There is nothing so freeing….as realizing the beatific chains of ethics.

Steve Hummel 11/6/2018

Tim,

Your explanations about money and taxes are correct. However, two considerations must also come into play regarding

1. money and inflation and
2. governmental sovereignty

Taking #2 first, MMT has the mechanics of money creation correct which is similar if not identical to your illustration about money and taxation. In a directly distributed fiat monetary system there isn’t any reason for taxation at all…except for three reasons:

1) sin taxation to discourage unethical actions

2) virtue encouragement via negative taxation/incentives and

3) establishing governmental soveriegnty, because if there was no enforceability by the government…corporations and individuals could simply ignore government policy. So high rates of re-distributive taxation become completely unnecessary and much lower but sovereignly powerful and enforceable levels of directly distributive taxation/incentive keep the system and its agents ethical, honest and rationally focused.

So far as the money and inflation problem is concerned, if one takes rational, beneficial and ethical control of the point of retail sale with a sufficiently high percentage discount/rebate monetary policy that businesses could not game without committing market share suicide and that would mathematically significantly increase everyone’s purchasing power….then you’ve basically implemented the new paradigm of Monetary Gifting and resolved the two most chronic and deeply embedded problems of modern economies in one fell swoop. Social Crediters never really fully recognized the power of the compensated retail discount policy.

Also, Bob is correct that a publicly administered central bank is necessary to have sovereign control of the entire economy, and the innovated and extended policies of social credit along the lines spelled out in my Wisdomics-Gracenomics are necessary to keep the economy based upon and temporally guided/enforced by the policies and regulations of the natural philosophical aspects of the universally resolving concept of grace.

Hopefully today is the last day that a godawful demagogue like Trump is able dominate our political system and the scales will begin to fall from the eyes of his base, but these monetary, financial and economic problems will remain. As a result liberals need to ask themselves how to finally resolve them as per above, because purchasing power has been decreasing for decades, the problems of inflation have not been terminatedly resolved and Finance still dominates….and so the dangers of demagogues with simplistic solutions remain.

If Public Banking and Wisdomics-Gracenomics would integrate their messages so as to benefit both business and the individual that would be an extremely attractive political and economic agenda that could draw heavily from both sides of the aisle.

The New Peace Corps, both domestic and international, going forth to help people in myriad ways and form organizations that will remain after them to foster love in action,  comedy, theatre, joy, art and cooperative resolution of problems and conflicts.

Capitalism is monetarily, financially and economically unstable and hence ethically compromised.

Socialism is ethically aligned with grace, but it alone is fudamentally not economically valid because it does not correctly or rationally consider or control costs. Thus it is also unstable.

Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Distributism factors costs honestly and correctly, accomplishes the goals of socialism (economic democracy) and remedies all of the problems that would still afflict economics (inflation, individual monetary scarcity and systemic monetary austerity) and so makes the system serve man instead of man having to slavishly serve the system as it does now and has always done for the last 5000 years.

The above new paradigm integrates the truthful, workable and ethical aspects of both capitalism and socialism and hence is a genuine thirdness greater oneness that reflects the concept behind it, namely grace as in love in action.

If a tremedously and universally beneficial monetary, financial and economic policy effect is created at the precise ending point of the entire legitimate economic/productive process and that additionally resolves modern economy’s two major problems of inflation and individual and systemic monetary scarcity….how can anything harmful occur?

The end of the economic process for every consumer item IS the end of the economic process for every consumer item, that is it’s where production becomes consumption and that means you and the enterprise who sold it agrred upon the sale so you own it, you can eat it, drive it, live in, it clothe yourself with it or whatever. And if the policy is applied to every economic process going forward….its permanent.

Regulate the economy with aligned incentives and sanctions, and rid ourselves of the idiotic idea that monopoly control of the most operant factor in profit making economic systems, namely money and its creation, can best be handed to private profit making banks….and you’ll have so further stabilized the stability and free flowingness of the economy created by the the policy implemented at the end of the economic process…that the majority of economists might no longer be needed.

The necessary insight for economists in order to leave their heads and actually progress

They’re stuck operating almost entirely on two mental integrations below the level of paradigm perception/paradigm change.

Ascending, these levels are:

Theory- mentally gathering and analyzing research and data

Philosophy- mentally organizing concepts

Paradigm Perception/Paradigm Change-mentally analyzing and integrating lower levels of analysis so as to isolate the essential concept/currently reigning paradigm and then using the signatures of imminent paradigm change/actual paradigm change to decipher the new paradigm

All policies must align with the various integrative aspects of the natural philosophical concept of grace.

Tax penalties for businesses that cavalerely raise their prices without there being actual increased costs to justify them, and revenue incentives for businesses to maintain best competitive price or to cut prices.  Tax penalties for dominating corporations who would use that dominance to cut prices to the point of endangerment of the existence of smaller competitors.

Strict enforcement of such penalties and unblinking enforcement of expulsion from the Discount/Rebate policy if an enterprise is a serial gamer/violator of the rules and regs

AZ:  Since I am actively engaged in teaching MMT, I woulld be very happy to learn more CONCRETELY about the problems. So far, I have examined carefully, and have not found any issues or problems with what I am reading in the textbook and teaching to my classes.

Me:  MMT correctly identifies fiat monetary mechanics, but it deals almost entirely with the “problem” of government debt and so does not deal sufficiently with the much larger problem of the currently necessary continual build up of private individual and corporate debt.

It’s “solution” of a job guarantee resides entirely within the mindset/paradigm of Debt Only and current fallacies about the quantity theory of money and its causes of inflation. A job guarantee could obviously be an adjunct program within the new paradigm of monetary gifting for those people having difficulty finding purpose without putting in their 40 hours per week.

It does not see the monetary and economic significances of the quadruple power point of final retail sale namely:

1) It is the terminal ending point of the entire legitimate economic/productive process

2) the terminal summing point of all costs [including profit and the costs of capital goods] and so prices for every consumer item in the economy and

3) the terminal expression point for all forms of inflation

4) Along with the above three points it does not recognize the significance of the fact that the money, pricing and accounting systems are all digital in nature and hence the power of a digital monetary policy at the point of retail sale.

In essence, like every other economic theory except Wisdomics-Gracenomics which integrates and extends the relevant insights of virtually every progressive heterodox theory AND most importantly brings awareness to how to implement the policies of the new paradigm of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting, it is incomplete because it has both empirical and mental/paradigmatic shortcomings.

Basically MMT is about the fiat monetary mechanics of government debt and Wisdomics-Gracenomics is about the much larger reality of personal and private commercial debt.  MMT is monetary macro-economics and Wisdomics-Gracenomics is the integration of both micro and macro-economics. MMT is a good and important step in the direction of the new paradigm and Wisdomics-Gracenomics IS the new paradigm.

Similarly, Public Banking is a necessary and significant reform, and a publicly administered national bank and central bank are an integral part of the new paradigm of Wisdomics-Gracenomics.

MMT and Public Banking are parts of the whole of Wisdomics-Gracenomics.

Me:  Kuhn correctly observed the slow process of paradigm change. My postulate is that what is required to greatly speed up paradigm change is Wisdom and its process of integrating the truths, workabilities and applicabilities of opposite perspectives and guided by the natural philosophical concept of grace which is just the western word hung on the goal and result of all of the world’s wisdom traditions which is higher self awareness. Science of course is good and necessary as a tool for discovering empirical truth and falsehood, but as its process is logic and one of the primary signatures of paradigm changes is the seeming illogic of conceptual opposition to the prevailing paradigm it stumbles, halts and generally its process does not lead to where we want to go. All the more reason to consult the process wisdom and ultimately its goal of a thirdness greater oneness.

Wisdom tradition techniques are replete with ways of eliciting such an experience. For instance a zen master giving a novitiate the classic koan question of “What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ isn’t actually intended to be answered logically or rationally, but rather to have the novitiate puzzle over it trying to come up with a logical/rational answer until he/she either becomes so internalized that they experience their own self awareness much more intensely than normal and so experience satori, or to puzzle over it with such frustration that much like a form of ab-reaction therapy thoughts, emotions and even bodily somatics become so intense that they let go of the attempt to rationally resolve the koan and come more intensely into the present moment…which of course is the only place and time that satori which IS a new experience CAN be experienced by one’s self awareness/consciousness.

As the human part of a genuine new paradigm is a personal NEW AWARENESS of a concept that changes an old temporal and/or mental pattern and creates a new one….it would seem that Wisdom is precisely the tool we need to….more rapidly reach that goal.

KZ: Craig, we part company on some basics. First, you talk of paradigm change. But why change from one to another, unless the change brings something beneficial for your society? You say the goal and result of all the world’s wisdom traditions is higher self-awareness. But before one can be aware, at any level one must have something to aware of. And whatever that is, it is created as the person goes through living interacting with other humans and with nonhumans. In other words, the person is not born with it. Their “inside” life comes to them as they live, grow, and mature. It is one of the results of being born into and living within a human culture. You say science is logic. If there is one thing the social studies of science has demonstrated it is that science mostly is not logic, although humans engaged in science make great effort to depict it as such. In this regard, mostly logic is not logic. Can’t be really since it’s a human creation. Your description of paradigm creation and change is a moderately good description of most human life. I agree with you that disciplines like Zen have the potential to reveal much that is hidden by science and other forms of logical life performed by western cultures. Western science is one of those dubious trade-offs in which Westerners get more simple knowledge but give up any glimpse into the many unseen events underlying the knowledge. And above all this is humans as not rational. Imaginative and creative, but not rational.

Me: On a scale of self knowledge/Self awareness, right below the highest level, that is knowingness itself, is not knowingness-unknowingness. So a child is actually born into a very high level of awareness and as they navigate the temporal universe they must cycle back through lower levels of self awareness and become habituated to them. The biggest puzzle and challenge of Life is finding their way back…to themselves. The biblical self awareness truth “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

Science is our best tool for exploring and navigating the temporal universe, Wisdom is the tool for navigating consciousness and the integration of both disciplines is the route to grace as in a loving flow of action.

As above, so below. The aspects of grace directly, reciprocally and strategically applied as monetary policy at scientifically significant points in time and the economic/productive process (retail sale) and directly to the most basic agent in the economy (the universal dividend to the individual) is the best integration of science and wisdom and will result in the expression and experience of the major aspects of grace as in abundance and free flowingness.

Wisdomics-Gracenomics, the way out of the present onerous and balky paradigm, the way home to the new freeing and free flowing one.

 KZ:  Craig haven’t seen stuff like this since the last time I read Fritjof Capra. Interesting stuff. Just don’t know how it helps us. Humans in terms of biology are one of the most helpless species in the history of the earth through the first five years of life. Other humans are essential to their survival. Humans 1-5 have no notion of who or what they are, no notion of self or personhood, and no awareness of their relationship to other humans and to nonhumans. This is created through the relationships humans go through in the first 5-7 years of life. It goes without saying, I think that during this period humans have no transcendental understandings or relationships. As my Lakota shaman friend reminds me, people often find it difficult to distinguish mysticism from bull shit. Which doesn’t speak hope for the future of the species.

Me:  It’s the realization that humans are actually born in a state of oneness with the cosmos, unknowingness of culture and any concept of self. It’s the inverse of and yet essentially same state of what has been referred to as cosmic consciousness that the world’s greatest sages have worked their way back to after learning to navigate the temporal universe with culture and science.

It is a state of grace utterly uneducated, and helps us to realize the importance of creating a culture of grace as in love in action in order to enable, amongst the many other positive and constructive purposes available in the temporal universe, the process that such sages have navigated back to.

And as economics and money systems at the present time affect virtually every moment of nearly everyone’s life in an increasingly stressful way, the application of policies aligned with the relevant aspects of the concept of grace and effecting same in those systems….is an extremely important pursuit and likely the greatest paradigm change since humans evolved into consciousness.

Me: Contemplate the immediate and strikingly beneficial real world monetary, economic and financial results of a universal dividend of $1000/mo., a 50% discount/rebate policy at the point of retail sale and the creation of a publicly administered national banking system and central bank:

Everyone’s purchasing power is immediately doubled.

The amount of readily available income for every enterprise is immediately doubled.

The absolute end of price inflation and the painless and beneficial integration of price deflation into profit making systems because retail sale is the terminal ending point of the legitimate economic/productive process as well as the terminal expression point for all forms of inflation.

The immediate end to poverty with the $1000/mo dividend and 50% discount/rebate enabling everyone 18 and older to have $24,000/yr in purchasing power.

Everybody employed is upper middle class. A one income household with a $9/hr job makes $18,720 x 2 = $37,440 + 2 $1000/mo dividends = $24,000 x 2 with the 50% dividend = $48,000 or a total of $85,440/yr of potential purchasing power.

Cost savings to both businesses and individuals via the complete elimination of then redundant transfer taxes for welfare, unemployment insurance and social security.

With the end of inflation, the establishment of a national banking system and direct financing of government, any worthy, constructive and/or necessary project (think research and innovation for more production with less resource usage and the off planeting of production) becomes completely doable. As the government can now fund itself income taxes for individuals and businesses could come down to between 5-10% simply to establish the government as benevolently but unmistakably sovereign.

The end of the dominance of everyone and everything by private finance and the seeming implacable force of financialization of the economy and the re-retailization of it instead because as the government does not need to make a profit the national bank could loan at 0% and finance could actually become a beneficial aspect of the economy instead of the exogenous parasite it has come to be by becoming the new terminal ending point for the legitimate economic/productive process enabling it to participate in the 50% discount rebate policy. Thus a $200k house becomes $100k at retail sale and $50k at the halving of the note.

Both Conservative and Liberal politicians and economic pundits would lose the ability to flim flam the issues of inflation and government spending and so concentrate on integrating their agendas on other issues.

Liberal economists and pundits would be able to drop the idea of the necessity of re-distributive taxation to prevent inflation and to fund the welfare bureaucracy.

Super power empires could drop their aggressive foreign policies and propagandizing because nations implementing the new paradigm policies and aligned regulations would no longer need to capture resources and additional demand in order to try (and still fail) to stabilize the domestic economies.

Undoubtedly a lot more social, anthropological, artistic, scientific and psychological knock on benefits.

Y:  It is evident that Blaug was still believing Popperian idea of scientific progress through falsification and refutation. After about 40 years have passed, we know well that this kind of criticism was in fact useless. Methodology or philosophy of economics had changed a bit. However, I think there is one thing that methodology of economics has not learned through 40 years of economics history. Why could criticisms of late 1960’s to early 1970’s have produced practically no effects in changing mainstream economics to the direction that many methodologists demanded?

Me:  Yoshi,

You’re right. And here are the primary reasons nothing has changed:

The human mind is paradoxically the easiest and most difficult thing in the cosmos to change.

Unconsciousness of both the current and the new paradigm

Macro-economics is a very new discipline. Hence its cultural horizon is very short and economist’s perspective on private Finance being a legitimate money creating business model is almost entirely unconscious and accepting.

Abstraction reigns in economics and direct present time observation has atrophied in same.

Economists can get their PhD and never take so much as an elementary course in accounting let alone consider the potential beneficial monetary and economic significances to be derived from a study of it’s, the money system’s and the pricing system’s mutually digital natures.

Wisdom is a neglected/abused mental discipline in the modern world.

Science has habituated nearly everyone to its fragmentary mindset, and almost everyone is unaware of the fact that what characterizes Wisdom is an integration of a deep and well observed pragmatism (read the book of Proverbs or analyze many of the other scriptures of the world’s major Wisdom traditions if you doubt this), the scientific method rigorously applied to the holistic self actualization process and, if studied with even a modicum of scholarly understanding, the rational consideration of morals also known as ethics.

SN:  @Craig It’s fine that you believe this mysticism, I don’t (or can’t) disagree that it is valid and true according to your own experiences, but how are you going to prove it to me? You can believe whatever you want to, but in order to persuade other people to your point of view, it requires passing other people’s “rule of thumb” wisdom we have acquired over our own subjective experiences. My subjective experiences do not comport with your mystic views, so you’re either going to have to find a way to pass this along to me through our shared logical axioms, or be content not being able to prove or persuade others to believe your own truths. You then have a belief that isn’t useful to the community you belong. You can choose to abandon it in favor of a belief society can agree on, to become a more productive and fulfilled member of a larger community, or stubbornly cling to the “objective truth” that makes sense to you, the choice is entirely yours.

Me:  Satoshi,

What is the empirical temporal universe purchasing power result of a 50% discount to consumers at retail sale?

Is that “mysticism” or simply an understanding of the digital natures of the money, pricing and accounting systems?

It was logical to assume the earth was the center of the universe when the sun, the stars and the planets “obviously” moved across the sky around it every night. However, transcending logic is a primary signature and necessity of impending paradigm change.

Is it mysticism or deeper understanding and logic that money is not the operant factor in “monetary” inflation, but rather, given a system of individual monetary scarcity and hence potential business revenue, that commercial agents do not presently have a better alternative than raising their prices when they perceive more money coming into the system?

What is the difference between faith IN the grace of god and the individual/personal experience of grace?

Answer: Too often the first is a mere abstraction/mental data point attended by supernatural and pre-scientific notions that has no further positive psychological effect on one’s life, and the second is a truly profound life changing experience of human potentials and simply a closer look at the natural/physical cosmos which is a titanic integrated/integrative swirl of quantum/electro-magnetic radiation in continually GRACEFUL process and flow.