August 05, 2016

Money from heaven can be real or fake and it can be dropped by trusted helicopter pilots or as Universal Basic Income

Sir, Robert Skidelsky writes: Because “there is no assurance that a lot of such helicopter money would not be hoarded…contemporary advocates of helicopter money like Willem Buiter and Adair Turner see it mainly in terms of monetary financing of additional government spending. The government should pay for, say, an investment programme not by issuing debt to the public but by borrowing from the central bank. This will increase the government’s deficit, but not the national debt, since a loan by the central bank to the government is not intended to be repaid. Thus the government acquires an asset but no corresponding liability.” “A tweak to helicopter money will help the economy take off” August 5.

Have these statists gone raving mad? “The government acquires an asset but no corresponding liability?” Is this a Ponzi fiscal revenue scheme?

Have these statists gone raving mad? In this world of cash-strapped citizens would they not know better what to do with their helicopter money than some bureaucrats with other people’s helicopter money?

And besides, helicopter money could be real money and it could be fake money… and only fiscal revenues Ponzi schemers would be thinking of dropping what’s fake.

And besides, helicopter pilots could be trusted, or only doing the drops on their favorite neighborhoods.

So, if you introduce a Pro-Equality tax, and drop all those revenues by means of a Universal Basic Income scheme equally to everyone, both the hoarding and the redistribution profiteering will be small.

Sir, if we are not expecting to profit on the redistribution, is that not what we, poor and rich, all want and need? 

@PerKurowski ©