>This is totally lost on me. Why? I don't see how any of the issues with UBI are accounting based.
So lets go back to what happens. Places like Switzerland or Germany have a labour participation rate of ~80%. So if you implemented UBI there. The 20% of people who were earning nothing or at most were on government services, now get a pay cheque. This will be by definition inflationary; but with such high labour rates and removal of those other services. The actual inflationary factor will be manageable. The probability of social movement increases obviously. So their participation rate near the beginning will drop.
The USA on the otherhand has about 60% participation rate and their government services are poor compared to the rest of the world. They in turn have made their military their welfare system. So if UBI implemented. Nearly have the country would be paying the other half of the country to sit at home.
What happened with covid? Less than 10% of people got cheques and we got >40% inflation eventually in the USA. So we can do the math. For a year or 2 of UBI at around 50% is more than 5x worse. So the USA would be looking at >200% inflation.
The army of accountants would be needed to make that 100x less.
>We already can spend money we don't have in the short term so nothing prevents transfer payments of any size in a purely logistical sense.
It's abundantly clear that isn't true. Hence the out of control every market and sky high inflation. That debt ceiling sure is hitting lots of heads lately for the USA.
>The issues with UBI are regressive redistribution, long term effects on the labor market, and long term effects on the currency. None of those are accounting issues.
Oh I completely agree those are concerns as well. The approach I have in mind is that if you manage it from the economic point of view, these longer term issues will be addressable at a later time. The entire welfare system would have to die. illegal immigration becomes far less of a problem. UBI would be only for citizens. The tax system could no longer be progressive.
UBI appears on face impractical or impossible. However, with said 'army of accountants' you could likely design something that works and possibly even beneficial. bviously a ton of work needed here.
> The army of accountants would be needed to make that(inflation) 100x less.
You seem to imply some black box where accountants are the input and reductions in inflation are the output. Can you explain to me what accountants are doing in this black box that affects inflation? Can you explain why more of these accountants fixes this problem to a greater degree(what is the marginal accountant doing here?)
I can tell you the answer though. This relationship doesn't exist. Inflation is not caused by a lack of accountants or accounting, therefor having more of them has zero impact on inflation.
I'm very open to hearing the specific mechanics of what these accountants are doing and changing my mind .
It seems to me that you may have a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is that accountants spend their time doing.
So lets go back to what happens. Places like Switzerland or Germany have a labour participation rate of ~80%. So if you implemented UBI there. The 20% of people who were earning nothing or at most were on government services, now get a pay cheque. This will be by definition inflationary; but with such high labour rates and removal of those other services. The actual inflationary factor will be manageable. The probability of social movement increases obviously. So their participation rate near the beginning will drop.
The USA on the otherhand has about 60% participation rate and their government services are poor compared to the rest of the world. They in turn have made their military their welfare system. So if UBI implemented. Nearly have the country would be paying the other half of the country to sit at home.
What happened with covid? Less than 10% of people got cheques and we got >40% inflation eventually in the USA. So we can do the math. For a year or 2 of UBI at around 50% is more than 5x worse. So the USA would be looking at >200% inflation.
The army of accountants would be needed to make that 100x less.
>We already can spend money we don't have in the short term so nothing prevents transfer payments of any size in a purely logistical sense.
It's abundantly clear that isn't true. Hence the out of control every market and sky high inflation. That debt ceiling sure is hitting lots of heads lately for the USA.
>The issues with UBI are regressive redistribution, long term effects on the labor market, and long term effects on the currency. None of those are accounting issues.
Oh I completely agree those are concerns as well. The approach I have in mind is that if you manage it from the economic point of view, these longer term issues will be addressable at a later time. The entire welfare system would have to die. illegal immigration becomes far less of a problem. UBI would be only for citizens. The tax system could no longer be progressive.
UBI appears on face impractical or impossible. However, with said 'army of accountants' you could likely design something that works and possibly even beneficial. bviously a ton of work needed here.