chumali

If you are referring to the Fed repo market operations, then these are short-term collateralised loans, so not really the same thing as pumping trillions in to the real economy.

A fiscal stimulus of that size would almost certainly drive demand (during a pandemic that has caused a negative supply shock) and therefore increase inflation.

The Cantillion effect describes a phenomena of relative inflation due to the uneven distribution of new money and access to credit.

This doesn't really translate to "a flow of wealth from working classes and savers to the bankers and the managerial class". Rather, the impact on inequality is that it reduces the purchasing power of those not benefiting from the increased supply of money and credit. As these tend to be the poorest individuals in society, inequality is made worse.

To be clear, I am in no way advocating the view that it is "inevitable that everything in banking/finance will move to a decentralized model". Financial institutions, although not perfect, serve many function which would not be suited to a decentralised model. There is no dichotomy here between traditional banking and decentralised finance.

There is however no reason for banks to have a monopoly on these services and every reason to encourage decentralised systems to develop. You claim that people don't want autonomy when this is clearly untrue. It's easy to assume this if speaking from a position of privilege, however there are more than a few edge cases where autonomy is required. A dissident in HK, an anonymous donor in Turkey, a worker in Venezuela, or perhaps even someone in the West wishing to make an international payment but not wanting to wait 2-5 days for a SWIFT payment to clear whilst also incurring a number of handling and transaction fees.

Can't see how Ungar could have acted any differently here given the betting by Matloubi?

> You also have to fill the card to begin with.

Any bank card works, so does Apple/Android pay. Even the prepaid card can be purchased from a self-service machine in less than a minute and topped up via an app.

> There are surely existing regional taxes.

The only broadly administered regional tax in the UK is the council tax. This only covers property owners. There is no other regional taxation - certainly not one that is broader. You also vastly underestimate the public opposition to taxes versus fare increases.

> Professionals working in the inner city don't pay different transit fares than janitors working in the inner city. ...and you don't want a pricing signal...

People pay different rates based on how close to the centre they commute to. Typically professionals commute further because the white collar jobs are located in the centre, blue collar workers on the other hand tend look for work close to where they live and are more likely to travel outside of peak hours.

As for the price signal, it plays a hugely important part. It enables fares to change depending on demand in order to spread out congestion rather than having everyone commute at rush hour (infrastructure cannot support unlimited travellers and public transport is most certainly a scarce resource that requires rationing). The price signal also provides a strong incentive to cycle/walk by imposing a marginal cost on each journey. This incentive would be completely lost if you'd already been taxed, leading to over-consumption and environmental costs.

Your plan would also mean that residents would effectively subsidise the travel of all outsiders - which for cities like London (which get huge amounts of tourists and external commuters) would impose an unfair cost on the residents.

Fare collection in London is almost frictionless. Almost all public transport can be paid for with contactless debit/credit or prepaid cards. Drivers have no requirement to verify fares and all stations have self-service terminals.

Although the administration cost is not zero, it is almost certainly negligible enough that moving to a taxpayer funded model would increase these costs. This is particularly true given that transport budgets are operated at the regional level and would require the introduction of new regional taxes rather than simply relying on exiting tax revenue. (The politics of passing any new tax legislation would be a monumental hurdle in the first instance).

Then there is the question of whether a broad tax is more equitable then the current model. I fail to see how this could be the case given the current system retains the price signal and through a system of concessions ensures that those who most benefit from the provision (e.g. professional working in the inner city) contribute the most and effectively subsidise fares for the rest of society.

> Why would they be?

Because their position is naive and lacks any serious economic or political justification. Even assuming that their beliefs are sincerely held, this would not be the correct course of action to go about inciting change.

It's true that travel should not be reserved for the wealthy. At the same time however travel is no different to most other non-essential commodities and should be similarly allocated via the price mechanism. Given that the supply of desirable destinations is fixed and demand is rising it stands to reason these destinations cannot be accessible to everyone.

As the article touches upon, each additional tourist presents an increase in the external costs they impose on everyone else. These costs may manifest in price increases (more expensive accommodation) or in other ways (longer queues, disruptions to locals, etc). Taxes are very much needed so that tourists bare the true cost of their presence. This will achieve the desired outcome of reducing tourist numbers by pricing some people out and making alternative destinations more appealing relative to their price.

Tourism is a luxury and there is no serious case to be made that cities should have to effectively subsidise the demand of travellers so that everyone can see the world.

This is an arbitrary definition that few economists would accept. Market concentration exists on a spectrum ranging from perfect competition to full scale monopoly. The determinant is the ease of entry and exit and the extent to which the outcome diverges from utility maximising point.

In the case of Amazon there are sufficient barriers to entry that if Amazon were to make profit maximisation its goal, then it could increase prices and enjoy above market returns for a significant period even in spite of the eventual 'possibility' of competition.

To suggest that regulators should wait until the market is fully captured before considering a firm a monopoly is patently absurd since by then the efficiency losses would have already been realised and the remedy becomes harder to implement.

Also, I urge you to find anyone who agrees that there has been an increase in the quality of products available on Amazon. On the contrary, there are countless stories of people lamenting the decline in product quality.