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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 7/23/15

The Great Unbinding Part 3.3

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Derryl Hermanutz
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If everybody gets the same monthly overt money funded basic income payment, the money would produce different 'inflationary' effects in different hands.

Giving unearned income to debtors enables them to repay their bank debts. The payment money is extinguished along with the debt on the bank's balance sheet. Household (and student) debt is reduced and the bank balance sheet is reduced. Zero inflation. All the inflation already happened, when the new bank credit was originally spent. Paying down debt with newly issued central bank money is not inflationary. The new money cancels the old debt, leaving $0 new money and reduced old debt.

Giving unearned income money to low-income people who have no debts provides them with additional rent and consumer spending money, which provides sales revenues and personal incomes to landlords and other local businesses. This puts idle economic capacity to work. It adds to business revenues and profits, which encourages business investment and hiring. This kind of stable ongoing spending "inflates" employment and "inflates" earned incomes. This is the good kind of inflation that the program is designed to produce.

The money is spent and earned and re-spent, and eventually somebody earns and saves the money, which adds to total savings. This inflates the supply of total money savings. But if the savings are being "saved" -- not spent or invested -- there is no further inflation of the prices of the supply of stuff money is being spent to buy.

Money is demand; stuff is supply. Only money that is being spent buying stuff can contribute to inflating the price of the supply of stuff. Saved money is dormant. It has no effect on prices of stuff.

Giving unearned income money to middle and high income people who already consume as much as they want to, might add to luxury goods consumption and contribution to charities. But mainly it would add to mortgage paydowns and money savings and investments. Adding to savers' incomes adds to bank account deposits. Adding to investors' incomes would further inflate the prices of investment goods, investible assets.

Too much investible money chasing too few investment goods leads to asset price inflation. The sound money gang believes investment is an unmitigated good: the more the better. Orthodox macroeconomics is happy to report CPI price inflation caused by an increase in consumers' wages, but is not allowed to admit the possibility of a savings glut that produces inflationary demand for investment goods. But that's exactly what has been happening for the past 30-odd years.

The flip side of high asset prices is low asset yields. Bank deposits pay almost no interest. Bond yields are at historic lows. Stock prices and P/E ratios are high, so dividend yields are low. The high purchase price of houses makes them low-yielding investments as rental properties. You can't make lots of money just by "owning assets", when the investor class has a "savings glut". There are simply not enough truly profitable investments to absorb all that money.

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I spent my working life as an independent small business owner/operator. My academic background is in philosophy and political economy. I began studying monetary systems and monetary history after the 1982 banking crash that was precipitated by (more...)
 

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