I had a thought this morning, that slightly ties into what was discussed in a different thread about living in a post-scarcity world, plus BOJ's decision to have negative interest rates.
What if the US government sent every American a crisp $100 bill? Didn't issue debt or count it as an expenditure; just straight up printed money and sent it out.
Setting aside the legality of it (I don't think this can be done). What would happen? Inflation would increase and consumer spending would pop up, and the value of the dollar would drop slightly. Would that be bad? It seems like that's exactly the goals we've been striving for with QE, but this would benefit poor people more.
What if the US government sent every American a crisp $100 bill? Didn't issue debt or count it as an expenditure; just straight up printed money and sent it out.
Setting aside the legality of it (I don't think this can be done). What would happen? Inflation would increase and consumer spending would pop up, and the value of the dollar would drop slightly. Would that be bad? It seems like that's exactly the goals we've been striving for with QE, but this would benefit poor people more.
Printing money