If you mathematically double the purchasing power/demand with a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale you don’t increase the costs of enterprise thus you eliminate the reason for cost push inflation while benefitting the normally opposed self interests of both merchant and consumer which also makes the policy effect an integration of opposites to the point of a thirdness greater oneness which is a signature of historical paradigm changes. It would also encourage competition and innovation which are economic virtues instead of clinging to “free” market theoretics which is:
1) a fetishized framework for total freedom which is just an enablement for commercial agents to commit the continual economic crime of inflation because total freedom is in reality the lack of known and enforceable barriers. In the human universe you can’t walk into a theater and yell “Fire!” and you shouldn’t be able to arbitrarily commit “Inflation!” either. Economics is probably the only human system where ethics don’t count because the beneficial experience of freedom is negated by the delusional belief in total freedom.

2) In my book I suggest that to give enterprise the actual freedom to raise their price you
a) make the discount at retail sale permanently 52%,
b) tax obvious episodes of “greedflation” at a rate of at least 100% and
c) do an honest analysis of monthly inflation unlike now which does not include food and energy/petroleum costs and then
d) additionally index the 52% discount to that honest rate of inflation. Finally, you
e) include state, county and municipal taxes in the final retail discount percentage thus the federally sovereign government pays for at least 50% of the funding of these non-sovereign governments.

So many ways to benefit everyone when you change the monetary paradigm.

Trump et all are nuts alright, but the idea that you can rebate money back to consumers nascently recognizes that by utilizing the double entry bookkeeping operations of equal debits and credits that sum to zero you can literally work miracles…especially if you realize that by integrating Strategic Monetary Gifting into the present monopoly monetary paradigm for the creation and distribution of new money which is Debt Only with my 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale…you don’t have to increase debt or tax in order to redistribute which are probably the two biggest bitches that libertarians and conservatives actually want.

I should pitch my paradigm changing policy program to Trump. He’d probably find some way to screw it up as he’s a chicken and “not quite right” as the saying goes. But I’m used to that. After all I’ve been dealing with it here and elsewhere for almost a decade.

Me: Your history and reasoning is correct as usual, but still fails to penetrate to the conceptual/paradigmatic level of analysis. Changing the concepts/paradigms that enlighten, create and enforce temporal universe realities are the most pungent ones possible for instance geo-centrism to helio-centrism and perfect circles to ellipses.

In the present monetary and economic case if you implemented a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale and the money/credit/demand rebated back to the merchant was a GIFT you’d change/end the present monopoly paradigm concept for the creation and distribution of all new money which is Debt Only to Debt AND Strategic Monetary Gifting. And the consumer gets $100 worth of groceries for $50, a $60k EV for $30k and a $500k house for $250k while the grocer, auto dealership and banker gets their full price with the rebate…but credit/the increase in demand due to Monetary Gifting does not fall. In fact this change in APPLIED CONCEPT implements beneficial price and asset deflation by increasing the money supply. Milton Friedman turns over in his grave…the same as Ptolemy did when Copernicus came along.

Steve Keen referring to Ben Bernanke: He’s certainly lacking in imagination and self-awareness. The word that comes to mind in describing him is “pedestrian”. He’s a True Believer in the Neoclassical paradigm, and can’t comprehend anything outside it. That’s typical of most believers in a paradigm: very few are able to see any flaw in their belief system.

That’s the way I taught economics: explain that the models they use are wrong, but they mark the exams, so you have to know what they believe in order to pass. I told students to treat the exam as if someone had made up crazy rules for Chess; you had to follow the rules even if they were crazy.

Me: Right again. Even the erudite find it hard to drop orthodoxies, fear risking to advocate for a conceptual change that is apparently illogical even though complete conceptual opposition is an historical signature of paradigm changes, and so they lack the imagination to see new paradigms. Pedestrianism has many hiding places even in brilliant minds like for instance cynicism which makes people give up before they even start…even though when the solutions that are also signatures of paradigm changes are evident, they fail to recognize that cynicism or even palliatives are actually unethical “alternatives”. I prefer Gramsci’s insight: “Pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will.”

Enforced instability by a monopoly paradigm like the present monetary paradigm of Debt Only as the sole form and vehicle for the creation and distribution of all new money IS a significant problem. However, if you change that paradigm you resolve its present negative/unstable effects but, because the temporal universe is by nature emergent/ever changing, even new paradigms eventually become anomalous…but at a much slower and less universal rate and so its much less of a problem…especially if one acculturates/keeps one’s mind open to the signatures of historical paradigm changes.

The 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale integrates your macro insights into the micro-economy. Voila! Paradigm change.

Why? Because every individual/micro-economic agent participates in retail sale but the universality of participation in retail sale ipso facto also makes the effect of the 50% Discount/Rebate policy aggregative/macro-economic in effect.

A thirdness greater oneness resolution of seeming unresolvable opposites will benefit everyone and enable the changes that both parties hold most dear. That thirdness is my new monetary paradigm policy of a 50% Discount/Rebate at retail sale because it doubles everyone’s purchasing power (democratic wet dream) while simultaneously doubles potential demand for every enterpise’s goods and services (republican wet dream), transforms inflation into beneficial deflation (libertarian wet dream).

To ignore or let pre-conceived orthodoxies prevent you from seeing these policy effects traps you in the unresolving dualities of capitalism vs socialism and democrat vs republican instead of the thirness greater oneness which has historically always been the signature of paradigm change.

Those who commit cynicism and/or palliation of problems when a new paradigm is known and available makes them appeasers of oligarchy and authoritarianism.

Steve Hummel 11/05/2025

1. All new money is created ex nihilo, that is out of nothing, simply with double entry bookkeeping, and this itself is not a problem
2. Presently, virtually all new money is created and distributed only as debt which makes the present monetary paradigm…the monopoly concept of Debt Only, and this Is a problem, primarily because of its monopolistic character
3. Paradigms by definition are both mental and temporal universe applied concepts, and so new paradigms change both the minds and the worldly circumstances of mankind.
4. Paradigm changes are permanent progressive solutions, so unless you value mere palliatives more than solutions…when a paradigm change is available…cynicism is actually irrelevant and the only choice is determined effort until the change is accomplished
5. Science is primarily identifying problems and Wisdom is about solutions
6. Problems are defined by dualities like capitalism vs socialism etc. and new paradigms are integrative thirdnesses/resolutions of seemingly unresolvable opposites/i.e. dualities, thus new paradigms and wisdom insights are synonymous phenomena