Ask me anything
A regular thank you for my paying subscribers
The posts I write on this Substack will always be free for everyone to read. But I feel I should give some reward to my paying subscribers. So, I’ve started an “Ask me anything” post. Paid subscribers can ask questions in the comments, and I’ll do my best to answer them.
I’ve also started a regular open thread, similar to the Monday Message Board on my longrunning (but now largely quiescent) blog. Keep a lookout
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John I am trying to understand what I am missing - apart from the need to fund imports in some cases, what is the difference between borrowing form OS and printing money?
Is there a cogent explanation of the difference between printing money and borrowing from overseas? I appreciate that overseas borrowing does impact the Bal of Payments and the exchange rate and has kept many countries in penury.
Whilst OS borrowing may impact on the exchange rate, and help pay for imports if the country lacks an export base, this is only short term - over time borrowings result in a negative cash flow:
(Borrowings) - (Interest) - (Debt Repayments) = (Payment Outflow)
Further complicated by the fact that external debt is denominated in other currencies and increases if the local currency loses value. So, in Australia's case borrowing from OS leads to capital outflow and pressure on the dollar, a lower dollar increases our indebtedness from what it would otherwise have been.
What am I missing?
My immediate reaction was that the labor supply effects of the UBI were very small. I feel that the authors of the study were confusing statistical significance with actual significance. I’ll try to write something about this.