@alex_mastodon @TatianaIlyina

Universal monthly payments can render unnecessary some targeted welfare programs & bureaucracies to distinguish between undeserving & deserving people. Universal monthly payments adjust the economic system to achieve improved distribution of resources & reduced economic inequality.

Universal, reliable monthly payments can effectively compensate people for higher energy costs & other burdens of coping with climate change, while producing more widespread prosperity, & perhaps stimulating GDP growth.

Politically, though not for economic reasons, the problems of getting an enabling bill through the Congress will be difficult, I agree. /5/end

@alex_mastodon @TatianaIlyina

In nearly all of these examples, recipients have exhibited increased levels of employment, many participants reducing working hours to get more education, mothers & fathers able to stay home to care for children, better household financial stability, & improvements in personal happiness. Sloth & indiscipline plague fewer than 5-10%. Identifying them & criminalizing them would be costly, while even the slothful & undisciplined continue to patronize retail businesses. On net, the participants benefit directly, with wide beneficial side-effects.

/4

@alex_mastodon @TatianaIlyina

Considerations for moderating inflation, with a dose of my opinion, ... As the ideas of Milton Friedman & the monetary operations of the Federal Reserve System under Paul Volcker demonstrated, changes in money supply & velocity have positive effects on inflation. As the cash distributions of the COVID-19 years & the 2017 tax cuts demonstrated, large wide distributions of cash can alter the money supply & velocity. As the Fed under Jerome Powell demonstrated, the Fed can control & manage undesirable inflation without excessive unemployment & without diminution of GDP growth. Thanks to these principles & predecessors, the Fed has working through these monetary balancing acts.

Concerns about people using their monthly payments unwisely have been shown unfounded by the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, the experiments in Seattle, Stockton, & Winnipeg, & by Social Security & Medicare, & by numerous other examples.

/3

@alex_mastodon @TatianaIlyina

I agree with Alex, that compensation, for the costs of coping with climate change and increased costs of energy, is a viable path in USA. I think the fear of significant decline in GDP growth rate is unwarrante concern for an improbable event.

A direct payment of taxable $ (USD) 100/mo to every child, woman, & man in USA would cost approx $35b/mo or $420b/yr.

The OnePct would collect approx $4b/yr, and they would likely put most of it in savings/investment. The next 9pct of the population would collect $36b, & we might expect them to spend half of that. The next 40pct would get $168b & spend $160b. The least wealthy 50pct (175m people) would get $210byr & spend it all. If I calculate correctly, that's $397b/yr less taxes that people spend mostly at retail establishments, a rough guess of $300b/yr.

That's $300b/yr of revenue for all kinds of retail,
revenue to their suppliers, requiring hiring workers & investment, & producing profits. /1

@alex_mastodon @TatianaIlyina

Most GDP growth occurs in the incomes of the TenPct and the companies they own. Growth doesn’t limit our response to global warming, but extreme income inequality does. One possibility: tax the rich and distribute the money to those who bear the burdens of climate change for the other inhabitants of the planet.