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 🤣

Maybe you should have worked harder at school.

Something which should be. I learn plenty of crap in school.. clearly nothing that would actually help me understand how money or economics works 🤣

Well, plough, unless you are American. The answer lies in inflation. Have a look at what happened in Germany after WW1.

He had a view million yes. Then he turned it into $400 billion. He's a good businessman.

He has a dual degree in physics and economics. He's a smart lad, albeit a bit eccentric.

Fair play to you OP, for asking the question to help you understand.

As long as you're not Rachel Reeves finalising your slide deck for later on this week....

Extra money printed tends to go into the hands of the wealthy and the poor get poorer as the economy gets worse. Sunak got plaudits for printing money at lockdown but overall the rich got richer and we are all suffering from increased living costs now.

I learned about Weimar Germany in GCSE history and I think my kids did it in y9, but of course it depends on the syllabus and your option choices.

Yes, smarty pants, I do. In my opinion the principle is the same.

MMT is a theory and not one I think is a safe approach. I run a small business with international reach, so I do give these things some thought.

No - what is the point of everyone being equal? It takes away ambition, a desire to improve oneself and pride in achieving. Very Communist attitude!

You know he doesn’t have billions in the bank? It’s mostly tied up in his Tesla shares etc, and if he sold them all to get the cash he’d tank the share price and his net worth (and many other normal peoples’) would also tank.

You might want to read about communism to learn how redistributed wealth works in practice, but I don’t think any country now is successfully (or even unsuccessfully) economically communist - because society sort of fails in that environment.

No, that’ll be our education system again! 🥴

Why is ambition based on how much richer you are than someone else?

So do you feel better knowing you shop at Waitrose while your neighbour runs to the food bank? Or do you teach your privately educated children to stick their nose up at state school kids?

why shouldn’t everyone be equal and treated as such?

There’s a lot of sneery answers here from those who are trotting out the standard monetarist line that it causes hyperinflation. In reality governments, or rather central banks, do ‘just print money’ when it is safe to do so, only they call it ‘quantitative easing’ to make it sound less scary. Typically it is done when both inflation and interest rates are low, so unfortunately would not be appropriate at this point in time.

I say, how about putting cameras by motorway junctions, and issuing fines of £1000 for each piece of litter dropped? Judging by the amount of litter at these places, the government coffers would be swelled very quickly. But I’m sure someone will say why this will not work.

Weimar Germany says this is not a good plan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic

Christ - do you know anything about him other than he made a lot of money and fathered a lot of kids?

he's not a bit eccentric - his assault on democracy is terrifying, as is a system that allows him and a few others such uncontrolled power.

It's not surprising this has happened, given the speed of change, but it needs to be addressed urgently.

This was what I was thinking!!

People have ambition precisely because they do want to achieve more than the person next to them! It is to be encouraged, not sneered at!

I like Tesla. I like SpaceX. Musk is doing a lot for clean energy and on space exploration.

If the government prints more money, people have loads of money but there are limited resources to buy, the cost of those resources goes up. After WW1, people were carrying armfuls of money to buy bread but there was still the same amount of bread so the cost of the bread went up.
Curious Kids: why don’t poorer countries just print more money? | Research at The Open University Please don't be patronised by the website, it was the best explanation I could find for the modern day.

Back in the day, a country lie the UK or USA held gold reserves and printed paper money as a representation of that gold.

Bank of England: the gold standard - House of Lords Library

I'm not an economist though. Help!

Absolutely agree that Tim Harford's series (Understand: The Economy) is great:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m001dzmd?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

It's good to ask questions if you don't know/understand (although, obviously choose your sources wisely, as there is a lot of disinformation out there too)... Enjoy!😊

This is a post trying to make certain people, with certain ideals, look stupid quite clearly.

Lots of people on both the left and right of the political spectrum understand why you shouldn't just 'print' money.

In our current financial system - which isn't a great one - it would lead to inflation and political instability. It has already happened to an extent.

I think what you mean to say is why do we have an economic system where wealth is distributed so unevenly, is unstable, and people have to suffer in what is supposed to be a civilised society, and where someone making a prediction about a stock market crash sends the markets into a spin. People can game the system so easily. It's not a good one. Printing money is a very weird and futile'solution' when you think about the consequences of it.

If you know you are clueless about econonmics or even basic maths then why post such questions?

A minute on Google will tell you why we can't just print more money, they tried quantitative easing a few years ago and it didn't work. Someone even wrote a book on it

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cant-Just-Print-More-Money/dp/1847943381

As for sharing out all the wealth, well a few minutes with a calculator/spreadsheet will tell you that it's not the path to riches that you imagine.

Google says there are just over 3000 billionaires with a combined wealth of about $16 trillion. Divide that out between the 8.2 billion population on earth and it's less than $2000 each. Less than a month's income at NMW. Don't spend it all at once.

Because the more of something you’ve got the less it’s worth. Printing more money would devalue the pound

@RisenWhine

why would people take risks to fund businesses if the result was that people would take their assets to make everyone equal again anyway?

why would anyone work if they can’t make their situations better? We already have situations in which people who are on benefits want to work but can’t really earn so much more that it is worth it. And cliff edges in the tax system that means that for people who have kids it’s not worth them working harder because they lose child benefit or childcare support.

capitalism is really not perfect, but it’s very hard to think of how you’d motivate people to contribute to society beyond their immediate family and friends without compelling them to do that without money (is that what you want? Should the state decide what job you are best and and how hard you have to work to make your contribution - it’s not worked well in the past). I’d never argue that it’s perfect to use money, but what else do you propose as an incentive.

yes, of course I’d like richer people to play more of a part in making the world better - there are some brilliant philanthropists out there and we should celebrate that more and be less in thrall to money and power as a society, yes. But I don’t think you’ve thought through how the desire for money does influence innovation.