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They do. Neoliberalism used to be considered a serious theory not that long ago.


Our knowledge of the laws of economics changes. The laws themselves don't because they are simply logical consequences of the laws of physics. The latter doesn't change, so neither does the former.


Again - physics is not man-made, economics is. We don’t discover economics, we invent it.


But all of our inventions are constrained by physics. We invent airplanes too, we do not invent the laws of aerodynamics. We invent electronics, we do not invent the laws of electrodynamics.

Economics is likewise constrained by natural law. This why, for example, you cannot eliminate poverty by printing fiat currency and giving it to poor people.


>you cannot eliminate poverty by printing fiat currency and giving it to poor people

Are you saying UBI can’t eliminate poverty?


No, I am saying that you cannot eliminate poverty by printing fiat currency and giving it to poor people.

(I also happen to believe that you cannot eliminate poverty with UBI, but that is a completely different claim. I also believe that we should adopt UBI despite the fact that it won't eliminate poverty. But that is yet another discussion.)


>I am saying that you cannot eliminate poverty by printing fiat currency and giving it to poor people.

So how is that different from UBI? (Hint: what’s the difference between printing money and deducting the same amount of money from taxes?)


> what’s the difference between printing money and deducting the same amount of money from taxes

Inflation.

But it's actually much more complicated than just that. An economy is a complex dynamical system. It is chaotic in the formal mathematical sense, which is to say its response to changing circumstances is not 100% predictable. But in general if you print money the result is inflation. In the long run, the value of the money supply has to aymptotically approach the value of the goods and services in the economy. (This is an example of a "natural law" of economics.)

So the answer to your question depends on the details. Do you print money once or do you do it on an on-going basis? If you do it once then you get a transient response. You will eliminate some short-term hardship, but in the long run the economy will most likely settle back into its previous equilibrium with slightly higher prices. If you do it on a continuous basis you will cause hyperinflation and the currency will collapse. Depending on the availability of alternatives, the currency collapse may or may not take the rest of the economy down with it.

Redistributing wealth through taxation doesn't have that problem, but it has other deleterious effects. Figuring out what those are is left as an exercise.




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