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DeepSeaTortoise an hour ago

You can never just use existing resources as long as those end up in places they're no longer accessible to the market anymore.

Cash just about never sits just around as long as whoever holds onto it has no current need for extremely liquid assets. Like insurances.

I doubt that the ratio of cash that ends up bound up that way to the one that doesn't changes a lot overall.

The real problem to UBI is governments creating income via debt, IMO.

zozbot234 an hour ago | parent [-]

> The real problem to UBI is governments creating income via debt, IMO.

The national debt is just a hidden tax on future generations. You're stealing resources from the future (by selling claims to them in advance, that's what national debt is) and spending them in the present. It's justifiable in extreme cases like a war (or perhaps for massive public investments that can't be funded within the existing budget - which is actually not that common), but really not otherwise.

ncruces an hour ago | parent | next [-]

It's fine if you're leaving something to those future generations. Like a bridge or a dam built to last 100 years.

notarobot123 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've often thought of state debt as an accruing tax collection deficit. Selling bonds (creating more of this debt) is more politically convenient than raising taxes but it digs a deeper hole and obliges the state to pay interest largely to the same class of people they have failed to tax.

crimsoneer 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

This is like suggesting no business should ever borrow to invest.

coffeebeqn 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I feel like government borrowing sometimes and government borrowing more and more every year and never paying it down until the end of time or more likely bankruptcy are two different things

zozbot234 36 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

If your business can't self-fund the investment, borrowing is justified. But if you're earning revenue that allows you to self-fund, why borrow? You're just incurring extra costs.