Mary Mellor says UBI should be funded out of new publically created money.

 

 

In a "Brave New Europe" article entitled “UBI: Public Money for a Public Purpose”, Mary Mellor argues that UBI (Universal Basic Income) should be funded out of new publically created money (henceforth “base money”), rather than out of tax on the rich.

In fact she goes much further than that. She says “….basic income and other democratically identified public and social initiatives should be funded by new public money which should then be retrieved by taxation.”

Well assuming the gap between issuing the new public money and retrieving it via tax is relatively short, then that comes to the same thing as the more traditional way of funding public spending, namely collecting the tax first and then spending the relevant money. To take the extreme case, what’s the difference between government collecting £X in tax and spending it a week later, and on the other hand, spending that money first, and then retrieving it via tax a week later? No difference!