this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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Inflation does very clearly not serve the public good. That aside, causing havoc in banks and medical institutions would have other unpleasant effects.
How about cleaning the bottom 10%'s debt, with the earings from one week of the top 0.1%?
I already know I'm gonna be downvoted for this, but the top 1%/0.1% spending isn't gonna change, whereas the bottom 10% will cause inflation... That's why there's no magic bullet.
The bottom 10% don't have enough money to "cause" inflation, not even the bottom 90% have that much money. Inflation is driven by the top 5-10%, representing 70% of the wealth; the rest just get taken for the ride.
You're right the top 1%'s spending won't change, it's already 1000x above a person's basic needs, so what's the difference between 1000x and 900x (10% inflation).
Exactly, the bottom 10% donβt have enough money, meaning that any money you give them will go towards consumption. The top bracketβs spending as % of income or wealth is tiny and is mostly independent of their income. Their money is spent on investments, not basic goods and services. They practically donβt affect inflation.
I think money should be printed during periods of low inflation. E.g. Japan could have benefited from that. After this bout is over, governments can return to printing, carefully.
Please don't confuse wealth and money.
What about earnings and income?
Top 0.1% don't have earnings and income.
Ah, you mean unauthorized "redistribution", not unauthorized "vanishing debt".
Technically should do less harm in terms of inflation, but money lying around is different from money being used, so there'll still be an increase in inflation.
The part about causing havoc - kinda same, there may not be direct inconsistencies as in the initial variant, but there'll still be some confusion due to the "top 0.1%" possibly being petty and trying to get their money back.
I frankly prefer changing the rules so that there'd be fewer artificial barriers for competition and economic efficiency to this. Say, patent law and trademark laws and IP laws have basically outgrown their usefulness and are now just a plague. Same with various licenses and practices for medical/pharmaceutical stuff (I know that things should be tested and an average person can't tell a hoax from a normal thing, just entities doing certification shouldn't be able to block stuff which would then be used to create oligopolies). Same with telecom. And so on.
Except for air traffic, water traffic, road traffic and radio, of course. Not regulating those would mean, eh, real havoc.
You're ruining the circlejerk with your realism! π
Edit: I think Mr. Robot gave a good glimpse what would happen if all debts were wiped. It sounds fun on paper, but in the end, the people with the least money would suffer the most.
I personally just lose any interest in conversation when I realize that my counterpart doesn't want a working system or a better world or really some justice, they simply want to rob someone who has more than they do. No deeper purpose or something, just plain envy.
It's like certain moments in sex. So bloody frustrating.
And, of course, the only leftists I've encountered who wouldn't be what I describe were book characters. Yeah, nice characters, fascinating, really making me wish something like this was possible, but even with the depth limitations for describing an entire person on paper they were still deeper that RL leftists, FFS!!!
I have at least met living sincere good-willing ancaps and living sincere good-willing fascists (sic) even. The only people I know in person I could possibly call a real sincere good-willing leftist would be my sister, and maybe one of my cousins, and one DM (though from a few conversations I suspect he just has, eh, a leftist background, but is more literate in economics than such people usually are).
I have no idea why you got down voted, but you're right
Well, I honestly in a way write such comments in a tone more likely to irritate people. Maybe not consciously. I just happen to have grown in a family and in groups where disagreeing and arguing was not considered disrespectful, and I am ironically not very tolerant to the other way of looking at this.
(Should think about this more often when I want to complain about life - some people were not that lucky.)
Seems that a chunk of this platform's userbase are people generally angry at the establishment who upvote everything that wants to bring it down and downvote everything that rejects the idea. Happy that there's many reasonable people here too :)
I'm generally angry at the establishment too, it's just that I see that establishment being pretty friendly to leftist ideas on economics in everything but direct admission of it.
Well, you can disagree without being angry. I in general think that anger is a liability, not an asset. It hinders debate and argumentation.
Fine, let's do taxes: how about cleaning the bottom 90%'s debt, with the income from 4 months of the top 0.1%.
...and that's just 30% income tax, it used to be 90% for the rich right after WWII: History of taxation in the United States
It's not that simple, there's a response of the "top 0.1%" moving their property elsewhere or distributing it by various legal means so that they'd have to pay less.
In dumb terms, you have to design a system where 4 people collectively owning 4bln$ would pay the same as 1 person owning 4bln$. Not even mentioning that they can have N friends abroad.
Also there are still "rich" people in Scandinavian countries, who may not directly own nearly as much as Bill Gates, but still have enormous power.
Also this will, in fact, affect inflation.
My point is - money represents power, which is convertible into other means, you can tax money or property, but you can't universally tax power.
Money-wise (as a universal equivalent in a non-coercive system) you can at least somewhat clearly evaluate that power. If you scare powerful people off to convert their power into more obscure media, you won't have that clarity.
So I don't see this as a problem one can solve, but I see other problems more accessible, like patent\IP\trademark\certification laws.
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Having a dedicated sub for bad understanding of economics seems stupid, it's already spread over all subs, it's normal.
Of course, the extremes of bad economics would be usually found someplace with "soc" in the name.
I'm saying your statement is bad economics. Debts get discharged all the time and they have no impact on inflation. It's called the Bankruptcy System and it's been a part of American economic reality since the mid-1800s.
Yes, so?
Measured by whom? Logically they should.
So in your idea of good economics it doesn't matter for inflation if debt of NxM total gets discharged per month or of NxK total per month where K is much bigger than M?
I just don't get that pretentious acting.
No, they shouldn't. The money supply is unaffected by discharges.
Discharge does introduce short-term shocks but it's not the doomsday scenario you're painting it to be. We did it in the 1800s and it was mostly fine compared to the regular bank panics before the greenback was adopted.
Ah, OK. Maybe "inflation" is the wrong word, but there's a response. Insurance becomes more expensive, loans become more expensive, basically everybody for whom such an event is a risk reacts to its probability growing.
Well, I'm not saying it's literally a doomsday scenario, just that it likely wouldn't benefit the person dreaming about it more than it would harm them.
Nono, inflation is the right word. Inflation isn't caused by the money supply, but by supply vs demand. If demand suddenly increases, there will be inflation. If a lot of money is printed and is thrown in a hole, money supply will increase, but there'll be no inflation.
Well, yes, I'm just always floating in economic terms, it really doesn't help that people around often have differing ideas on what these mean.
Only decreases (if we are speaking about demand for money, not demand for commodity bought with it), not increases, but I think it's an error, not a mistake. =\
Ah, I was talking about the demand for commodities/services.