Comment by EGreg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by EGreg | Hacker News Reader

This is why UBI is inevitable.

There is less and less demand for US treasuries, and Trump’s tariff war has only accelerated it.

The GENIUS act gets US a set of entitites that are forced by law to buy US treasuries - stablecoin issuers. It helps the digital dollar be used around the world, and treasuries to still have some demand. That is probably why it is called “genius”. This is the last step before the demand shock.

The US will have to stop borrowing and eventually print money to service its sovereign debt.

And when they do, they could either send it to banks, corporations, fatcats and pork projects — or they can send it to every American equally. The latter would be a UBI that would trickle up into the economy, with people spending it on their actual needs. It would increase most health outcomes, emotional health as well, raise average effective IQ by 13 points. And then they could tax the corporations and robots, and pay down the debt.

As it is, there are literally not enough dollars in existence to pay down that debt. The US will have to print them, or default.

They don’t need to print—they could revalue US gold holdings (artificially held at $42.22/oz). Revaluing this to current market value (over $4k/oz) would instantly generate hundreds of billions on paper, enough to slightly offset debt-to-GDP. Revaluing it even higher would weaken the dollar without any printing. This can be done statutorily even if the statutory price is higher than the market price.

If all hell breaks loose wouldn’t the US just say “screw you we aren’t paying” and utilize the largest military (by far) in the world to keep the goods flowing? Some version of that seems far more likely than UBI does. I’m not saying this would be good (it wouldn’t) and it would be a terrible threat to quality of life and make the US an absolute hellhole, but let’s be real here, if the bread and circuses stop the US citizenry is going to call for blood long before they even remotely consider UBI.

It says a lot about the prevailing mindset of our politicians if they’d rather turn the country into a hellhole and kill a lot of people than just give the plebs $1000 a month and increase their healrh outcomes. The fact that we can spend trillions on bombs and totally avoidable wars, but ask how we can afford insulin and healthcare for our own citizens, is in my opinion a massive political sickness.

“Are we the baddies”? Well, our empire might be. If we are really a democracy, we should try to reform it.

We've done a hell of a job keeping the oil flowing haven't we?

UBI is usually proposed at 1k per month. Nobody is living off that. But doing that increases the budget by 3 trillion.

Why exactly would UBI help the average person? It gives them pennies and only worsens US spending.

US spending and the sovereign debt we racked up is already unsustainable. You have it backwards. Money IS credit. If we paid it back, we’d have no money. We need to print MORE money, give it to the spenders, and eventually it will trickle to the treasury holders, so we keep our promises. There will be more USD in the world - so what? It is bound to be devalued gradually anyway.

How would it help the average person? Because it lets people have better health outcomes, including mental health, including for kids and elderly, makes everyone have 13 points higher IQ and productivity. Helps them renegotiate with their employer, without minimum wage laws. Helps them be more entrepreneurial and start their own businesses. That $1000 a month can pay for a ton of AI spend for example, and will soon be able to pay for timeshared robots.

The average person will be paid less and less or even be laid off soon. We dint have a mechanism to supplement their income. At least we have medicaid, I guess.

Elon Musk is more extreme than me — he says money won’t even matter in 10 years. Meanwhile the guy is worth $1 trillion on paper. I don’t want to tax him. I want to tax his corporations as they lay off workers.

Sounds like a reheated version of MMT, modern monetary theory. The "just print money" approach exploded in a mushroom cloud of inflation during the COVID years, just as any economist even remotely aligned with the Austrian school of thought could've predicted. And you're still seeing the inflation, it's just partly hidden in and taking place in frothy equity markets.

MMT isn't inevitable. You're describing a path to where Argentina was before Milei. A path to amplifying all the social issues that started in the US with the creation of the welfare state. The alternative would simply be fiscal restraint.

The only real problem or question is if democracy is capable of restraint. The answer is unclear, seems like it may be 'no'.

Mild inflation (in global terms) is fine and actually rebalances money from savers/hoarders to spenders. Look at the Miracle of Worgl. And the inflation is only the result of the money supply being increased, due to the politicians fear of raising taxes on the corporations.

You need to increase taxes on corporations and automation if you want to prevent inflation, otherwise you aren’t removing money from the economy.

Printing money on the one hand can be counterbalanced by taxing the money on the other hand — if you actually burn the money collected by the taxes in a giant hole.

But instead the money from the taxes can be used to pay the treasury holders, and make them whole. This is in fact what the Grace commission found in the 80s under Reagan:

With two thirds of everyone's personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the federal debt and by federal government contributions to transfer payments. In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services that taxpayers expect from their government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Commission

Sounds vaguely like the dissolution of the Soviet Union. There too, assets of the State were distributed to the People. Somehow it all ended with oligarchs in the end.

Vague indeed. Why would you compare “shock therapy” privatization (essentially looting) of public resources directly to a handful of oligarchs hands promoted by the Chicago School (founded by Milton Friedman, who also advocated this with Chile’s Pinochet)

with a UBI gradually given directly to the People, and raising taxes on corporations?

The former led to a 1993 constitutional crisis where the parliament wanted to oust Yeltsin (“our man in the white house”) and Yeltsin had troops fire on the parliament and arrest the congress, which represented the people fed up with the wage repression and looting

Yeltsin had a 6% approval rating and we helped him win re-election by meddling in Russian elections. We bragged about in 1996 with movies like “Spinning Boris” and “Yanks to the Rescue” Time Magazine cover.

The latter led to - amazing health, business and productivity outcomes under MINCOME in Canada, and the lowest gini index in America under Alaska’s Permanent Fund

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUiyQ-yrk7k

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_cr...

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

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

It's just that I think that it ever come to servicing debts by printing money instead of borrowing, "shock therapy" would result. Not from the UBI proposal, but from the world order crumbling. And when chaos comes, there's always a small number of people on top taking advantage. Exactly who gets to run Gas Town may not possible to know in advance, but someone will.

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