RE: Andrew Yang's Siren Song of Free Money Will Cost You Dearly
I don't even know what your quoting. It's common sense that money printing leads to devaluation of the dollar. When exactly it leads to hyperinflation is any one's guess. The world is already turning away from the petrodollar and every time they try the U.S. tries to reign them back in with threats of warfare. It'll only work for so long before something wicked this way comes. The U.S. couldn't even make good on the "free health care" pipe dream which turned into "affordable health care" and that wasn't even affordable and you're going to trust that a UBI will work out? Once these hustles get into place it's almost impossible to undo the damage done, and to roll it back. In fact, it takes an act of congress. Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.
Of course you don't know what I'm quoting, it's why I said I doubt you bothered to read it, it's literally the last article I linked after you tried to mock ubi or the people of Zimbabwe or both. If you read the white paper you'll not consider inflation as simple as you think. It talks about how more money printed doesn't translate into devaluing the dollar, contrary to your so called "common sense". If you bothered to read the investopedia article you'll see that theory is not supported by most economists, like I quoted, or empirical evidence. Yet here you are still talking about something you don't know shit about, besides ubi. The same thing was pointed out in the medium article on Inflation and UBI I linked in response to your theory of increased cost of living, blowing both out of the water.
Argumentum ad populum doesn't do it for me. It hasn't for anthropogenic global warming and it won't for UBI. You have to understand that if UBI came anywhere near to the desert of the real that everyone would be doing it. However, because of whatever, this or that, it is not feasible. You have to understand if your theory came anywhere close to working I'd be down for it, but don't try it here first. Your ambitions are like Icarus flying too close to the sun. I know you don't have any malintent. However, you do not know what it is that you're getting yourself into. Affordable experiments on a small scale do not equate to unaffordable experiments on a larger more ridiculous scale. Governments want to be wanted and needed to be needed and what's more desirable than a fucking pipe dream. I'd extend myself so far as to say nothing is on par with that kind of wishful thinking. That said if it was possible; a nation-state would be doing it as we speak.
It's not about what's popular at all. What are you talking about argument ad populum? "if it worked we would have done it already" dafaq kind of logic is that? The Wright Brothers would appreciate your flawless retort. And what's the other one? "however, whatever, it's not feasible" that's your other argument? Or is it "it works everywhere else but here". Da faq. Again, you don't know jack shit about ubi. You don't know jack shit about inflation. Read the fucking white paper, come back with something that isn't remotely as ridiculous as decrying something that is supported by evidence as a fallacious argument or reasoning that "if it worked we would have done it", or even more ridiculous, "however, whatever, it's not sustainable". You're a joke.
That's argumentum ad populum if it's even correct, you may have been making a gross generalization. Besides, the Austrian school of economics makes a helluva lot more sense than whatever drivel is taught in school nowadays. Thomas Jefferson said it best: "Never spend your money before you have earned it." However, that's just common sense, or it should be anyhow.
Why don't you show me how it's done? I'll give you a bitcoin address, and you can send me a UBI. We'll try it out for a year or two and I'll get back to you with the results. Surely if you expect it to work on a grand scale, we can prove it on a smaller scale first, right? Watch the video below, it's anchored to a specific time. It seems our little debate can be summed up as a Monetarist vs. Keynesian view of the economy.
P.S. I'm not saying that I subscribe fully to monetarist theory, just the one aspect with respect to unchecked inflation.
It has been studied again and again with the same results. You can pretend that it hasn't all day long, the facts are there for anyone who cares to investigate. And yes
What follows is WHY, and that is Because the Empirical Evidence does point to QTM and inflation working like that.
You know, even if you are right about the UBI and by some black magic it isn't going to cause inflation, the VAT will feel like inflation at the point of sale. That in itself has an effect similar to inflation and is practically indistinguishable from it. The only difference is what you call it. Inflation is a hidden tax, and the VAT is a direct tax. They're both just taxes.
If you can hypothetically duck hyperinflation by having an upfront tax to cover the bill, people are still paying more for goods and services just as they would with inflation. Does a war by any other name not smell as putrid? I mean you may as well be arguing with me that the U.S. hasn't been to war in decades and that these little tiffs we've been getting into all around the world are just military conflicts. You'd be right in name only, but these are just tricks of the mind.
The problem with top-down tinkering in complex systems that evolved from the bottom up is there are innumerable moving parts that work in synchronicity with each other and every time someone upsets the applecart it creates a chain reaction of events that may not be readily obvious.
Maybe Yang will win his 2020 bid, and you can either learn from the school of hard knocks, or perhaps utopia exists, and I’ll be in a state of pure awe and amazement. One sure-fire certainty is that the VAT will spike prices at the point of sale. Yang frames it as if the tax will only affect silicon valley, but I’m not buying the impression he is trying to put out in that regard.
It seems wiser to slash the income tax to zero until after someone earns 12k; this way they would not have to resort to playing with fire. I foresee a free money system having strings attached and compelling performance. Not up to date on your vaccines, no UBI for you. Failure to enroll in the new single-payer health care system, no UBI for you. Said something uncouth, rude, or politically incorrect on the internet, no UBI for you. Without said UBI you won’t be able to afford the added tax on goods and services at the point of sale.
It will be a clever way to manipulate people and will give the social credit system they want to roll out some teeth. The clip below is a good illustration of the amazing complexity of free market systems that evolve from the bottom up. Something seemingly as simple as the organization involved in manufacturing a pencil is surprisingly intricate, and market tinkering generally tends to cause unforeseen blowback.
Listen, this has turned into a disregard fest. I have no reason to watch this video as I didn't think I had any reason to watch the other videos. I can go back, collate all the points that you disregarded and then maybe I can justify extending the same respect to you, maybe, because if you disregard them yet again it only tells me that you take me for a fool.
The fact that ubi has no such effects on the free market as you envisioned is among those things you disregarded, what it does have is numerous benefits that have been repeatedly observed, and this is all the while the most scrutiny is given to how it could be a negative outcome or at the very least impact, not to say that the last thing government wants is a people who are empowered but by your own perspective, if ubi was so horrible, it would be encouraged by the public servants that you consider thieves as what better way to control the people than by impovrishing them more, increasing the demand for more codes, then more police, more taxes to curb certain goods and services to pay for the police and government, more regulations, more registrations, etc.., and the private sector would fall over themselves with regards to an ever influx of patients who can pay, even if it's not much, all because of the laziness and stupidity of free money. Yet, every single time it's been studied, unless the government literally said "it was not sustainable" and offered nothing more after they abruptly stopped it, what people found was that free money benefits, and it created a lasting benefit, as some studies followed up 20 years later, yeah the benefit isn't a miracle panacea but to disregard the benefits in any way while spewing nonsense based on unfounded fears and theories or to try to minimize it's impact in any way and I'll be the first one to tell you that you don't know shit.
I don’t subscribe to or give credence to Keynesian economics. So, learning the opinions about the effects of UBI from an economist, or multiple economists of the Keynesian variety would be an exercise in futility for me. How about we move forward and assume you are correct? Let us pretend, or let me “pretend” the UBI will not cause inflation, that still doesn’t change the fact a VAT is en essence inflation at the point of sale. If we can both agree inflation is a hidden tax, then adding a direct tax at the point of sale is very similar to the inflation tax, only it’s not hidden. Well, it’s hidden, but it’s hiding behind that $1000.00 a month, as the lure of free money can sometimes blind people to reality.
Can we agree that inflation is a hidden tax on the buying power of the dollar? If so, then is directly taxing the price of goods and services at the point of sale that much different than inflation? The only difference I see is that the effect of the VAT will be immediate and less hidden. For free money to truly be free there can't be strings that take money away, how you don't see the hustle here has me scratching my head. The last time the Democrats conned the American people healthcare prices on a plan that was supposed to be affordable had people choosing between whether or not they would eat or pay for health insurance, and obviously not eating is very terrible for your health. Why are you so willing to get fooled again?