Comment by sleepingadmin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sleepingadmin | Hacker News Reader

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>How exactly is this supposed to work? The government prints money and gives it away for free, nobody has to work?

Given the tremendous inflation occurring because of non-universal benefits, UBI pretty well died as a subject. Everything the anti-UBI people have said would happen, is happening. So if it were universal, it would be worse than this.

Trying to discuss UBI is complex because every single attempt at it has failed.

There is a simplistic idea of UBI = $1000/month to every single person. Just start delivering cheques and see what happens? Everyone earns $1000 more and everyone bumps up in the progressive tax and hopefully you tax enough to keep the budget balanced and inflation under control? We know this doesn't work now. MMT is dead as a subject. We must do much more than just free money.

Lets look deeper.

What if we dismantle every single safety net. Welfare goes away, employment insurance, child benefits, old age pensions, indigenous UBI, etc. These all go away. We take those budgets and combine them and disperse equally. In essence what happens is that from a government budget point of view we aren't broke. At exactly the same time we also make a constitutional amendment requiring the government to balance the budget.

What is this exactly? It's a negative income tax that Milton Friedman recommended ages ago.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM

> Given the tremendous inflation occurring because of non-universal benefits

The amount of inflation is not especially high, it would've been quite normal back in the 1980s (post Volcker, even). That's why the Fed is slow at addressing it. And of course, the global pandemic had much to do with it.

In the latter part of your comment, you're talking about two versions of the same thing. Calling budget constraints 'MMT' does not change how they work.

>The amount of inflation is not especially high

From a historical point of view sure. The thing about WW1 boomers retiring in the 80s and causing major inflation. Sure it was a huge problem. This time it's the WW2 boomers retiring that will cause major inflation. But that effect hasnt quite kicked in. The inflation stems from benefits and low rates. Which low rates can be just called benefits as well.

> it would've been quite normal back in the 1980s (post Volcker, even). That's why the Fed is slow at addressing it. And of course, the global pandemic had much to do with it.

So here we sit post-benefits. You and I can both agree people who couldn't work because of the pandemic shouldn't be left to starve.

The consequence is extreme inflation, but worse. The USA has entered another recession. Nearby recessions means they are connected and therefore this is a depression. Which we can verify by the high correlation with psychological depression. What do you think, do you find more and more people around you are getting depressed?

>In the latter part of your comment, you're talking about two versions of the same thing. Calling budget constraints 'MMT' does not change how they work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_budget_amendment

The countries like Germany and Switzerland that have implemented this are brilliant. Though to be fair countries which dont even need the amendment are that much smarter.

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