Reply to post: Re: Two things about UBI

Re: Two things about UBI

"One big issue is where the money come from"

This is actually a problem with our conception of money, which is still rooted in metal-backed currencies even though we use fiat. In fact, this is pretty much where all the problems in our economy are rooted.

Basically, after the gold standard finally died in 1971, we effectively agreed to just pretend that money was backed by gold. This produced the USA's limitless pot of debt, since it was now treated as gold-backed without actually needing to BE gold backed; most surplus value thus ends up in the US, and most of that gets concentrated into the hands of about 17 families. It did mean we were able to avoid a massive re-configuration of the financial system, but was otherwise pretty disastrous in the long term. (note that returning to the gold standard would also be a disaster, since the supply of gold doesn't expand quickly enough to cover increased productive output, leading to exactly the problems that led Nixon to drop convertibility).

The actual advantage of a fiat system is that you really can just print as much money as you like, distribute it to the population fairly and equally, and then remove excess at the end - so taxation is used to reduce inflation, rather than to pay for the costs of running the government. There's really no sensible reason for any government that can print it's own currency to go around trying to find that money from elsewhere, since a) it's unpopular, so politicians run deficits instead, and b) it doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.

UBI works just fine under a 'proper' fiat system like this. It won't work at all under the curious 'unbacked backed' system we currently use, but then again 2008 and the years since showed that the present system doesn't really work very well anyway. Money ought to be the grease which permits goods to flow through the economy to where they're most needed; currently it is completely failing at that role, and we have large amounts of idle capacity and large amounts of unemployed or under-employed workers. That's more or less the biggest failing an economic system can have.