I agree with Dean that the dividend should guarantee a decent lifestyle. That way there is no “second class citizen” stigma attached to it. An economic equilibrium is relative and able to be balanced by the twin policies of Social Credit no matter what the amount as they are actually the anatomy of economic equilibrium themselves (a plus to individual incomes and a minus to retail prices) . To answer your question directly I estimated in my book for the dividend to be in $1500-2000 range because that way a household of two adults would be $36,000-48,000 per annum and a family of four could more than survive on that and they would of course also have the option of supplementing their supplement with employment …which with the dividend and discount would undoubtedly be more likely than now…without it. The dividend of course is variable and  could be somewhat lowered actuarially with the elimination of welfare and unemployment taxes which would become immediately redundant, and even social security taxes could be phased out eventually. So Take $36000 times half the number of individuals 18 and over which in a Google search I just did turns out to be about 108,800,000 and that equals 3.9168 trillion dollars per year. Considering that there is already a deficit of actually available spending, that the discount would mathematically eliminate inflation at any level of income, that further reduction in the dividend could be accomplished without loss of purchasing power by eliminating much of the money that is wasted in the economy,  that the increased profits of businesses from both the dividend and the rebated discount monies would substantially reduce their normal financial costs and finally the financial costs of the consumer will be greatly reduced as well making the ultimate relative amount of the dividend probably considerably less and yet still supportive of a middle class level of lifestyle.

A Distributive Economy Based on an Ethic of Grace and With Monetary Policies That Reflect Grace as in the Free Gift…The Natural Ally of Public Banking as a Structural Competitor of Private Banking and also as in a Central Bank That Truly Operates  in the Interests of the Individual. 

What is wrong with capitalism? And what is its evolutionary, not socialist and reactionary replacement? First of all, normally I’m not one to quibble over words so actually one could still call the following system capitalistic, but it would be a Distributive Capitalism, not the often cruel, onerous, unstable and ecologically rapacious Finance Capitalism we currently have. So you could just call it Distributism or Distributive Capitalism.

Capitalism is actually an anachronism, an appendix, an economic and social system which has gone on too long and that refuses to integrate with anything other than the wholly inadequate primary purposes of profit and power. Not that profit and even power are wrong in and of themselves, but if one integrates economic theory and aligns its philosophy and policies with a truly human and adequate primary purpose…profit and power will still exist within such a system, but they will be tempered if not transformed by the guidance of such adequate philosophy and policies.

So what is the philosophy and what are the policies of such a system? Well, as Wisdom is the integrative process and the pinnacle result of such integrative contemplation is a philosophy, an ethic and the experience of graciousness, then Grace and policies completely aligned with Grace are exactly the the idea and the paradigm we need to focus on. The major characteristics of the idea, the policies and the experience of Grace are balance, equilibrium and flow as in, “The dancer flowed gracefully across the dance floor in perfect balance and equilibrium.” That these same characteristics are the sine qua non and intended goals of economic theory is no coincidence. Such a system based primarily on Grace and its reflective policies would be a more human and encompassing philosophy and would not destroy, but rather evolve. And policies enacted that aligned with such a philosophy would immediately transform the system and end the reign of the asymmetrically powerful individuals and entities that currently “control” the present system. Finance which, in what is allegedly free market theory, enjoys a glaring monopoly on credit creation, and whose product and sole paradigm is Debt…would immediately have that monopoly balanced by policies aligned with an aspect of Grace, namely monetary grace the free gift to the individual. In sufficient quantity this would immediately transfer unextortable power to make policy/determine which economic entities would survive and those who would not…from a self interested elite into “the many hands of individuals.” With such policies in place it matters not whether everyone immediately sees the efficacy of such philosophy and policies. Wisdom after all by definition is the best, most ethical, most practical and yes the necessary guide for both individual development and systemic policy, and also the highest integration of both thinking and acting. Hence it cannot be irrelevant. The concept of Grace is not “pie in sky” but rather the signature, the hallmark and the result of the fully integrated personality,….and policies based on that same concept are powerful, ethical and necessary. Necessary? Yes, the one common denominator of every period of relative economic “good times” is more money actually available for the consumer to spend and so make the economy flow…and the lack of such readily available money is also the one common denominator of every economic downturn.

So enough of the mereness, the fragmentation and lack of clarity and alignment of economic theory with Humanity whose species designation is homo sapiens, wise and discerning man. Let us have Wisdom as our guide, because of ourselves and despite our flaws. A Distributive Wisdomics, a Gracenomics is the necessary, the liberating and the more fruitful future for the cynic, the oppressed and even the already powerful.

Now how does Public Banking factor into this economy? Just as the title of this post says, as a structural competitor to private Banking on the state level and as an intermediator of funds distributed for necessary infrastructure by a public Central Bank which also compiles, computes and distributes the monthly dividend and discount percentage…and so elevates the Public Banking concept to a higher level which truly serves the individual’s interests.

Ellen Brown: Thanks, $4 trillion is the sort of figure I was looking for. I don’t follow how we can prove it wouldn’t inflate prices though. What does this mean?

Me: That should have been stated: the discount would mathematically eliminate inflation at any level of dividend income.  The Discount mechanism of Social Credit is derived from a ratio of the total cost of what is purchased at retail sale over the total cost of production including all exported production and all interest charges in the same period of time. This is a macro-economic formula and a percentage discount  that is applied to every good and service at retail sale. This an unobtrusive and non-manipulative kind of price control because the merchant is allowed to find his price before it is applied and the total discounts the merchant gives to the consumer are completely rebated back to them (the merchants). To the consternation of libertarian pundits this mechanism totally refutes and proves incorrect their irrational fear of central planning. It also mathematically eliminates any inflation because it monetarily balances the costs of consumption and production. Now, because of the amount of waste that takes place in the economy, it is unlikely that asset inflation will outstrip the discount percentage, but even if it did it would be a simple matter to tax the entities that inflated their prices above that rate, and it would be perilous for merchants to inflate their prices beyond such rate…because their competition could then just under bid them and acquire their market share. It’s a very gracious, win-win policy for  the consumer, for businesses and for the overall stability of the economy. In fact it’s a non-dominating way of offering businesses “an offer they cannot refuse.”

Response to a question by Ellen Brown on another thread: “Why did Varoufakis back off from that proposal?”

Me: If you’re a member of a left wing (or right wing) political party you have to submit to their mindset and their agenda.

On the other hand if your agenda is primarily implementing policies that will accomplish and maintain individual economic freedom and systemic freeflowingness, even over and above maintaining power and control, …you don’t have to submit to such elitist stupidities.

Scott Baker:  “Several writers, including me, have been saying for a long time now that Greece cannot survive unless it introduces some form of complimentary currency….”

Me:  A complimentary currency is again, a nascent recognition of a scarcity of individual income, and no its not just during times of economic downturn. The continual injection of money by the Banks in the form of loans tends to obscure and palliate the inherent scarcity, but it never actually equates costs and incomes with which to liquidate prices. Why? Because loans obviously incur an additional cost to both the enterprise and the system…which then just gets passed along to the individual in the form of cost push price inflation. You have to short circuit this inherent price inflation by directly gifting the individual….which solves the individual’s scarcity and does not incur an additional cost to him, to the enterprise or to the system.

Rent of course being a diminution to the circular flow of money is an aspect of the Gap (the gap consists of both excess costs and reduction of money to the circular flow as well as wasted effort like for instance the titanic waste of defense spending which could probably be halved without diminishing security) so eliminating the Gap with a universal dividend and a retail discount would compensate for all diminutions and excess costs….and because of the discount there would actually end up being falling prices due to innovation. All of the valid insights (but none of the invalid conclusions of some of these theories) of Georgism, Marxism, Keynesianism of whatever stripe, DSGE, etc. are compensated for by Social Credit’s more underlying and monetary paradigm changing and transforming policies. All of these thinkers deserve credit for correct observations, but why settle for mere palliation and why not unite behind the deeper, more encompassing and total solution?????

Public Banking is also a valid insight, and actually that insight that deals with the most asymmetrically powerful aspect of the systemic problem…the dominating and manipulating monopoly powers enjoyed by the business model of Finance. A synthesis of the Social Credit insight and the expansion and elevation of the goals of Public Banking from only public state banking to both state banking and a truly Public central Bank that disburses the monies for the dividend and discount and also disburses/regulates on a rational ethic basis the funds for the individual banks to lend.

Transformation First! Rational and ethical regulation…right along with it!

Response to Gary A:  The Eurozone will likely keep funding the Greek banks. If they don’t, and the ATMs are shut off, then Greece will have to fund the banks with Drachmas. If that happens, the Greek bonds, Billions of dollars of them, that were used as pristine collateral in swaps deals and loans, up until Feb, 2015, would all be worthless. Billions upon billions upon billions of dollars in swaps could be in danger. The holders of the bad swaps, the risky swaps, would have to put up billions more in collateral and if they couldn’t, it would be a panic. A Euro panic.

Me:  Inflation is actually mostly of the cost/push variety. All of the paranoia about monetary inflation is just Banker’s hype. As Steven Zarlenga exposed in his book The Lost Science of Money it was the compliant central bank of Germany who lent money to speculators who then shorted the Deutsche Mark that led to hyperinflation. What needs to happen is the complementary currency/social credit needs to happen and then reformers here and in Europe and Greece need to immediately and loudly scream bloody murder if the ECB, FED and/or Greek central bank lends to unethical and greedy “whales” in order to “prove” the bugaboo of monetary inflation.

What also needs to happen is any swaps etc. already on the books need to be unwound between the banks and the individuals/institutions that made them…without attempts to save such individuals/institutions by bailing in the mass of the populace. If this results in Banks and individuals going bankrupt…fine. The system needs resetting, structural reforming and transforming anyway in the Social Credit/Universal Dividend/Retail Discount/Public Banking mold anyway.

If you don’t go to the level of idea/paradigm you are doomed to lose the war because you have to play on their field (Debt only) and by their rules (loan only).

Response to why would the financial authorities do what is correct:

Of course they won’t. It’s up to us to band together and offer alternatives, comprehensive and complete alternatives. I don’t disagree that ultimately, and even if not just with Greece but also the remaining indebted states of the Eurozone, the ECB is holding a very weak hand. But as we have seen before in the midst of crisis and collapse compliant pols can be coerced/hypnotized/gleefully embrace enacting the agendas of the wealthy and powerful. All the more reason to band together and market our alternatives to the mass of individuals, to businesses whose interests are aligned with consumers having more money and the system not being inflationary, and then insistently herd the political apparatus toward the correct policy enactments/threaten the individual careers of those who are dumb, bought and/or otherwise mentally challenged on the concept of individual economic freedom and systemic flow.

I’m formulating an outlined marketing plan I call Project Grace that would include both Social Credit and Public Banking as mentioned above that aims at each of the constituencies above.

Also, if we’d implement “a modern debt jubilee” as Steve Keen has suggested [and that by the way perfectly reflects the nature of Social Credit’s philosophy and policies, that is, the forgiveness (of debt), abundance (of Grace) and cancellation (of debt in a digital creditary money system) aspects of the concept of Grace] there would be a much more robust economy because of the increased discretionary spending ability of the individual resulting from the cancellation of debts….even though the MBS etc. infected nearly everyone to one degree or another. And if those derivative pieces of sh!t were equitably unwound it ought to result in not that many taking a disastrous hit anyway.

Me:  It’s obviously a knuckling under to the elitist, hierarchical socialist power and control agenda….the same way that businesses and politicians must knuckle under to the elitist, hierarchical Finance capitalist power and control agenda. The only way we can avoid such power and control agendas and have true economic democracy is by placing true economic freedom in the form of cold hard cash/purchasing power directly into the many hands of the individual. Gifting/monetary grace the free gift IS THE ONLY IDEA AND POLICY THAT CREATES, THAT EFFECTS INDIVIDUAL ECONOMIC FREEDOM AND THAT ALSO TAKES THE OPPRESSIVE STING OUT OF HIERARCHICAL POLITICAL ADMINISTRATION.

Me:  

“If there is no struggle there is no progress……..Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Frederick Douglass 1857

Ultimately that is correct, however if we can only operate in and on the terms of the paradigm of debt…we’ll never win. Never. Transformation and balance of the system via monetary Gifting first! Rational and ethical regulation right along with it!

Post in reply to a post by Steven Lesh:

SL: I don’t believe realism is ever irrelevant.

Me: There are kinds of partial “realisms” and then there is the realism of the sages and various Wisdom traditions of our history. That’s not just me saying that, and I would hope that you able to discern the difference between the latter and the former.

SL: And realism doesn’t become cynicism just because someone disagrees with your diagnosis of the “enslaving nature of the current system” and the fixes you propose.

Me: I never said that it did…..in fact I’ve been careful to include the truths of numerous reform perspectives in what I post and have simply tried to urge the differing viewpoints to integrate with each other…the better to resolve the exact and whole problem and combat the forces we confront.

SL: If all you do to address these underlying causes is print
more money to balance the books, what do you really expect to
accomplish?

Me: You’re obviously missing what Social Credit is ACTUALLY doing with its two mechanisms. First and foremost it is battling Debt on the level of the idea, the paradigm. That, if you care to believe the sages like Ghandi and guys like Bucky Fuller is how you ACTUALLY defeat an oppressive enemy with as much finality as the temporal universe is capable of giving us. Structural reform is fine as well, I’ve been careful to point that out too, but the real battlefield is in the minds of men, mindset, philosophy…and the alignment of policy with philosophy.

Secondly Social Credit is based on valid economic and scientific thinking and their correct integration with each other, and that is why its second mechanism the retail discount does what it is supposed to do. It maintains the equilibrium the dividend virtually creates…because a plus and a minus is the anatomy of equilibrium. It rectifies the primary targets that need the plus (individual incomes) and the minus (prices) so that there is an equilibrium of consideration for the individual (dividend) and the system (discount). And as per above fights and balances the monopoly idea/paradigm of the Banking and financial systems use to oppress. And of course it is open to reforms that are rational and ethical as well.

SL: The psychopaths who run the system  – and maybe a lot
of the rest of us – are incapable of the profound transformations of
character – the gifting and grace – upon which you base your
prescriptions

Me: The psychopaths, like the poor in the pre-scientific days of the first century A.D. “you will always have with you”. So other than to carefully and correctly identify them…they are not nearly as relevant as focusing on the best most relevant and correct philosophy and its aligned policies….and awakening the necessity in the minds of the mass of the populace of their being enacted.

Grace as a philosophy consistently and thoroughgoingly contemplated will lead to the experience of grace and graciousness to all but the most damaged or other intentioned. This is simply applied and valid human psychology and not anything “airy fairy” at all. In fact it is the epitome of Wisdom identified by other words than Grace in all of humanity’s wisdom traditions.

SL: Just putting some money in people’s pockets – or letting them and their governments borrow it interest free – or waiting for a cloud of Grace to envelop humanity is not going to cut it.

Me: Just answered all of that misconception above. The integration of a comprehensive philosophy, valid policy and a winning social and political strategy is all I’m after. I’m open to the integration of other agendas that do not violate the underlying philosophy and welcome anyone not merely other intentioned.

Posted to a thread about moving beyond capitalism:

Moving beyond capitalism is not socialism. Let’s be clear about that. At least the re-distributive aspect of socialism. The true evolution of capitalism is Distributism which qualifies as a true integration of the best aspects of capitalism (dynamism and efficient allocation of costs) and socialism (bringing moral and ethical rigor to economics), but again, none of either’s flaws and/or untruths. Integrating an actual Duality is required to attain a Trinity which is an elevation and Unity of truths.

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Public Banking as a STRUCTURAL competitor to Private Banking, and that I have no problem with, still does not address or solve the uncountered monopoly PARADIGM/IDEA of Debt. If costs are produced at a higher rate of flow in the economy than are individual incomes with which to liquidate those costs/prices in its normal and unfettered operations, then Debt will inevitably build up and become unrepayable…..even at 0% interest. Furthermore, if the ONLY ways that individual income can be increased is employment which is acceleratingly being diminished by innovation and AI or by a loan which incurs an additional cost to both the system and the individual, then the unbalanced and uncountered PARADIGM/IDEA of Debt will continue to de-stabilize the economy….unless the idea of monetary gifting balances it…because it does not incur an additional cost. Public Central Banking that operates truly in the interests of the individual and the system by being the governmental agency that is mandated to distribute the monetary gifting of a universal dividend and a retail discount completes the structural application of the paradigm of gifting.