[badlucklottery]

> You can't create energy by printing money.

Yes but the energy crisis isn't evenly distributed across the world. NA, for example, is still doing relatively well. While Europe is being hit relatively hard by the shortage and will likely have to import from more expensive sources than previous years to make it through the winter.

[ALittleLight]

How would European governments printing more of their own currencies to give handouts to their citizens, resulting in inflation, resulting in their currencies becoming weaker, help buying energy from NA?

[simongray]

The energy has already been paid for since European countries have been overcharged for gas during most of 2022 in order to fill their storage to at least 80% before winter. Energy bills are usually paid by the quarter or by the year—not daily—so in some cases the worst part has yet to reach consumers.

Furthermore, the way the European electricity market works[1], other energy sources are also bid up when the price of gas increases iff this gas is needed to ensure supply in a given hour of the day. So we have been overcharged both directly (gas), mostly indirectly (electricity) and completely indirectly (goods inflation) throughout all of 2022. This is seriously hollowing out the budgets of some European families.

I don't agree that blanket handouts are the solution, but some kind of compensation is needed to those most exposed, otherwise they will sink into poverty.

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[1] : https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/markets-and-consumers/eu-...

[andrekandre]

  > European governments printing more of their own currencies to give handouts to their citizens, resulting in inflation

are you sure its printing?

couldn't they just tax it back from the wealthy in the end...?

[adrianN]

Not everyone gets the same amount of money, so that poorer people benefit from the scheme while richer people are more affected by the increased inflation.

[ALittleLight]

Rich people are less affected by inflation because they have access to investment opportunities that aren't as affected - for example, I'm sure German billionaires have money in American hedge funds. The middle class are most negatively affected by the tax of inflation because they have enough money that having the value of it reduced by inflation is meaningful, but they don't have sophisticated investment instruments to hedge against inflation.

This takes us back to what I wrote originally - why is inflation the way to do this as opposed to just tax and spend? That is, why not create a specific tax and implement that and use the proceeds to pay for poor people's energy? Money printing is just a dishonest way to sneak a tax in on people who might not recognize it as a tax.

[psd1]

The levers don't do exactly the same things; devaluing currency helps exports, for example.

There's also the political cost. I'm in favour of democracy in the ideal case, but obstructionism looks like a concern in some countries, people buy into lying spin and vote against their own interests, bills have their own cadence, and lawmakers are not always intellectual powerhouses. Case in point: the BoE reacted within hours to reduce the damage done by Liz Truss