I've noticed that two conversations are merging toward each other … will they meet?

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Intro

Unconditional basic income and helicopter money from which you might of heard or read already. If not, Unconditional basic Income is the concept that every citizen of the country receives a certain amount of money from the state Unconditional weather you do something for it or not. If you want to upgrade your income amount, you do what most people already do, take on a job were you can earn money, start a business or whatever else you can think of artistic, writing or what ever else comes to mind. Then there’s Helicopter Money its a concept first mentioned by Ben Bernanke. He was the former head of the Central Bank of USA the FED, Federal Reserve Bank. His basis idea was if nothing else works to help stem up the economy, for instance lowering the interest rate to near zero %, quantitative easing which is an expression used for and simplified said, print money in a top down manner. Hope the dollars printed and given to the Banks for free eventually trickles down to the consumer through credits to Businesses. If all that doesn’t work then just drop bundles of dollars all over the country from helicpters.

Unconditional Basic Income

Lets start with the first concept. Unconditional basic Income. It's bin talked about for quit some time in different countries and with different concepts. In Europe besides having rights and freedom of speech, there is the concept of living in dignity. In the U.S. besides rights and freedom of speech there is the concept to strive for Happiness and Success. For people that fall through the grid you have Welfare like in Canada or Hartz IV in Germany just for an example. The concept of work has also changed over the years as our economies evolved from Farmers to Industrial, to Service oriented, now to Knowledge/Information based economies. The time span between these transition are ever shorter. The people unable to work because of illness, injury lack of proper education, or because they are taking care of someone else for example an elderly, children or for what ever other reason are becoming more and more. To take part in normal activities in society regardless if in sports, cultural or religious areas seems to becoming ever more difficult. The spread between the Super Wealthy, the 1% and the rest isn’t helping either.

So we can start out with getting rid of bureaucracy add some money from the state and all is well. Countries like Finland have a system were they pay €900.00/month ($1017.00 USD) to the citizens. The province of Ontario wants to start a pilot project in this area sometime in the near future. The Swiss just had a referendum about just this subject and voted 78% against it. Not surprisingly because the Monthly Income that was aimed for 2500 Franks ($2568.00 USD) . The CEO from DM Markt a Drug Store chain in Germany has bin fighting for years for a Proposal in this direction, €900-1000/month. His argument is that people are not lazy from birth, they will work productively for society once they receive condition less money and want to participate in every day life interactions. I can understand that. A new born baby isn't “Evil” either and has normal aspirations just like everyone else. To be nourished, loved and have a warm place to stay. Grow up and become a full pledged interacting member of the community that he or she lives in.

So lets look a little closer. Everything we do is work. The work is not always done well, but never the less when completed or not, work is being carried out. There’s the classical work but Scientists do some of their best work when they screw up and sometimes bring medical treatment farther. Someone might says I'm just going to travel the world and enjoy myself. Well, … you will probably take some pictures try out sun lotions, hotels, restaurants. If you go to the far north were you might need special clothing to protect you from the cold or when you decide to travel tropical jungles and learn about plants and animals one should avoid to touch or come in contact with so one can report the experience. All this is work, pleasurable sure maybe even really physically demanding, possible. You want to share it with someone maybe here on steemit or maybe a travel guide book, maybe you might even be inspired to write stories, poems. Its all work. So the question isn't what we do, but how we get payed for what we do. People will also have to compete ever more against robots, artificial intelligence and the like. So the work we do, will most likely shift ever more to pleasurable activities. The question remains, just how do we pay for it. This discussion is happening right now, right on steemit and the question about the distribution of funds. I even have the feeling the whales can't even get around to everyone to up vote them all. On the other side I could be wrong. Here we have the same problem like with the central banks, who gets what and how come, I'll get to that in a moment but first we have to figure out how to disrepute the funds. By unconditional money the state has to jump in money, in other words the tax payer pays for it. Lets just say there is enough funds in the budget to pay for all this. What now, will the purchasing power stay the same? Most likely not. The average wages that are being payed in the economy will fall proportional to the unconditional payout. Why, because businesses try to maximize profits either for themselves or for their share holder. The out come therefore is that we will shortly after starting such an engagement end up in the same place we are wright now. We should also not forget that we do not live on an island. Our economies always are in direct competition to all the other economies all of the time. I mention Finland before. It has a very high tax level to start off with and the state takes over the cost of the many services that you have to pay for in other countries. In Finland you do not have this extended wealth gap. It is a more socialistic country. The question seems to be how much socialism does a society want or how much can it handle and still have a stable political and economic system. Most of the developed countries and for that matter the developing countries are over in dept, also they can't afford such programs. But could it really work, I would like to say yes, somehow I get the feeling this is wishful thinking, but lets take a look on the second part of the discussion which to me is merging with this first part.

Helicopter Money

Central Banks have different objectives. The FEDs two main objectives are:

I. Price Stability:
II. Low Unemployment

Other central banks just look at price stability. Since Richard Nixon went off the Gold Standard in 1971 the dollar and the other currency float in respect to one another compared to the individual GDPs. Is one society more productive then another in form from products and or services then that currency will become stronger and the others weaker. You would think that a country likes a strong currency because the purchasing power is greater and the standard of living rises on average for those living there. In a world were products are scares, it works very well. In a world were many countries produce the same or similar products we become overproduction. That seems to me the beginning of the whole problem in all of the facets that we have today. Economists always say competition is good. Competition is only good as long as you do Not have over production. Competition insures that the product becomes better in terms of use, safety, price and many more features. By overproduction this process continues but in a much harsher environment. Profit Margins shrink. Reinvestment capital into innovations also declines and now it starts to get tricky. Its like going to war which is always existential. Political difference is like being in friendly competition. War is like over production. When a population in earlier years was to large to sustain itself one needed new pastures and states could provide this through wars. With industrialization countries are not reliant on expansion of farm land but on access to commodities.

Globalization in the last 40 years has reached all the corners of the world. Competition of products is carried out on different levels. In innovation, on cheap resources, on low cost of labor. This is why labor wages are stagnant in western economies for the last 20-25 years in slight variation. Developing nations have a large pool of cheap labor. The competition has escalated from the economy to currency wars. Why because no companies are aloud to go bankrupt anymore but this is necessary in a working capitalistic market place. Bankruptcies mean unemployment more cost for governments and less revenue to give out. If too many have no chance to come ahead in life then a destabilization of government is not far away. To compensate for the imbalances, governments borrow, lower taxes for companies to give them a competition edge and lastly Central Banks manipulate, manage the currency value lower to bring down unemployment levels. They do this by lowering interest rates and printing money. The problems wouldn't be so bad if we didn't concentrate so much on cars, phones and clothing. These are areas of overproduction. We need clean water, affordable renewable energy and healthy food in this world. On the other side we need consumers, which we have all over the planet but they do not have the necessary resources to pick up the overcapacity of consumer goods.

Now we're coming closer to the merging of the two ideas. Up until now it was tried to stabilize the complex economy by giving free cash to the banks to lend out to the economy to further growth. The problem is company’s see no need to expand their production because we have overproduction already. The next step in the discussion is Helicopter Money. Who is talking about it the most besides Bloomberg TV, the Japanese. The are the most indebted with 250% of GDP. Economist used to say, any country with a dept higher then 90% can not pay back what they have lent. Japan is an aging population and consumption goes back as we get older. The cost of illness goes up. Now if Japan wants to start and give away money to further growth called Helicopter Money, what will that do. Well, the elderly will pay for medical services but that doesn’t help exports, the Yen should drop like a rock causing imports to become more expensive. That is called bad inflation because the prices of goods go up but wages can't keep up (Global Wage Competition) causing wage stagnation. If you dropped helicopter money over Africa that would help exports.

Another point that came up to short in this discussion up until now are negative interest rates. Governments like Japan and Germany for the first time issued bonds for Germany it was bunds, at negative interest rate. That means, you pay back less then you borrowed. If you borrowed enough or negative interest rates go down to -20% even better for the government which represents the people. Then government dept gets paid off, services toward the public can expand, unconditional basic income becomes an option. Here again, free money for all might be in good intent, but because Germany isn’t an island wages will drop becoming even more competitive with even more export over shut. This isn't working out to well either looking at it from a global situation. In this case, if Germany exports even more, someone else has to go into dept to buy these products, this is called trade imbalance.

The situation now is like this. Currently there is to much money around not necessarily by you and me. Hedge Fund Managers do not now what to do with their money. Bonds all over the world are in bubble territory, stocks are also way over valued, commodities are in the basement because there is no need for them and currency are volatile. Jetting in and out from one country to the next looking for yield. Gold and Silver are acting as a valve leading both metals to go higher. Gold 20% year to date and Silver twice that by 40% gains so far. Even though we have read that these metals have bin manipulated by major banks just like interest rates a currency they are heading higher. What does this tell us besides that we are in a very critical situation. It tells us you can go off the Gold Standard and in the mean time its bin 45 years, but it seems like the gold standard is being reintroduced through the back door. If Gold goes high enough in price, then the balance sheets of government will be corrected giving more leeway for them to invest in important projects which will lead to economic growth. Good economic growth is avoiding investing in products and service of which we have plenty of. It is really easy to think of products that society’s need immediately.

Another way to come to the same outcome as described above is to take a look on all this money flushing around. Once the confidence in money is reduced even more it will be released through the valves looking to get in some kind of equilibrium. That is why Digital Currency is coming of age. They also act as a pressure valve like Gold and Silver. Well it looks like government have lost control over their dept and their balance sheets, central banks have also lost control, nothing seems to be work properly any more. There is 500 times more paper gold in circulation then there is real physical gold. The derivatives market is approximately 17 times that of the world GDP. Who and about what are we talking about here. Investors, they are the ones in control but they can loose it in a blink of an eye if they are not careful. Bubbles everywhere and they are all trying to make yield out of nothing. Some type of work has to be under taken so one can have a return on it. The investor, and I'm talking about the big ones, have to make up their mines if they are ready to unwind the derivative market and reinvest in real projects. By doing so make real dollars and doing something useful for society. With money comes responsibility. Will they be responsible or are they so bored with life that they are going for GAME OVER.

What do you the readers think of this scenario.