Comments by "Mark Welch" (@markwelch3564) on "Modern monetary theory is not a policy" video.

This has upsides - if money loses value, you don't want to stockpile it - you have to use it and keep it active. It discourages Smaug piles
4
@branduusituuli I have heard of pensioners, but I have also heard about this thing called the triple lock
2
@branduusituuli so people need to vote to protect their material interests, rather than vote for who they think would be a laugh down the pub A gold standard currecy won't protect you from a government that serves a narrow, closed circle of chums. The only protection there is to not put such people in power, even if their banter game is good
2
@branduusituuli but if everyone has a big pile of economically inactive capital, that will devalue the currency far more than our current mild inflation will!
1
@branduusituuli I'll go for an extreme example, to demonstrate the effect. Let's imagine everyone suddenly gains enough money to buy an average house outright. Are house prices going to stay the same? No - they'll rise. Sellers will know the money is out there, and buyers will have to compete. You want to buy that house? Too bad, you've been outbid by a group who were willing to pool their resources to outbid you Prices will rebalance to reflect the buying power that's in the market. That's what market dynamics do
1
@branduusituuli so an economic mexican standoff, where everyone has money, but nobody wants to lose out by making the first move on spending any? Typically that results in a shadow economy, where economic activity is done by barter and ad-hoc IOUs. If it continues long enough, people will adopt a foreign currency as a de facto local currency, or a semi-formal shadow currency will form Simple truth is currency only has value if people buy stuff with it, and the more it is stockpiled, the less useful it is
1
@branduusituuli this is an interesting conversation, because we agree of a lot of things, just disagree on how to achieve them So for more conversation fuel, what if we lean into being able to print fiat currency, but give it to people who currently don't have much wealth, rather than giving it to the already wealthy? What do you think would happen then?
1