First version: 2026-06-12
Last updated: 2026-07-30
I have a page on my website where I describe an idea that I had for providing free food and rent for everyone in the population. I have been thinking about the idea in some detail, and I have come up with a system that seems to me like it could work in order to achieve this. My idea involves the central bank printing money in order to pay for the food, rent, and other basic living expenses required by everyone in the population, and distributing it directly to the people who provide those services to others in the population. This page describes the system that I have come up with.
I do not consider myself an expert on economics. This is what I have come up with after doing a small amount of research and thinking about it as a non-expert. It is definitely possible that I have misunderstood something. If anyone sees any mistakes in my reasoning, please feel free to contact me and let me know which part I have misunderstood.
If you find this page interesting then you should also read the page that I have written on automating work, which provides some more justification on why I think it makes sense to create a system like this.
In order to provide free food and rent for everyone in the population, the government would have to come up with some way of obtaining the money to pay for these things. With our current economic system, in order for the government to obtain this money, they would have to either collect taxes or borrow money in order to obtain the money that would be required. Theoretically, it is possible for the government to pay for these things by printing new money, rather than collecting it from someone else, however people who are knowledgable about economics usually claim that this is a bad idea because it will cause inflation. The reason that they expect this to occur is because they expect that the government would spend too much money, resulting in average people generally having more money to spend on things for which there are limited quantities available to be purchased. The competition between the people attempting to buy the same things would cause the prices of those things to increase. If these price increases occurred across a wide range of goods and services, then it would effectively mean that the currency was worth less than it did before. If the currency decreased in value too quickly, this would cause the currency to no longer be useful as a store of value. For this reason, most experts on economics claim that it is not a good idea for a government to print money in order to fund its activities.
Interestingly, even though politicians and governments say they are opposed, the central bank apparently already prints money in order to control interest rates. They use either open market operations or quantitative easing, which both involve printing money, in order to do this. However, when the central bank prints money, it is only given to people who already own certain financial assets that have started to decrease in value. These assets are usually owned by banks. The money is given to them to make sure those assets do not decrease in value. In a sense, the government is intentionally causing inflation in the value of those specific assets. It is assumed that giving the banks all of this extra cash will eventually, somehow, indirectly result in improving the quality of life of average people.
In this system, since the banks are the entities that have received most of the cash, they generally provide the cash to other entities by loaning the cash to them. Regular people and other parts of the government besides the central bank can borrow the cash from the bank, however they have to give it back, because it is a loan. It is possible for someone to receive some of the cash without having to pay it back, however in order to do that, you need to convince someone who has borrowed the cash to simply give it to you without expecting it to be returned. This is often done by a person getting a job from someone who has borrowed money from the bank. This includes the government itself, which borrows money from the bank when it has not collected enough money in taxes in order to pay salaries.
The reason why this system is considered to be a good method of preventing inflation is due to the fact that the government has to pay back the money printed by the central bank, which is thought to discourage the government from spending too much money. However, this appears to be only partially true in practice, because the government is technically able to borrow unlimited amounts of money. It can always borrow more money from the central bank to pay back the previous loans, and so technically, it is not really paying back the loans.
A key problem with this system, in my opinion, is that it is effectively a kind of slavery system. Only the banks, the government, and wealthy people receive the money that was printed. For regular people to receive any of it, they need to find a job from someone who has borrowed it. Since money is required to purchase food and pay for shelter, which are things that are required to survive, people therefore have no choice but to seek some way to obtain money, and therefore have no choice to obtain a job from someone who will have a lot of control over them.
In my opinion, the system should be changed so that it is no longer a system based on economic slavery. For the system to no longer be based on slavery, it has to be the case that any person could reasonably quit their job at any time without worrying about being physically harmed, which is something that can result if a person becomes homeless or becomes unable to afford food. It seems like a way to solve this might be to simply print money and give it to everyone, however inflation really is a valid concern if this is not done carefully.
The fundamental change that I am proposing is that rather than printing money and giving it to people who own financial assets, it is instead printed on demand whenever a person provides a service to someone else, and given by the central bank directly to the person providing the service. I envision the economy being divided into two parts, the consumer economy, and the business economy.
The way I see it, every person should have a right to be a consumer. This means that there are many things that they should be given for free for them to consume. If something is consumed, then after they obtain the item, they are not left with something that can be immediately resold or traded for a significant value. The fact that the items that they are given are not considered significantly valuable after they obtain them means that they are not able to use them to compete with others when trying to obtain things available in limited quantities. This seems like it should limit inflation in the prices of the things available in limited quantities.
Here are some examples of things that could be free as part of the consumer economy:
Rent
People obviously need a place to live in order to survive. Once rent is paid for their primary residence, a person is not left with something of value that they can resell or trade, because they themselves live in their primary residence. This is not the case, however, for a secondary residence, which they could rent to someone else. Therefore, it would make sense to have a policy of paying the rent for a primary residence but not a secondary residence.
Food
People obviously need food in order to survive. Once food is eaten, it cannot be resold or traded. Therefore, it should be possible for people to be provided with a certain amount of free food without causing inflation.
Medical Services
People obviously need medical services in order to survive. Once medical services have been provided to a person, that experience can no longer be resold or traded. Therefore, it should be possible for people to be provided with medical services without causing inflation.
Other Services
In general, any service that a person provides for someone else could be free. This could include digital services, like Internet access, or services like Netflix.
Mass-Produced Physical Products
There are many mass-produced physical products which usually do not have significant value if resold, even if they are technically not consumed. This includes things like movies and television shows sold on DVDs and Blu-rays.
I came up with the specific examples that I listed above because I personally want those things for free. However, it seems like there could be a large variety of things that could be available for free, as long as providing the thing for free would not cause inflation. Unfortunately, I cannot think of a way to make it work without there being a method of defining the specific categories of things that are available for free, the number of each thing that a person is able to have for free in each category, and the amount of currency that is printed and given to the person or business providing the thing for free. If people were allowed to have unlimited quantities of the things available for free, it seems like that would probably lead to inflation as the central bank would then have to print an unlimited amount of money in order to provide it to the people providing the things that were available for free. It also might make sense to place some limits on the things that are available for free so that people still have an incentive to try to make money in order to buy certain things that they want to purchase, even if they do not require those things for survival. If people do not have an incentive to try to make money, then money itself is not very useful because it cannot be used to convince people to do things.
I am not sure what the best system would be for defining the categories, the prices, and the limits. This is somewhat of an open question and I have been trying to think about how to design the best system. It seems to me that it would be ideal if there was some kind of direct democracy system along with some kind of fancy algorithm, rather than leaving all of the decisions up to politicians. Aside from that, I am not really sure what the best system would be. There are multiple possible systems that seem like they might work.
One idea that I had for coming up with prices is that people could be periodically allocated a certain number of points which they can use to buy things. The businesses providing services would be able to decide for themselves how many points they require in order to provide each service or to obtain each product. The number of points would then influence the amount of real currency that the business receives in return for providing the service. The points would be like receiving normal currency to spend, with the exception that the points expire after a certain amount of time. This would prevent people from accumulating them over a long period and causing inflation if they accumulated a large number and tried to compete with others for things that are available in limited quantities. I like the points idea because it allows businesses to compete in a free market in order to discover the appropriate amount of real currency that they should be paid for their service, rather than requiring all prices to be set by a central organization. The points system, however, seems like it might not work in every case due to the fact that businesses providing essential services might just start asking for all of the points that a person receives. It might require some experimentation to determine the best system.
All of the things provided for free should be provided for free regardless of whether someone is employed or not. If this is not the case, and the system was instead treated like a social welfare system that people were only allowed to use if they were unemployed, then the system would create an incentive for people to avoid working, because otherwise finding a job would mean that they would have to start paying for the things that they were previously being given for free.
If you are providing a service to someone else and receiving money from the central bank for doing so, then you are a business. This part of the economy would work similar to the economy that we have today, with the exception that you can now rely on the fact that literally everyone you see is a potential customer that could afford your service. You no longer need to feel guilty about trying to maximize your profits when selling goods and services to people who do not have very much money. Landlords never need to evict tenants from their primary residence for being unable to pay rent. Many online services which are supported in the current economy by showing advertisements could remove the ads and rely on this system instead.
I am not sure if the central bank would still print money in order to manipulate interest rates, like they do now. Without the central bank printing money, it would be more difficult for the government to borrow unlimited amounts of money, and it might make things difficult for regular people if they want a loan, for example if they were buying a house. It would also have an impact on large corporations which often borrow large amounts of money. I personally need to think about this a bit more before I have a strong opinion.
This concept is similar in many ways to the concept of a universal basic income. The key difference from the point of view of the consumer is that instead of receiving actual currency from the government, people instead receive specific services for free instead, as well as the points that I described previously. The points system is somewhat like a UBI due to the fact that people receive a specific amount of points which they are allowed to spend on a wide variety of goods and services, potentially on anything that you are able to use real currency to purchase, with the difference being that unlike real currency, the points would expire if they were not spent after a certain amount of time. The fact that the points expire is what limits inflation, because it prevents people from accumulating a large number of points and therefore causing inflation due to the fact that people would be able to bid higher amounts for things available in limited quantities.
The other difference from UBI is that I am explicitly stating that the central bank would print the money that was necessary to support the system, rather than collecting the money from taxes or borrowing it. It would be possible for a UBI system to include this aspect as well, however in that case it seems like inflation might be a concern, because people would eventually be able to accumulate large amounts of currency that they received from the UBI system. It is the fact that people receive points that expire, rather than cash, which seems to me like it would limit inflation, and therefore make something like UBI possible.
It might make sense for people to be given a small amount of real currency in addition to the free services and the points, which would then essentially be a UBI. This would allow people who are not doing any work to be able to save up money and eventually be able to make larger purchases. However, it seems like it would have to be a small amount in order to limit inflation, and to provide people with an incentive to provide services to others in order to receive real currency.
In terms of taxation, it seems like many taxes that we have in society today might not be required if the taxes were mainly being charged in order to fund government activities. It is possible that the central bank could have a separate system for printing money that the government requires to pay for large projects, for example for things like the construction of bridges and roads and other similar projects, as well as to pay government employees. This kind of system could also be based on specific categories and limits per category, similar to the system which would print money in return for providing services directly to consumers. For large construction projects, the limits in the system could be based on the capacity that society had to be able to build those large projects, in order to avoid having the government try to overuse that capacity and therefore cause inflation in the prices that those things cost to construct. It is also possible that we could choose to keep the existing system for funding these kinds of government activities, and require that the government collect taxes in order to pay for them.
If we did have a system in which taxation was very low at the same time that the central bank was continuously printing money without expecting it to be returned, we would probably eventually start to find that people were accumulating very large bank balances. One way to solve this would be to periodically reduce all bank balances and all prices by a fixed amount, for example by removing the final digit on all balances and prices. This is normally referred to as redenomination. If the final digit was removed, it would be equivalent to a flat wealth tax of 90% which would be collected and then the money that was collected destroyed. The tax would not actually have to be as high as 90%, this is just the amount which would precisely remove the final digit on all balances. However, this kind of tax would not address concerns that might exist about certain people in society having accumulated balances which were far, far above everyone else. If that is a concern, then we might require a progressive wealth tax, which would charge people with lower bank balances a smaller percentage of their balance than wealthy people. Either way, the money would simply be destroyed after collecting it.
If we did charge a progressive wealth tax, I am not sure what the solution would be for cases where people were keeping most of their wealth in a form not represented by a bank account balance, for example if they owned valuable assets. It may or may not make sense to include those assets when calculating the correct amount that a person needs to pay for the wealth tax. If we choose not to include those assets as part of the calculation for a wealth tax, it may make sense to have something like a property tax in order to create an incentive for people to want to obtain the currency in order to pay the tax. Otherwise, they might immediately always try to exchange the currency for some other kind of valuable asset in order to avoid having to pay the wealth tax.
The problem of people avoiding a wealth tax seems like it would be more of a concern for a progressive wealth tax, and less so for a redenomination or a flat wealth tax. A flat wealth tax would not actually change the wealth that people had relative to each other, and so there would be less of a reason to avoid paying it. A tax like that would most likely cause most prices to be reduced by the same percentage as the tax, due to the fact that people had lower bank balances to use to bid for things available in limited quantities. If you tried to exchange the currency for valuable assets in order to avoid the tax, the prices of those valuable assets would be reduced by the amount of the wealth tax anyway, so it would make no difference. For a flat wealth tax, the thing that would actually matter would be whether the central bank was also going to reduce the amounts of money that it printed in order to pay people for services by the amount of the wealth tax. If it did not reduce the amounts that it printed to pay people for services, it would be like the central bank was suddenly printing a lot more money relative to the bank balances that people had at the time, and so it would be like the people being paid directly by the central bank had received a massive increase in income. This may or may not be desirable.
The idea of periodically performing a redenomination, or charging a flat wealth tax, while not fully reducing the amounts that the central bank printed in order to pay people for services, might be an alternative to a progressive wealth tax as a method of solving the problem of certain people in society having accumulated balances which were far above everyone else. This kind of system would make it easier for workers who performed work recently to catch up to the balances of very wealthy people, as they would periodically get raises to their income. It would also be easier to charge people a flat wealth tax than a progressive wealth tax, because it would not be as important to keep track of whether two different bank accounts actually belonged to the same person. Instead, all bank account balances and prices would be reduced by the same percentage, or have the same number of digits removed at the end.
Even though I have been using the terminology of referring to a wealth tax, I am picturing that many things in society would be automatically adjusted to accommodate the change in bank balances as a consequence of the wealth tax in order to make it similar to a redenomination. For example, loan amounts and prices would also automatically be changed. This seems like it would naturally occur anyway for things like prices due to the fact that people would have lower bank balances in order to bid on things available in limited quantities, however it might need to be specifically handled for things like loans. Alternatively we could call it a redenomination, and come up with a way to do a progressive redenomination if we wanted something like a progressive wealth tax. Perhaps it could be a redenomination plus providing additional money to people with less money, if we wanted a progressive wealth tax. This would essentially mean having a progressive UBI based on wealth in addition to the redenomination.
In order to track all of the money that was available in the economy and to know all of the bank balances of everyone in the population in order to charge a wealth tax, perhaps something similar to the existing cryptocurrencies could be used. For cryptocurrencies, the balance of every bank account is something that is usually recorded in the blockchain.
For taxes which are not primarily charged for the purpose of funding government activities, and are instead charged in order to influence behaviour, for example a carbon tax, these taxes are not related to the system that I described and it makes sense for them to continue to be charged.
This system seems like it has some appealing benefits, as I like the idea of work being optional, as well as the idea that I could run my own business and try to make money from others without very much difficulty. It seems like it would be much easier to run a business because people would likely be very willing to spend the points that they had received which were close to expiring. It is possible that some people might try to take advantage of the system, for example by having their friends pay them for services using their points in order to receive real currency, and in return being paid back using the same method. However, this kind of behaviour seems like it might be acceptable in small amounts. There might have to be some kind of government agency responsible for checking to make sure that the services that were claimed to be provided for the points were actually provided.
I recommend also reading the page I wrote on automating work. If work is made optional due to the fact that the services that I describe on this page are available for free, then we might need more automation in order to replace the jobs of people who are currently only doing their jobs because they have no other choice.