KZ:  Craig, everything you describe is good, if it happens. But how do you suggest we convince the current Congress (now mostly the Senate) that hates (literally) anyone not carrying at least $1,000,000 after their name to vote for legislation needed to implement such changes? I don’t think it is news to anyone, Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, etc. that finance is a vampire sucking the nation dry. Now it is a question of which politicians will desert the nation for a share of the blood and which will not.

Me: Ken,

By communicating to the populace how the new monetary and economic paradigm of Direct (the universal dividend) and Reciprocal (the 50% discount/rebate policy at retail sale) Monetary Gifting….integrates their obvious best interests and the best aspects of the liberal and conservative economic and political agendas….into a complete and beneficial whole.

That way conservatives have to acknowledge that the anti-austerity policies of the dividend and discount/rebate at retail sale at least double potential business revenue and yet simultaneously not only defeat inflation but implement the price deflation that libertarians mistakenly think austerity on steroids will effect.

That way liberals have to acknowledge that the two policies immediately end poverty, individual monetary scarcity, systemic austerity and inflation without having to further hamstring enterprise with the mistaken need for re-distributive taxation.

That way gross moralists can stop generalizing and being tight assed about money being the root of all evil (instead of it being THE LOVE of money) and embrace an ethic of grace as in love in action to be acculturated not only into the economic, financial and monetary systems, but the entire society.

That way Keen can recognize that Wisdomics-Gracenomics is the higher disequilibrium and financial stability theory that he and Douglas were seeking, Hudson can realize its the answer to his financial parasitism and MMT can realize that it’s the more freeing way to truly enable governmental deficits for urgently needed things like infrastructure and yet dispels their old paradigm obsessions with employment as the only way to resolve austerity and their mistaken critiques of UBI/universal dividend. That is, they can unite behind Wisdomics-Gracenomics being the completion of their separate insights and theories.

In other words everyone has to come off their lingering orthodox stances and instead embrace an wholistic, integratively wise, ACTUAL solution to a 5000 year old monetary, financial and economic problem with these paradigm changing policies and regulations.

C3000:  I need to chime in with some points and facts. First, our monetary system has changed.numerous times over the history of the nation so changes can happen. The first and second US banks were chartered and then not renewed. The third central bank, the Fed, was chartered in 1913 and then drastically modified by FDR in 1933. Since that time we have had dual monetary systems, real money/sovereign money created by the government and spent directly into the economy and bank money/debt money. After FDR’s action real money included Silver Certificates, US NOtes and coins. Silver Certificates were discontinued in the ’60s and US Notes in Jan of 1970. The attack on real money spending (and it is correct to call it an “attack”) continued with the demise of the half dollar coin and the blocking of circulation of the one dollar coin which, by the way, is circulated widely in some Central American countries. The object of the attack on government spending of real money was obviously to increase dependance on bank money and it has worked. I submit that to cure the debt money problem will require increasing real money spending by the government and that highlights the very significant issue; the congress will then be responsible for managing the money supply, they will have to learn that taxes are the tool to forestall inflation of the money supply and are not revenue. That plus the other repercussions across the monetary system is the real roadblock to fixing the debt money problem.

Me:  Most of your facts are well taken (except for the fallacious idea that re-distributive taxation is effective or necessary to fight inflation). However, just “increasing real money spending by the government” leaves the the REAL AND DEEPEST part of the problem unresolved, namely the virtually monopolistic financial paradigm of Debt Only that the private banking system dominates and manipulates everyone and every other business model with.

The truth is that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely and so either a private financial system or a publicly administered one will be imminently corruptible….unless they implement the individual, commercial and systemically freeing policies and regulations of the new paradigm of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting….which gifting in turn is powerfully aligned with the universally resolving natural philosophical concept and unimpeachable ethic of grace as in love in individual action/policy in systems.

If we don’t communicate the benefits to everyone, every enterprise and the system, and demand a change to the paradigm….do we think our politicians are going to be able to rise above the power of finance’s current dominating paradigm? Of course not.

We need to get real, solve the whole problem with Wisdomics-Gracenomics, let freedom ring, acculturate the multifaceted aspects of grace….and let the nation and humanity grow out of a troubled adolescence and into a mature civilization.

KZ: You seem to be in the same boat as Peter Kropotkin. Kropotkin’s most famous book, Mutual Aid, maintains that cooperation within a species has been an historical factor in the development of social institutions, and in fact, that the avoidance of competition greatly increases the chances of survival and raises the quality of life. He contends that mutual aid is a factor that is both biological and voluntary in nature and is an enabler of progressive evolution. Without it, life as we know it could not exist. This is also seen in the animal kingdom.

Kropotkin also believes that humans have a predisposition to help one another and do so without governmental coercion. A centralized government is not needed to set an example or to make people do the right thing. People did so before the rise of the State. In fact, Kropotkin maintains that often it is government that represses humans’ natural tendency for cooperation. He accuses historians of giving little attention to the lives of the masses and their inclination to help each other, offering up instead, a distorted view of civilization through a series of “epic poems, the inscriptions on monuments, the treaties of peace – nearly all historical documents bear the same character; they deal with breaches of peace, not with peace itself” (Kropotkin 1989, 117).

Kropotkin strongly objects to the Hobbesian notion that defined humanity as no more than an indifferent alliance of individuals who prefer to battle with one another rather than make peace, only prevented from doing so by some outside authoritarian force. In his own words,
The leaders of contemporary thought are still inclined to maintain that the masses had little concern in the evolution of the sociable institutions of man, and that all the progress made in this direction was due to the intellectual, political, and military leaders of the inert masses (Kropotkin 1989, preface).

Kropotkin’s insights not withstanding, humans seem clearly still stuck in struggle and competition, not cooperation. The sociopaths are clearly winning today.

Me:  Kropotkin does a good job of elucidating the anarchist point of view, and Hobbes’ cold logic, if less enlightening, has historical validity. The answer to both of them is the integrative mindset of wisdom and its pinnacle concept and experience, grace/increased self awareness. All the more reason to implement the policies and regulations of monetary grace as in gifting, de-stimulate the chronic stress and anxiety of individual monetary scarcity and systemic austerity caused by the dominance of finance’s paradigm and do our best to acculturate the philosophy and ethic of same.

KZ:  Craig, you miss the significance of Kropotkin. He challenges a large portion of the foundations of modern western philosophy, social science, and politics. All rest on the basic belief that human life is, and only is a competition for survival. This is a foundation of the Social Darwinism that is a foundation of modern versions of capitalism. In other words, capitalism is not just misinformed, but basically worthless in its present form. Wide ranging radical changes are called for.

Me:  I don’t miss what Kropotkin says at all. I’m simply saying that if we intelligently integrate the two perspectives we can come up with a thirdness greater oneness of culture that isn’t a mere reaction against and if guided by the concept of grace/graciousness can evolve instead of devolve.

charles3000:  Craig, monetary inflation is very real be it the use of it as a foreign policy tool in Germany in the early 30s or the ongoing crisis in Venezuela. In my vocabulary “redistributive taxation” is an oxymoronic expression. In this era of acknowledged fiat money, taxation destroys money and is not a “redistribution of money.” You are correct, however, in questioning whether or not the action would cure the debt money problem. My response is it could but many other things would have to happen to make it a fact. The reduction in real money flow from the government into the economy has happened to provide the central bank with greater power to manage the money supply, the debt money supply. We could look at how the money supply was managed in the war years of the 40s to see how the central bank’s role can be reduced without “throwing out the Fed.” Some have described what happened was the Fed was told to go sit in the corner and they did. The RFC had been in operation since the early 30s but was put to extensive use in the 40s. It was a real national bank and it supported the war effort with real money. If you look at the ratio of commercial bank assets to the national debt from 1934 to 2016 you will find that commercial bank assets exceed the national debt by just a few percent on average but in the 4os, near 1946, the debt is nearly two times bank assets, indicating the government’s spending of large quantities of real money. The economy of the 40s indicates the effects of this real money spending which resulted from large quantities of money, real money, circulating in the economy debt free. Hence, to make it happen, we need a national bank similar to the RFC and, noteworthy, like the four national banks that China employs! The other action that would support the demise of the debt money problem is for the Treasury to be stopped from selling treasury bonds, allowing the national debt to be retired in thirty years. This action would essentially remove the FOMC’s strongest tool for management of the money supply, open market operations. The “goodness” of the national debt could be incorporated into the national bank by allowing individuals/entities to set up interest paying savings accounts in the national bank. If all of this were to happen then the congress would have to shoulder the responsibility of controlling the economy and the money supply.

Me: charles3000,

While your post has much of the current money mechanics correct, and it’s true that places like Venezuela are under attack by finance capitalism it misses the point I’ve been making here for years and that is:

a sufficiently high percentage discount/rebate monetary policy at the point of retail sale….effects a monetary, financial and economic paradigm change. How and why? Because a 50% discount to prices IMMEDIATELY doubles everyone’s purchasing power thus inverting the current systemic reality from scarcity to abundance. The rebate back to the enterprise giving the discount makes them whole on their overheads and profit margins and IMMEDIATELY doubles their potential business revenues. Being implemented at the end of the entire economic process for every consumer item or service at retail sale it is also the terminal expression point for any and all forms/concepts true or fallacious of inflation….it ends any possibility of inflation and in fact integrates price deflation painlessly and beneficially into profit making systems.

Until one crashes through the “sound barrier” of the present orthodoxies they have inherited from their economic educations and ACTUALLY looks at the IMMEDIATE effects of this one policy, all of the supposed complexities you enumerate seem to be true and necessary.

This policy provides the better alternative to commercial decision makers inflating prices in an austere and scarcity system when they see more money coming into the it, and combined with a universal dividend would enable us to eliminate transfer taxes for welfare, unemployment insurance and even social security because if everyone has at least $2000/mo worth of purchasing power from the time they turn 18 until they get planted…..these taxes become completely redundant.

When Monetary Gifting becomes the new guiding paradigm why would we want private banking to remain? A national bank can do everything needed that private banks do…and a helluva lot less destructive like MBS, CDS, synthetic versions of these not to mention dominate everyone, every other actually legitimate business model, nation states, regions and the globe. Even if one can’t see these obvious benefits of a publicly administered banking system at least they might be able to understand that the problem of regulating a single entity as opposed to a bunch of self interested enterprises with a monopoly on the most vital and essential factor in all of a monetary economy violates the concept of Occam’s Razor.

Private and public finance have had 5000 years to create a stable and beneficial system for all. It’s now time to take the most efficient and wise route to doing that with the guidance of the new paradigm and the concept behind even that.

charles3000:  Hi Craig. In this statement, ” The rebate back to the enterprise giving the discount makes them whole on their overheads and profit margins…”, who gives the rebate? And, yes, a real national bank is a key ingredient. The US proved that in the 40s. Commercial banks should be allowed to continue operations and they should be treated like any other privately owned business but their umbilical cord to the US Treasure via the central bank which enables them to earn money on the senioriage of FRNs should be ended.

Me: The new publicly/government administered central bank will distribute all new monies distributed for the dividend and rebate policies as well as for government programs at at least the federal level. Personal and private enterprise loans will also be created by the central bank and distributed by the national banking system subject to credit-ability and alignment with the variously applicable aspects of the natural philosophical concept of grace. Everything/every governmental/public policy or program will be funded based on its philosophical alignment with same.

Private money creation is NOT a stable or legitimate economic business model. The history of human civilization tells us this. Banks can be depository institutions, intermediaries of already created and saved money and perform certain needed financial services, but that is it. Nothing more. We never went back to Ptolemaic cosmology and we will never go back to the idiocy of the domination by private finance via its monopolistic paradigm of Debt Only.