In order to save democracy we’re going to have to establish the integrative and unifying power of the natural philosophical concept of grace. Stay with me here, I’m not an orthodox religious person in any sense. I’m all for wisdom though, and grace/graciousness as in love in action is the pinnacle concept of human wisdom. And the concept and application of an aspect of grace has always been what has lead to permanent as in paradigmatic change.

The media and our politics need to change in the ways that all of you have insightfully posted here, and those suggestions need to be pursued concurrently with the monetary and economic policies I’m suggesting.

The current paradigm for the creation and distribution of money is Debt Only. That is, it is a monopoly concept, and monopolies by definition are dominating and anti-freedom. If we integrated a new monetary paradigm of grace/graciousness as in Monetary Gifting into the debt based system with two policies…all manner of positive, integrative and unifying effects would be possible.

The first policy of the new monetary paradigm is a 50% Discount/Rebate at the point of retail sale. In other words every product and service in the economy is discounted 50%, and then the entirety of that discount is mandated to be rebated back to the merchant granting it to the consumer by the monetary authority so that the merchant can be made whole on their overheads and profit margins.

This would immediately double both everyone’s purchasing power and potentially double the free and available demand for every enterprise’s consumer goods and services. (Stay with me here, this doesn’t necessarily equate with a doubling of consumption…but it does integrate the economic interests and political agendas of the traditionally opposed constituencies of labor and management. Remember, integration and unification are aspects of the philosophical concept of grace.)

This single policy would also forever end any possibility of systemic inflation as garden variety inflation is almost always a low single digit percentage. How? By integrating BENEFICIAL price and asset DEFLATION. Guess what? Inversion of temporal universe reality is one of the cardinal signatures of paradigm change. For instance, the Copernican cosmological paradigm change was no more and certainly nothing less than the realization that the inversion of the positions of the earth and the sun resolved anomalies that had plagued astronomy for centuries.

Now if you ended the possibility of inflation forever…you could forever end the political debate about fiscal deficits being inflationary. That would open the way to vastly increasing government spending for infrastructure and the kind of mega projects necessary to confront climate change.

The second policy of the new monetary paradigm is a $1000/mo. universal dividend paid to everyone 18 years of age and older. Combined with the 50% discount that would guarantee every adult $2000/mo. of purchasing power…for life. If every adult was guaranteed $2000/mo. the payroll taxes every working person and every enterprise pays for welfare, unemployment insurance and even for social security immediately become redundant and are hence could be eliminated. $2000/mo. is higher than the vast majority of individuals get for social security, and you don’t even have to work for 45-50 years to get it! And again, this policy integrates the normally opposed economic interests of labor and management.

There are numerous other philosophically aligned policies like the above two that would solidify the new monetary, financial and economic paradigm of Gifting, and would also help consciously build self awareness of grace/graciousness that is also the deepest need and remedy of our faltering democracy. Just imagine if you felt grateful for a government that gifted you half of the price of everything every time you bought something?

Cryptocurrencies are energy impossible and unsecured rabbit holes. Money and accounting are two of humanity’s greatest inventions and tools and there is no actual reason to reject them. The real problem is the monetary and financial paradigm which has always been alternatively monopolized by either the palace or the private banks. Make the money system serve humanity instead of humanity having to slavishly serve it by integating the new paradigm of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting into the solely debt based system…and many additional benefits not the least of which could be human and planetary survival will follow on.

“Fiscal Keynesianism is still a policy in search of a theory.”

Yes. Because Keynesianism is an incomplete and once removed from the individual theory. Within all of the calculus it is better than neo-liberal macro which attempts to hide the dominance of finance by ignoring “money, (private) debt and banks”, but it doesn’t address the elephant in the room which is private finance’s monopolistic paradigm of Debt Only as the sole form and vehicle for the creation and distribution of money. And it hasn’t broken through the sound barrier as to how to best and most universally implement the new paradigm of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting, which is precisely the way the banks do so now, that is, reciprocal accounting entries at both retail sale and at the point of loan signing.

It’s time we awoke to the new inversion of reality like we did with the Copernican cosmological paradigm change, and ended the Catholic church’s monopoly on the sacraments (albeit more peacefully) during The Reformation.

Please consider it. After all, the best way to reverse the anger, frustration and destruction of a disintegrative trend is to cognite on the ultimate integrative effects of applying the natural philosophical concept of grace as in love in action…in a universally participative system like economics.

Keen is my pick for the best economist on the planet. His work de-bunking DSGE is excellent and identifies the theory’s major problems.

His only problem? He talked about a new paradigm, but even though he pointed directly at the problems (money, private debt and banks) he didn’t recognize the current problematic paradigm, apparently doesn’t have a knowledge of the signatures of historical paradigm changes and so didn’t know how to formulate the new paradigm concept.

He even had another brush with cognition about the means of implementing that new paradigm when he correctly stated that economists could get their Phd.s in economics without so much as taking an elementary course in accounting.

So astute, so close, but close only counts in horse shoes, while new cognition is everything with paradigms.

What we need is a monetary Reformation. The present situation where private banks own a virtual monopoly paradigm to create our money ONLY AS DEBT is exactly analogous to the Catholic church owning a monopoly on the entrance to heaven only via THIER sacraments. Monopolies and even more powerfully, paradigmatic monopolies are anti-freedom. If we were to gift a 50% discount to consumers at retail sale all of which was rebated back to the merchant giving it to the consumer by the monetary authority we could immediately double everyone’s purchasing power and eliminate inflation at the same time. In fact (magically, if you are an orthodox economist) we would be beneficially integrating price and asset DE-flation into profit making economic systems…with that single policy. Temporal universe inversions of reality are a primary signature of historical paradigm changes. Get the policies of the new monetary paradigm here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PLNJLRN/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=wisdomics-Gracenomics&qid=1552358772&s=books&sr=1-1-catcorr

A few decades from now when the human race is facing the fact that it is probably not going to survive because of climate change just how stupid are they going to feel when they passed on the one policy that would have enabled the greening of the economy necessary to avoid that fate?

My sincere sympathies. I don’t doubt his good intentions, but it is my observation that Austrians cannot think outside of the present monetary paradigm even if doing so would enable them to accomplish their highest goal of price and asset deflation. A clear sign that they are blinded by orthodoxy. And libertarians? Again their intentions are virtuous, but economically they believe in an idealized/fetishized idea of liberty/freedom/free markets instead of realizing that integrating monetary gifting into the economy would mimic and create an economy that operated like the gracefully dynamic and in fact unstoppable free flow of time and space…that they themselves desire.

And that is the natural philosophical concept behind every historical paradigm change.

And that concept is grace.

And grace by the way is also the next new zeitgeist, which the new monetary and financial paradigm of monetary grace as in Gifting will do more to enable as a reality than any other policy action/reality because zeitgeists are new mental/self actualized realities…and the repetitive and continuous nature of a gracious monetary gift at retail sale will do more to enable us to consciously realize the goodness, the gratitudiness, the problem solving practicality and the wisdom of the natural philosophical concept of grace/graciousness.

Just think about what the continuous experience of gratitude for a gift whenever you bought something, would be like…and could lead to.

Me: Don’t get me wrong, all of the heterodox reform research of Mosler, Keen, Hudson etc. is well and good, but the deepest part of the problem has not been addressed and that is discovering the single new paradigm concept and finding an efficacious way to integrate it into the economy that actually changes the nature of its entire pattern. The present paradigm for the creation and distribution of money is Debt Only. The new paradigm is Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting and the most efficacious way to implement the new paradigm is with a 50% discount to consumers at retail sale every penny of which is rebated back to the merchant giving it to consumers by the FED or another monetary authority. This resolves the problems of individual monetary scarcity, systemic austerity and any possibility of inflation, and enables many more political and economic possibilities because it integrates interests and agendas on the left and the right. Again, this in no way belittles current heterodox research but rather affirms their conclusions and simply makes their stated goals a reality.

SG: MMT has always said the all the historical hyper-inflations have resulted from supply disruptions. This is what is going on, so MMT has always had an explanation. Now is the time to bring it up. Also explain that MMT is not able to predict unexpected supply disruptions. But MMT proponents should have been looking out for their occurrence when they happen. MMT should have been able to predict this inflation as soon as they saw the huge supply disruption caused by the pandemic.

Me: Hyperinflations are very rare and occur only after a series of prior disastrous circumstances like losing a war, having your productive facilities turned into rubble, being punished by the winner with onerous debts, thus making money printing a politically palatable action in an attempt to pay off such debts, and finally a private banking system leveraging up currency speculators who short the currency…and that is what makes the inflation go hyper. We don’t have to worry about hyperinflation, but we do have to worry about high inflation (basically a single digit percentage) which has many causes the most basic of which is that there really is no effective means of stopping it. Currently austerity is used to attempt to stop it, but that of course doesn’t work and brings on economic recession. The highest year on year rate of inflation the US has had in the last 100 years or so was a result of waging war in southeast Asia for a decade combined with the Arab oil embargo which increased the most important commodity, namely petroleum, by 400%…and then we only had 14% inflation. Now if we implemented my 50% discount/rebate policy at retail sale that would mean that despite the 14% inflation you’d still have (miraculously so far as orthodox economic theory is concerned) BENEFICIAL price and asset DEFLATION

Reforms are good, genuine paradigm changes are waaaay better. For instance, combine the 50% discount/rebate policy with a $1000.mo. universal dividend for everyone 18 and older and you’d not only have benefical deflation you’d also implement $24k/yr. guarnteed potential purchasing power for every adult in the nation. So what would be the need then for the payroll taxes individuals and enterprise pay for welfare, unemployment insurance and even social security??? And of course if you got a job, on your first day you’d get a 100% raise in the purchasing power of your wage.

What is required is a movement that communicates these (and other) incredibly beneficial policies to the masses. Never mind trying to change the minds of economic authorities and increasingly idiot pols. Create a mass movement that (indignantly) herds both sides of the political apparatus toward relative abundance for all.

SE: Steve Greenberg She had 6 minutes to respond to multiple complex questions. She did mention supply chain and re-opening issues as a cause. Fareed also said he wants to have her back to continue the discussion. Might be more helpful to contact Fareed directly via his Twitter thread or his GPS show to ask him to discuss how we can fix our supply chain issues. Also this is not something new, at least not for me as I have heard it mentioned multiple times before that we need to fix our supply chain issues to ensure we’re ready for the next economic and health crisis.

Me: Best way to end supply chain issues (and reduce their expensive and high carbon footprint) is to re-industrialize America by implementing a 50% discount/rebate policy at retail sale. Why? Because if you reduce price, double potential purchasing power/potential demand and resolve inflation with that single policy…why import the vast amount of goods when you can very profitably make them yourself??? The benefits of this policy are so good even export platforms like China, Germany and Japan could cut their exports tremendously and yet still have stable profitable economies. Ah, paradigm changes, always universally beneficial.

SG:

Me: That’s a good article. The “gig” economy comes to trucking and long shoring. But again, while reductionistic analysis is obviously important an informed wholistic/paradigmatic perspective is what is necessary if you really want to get immediate and continuing change

Private Finance and its monopolistic paradigm of Debt Only for the creation and distribution of money IS THE DEEPEST problem we face. It keeps all of the other problems of neo-liberal economics in suspension. Finding and bringing conscious focus on the correct concept of the new paradigm with a policy that benefits all economic agents commercial and individual (a 50% discount/rebate policy at retail sale) and expresses the new paradigm itself (Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting) and communicating that to the masses in order to herd both sides of the political apparatus toward implementing it IS THE PATH, IS THE WAY TO UNITE ALL OF THE ALIGNED REFORMS like MMT, Keen’s Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis, Hudson’s Financial Parasitism and Brown’s Public Banking.

Me: MMT is a good reform exactly like UBI, a job guarantee and all of the correct refutations of many of the assumptions of neo-liberal macro.

Now, a 50% discount/rebate at retail sale is a paradigm changing policy because it is an actual action, because it mirrors the way that money is presently created albeit only as debt (accounting entries), because it is implemented at a point that is strategically, integratively and continuously a significant part of the economic process itself (retail sale) and because the policy is the very expression of the new monetary and financial paradigm, namely Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting.

Finally, it resolves virtually all of the deepest problems of modern economies (individual monetary scarcity, systemic monetary austerity and price and asset inflation) and does the impossible so far as orthodox economic theory is concerned, that is it BENEFICIALLY integrates price deflation into profit making economic systems. This last comprises two of the primary signatures of historical paradigm changes, that is complete conceptual opposition and temporal universe inversion of reality.

That’s all.

GH: I want to join Craig’s crusade but form a break-away movement. I think the discount on retail sales should be 37.25 per cent not 50 per cent. Now, how do we decide who’s right?
Actually, I’m not sure how we enforce either since retailers will be able to argue about the base from which the discount functions but no doubt Craig has a solution.

Me: Well there’s a no brainer answer to that question. Retail sale is the end point of production so it’s obviously whatever their price is at that point that is reduced 50%. Now one could say that: “Well what if the retailer and/or any other business model before retail sale just bumps their price by 10-20%?

Answer: 1) part of the opting into the 50% discount/rebate policy will be that if your overall costs exceed the cost savings that the 50% discount/rebate bequeaths (payroll tax eliminations, large corporate and individual income tax cuts) read never, then you will able to raise your prices. If you don’t meet that standard then any revenue garnered from a price rise will be taxed at a rate of 100%.

2) This applies to all business models

3) Competition. If you raise your prices by a largish percentage how much market share are you likely to lose if even one of your competitors doesn’t raise their prices?

4) Even if despite the tax incentives and tax dis-incentives that would be a part of the overall program of implementing the new paradigm and its policies, if yoy inflation is still 2-3% then index the discount percentage to that percentage rate…and no harm no fuss everyone’s purchasing power is still doubled.