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 🤣

Nice analogy.

Have you ever seen the film 'The Admirable Crichton'?

But that isn't a new thing.

There have always been people (men) that wealthy going way back in history

It's supply and demand at work, tho.

500 PL footballers with a limited career life generating ££££ income in a sport.
Using a surgeon's essential medical work is apple v oranges as moral value in employment doesn't apply in a straight comparison of monetary value.

What political systems has musk collapsed pray tell?

And print more money to solve the money problem - You haven’t gone to school, have you? Zero understanding of economics.

Except it's been the UK's key fiscal strategy during the 21st century.

Shame Carney and Osborne didn't check with AIBU before doing what they did.

It's a valid question OP.
The Bank of England did do this to some extent - for instance after the financial crisis of 2008 - it's called Quantitative Easing (QE). It helped keep market interest rates at historic lows and encouraged consumers and businesses to keep borrowing and spending - boosting the economy in the process. There was the obvious risk of inflation, and by 2022 the inflation rate reached 10% - way above the Bank's target of 2%. The process was gradually reversed (Quantitative tightening) to try to get inflation under control.

The currency is also part of a wider global system of currency exchange. This leads to other major risks in printing more money excessively - for instance:

Just like your bank would charge you a higher interest rate for a loan if your credit rating was poor, it costs more for the government to borrow money, via gilts, and service its debts. (Think about the effects of the Truss mini budget 2022). A gilt is a bond the UK government issues in order to borrow money. If it can't raise money this way it has to raise more in taxes. Investors who buy gilts (pension funds for instance) demand a higher return for the greater risk of future inflation.

We are an island that relies on imports - for gas, petrol, food, clothes, electronics. Many of our industries rely on imports for their raw materials for production as well as for energy and transport. If our currency drops in value relative to others, we have to pay more for those imports - as indeed we are now. Almost any purchase you can think of bears the cost of imports somewhere in the production process - even local farmers need fuel, fertiliser, animal feed, machinery and parts.

And it's never made sense.

And there was still the 'elite' living off others' work and keeping money and treasures to themselves

Even communes struggle to get everyone contributing the same

My aunt and uncle lived in Zimbabwe when the govt there just printed money and said that’s what it was like. Taking carrier bags of cash to buy a loaf of bread. Bringing wages home in a wheelbarrow. People were still starving and couldn’t afford stuff.

Well your written English is fine so you're not completely uneducated.

Why are you unable to access the other 99.9999% of the internet? At the risk of sounding like the recruitment advert for the Royal Navy, if you can access MN and Tiktok, you can get on the internet, if you can get kn the internet you can read about anything you're interested in, if you can read about anything you're interested in you can learn, if you can learn, you can learn how to assess the quality of information, if you can learn hotk assess the quality of information you can work out what's utter crap and what's factually accurate.

Why?

Inherited wealth, I grant you. Bu if you have the idea and the work, why should you give it away to those who contribute nothing (when they could)?

You don’t do much of anything but you expect other people to share their hard earned money with you. Ok…

Post war Germany printed extra money. It became worthless. There was a photo of someone going to a bakers to pay for a loaf of bread with a wheelbarrow full of money - that was the price of it.

Beat me to it. As adults most people learn.

Because it's wealth for the sake of wealth. Beyond a certain point, way before you reach £1 billion, the money no longer benefits you. You don't see any direct tangible advantage from having it, and therefore from that point the money is meaningless, if it only accrues to one person. Distributed across a wider group/area, it starts to have a wider purpose/function and stops being just a theoretical amount.

But people aren't equal. For instance, some are more hardworking than others. And some are bright, and some are really stupid, and some will listen and learn and some won't.

It has been their strategy but have they solved the problem?

OP - Limitarianism as suggested by Ingrid Robeyns in her book of the same name might be more what you are after.

She basically makes the case for having a (high) limit to the wealth an individual is able to accrue.

There is an argument to invest for growth. Which we definitely should be doing

What you suggest would lead to hyper inflation. It devalues money so everything grinds to a halt

My book recommendation is J K Galbraith - Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went. It goes right back to first principles of what money is and I found it really helpful as a foundation for understanding economics.

It's an old book - 1975 - and obviously economies have changed enormously since then - but it's still a worthwhile read for that foundational understanding. He's also a really good writer.

Absolutely. The person doing most of the organising and/or the one with the gun always decides to keep the best food for themselves.

OP I suggest you go and look at countries where this has been done. They are usually run by dimwit dictators so that should give you a clue to the end result. Zimbabwe would be a good start.

🙄

No of course not but people on this thread are acting like it's a wild idea and referencing Germany and Zimbabwe as examples of why it doesn't work. They don't seem to realise what's happened to their own economy, that successive chancellors and BoE heads thought it was just dandy.

No, never heard of it. Would you recommend it?