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Comment by twobits | Hacker News Reader

That's what I have been thinking how the system should be.

Just print eg 3% more money each year. Give eg 30% of the new money to the state for its expenses, give the rest equally divided to all the population. End of story.

No need for IRS, no need for filling taxes, layers, tax accountants, tax checks. The amount would be insignificant (as a percent) for the rich, significant for the poor, thus helping them more. The only tax would be the specifc controlled inflation.

Looks to me as a very simple, nice system. ..Any thoughts anyone, why this would or wouldn't be a good idea, and / or how it could possibly be improved?

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I think it would be hard for central banks to control inflation well in this system. Japan has been trying hard for 20 years to trigger inflation through QE and related money-printing schemes, but it hasn't translated to inflation.

In Japan's case, inflation happened because of a sales-tax increase. Taxes are forced spending, and you can target heavy savers if you need to.

I think that just the levers of how much money to print and percent going to gov't could give a good amount of control though.

Some practical considerations though: How do you get the money to each person? Not everyone has a bank account. In a lot of countries (including US), there's no good single-identifier to find people either. Fraudsters could claim for other people, and the innocent people couldn't get their share. There's some logistics involved.

One small thing is that taxes have also been used a way of incentivising certain behaviour. Carbon taxes aren't about generating revenue but reducing pollution. How would that enter in this new system? Maybe Carbon...incentives? Kind of weird to implement I think

> How do you get the money to each person?

Unconditional basic income?

Money would find its way from the consumers to companies that need investment. Instead of banks estimating how viable your business is before giving you a loan you'd get your money straight from your customers. The market would decide which endeavors should get funding.

My only concern is that printing money would not provide enough money to run country budget (let alone basic income) without creating hyperinflation.

I meant on the logistics side of things. Lots of people don't have bank accounts. Lots of people don't have any solid ID. Plus you'll get people who are really in limbo in whatever system you build to get money to the people... some tricky stuff (especially if it's real large amounts of money).

Maybe Medicaid has solved all these kinds of issues already, and it's just about scaling

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