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-   -   Guaranteed Income as Quantitative Easing (http://www.politicalchat.org/showthread.php?t=11459)

donquixote99 02-10-2017 12:57 PM

Guaranteed Income as Quantitative Easing
 
Fact one: Top Tenth of 1 Percenters Reaps All the Riches (Bloomberg)

Fact two: What they are doing with all that money gives us the economy we've got. Anemic growth and low-wage jobs are it, going forward. The money goes into bidding up assets (the stock market) and government bonds (buying guaranteed income). To a large degree, the money becomes static, tied up in non-productive assets, and economically ineffective.

Fact three: Government keeps incurring debt because it can't tax enough to cover current needs. It can't tax enough because the political power of the top .1% prevents it. They don't want the government taking their money, when instead they can loan it to the government and get interest on it forever.

Fact four: desperate to promote increased economic growth, the Federal Reserve has undertaken a program of 'quantitative easing,' in which large amounts of money are created and made available as reserves to commercial banks, enabling them to increase loans and investment. The stimulative results of this program have been disappointing.

Fact five: increased demand from the consumer sector would be the most certain factor to produce increased economic growth. However, downward pressure on employment and wages from globalization and automation precludes robust earnings growth in the consumer sector. This downward-pressure on the consumer sector will only increase in the future.

Fact six: massive government support for consumer demand, in the form of guaranteed annual income for consumers, has bee proposed as a method of stimulating the economy and restoring satisfactory rates of growth. However, the cost is deemed too great, as it will remain politically impossible to raise taxes on the high-income sector to fund a 'transfer' of income. Funding with debt would likewise lead to a burgeoning debt that will be too expensive to service.

Proposal: end quantitative easing program for creation of bank reserves, and instead fund guaranteed annual incomes by creating the necessary money. As long as this funds creation is kept within necessary bounds, it will not result in hyper-inflation, even as the current quantitative-easing program has not proved to be inflationary. Like current quantitative easing, it will simply counterbalance the deflationary effect of the withdrawal of huge sums into the relatively economically-inert cash hordes of super-weathly individuals and their corporations.

This proposal should enjoy support from all sectors; the super-wealthy will both like that it does not require taxation of their income, and be gratified as, over time, increased growth adds multiple zeros the the number-scores that denote their status. Because the program will allow them to continue to 'reap all the riches,' and indeed, counts on it to provide the sink that counterbalances the money-creation. And of course, it will also provide the benefit of a better life to those no longer necessary to the economy.

CarlV 02-10-2017 02:21 PM

That's not what they say on Fox News. :p


Carl

Tom Joad 02-10-2017 02:55 PM

I don't care what anybody says, due to dramatic increases in worker productivity we have a surplus of labor.

Robotics is going to make this surplus even more acute.

It's a wet dream for employers because they can dictate the terms of employment they want and the poor desperate for a job masses have to eat whatever shit sandwich they are offered.

The way I see it we have two options.

One is to create a shitload of non-jobs with the government.

The other is to pay people not to work, like we pay farmers not to grow shit in order to avoid surpluses.

I favor paying people not to work.

That's what I see the guaranteed income to be.

donquixote99 02-10-2017 03:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CarlV (Post 347324)
That's not what they say on Fox News. :p


Carl

I wouldn't know.

whell 02-10-2017 03:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom Joad (Post 347325)
I don't care what anybody says, due to dramatic increases in worker productivity we have a surplus of labor.

Robotics is going to make this surplus even more acute.

It's a wet dream for employers because they can dictate the terms of employment they want and the poor desperate for a job masses have to eat whatever shit sandwich they are offered.

The way I see it we have two options.

One is to create a shitload of non-jobs with the government.

The other is to pay people not to work, like we pay farmers not to grow shit in order to avoid surpluses.

I favor paying people not to work.

That's what I see the guaranteed income to be.

Curious: what do you think will happen to the labor surplus and high productivity when we start paying people not to work?

Also, assuming this....um...interesting economic theory is put into place, and somehow supply meets demand in the labor market, how do you convince all those folks who are being paid not to work that they actually need to go back to work?

Tom Joad 02-10-2017 03:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by whell (Post 347329)
Curious: what do you think will happen to the labor surplus and high productivity when we start paying people not to work?

Also, assuming this....um...interesting economic theory is put into place, and somehow supply meets demand in the labor market, how do you convince all those folks who are being paid not to work that they actually need to go back to work?

You would get enough for basic necessities by not working. You work for the luxuries and frills.

Type A's like you will be happy to work to get more material stuff.

Type B's like me will be happy to just chill on the couch.

Which is what I have been doing for the past 9 years. :)

Oerets 02-10-2017 04:26 PM

Place a tax on all the jobs replaced by automation. To be used in retraining or maintaining those displaced.
Go to a thee day and a half day workweek and increase vacation time. In order to employ more people.



Barney

Tom Joad 02-10-2017 04:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oerets (Post 347338)
Go to a thee day and a half day workweek and increase vacation time. In order to employ more people.
Barney

Not a bad idea.

When I was a freshman in 1965 our economics 101 instructor told us that due to increases in worker productivity we would only have to work 20 hours a week by the time we were his age.

Well productivity kept increasing, but workers share of the proceeds didn't. The mega rich kept it all for themselves.

I place part of the reason on the reduction of the top income tax bracket from 90% down to what it is today. When it was 90% the rich had an incentive to share the wealth because if they didn't the government was going to take 90% of it. Today that's not true, so they keep it all for themselves.

whell 02-10-2017 05:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oerets (Post 347338)
Place a tax on all the jobs replaced by automation. To be used in retraining or maintaining those displaced.
Go to a thee day and a half day workweek and increase vacation time. In order to employ more people.



Barney

...and watch those jobs go somewhere else where there is no tax on automation? It might get harder to tax somethibg when it disappears over time.

whell 02-10-2017 05:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom Joad (Post 347331)
You would get enough for basic necessities by not working. You work for the luxuries and frills.

Type A's like you will be happy to work to get more material stuff.

Type B's like me will be happy to just chill on the couch.

Which is what I have been doing for the past 9 years. :)

But since you're not producing anything of value that can be taxed, it won't take long for my Type A ability to purchase luxuries to be diminished so that the economy can continue to provide your Type B basic necessities. After a while we type A's will want you to be productive, because the economy can't afford you anymore. Couple that with some of my fellow type A's who might find the type B lifestyle gradually more appealing as time goes on, and you'll run out of enough type A's to keep things funded.


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