Poverty in N. America is "sulking in a state of denied affluence." A UBI would be immediately mopped up by "the system" leaving no obvious result. Show me what your currency peg is before talking about a UBI. See also https://warwickpowell.substack.com/p/beyond-solvency
for a look into managing liquidity in the economy.
I think you are actually in full agreement with my philosophy. Perhaps some of your reactions are more knee-jerk responses to what is usually posted about UBIs.
"Poverty should be disassociated from money." Absolutely! Since I claim two categories of value systems, you are demonstrated the precise conflict when we confuse them. Monetarily, we might say that indigenous people earning zero dollars per day live in poverty. But from a genuine wealth, perspective, they will scoff at the idea, and speak of their natural affluence.
"A UBI would be immediately mopped up by the system leaving no obvious result." I don't know what you mean by this vague statement. The idea of UBIs having no result is certainly not borne out by any of the extensive evidence out there.
Your links demonstrate to me that you are very well-versed on matters of currency and financial economics - certainly well beyond my expertise. However, as I write in an earlier post, it's not about the money (https://thevaluecrisis.substack.com/p/its-not-about-the-money).
What I was trying to say about "the system" is that those in charge of the economy, food prices, etc., would simply raise the economic floor of a poverty threshold to swallow that new flow of money leaving everyone in exactly the same position. That's how the system is designed to work. Prof. Powell is suggesting a full re-working of liquidity flow which for now is flowing into the rentier class - public "debt" is the flip-side of private wealth and speculative froth. In that light, directed liquidity, such as food stamps, might avoid the System's consumption of the monetary flow.
Thank you for that clarification. There is merit to what you say, and to the alternatives you talk about.
However, I still say that you are stuck in the numbers game. To a certain extent, it does not matter if raised prices wipe out all of the numeric gains of a UBI. I still claim that the presence of a UBI, *regardless* of the amount, makes a *values* difference. (Stockton demonstrated this.)
If I give you a book for Christmas, and you unknowingly give me a copy of the very same book in return, a neoclassical economist might claim that they cancel each other out, and that no gifts were exchanged or that there was no effect, but of course, as humans, we know that such a view is missing lots.
It's possible you are stuck in the numbers game, since managing liquidity is more important than correcting inequality with amounts of money. US is wrongly confining treasury spending to bond sales, and the interest on those bonds accrues to the already wealthy. Offering a gift to the poor is looking in the wrong direction, papering over the real issues.
"Put simply, not all surpluses are equal, and not all liquidity ends up building real capacity. Without a theory of how liquidity circulates and is absorbed, we risk reinforcing the very dynamics - rentierism, financialisation and systemic entropy-inducing inequality - that critics of austerity seek to overcome.
The problem is not just liquidity creation per se. Rather, it is ungoverned liquidity in a context of declining biophysical returns. In such conditions, liquidity increasingly flows into:
> Financial arbitrage and speculation;
> Over-valuation of long-dated assets;
> Debt expansion divorced from productive investment; and
> Unsustainable consumption in wealthy economies.
Even well-meaning public spending can reinforce these trends if not paired with structural transformation of production, distribution and energy systems.
The real question is not “how much can we spend,” but “where will this money flow, and can the system absorb it productively and sustainably?”
The rediscovery of sovereign monetary capacity, whether in chartalist, functional finance, or post-Keynesian traditions, has cleared important intellectual ground. But we cannot stop there. We must evolve these insights to address the emerging realities and concerns of the 21st century: ecological entropy, energy depletion and systemic fragility."
So there you have it. We presently are in social entropy as well as these other depletions. This actually aligns deeply with your thesis, but gives it better grounding.
Poverty should be disassociated from money. Ask one of the uncontacted people if they are "living in poverty" see https://kathleenmccroskey.substack.com/p/money-is-fraud
Poverty in N. America is "sulking in a state of denied affluence." A UBI would be immediately mopped up by "the system" leaving no obvious result. Show me what your currency peg is before talking about a UBI. See also https://warwickpowell.substack.com/p/beyond-solvency
for a look into managing liquidity in the economy.
I think you are actually in full agreement with my philosophy. Perhaps some of your reactions are more knee-jerk responses to what is usually posted about UBIs.
"Poverty should be disassociated from money." Absolutely! Since I claim two categories of value systems, you are demonstrated the precise conflict when we confuse them. Monetarily, we might say that indigenous people earning zero dollars per day live in poverty. But from a genuine wealth, perspective, they will scoff at the idea, and speak of their natural affluence.
"A UBI would be immediately mopped up by the system leaving no obvious result." I don't know what you mean by this vague statement. The idea of UBIs having no result is certainly not borne out by any of the extensive evidence out there.
Your links demonstrate to me that you are very well-versed on matters of currency and financial economics - certainly well beyond my expertise. However, as I write in an earlier post, it's not about the money (https://thevaluecrisis.substack.com/p/its-not-about-the-money).
What I was trying to say about "the system" is that those in charge of the economy, food prices, etc., would simply raise the economic floor of a poverty threshold to swallow that new flow of money leaving everyone in exactly the same position. That's how the system is designed to work. Prof. Powell is suggesting a full re-working of liquidity flow which for now is flowing into the rentier class - public "debt" is the flip-side of private wealth and speculative froth. In that light, directed liquidity, such as food stamps, might avoid the System's consumption of the monetary flow.
Thank you for that clarification. There is merit to what you say, and to the alternatives you talk about.
However, I still say that you are stuck in the numbers game. To a certain extent, it does not matter if raised prices wipe out all of the numeric gains of a UBI. I still claim that the presence of a UBI, *regardless* of the amount, makes a *values* difference. (Stockton demonstrated this.)
If I give you a book for Christmas, and you unknowingly give me a copy of the very same book in return, a neoclassical economist might claim that they cancel each other out, and that no gifts were exchanged or that there was no effect, but of course, as humans, we know that such a view is missing lots.
It's possible you are stuck in the numbers game, since managing liquidity is more important than correcting inequality with amounts of money. US is wrongly confining treasury spending to bond sales, and the interest on those bonds accrues to the already wealthy. Offering a gift to the poor is looking in the wrong direction, papering over the real issues.
Really, you should read Powell's latest post,
https://warwickpowell.substack.com/p/beyond-solvency
in which he says:
"Put simply, not all surpluses are equal, and not all liquidity ends up building real capacity. Without a theory of how liquidity circulates and is absorbed, we risk reinforcing the very dynamics - rentierism, financialisation and systemic entropy-inducing inequality - that critics of austerity seek to overcome.
The problem is not just liquidity creation per se. Rather, it is ungoverned liquidity in a context of declining biophysical returns. In such conditions, liquidity increasingly flows into:
> Financial arbitrage and speculation;
> Over-valuation of long-dated assets;
> Debt expansion divorced from productive investment; and
> Unsustainable consumption in wealthy economies.
Even well-meaning public spending can reinforce these trends if not paired with structural transformation of production, distribution and energy systems.
The real question is not “how much can we spend,” but “where will this money flow, and can the system absorb it productively and sustainably?”
The rediscovery of sovereign monetary capacity, whether in chartalist, functional finance, or post-Keynesian traditions, has cleared important intellectual ground. But we cannot stop there. We must evolve these insights to address the emerging realities and concerns of the 21st century: ecological entropy, energy depletion and systemic fragility."
So there you have it. We presently are in social entropy as well as these other depletions. This actually aligns deeply with your thesis, but gives it better grounding.