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Comment by fells | Hacker News Reader

The fed doesn't have access to taxpayer money.

Does that mean that instead of giving taxpayer money, they instead devalue all taxpayer money by inventing new money?

Honestly, it's a good thing. Given how dysfunctional the legislative branch is with fiscal policy I can't imagine a worse idea than putting it in charge of monetary policy as well.

It turns the fed into the only arm of the government able to levy a new tax.

Printing 20% more money doesn't seem materially different than taking 20% of everyone's money.

Either way an individual is able to buy 20% less stuff and the government is able to spend 20% of the value of the economy.

Except the fed has to answer less to the public than legislators do. We have a non-elected tax authority deceiving the country about the level of tax they are paying through the subterfuge of an overly complex system.

I would love to hear how this assessment is wrong (actually, not rhetorically).

It's not wrong, we have a wall street government. Did you notice at how those most responsible for the 2008 financial crisis, never went to jail... instead they were the advisory board for Obama on financial stuff?

If we want the workers to completely own the means of production, by all means put officials elected by the workers wholly in charge of fiscal and monetary policy. I'm not arguing against it. Just don't half-ass it, let's go all in on central planning.

The whole “devalues other money” thing is the ‘quantity theory of money’ which has never really been observable as true in normal economies - only at the very extremes (but other factors play in - all in all velocity of money is more important).

True. There's option to export a newly created inflation to other countries, at least partially. Thus, steal from other countries' citizens and taxpayers.

It was designed to do that.

The creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin is a book that describes the creation of the FED, how it was done in secret.

They absolutely do. They print money, and the resulting inflation is an indirect tax; the glory of MMT.

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