“Depending on retail subsidies and income transfers is another iteration of the regulatory state policies of the 20th Century. With many hands grasping the economic steering wheel such policies presume to tell us how often and to what degree the wheel may be turned.”

The retail discount mechanism and percentage I am envisioning is a macro-economically derived one that would apply generally and to every product and service based on the formula of total cost of individual consumption over total cost of overall production for a given time, say monthly (although with our current computing power that could be a shorter period of time). It is placed at retail sale to an individual for good reason. As I have said before retail sale to the individual is where the total costs for any item are terminally summed. Thus placing it there would be completely unobtrusive because every merchant including retailers will have been able to discover their best price BEFORE the discount was applied. Then, as the discounts given to the consumer by the retailers are completely rebated back to the participating merchants there is absolutely no harm done to any business entity…and of course the individual is graciously granted a price that actually ends up greatly increasing their individual purchasing power.

As for income transfers….there is no transfer. The universal dividend and retail discount policies are directly Distributive in nature, not RE-distributive. They simply use the digital plus and minus nature of the monetary system to “zero in on” the two most problematic and chronic problems of technologically advanced economies, scarcity of individual income and inflation, and solve them without incurring an additional cost to either the individual or the system.

Wisdom is the integrative process no matter whether it is applied personally or systemically. The above two mechanisms integrate seamlessly with profit making systems and the digital money system. They express the necessary new economic and monetary paradigm of direct monetary grace/monetary gifting that will enable us to embrace robotics and AI rather than fear/fight them. It will also enable us to finally, after 5000 years of instability and servitude, terminatedly handle and break up the monopolistic paradigm of Loan ONLY long standingly enforced and puzzlingly enjoyed by the business model of Finance. MMT is reflective of this paradigm. I’m just extending its systemic scope and its reach all the way to the individual. The more one “gets their head around” the direct distributive grace/gifting paradigm the more its universal solvent nature becomes apparent. Wisdom applied is not BS, but rather the higher relevance and pragmatism. New paradigms are always generally considered absurd…right up to the time the old paradigm is generally recognized as completely unworkable….and absurd itself, for instance the structural absurdity of austerity.

Me:

Kevin and Ben
“applying a discount cannot be an effective price anchor because it does not address inflationary effects that do not result from spending.”

Sure it and can and sure it does if it is administered at retail sale to an individual…because again, that is where ALL costs for any item are terminally summed….due to both production costs and any other costs whether they are circumstantial, due to asset inflation from bubble creation or even arbitrary decision by the enterprise.

“all income shifts are transfers”

Not if the income is a free and additional gift as the dividend actually is.

‘Still sounds like corruption. Selective handouts to the retail sector are as indefensible as handouts to debtors advocated by debt jubilee proponents’

They are not really handouts they are hand backs at and only for actual retail sales that are graciously given to the consumer….and then just as graciously given back to the retailers. As for their indefensibility, Steve Keen’s concept of a modern debt jubilee correctly would give those who did not have debt (actually a very small number of individuals nowadays) an equivalent cash payment so there is no moral hazard there, plus considering present world circumstances and the fact that long economic downturns very strongly rhyme with war….the obviously ethical thing to do is eliminate the debt overhang and go from DefCon 4 to DefCon1.

The policies I am referring to are aligned with and actually effect freedom for the individual and free flowingness to the system. Effecting freedom is effecting freedom. A = A. I’m sorry, but belief that centralized government and policy is necessarily tyrannical is too general to be completely rational.