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Comment by jaimeyap | Hacker News Reader

Basic income is absolutely not zero sum!

The people who would benefit from it the most would have the freedom to invest their time and money raising their children, bettering themselves, or taking risks and starting businesses.

Also, money repeatedly changing hands itself generates tax revenue, as well as personal wealth. Again, not zero sum. Giving these people purchasing power can also spur innovation from businesses who would offer them services that otherwise wouldn't be easily monetizeable.

As more jobs get replaced with automation, basic income will become increasingly attractive.

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I think raising your children and bettering yourself is a great thing, but it doesn't tangibly generate revenue. Starting a business might if it's successful, but there are small business loans. Money changing hands (money velocity) is one of the ingredients to inflation along with high demand for goods and services. Detaching the expectation of some level of productivity from income is a recipe for big inflation

The inflation argument is a little misleading. We have been printing money to offset historically low and increasingly declining money velocity. The money velocity is declining precisely because wealth is being aggregated in silos and not being spent. Money velocity is essential to a healthy economy. And quite frankly, we could do with a little inflation to encourage spending and not hoarding by the uber wealthy.

Thinking that properly raising children and investing in bettering oneself doesn't tangibly generate revenue is a bit short sighted.

In 15 years when machines are cheaper and better at driving, manufacturing, and doing most unskilled labor (or even some knowledge worker type jobs). Would it have been a bad economic investment to have all the kids growing up today have parents with the financial freedom to go back to school or focus on giving their kids a proper childhood (so they can grow up and be productive citizens)?

Do you genuinely think that we are better off as a society sticking to "you have to work to live" when the machines are outperforming an entire class of people at their jobs? Not everyone can or wants to be an engineer. At some point our populations will stabilize, and technology will make it so that we have enough food and basic essentials for everyone.

We are all in it together.

>The inflation argument is a little misleading. We have been printing money to offset historically low and increasingly declining money velocity. The money velocity is declining precisely because wealth is being aggregated in silos and not being spent. Money velocity is essential to a healthy economy. And quite frankly, we could do with a little inflation to encourage spending and not hoarding by the uber wealthy.

We have been printing money for quantitative easing, but it isn't released into circulation. The Fed sets short term interest rates directly, but once those hit zero, the only alternative is QE. QE uses Fed cash (printed if you will) to buy US Treasuries thereby increasing the demand for them and driving down long term interest rates. The goal is to avoid the contraction of credit and the deleveraging of the US economy. If that much cash was just dumped into circulation you would see inflation on a large scale.

As for the rest of it I'm going on opinion which you and I have no chance of agreeing on (which isn't the end of the world, everyone has their own opinion). Yes I think child care and self improvement are great in the long run, but it can be tricky to measure exactly how much they contribute directly to GDP (quantitative measurement). Yes I also think work to live is better for society. I think work helps people stay out of trouble and even when I was making next to nothing it felt good to make my own way.

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