Of course you don't know what I'm quoting, it's why I said I doubt you bothered to read it, it's literally the last article I linked after you tried to mock ubi or the people of Zimbabwe or both. If you read the white paper you'll not consider inflation as simple as you think. It talks about how more money printed doesn't translate into devaluing the dollar, contrary to your so called "common sense". If you bothered to read the investopedia article you'll see that theory is not supported by most economists, like I quoted, or empirical evidence. Yet here you are still talking about something you don't know shit about, besides ubi. The same thing was pointed out in the medium article on Inflation and UBI I linked in response to your theory of increased cost of living, blowing both out of the water.
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Argumentum ad populum doesn't do it for me. It hasn't for anthropogenic global warming and it won't for UBI. You have to understand that if UBI came anywhere near to the desert of the real that everyone would be doing it. However, because of whatever, this or that, it is not feasible. You have to understand if your theory came anywhere close to working I'd be down for it, but don't try it here first. Your ambitions are like Icarus flying too close to the sun. I know you don't have any malintent. However, you do not know what it is that you're getting yourself into. Affordable experiments on a small scale do not equate to unaffordable experiments on a larger more ridiculous scale. Governments want to be wanted and needed to be needed and what's more desirable than a fucking pipe dream. I'd extend myself so far as to say nothing is on par with that kind of wishful thinking. That said if it was possible; a nation-state would be doing it as we speak.
That's argumentum ad populum if it's even correct, you may have been making a gross generalization. Besides, the Austrian school of economics makes a helluva lot more sense than whatever drivel is taught in school nowadays. Thomas Jefferson said it best: "Never spend your money before you have earned it." However, that's just common sense, or it should be anyhow.
Why don't you show me how it's done? I'll give you a bitcoin address, and you can send me a UBI. We'll try it out for a year or two and I'll get back to you with the results. Surely if you expect it to work on a grand scale, we can prove it on a smaller scale first, right? Watch the video below, it's anchored to a specific time. It seems our little debate can be summed up as a Monetarist vs. Keynesian view of the economy.
P.S. I'm not saying that I subscribe fully to monetarist theory, just the one aspect with respect to unchecked inflation.
You know, even if you are right about the UBI and by some black magic it isn't going to cause inflation, the VAT will feel like inflation at the point of sale. That in itself has an effect similar to inflation and is practically indistinguishable from it. The only difference is what you call it. Inflation is a hidden tax, and the VAT is a direct tax. They're both just taxes.
If you can hypothetically duck hyperinflation by having an upfront tax to cover the bill, people are still paying more for goods and services just as they would with inflation. Does a war by any other name not smell as putrid? I mean you may as well be arguing with me that the U.S. hasn't been to war in decades and that these little tiffs we've been getting into all around the world are just military conflicts. You'd be right in name only, but these are just tricks of the mind.
The problem with top-down tinkering in complex systems that evolved from the bottom up is there are innumerable moving parts that work in synchronicity with each other and every time someone upsets the applecart it creates a chain reaction of events that may not be readily obvious.
Maybe Yang will win his 2020 bid, and you can either learn from the school of hard knocks, or perhaps utopia exists, and I’ll be in a state of pure awe and amazement. One sure-fire certainty is that the VAT will spike prices at the point of sale. Yang frames it as if the tax will only affect silicon valley, but I’m not buying the impression he is trying to put out in that regard.
It seems wiser to slash the income tax to zero until after someone earns 12k; this way they would not have to resort to playing with fire. I foresee a free money system having strings attached and compelling performance. Not up to date on your vaccines, no UBI for you. Failure to enroll in the new single-payer health care system, no UBI for you. Said something uncouth, rude, or politically incorrect on the internet, no UBI for you. Without said UBI you won’t be able to afford the added tax on goods and services at the point of sale.
It will be a clever way to manipulate people and will give the social credit system they want to roll out some teeth. The clip below is a good illustration of the amazing complexity of free market systems that evolve from the bottom up. Something seemingly as simple as the organization involved in manufacturing a pencil is surprisingly intricate, and market tinkering generally tends to cause unforeseen blowback.
I don’t subscribe to or give credence to Keynesian economics. So, learning the opinions about the effects of UBI from an economist, or multiple economists of the Keynesian variety would be an exercise in futility for me. How about we move forward and assume you are correct? Let us pretend, or let me “pretend” the UBI will not cause inflation, that still doesn’t change the fact a VAT is en essence inflation at the point of sale. If we can both agree inflation is a hidden tax, then adding a direct tax at the point of sale is very similar to the inflation tax, only it’s not hidden. Well, it’s hidden, but it’s hiding behind that $1000.00 a month, as the lure of free money can sometimes blind people to reality.
Can we agree that inflation is a hidden tax on the buying power of the dollar? If so, then is directly taxing the price of goods and services at the point of sale that much different than inflation? The only difference I see is that the effect of the VAT will be immediate and less hidden. For free money to truly be free there can't be strings that take money away, how you don't see the hustle here has me scratching my head. The last time the Democrats conned the American people healthcare prices on a plan that was supposed to be affordable had people choosing between whether or not they would eat or pay for health insurance, and obviously not eating is very terrible for your health. Why are you so willing to get fooled again?