To wonder why the economy, and people are struggling financially when the government could just.. ‘print’ more money to plow into it.

[RisenWhine]

I just find it absolutely bizarre that businesses, NHS, education, benefits, taxpayers struggle so hard when money is literally a man made concept that we print and just ‘decide’ how much to have? Just ‘print’ more, if we created money and let’s be honest it’s just numbers, numbers are infinite.. put more into the NHS.. put more into education..

There is absolutely no reason anyone should have to struggle with money at it just baffles me that the UK is the way that it is because of some shite we made up 🤣

@RessicaJabbit absolutely.

@Swiftasthewind are you drunk?

Everyone knows that some of the hardest workers are those doing long hours in min wage shitjobs and everyone knows that some of those jobs are the most necessary. If the economy collapsed tomorrow we would still need to harvest crops and get food from field to table, care for our sick, disabled and elderly, raise our children etc.

Once someone attains a certain level of wealth they don't need to work at all anymore. Their money does the work for them. They invest in property and gamble on it increasing in value or they loan their money and collect the interest or they use advanced gambling tricks to move it around the market, never creating anything, just buying and selling at the right time. They don't have to understand or manage any of this themselves, they employ highly skilled accountants to do it for them. Wealth begets wealth.

So while working hard can make some difference to outcomes in life for some individuals, I'm not sold on the idea that the economy rewards hard work on the whole. I think it exploits hard work and it exploits indebtedness to keep people working hard.

I don't know what the answer is but it's not communism.

From each ... to each ... works great within a well-functioning family (I'm aware that not all families are well functioning!) Family members have different abilities and needs and these change over the years, and everyone in the family is interdependent in all sorts of ways. They care about each other and their interests are tied up with the welfare of the family as a whole.

It can work in small intentional groups of unrelated people, e.g. communes, but it's trickier because the ties are weaker and it's difficult to care about others quite as much as we do family. It might take some conscious effort to stay committed to the group and the principle of sharing according to needs and abilities but it can be done as long as people have genuinely common interests, know and trust each other enough and basically care about each other.

The larger the group, the more difficult it becomes. We're just not built to care enough about people we don't know, who we'll never meet, it's not in our nature. We might care in an abstract way, maybe give to charity or feel sadness and compassion for strangers going through a hard time, maybe admire their accomplishments, but I don't think we're capable of seeing their welfare as synonymous with our own, because it's not.

@Swiftasthewind
The people attacking you are probably having a hard time looking over their shoulder being citizens of a country that has a habit of people falling out of windows

How many people have fallen out of windows in UK?

Who knows? I was talking about another country. One that likes to meddle in the affairs of constitutional democracies.

@RisenWhine My point is that in an ideal world everyone is for the village, not for the money or the fortune. We help eachother, no one needs to inflate prices because wealth is distributed equally anyway. No one trying to gain more or have more. - I get it’s much deeper but I’m a simple person ok.

Just think of families - a small number of people who are bound by blood and, ideally, love. How often are there threads on here complaining about one person taking advantage, about an unfair split of labour, about arguments over how resources should be spent etc.

If your ideal of an equal distribution doesn't even reliably work between two adults who have chosen to be in a relationship together, then why on Earth do you think it would work on a village/city/country level?

WTF - I haven't asked MNHQ to remove my post at 22.33! All it said was that I suspect OP is on a wind-up!

Whats going on MN????

Animal Farm is a good read. "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

Thus if a billionaire had to share his wealth only to receive $13,500/yr in return what would be his incentive to work?

It might go against the rule about troll hunting.

Printing money doesn't create more productivity OP.

What would happen if someone had the ability to produce counterfeit banknotes that were indistinguishable from the real thing and dropped started just releasing £1 billion every day and just let it blow away for whoever to find?

The reason a footballer, or actor, makes more than a surgeon is technology.

Let's say an average surgeon can do two average surgeries a day. They can charge a lot, because they are saving people's lives or really improving them, and it's a rare skill. It will top out though, at a point where not many could afford more, or the system couldn't. And we also tend to think that something like healthcare should be widely available, society overall looks down on letting people die for greed, and most doctors do as well.

Now, in 1900, if two surgeries per day was average, it might be a bit higher or lower now, but probably not a lot. There is only so much one person can do in a day and each surgery helps one patient.

Now a footballer in 1900 was not going to make much money. He might have 100 fans come to see the game, paying a smaller amount per person than the surgeon gets. He might play a few games a week. In the end he's unlikely to make much more than the surgeon. I don't know uf there were rich footballers in 1900, but there were a few rich actors. But not many, and not that rich. There were more rich surgeons.

Now however, your footballer still only can charge a lower amount per fan than the surgeon gets per patient. But he may have millions of people tuning into games. And there is ad revenue on a huge scale as well.

Interestingly enough, one of my favourite England rugby union players, Jonathan Webb, earned his living as a surgeon. The union players get paid to play now, still nowhere near as much as footballers.

Don't be so ridiculous, they can't just print money out of thin air! Surely everyone knows it has to be carefully grown on a magic tree.

Funny you should say that, I have some magic money tree beans to sell.....

Was just going to post that

We would end up with Stagflation which we’re already flirting with. Look to South America for some examples of how that works out.

Of course the rich do not want it to change. We are in end stage capitalism.

Some of the sneery comments here are so irritating. So what if somebody does not know much about a topic and has asked a question that surprises you at its basic level? Why not do as some have, just explain the concepts in simple terms? All this demeaning of the OP. Saying she’s stupid and uneducated, how can she vote etc, it is really nasty to read. Does this honestly make people feel better about themselves?

I am a hospital consultant of many years. I have a reasonable brain. But there are definitely aspects of financial language and concepts that I struggle with. I am good with numbers, but I do find some concepts difficult to understand, like aspects of my pension, the McLeod judgement etc. Talking to my doctor colleagues, I know I am not alone. Luckily, I have spoken to specialist accountants who have far more knowledge and expertise in this area and they have explained concepts to me without making me feel stupid. There is nothing wrong with ignorance in one area, it does not mean that you are unintelligent in every way.

If somebody has gaps in their knowledge and is asking questions, why not answer with some civility, instead of this patronising and supercilious attitude? The arrogance of some here is breathtaking.

What would happen is that it would be all over SM in about 10 seconds that people were finding notes all over the streets and then the government would likely just ban cash until it was resolved.

Your everyone for the village theory is the problem.
This country is now everyone for themselves. Labours tax credits saw to that.
Allowing people to work 16 hours and get a state top up of hundreds a month was never going to be sustainable.
It was meant to ensure people didn't fall into debt and could keep a roof over there heads when they lost their jobs until they found a new one. Trouble is many just did the bare minimum and took the state money indefinitely. That's why UC had to have conditions attached telling people how much to work and how much to earn.
If everyone who can work did and people used benefits as a leg up rather than a lifestyle choice we wouldn't be in the mess we are.

Why make a MN post. Why not Google? There's a nice YouTube video explaining it. You can also use chatgpt.

Still not had time to read the whole thread, but I totally agree with this. Sometimes asking questions and having a discussion and having lots of people make interesting points is more enlightening. It's a really complex topic (especially bringing politics into the mix as well) and the way we invented money as a useful concept/mechanism and yet struggle to control it is really interesting. Most people don't fully understand economics and a thread like this is full of useful and interesting bits of info and angles.

These days you can google anything and be given an AI answer that is often wrong, at best simplistic, and likely to be influenced by vested interests in various ways. You can read wikipedia or britannica on economics but still find things might not make sense or be hard to grasp. Economics itself has recently been in the grip of an academic crisis/debate/schism relating to how it fails to explain reality.

I'd say OP's question is actually one of the more important and interesting questions raised on MN, though that's not to diss more trivial ones either. Discussing and debating stuff is valuable and human nature IMO whether it's printing money or the aesthetics of a handbag.