The (Actual) Stunning Thing About the Trillion Dollar Coin Idea

In response to Joe Weisenthal’s utterly moronic “Two Most Stunning Things About The Movement To Mint A Trillion Dollar Coin” over on Business Insider, isn’t (as Joe Weisenthal asserts) that:

Despite the supposed absurdity of it, and despite the fact that it flies in the face of everything everyone thinks about money, there are virtually no good arguments against it.

I posted my follow up in the BI comments section, but given that a lot of my comments there get kicked to the bleachers for being a bomb-thrower realist, I post it here as well:

First off, the opening admission that the idea is absurd is in-congruent with the (wrong) conclusion that there are no good arguments against it. The fact that it IS absurd proves the precise opposite, that there are no good.arguments.for.it.

Why? Because it is typical of the fallacy that governments can “create wealth” via edict, that it is possible to consume MORE than one produces in perpetuity (and that one can do so before any production actually takes place).

It means that “wealth” can be invented out of thin air as long as everybody collectively buys in to the delusion that it is so. (It isn’t).

IF IT WERE TRUE then this is what it means:

Nobody ever has to work again, we don’t even have to get out of bed, because we can all be trillionaires. We just have to mint a platinum coin for every person in the world and we can all eat caviar, fly around in a private jet and sleep all day, every day, forever.

This is the trillion dollar coin idea, it is ALSO the equally idiotic #printtheiou idea.

They are not even ideas, they are desperate, inane rationalizations of a society living way beyond it’s means and will do ANYTHING to avoid facing that stark, inevitable FACT.

So what’s actually stunning about this idea, is that they give Nobel prizes to people like Paul Krugman, who actually espouse it.