RE: Andrew Yang's Siren Song of Free Money Will Cost You Dearly
You think that inflation, despite the lack of Empirical Evidence, is simply "over printing".
Yes, I think one of the main key reasons for inflation or hyperinflation is overprinting, even your precious Investopedia concurs with this along with a loss of confidence, and the two together create a feedback loop. If you try to overprint to cover a stagnant GDP, it’s akin to putting a bandaid on a bullet wound, and the results are predictable depending on the severity of the problem. When the fed eats its own tail, or debt, like an ouroboros to maintain an adequate sink to prevent inflation, these types of shenanigans freak out foreign debt holders and cause them to dump more U.S. bonds to the market because of a loss in confidence and that causes the fed to rinse and repeat the process to keep prices stable. In the end, all Ponzi schemes fail.
"You cannot escape the consequences of increased productivity on the economy, it leaves no opportunity for people to make a living, a phrase that should result in an eyebrow going up, because living should be given, not a fight, not a constant struggle."
Let's examine the first part of that statement having a look at Amazon as an example. Amazon is hyper productive and ultra capitalistic. Many of their employees are miserable because they're being worked very hard. Yet it's a massive company that employes a whole lot of people. This employment gives people an opportunity to make a living. One could argue well for that type of work it would be nice if they paid their employees 28 bucks an hour. And sure it would be nice but ultimatly a move like that would effect the consumers who use their service. Because of their hyper productivity they can provide goods and services very cheap. If you make them less productive, they'll have to compensate at the point of sale. Everything is interconnected and interrelated.
"living should be given, not a fight, not a constant struggle."
Should it though? Who should be the giver? Who should be the taker? Do you have food in your cupboards? Can you afford to sponsor a child in Africa? If so why aren't you? You can eat, and they cannot. For just $1.30 a day, the price of a cup of coffee, you can change someone's life in Africa. Why aren't you? You don't have to have that cell phone, or internet connection, or cable TV, not when there are people starving in the world. If everything has to be equalized we must learn to go without a great number of things. Are you prepared to pay your fair share to end world poverty by giving people a living? How many people can you sponsor, and what will you be willing to give up to do so?
Don't get me wrong I like the idea of people giving people "a living," but if it doesn't come from a voluntary place, is it a moral act to force it on people? Let's say you are accustomed to dining out at fancy restaurants and going to concerts or movies once a week and have a cell phone, internet, air conditioning, and cable tv. How much of that stuff are you willing to have ripped away from you to give people that you didn't make, or don't know, who live in a foreign country... a living?
It's not a matter of sacrificing anything. You can't see that without opportunity there's no consumer. You are worried about the consumers but you cannot resolve the obvious conclusions of capitalism : lords that own property that extract more money in a month from the community than most poor families make in a lifetime, for doing absolutely nothing, who will dictate all of the economy as they will be the only ones with any real power over it, the rest fighting for the ever diminishing opportunities as a direct consequence of productivity, until, poverty will be so rampant that it will make the worst places in Africa look appealing because of the affordable cost of living. You cannot see the flaw of hoarding wealth, which undoubtedly impoverishes the rest. It's not a matter of extra taxes, it's a matter of taxing the landlords that extract all that wealth from the economy, and it would be exactly like a negative tax.
I guess we'll have to wait and see how it shakes out. With most so-called socialist countries it starts with good intentions but ends catastrophically. What you should be concerned with is the fact that wealthy capitalists in government might be in favor of a VAT if it's done in such a way where it will cause them to capitalize even more off of the poor.
Yang's free money would be less insulting to my intelligence if he wasn't going to do a VAT to pay for it, even then, it would have to be paid for with taxes so its six to one, half a dozen the other. When he talks about imposing the VAT he suggests with his words that it's only going to affect Amazon and Silicon Valley.
However, VAT is a tax on financial transactions, so it seems Yang is suggesting jacking up the prices on every financial transaction by at least 10% and then to cover the difference "for the program costs" he proposes adding "a carbon fee that will be partially dedicated to funding the Freedom Dividend."
Partially can mean anything, it can mean 0.001%. My guess is that Yang is bankrolled by the carbon tax hucksters to lure people in with the offer of "free money" so they will accept a carbon tax. They're lobbying the American people with their own money to get more money. In the end, when you account for the VAT and carbon tax, everyone will end up short-changed. Many Americans are weak-willed, gullible, and very susceptible to influence. All that said, Yang, might very well defeat Trump.
What more is there to say? May the better system win. All I can continue to stress is: be careful what you wish for. I think you've fallen prey to a sophisticated hustle constructed by the very capitalists that you loathe.
Corporations are in the business of making money. These institutions have a fiduciary responsibility to make their shareholders a profit, and this means they are legally obliged to do just that. That said, any top-down tinkering with the system that causes the profits of these entities to diminish will almost instantaneously get countered by the corporations when they raise their rates to compensate for the loss in revenue and appease shareholders. In the end, consumers will foot the bill.