You’re absolutely right Alan. Douglas was such a clear thinking person. His insights that money was basically accounting far pre-dated Mosler’s MMT and his Universal Dividend justified as a part of our cultural inheritance of technological and productive advance is something advocates of UBI still have not recognized. However, Douglas was born into classical economics and its concept of monetary and economic equillibrium and he also lived before the concept of paradigm/pattern change was elucidated by Kuhn. Hence he never suggested we make the CRP a high percentage that would make the benefits thereof a true dialectical thirdness of a higher monetary and purchasing power disequillibrium. That innovation which is my 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale. I give Douglas full credit as per above, but I like to think that I am Douglas’ Kepler whose discovery of elliptical orbits is what actually made Copernicun helio-centrism more accurate than Ptolemaic geo-centrism.
…is a very important tool and abstraction that the monetary authority can create as much of as is necessary or it wants to…to resolve a monetary problem. The FED proved that in 2008. That means the central bank could fund 50% of government expenses and so cut taxation by 50%. It also means that it could fund 50% of total national retail sales by directly distributing that total back to economic and financial merchants who gave consumers a 50% Discount at that same point in the economic process thus resolving inflation by implementing beneficial price and asset deflation. The effect also doubles both the purchasing power of individuals and the potential demand for every merchant’s goods and services so it is utterly compelling to all economic agents. This is the indisputable “miracle” of the nature of money and of the trinitarian result of double entry bookkeeping’s operation of equal debits and credits that sum to zero.
The 50% Discount/Rebate policy at regular consumer retail sale and the retail point of finance (one’s mortgage, automobile, insurance or other big ticket item’s monthly payment…a new monetary paradigm in a single policy and the best friend forever of everyone and every merchant as well…including the private banks.
Debt jubilee is an excellent thing, but its also just a one-off palliative that still allows finance to dominate everyone because it doesn’t change the monopoly monetary and economic paradigm that finance wields, namely the concept of Debt Only as the sole form and vehicle for the creation and distribution of all new money. Integrate the new monetary and economic paradigm of Strategic Monetary Gifting into the Debt Only system with its primary policy of a 50% Discount/Rebate at retail sale. Learn about it and the rest of the new paradigm’s policy program here https://wisdomicsblog.com/ and my book here: https://www.amazon.com/Wisdomics-Gracenomics-New-Monetary-Paradigm-Policies-ebook/dp/B0C49B9PX7/ref=monarch_sidesheet_title#
Being both a pill popper and a UFO, now UAP buff, this podcast is like a supercharged chemical synthesis that has raised my dopamine level higher than a nicotine patch. Good on both of you. Yes Dr. Greer is verbose, but its a multi-facted topic after all, and his oligarchic scenario rings utterly true to me. I’ve enjoyed your podcasts for years Dave, and this is one the top ones. Speaking of deep things and syntheses integrating the seeming opposites of human consciousness and the electro-magnetic flux emanating from the cosmic zero point is probably the ultimate human experience as well as what all of the world’s wisdom traditions point at and urge us to attain, i.e. the experience of god as in graciousness/loving experience, intention and action. The experience of Grace/graciousness is the height of wisdom and its integrative fruits are a kind of cosmic code. I invite you to check out my book here: Wisdomics-Gracenomics: The Transformation of Economics and Creating An Everyday, Universally Participated In Infrastructure For The Self Actualization Of Gratitude https://www.amazon.com/Wisdomics-Gracenomics-New-Monetary-Paradigm-Policies-ebook/dp/B0C49B9PX7/ref=monarch_sidesheet_title and my blog Wisdomicsblog.com here: https://wisdomicsblog.com/
Yes double entry bookkeeping is a wonderful tool. However its moniker is actually a misnomer because it neglects the fact that it is a trinitarian process which is equal 1) debits and 2) credits that sum to/result in 3) zero.
Unconscious, obsessive and/or false duality is the curse word of the human mindset and of human history, and not recognizing the monetary and economic trinitarian beneficial results of a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at the points of regular consumer retail sale and the retail point of finance, i.e. one’s mortgage, automobile, insurance or other big ticket item’s monthly payment…falls into that same dualistic trap.
With the 50% Discount/Rebate at regular consumer and financial retail sale inflation is resigned to the dust bin of history and universally secure monetary and economic democracy is basically accomplished. Hence, the present speculative nature and criteria for bonds and their rates can instead be tied directly to more rational and ethical purposes…like addressing the energy and ecological crises converging upon us all.
So pardon me, but fuck all of the libertarian falderal about the importance of the bond market and their rates.
Wisdomics-Gracenomics is the answer to universal economic security and stability. Full stop. However, no matter how much economic security one has, if they don’t also have a positive constructive purpose, they’re going to end up being an unhappy son of a bitch. Therefore, find your positive constructive purpose (PCP) and let that also be the goal of government and private entities.
Addendum: Social Security is the most enduring economic palliative and as a result it became the “third rail” of politics IOW if you tried to diminish it you were dead politically. But there is a world of difference between a palliative and a paradigm change, neah, a mega-paradigm change like Wisdomics-Gracenomics. Politicians! Wisdomics-Gracenomics is the new third rail of politics!
Trump is a total idiot that is for sure, but the libertarian obsession with austerity and pain is only one step above his stupidity.
The truth: Deficits don’t matter because they are revenue and thus a part of GDP. Only problem is they are revenue for only the banks and the wealthy who can afford to buy the treasuries. Democratize the revenue to buy them.
Inflation? Not with a policy of a 50% Discount/Rebate at retail sale which enables $4.50/gallon gas to be purchased for $2.25 and a $500k house for $250k and yet the home builder gets their full price with the rebate aspect of the policy.
Increased Taxes? Nope. Just mandate that the FED pay for 90% of the government deficit thus reducing total taxes by 90%
When you intellectually break through and start analyzing conceptually/paradigmatically you begin to realize that concept/paradigm changes resolve formerly thought of unresolvable opposites and invalidate old orthodoxies
Wisdom is the intellectual process of integrating and resolving opposites, and the beneficial aspects of every historical paradigm change have always been an aspect or aspects of the natural philosophical concept of grace, in this case grace as in the free gift of price/purchasing power.
Wisdomics-Gracenomics the new monetary and economic paradigm policy program.
AT: Your whole argument rests on the GDP being the ultimate variable that describes an economy. I’d argue that is bunk.
Me: Not correct. Its based on purchasing power at the very point of purchase itself. Model the freshman algebra of -50% discount at retail sale to the individual agent + rebate of the total of 50% discounts back to the merchant until you see that this single policy is the greatest progression of profit making economic systems since sea shells were money.
Its become sport for me to come here and prove that the biggest problem humans have is not realizing that changing one’s mind is simultaneously the easiest and most difficult thing to do. Easy if you actually look at the effects of a new applied idea/paradigm concept, and impossible if you’re stuck in your head with an old orthodoxy that the new paradigm invalidates.
Will is the answer to your malady, and the aspects of the natural philosophical concept of grace are the beneficial effects behind every historical paradigm change. Thats the new science of paradigmology. Just call me Copernicus and maybe also Plato or Socrates.
rjd: Forthwith, I shall call you ‘Descartes’
Me: Don’t know if that was meant to be a compliment or an insult. Descartes’ dualism is a reality, but the whole truth is trinity/thirdness greater oneness of a duality as in Hegel’s thesis, antithesis and synthesis which is the intellectual process of wisdom and the signature of historical paradigm changes.
Quatloo: Just don’t put him in front of the horse.
Me: Yes, that might result in forward movement as in permanent progress/paradigm change. Those who are right only in their own minds are indeed the perfect example of the cart before the horse.
JD: GDP “growth” is already mostly the issuance of new debt.
Me: True. And thats why the answer to that problem is Strategic Monetary Gifting.
AO: I think you would be wiser to stick to cleaning windows.
Me: I indeed at one time owned and operated a boutique residential window cleaning service. The irony is that my moniker is also a reference to Huxley’s book The Doors of Perception which is a treatise on Blake’s quote: “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” [1]
Synchronicities are meaningful coincidences.
LM: Glad you cleared that up. Your ideas makes you sound like a window licker. Seriously. Maybe you can get away with this with Ai robots doing all of our work for us some day. But are you suggesting that 50% markup can be simply erased? Markup represents the middleman’s cost. Having a storefront, website, or a physical business location does not come for free. By your logic everyone could take a 60% haircut, or 70%, 80%. Then everyone is closer to working for free. I gotta call BS. Check your real math. Map it out on a chalk board. See where it all goes. My guess is you’re not summing all the forces at work.
Me: There is no 50% mark up. Its a 50% discount to ultimate price because retail sale is the point where production exits the economy and becomes consumption, yet with the central bank rebating every cent of the merchant’s discounts back to them they are made whole on their entire price…so no moral hazard there. And what libertarians dream about, namely deflation becomes the reality. Plus it doubles everyone’s purchasing power which is what enterprise would love to see happen. It out profitability’s capitalism and out economic democracy’s socialism…because its a thirdness greater oneness of the obsessive alligance to orthodoxy on both sides of that duality.
Mish: Fuck your MMT or whatever it is wisdomomics
Me: Mish, Mish…I expected a little more scholarly response than that, or at least a non-response. Did you actually model the policy with the central bank rebating the merchant’s discounts back to them so they’re made whole on their full price? Also, did you understand that all of that rebate is debt free money so no “national” debt increases, and it implements price deflation? Thats libertarianism without all the pain, less all of the unworkability of “free” market orthodoxy, less all of the domination by Finance’s monopoly paradigm of Debt Only.
I think you guys who are so resistant to being able to buy $100 worth of groceries for $50 or buy a $500k house for $250k will resist until your wives catch up to you and hit you over the head with a rolling pin at which point you grow a couple more brain cells and say: “Hey, this really IS a great deal! I’m on that bandwagon!”
Me: I have never argued that over indebtedness is not a problem. IT IS THE PROBLEM. Private over indebtedness, not “national” debt, that is. And that is because of Finance’s monopoly paradigm for the creation and distribution of new money which is DEBT ONLY, and logically and applied idea/paradigmatically that means that integrating Strategic Monetary Gifting into the Debt Only system…IS THE ANSWER.
PD: Stop being such a lightweight. 50% discount? No way. I want it all for free. Make the government rebate the retailer 100%.
So the house builder gets all his materials for free. He pays his workers nothing. Sells the house for nothing. And the buyer pays nothing.
Perfect. We all live in mansions, drive Ferraris, get our food and necessities for free. It’s the Window Cleaner’s Golden Age.
Now. When are you going to imeplement this miracle system? It sounds so much better than Trump’s Golden Age.
Me: Don’t put your words and non-economic thinking in my mouth. The 50% Discount/Rebate at retail sale is exquisitely economically valid and relevant to the system’s deepest problem…the monopoly monetary paradigm wielded by Finance.
Me: This sure has been fun. It will probably end up as a chapter entitled Owning The Overly Orthodox in my book The New Study of Paradigmology.
And remember, there’s never been anything wrong with the idea or the practice of Gifting because after all, it elicits grace as in gratitude.
Orthodoxies trap you squarely in Plato’s cave while the flow of nowness and continual newness of grace leads you to the surface where a deeper reality can be experienced.
Social Credit/Wisdomics/Gracenomics/ Gracientialism 