Mish:  I do not understand what you mean by “Why not fix both the scarcity of individual incomes and inflation with the dual book end policies of a universal dividend and a deflationary discount to retail prices”

Whatever that means, I am 99% sure to disagree since it implies someone other than the free market setting prices.

Me:  A discount at the point of retail sale that is totally rebated back to the merchant granting it IS THE FREE MARKET AT WORK AND HAS NOT MANIPULATED THE MARKET IN ANY WAY BECAUSE POINT OF RETAIL SALE IS THE TERMINAL END OF THE ENTIRE ECONOMIC/PRODUCTIVE PROCESS AND ALL COSTS ARE SUMMED AT THAT POINT.

Please think about that fact, and also realize that this policy would integrate Austrian deflationary thinking into profit making systems without enforcing increased austerity on a system already inherently cost inflationary because as capital costs become more intense in a modern economy those additional costs on top of financial costs etc…..must go into price….and yet even under the most ideal conditions (which never actually exist either) only the amount of money financed is created and available to become individual income.

Peterblogdanovich:   A debt jubilee a la Steve Keen will dramatically shrink banking and finance. This is enough hell for them to to pay for now. All of us participated in the asset flipping mentality that brought us here. If you’re sin (and debt, and asset) free you’re likely poor. I’m just not eager to do anything more than shrinking financial sector profits from 25% of total private profits now down to 3% to 5% max where they belong. To a banker that’s a circle of hell in its own right.

Me:  Keen’s modern debt jubilee is a necessary thing presently, but it is only a one off when a truly systemic solution is what is required. Keen himself has called for a new economic philosophy, but he’s never advocated anything but one off or fragmented and partial policies. A universal dividend and a rebated retail discount to consumers are both macro-economic, systemic policies….and just happen to directly strike death blows to the two major systemic problems of modern economies, namely their chronic scarcity of individual incomes in ratio to prices and creeping inflation. They also just happen to break up the monopolistic paradigms of debt and loan ONLY which the Banking system enjoys despite monopoly being utterly inconsistent with free market theory. In Keen’s most recent video he has changed his assessment of the problem being “parabolically rising debt” to “parabolic debt in ratio to individual income”. Listen to his latest video yourself. It starts at about the 1:15 point. I have been saying this same thing here and on Keen’s blog and youtube video for at least the last 9-10 years. As I have said here many times Keen and Mish are nascent social crediters. Every cutting edge reform movement including Keen’s “modern debt jubilee” includes in its policy recommendations an aspect of the linguistic and philosophical concept of Grace. My book Wisdomics/Gracenomics unifies all of these reform movements as well as integrates supposedly opposing theories by fully fleshing out that concept and showing its economic and monetary relevance to our current crisis and the system as it actually is.

Regarding Mish Shedlock’s reasons for blogging about self driving cars

Me:  Mish is prescient when it comes to seeing significant economic factors, and my guess is he thinks innovation and AI will force deflation…and he’s right about that. However, if there’s another inherent factor that is destabilizing modern economies namely that the rate of flow of total costs always tends to exceed the rate of flow of total individual incomes then the economy will eventually collapse anyway and never, ever be stable in the process. Mish’s buddy Steve Keen said it several years age when he said “Last time I looked someone could get their economics degree without taking so much as an elementary accounting course.” Only problem is Keen’s mathematics never penetrates below the surface of accounting and its debits and credits and basic formula of assets plus liabilities equals owners equity. What a truly empirical researcher would do is get into the cost accounting stats of every enterprise and compare them with individual incomes simultaneously produced and that would enlighten them as to the real and deepest problem of modern economies as stated above. If Mish would see that my integration of Austrian deflationary theory into profit making systems is precisely what is needed he’d become wise and far seeing.

Mish:  We have discounts already
Amazon – Walmart – senior citizen, everywhere

Me:  Correct, but they are not macro-economic discounts but rather piecemeal ones, and not enough of a discount to integrate deflation into an inherently cost inflationary system. If the monthly flow of total/systemic costs is 5% and the monthly flow of total/systemic individual incomes is 2%….the system and every enterprise and individual in it has an inherent cost inflationary problem. With my policies we can costlessly and unobtrusively increase individual purchasing power and turn the vector of the entire economy around from inflationary to deflationary. And on top of that we can downsize the TBTF Banks so that they take their smaller and proper place in the economy…instead of being the dominating and manipulating force they have been for at least the last several centuries.

And all it takes to see how this is a necessity is

1) to take the empirical data (total individual incomes produced in ratio to total costs for the same period of time) from the cost accounting books of any modern enterprise which reveals the scarcity ratio I’ve posted about here for so long, and

2) realize that a macro-economic i.e. general discount to prices at retail sale (and in addition to any other discounts a business may want to competitively give) AND THAT IS FULLY REBATED BACK TO THE MERCHANT GIVING THE MACRO DISCOUNT eliminates any possibility of inflation, creates a deflationary and yet more profitable system, corrects the unethical dominance of the Banks, is not price controls because the merchant is free to determine his best price BEFORE the discount is applied and in addition to any other discounts he may want to grant and finally that no economic agent can be harmed by it because retail sale is the end of the productive process….and has become consumption.