RE: Ethics and Morality of Basic Income.

You are viewing a single comment's thread from:

Ethics and Morality of Basic Income.

in cryptocurrency •  7 years ago 

I am sure basic income is a good thing for all. If people don't have to worry about how to survive, they can be creative, do with great passion what they love, and make world better place.

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!
Sort Order:  

Wealth generation doesn't just happen. Where does the funding for this basic income come from?

Where does the funding for this basic income come from?

it is no longer about money but total control at this stage, centuries on relying on governments to tell us how to live. This has a price tag.

...come again?

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Where does the funding for anything come from? It comes from the loaning into existence of new money. The only difference here is where the new money is being spent and what we value more (as an example compare financial speculation to people surviving and being consumers).

...are you serious? You don't loan money into existence. Money is a tangible good. You might be talking about currency, but unless that currency has some sort of limits on how easy it is to acquire, it's going to be worthless. The only reason the dollar is worth anything is because there's a lot of guys with guns and missiles threatening people to keep using it to buy and sell oil.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Money is currency. All financial transactions require the exchange of money. If all those exchanges lead to economic growth, then that's new money in the system (minus a bit due to the small amount of base money in circulation and minus a small amount to account for the velocity of money through the system). Virtually all new money comes from commercial bank loans. Only a small amount comes from the federal reserves printing new money.

Money isn't currency. Currency is a stand-in for money (or should be). Fiat currency is not money.

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. I don't see the distinction between the two, and in any case you asked where does the "funding" come from. Funding is money.

Money is a medium of exchange that is durable, fungible, transferable, scarce, and divisible. Currency is a representation of that money in the form of a receipt or promissory note. Currency is not money because it is generally not durable, and it's not scarce as more notes can be printed, which reduce the value of every other promissory note. You can't create wealth out of thin air.

So, to return to my question: who provides the funding for this? Your contention that central banks don't print currency is fallacious. Case in point, quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve over the last 10 years. Literally trillions of dollars created out of nothing. Moreover, if you're going to rely on a central bank to provide the currency for this scheme, you're tacitly agreeing that violence and force has to be used against people in order to pay for it in the form of taxation.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I didn't say that central banks don't print money/currency. I said that the vast majority of money is created by commercial banks as debt. In most advanced neoliberal economies it is 90%+ region. And as I said, you need that money creation to fund economic growth. There's no reason that that money can't be used to fund a UBI. It's all about what we value and how we value it.