[ExI] My review of Eliezer Yudkowsky's new book (UBI)

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> 



 

>…As I recall back then I insisted there is a difference between saying having a perfectly balanced budget is neither necessary nor desirable, and saying the budget deficit can be infinitely large with no unfortunate consequences…  John K Clark 

 

 

So really the only argument is about how much we can borrow and how big we can let the deficit grow.  OK I can deal with that. 

 

Let’s look at the UBI notion you posted earlier and do some math, where single digit precision is good enough and we can do it in our heads.

 

Let’s toss out a number, 3000 bucks a month.  That is a good single digit, because there are (close enough to) 340 million proles in the USA, if we count non-citizens who would also collect the cash, so about a trillion dollars a month is all it would cost, or 10 trillion a year if we stay with single digit precision.

 

If we did that, we Americans wouldn’t need to worry about the nearly 40 trillion in debt the federal government has already borrowed, or even the fact that servicing the interest on that debt is dominating the federal budget.  That 40 trillion wouldn’t matter much since the fed would be adding a new 10 trillion every year.  The original 40 would fade away into insignificance.

 

We could do that strategy for about another decade or so.  Then all the actual tax revenue the federal government could take in, along with all the borrowing it could still do, would go to paying interest.  Elon described it during his brief ill-fated adventure as an amateur government economic advisor (the DOGE committee.)  

 

Musk clearly explained how enormous deep cuts in federal government spending must happen immediately, for otherwise the US government becomes little more than a debt slave, doing little other than collecting money to make the minimum payment on its tired and now-mostly-cancelled credit card.  From what I can see, he was right.

 

Now we have the US congress pretending to shut down the federal government over a budget disagreement.  Government shutdown, swoon how shall we cope?  

 

Well, have you noticed any problems from that?  Neither have I. My mail is still coming in.  I see no marauding bands of carnivorous nomads hunting and devouring stray pets, no crumbling infrastructure, no paramilitary militia terrorizing the citizens with their camo costumes and whatever else strikes terror into citizens (so what’s wrong with camo?  I like camo.  Green, tan, black, it is so naturey.)  But the government shut down, and I can’t tell any difference at all.

 

Musk was right.  The fed needs to be Twitter-Xed: downsized to fit revenue.  The federal budget must balance.  The long-term consequences of failure do matter, and they are bad news.

 

spike    

 

 

 

 

 

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