Uncertainty ye shall always have with you, however it helps to understand and abide by the following:

The willingness and ability to mentally integrate the truths in seeming opposites, i.e. wisdom,

The willingness and ability to focus on and observe the present and recognize and decipher solutions from such, i.e. the pragmatic aspect of wisdom,

The willingness and ability to perceive essences and their significance, i.e. the paradigmatic perception of wisdom and

The willingness and ability to recognize the wisdom of always maintaining an ethic of integration in one’s thinking and investigations, i.e. the wisdom of wisdom.

“It’s the monetary and financial paradigm, stupid”.

Me:   With the new monetary paradigm freeing us from the capabilities of export platforms, inflation and fear of unemployment we could rapidly re-industrialize in the most efficient and ecologically sane way possible and/or in the medium term begin to off planet production.

The effects of a mega paradigm change are both immediate and vast.

E:  That begs the question of exactly what new monetary paradigm? In addition, no monetary paradigm can fix all our economic problems. It is quite false to think that money and market decisions alone can order our economy ethically, efficiently or sustainably. Money, finance and market decisions are made on the fallacious and imperfect assigning of relative values in an non-objective and nominal monetary unit. More to the point, money rewards are made more in relation to power, guile and hierarchy status than in relation to the social or ecological value of outputs. Our economic decisions going forward must be made on scientific and ethical considerations. Money, if we continue to use it, would simply be used to enable implementation of the decisions taken.

A truly evolved democratic socialist society would evolve beyond the need for money. An alternative would exist in terms of “permissions to consume”. The market as “distributed intelligence” could be replaced by socialized planning aided by data collection and AI. Such planning is far more feasible with modern computing systems provided we use real counts of real things, real goals measurable by scientifically objective criteria and manage the whole according democratic and socialist ethical principles. To fail to see this at this juncture in history is to be as blind as those at the end of the Ancien Régime who wanted to retain that system and lacked the imagination to consider any new system (or failed to see that a new system was overtaking them anyway.

A number of current “virtues” must be inverted, if we are to survive as a species. Thrifty use of resources must replace greed and watse. Conspicuous frugality must replace conspicuous consumption. Encouragement of economic growth and over-consumption must replaced by a steady state, circular economy and sustainable consumption.

Me:   “That begs the question of exactly what new monetary paradigm?”

The one that resolves all of the major and deepest macro-economic problems that all the heterodox economists agree NEED to be resolved and that I have enumerated here many times, and ends the current monopoly status monetary paradigm of Debt Only.

Steve Keen includes in virtually every one of his videos these days a graph that shows that whenever the rate of increase of credit dips the economy goes into recession…and yet the level of private debt has become so high that it has become un-serviceable…..and yet the current monopoly paradigm remains untouched Hence we are stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place. The new paradigm of Monetary Gifting intelligently and insightfully implemented breaks up the current monopoly one and resolves the economy’s major problems….if one actually looks at what its policies do….as opposed to merely intellectualizing about the problems and ignoring the policy solutions.

Does a monopoly paradigm of Debt Only makes sense to you? Especially in view of now chronically unserviceable levels of Debt?

“In addition, no monetary paradigm can fix all our economic problems.”

Never said it would. Only the deepest and major ones.

Money is such a facile and effective tool, and double entry bookkeeping is likewise such a good tool (although it may need some reform in certain areas and possibly even transcendence in certain instances). All of the blockchain, cryto-currency and even the AI “solutions” are just complexity rabbit holes and serve mainly to take our focus off the real problem of the monopolistic current monetary paradigm.

E:   We tend to advocate what we understand. A person understands MMT and double-entry bookkeeping, he advocates MMT and double-entry bookkeeping. A person understands how to make money on the current “free” market, she advocates the current “free” market. A person understands management theory of a certain kind, he advocates management theory of a certain kind. A person understands ordoliberalism, she advocates ordoliberalism… and so on.

Note, here “understand” means “knows the theory of” usually with little idea of how that theory would work in all the multivarious empirical situations it could encounter.

Me:   Without recognizing the single aggregative/macro-economic point in the micro-economy, that is retail sale, and the significance of the monetary, financial and economic paradigm changing effects of a high percentage discount/rebate monetary policy implemented at that point….none of the current cutting edge theories and reforms have nearly the broad, “knock on” and transformational effects as the program I’ve been posting about here for years.

And that’s the difference, no matter how much or how little one understands it, between a mere theory within the current paradigm and a genuinely new pattern change.

EZ:   Craig: To make sure we have the same view of the economy, here’s my view:

GDP is the measure of our productive economy. GDP is the sum of household, business and government spending (and likewise the income of those sectors equals that spending, because all spending is someone else’s income). Our economy depends on household spending (2/3 of GDP). That spending is limited by household income (which comes only from those three sectors). Business provides that income to the extent demand (business opportunity) exists, and government provides the rest (by way of bookkeeping entries to household bank accounts). All that’s important to the economy is maintaining this flow, and with a fiat currency (whose value, by definition, depends only on currency-users perception), there are no limits other than that perception.

The household spending portion of GDP is the FINAL sale of products & services. I’m assuming that is specifically what you’re proposing to discount & that the reimbursement will occur by crediting the vendors’ bank account upon receipt of their submission of their sales report. (The report format & timing requirements would need to be revised & the reporting fully automated (ie, paper eliminated) for the benefit of both vendors & BEA. Full automation would be especially important to ease the burden on small retailers, landlords & service providers, especially those in the household construction and maintenance sectors.)

GDP would dramatically increase, but not necessarily double (with a 50% discount), the PCE/GDP ratio would significantly increase (which I’d deem a significant improvement in manageability of the economy) & I’d expect to see a significant reduction in payday loans & some increase in personal savings. If staple goods/services constitute the major portion of GDP, inflation should not be a problem, due to competition.

The advantage over a UBI would be that the government spending flows directly into household spending (rather than some of it going into savings & investment). I expect that vendor resista/nce would be the most difficult part of selling the program, which could be overcome with a well-designed reporting/reimbursement system (mobile reporting, instant reimbursement). Political resistance could be minimized by starting with a small discount, increasing as the program proves itself. All in all, seems like a reasonable proposal.

Me:  That appears to be good detail to me. I would say however that integrating the discount/rebate monetary policy with both a universal dividend and a job guarantee is perfectly doable because of the finality of it being implemented at the terminal ending point at retail sale, and because of how those policies would enable us to completely step out of the current paradigm and implement fully direct personal and fiscal distributism. Taxation is a legitimate sovereign power and right to discourage economic vices and encourage economic virtues, but re-distributive taxation is old paradigm and unnecessary when direct fiscal distributism is made possible by the 50% Discount/Rebate policy. I see no reason to keep any unnecessary foot in the old paradigm.

DT:   Craig, I sometimes wonder if you can read! I outline the argument for credit cards as a paradigm for giving people “money” when they need it, paid for by their earning it, and you come back saying “Nobody has suggested a program nearly as comprehensive and immediately effective as my new monetary and financial paradigm”!

So you want us to give back money to those who already have too much, but not to penniless producers turned off their land so trees can be chopped down to grow stuff for beef-burgers and margerine?

It seems you have never thought about Malthus’ problem, never mind our current need for self-imposed austerity in both consumption and reproduction (i.e. overall birthrates), hence the need for local control information and global mobilisation of tree-replanters. But are you SEEING what I am saying, or as usual just LISTENING to yourself?

Me:   Dave, a credit card is not a monetary gift, it is a DEBT….and that places you unmistakably in the private banker’s mindset and paradigm of DEBT ONLY as in a monopoly paradigm. The monopolistic onlyness, especially in supposedly COMPETITIVE free enterprise economic systems, is precisely what is problematic and wrong. Comprende?

The Adamic curse was lifted over 2000 years ago. It’s time we applied it to the economy and money system. Or does it not apply there?

Now if you’re an entrepreneur or business person and you want or need to increase your production, or a home buyer the national publicly administered non-profit banking system will be happy to create and LEND you the required funds…at o%…unless you’re a hard core pornographer or drug king pin or something….then you’ll have to go to the private financiers with someone’s already created and saved profits or incomes and they’ll intermediate your project at a rate of interest that I’m sure would be a “deal”.

“So you want us to give back money to those who already have too much,”

Of course of those who have much, much is required, but the politics of envy are largely irrelevant….and old paradigm as well.

“but not to penniless producers”

Not relevant critique. As I showed Ken, my program of a dividend and a job guarantee enables his homeless Portlander to have over $52k worth of purchasing power per year. Solidly middle class for an individual.

“turned off their land so trees can be chopped down to grow stuff for beef-burgers and margerine?”

A sovereign, and under the new paradigm’s policies an obviously benevolent government, people will not be extortable and having knowledge of their prior oppression will undoubtedly be sensitive to the caprices of commercial interests who also being under the gracious but sovereign purview of the government, will not have free reign to exploit.

“It seems you have never thought about Malthus’ problem, never mind our current need for self-imposed austerity in both consumption and reproduction (i.e. overall birthrates), hence the need for local control information and global mobilisation of tree-replanters. But are you SEEING what I am saying, or as usual just LISTENING to yourself?”

Doubling purchasing power does not equate with a doubling of commodity consumption.

Select additional subsidization of green consumer products and the enabling of funding for the mega projects necessary for ecological survival…are a primary part of my program and end the idiocy of such being “too costly” under the current financial paradigm of Debt Only.

I’m sure there’s a gracious integration of population control within ecological survival…but it won’t have any possibility of enactment unless we awaken to the new monetary and financial paradigm FIRST. The new zeitgeist is grace and the current zeitgeist is power. So maybe you should figure out what that means.

EZ:  Craig: Where can I find a definitive description of your Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting proposal?

Me:  In my book on Amazon entitled: “The New Monetary Paradigm and Its Policies….Change Everything” which I’m re-writing presently for conciseness and policy emphasis. Give me a week to finish the changes.

The actions of the 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale perfectly describe and express the new paradigm. All merchants opting into the policy (read all of them because to opt out is to become completely uncompetitive) agree to reduce any and all product or service prices by 50% and open an account for all sales entitled discounts. The total amount of their discounts to consumers is rebated back to them by the monetary authority whether that is a new actually publicly administered federal level monetary authority or whatever authority is mandated to fulfill the rebate, and in so doing make every merchant whole on their overheads and margins of profit.

As retail sale is the terminal ending point of the entire economic/productive process for every consumer item from a package of chewing gum to an automobile or home and is by definition also the terminal expression point for all economic and monetary factors, like inflation for instance, because it is the point where production becomes consumption. If possession is 90% of the law, then possession as in consumption at retail sale is 99.9% of economics. That means everyone’s purchasing power just got doubled at the very least (the dividend of course is additionally doubled purchasing power and enables transfer taxation elimination).

Price inflation is typically a small single digit percentage so the net percentage discount insures beneficial price deflation, and even if after the taxation discouragements and further sanctions I recommend in the new paradigm program to inhibit greedy anti-social businesses from inflating still somehow results in say 1-4% overall inflation….you just make the discount 51-54%.

Hyper-inflations never happen without several specific and disastrous circumstances happening like a prior war and the destruction of most of a nation’s productive capacity and then a compliant central bank that leverages up speculators who short the currency that initiates the actual final hyper-inflation. That plus high-tech capital intensive economic systems are costly and still competitive meaning they can’t just raise their prices arbitrarily high without losing market share. So never mind the straw man/rabbit hole of the hyperinflationistas.

The $1000/mo universal dividend, 50% discount/rebate policy and national publicly administered non-profit banking and financial system and other regulations eliminate inflation, the need for transfer taxation for welfare, unemployment insurance and social security.  The second 50% discount/rebate at the point of note signing for any and all green technologies and green consumer goods super charges the ability to purchase and necessity of finding renewable energy and resource alternatives.

Doubling purchasing power does not equate to a doubling of consumption or commodity through put.

We haven’t acted/created effective policy for climate change and renewable sources of energy for almost 50 years. The policies I’ve suggested will FINALLY enable and streamline what we should have been doing for that period.

The new monetary paradigm ends the paradox of thrift and with its directness greatly homogenizes the so called “fallacy of composition” in economics and the money system.

Nobody has suggested a program nearly as comprehensive and immediately effective as my new monetary and financial paradigm. MMT only talks about government debt. Public Banking is a mere reform. UBI/QE for the people is a mere bone toss to we serfs. Hudson’s diatribes against finance are spot on but there’s no policy program to do anything effective about financial illegitimacy. Keen exposes financial instability, but again has no insightful or comprehensive way to accomplish the new paradigm he says we need, and then squirrels off to dealing with energy. Indeed, a very important area of research, but an excellent example of focusing on problems to the point of the neglect of solutions. We don’t need intellect nearly as much as we need wisdom….which of course includes intellect.

Retail sale. And that is how and why a direct and reciprocal monetary policy at that point resolves virtually all of the problems that macro-economists currently puzzle over in our monetary economy. Too simple for the erudite to countenance, too much of a plain as the nose on your face part of the otherwise complex economic calculus to perceive by same….and too utterly beneficial to every legitimate economic agent….to be denied.

It (the 50% Discount/Rebate monetary policy) is the very expression of the new monetary and financial paradigm of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting.

For any corporation, domestic or foreign, using fake accounting to pay no tax there will be a 2% tax on their gross revenues in order to be able to participate in the 50% Discount/Rebate policy, and they will have to faithfully obey the rest of the gracious policies and regulations.

Conservatives are always on the wrong side of history because evolution is a fact and the true underlying nature of the cosmos is grace as in interactive, integrative flow through time and space.

Steve Hummel 11/28/2019