Money, Money, Money

[rinkytink]

What would happen to the economy if everyone in say the UK, became millionaires overnight ?

[sft42]

This effect was described once in a book on economics i read. All that would happen in the very short term is that consumers would snap up goods with all the spare cash they had and the economy would get a very sudden jump start but this would be countered almost immediately by an instant rise in the price of all goods to allow retailers to take advantage of all the spare cash going round, with the long term effect of devaluing the pound and instabilising our economy. But basically it would level off in one country sooner or later but it could ? have a positive effect on the world economy as a whole. This is a very simplified view of a very tangled web with lots of other intermingled issues of tax revenues generated, imports and exports and multinational businesses and the like but any good economics course book will cover this or something similar.

[gmc2002]

Ah but you couldn't buy any goods because the shop assistants would be millionaires too and would have packed in their jobs !

[wildwood]

What a chaos! gmc2002 has picked up on the most important immediate effect. Lots of millionaires with heaps of rubbish by their door, overflowing toilets, no lekkie/gas, no bread, and who's gonna milk the cows????

[PaulYukochan]

but who would deliver the online purchases?

[Gef]

Stupid question and deserving of lots of stupid ansewrs!

[docklands77]

this question isn't as dumb as it sounds. gradually more and more millionaires in this country are being created. some have won their money as a result of the national lottery, others have earnt it through new businesses such as telecoms, new technology industries, share portfolio rises etc. one effect would certainly be that we would have to import labour from abroad as is happening now. how many people work in an office where the cleaners don't really speak english? because we can't get english people to do the job.