented by not building new buildings". You can't build houses forever, but you sure can build many more of them than the US does right now.
- burntbridge 5y ago
  Prices only go up if the demand approaches or exceeds supply. If there is capacity in the system all is good, more jobs. This is how Franklin D. Roosevelt brought an end to the Great Depression (spending money I mean not UBI) If the economy is running at capacity and you wanted a UBI taxes would have to increase to prevent inflation. This would end up being wealth redistribution.
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.