In order to save democracy we’re going to have to establish the integrative and unifying power of the natural philosophical concept of grace. Stay with me here, I’m not an orthodox religious person in any sense. I’m all for wisdom though, and grace/graciousness as in love in action is the pinnacle concept of human wisdom. And the concept and application of an aspect of grace has always been what has lead to permanent as in paradigmatic change.

The media and our politics need to change in the ways that all of you have insightfully posted here, and those suggestions need to be pursued concurrently with the monetary and economic policies I’m suggesting.

The current paradigm for the creation and distribution of money is Debt Only. That is, it is a monopoly concept, and monopolies by definition are dominating and anti-freedom. If we integrated a new monetary paradigm of grace/graciousness as in Monetary Gifting into the debt based system with two policies…all manner of positive, integrative and unifying effects would be possible.

The first policy of the new monetary paradigm is a 50% Discount/Rebate at the point of retail sale. In other words every product and service in the economy is discounted 50%, and then the entirety of that discount is mandated to be rebated back to the merchant granting it to the consumer by the monetary authority so that the merchant can be made whole on their overheads and profit margins.

This would immediately double both everyone’s purchasing power and potentially double the free and available demand for every enterprise’s consumer goods and services. (Stay with me here, this doesn’t necessarily equate with a doubling of consumption…but it does integrate the economic interests and political agendas of the traditionally opposed constituencies of labor and management. Remember, integration and unification are aspects of the philosophical concept of grace.)

This single policy would also forever end any possibility of systemic inflation as garden variety inflation is almost always a low single digit percentage. How? By integrating BENEFICIAL price and asset DEFLATION. Guess what? Inversion of temporal universe reality is one of the cardinal signatures of paradigm change. For instance, the Copernican cosmological paradigm change was no more and certainly nothing less than the realization that the inversion of the positions of the earth and the sun resolved anomalies that had plagued astronomy for centuries.

Now if you ended the possibility of inflation forever…you could forever end the political debate about fiscal deficits being inflationary. That would open the way to vastly increasing government spending for infrastructure and the kind of mega projects necessary to confront climate change.

The second policy of the new monetary paradigm is a $1000/mo. universal dividend paid to everyone 18 years of age and older. Combined with the 50% discount that would guarantee every adult $2000/mo. of purchasing power…for life. If every adult was guaranteed $2000/mo. the payroll taxes every working person and every enterprise pays for welfare, unemployment insurance and even for social security immediately become redundant and are hence could be eliminated. $2000/mo. is higher than the vast majority of individuals get for social security, and you don’t even have to work for 45-50 years to get it! And again, this policy integrates the normally opposed economic interests of labor and management.

There are numerous other philosophically aligned policies like the above two that would solidify the new monetary, financial and economic paradigm of Gifting, and would also help consciously build self awareness of grace/graciousness that is also the deepest need and remedy of our faltering democracy. Just imagine if you felt grateful for a government that gifted you half of the price of everything every time you bought something?