RE: Ethics and Morality of Basic Income.

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Ethics and Morality of Basic Income.

in cryptocurrency •  7 years ago 

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.

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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.

...what? How can debt be money? Moreover where do you think they get the money to loan out? Why do you think the house crisis in 2008 happened?

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Money (outside of central bank printing) is loaned into existence by commercial bank loans, and is winked out of existence when it is repaid. This is not in the slightest controversial. Consider this simplified example:
Alice deposits $100 into her account at Bank A. Bank A loans that $100 out to Bob. Money supply has just increased from $100 to $200 (as both Alice and Bob have claim on $100 each). That extra $100 is a debt. This is how the vast majority of money comes into existence.