Friday, January 4, 2013
contrived macronautic stymie
"government-issued fiat money will not be perceived as a source of private-sector
wealth if the households owning that money are the same households that, first,
receive all of the transfers or pay all of the taxes associated with future
changes in the money supply and that, second, incur all of the opportunity costs
associated with carrying the money stock between all future
periods. We are used to the idea of Ricardian
Equivalence implying that government debt is not net wealth. Essentially
consumers internalise the government’s budget constraint. But that argument
applies to outside money as much as government debt. We can replace initial
values of debt and money by the discounted future stream of primary surpluses
they support"