Middle Ground

Awhile back, I proposed a one time $100,000 gift bestowed upon everyone that matured at an arbitrary age. 18, 25, 30, whatever. Another way of putting the matter is to imagine a loan that is automatically forgiven, or a loan with an negative interest rate. The given premise behind the stimulus and bailout money printing schemata like 'quantitative easing' that the government has been running since 2008 is much the same as mine, except the loan rates are not negative, they are 100+%. The idea to give banks money so they can turn around and loan the money to the economy with low interest as a stimulus struck me as the opposite end of the spectrum from my original idea, instead of free money, its money that costs more to take than to receive.

In the middle ground there is an additional proposal, what about giving the money out as an at loss loan. Every citizen gets a $100,000 account at an age of maturation that can be drawn from at an at loss ratio. At $.25, for instance, then for every $4 withdrawn, $1 has to be paid back later. Some people may never use the money, like Warren Buffet. Some may use it all at once, as start up capital to start a business venture or buy a home. Some may use it as a stop gap to make ends meet during hard times, such as working class folks. Even if some people take it all out and blow it on stupid cars and toys, that would still stimulate the economy. The better the ratio of at loss, the more likely people are to use it. The two extremes are to never collect repayment and to collect repayment at greater than the amount originally received. The government and corporate world considers one of those extremes reasonable and every other position extremely dangerous.

Yet I'm the one whose probably considered an extremist.