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RE: What Can Iceland and Cryptocurrencies Tell Us About A New Monetary System And A Universal Basic Income?
My main concern for the concept of UBI is that, to me, money is merely a medium of exchange that facilitates exchanges.
The concept of exchange implies value for both parties involved and if one party is receiving value in the form of some currency for no input, the system falls apart.
Like Milton Friedman said,
Nobody spends somebody else's money as wisely as he spends his own.
I don't think Fractional Reserve Banking is necessarily bad, only when those fractions become as insanely small as they are now. The problem is not the system itself, but the corruption in the system that allows non-producers to manipulate it to their own benefit and to the detriment of the producers.
In a sense their input will be to spend the money they get, propping capitalism up. Not to mention probably a heap of other contributions to society.
I think there's about a decade of Twist & Zerp and QE1-99 that don't bear out that hypothesis, not to mention the decades of poverty that welfare has trapped minorities and low income families in here in the US.
I respect Iceland for defaulting on the debt and prosecuting the criminal bankers responsible.
Good luck with UBI.
I don't know what "Twist & Zerp and QE1-99" is supposed to be, but the implication that poor people don't spend their money into the economy is ridiculous.
And you'd need to provide proof that welfare "trapped" people into poverty.
Twist, Zerp and the series of QE's are all of the "Quantitative Easing" stimuli that the US Federal Reserve have used in their "attempt" to stimluate the economy. They have been unsuccessful.
As far as welfare is concerned, I don't think I could say it any better than Milton Friedman.
QE isn't the same as a UBI. A lot of QE wasn't spent into the economy. And I'm not sure how much evidence Milton can produce from the 1970's.
Yes, the vast majority of the "stimulus" money is still in the hands of the banks. In terms of stimulating an economy, it would have been more effective to simply give people people "helicopter money". Instead it was given to the criminals that caused the problems in order to prop up their failing banks by the unelected and unaccountable controllers of the money supply, the central banks. I don't believe the intent was anything more than that, keep their friends out of jail.
As far as welfare goes, there's a vast amount of evidence, over 50 years worth, that shows the negative effects of paying people not to work. Drive through the slums of Detroit or Chicago some day if you'd like to see the real effects of welfare.