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Comment by hddu | Hacker News Reader

We are already go fucking deep in debt this barely makes a difference. I say go for it. let the people vote for whichever politian says they will give them the most free money.i give the usa less than 100 years.

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Giving $500/mo to everyone would cost like half of the current federal budget per year.

I think the idea is that it would grow the economy and overall tax revenue. Struggling with housing and joblessness is a great way to avoid paying tax - if you’ve got nothing you pay nothing. For people who don’t need the money, it just flows into their taxes, and their purchases. In addition the insane amounts spent on policing, and other downstream costs of poverty would help recoup.

But the final argument for something like this is: do you want to thrive while someone else starves? Would it not be worth it to you to thrive a small amount less in order to ensure that nobody is starving?

It might also just inflate the cost of everything to the point where increases in rent, groceries, etc. eat up whatever money we distribute like that.

I mean, inflating away debts is certainly one way to reduce the associated pain, but inflation can also wipe out wages, so it’s a bit of a balance. We haven’t seen a permanent UBI scheme in a large enough way to know what might happen.

That’s not how the national debt works at all. Who do you think the debt is owed to?

I think the idea is that if we continue to print money, the dollar will eventually collapse as the world's reserve currency, and nations will use the yuan or euro instead - having a material effect on American persons life outcomes.

I know increased national debt doesn't directly imply money printing, just throwing some thoughts out there.

> I think the idea is that if we continue to print money, the dollar will eventually collapse as the world's reserve currency, and nations will use the yuan or euro instead - having a material effect on American persons life outcomes.

So, if poor people are given "Free" money to express a demand for goods and services they currently possess but do not have the funds to express, how does this lead to inflation - more specifically how does this lead to fruitless inflation?

The Euro is definitely not well managed compared to the dollar; how many cycles of supposed bank stress tests followed by bank failures have we seen?

China more or less has decided that it would rather choose the ability to impose strict capital controls at will than have a reserve currency.

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