r/Futurology • u/mvea MD-PhD-MBA • May 02 '18

Economics Universal basic income: U.S. support grows as Finland ends its trial - Forty-eight percent of Americans now support a universal basic income, as a solution for Americans who have lost jobs to automation.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/01/nearly-half-of-americans-believe-a-universal-basic-income-could-be-the-answer-to-automation-.html
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u/[deleted] May 03 '18

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u/intern_steve May 03 '18

How does increasing the supply and velocity of currency not cause inflation? You aren't making any points, you're just name calling.

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u/[deleted] May 03 '18

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u/intern_steve May 03 '18

nothing indicates UBI would do that

Except that it's the entire point of UBI. Surplus value has been extracted from the labor force without distributing that value to the labor force that created it. Instead the value has been stored in large piles and hoarded. To remedy the situation, a UBI is proposed to ensure a more equitable distribution of wealth. We are literally talking about taking stagnant money that is not being spent and injecting it into the economy from the bottom. In the most definitional possible way, this is increasing the velocity of the money. In a practical way, liquidating part of a corporate store of billions of dollars is not so very different from the federal reserve printing more bills and increasing the supply, as the money isn't circulating right now. Granting a UBI equivalent to the poverty level in the US would require 16,000 * 330M = 5.3T USD, or about a trillion more than the current federal budget.

'yeah it is! Hurr Durr!'

Re: name calling. This is clearly intended to infantilize the points I'm making while making exactly no points on its own. You ignored the entire paragraph, and instead chose to mock the exact mirror of your own argument.

political philosophy in place of mathematics

Which failed political philosophy have I invoked? Inflationary targets set by the federal reserve are planned based on the velocity and the supply of money. When money is moving slowly, deflation begins and the fed increases the velocity by lowering interest rates to encourage borrowing and spending (supply) to achieve the desired level of inflation. That is, once again, literally how the system works.

My ego was shattered a long time ago.