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A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

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Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base assumption, we just print the money. It's how we pay for everything else like wars and subsidies and whatnot. Then, as a courtesy to those people who benefit from a society without excessive inflation (mostly, people with lots of money who are clearly benefiting the most) we take and burn that money, to remove it from circulation.

I was thinking about this idea, if we print money and distribute it "wisely" among the lower income classes, this would debase the currency proportional to the amount printed, harming primarily those who are wealthy, proportional to their wealth, and the money will eventually flow upwards through the financial system, primarily through consumer spending, but ultimately back into the pockets of the wealthy. Of course,…

Of course. You don't even have to be all that wise about it: just a flat handout disproportionately affects the wealthy.

To get around capital flight (people reinvesting in non inflatory currency, sinking the international buying power of said currency), though, it probably needs to be able to economically isolate, or be universal enough that there is nowhere to flee. And when you do that, you might realize just how much everything is built on the ongoing suffering of the global poor.

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#162

I'm glad to see Thomas Paine referenced in this article. So many Americans don't realize that one of America's founding fathers championed the idea of universal basic income back when the USA was just being created. This was something that Andrew Yang pointed out, but was largely ignored.

This is a very one-sided and unsupported (I don't see links to articles) argument. You can do better.
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