Alex Howlett
@alexhowlett.bsky.social
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📥 65
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Basic Income — Money View People need money, not jobs.
The Money View Reading Group is starting George Pantelopoulos's "Between Payments and Credit: An Introduction to the IOU Economy." Our first session is this coming Tuesday, March 10th, at 2pm EDT.
ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-...
Come join!
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Money View Reading Group - YSI INET
The Money View Reading Group reads and discusses writings on money, banking, and finance. We are a self-directed group. Anyone interested in money and banking can read the readings, join […]
https://ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-view-reading-group/2026-03-10/
about 1 month ago
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I recently joined Julian Vigo on her Savage Minds podcast to discuss UBI and jobs (and MMT).
savageminds.substack.com/p/alex-howlett
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Alex Howlett
S5E43
https://savageminds.substack.com/p/alex-howlett
about 2 months ago
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New blog post from my colleague Derek Van Gorder! "Overemployment may already be the problem we should be worrying about—not joblessness."
www.greshm.org/blog/unautom...
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UnAutomating the Economy: More Labor but at What Cost?
Imagine an economy where robots, AI, and advanced machines do much of the work that used to require human labor. Not a dystopian or utopian future of full automation—just one where most goods and serv...
https://www.greshm.org/blog/unautomating-the-economy/
2 months ago
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I wrote a guest blog post for the Feasta blog. "People need money. They don’t need to be exploited. And we certainly don’t need to pretend to exploit people as an excuse to hand them money."
www.feasta.org/2026/01/30/b...
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Beyond the Artist Subsidy: Universal Basic Income as a Radical Shift in How People Receive Their Money – Feasta
https://www.feasta.org/2026/01/30/beyond-the-artist-subsidy-universal-basic-income-as-a-radical-shift-in-how-people-receive-their-money/
3 months ago
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The Money View Reading Group is starting Joseph Schumpeter's "Treatise on Money." Our first session is next Monday, January 12th, at 2pm EST.
ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-...
Come join!
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Money View Reading Group - YSI INET
The Money View Reading Group reads and discusses writings on money, banking, and finance. We are a self-directed group. Anyone interested in money and banking can read the readings, join […]
https://ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-view-reading-group/2026-01-12/
3 months ago
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In my new working paper, "Keynesianism's Labor Problem," I argue that thinking of people as workers leads us to get economic theory wrong. This is a revised version of what I presented at the BIEN Congress in Brazil
www.greshm.org/files/2025-1...
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https://www.greshm.org/files/2025-12-09-keynesianisms-labor-problem.pdf
4 months ago
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The Money View Reading Group is starting a new book! Our first session on Calomiris and Haber's "Fragile By Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit" (2014) is this coming Monday, November 17th, at 2pm EST.
ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-...
Come join!
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Money View Reading Group - YSI INET
The Money View Reading Group reads and discusses writings on money, banking, and finance. We are a self-directed group. Anyone interested in money and banking can read the readings, join […]
https://ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-view-reading-group/2025-11-17/
5 months ago
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The Money View Reading Group is starting a new book! Our first session on Giovanni Arrighi's "The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times" ([1994] 2010) is next Monday, October 20th, at 2pm EDT.
ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-...
Come join!
6 months ago
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reposted by
Alex Howlett
Michael A. Lewis
7 months ago
Latest piece on UBI here:
www.greshm.org/blog/we-must...
@alexhowlett.bsky.social
@karlwiderquist.bsky.social
@scottsantens.com
@theubiguy.bsky.social
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We Must Challenge the Job Ethic
I recently co-authored an essay arguing that a Universal Basic Income (UBI) might attain the goals of Guaranteed Income advocates better than a targeted Guaranteed Income would. I stand by the points ...
https://www.greshm.org/blog/we-must-challenge-the-job-ethic/
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I have a new blog post on the difference between Guaranteed Income and Universal Basic Income. "Treating the symptoms of a broken system is a far different project from radically restructuring the system itself."
www.greshm.org/blog/guarant...
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Guaranteed Income Is Not UBI
In his final book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Martin Luther King, Jr. called for direct cash as a solution to poverty. He wanted to guarantee that every person had sufficient incom...
https://www.greshm.org/blog/guaranteed-income-is-not-ubi/
8 months ago
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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-...
9 months ago
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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."
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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...
https://www.greshm.org/blog/what-problem-does-ubi-solve/
10 months ago
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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...
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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 ...
https://www.greshm.org/blog/ubi-and-the-environmental-cost-of-overemployment/
11 months ago
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"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."
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1:1 The Money Market
Smoothing Over Payments Deficits
https://www.survivalconstraint.com/p/11-the-money-market
11 months ago
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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!
12 months ago
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reposted by
Alex Howlett
Michael A. Lewis
12 months ago
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
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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...
https://rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/an-equal-playing-field/
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"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."
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1:1 Money Is Global
The Myth of Monetary Sovereignty
https://www.survivalconstraint.com/p/11-money-is-global
about 1 year ago
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"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."
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The System Is Fragile
Promises Breed Instability
https://www.survivalconstraint.com/p/the-system-is-fragile
about 1 year ago
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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...
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https://www.greshm.org/files/2025-04-01-calibrated-basic-income.pdf
about 1 year ago
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"Money, in its ideal platonic form, is a credit claim. Commodity monies such as gold are merely an approximation of that ideal."
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Money as Credit
The Purest Money Is Paper
https://www.survivalconstraint.com/p/money-as-credit
about 1 year ago
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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!
about 1 year ago
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"The emergence of banking is the emergence of hierarchy."
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Banking Implies Hierarchy
A Natural Money Structure
https://survivalconstraint.substack.com/p/banking-implies-hierarchy
about 1 year ago
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"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."
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Public-Private Monetary Hybridity
Money as a Creature of the Market
https://survivalconstraint.substack.com/p/public-private-monetary-hybridity
about 1 year ago
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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."
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Why Basic Income (UBI) Is Cooler Than You Think — Phil Jackson @ BIEN Congress: — August 31, 2024
YouTube video by The Greshm Institute
https://youtu.be/8a-nLm0sjco?si=sx_lM6GSZdpBjdj2
about 1 year ago
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Banks are in the business of "monetizing" debt.
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The Alchemy of Banking
Transmuting Promises into Money
https://survivalconstraint.substack.com/p/the-alchemy-of-banking
about 1 year ago
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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.
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Transactions
It Takes Two
https://survivalconstraint.substack.com/p/transactions
about 1 year ago
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New Post! The four payment types are the fundamental building blocks for understanding all balance sheet operations.
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Four Ways to Pay
Representing Payment Types
https://survivalconstraint.substack.com/p/four-ways-to-pay
about 1 year ago
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Nobody should be entitled to a job or a wage. Not even physicists.
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I was asked to keep this confidential
YouTube video by Sabine Hossenfelder
https://youtu.be/shFUDPqVmTg?si=j581cM0jDwKQryjK
about 1 year ago
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"Prices come from markets made by market-makers providing liquidity. And liquidity lets people meet their payment commitments to satisfy their survival constraint."
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Market-Makers Make Markets
Rethinking Supply and Demand
https://survivalconstraint.substack.com/p/market-makers-make-markets
about 1 year ago
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New post! We can compensate for a payments deficit by dishoarding money (monetary liquidity), borrowing (funding liquidity), or liquidating assets (market liquidity).
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Gap Liquidity
Money, Funding, and Markets
https://survivalconstraint.substack.com/p/gap-liquidity
about 1 year ago
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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-...
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Balancing Act
Lining Up Cash Flows in Time
https://survivalconstraint.substack.com/p/balancing-act
about 1 year ago
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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!
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Settle or Die
Payment, Liquidity, and Survival
https://survivalconstraint.substack.com/p/settle-or-die
about 1 year ago
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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-...
over 1 year ago
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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
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YouTube
Share your videos with friends, family, and the world
https://www.youtube.com/live/7BCKXX3ZSXg?si=0NhKapRKMP_3mz8H
over 1 year ago
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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!
add a skeleton here at some point
over 1 year ago
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Starting tomorrow (Nov 12th) at 4pm EST, the Money View Reading Group will be discussing "A Monetary and Fiscal History of the United States 1961–2021" by Alan Blinder (2022).
ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-...
Come join!
over 1 year ago
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Reducing the incentive to work is not the same thing as reducing productivity. If people are over-incentivized to work, then reducing the work incentive will increase productivity.
over 1 year ago
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It's not a radical idea to expect jobs to pay enough to cover rent and other basic expenses. A radical idea would be to realize that this expectation doesn't make sense.
over 1 year ago
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The dysfunction in our money distribution system stems from our expectation that people should "earn" a living. It causes us to artificially stimulate both labor supply and labor demand.
over 1 year ago
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It's normal not to want to do the kind of work that we have to pay people to do. That's why we have to pay for it in the first place.
over 1 year ago
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Universal Basic Income is compatible with neoliberalism in the sense that it helps the market better serve the people and society. If you're a neoliberal trying to use UBI as a Trojan Horse to dismantle the welfare state, you're using it wrong.
over 1 year ago
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Starting on October 1st at 4pm EDT, the Money View Reading Group will be discussing "Birth of a Market: The U.S. Treasury Securities Market from the Great War to the Great Depression" by Kenneth Garbade (2012).
ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-...
Come join!
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Money View Reading Group – YSI INETVirtual ProjectVirtual Projectproject Seriesproject SeriesVirtual Project
https://ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-view-reading-group/2024-10-01/
over 1 year ago
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Nobody should be entitled to a job, let alone any particular wage.
over 1 year ago
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Universal Basic Income doesn't mean that workers are paying non-workers to be lazy. It means that the government is paying everyone instead of forcing people to work unproductive jobs.
over 1 year ago
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Instead of the Fed lowering interest rates today, we could have had a Universal Basic Income.
over 1 year ago
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We all depend on the government for money distribution. But instead of just handing people money, the government stimulates the financial sector to generate wages for people. Those wages and the jobs that pay them are not necessary for efficient labor allocation.
over 1 year ago
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I wonder if the folks who suggest that people get jobs instead of Universal Basic Income understand that they're advocating using fake jobs as an excuse to hand people money.
over 1 year ago
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People who oppose Universal Basic Income usually fail to propose an alternative.
over 1 year ago
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Forcing people to spend their time unproductively to "earn" their money is more wasteful than paying all people unconditionally, some of whom might happen to choose to spend their time unproductively.
over 1 year ago
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We live in a world of scarce resources. We don't want to waste resources on over-employing people.
over 1 year ago
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