Me:  Just got back from watching The Big Short and it is a great film and an incredible indictment of the Banking and Financial system, how it can extend and pretend in order to cover up reality and how it can do utterly unethical things like sell MBS and then turn right around and short those very same investments…after it has realized it had been been setting the economy up for a catastrophe. It is also an example of the destructiveness of the intersection of greed, orthodoxy/refusal/inability to look and the corruption and duplicity that attend power.

E:  Yves Smith has a good piece on how the movie turns the real villains into heroes —

Me:  Yes that was the actual reality and the cinematic comic drama was an in between morality tale…..all the more reason to replace/transform such an evil and corrupting system of greed with one based on Grace that abundantly rewards everyone enabling them to prosper without needing to participate in such self destructive folly.

The real point is the actual system as it is…must end. And only a system based on Grace and who’s policies perfectly align with same will be up to completing that task.

Joe is good and Zarlenga and Kucinich were gutsy enough to include a citizen’s dividend in their legislation so I give them all props. Now anecdotally it is possible to pay off interest…if you’re a very successful business and/or you have a very good income for a very long time, however macro-economically the system will still be destabilized by it….AND ALL OF THE OTHER ADDITIONAL COSTS OF PRODUCTION LIKE DEPRECIATION, ETC. ETC.AND FOR WHICH THERE IS NO COSTLESS DISTRIBUTION OF INDIVIDUAL INCOME WITH WHICH TO LIQUIDATE THOSE ADDITIONAL COSTS/PRICES.

And that is the Social Credit insight, and the Dividend and Discount are the policies that will FINALLY resolve that disequilibrium and instability.

The Dogmatic level    closed, orthodox/unwilling to actually look, authoritarian, materialist, rigid, exclusionary, linear and very often regressive, monopolistic, stuck on stopping and rejecting, BELIEVES in and values MERELY/ONLY rightness in one’s own mind

The Logical Level      intellectual, theoretical, abstract, less rigid, exclusionary and orthodox but still bound to and inhibited by restrictive thinking,  slightly progressive, linear, dualistic, stuck on logic and thinking, BELIEVES in and values MERELY/ONLY  logic

The Wisdom/Grace/Conscious Level      integrative/wise, both intellectual and spiritual/experiential,  both abstract and empirical,  inclusive of everything true, workable, applicable and ethical, confident without being authoritarian,  progressive, linear, spatial and ascendant,  Trinitarian (i.e. dialectical)-Unitarian-Monist (in fact it is inclusive of twoness/Duality, Threeness Trinity and Oneness/Unity),  unstuck, free, free flowing, Believes in and values Integration, and  recognizes and Integrates  all existent realities whether conceived of as transcendental or natural and includes not only the mindset of Science, but also is encouraging and enabling of  the mindset of good science and the signature of virtually every scientific breakthrough which is….INTEGRATIVE OPEN MINDEDNESS.

What the economy, the nation and the world needs is not an academic or an economist, even an erudite and theoretically correct academic or economist, but a visionary who takes all of the data and conclusions of the aforementioned and crafts policies that penetrate directly to the level of the individual and so free him/her, and also create a dynamic upward thrust toward systemic free flowingness and increasing freedom because they are guided by a concept associated entirely with freedom/freeness/free gifting like Grace ….and so they would also go to the levels of meaning and purpose in Life. That would be a true integration of economics and Wisdom, a Wisdomics if you will,  instead of a mere study and application of economics. After all, do we craft policy for homo economicus or homo sapiens, i.e. wise and discerning man? And finally, what is needed is to integrate the concept of Grace into the entire culture so that Grace takes hold as a new cultural paradigm, that is a new generally accepted idea and that will lead to a new age, a new Ethic or zeitgeist of Grace.

Amen. So be it.

John: Steve, you are acting on the assumption that a discount system would be effective, which you have never yet shown to be practicable.
This is the sort of argument that makes Social Credit theory appear suspect to outsiders.
J R

Me:  John,
The Discount and Dividend together “pervade, encompass and bracket” the entire economy. And that is why they will work. Now I never said that you might not also want to watch businesses all along the route from resource extraction to retail sale and if they are simply raising prices in some large and unjustifiable fashion tax them or regulate them in some fashion. Actually because competition will be in effect in their business model like it is in any other this will tend to minimize gouging anyway, and again, even if there is some slightly higher rate of demand pull inflation….the discount at the end of the economic process will catch it anyway. And because both of the mechanisms of social credit ARE macro-economic tools, that is they deal with aggregates of numbers and percentages…if we are wise we will do what I suggest and simply reduce retail prices by some very significant fashion like 40-50%…because we want the system to move toward/become one resembling ticketing. You simply have to look at the system, be prepared to effectively deal with those who don’t/haven’t recognized that it benefits all including themselves. My Wisdomics/Gracenomics/Graceientialism is fully aligned with and yet actually an extension and exegesis of the philosophy of Social Credit. Wisdom is by definition the best and most relevant inward reality and outward actions. It is in no way one sided. Wisdom is the integrative process so the integration of the best theory and the best practice is what it advocates and accomplishes.

As for outsiders….I don’t give a damn about what they “think”. They have to look, actually look if they want to see. I’m out to resonantly communicate the hope and self interests (there’s an integration of opposites for you) to the individual and the vast majority of the small to medium sized businesses because they actually have mutual self interests and people generally respond positively to hope.

John:  Steve, I ask you to explain how the discount scheme would work.
It has been put florward in two different ways:
1. The establishment of just prices for items and payments to retailers if they adhere to them.  In modern conditions, when, say, three different pounds of butter may have dofferent prices in one supermarket and different supermarkets could justly charge different ranges of prices because of various factors such as freight to longer distances or different local taxe, settting “fair prices” would be a nightmare.s. That idea obviously is unworkable without an army of inspectors to do that and supervise adherence to them.
2. A rebate to consumers of a certain percentage of each purchase. In these days of computerisation, the logistics of that could be fairly simple.  But there is no provision to stop retailers raising prices because people can then afford to pay them. The answer given to that objection is always “competition”. But just as competition gets more fierce in “hard times”, so it gets less as they improve. Nobody has ever shown that it would apply at all when, as is a fundamental aim of Social Credit, people are given sufficient purchasing power to buy all of production.
In any case, the concept is completely unnecessary.  Provided the dividend paid is sufficientonly  to “close the gap” and no more, it should have no inflationary effect.
Records from this country in the early 40’s show that inflation need not be a serious factor because the economy are prosperous.

J R

Me:  #1 is wrong and would not be used.

“there is no provision to stop retailers raising prices because people can then afford to pay them.” Basically irrelevant with my deflationary scenario, and with that deflationary policy in place there WOULD be more competition. And besides I already said that if businesses raised their prices without or with flimsy justification they could be subject to taxation or other regulation like maybe suspension of their participation in the discount program.

“In any case, the concept is completely unnecessary.  Provided the dividend paid is sufficientonly  to “close the gap” and no more, it should have no inflationary effect.”

Not true. As mankind runs businesses and mankind is flawed it is inevitable that inflation will occur. What is unnecessary is to worry about whether or not there is inflation or how much….when you have a macro-economic tool like the Discount in place that can be utilized to not only defeat that inflation, but to create deflation…even within a profit making economic system.

John:  Then, Steve, please explain how your “deflationary scenario” would work. Your next sentence after that seems to indicate the “army of inspectord” scenario.
I have a feeling, also, that you are unaware of the provable fact that much of modern inflation is of the “cost-push”   type, not a result of too much money in circulation. This is, of course, a corollary of Douglas A+B analysis. It is totally impossible to have too much and too little purchasing power at the same time.

Me:  The deflationary scenario is simply accomplished by reducing every retail price of every product/service of participating merchant by 50%. (I cannot conceive of any merchant that wouldn’t want to participate in such a program where he can sell his product at 50% of his normal price and still be guaranteed his normal compensation) If actual inflation were 3% or 5% or even 10% due to many businesses raising their prices due to demand pull inflation….good!, we just increased the purchasing power of every consumer by 40% or more. All of these compensated discount totals are granted by the National Credit Office (NCO) INSTEAD OF BY REVOLVING LOANS/LINES OF CREDIT BY THE BANKS THUS SEVERELY DOWNSIZING THEIR CONSUMER MARKET.

If the government has to employ 10,000 auditors (probably more like 1000) to peruse the statistics that accounting algorithms of robotic software show are anomalies in an enterprise’s costs…so be it! For instance, a paper products company has been selling toilet tissue at $.80 per roll for the last 10 years but all of a sudden a chemical costs 500% more and it now must sell them for $1,20 per roll. Red flag! Another company raises its prices 10% serially for 3 months. Red Flag!

No John, I do not have any lack of awareness of A + B….or its effects as you apparently do in saying, “It is totally impossible to have too much and too little purchasing power at the same time.” That of course is what the advocates of DSGE (Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium) BELIEVE they’ve theoretically accomplished….except they haven’t, because they confuse total money in the system and total available individual income to actually spend, and so they also think they have resolved the economy for Time….but they actually haven’t. Yes, cost inflation is the most underlying and unperceived cause and Time (lags) enforces its effects. Don’t mix DSGE with Social Credit….it leads to misunderstanding.

Essentially it doesn’t even matter how much “the Gap” is. With a sufficient Dividend and price deflationary Discount percentage we could all be economically free and getting wealthier every month because the dual macro-economic policies of the Dividend and Discount monetarily pervade, encompass, bracket and maintain a flow of the economy, all while fitting seamlessly within a profit making system, downsizing the Banking and financial systems to still profitable but non-dominating status and hard charging the vector toward money as a ticketing system for the distribution of production….exactly like technology and now artificial intelligence are meant to enable. Enterprise will adapt to security and stability much more easily than to austerity and its dominance, and people will have have much more of an investment in keeping such a system just, and so regulation and ethics will undoubtedly be better enforced. Oh, and as savings is not really a problem because the individual has self determined control of them while they do not have such control over debt who cares how much they save? And finally, people will be much more open to and rational about modulating their consumption when they are securely free and un-coerced which would undoubtedly make actual ecological balance much more likely than if all people can do is despairingly dream of more and the system is hooked on growth.

Monetary grace the free gift, the new economic paradigm. Open your eyes and let yourself see it. Freedom is contagious and takes better care of itself and others than fear, doubt or obsessive control.

On a scale of knowingness to mystery there are many steps, but ascendingly the two top states of knowing on that scale are Unknowingness and Knowingness.  Economics contains a lot of data, but the dominant ideology has many false assumptions (Doubt) and a few missing insights and metrics (Unknowingness).  By simply rejecting the current false assumptions and discovering the missing insights it could immediately go from Doubt to Unknowingness to Knowing.

As the economy and money system are considered to be out of equilibrium, balance and flow, the primary aspects of Grace are Balance, Equilibrium and Flow and the experience of Grace itself is the complete integration of 1) Space and 2) Time and 3) Cognition/Self Awareness….then the concept of Grace and its aligned policies would appear to align with Knowledge at all of its levels, the  process of gaining it and  the classical goals of economic theory and practice…..and as the concept of Grace as in Gifting is not an allowed policy in the current economic and monetary systems….it would appear the inclusion and integration of that concept would be wise.

Wisdom/Personal Knowledge/Knowingness/Cognition is simply a more contemplative and higher reflection of a breakthrough integration of data and theory.

Soddy was smart, it’s just that like every other theory and theorists except Social Credit/Wisdomics/Gracenomics his policy reach did not go directly and all the way to the individual.

The ethical point of economics is the satisfactory inclusion of the individual and the free flowingness of the system, and since ethicality, personal freedom, free flowingness, directness, inclusion….and Bothness as in integration are all  aspects of the concept of Grace….I suggest we integrate them into a comprehensive new theory and paradigm of Economics.