BeetleBark
Every level of our economic system is designed for short term return on investments. One big consequence is that if cash isn’t flowing to those at the bottom, it flows nowhere else. Luckily there’s a very simple—and indefinitely sustainable!—solution: direct cash transfer from the federal government. We print our own money, and we’re nowhere near any theoretical limit on amount of debt the US government can hold.
And we can easily turn this into a normal thing we do, just like Alaska’s “Permanent Fund” or Norway’s current program: to make it sustainable, the government could immediately purchase stocks and bonds cheaply (which would help restore some trust in the stock market, too), so when things start to return to normal, and those investments are growing again, the dividend and interest income could be used to keep the checks flowing, indefinitely. This has the added bonuses of acting as a permanent social safety
Something I want to address: Lots of people are calling for direct $ transfers to households. $1000/per person, $5000/house etc. And I've seen some people say things in response, well like "If we can give people $1,000, why not just give them $100,000 and we'd all be rich." /1
BeetleBark