I’m in full agreement with Michael Hudson’s assessment of Financial dominance being the primary economic problem in modern economies. He and virtually all of the present leading reform movements have surrounded the problem, however, they have missed the solution not out of inaccurate analysis but by not “upping their game” to paradigmatic/pattern analysis. Reforms are wonderful, good…and almost always easily gamed. To create permanent change you have to decypher the correct new paradigm concept and how best to implement it as policy. As Michael, Steve Keen, advocates of UBI, MMT and others have observed the core of the problem is regarding money, debt and banks/finance.

A few observations about the signatures of an accomplished paradigm change: 1) they are always in complete conceptual opposition to the present paradigm 2) they resolve the major problems that have grown up around the present paradigm 3) they totally invert the character of the present paradigm and hence the temporal universe character of its pattern 4) everything adapts to a new paradigm…not the other way around.

So what is the specific new paradigm concept? If the present paradigm for the creation and distribution of new money is Debt as in Burden to Repay Only (the word only designates the present paradigm as a monopolistic one) then according to 1 above the new paradigm is Monetary Gifting which is conceptual opposition to debt as burden to repay. This is why fiscal deficits, UBI/Universal Dividend, job guarantees, and debt jubilees align with the new paradigm because they are all monetary gifting. How might a policy of monetary gifting most efficaciously and macro-economically resolve the two biggest problems of the current paradigm, namely inflation and chronic individual scarcity of demand? The point of retail sale is universally participated in by every individual economic agent. Hence a beneficial policy at that point would have universal/macro-economic effect. So, a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale where the retailer grants the consumer a 50% discount on every product or service and the monetary authority rebates the entirety of that discount back to the merchant so as to make him/her whole on the overheads and profit margins would accomplish the following: 1) the terminal ending of inflation by (mind blowingly) implementing beneficial price and asset deflation. That single policy fulfills 2 & 3 above by inverting harmful, erosive inflation into beneficial and non-painful deflation. 2) This policy also: a] immediately doubles every individual’s purchasing power and b] potentially doubles the available demand for every enterprise’s goods and services thus solving the problem of chronic individual income and hence demand for production. 3) #4 above is important because presently we do face tensions between east and west as Michael and others have observed, and because historically the primary reason empires have invaded their neighbors is to steal their assets in order to attempt to stabilize their domestic economies. If the new paradigm stops inflation and monetary scarcity and paired with a policy of debt jubilee ends the build up of private indebtedness then we would be eliminating the major underlying cause of geo-strtegic tension to invade. Also, because the benefits of a new paradigm are so good and universally experienced such policies will eventually be adopted by everyone. So if the Chinese would adopt the new paradigm they would be able to satisfy their entire populace much more than they presently do, and if the US did the same they’d experience the same kind of uplift to the social contract. There are many other benefits and policies in the complete program as elucidated in my book.