Emeritus Professor Richard Wallace, of Wofford College, is enamored of Mark Zuckerberg’s universal basic income proposal.

Here’s the quick and dirty of the thing, beginning with a quote from Wallace’s letter.

The strongest arguments for universal income center on its elimination of work disincentives by the unconditional nature of such grants.

Leave aside the fact that free money is its own disincentive to work. A UBI will only increase demand—all that seemingly added money with which to buy stuff from necessities to goodies—without increasing supply. The resulting price inflation will very quickly reduce the buying power of the UBI to the same level that the current poverty-ridden man possesses. A UBI will not make anyone better off.

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans said Tuesday that the U.S. central bank can wait until the end of the year before making the decision to raise rates again, while adding it could start reducing the size of its balance sheet before that.

Indeed.  We could wait a decade, too.  Both delays are about equally foolish.

Increasing interest rates on debt, whether market rates of Federal Reserve benchmark rates, are inherently inflationary.  Thus: the Fed needs to set its rates to levels consistent with target inflation, and then sit down, and be quiet.

The Federal Reserve’s interest-rate increases aren’t having the desired effect of cooling off Wall Street’s hot streak.

Well, NSS.  There’s a hint there.

The Fed needs to stop trying to manipulate the market and go back to doing its job, maintaining stable price levels (controlling inflation to low levels) and achieving full employment (whatever that means.  And, the latter is wholly dependent on the former and so need not be an independent goal, but that’s a different story).