Why do you think that you should have the right to live off of other people's work? Welfare checks aren't fairy money, they're money that came out of other people's paychecks.
In short, because most of world organised around work is nonsense. So getting a bit of money to live poorly without work is not any more nonsensical. That's a way to see it.
A huge number of people want this mismatch to be fixed, but are wise enough to know they have zero ability to do anything about it.
We're in the midst of discovering just how useless "consciousness raising" slacktivist campaigns are, and that was basically the last hope for being able to contribute to a solution for a lot of people.
Yes, jobs are available, but they also get filled quickly. There's no shortage. The unemployed can out-bid each other in a "how-low-can-you-go" competition, but that just leads to working poor.
That's true, but I increasingly don't mind. It's also money that came from your own paycheck if you were a high earner in the past.
So your argument is solely a moral one. Jobs are mostly a first served problem or the result of privilege: education, network, etc.
No they aren't, the easiest way to get a job is to get really good at something.
You only have a natural right to the things that you make with your hands. Money that's handed to you is not a right, it's a privilege.
Inflation is not the problem it used to be and I actually think it's a much better measure of the economy's capacity than unemployment. Would inflation of 4% be that bad for the public and financial system anyways?
In the US at least I strongly oppose tax-based welfare because I percieve it as a rigged system where the wealthy can avoid paying their fair share through loop holes and classifying their income differently than mine. But inflation in a sense is unavoidable and progressive since the more money you have the more you lose to inflation if you don't invest it. This is especially true if the cause of inflation is labor scarcity and not some other key resource like oil.
Printing money is equivalent to a tax on all US dollar holdings. The value of the printed money is subtracted from everyone else's holdings by inflation. Doing this excessively, e.g. to fund the entire public sector, would cause an inflationary spiral, as everyone tries to get rid of their rapidly-devaluing dollars as quickly as possible.
The US is doing exactly that, and has been for decades. Since the 2008 debacle it has being doing even more of it.
> inflation in a sense is unavoidable
If you mean politically unavoidable, I agree; no government in human history has been able to avoid messing with the currency.
If you mean unavoidable period, I'm not sure why it would be. There is nothing in principle impossible about having a currency that cannot be inflated.
> if the cause of inflation is labor scarcity
How does labor scarcity cause inflation?
By unavoidable I meant that if you hold currency, you are subject to it. Especially if you are holding assets that are appreciating at a slower rate than inflation. Essentially I don't think the wealthy get to loophole or lawyer their way out of inflation the same way they can with taxes.
I meant labor scarcity not in the exonomic sense but in the sense of literally running out of people to allocate. I think it's clear that if businesses have to compete for a dwindling pool of workers prices will inevitably rise.
The US money supply has been increasing fairly steadily since WW II.
> The US has been borrowing money but that hardly translates to printing it.
The US has indeed been borrowing money. But it has also been printing it.
> I can definitely see how quantitative easing essentially translates to printing a couple of trillion to buy outstanding debt but that has already stopped.
QE is just the latest round of printing money. (More precisely three rounds, since there was QE1, QE2, and QE3.)
> By unavoidable I meant that if you hold currency, you are subject to it.
Only if the supply of currency increases. Why is that unavoidable?
> I meant labor scarcity not in the exonomic sense but in the sense of literally running out of people to allocate. I think it's clear that if businesses have to compete for a dwindling pool of workers prices will inevitably rise.
No, it's not clear at all. What is clear is that the price of labor (wages and salaries) will increase relative to the price of capital (e.g., interest rates). But that does not mean price levels in general will rise. That depends on how well businesses can substitute capital for labor. In the age of automation, that is usually "pretty well".
The only fundamental difference is taxing income to pay for welfare vs. taxing wealth.
The two words that are most likely to cause a old-fashioned Hacker News libertarian-slash-armchair-economist freakout: "print money."
Inflation is a tax on currency holdings. So if a person has $10,000 and inflation is 4%, they are effectively paying a $400 tax on it –– because the -4% loss of value is transferred to the one causing the inflation, i.e. the printer of money, which is the government. The people would just divest their US dollar holdings, and switch to investments with better capital preservation, and ROI.
> a rigged system where the wealthy can avoid paying their fair share [...] But inflation in a sense is unavoidable and progressive
Most people with non-trivial savings invest their money. People who have a basic level of understanding of how to manage their finances understand that cash in a bad investment. The US dollar has an effective "investment yield" of -2%. The best interest rates you can get in the US, don't exceed 2%. If I lock up my money in a 5-year CD (certificate of deposit), I get close to 0% returns. Why would I ever settle for 0% returns on such a terrible illiquid investments?
Most sensible people will invest any cash (USD/etc) they have, and will aim to maximize their investment returns, concordant with their investment goals. Most of the wealth in the world (held by people with lots of savings, and by companies/institutions) is in the form of stock/shares and bonds. Currency is just a medium for transmission/exchange of money. Most of the wealth in the world is held in stocks, bonds, and property, and not in currency.
> the wealthy can avoid paying their fair share through loop holes and classifying their income differently than mine
The solution to that is simply going back to classifying capital gains[1], dividends[2], and carried interest[3] as regular taxable income. The current regular federal income tax system[4] is very progressive and effective. Getting rid of that would be the wrong thing to do, FICA taxes are a bit regressive, but that can also be easily fixed by eliminating the Social Security wage base[5].
References:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_Unite...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividend_tax#United_States
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carried_interest#United_States
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate_schedule_(federal_income_...
I think you are also assuming that returns on all investments would stay the same under increased inflation which I seriously doubt.
More importantly I understand that wealthy people have a smaller portion of their wealth in cash than poor people what I am arguing for is that perhaps inflation is at most no worse than our current taxation scheme.