All of what you say regarding neo-liberalism is correct. Full stop. However, the even deeper problem is that macro-economics almost entirely abstracts out the individual agent and thus it sets up an ethic that says Man was made for Systems…rather than Systems were made for Man. We need an ethical/humane macro-economics. We can accomplish that by integrating a new monetary paradigm of Strategic Monetary Gifting into the current monopoly paradigm for the creation and distribution of all new money which is Debt ONLY. The word ONLY designates it as a monopoly paradigm the same as Salvation Via Roman Catholic Sacraments ONLY was a monopoly paradigm and The Reformation ended that inhumane/unethical reality. We require a monetary reformation or the current dominating monetary paradigm wielded by the private banking system will continue to stand astride the world like a collosus…forever. I’m not suggesting we eliminate debt altogether, that would simply replace a monopoly paradigm with another monopoly paradigm. However, if we implemented a policy of a 50% Discount/Rebate at retail sale 50% of all new money would be a gift that benefitted both commercial agents AND individual agents and (because your monthly automobile, mortgage or other big ticket item’s monthly payment is the retail point of finance) the retail discount policy would integrate finance into the actual economic/productive system instead of allowing it to be a dominating and very costly exterior parasite on everyone and the actual economic system. Applying the 50% Discount/Rebate at the retail point of finance would actually benefit the banks because if everyone got a 50% discount on price for consumer goods and then an additional 50% reduction when they bought a big ticket item (example: a $500k house is reduced to $250k at its purchase point, and then the central bank paid 50% of your monthly mortgage payment the individual gets that $500k house for a payment equivalent of a $125k loan)…the market for mortgages quadruples or more because virtually EVERYONE IS CREDITABLE!

GW: Complimenting Steve Keen: Super! From Ptolemy to Copernicus in Economic theory. Better late than never!

Me: Not quite. His systemic analysis is all perfectly true, but his remedy is more like Ptolemaic cosmology’s “epicycles”, that is, a (false) fix because it doesn’t penetrate to the core problem which is the monopoly monetary and economic CONCEPT of Debt ONLY.