iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Nov 14th, 2026 The Greshm Institute is excited to announce the first-ever Symposium on the Economics of UBI. The online symposium will discuss the economic theory of UBI and explore its implications for monetary economics and macroeconomics. www.greshm.org/symposium/

greshm.org

UBI Symposium

Saturday, November 14th, 2026 REGISTER HERE TO ATTEND THE SYMPOSIUM Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a regular income paid unconditionally to every person. The Greshm Institute is proud to announce the...

020

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Come to my lightning talk in 45 minutes! **UBI and the end of Labor-Centric Economic Theory**

020

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

The Money View Reading Group is starting George Pantelopoulos's "Between Payments and Credit: An Introduction to the IOU Economy." Our first session is this coming Tuesday, March 10th, at 2pm EDT. ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-... Come join!

ysi.ineteconomics.org

Money View Reading Group - YSI INET

The Money View Reading Group reads and discusses writings on money, banking, and finance. We are a self-directed group. Anyone interested in money and banking can read the readings, join […]

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

I recently joined Julian Vigo on her Savage Minds podcast to discuss UBI and jobs (and MMT). savageminds.substack.com/p/alex-howlett

savageminds.substack.com

Alex Howlett

S5E43

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

I wrote a guest blog post for the Feasta blog. "People need money. They don’t need to be exploited. And we certainly don’t need to pretend to exploit people as an excuse to hand them money." www.feasta.org/2026/01/30/b...

feasta.org

Beyond the Artist Subsidy: Universal Basic Income as a Radical Shift in How People Receive Their Money – Feasta

020

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

In my new working paper, "Keynesianism's Labor Problem," I argue that thinking of people as workers leads us to get economic theory wrong. This is a revised version of what I presented at the BIEN Congress in Brazil www.greshm.org/files/2025-1...

greshm.org

100

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

The Money View Reading Group is starting a new book! Our first session on Calomiris and Haber's "Fragile By Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit" (2014) is this coming Monday, November 17th, at 2pm EST. ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-... Come join!

ysi.ineteconomics.org

Money View Reading Group - YSI INET

The Money View Reading Group reads and discusses writings on money, banking, and finance. We are a self-directed group. Anyone interested in money and banking can read the readings, join […]

010

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

The Money View Reading Group is starting a new book! Our first session on Giovanni Arrighi's "The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times" ([1994] 2010) is next Monday, October 20th, at 2pm EDT. ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-... Come join!

020

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

I have a new blog post on the difference between Guaranteed Income and Universal Basic Income. "Treating the symptoms of a broken system is a far different project from radically restructuring the system itself." www.greshm.org/blog/guarant...

greshm.org

Guaranteed Income Is Not UBI

In his final book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Martin Luther King, Jr. called for direct cash as a solution to poverty. He wanted to guarantee that every person had sufficient incom...

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

Next Tuesday, August 12th, at 4 pm EDT, The Money View Reading Group is starting Kenneth Rogoff's new book, "Our Money, Your Problem: An Insider's View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance." Come join! ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-...

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

Does UBI solve a problem, or does it serve a function? UBI allows us to distribute money while allocating labor more efficiently. "The more efficiently we can exploit people, the less we have to exploit them."

greshm.org

What Problem Does UBI Solve?

Ask ten different people what problem Universal Basic Income solves, and you’ll get ten different answers. Scott Santens could probably give you a hundred. This is understandable: A world with UBI dif...

020

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

If you're serious about environmental impact, then you should be serious about UBI. "Have we unwittingly been overemploying ourselves and overworking our economy, incurring costs to markets and our environment, yet receiving fewer benefits in return?" www.greshm.org/blog/ubi-and...

greshm.org

UBI and the Environmental Cost of Overemployment

Imagine for a moment that we paused all economic growth. The pie isn’t getting bigger, but it isn’t getting smaller either. Now, imagine we invent an efficiency improvement—some new technology. This ...

020

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

"Everyone has their own individual balance of payments: the time pattern of locked-in cash flows and cash commitments. When money is tighter in the market as a whole, those with payments deficits drive up the money rate of interest by bidding for funds."

survivalconstraint.com

1:1 The Money Market

Smoothing Over Payments Deficits

010

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

The Money View Reading Group is starting a new book! Our first session on Fernand Braudel's "The Wheels of Commerce" (1982) is this coming Tuesday, May 6th at 4pm EDT. ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-... Come join!

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

"Individual countries want to believe that they can control their own monetary systems, but they don't have their own monetary systems. There is one system: a global system."

survivalconstraint.com

1:1 Money Is Global

The Myth of Monetary Sovereignty

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

"As long as cash commitments are easy to meet, people will continue entering into new cash commitments. The web will grow more tangled. The dominos will get closer together. This continues right up to the point of financial crisis."

survivalconstraint.com

The System Is Fragile

Promises Breed Instability

010

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

My colleague Derek Van Gorder has written a new working paper explaining the idea of Calibrated Basic Income. There's a level of UBI that maximally helps the economy serve the people. Let's find it. www.greshm.org/files/2025-0...

greshm.org

010

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

"Money, in its ideal platonic form, is a credit claim. Commodity monies such as gold are merely an approximation of that ideal."

survivalconstraint.com

Money as Credit

The Purest Money Is Paper

120

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

The Money View Reading Group is starting a new book! Our first session on "The Empire of Value" by André Orléan (2014) is Tuesday, March 25th at 4pm EDT. ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-... Come join!

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

"Centralization is natural. Money and banking connect everything. Labeling the economy as distinct public and private sectors doesn't change that. Beneath the labels, the monetary system is all one thing."

survivalconstraint.substack.com

Public-Private Monetary Hybridity

Money as a Creature of the Market

010

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

Phil Jackson's Talk from BIEN Congress 2024: Why Basic Income Is Cooler Than You Think "If automation is hurting people, then that has to mean that there is something wrong with the economy itself."

youtu.be

Why Basic Income (UBI) Is Cooler Than You Think — Phil Jackson @ BIEN Congress: — August 31, 2024

YouTube video by The Greshm Institute

011

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

It takes two (at least) to transact. If we want to wrap our heads around money and banking, we need to learn how to think in terms of transactions.

survivalconstraint.substack.com

Transactions

It Takes Two

010

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

New Post! The four payment types are the fundamental building blocks for understanding all balance sheet operations.

survivalconstraint.substack.com

Four Ways to Pay

Representing Payment Types

010

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

"Prices come from markets made by market-makers providing liquidity. And liquidity lets people meet their payment commitments to satisfy their survival constraint."

survivalconstraint.substack.com

Market-Makers Make Markets

Rethinking Supply and Demand

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

New post! We can compensate for a payments deficit by dishoarding money (monetary liquidity), borrowing (funding liquidity), or liquidating assets (market liquidity).

survivalconstraint.substack.com

Gap Liquidity

Money, Funding, and Markets

010

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

New post! Perry Mehrling's money view perceives assets and liabilities as time patterns of future cash flows and commitments. We lose this information when we try to calculate the net worth of a balance sheet or aggregate balance sheets into sectors. survivalconstraint.substack.com/p/balancing-...

survivalconstraint.substack.com

Balancing Act

Lining Up Cash Flows in Time

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

I've started a new Substack to supplement Perry Mehrling's "money view" framework and his 2012 Economics of Money and Banking lectures. Check out the first post!

survivalconstraint.substack.com

Settle or Die

Payment, Liquidity, and Survival

010

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

INET's Young Scholars Initiative is organizing the 5th annual online Money View Symposium from February 14th to 16th. If you'd like to present, please submit an abstract by January 12th! ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-...

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

On Saturday, I had the privilege of exchanging ideas about Universal Basic Income with Steve Keen and friends, fellow travelers who have different visions of how to improve humanity's prospects. @scottsantens.com @michaelalewis10.bsky.social @karlwiderquist.bsky.social @theubiguy.bsky.social

youtube.com

YouTube

Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

381

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Hey everyone! I'll be discussing Universal Basic Income on Steve Keen's streaming show on Saturday at 12pm EST. Tune in and ask questions!

043

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

Starting tomorrow (Nov 12th) at 4pm EST, the Money View Reading Group will be discussing "A Monetary and Fiscal History of the United States 1961–2021" by Alan Blinder (2022). ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-... Come join!

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 26/09/2024

Reducing the incentive to work is not the same thing as reducing productivity. If people are over-incentivized to work, then reducing the work incentive will increase productivity.

011

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 26/09/2024

It's not a radical idea to expect jobs to pay enough to cover rent and other basic expenses. A radical idea would be to realize that this expectation doesn't make sense.

021

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 25/09/2024

The dysfunction in our money distribution system stems from our expectation that people should "earn" a living. It causes us to artificially stimulate both labor supply and labor demand.

021

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 23/09/2024

It's normal not to want to do the kind of work that we have to pay people to do. That's why we have to pay for it in the first place.

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 23/09/2024

Universal Basic Income is compatible with neoliberalism in the sense that it helps the market better serve the people and society. If you're a neoliberal trying to use UBI as a Trojan Horse to dismantle the welfare state, you're using it wrong.

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 22/09/2024

Starting on October 1st at 4pm EDT, the Money View Reading Group will be discussing "Birth of a Market: The U.S. Treasury Securities Market from the Great War to the Great Depression" by Kenneth Garbade (2012). ysi.ineteconomics.org/event/money-... Come join!

ysi.ineteconomics.org

Money View Reading Group – YSI INETVirtual ProjectVirtual Projectproject Seriesproject SeriesVirtual Project

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 20/09/2024

Nobody should be entitled to a job, let alone any particular wage.

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 20/09/2024

Universal Basic Income doesn't mean that workers are paying non-workers to be lazy. It means that the government is paying everyone instead of forcing people to work unproductive jobs.

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 18/09/2024

Instead of the Fed lowering interest rates today, we could have had a Universal Basic Income.

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 18/09/2024

We all depend on the government for money distribution. But instead of just handing people money, the government stimulates the financial sector to generate wages for people. Those wages and the jobs that pay them are not necessary for efficient labor allocation.

000

Alex Howlett @alexhowlett.bsky.social · 16/09/2024

I wonder if the folks who suggest that people get jobs instead of Universal Basic Income understand that they're advocating using fake jobs as an excuse to hand people money.

000