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jfengel 15 hours ago

That's not the plan, but it's actually something economists have considered. They call it Modern Monetary Theory.

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

Basically, printing money is just an IOU, so you might as well not bother with a separate "borrowing" step. If the government wants something, they issue an IOU, in the form of its own currency.

On the flip side, the government still taxes, but it's just getting back its own IOUs. Instead of pretending it's depositing those IOUs back into a bank, they just tear them up and forget them.

If your taxes match your spending, there's no inflation. The money supply remains constant. If you do spend more than you take in, you get inflation -- which is OK, if managed carefully. It encourages people to go spend their money, rather than just sitting on it.

It's counterintuitive, but it's a lot more flexible than the way we handle it now. It lets the government spend its way past crises, especially during crashes when people hold on to their money.