> There is so much to gain by doing so, for everyon
Not for everyone. For young people.
The way we’ll get UBI is by repurposing Social Security and possibly Medicare funds for its purpose. That, in turn, requires millenials turn out to vote.
Not for everyone. For young people.
The way we’ll get UBI is by repurposing Social Security and possibly Medicare funds for its purpose. That, in turn, requires millenials turn out to vote.
In other words, the people who built say the roads did so for a package of renumeration that included a salary and a pension. Now you are proposing to renege on half of that deal. Fine - but stop using the roads you didn't pay to build in the first place. Stop using the technology that you didn't pay to do the basic research for. Not such an attractive deal now is it?
A course on Modern Monetary Theory wouldn't go amiss...
If you believe it needs to be ever paid back, it hasn't been paid back since 1914. It just grows ever larger.
The initial 1914 version pegged the fiat money to gold. Like all pegging systems, they eventually collapse catastrophically, and this one did in 1929.
Private banks create money through lending, correct. Lending is constrained by the supply of creditworthy customers. Money is not issued by decree by the Federal Reserve or the government.
There is not really any such thing as an inter-generational wealth transfer. There are transfers from poor to rich that the rich are (successfully) scapegoating old people for.
From the issuer's (government) perspective it is a liability. From society's perspective it is both a liability and an asset.
Moreover, there's not necessarily anything "good" about having taxes pay for operational costs if those operational costs are cluster bombs on yemeni children.
There's not even necessarily anything intrinsically good about paying back those bonds in dollars that are of equal or greater value. Sometimes (e.g. in times of great wealth inequality) letting inflation eat huge chunks out of the value of outstanding bonds is the best course of action for society as a whole.
Deficit spending only really needs to be constrained when inflation is around 9% (~11% is the point at which inflation has a negative impact on growth).
We're constraining future cash flow during an expansion. That is stupid.
I am not sure how you keep mis-reading me.
The only risk is inflation.
The current 'old' also inherited a built environment and a great deal of basic research, and if you project back far enough (not far!) they barely paid anything for it either. Those working in the 40s and early 50s paid almost nothing (in terms of having to pay taxes for other people's benefits) for the infrastructure that they inherited.
It also somehow suggests that the bulk of historical economic activity was the development of long-lasting capital works that outlived the users, which is odd.
I think we already have enough spurious arguments for feather-bedding relatively well-off old people without inventing weird new ones. The monumental voting power of the old has ensured that they collectively do pretty well for themselves; astoundingly well, say, compared to children living in poverty.
The current generation of pensioners paid towards the previous generation of pensioners without quibbling.
It’s only millennials who take it all for granted and don’t want to pay what’s fair.
Every generation takes stuff for granted, true. Also, they play their music too loud and disregard the eternal verities (c.f. ancient Greeks).
The gaping holes in public-sector pension funds beg to differ.