We "print" money all the time. It's called "cryptocurrency".
I mean...
We could just... Eat. The. Rich.
The US has such a huge pool of people using the dollar that when they do seigniorage they're essentially taxing the world instead of only their citizens. It's kind of obscene and why the imperialists are very hostile to BRICs.
Printing more money and using it for public works or giving it directly to the poor could be a valid form of wealth redistribution that doesn't require collecting taxes. The problem of course is capital, it's immune to this kind of inflation, though rich people who have their wealth in debt would be hurt.
The funny irony is that because money is mostly made up bullshit anyway, we kinda could just decide to print more money and keep its value. Granted, it would take the unanimous agreement of basically everyone on this silly little planet, so the chances of this ever occurring are effectively absolute zero, but still, there is no actual rule that says we cant except for the ones we ourselves created
Price of gold goes Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtrtrtttrtrtttrrtrrtrtrttrr
All government spending is done by "printing money", at least in monetary sovereign countries like the US, UK, and other countries issuing their own cureencies. The government is the monopoly issuer of the currency and cannot run out of it, just like the scorekeeper of a baseball match cannot run out of points. Taxes are also not for funding the government, but for removing momey from circulation, precisely to curb inflation. (Also to drive the value of the currency by making people demand it to be able to pay their taxes). Thus "printing money" isn't in itself inflationary, as long as the newly created money is spent on something where there is excess production capacity. The question for the government is never "can we afford it", but rather "are the real resources there to achieve it".
I think the problem isn’t that there is a lack of money which could be solved by printing more, but that there is a lack of money because like 6 guys have stolen most of it and piled it up under their mattresses with no intention of actually using it at any point.
Prices should be set by the king tho, the only acceptable rate of inflation is zero.
The problem here is that a government does not in fact have the ability to decide how much their currency is valued, they can only indirectly influence it. When they try to pretend like it's just a "rule" they can set like "here is the mandated exchange rate, we'll put you in jail if you make trades at any other price" is when things get real stupid.
Humans do make the rules, unfortunately only some of them get the chance to so they made the rules favor themselves.
I mean. Yeah honestly, lol
We can, and we do, for virtually everything.
That’s precisely why the DOGE takeover of the payment system is so scary. Government money isn’t being transferred from some limited pool of taxpayer funds, it’s spent into existence out of thin air.
We also borrow, in the form of bonds, but that’s mostly to tame inflation by taking currency temporarily out of circulation with the promise of a later profit for the bond holder. (And also to encourage long-term investment in domestic currency.)
You laugh, but this actually kinda worked for 1980s Brazil.
I do sometimes wonder if you could technically still run a working government off printing money, just recognizing that doing so didnt create more value, but instead acted as a form of taxation. Imagine a government that currently holds no significant fraction of its currency. It then prints an amount equal to what is currently in circulation, doubling the money supply and in doing so presumably halving the value of a given unit of that currency. Once it has done so, no new value is created, but that government has gone from having no significant fraction of the money in circulation, to having half of it, which it can now spend.
Suppose you did this predictably, you let everyone know that you will be increasing the money supply by x percent every year, and will be re-denominating it to avoid difficult to work with numbers at set intervals. Wouldnt you technically have a functioning system for extracting value from the economy to pay for government functions?
It might not be a very good system, since all it would effectively tax is people's savings of currency and not stuff like property, and you would have to set up things like employment contracts or debts to compensate for constant high inflation rates, but Im not sure I see a reason why it technically couldn't be done.
I started turning my American Dollars into Euros. Here's hoping that mitigates the economic damage that will come from Elon's stupidity.
Honestly, I don't like messing around with money since I don't really understand it...but if I don't, I fear that I won't be able to get onto a lifeboat. It also makes me feel silly being proactive. Here's hoping my Blue State would either vindicate or placate my fears.
Imagine there's a new issue of a famous comic book being printed (the series doesn't matter; take your pick). But the caveat is that there's only going to be ONE copy printed. Only one in existence. That single issue could potentially be worth millions, because it's so desirable for comic book nerds and they all want to get their hands on it. Only the wealthiest of collectors will be able to throw enough money at it to win an auction, which raises its value significantly.
Now imagine the publisher decides to make 100 copies instead. The value of that issue is now much cheaper; maybe worth several thousand dollars per comic, because there are a handful of them floating around now. Still, only wealthy collectors will be able to afford bidding on a copy, but at least the top 100 bids will win a copy. Raising the value, but not as much as if they are all bidding on a single product.
Now imagine 100,000 copies are made. Now it's mostly a standard printing, and it's only worth the cover price for a comic nowadays (what, like $3.99 or so?)
The more copies that are out there, the easier it is to find and acquire, and thus the cheaper its value is. Same goes for money; the more printed bills that are out there, the less value each bill has, and you'll need more of them to afford basic products. Which is why inflation is a thing, because we're constantly printing more money each year.
In reference to my point about comic book values, there are only about 100 copies left in existence of the first Superman comic (Action Comic #1). A single copy sold last year for $6 million, and its condition was only rated 8.5/10, which means it's a little rough around the edges from wear and tear. Not even a pristine comic book, and it still cost millions to buy!
That same issue sold for 10 cents when it was first made in 1938, but the fact that comics were made to be read and then discarded back then means most people never held on to their comic books and their numbers have dwindled over the years. Now Superman is a huge deal - one of the best-selling comics of all time - and his first appearance in a comic book is so rare, people will spend millions just to have an original copy.
