People often have a problem with the 50% Discount/Rebate and $1000/mo. universal dividend policies in my book Wisdomics-Gracenomics because they think they will wildly increase consumption. My response is that a doubling of purchasing power does not ipso facto result in a 100% increase in consumption/economic throughput because not everyone is going to eat twice as much as they do now or go out and purchase twice as many shoes, underwear etc. However, in order to keep consumption from increasing even as much as it otherwise would with the above two policies here are some policies that will curb it.

1. The creation of Eco-Infrastrucure Research Bonds that would pay 5%. (Remember, government debt is a complete side show and IS NOT the problem. The problem is the continual build up of PRIVATE debt that results in debt deflation.) These bonds would serve the dual purposes of curtailing consumption while increasing sane and constructive investment because they would help fund the kind of mega-projects necessary to re-build the nation and confront and handle climate change.
2. Even though the US is monetarily sovereign and hence does not need to tax anyone in order to fund the government, the tax rates for the very wealthy will be higher if they choose not to think wisely about what they do with their money. Lets say that the highest rate is 50%. However, if such a wealthy person contributes 25% of their gross income to a variety of charities that the Grace As Wisdom Counsel (the formation of which is another of the policies of Wisdomics-Gracenomics) deems are needed for the wise regeneration of the country, and they use another 25% of their income to purchase the Eco-Infrastructure Research bonds then their tax rate will be reduced to 0%.
3. Those individuals who practice the above Gifting policies for at least 10 years will be awarded the New American Entreprenuer Pantheon Award.
4. These policies reflect the fact that Grace is real and personally available both via Gifting and receiving a Gift. In other words Grace can bounce back at you if you gift and giving elicits gratitude which is an aspect of Grace as well. Grace begets Grace, and incorporating opportunities to experience Grace as an everyday experience in the economy which everyone particiaptes in daily can result in a tremendous increase in the self actualization of Grace. As a man thinketh, so is he. And acting with grace on a consistent basis again, bounces back at you.

CK: Very powerful post Steve- the Western World is obsessed by money! In Michael Singer’s great book “The Untethered Soul” he tells us that 80% of the Western World lives in the Spirituall Equivalent of a Bedridden Cripple. This journey we’re on together was gifted to us, and as a natural result I share that gift at every opportunity. Where can I find your book?

Me: Thank you. Its on Amazon. Here’s the link: https://www.amazon.com/Wisdomics-Gracenomics-New-Monetary-Paradigm-Policies/dp/B08X7MZ4KH/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1552358772&sr=1-1-catcorr

Yes, grace as in love in personal action (or as systemic policy, as policies are the actions of systems) is IMO the pinnacle concept of Wisdom. We are so unkowingly crippled by not being aware of the concept and experience of grace and how to best self actualize it. When I think about the positive personal and economic potentials of enabling an aspect of grace (gratitude) to be experienced every time we buy something it blows my mind. Imagine an economy that creates grace! And as a kicker such policies resolve the deepest problems of the current economic and monetary paradigm. It’s what I refer to as a mega-paradigm change which is one that is universally beneficial, continuously so and whose benefits spill over into other systems, body’s of knowledge and areas of human endeavor than the primary area that the new paradigm applies to. I posit that there have only been two confirmed mega-paradigm changes in the entire history of the human species. 1) when humans emerged from the unconscious struggle for survival as the highest good and became self aware which logically supposes that everyone else is also self aware and which was the birthing of ethics. 2) When we went from nomadic hunters and gatherers to agriculture, homesteading and urbanization.

Making the economy and money system serve us instead of we having to slavishly serve it will go a long way toward completing that second mega-paradigm because it will transform the Faustian problems that have grown up around it and enable us to better self actualize the Arkadian mental existence of Grace that was in many instances probably more readily and directly experienced in the hunting and gathering age. It’s a kind of coming home.

Marianne, I would say the best way to end the war in Ukraine is to end the deepest reason empires invade their neighbors namely, their economies always become destabilized by PRIVATE debt so they think invading and stealing their neighbors’ assets will solve that ever recurring problem. Except it doesn’t of course…because we haven’t recognized the new monetary and economic paradigm and how to most efficaciously apply it. Hence the deepest problems of modern economies are never truly resolved. Well, I’ve written a book that identifies that new paradigm and how it could be best implemented. It’s Called Wisdomics-Gracenomics: The Monetary Paradigm and Its Policies. I’d love to engage you and others here and elsewhere regarding it. Its policies integrate the economic self interests of traditionally opposed political constituencies while forwarding and better enabling an underlying liberal agenda that I think is actually inherent in everyone.

The title is derived from the fact that historically, new paradigms are always integrative, transformative phenomena.

Wisdom is the superlative human mental discipline, not science…because even though science is wonderful, deliciously interesting and NECESSARY…good, open minded, breakthrough science exists entirely within the mindset/digestive tract of Wisdom. In other words its the larger set.

Also historically, it can be shown that every new paradigm’s effects have been an aspect or aspects of the natural philosophical concept of grace as in love in action, and as policy is the action of systems, bringing the gracious policies of Wisdomics-Gracenomics is the deeper and transformative economic solution.

I might add that the major economic reforms of UBI, MMT, Steve Keen’s Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis and Ellen Brown’s Public Banking all align perfectly with the new monetary paradigm…they just haven’t cognited on the specific new concept and how to best apply it in the economy so as to integrate and further their separate agendas.

Again, would love to engage you and any others here.

A 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale is

1) digital (equal debits and credits summing to zero increase in costs),

2) its immediate and continuing economic and monetary effects are aggregative/macro-economic because retail sale is the single universally participated in point in the entire economic process

3) its partner policy a 25-50% discount/debt jubilee policy at the point of loan signing integrates debt jubilee directly into the Debt Only based system thus ending Finance’s dominating monopolistic paradigm and addresses Minsky’s insightful debt deflation hypothesis with of all things BENEFICIAL debt deflation. Ah irony, mentally satisfying and a signature of historical paradigm changes.

KV: One trouble with most economics, including this analysis, is the tendency to look at one factor at a time. As Herb Simon and Oliver Williamson explain, that is due to limited rationality, but it still means that we don’t get the whole picture. This demand side analysis looks at one part of increased income, while ignoring that existing owners of bonds paying lower interest rates have capital losses (and the tendancy for the values of equities to fall when the Fed increases rates). But more importantly, it ignores supply side effects entirely. For example, increasing interest rates decreases the willingness for housing developers to build new housing at a time when increases in the price of housing are the most significant component of current inflation. This can’t help decrease inflation, which at the current time appears to be more supply side driven. That said, it is still important to note the correctness of Prof. Mosler’s point.

Me: Yes, but that doesn’t mean we necessarily need more complex analysis. What we really need is to identify the key applied concept, that is, the current monetary and financial paradigm, and then using the signatures of all historical paradigm changes discover the new paradigm concept and its applications.

I’m not here to slam anybody’s valid research and stated reforms, only to promote a pattern change, ney a mega-paradigm change in this case, because being an entire pattern change, it will include all of the goals of those reforms that align with the new concept.

K: I have no disagreement that we need new paradigms, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to understand the complexities of the facts.

Me: Completely agree. Studying and identifying the complexities helps to focus on the current problematic operant concept like MMT and the other reformers I’ve refered to here have done.

But the irony is the key to perceiving paradigms is simplicity as paradigms, like wisdom insights, are single concepts that are deep simplicities.

So we have Modern MONETARY Theory. We have Steve Keen saying its all about “money, debt and banking” We have UBI. We have Public Banking. That’s why I have said the current paradigm is Debt as in burden to repay ONLY. The word ONLY designates the paradigm as a monopoly concept.

We know from history that past new paradigms have always been in complete conceptual opposition to the current one. That’s why Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting is the new concept. We also know that they invert current problematic temporal universe realities and destroy orthodoxies surrounding the current paradigm. That’s why a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale is the breakthrough exact applied expression of the new concept because it changes the temporal universe reality of erosive inflation into beneficial price and asset deflation, and destroys the orthodoxy of the quantity theory of money.

You’re right there’s no actual pattern there at all…because:

1) the point of speculation is purely monetary and financial, and

2) as Steve Keen has shown Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis is true, and

3) so its a chaotic system

Of course lots of speculators are habitual gamblers so its fun for them, but when the system is unstable as it truly is, economic punditry on the right that affirms the orthodoxies of the current paradigm of Debt Only like austerity and the quantity theory of money, or gets lost in well intentioned but no less unresolving punditry on the left like envy ridden taxation and generalized negativity…aren’t up to finding a better and more rational and stable system.

Paradigmatic analysis and mental breakthrough is required at this point, but no one has the guts, the good sense or has developed the mental tools for looking at the system from that level.

Here is a new post to my blog wisdomicsblog.com

In the new monetary paradigm not only will arbitrary inflater corportions be taxed at a rate of 100% on any revenue they may gain from such anti-social action, but they and their employees will be taxed to fund the new eco/climate bonds created to confront those problems. These new payroll taxes will total at least 50% of what the corporation and their employees paid for welfare, unemployment insurance and social security and which were eliminated by the policies of the new monetary paradigm.

Such inflating corporations’ management personnel will also not be eligible for the personal and corporate tax reductions also enabled by the policies of the new paradigm, and they will also lose any gifted revenue (a 1-2% gift of net income for not inflating).

The concept behind the new monetary paradigm is an aspect of grace, namely Gifting/a Gift, which concept has always been the concept behind every historical paradigm change. And the taxation policies above are also based on an aspect of grace as in sovereignty as in absolute power that is redeemed by its desire to both serve the common good and to inhibit/punish irresponsible behavior that would destabilize same.

The whole concept of “free” markets is flawed because in the human universe there is only freedom within known and enforced barriers. That’s why you can’t walk into a theater and yell, Fire!

In today’s modern oligopolistic corporate conglomerates and branding there is scant to no competition and no effective barrier to inflation. Hence “free” market theory is actually an enforcement of the present chaotic reality. Sovereign redeemed power by the government in its constitutionally granted power of taxation will effectively end that present fact and deal with agents who would abuse with it.

KC: That idea would be the end of private enterprise, innovation, and abundance. Instead, your ideas are the worn out prescription of communism, the surest way to create scarcity & misery. It’s failed everywhere it’s been attempted. There is no new monetary paradigm – there are only proposals to reattempt failed ideas by people who don’t know history.

Me: HAHAHA! Please explain how:

1) doubling individual demand by reducing the price of everything at retail by half (and yet the enterprise still receives their full best competitive price with the rebate), and
2) which potentially doubles the demand for every enterprise’s goods and services which is the definition of “good economic times” and
3) ends any possibility of inflation becuase retail sale is the terminal ending point of the entire economic process where production exits the economy and becomes consumption and
4) enables us to cut taxes of all kinds (for those who abide by the new graciously beneficial policies of the new paradigm)…is “the end of private enterprise, innovation, and abundance.” ???

The fact is it is the end of the rule of advanced Finance Capitalism and the rejuvenation of the very profit making economic system you imagine is or should exist, by resolving its major problems and by imbuing it with what it majorly lacks, namely an unassailable ethic of graciousness.

Keith, I’m sure you mean well, but you need to look past your orthodox mind filters and keep looking at the above temporal universe economic policy effects until you are able to see them…instead of just reacting to them.

KC: With all due respect, your comments are wordy but meaningless & nonsensical. You have not discovered new rules of economics.

Me: My comments and proposed policies are simply the utilization of the tools of accounting, that is debits and credits. Accounting/double entry bookkeeping is one of humanity’s greatest tools and its basic practices create temporal universe grounded realities that one cannot deny…IF they actually look at it. For instance when you borrow from a bank the equal accounting entries of that contract create the reality of Debt. A reciprocal gift of money utilizing debits and credits erases the burden to repay price at retail. That creates price reduction to the consumer and yet no loss of final payment to the retail merchant participating in the policy. Look at that, and keep on looking at it until you see it.

I have in fact discovered new economic facts about retail sale that have been staring economists in the face for at least a century, but they missed mostly because they got caught up in their abstractions instead of looking directly at the economic process itself, and also because they like nearly everyone else is guided and unfortunately too often blinded by their own cultural horizon. I have also innovated monetary policies that resolve long standing economic problems. Look at the policy effects. Keep on looking. They are not meaningless and nonsensical. They create empirical, mathematical and temporal universe realities.

KC: Inflation still hot, consumer spending still strong on the gusher of printed money they’ve been given by Santa’s elves at Treasury. ‘Transient’ is becoming as legendary as ‘if you like your plan you can keep your plan’. MMT isn’t solving anything, it’s exacerbating problems.

Me: Neither you affirming the means of dominating the general populace and all other commercial agents except those that are already monopolies (austerity), nor MMT’s failure to realize that reforms, even good reforms like MMT, within “free” market theory will never effectively deal with inflation. “Free” market theory is fantasy. It should rather be called Monetary and Financially Dominated Chaos Theory.

We are at the point where nothing except a new paradigm will effectively resolve our economic problems. THAT MUST BE COGNITED ON BY ECONOMISTS. Ptolemaic economics REQUIRES Copernican economics. All of the perfectly legitimate reductive analysis is simply not up to the task. It REQUIRES finding the SPECIFIC single, operant concept AKA paradigmatic analysis and the most workable and problem solving means of its application.

Brilliant guys like Steve Keen says exactly the above…and then immediately drops the idea and gets on to ANOTHER problem, the negative effects on energy caused by unchecked climate change, which changing the monetary and financial paradigm will enable the kind of mega projects needed to deal with that problem.

For chrissake lets put the horse back in front of the cart.

Kelton’s Substack

Me: This is good exegesis of the creation and flows of money, but it’s still a “missing of the mark” because its full of ifs, buts and maybes. It shows that theory within the current monetary paradigm still thinks you can only be pulled five ways from the middle and so accomplish little…or nothing. It’s monetary “epicycles”.

I’m sorry, I absolutely affirm that MMT and all of the other progressive theorists and reforms go in the right direction. To paraphrase Alan Ginsberg in his epic poem Howl!

I saw the best economic minds of my generation destroyed by the madness of Debt ONLY, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through its theoretical negro streets at dawn looking for an angry reformist fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo AKA a paradigm change in the machinery of neo-classical night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating the jazz of the new concept, that applied, would enlighten and actually resolve,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, but forgot that the new paradigm requires the recognition that conceptual opposition is the only route out of the current reality,

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of the current paradigm,

*****************

Stephanie, Steve, Warren, Michael and Ellen, I’m with you in Debt ONLY

where 6000 years of acculturated slavery forces us onto “all fours” and prohibits us from “standing in the light of the required new reality,

I’m with you in Debt Only,

where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our cogniting on the fact that the effect of every historical paradigm change has always been the expression of an aspect of the natural philosophical concept of grace…like Gifting.

Keen’s Podcast

Me: Nice to see you using the word paradigm so often recently. Ptomaic cosmology never actually changed until helio-centrism was conceived, Gallileo observed it in the temporal universe and Kepler discovered elliptical orbits.

As fiscal deficits, debt jubilee and UBI are all monetary gifting, then:
1) the discovery that direct and reciprocal monetary gifting utilizing accounting at retail sale is the single marco-economic/aggregative policy point in the entire economic process because everyone participates in/experiences its economic effects and
2) a high percentage discount/rebate policy, say 50%, at that point mathematically implements beneficial price and asset deflation.

So why not advocate for that?

Be happy to discuss and attempt to rebutt objections to any of this.

Me: The only reason it’s debt is because the plain old MONEY created is immediately transformed into debt by making it become treasuries. Just change the law. Keep it what it actually is A GIFT OF MONEY TO GOVERNMENTCONTRACTORS AND EMPLOYEES.

What everybody needs to wake up to is 1) the new monetary paradigm is GIFTING

2) that strategically implementing GIFTING into the Debt Only based system in the various ways I’ve posted here many times is not only the political football resolution to the ignorant and demagogic right’s blather but

3) mathematically the end of inflation which is the biggest problem in economics

4) the freeing of the individual from enforced austerity,

5) the greatest boost to GDP in history

6) the opportunity to form the greatest political coalition the country has ever seen, which will enable the bulk of liberal reforms unrelated to money/economics to be enacted

7) Clear the way for the kind of fiscal “deficits” necesarry to upgrade the infrastructure and confront climate change

8) create a solid everyday individual opportunity and temporal universe reality to feel gratitude everytime you purchase something instead of grudging resentment toward business and government. Imagine an economy based on and evocative of grace as in Gifting.

And that’s why the new monetary paradigm is a MEGA-paradigm of which there has only been 2 others in human history.

JB: Steve

I have no idea what you’re talking about here. Do you ??

And, please, what does any of this have to do with MY comment? Please, any reference to something I said here ??

I have not read whatever you wrote here repeatedly, so these memes mean nothing to me. Sorry

And this …

“”The only reason it’s debt is because the plain old MONEY created is immediately transformed into debt by making it become treasuries. “”

Wow ! First, I thought, in error I guess, that you understood that all money created BY BANKERS, MUST BE in the form of a DEBT, before it is entered into the account of the Borrower – where it first enters circulation as part of the nation’s money supply (M-1). It’s called ‘debt-BASED money’,

Or to Adair Turner ( an Uber central banker), called Debt-Contract Based Money.

BEFORE that ‘money’ can happen, the Borrower must sign the Promissory Note (Debt to Lender) to make all the (Debt-Service ) payments in the loan contract . THAT bank-money requires the DEBT as a pre-condition to making the loan and deposit, MEANS that everything you wrote there is a WAN, supported by neither proof nor logic.

And then, the Math. Although Treasury borrows a $TRILLION each year now in ordinary(*) times, that would only be less than 5 percent of the money put into circulation BY THE BANKERS that year, so the notion that the money issued becomes Debt “by making it become Treasuries” …. I mean, WOW!

(*) Neither Crisis nor Pandemic)

Thanks

Me: “I have no idea what you’re talking about here. Do you ??”

Yes.

“what does any of this have to do with MY comment? “

1) It’s obvious that you cannot think outside of the present monetary paraigm of Debt ONLY as the sole form and vehicle for the creation and distribution of new money.

2) Neither the Fed nor the Treasury are private banks, and other than to be a legalized handmaiden of the private banks and to obscure the private banks’ monopolistic paradigm there is no actual necessity to immediately transform the money of the deficit into treasuries, i.e. debt.

Money as Debt as in a burden to repay is a concept. Monetary Gifting as in no necessity to repay is conceptually in complete opposition to the Debt ONLY concept. One of the signatures of historical paradigm changes is that they are always in complete conceptual opposition to the present paradigm.

JB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwyPmENzBQ4

Me: Joe, I’m with you in so many respects. Minsky? Yes via listening to every one of Steve Keen’s videos for the last 10 years. Stephen Zarlenga? Yes, bought and read the book, and yes whoever controls the money system controls the nation. I even agree that MMT has some definitional and hence communication problems with their policies and presentation…but its a progressive reform, so lets not pick at it so much as find a way for it to integrate with the rest of the reforms and theorists.

All of Minsky, Keen, MMTers, Hudson, Graeber, UBI advocates, Public Banking want the same things. So how do you consolidate and integrate their reforms? You awaken to the new operant paradigm concept and how it is best applied. But you have to start analyzing on the paradigmatic level in order to do that. That is the missing link in the chain that will win the day for progressive economists and reforms. New paradigms change the nature of ENTIRE PATTERNS and resolve the major problems of the present/old paradigm. Lets do that.

WG: Steve, You may disagree with everything I’ve written on this site–and you may be right–but I have attempted in my own ham-fisted way to write in plain English. For the life of me I don’t understand a word of what you’re trying to say. If you think you have something profound to say, then say it plainly. I’m not suggesting that you don’t have something important to add to the conversation, but your post gives me no guidance. If you do have a keen insight, I don’t want to miss out because I can’t decipher your difficult prose. Please help me out by writing in the simple words I can understand. Thanks, Wally

Me: Wally, I’m in agreement with virtually everything you say and want to see happen. The only difference between Stephanie, Mosler, Keen, Hudson, Graeber, Minsky, Ellen Brown etc. and me is they are talking about separate reforms and I am analyzing on the paradigmatic level and advocating for the best/resolving applications of that single new concept.

Visualize a blank piece of paper. On that page put pencil points labeled with all of the above names. Then make a big circle around those names and label that entire circle New Paradigm Concept. The circle’s concept and its resolving policies is what I am talking about. The labeled points are all valid researches, theories and reforms…but they’re separate, aligned in many ways in their pursuit of solutions, but they’re still missing the new concept and its applications which, if its an actual new paradigm concept, changes the nature of the ENTIRE pattern, system, body of knowledge, area of human endeavor and resolves the problems/orthodoxies that have grown up around the old/current paradigm.

The Copernican cosmological paradigm concept was from geo-centrism to helio-centrism. The paradigm change from nomadic hunting and gathering was accomplished by homesteading, urbanization and agriculture. The current paradigm for the creation and distribution of new money is Debt ONLY. The new paradigm concept integrated into the current debt based system is Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting.

CVA: We should run as nominees of the Monetary Reality Party!

Of course, that would require creating a Monetary Reality Party . . . .

Me: Or the New Monetary Paradigm Party. Or maybe the Make Systems Serve You Party.

In our technologically advanced society all a paradigm changing idea and its reflective policy program requires is a platform. That’s why if you could get a Steve Keen, Stephanie Kelton, Randall Wray, Michael Hudson etc. to see its efficacy, and just get people to do the simple math of how it benefits them Hugo’s famous saying: “Nothing else in the world…not all the armies…is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” …will carry you through.

KC: “If deficits don’t matter, why do we need to tax anyone’s income at all?”

Me: Because MMTers are still stuck in the old paradigm that says we have to worry about inflation. MMTers are right about money mechanics and you are wrong, make no mistake about that, but neither you nor them are looking at what a policy of a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale would do. It would end inflation forever. That would free us to run the kind of fiscal deficits to renew our infrastructure and confront climate change. It would also claw back the purchasing power everyone has lost over the last 50+ years due to inflation and shipping jobs overseas.

I’ve rebutted every misconception and every critique, here and elsewhere, that is simply the assertion of an orthodoxy that the new monetary paradigm destroys. Neither Stephanie not Steve Keen will answer my posts. I suspect that’s because they don’t actually have answers to my new paradigm’s policy program…except in their own minds which again still have orthodoxies that the new paradigm destroys. I’m happy to be questioned by them. Bring it on. Lets see whether I’m a crack pot or the monetary version of Copernicus, Gallileo and Kepler all wrapped up in one.

The clock is ticking on our socio-economic and political instability and on climate change. It’s time to “go long, go deep.” And remember, to hold onto a good reform like MMT when a paradigm change is possible is an unethical act.

KC: Where in the Founding documents will we find the language saying governments job is to protect the weak from the ruthless? If MMT works, we never need to tax again. Just print money.

Me: Its simply a matter of elementary ethics that government should protect the weak from the powerful. Conservatives and libertarians often forget that ELEMENTARY consideration. That’s also how they can always manage to side with the powerful in the maintenace of their power.

The truth is both liberals and conservatives are mostly stuck in the obsessive dualism of thesis vs antithesis instead of seeking a genuine synthesis. And of course Finance loves the fact that both sides love yelling at each other instead of LOOKING for the synthesis of a paradigm change.

A genuine synthesis benefits EVERYONE and SOLVES problems. You have to decide whether you like solving problems more than arguing about them.