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Comment by Spartan-S63 | Hacker News Reader

I mean, if we're already subsidizing low wage jobs with social programs like food stamps, why not just make the extra UE benefits permanent? It'll rob those companies of productive labor they were paying substantially less for and force them to either do without or pay more.

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I would love something like this. Honestly I think it's the right answer to minimum wage, the whole gig economy independent contractor thing, and if we can just get healthcare removed from the employer/employee relationship we can get a real situation where the only people working these jobs "want" to work them. As in these jobs give enough X where they consider it worth it rather than they need to work to live.

But how would the government afford to pay all these benefits indefinitely? Unless the new normal will be to just keep taking out more debt in perpetuity.

> if we're already subsidizing low wage jobs with social programs like food stamps

I imagine by not having to pay as much for social programs, like food stamps. We're already paying for social programs indefinitely.

That is basically the plan, yes. "Modern Monetary Theory" is that USD-denominated debt is free because you can print the dollars to pay it back at any time.

> USD-denominated debt is free because you can print the dollars to pay it back at any time

Are you aware of this thing called "inflation"? Do you understand that printing more dollars dilutes the real value of a dollar?

Govt. debt has been used to pay for high military spending etc. It has happened before many times and can happen again. A better way to solve these problems could be to not just throw money at them but build preventative systems.

Spend what's needed, then take in what's needed to balance it out, through a combination of taxes and debt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory

Yeah, that worked great for my home country.

https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/fall-2019/modern-monetary-...

The new normal should be a combination of moderate deficit spending (nothing like the COVID stimulus packages - those are special crisis spending level events) and significant tax increases for the wealthy (think 1950 level), plus wealth taxes for the ultra-wealthy.

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