Neither labor nor capital are free. If you want to donate yours, I'm sure they could plant a few extra trees. But those resources need to come from somewhere, and they aren't unlimited.
> Maybe if it wasnt suck by funding hyperinflated bogus military tech… there would trees.
US military spending for 2024 was approximately $850 billion. Let's say we put all of that money into one of those $1-per-tree charities. That is 850 billion trees taking up around 7.98 million km^2 at typical planting densities. This is about 2/3 of total US land area. Maybe we can get some more value for money at scale and plant 1.275 trillion trees covering the entire US land area instead.
Once all those trees are grown, they would absorb anywhere from 10kg-25kg of CO2 per year. That's about 12 to 31 gigatons per year for all of the US land area.
The world currently generates ~41 gigatons of CO2 per year.
The just-plant-trees "solution" doesn't really work.
> Do you really think Las Vegas is cash strapped so that they can't afford it?
I've been to Las Vegas a handful of times, and it's really striking how much poverty exists there.
To be clear, I'm European and even Los Angeles or San Francisco are dystopian from my perspective; but Las Vegas is much better at keeping it out of tourist areas and it goes unreported because of it. I don't know a single person in Las Vegas who is living the middle-class lifestyle comparable to my friends in New Jersey, Philly, LA or Seattle.
Statistics be damned, because likely there's massive inequality that's pushing those numbers up.
They are both free when you are the one who prints the money. Governments can definitely afford to plant trees, even though I agree that it won't solve the problem.
Printing money (monetary inflation) is essentially just a stealth tax on everyone who holds or earns dollars. I'm not opposed to increased government spending on mitigating climate change but let's be honest about it and budget for it properly rather than wrecking our currency.
Interestingly, that’s exactly where this mantra is false.
Printing money for projects that benefit the greater good does not create any inflation and costs barely anything to anyone.
Print 100 for no reason and give it to the economy and for sure you create inflation. Print 100 and plant a tree, you just have a tree and a worker who get paid for doing real work.
But everyone gets a tree.
Printing money shouldn’t be seen as a crime in the context of climate change. But it must only be directed towards everyone benefit like public infrastructure projects that will stay public forever.
Bonus : great infrastructure reduces a lot of other costs and boosts the economy.
Not agreeing with either side here, but, printing money and handing it to an investment class who then launders it through their companies, to acquire more assets vs printing money that goes into infrastructure, works projects, or R&D are wildly different.
Not all monetary inflation is the same, and the destination of the money and the work produced with it can actually have quite an impact on the true wider economic effects of that increased money supply.
To be very clear, I'm not saying monetary policy is magical, or that it doesn't cause inflation.
It has very little to do with "things you like" and a lot more to do with "utility to society accomplished with the policy" along with the velocity of that money afterwards in local economies (IE. a worker is more likely to buy, well, food and rent, education. A PPP loaned exec will buy assets, or another yacht)
Believe it or not, one of those can generate more widespread economic growth than the other, for the same amount of money printed
> They're identical from the perspective of creating inflation, even though they might have different outcomes
That will only hold true if you look at only the singular issue:
Printing money while not changing economic output increases it's availability and thus decreases it's purchasing power, which we call inflation.
However: if the money goes towards things like clean air and other infrastructure, there are suddenly less things you need to pay for (clean air, water, cooling in summer, cost of transportation become cheaper), which effectively leaves more money for you to spend on wants, offsetting the effect of inflation partially/fully.
Another effect is that correct public can increase overall value generated (think: "nice, with cheaper transportation my home sales business is now viable and contributes to the value/tax pool"), so the "new" money can become backed by real value, again offsetting the loss of spending power for the average Joe.
I agree that if you add more variables that counter the effect then the effect will be countered. But that seems tangential to whether you pay for something by printing more money vs another means. If you use another means you don't inflate the currency, and you decrease inflation, leading to a better outcome.
Spending on things like infrastructure or R&D might in theory increase productivity by more than it increases money supply, in which case it would not result in inflation.
It's not on "things they like" it's on productive output.
Because as long as the folks who buy your Countries bonds believe you are spending the money in a way that will eventually return on the investment, your bonds are still valuable and you con continue spending on projects.
> Printing money (monetary inflation) is essentially just a stealth tax on everyone who holds or earns dollars.
Of course it is. My point is someone doesn't need to donate labour or capital to make this happen. Governments, not people, should be the ones who are doing it.
