Posted To Ellen Brown’s Forum 01/14/2016

John: Steve, you are acting on the assumption that a discount system would be effective, which you have never yet shown to be practicable.
This is the sort of argument that makes Social Credit theory appear suspect to outsiders.
J R

Me:  John,
The Discount and Dividend together “pervade, encompass and bracket” the entire economy. And that is why they will work. Now I never said that you might not also want to watch businesses all along the route from resource extraction to retail sale and if they are simply raising prices in some large and unjustifiable fashion tax them or regulate them in some fashion. Actually because competition will be in effect in their business model like it is in any other this will tend to minimize gouging anyway, and again, even if there is some slightly higher rate of demand pull inflation….the discount at the end of the economic process will catch it anyway. And because both of the mechanisms of social credit ARE macro-economic tools, that is they deal with aggregates of numbers and percentages…if we are wise we will do what I suggest and simply reduce retail prices by some very significant fashion like 40-50%…because we want the system to move toward/become one resembling ticketing. You simply have to look at the system, be prepared to effectively deal with those who don’t/haven’t recognized that it benefits all including themselves. My Wisdomics/Gracenomics/Graceientialism is fully aligned with and yet actually an extension and exegesis of the philosophy of Social Credit. Wisdom is by definition the best and most relevant inward reality and outward actions. It is in no way one sided. Wisdom is the integrative process so the integration of the best theory and the best practice is what it advocates and accomplishes.

As for outsiders….I don’t give a damn about what they “think”. They have to look, actually look if they want to see. I’m out to resonantly communicate the hope and self interests (there’s an integration of opposites for you) to the individual and the vast majority of the small to medium sized businesses because they actually have mutual self interests and people generally respond positively to hope.

John:  Steve, I ask you to explain how the discount scheme would work.
It has been put florward in two different ways:
1. The establishment of just prices for items and payments to retailers if they adhere to them.  In modern conditions, when, say, three different pounds of butter may have dofferent prices in one supermarket and different supermarkets could justly charge different ranges of prices because of various factors such as freight to longer distances or different local taxe, settting “fair prices” would be a nightmare.s. That idea obviously is unworkable without an army of inspectors to do that and supervise adherence to them.
2. A rebate to consumers of a certain percentage of each purchase. In these days of computerisation, the logistics of that could be fairly simple.  But there is no provision to stop retailers raising prices because people can then afford to pay them. The answer given to that objection is always “competition”. But just as competition gets more fierce in “hard times”, so it gets less as they improve. Nobody has ever shown that it would apply at all when, as is a fundamental aim of Social Credit, people are given sufficient purchasing power to buy all of production.
In any case, the concept is completely unnecessary.  Provided the dividend paid is sufficientonly  to “close the gap” and no more, it should have no inflationary effect.
Records from this country in the early 40’s show that inflation need not be a serious factor because the economy are prosperous.

J R

Me:  #1 is wrong and would not be used.

“there is no provision to stop retailers raising prices because people can then afford to pay them.” Basically irrelevant with my deflationary scenario, and with that deflationary policy in place there WOULD be more competition. And besides I already said that if businesses raised their prices without or with flimsy justification they could be subject to taxation or other regulation like maybe suspension of their participation in the discount program.

“In any case, the concept is completely unnecessary.  Provided the dividend paid is sufficientonly  to “close the gap” and no more, it should have no inflationary effect.”

Not true. As mankind runs businesses and mankind is flawed it is inevitable that inflation will occur. What is unnecessary is to worry about whether or not there is inflation or how much….when you have a macro-economic tool like the Discount in place that can be utilized to not only defeat that inflation, but to create deflation…even within a profit making economic system.

John:  Then, Steve, please explain how your “deflationary scenario” would work. Your next sentence after that seems to indicate the “army of inspectord” scenario.
I have a feeling, also, that you are unaware of the provable fact that much of modern inflation is of the “cost-push”   type, not a result of too much money in circulation. This is, of course, a corollary of Douglas A+B analysis. It is totally impossible to have too much and too little purchasing power at the same time.

Me:  The deflationary scenario is simply accomplished by reducing every retail price of every product/service of participating merchant by 50%. (I cannot conceive of any merchant that wouldn’t want to participate in such a program where he can sell his product at 50% of his normal price and still be guaranteed his normal compensation) If actual inflation were 3% or 5% or even 10% due to many businesses raising their prices due to demand pull inflation….good!, we just increased the purchasing power of every consumer by 40% or more. All of these compensated discount totals are granted by the National Credit Office (NCO) INSTEAD OF BY REVOLVING LOANS/LINES OF CREDIT BY THE BANKS THUS SEVERELY DOWNSIZING THEIR CONSUMER MARKET.

If the government has to employ 10,000 auditors (probably more like 1000) to peruse the statistics that accounting algorithms of robotic software show are anomalies in an enterprise’s costs…so be it! For instance, a paper products company has been selling toilet tissue at $.80 per roll for the last 10 years but all of a sudden a chemical costs 500% more and it now must sell them for $1,20 per roll. Red flag! Another company raises its prices 10% serially for 3 months. Red Flag!

No John, I do not have any lack of awareness of A + B….or its effects as you apparently do in saying, “It is totally impossible to have too much and too little purchasing power at the same time.” That of course is what the advocates of DSGE (Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium) BELIEVE they’ve theoretically accomplished….except they haven’t, because they confuse total money in the system and total available individual income to actually spend, and so they also think they have resolved the economy for Time….but they actually haven’t. Yes, cost inflation is the most underlying and unperceived cause and Time (lags) enforces its effects. Don’t mix DSGE with Social Credit….it leads to misunderstanding.

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