Great article Ellen. But remember you also need the Discount mechanism because it will catch and compensate for BOTH the inherent cost inflation of the system itself AND the inevitable price inflation that merchants will tack onto their prices as they see increased demand becoming available. This is also why the Discount percentage must exceed by a goodly percentage, the actual rate of inflation. This latter phenomenon is missed by the otherwise accurate theorizing of guys like Steve Keen and MMTers mostly because they’re very smart but a little too caught up in abstraction and so miss some of the temporal possibilities of a very (too) complex system. In order for the economy to work and remain stable it must have both mechanisms/policies.

The Dividend and Discount policies/mechanisms are the component parts and definition of economic stability and equilibrium, and reflect the + and – of the money system and the stock/flow consistency of debits and credits in accounting/double entry bookkeeping.

If you or anyone wants to see some of the chapters of one of my books Grace: The Aspects and Economic and Monetary Relevance they can see them on my blog here:

wisdomicsblog.com

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Me:  I believe you have asked me these questions before John. I think you have a misunderstanding that there are two types of discount policies. There is only one that makes any sense in a monetary economy and that is retail discount. The “just price” is kind of carry over language and thinking from the original non-monetary Distributists like Hillaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton who although they are philosophically in attune with Social Credit were advanced and surpassed in monetary and economic thinking by Douglas. Douglas, despite the fact that he saw things much more clearly than anyone else in the early 20th century and today’s economists are only now coming back to partially re-discover his insights, was at the very beginnings of what is considered macro-economic thinking. Macro-economics is concerned with aggregates, aggregate numbers and their effects on the stability of economies. Douglas was brilliant and insightful, but, being at the beginning of that new way of looking at economics I don’t think even he actually had a clear idea of what the macro-economic tool of the Discount could have. Everyone lives within the horizon of their own culture and times. Not even Douglas could completely stepped outside of this or see the effects of the new discipline of macro-economics.

I have done as thorough an exegesis as I currently can of the core concept of Social Credit, namely Grace/Self Awareness/Consciousness (these three are synonymous) and as only a part of that exegesis shown the logical and reflective philosophical alignments between them and the classical goals of economics and economic theory. Douglas correctly pointed out that all policy should align with its philosophical counterpart. I’ve just taken it a couple of integrations higher as I have also integrated linguistics and trans-personal psychology/spirituality into that study.

As for how would I stop merchants from tacking some more onto their prices, that is one of the reasons why I advocate a large price deflationary discount percentage in order to compensate for that possibility/inevitability as well as to reverse the entropic/cost inflationary nature of the economy.

And as for the rich getting the larger numerical benefit…..such socialist envy is irrelevant if the individual is guaranteed a relatively abundant, satisfactory middle class income level as well as increasing leisure time to pursue his own interests and/or self development. So I don’t trouble myself with it.