As I believe the following post shows I am both flexible and pragmatic, and at the same time desirous that the highest economic efficiency, comprehensiveness of correct and necessary economic factors/parameters are included so as to approximate an ACTUAL SOLUTION of the ENTIRE problem, as opposed to looking at it in a fragmented, exclusionary way that actually ends up being a mere palliation of it. That’s the integration of pragmatism and dedication to the wholeness perspective of Wisdom which is actually the higher pragmatism…NOT some rigid religiosity. Religiosity excludes points of view and refuses to actually look and perceive. Wisdom integrates them toward a more unified truthfulness. The only thing I’m rigid about is the mistaken attempt to integrate economic and monetary unworkabilities and inapplicabilities into reform…..thus sabotaging unity.

From the other thread:

So long as the BIG/Dividend is not financed by taxes and a
discount accompanies it (except for the rapidity of transformation to the economy of having a large deflationary discount) I don’t really care if the dividend is a smallish $400-500/mo. The immediate stable upturn of the economy combined with the increasing loss of aggregate incomes due to AI will awaken everyone to its necessity. That plus you get people accustomed to a dividend and regressive forces will never reverse it. Look at the incomplete reform of Social Security. They’ve been trying to eliminate it for 80 years to no avail.

But again, the implementation of the combined policies of dividend and discount is essential. The idea that businesses seeing a steady stream of additional demand coming will not arbitrarily raise their prices, if not immediately then soon thereafter, is sheer Keynesian half assed policy kant and will lead to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It’s like saying that just implementing a public banking system without a sovereign authority guided by policy mandates reflecting Grace will solve the problem. Of course it won’t. The ethical force/bulwark of the concept and policies of Grace are essential to avoiding corruption and the return of control to private finance.

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Adrian,

We have a monetary economy, not a barter or completely free/gifting one. Money is a wonderful and precise tool. Furthermore the money system is debt based and thus $10 of income will extinguish $10 of debt. In other words its digital and capable of both creation and annihilation of debt. Simply gifting individuals is good, but INTEGRATING gifting WITH a digital money system is much more economically efficient and accurate of assessment of costs. It’s integrative instead of fragmented, exclusionary and thus more prone to orthodoxy and religiosity.

Adrian:  Nobody’s talking about a barter economy except you. Are you in favor of loans or a guaranteed income? What is it, a gift or a loan?

Me:  I am NOT advocating barter you are in suggesting you can do a simple exchange of education etc without using the tools of a digital money system and cost accounting.

“Are you in favor of loans or a guaranteed income? What is it, a gift or a loan?”

The obvious and integrative answer is BOTH. There is no reason to exclude either. The problem currently is that Gifting IS excluded. Interest is only one of MANY ADDITIONAL costs. Mistaking interest in an exclusionary way as THE ONLY additional cost leads to incorrect assessment and incomplete policy creation.

Adrian:  I am not advocating barter. If nobody is, please let’s let it go. Nor did I say that we should (or should not) use the tools of digital money, whatever that means. If you’re talking about A + B, I didn’t say that interest was the only additional cost, but far as I can see it’s the only one that doesn’t have to be paid up front.

Me:   Yes, I stand corrected. It was World2Steven who suggested it.

“Instead of giving people money to ‘buy’ it, you could simply give it (education, medical care, etc) – or a lifetime lease to it in the case of real property like housing – to them.

If you would consider: “I didn’t say that interest was the only additional cost, but far as I can see it’s the only one that doesn’t have to be paid up front.”

does not include the costs of depreciation or maintenance of the means of production, nor utility costs, insurance etc. that are consequent to original or any financing.

Also accrual accounting with its accounts receivable and accounts payable mechanisms stretches out costs and repayments introducing Time and the illusion that “eventually everything gets paid for” and yet the real lesson to be learned from this is that the most basic metric to perceive in the economy and moment to moment reality is actually one of “a scarcity of total individual incomes in simultaneous ratio to total costs and prices.” And correcting that with a universal dividend and a cost deflationary retail discount would enable a truely free and free flowing equilibrium (not the false equilibrium of saying the statistic of total MONEY in the system must equal and not exceed total consumer prices which mistakenly causes most theorists to think that austerity works when it doesn’t) The true equilibrium can be attained and maintained by reversing both sides of the dis-equal ratio into:

a relatively abundant dividend and a cost deflationary discount to consumer prices that through time increasingly tends to eliminate the necessity of borrowing…and the additional costs of such by all economic agents.

Adrian:  Well, I’m no accountant but isn’t depreciation taken into account under current expenses (e.g., for tax purposes) and isn’t maintenance something also paid out of current expenses, and you certainly have to pay your insurance upfront. You might be right, but my point is only that all this is very arguable.

I think this goes to part of the confusion of A + B. It’s not obvious how to calculate it, and the factors and variables keep changing.

Me:  The flow of Depreciation costs must be gotten in prices throughout the flow of time of the economy and hence create a flow of additional expenses. Depreciation allowances do not mean that these costs are eliminated. The allowances are merely a stay of execution of costs not a forgiveness or cancelling of them. Further, reduction of any taxes by taking them simply reduces a flow….that also reduces income (taxes) so again the additional costs of depreciation remain. Money truly is accountancy. The problem is if one ignores it, as most economic theorists do today as Steve Keen has recently discovered and lamented, it sends the theorist off into a netherland looking for other less empirical evidence for the economic instability we are plagued by. Of course Keen is still splashing around on the surface of accounting with debits and credits instead of getting down into the nitty gritty “on the ground realities” of business/the economy found in the subset of double entry book keeping known as cost accounting. Gather those datums and look at the economic consequences of their ratios and relationships as flows (and they are continual flows of costs and are the realities of every enterprise) and you’ll get/see a much more concrete reality on A + B.

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Me:  Good paragraph by paragraph reply Liam. The Gap is the primary and inherent systemic problem, interest and the accompanying NECESSITY to keep borrowing (which of course the Banks are happy to do) until we can’t pay the debt anymore are the subsequent structural problems that keep that prison term enforced for eternity….unless we have the concrete “cash on the barrelhead”, un-game able policies of a universal dividend and a retail discount that actually effects a reduction of prices over and above any actual rate of inflation (and that is generally quite far above the government assessment of such) so that the entire direction of the economy goes from inherently cost inflationary…..to continually price deflationary. Such is the power of the paradigm and reflective policy of reciprocal monetary Grace/Gifting at retail sale that it can reverse even the economy’s thermo-dynamic embeddedness/enslavement to entropy and hence increasing costs. But then, Grace is Godly in its power whether its source is supernatural or thoroughly integrated natural metaphysics.

And “God’s” work…..must surely be our own.

John R:   A fact is defined as something on which most people agree, therefore it can not be classed as a fact.
But this model provides a better explanation of the economic system than the orthodox version (Say’s “law”, which is an assumption), so therefore it has become the more reliable theory of the two.

Me:  The operant and most important part of that response is this:

“so therefore it has become the more reliable theory of the two.”

so unless we can come up with another economic force more potent than Grace as in monetary Gifting…..let’s just leave it at that.