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Comment by tbrownaw | Hacker News Reader

but that something is nothing of value to the economic elite of the world

It has absolutely nothing to do with any "elite". It has to do with being economically visible.

If the government pays 300M citizens each $25k annually, that's $7.5T that has to come from somewhere.

If you play videogames all day, or turn your back yard into a decorative garden, or anything else you don't get paid for, then you are not contributing to that $7.5T.

Which can kinda be a problem if too many people do that and there's nowhere for it to come from.

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From [1], we already allocate roughly $6k per person per year in the US, enough to fork over $25k/year to the poorest 20%. (This doesn't account for the potential savings of reduced crime (prisons are expensive!), improved health/nutrition, reduced administrative overhead of replacing all welfare systems with a single basic income, etc.)

Also: not all value is neatly captured on a W-2 form. If turning my backyard into a decorative garden allows me to set a higher sale price for my home later, I've contributed. If I buy groceries so that I can play videogames all day without falling over from hunger, I've contributed. (If I can pay in cash instead of food stamps because I collect a basic income, even better: there's less bureaucracy on the way to collecting tax on my purchases from the grocery store.)

[2] notwithstanding, people who contribute literally nothing to the economy are extremely rare.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_States_federal_bud...

[2]: http://www.becomingminimalist.com/the-man-who-quit-money-an-...

If you hand out money to everyone, wouldn't prices just go up?

Only if you printed money to hand it out. If redistributive, no.

That 7.5T in payouts doesn't just disappear from the economy. Most people will put almost all of that payment right back into the economic equation through consumerism. In most models the basic income would be pretty close to the cost of living, and (this is strongly speculative) savings would drop to near-zero if people are less concerned about where their next paycheck is coming from.

A huge proportion of the welfare will is spent right away on consumption of necessities (food, rent) which goes right back into the economy. Specifically, it becomes revenue for business owners.

> Which can kinda be a problem if too many people do that and there's nowhere for it to come from.

This is how the majority understand the macro economics: an extension of bartering system. But a sovereign currency regime does not need to worry about it. What constrains an economy are real resources, but not financial resources. Sovereign debt = public assets. For more, check "Modern Monetary Theory".

That is, printing more money is the way? Quantitative easing, as they now call it.

I also heard throwing money from helicopters is beneficial, too.

Well, thats what mainstream (neo Keynsians) have advised and has not worked. Quantitaive easing just shuffles financial assets.

What is needed, is a fiscal policy--and this leads to basic income, basic employment. The only constraints are "real" resources.

The funny thing is that I mentioned throwing money off helicopters ironically, but probably it was lost for the downvoters.

I suspect this was Poe's law in action; some of the current fiscal policies are so contrived that it's hard to tell theonion-style sarcasm from the real thing.

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