> The easiest place to take it is via the money printer
FWIW: the easiest way to get people to throw you into a "junk economics" bin is to use terms like this. "Printing money" is, at best, an inside-the-echo-chamber shorthand for macroeconomic finance policy that is only going to confuse real economists trying to understand what you're talking about. Most of the time, though, it's just a signal that you don't know what you're talking about.
This argument seems rather disingenuous. Are they literally printing money? No, not to any significant degree. They're not running the presses 24/7/365 or anything like that.
Perhaps, though, you'd care to explain how, if you grow M1 from $4T to $18T, it matters whether you do it with physical printing presses or pushing buttons on a keyboard. The overall effect is the same.
In fact, the printing press method would be less impactful. There's a physical limit on how fast a mechanical press can run. With the keyboard method, you just have to type in a few more zeros at the end.
> Are they literally printing money? No, not to any significant degree.
Right. So talk about what they are actually doing, be it routine deficit financing (not "printing" under any reasonable definition) or QE (arguably I guess, depending on how you want to spin the repurchase scheduling). Under no circumstances does the government actually create money "out of thin air".
Which under some circumstances is fine. If you're discussing a political topic with a bunch of like-minded gold standard fans (or whatever), then you can use this as a shorthand for "the fiat currency policy we all hate". And no one is confused.
But THIS subthread is actually talking about financing public policy. So trying to shorthand the issue away is just a rhetorical trick. If you want to argue against public financing of a UBI, you have to do more than just shout "Money Printing!".
Edit, because I missed this bit:
> if you grow M1 from $4T to $18T
I shouldn't have replied. That's a 100% bad faith argument, owing to a redefinition of the M1 money supply in May 2020 (to include "savings" accounts, which were previously ignored) that created a big discontinuity in the graph. You can argue that the new measurement is better or worse than the old, you can't use a delta between them as "growth". That's just a lie, and you should know better.
Actually, I'd forgotten about the redefinition. You pretending that when someone says "printing money" they mean physical printing presses with ink and paper, rather than a figure of speech, is the actual bad faith argument here.
No, I'm saying that when someone says "printing money" they're engaging in demagoguery instead of discussing the issue on merits. Which is fine, if you're making a political point about your enemies within the in-group that understands your shorthand[1].
But this subthread is an actual point about economics and public financing. You can't demagogue that.
[1] c.f. ACAB, etc... Every partisan subculture has its jargon.
Okay, since you're apparently never going to respond to the actual issue about why (e.g.) jacking up the money supply by pushing buttons at the Fed and Treasury doesn't have the same effect as running the printing presses (more so, in fact; as I pointed out there's a limit on how fast presses can run), I think we're done.
First you tried to deflect by going off on my mistake about why M1 increased so much, even though that was completely beside the point -- although it DID increase massively, just not as much. This is akin to your pedantic non-argument about how increasing the money supply doesn't generally involve running physical presses.
Now you're trying to deflect by calling me a "demagogue".
I will ask you one last time, and if you don't give me a straight, non-evasive answer (which you won't) we're done.
How, in actual effect, does increasing the money supply $n trillion by running the presses faster differ from the Fed/Treasury increasing the money supply by typing numbers into a keyboard?
Hint: it doesn't. But you can't admit it because that would demolish your entire thesis.
> although it DID increase massively, just not as much
It's shrinking very rapidly as we have this silly argument, even as you'd admit that no action was taken to reduce spending: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL
About 60% of the increase over the pandemic has disappeared, as people spend down the accumulated wealth. That's not "massive", and just not consistent with the idea of "money printing"; the analysis is complicated, and has as much to do with supply effects (not as much stuff to buy due to impeded production/shipping) as it does with pandemic relief aid.
I'm happy to have this discussion and to educate you about these issues. But not if you insist on painting things with ridiculous smears like "printing money" (and especially when you start with outrageous claims that are clearly lies you picked up from partisan media).
> It's shrinking very rapidly as we have this silly argument, even as you'd admit that no action was taken to reduce spending: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL
That's not answering the question.
> educate you about these issues.
Oh, DO be quiet. You could "educate" me by actually answering the question, but (once again) you haven't.
What's your question, exactly? "Can inflation[1] be caused by other means than literally printing money?" Of course it can. That's not a license to call things like supply shocks or trade wars "printing money" though. Your hyperfocus on this one gotcha point is betraying your ignorance about the actual economics, which is my point you seem to be trying to ignore.
[1] Actually you started with money supply expansion, which isn't really the same thing. But I think you're really talking about inflation.
FWIW: the easiest way to get people to throw you into a "junk economics" bin is to use terms like this. "Printing money" is, at best, an inside-the-echo-chamber shorthand for macroeconomic finance policy that is only going to confuse real economists trying to understand what you're talking about. Most of the time, though, it's just a signal that you don't know what you're talking about.