[ExI] Summer weather and COVID-19

[John Clark]

On Sun, May 24, 2020 at 10:22 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:



> *> the print more money argument.  If they do that, then those who lent
> real money are paid back in play money, diluted currency.  They will not do
> that again.  This is a strategy that can be used only once.*
>

Only once?! That strategy has been used almost continuously since 1835 and
people are still eager to loan money to the federal government even at the
super low interest rates we see today.


> >> … In the last couple of months the income to 40 million American
>> families has dropped to zero and they've also lost their health coverage
>> during the worst pandemic in a century that has already killed 100,000
>> Americans with no end in sight…
>
>
> *> Ja, so now the fed’s revenue drops dramatically.  How are they going to
> cover that?*
>

The Federal Reserve will cover the shortfall by using its superpower to
create money; this is nothing new, historically it has always done this in
times of emergency. As I said in my last post there is no such thing as a
law of the conservation of money.

>…If the federal government refuses to create money and give emergency aid
>> to the American people then the federal government will not be around for
>> much longer and neither will the constitution. I don't know what will
>> replace it but it won't be pretty.
>
>

*John, was it not you who said we don’t need a militia?*
>

Yes, that was me.

  > Are you still saying that now?
>

Yes absolutely. A bunch of fat dim bulbs in MAGA hats running around with
shotguns would be one of the things that would not be pretty.

*> Sounds like you and I eventually converged in our vision of the future.
> The difference is that we disagree on whether the print-more-cash notion is
> a solution.  I say it isn’t.  It has been tried before.  Things went
> badly. *
>

There have been times since 1835 when too much money was created and things
went bad, but not disastrously bad. The worst inflation in American history
occurred in 1917 when it reached 19.6%, and it probably seemed bad at the
time but today it looks like a trivial footnote compared to the horrors of
the pandemic that occured the very next year. At least with this pandemic
we're starting with super low inflation and interest rates that are
virtually zero.


> > My suggestion is to cut federal government to match government
> revenue.  You are right: that won’t be pretty.
>

I thought you were a fan of the constitution! If you did that in the middle
of a global pandemic with as many people unemployed as in the Great
Depression the constitution would be dead as a doornail within a year. A
lot of conservatives don't like Franklin Roosevelt but without his New Deal
today we'd be living under either a fascist or a communist government,
either way it would be totalitarian.

John K Clark
>
>
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