Alex Howlett

Next Tuesday, August 12th, at 4 pm EDT, The Money View Reading Group is starting Kenneth Rogoff's new book, "Our Money, Your Problem: An Insider's View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance."

Come join!

ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-...

What Problem Does UBI Solve? Ask ten different people what problem Universal Basic Income solves, and you’ll get ten different answers. Scott Santens could probably give you a hundred. This is understandable: A world with UBI dif...

Does UBI solve a problem, or does it serve a function? UBI allows us to distribute money while allocating labor more efficiently.

"The more efficiently we can exploit people, the less we have to exploit them."

UBI and the Environmental Cost of Overemployment Imagine for a moment that we paused all economic growth. The pie isn’t getting bigger, but it isn’t getting smaller either. Now, imagine we invent an efficiency improvement—some new technology. This ...

If you're serious about environmental impact, then you should be serious about UBI.

"Have we unwittingly been overemploying ourselves and overworking our economy, incurring costs to markets and our environment, yet receiving fewer benefits in return?"

www.greshm.org/blog/ubi-and...

1:1 The Money Market Smoothing Over Payments Deficits

"Everyone has their own individual balance of payments: the time pattern of locked-in cash flows and cash commitments. When money is tighter in the market as a whole, those with payments deficits drive up the money rate of interest by bidding for funds."

Home The mission of The Greshm Institute is to deepen the intellectual discussion of basic income (UBI).

I've never been against UBI, and I haven't removed any videos. Are you sure you're not confusing me with someone else?

I literally run a nonprofit think tank in support of UBI.

For more info, you can take a look at our website.

www.greshm.org

I like this article.

For me, the main issue is that Guaranteed Income merely targets people who are left behind by the current economic system. That might be a worthwhile thing to do, but UBI actually fixes the system.

What are you talking about? What episode? Was it a Boston Basic Income? It wasn't my intention to remove any of them.

I've been an ardent UBI supporter since 2011.

The Money View Reading Group is starting a new book! Our first session on Fernand Braudel's "The Wheels of Commerce" (1982) is this coming Tuesday, May 6th at 4pm EDT.

ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-...

Come join!

An Equal Playing Field: Why UBI Is Preferable to GI - Roosevelt Institute Given the current climate, one might wonder whether this is the time for a report on universal basic income (UBI). But speaking as two people who’ve advocated UBI since the early 2000s: Current prospe...

And this piece I co-authored with my "roommate" appears in it

rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/an-equa...

@karlwiderquist.bsky.social @alexhowlett.bsky.social @scottsantens.com @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social @amycastro.bsky.social

1:1 Money Is Global The Myth of Monetary Sovereignty

"Individual countries want to believe that they can control their own monetary systems, but they don't have their own monetary systems. There is one system: a global system."

The System Is Fragile Promises Breed Instability

"As long as cash commitments are easy to meet, people will continue entering into new cash commitments. The web will grow more tangled. The dominos will get closer together. This continues right up to the point of financial crisis."

My colleague Derek Van Gorder has written a new working paper explaining the idea of Calibrated Basic Income. There's a level of UBI that maximally helps the economy serve the people. Let's find it.

www.greshm.org/files/2025-0...

Money as Credit The Purest Money Is Paper

"Money, in its ideal platonic form, is a credit claim. Commodity monies such as gold are merely an approximation of that ideal."

The Money View Reading Group is starting a new book! Our first session on "The Empire of Value" by André Orléan (2014) is Tuesday, March 25th at 4pm EDT.

ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-...

Come join!

Banking Implies Hierarchy A Natural Money Structure

"The emergence of banking is the emergence of hierarchy."

Public-Private Monetary Hybridity Money as a Creature of the Market

"Centralization is natural. Money and banking connect everything. Labeling the economy as distinct public and private sectors doesn't change that. Beneath the labels, the monetary system is all one thing."

YouTube video by The Greshm Institute Why Basic Income (UBI) Is Cooler Than You Think — Phil Jackson @ BIEN Congress: — August 31, 2024

Phil Jackson's Talk from BIEN Congress 2024: Why Basic Income Is Cooler Than You Think

"If automation is hurting people, then that has to mean that there is something wrong with the economy itself."

The Alchemy of Banking Transmuting Promises into Money

Banks are in the business of "monetizing" debt.

Transactions It Takes Two

It takes two (at least) to transact. If we want to wrap our heads around money and banking, we need to learn how to think in terms of transactions.

Four Ways to Pay Representing Payment Types

New Post!

The four payment types are the fundamental building blocks for understanding all balance sheet operations.

YouTube video by Sabine Hossenfelder I was asked to keep this confidential

Nobody should be entitled to a job or a wage. Not even physicists.

Market-Makers Make Markets Rethinking Supply and Demand

"Prices come from markets made by market-makers providing liquidity. And liquidity lets people meet their payment commitments to satisfy their survival constraint."

Gap Liquidity Money, Funding, and Markets

New post!

We can compensate for a payments deficit by dishoarding money (monetary liquidity), borrowing (funding liquidity), or liquidating assets (market liquidity).

Balancing Act Lining Up Cash Flows in Time

New post! Perry Mehrling's money view perceives assets and liabilities as time patterns of future cash flows and commitments. We lose this information when we try to calculate the net worth of a balance sheet or aggregate balance sheets into sectors.

survivalconstraint.substack.com/p/balancing-...

Settle or Die Payment, Liquidity, and Survival

I've started a new Substack to supplement Perry Mehrling's "money view" framework and his 2012 Economics of Money and Banking lectures.

Check out the first post!

INET's Young Scholars Initiative is organizing the 5th annual online Money View Symposium from February 14th to 16th. If you'd like to present, please submit an abstract by January 12th!

ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-...

Thanks, David! You're right there's lots of interesting and useful stuff we can do with taxes. But my focus is mainly on UBI. Taxes solve different problems from the problem UBI solves.

Generally, I don't think it's useful to pair particular taxes with particular forms of government spending.

For a continued discussion of the economics of Universal Basic Income, check out the UBI Economics Discord server.

On Saturday, I had the privilege of exchanging ideas about Universal Basic Income with Steve Keen and friends, fellow travelers who have different visions of how to improve humanity's prospects.

@scottsantens.com
@michaelalewis10.bsky.social
@karlwiderquist.bsky.social
@theubiguy.bsky.social

Hey everyone! I'll be discussing Universal Basic Income on Steve Keen's streaming show on Saturday at 12pm EST. Tune in and ask questions!