Thought experiment: If this actually happened, how would it play out? What would you do?
Most people would stop going to work. So now what? How are you going to buy anything? Everyone quit, because they all have half a million bucks. What you don’t have is any food, electricity, water, or anything else that you need.
You see a guy with some food, so you offer him money for some of his food. He doesn’t want your money, he has half a million bucks and sandwiches. You are hungry, so you eventually get to the point where you offer him $50,000 for one of those sandwiches. Others see this and do the same.
Now dude is selling $50,000 sandwiches, but has no one to help make more. So he tries to hire someone, but because sandwiches are so expensive, he has to pay $45,000 per hour. Still, people do it because they need more money to buy things at the newer, higher prices. I mean, everyone is using their $500,000 a year to outbid everyone else. Prices are crazy high.
Now we have a nation of millionaires who are all paying $50,000 for a sandwich.
That’s how increases in the minimum wage work.
16 Comments
Paul M. Jones · November 10, 2025 at 1:35 pm
>But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
>And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
— https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_copybook.htm
SP RN · November 10, 2025 at 3:48 pm
He reveals a monumental illiteracy about economics. Rather than the peaceful Eden he visualized, it would pretty quickly be blood in the streets: why would I sell you my food if I don’t need your money? You want it, try taking it. Chaos.
Danny · November 10, 2025 at 5:18 pm
That’s just more online pap.
Honk Honk · November 10, 2025 at 5:40 pm
property is theft.
TRX · November 10, 2025 at 7:47 pm
“It’s only money. You just print more of it.”
— Rep. Alexandra Ocrazio-Cortex
Boneman · November 11, 2025 at 6:04 am
Yeah… the “Dark Side” of “A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats”.
Anonymous · November 11, 2025 at 8:18 am
The Biden administration tried a smaller dollar version of that with the stimulus money. People didn’t like the resulting double digit inflation and are now waiting for “prices to come down”.
SiG · November 11, 2025 at 8:51 am
I tend to think this isn’t so much his idea, but one of those things the real nutcase fans of AI spread around. There’s no going to be such a thing as work. Every job will be done better, faster, cheaper by AI.
It’s one of the reasons I think this is the biggest con job in human history. I still don’t see any reasonable way we come up with generating all the electricity we would need to run this. I’ve seen estimates from the equivalent of 10 nuclear power stations for one data center up to many times the size of the power grid.
JimmyPx · November 11, 2025 at 1:45 pm
This is basically Universal basic income where everyone gets a set amount of money every month no questions asked.
Proponents say “people will become artists, musicians, etc and will do great things unshackled by having to work every day”.
It’s been tried, what happened ?
People laid on their ass and did nothing but watch TV, play video games, get high and drunk.
The problem is that most humans by their nature are lazy and work because they HAVE to not because they WANT to. Those who disagree, ask yourself “If I win the Super lotto and $100 million are you going to keep working” ?
This is why s0cialism doesn’t work, if everything is free why work ?
To remedy this the state forces you to work and always becomes a police state and forms gulags where slave labor performs much of the work done.
Botan · November 11, 2025 at 1:46 pm
We would be the Weimer Republic or worse in 6 months. Imagine you/they get $500K. They go the the grocery store only to find it closed because all the workers quit because they got $500K. Anybody willing to work would be charging $10,000+/hr, bread would be $100. Worker bees need other worker bees. I believe someone noted years ago that if all wealth was spread equally that within a few years the same wealth would again have “all the wealth again”. Ever notice many of the people who “hit the lottery” are worse off in 2 years or less? There are people that know how to handle money and those that don’t and most people don’t!
Phil B · November 11, 2025 at 5:04 pm
Within about two months, you will again have millionaires and people in poverty. The ones in poverty would spend the cash on booze, drugs, eating out, fancy holidays abroad and go broke.
What would I do? I’d buy sugar, yeast, barley and a load of 55 gallon drums. I’d brew beer and/or distill spirits and take all the money from those that wanted to drink themselves into an early grave and quickly become a millionaire, employing people to do the work.
Then when the Government came along and took all my money because I was a rich, bloated capitalist, I’d have learned my lesson and would buy land with the next half a million dollars …
It is a mind set. I regard money as a tool to make money (buy equipment, supplies, set up a business) while others regard it as a means of not working and living the high life. I know people that earn a lot more than me but are constantly “broke”. However they do eat out two or three times a week and what is a nice restaurant meal without a $200 bottle of wine? Or two or three foreign holidays a year, or the latest $1500 smartphone or change their brand new car every two years … But I’m the lucky one that owns my house outright, lives frugally and drive a 25 year old car (I don’t need a better one) and should “share”. Yeah, right …
Don Curton · November 12, 2025 at 9:27 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8LroCgg3uc
I think Chappelle already covered this in detail.
Elrod · November 13, 2025 at 3:33 pm
“How to create lots of rich poor people in one easy step. Film at eleven.”
Exile1981 · November 16, 2025 at 12:22 pm
If everyone got 500k from the gov’t… I would spend it fast. The sudden increase in money supply will crash the dollar value overnight. First pay off every debt, second prepay property taxes for next year. Third buy an extra set of spare tires for each vehicle, including the tractor and skid steer.
Triple the food stores i have on hand, lots of other supplies. All of those items will skyrocket in price as the market reacts to the hyper inflation, keeping any of the 500k in paper currency is a bad idea.
Divemedic · November 16, 2025 at 1:26 pm
With what’s left, buy physical metals. All of them, even copper will greatly increase in value.
Exile1981 · November 19, 2025 at 10:34 am
Lead, copper, brass, steel fairly inexpensive right now but will be much more expensive when cheap imports go away.
I’m a big fan of building with screws vs nails for every wood structure i’ve put up on my property as they are less likely to loosen up with years of seasonal temp swings; that said i stock cases of different nails because a nail is easier/ faster to put in without power.
A hardware store near me went out of business a year ago. They had 80% liquidation prices at the end. Everyone wanted the power tools but the hardware section was well stocked, i picked up 20lb plastic sealed square buckets of screws and nails for under $10 each, they stack and dont care if they freeze. Price on them has gone up $45 to $65 at other stores during this last year. Get them when they are cheap and while you can.
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