Hi all,
First, thank you Joe for some of the insider baseball perspective on
Peterson and a wonderful sociological and administrative analysis. Gregg,
your encouragement to travel as a group into the weeds and develop
principle-based solutions is inspiring during a time of intense micro
ingroup/outgroup formation. Jason, I appreciate that you offer an
economically populist perspective.
More on the point that Jason and Dave are suggesting is a consideration of
proportionality. The functional option from my humble perspective is a
Universal Basic Income that is *tethered to a percentage of total wealth*.
Healthcare, education, food, shelter, and safety should be guaranteed
*non-conditionally*. Essentially we are covering the first two levels of
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It takes nothing substantively from
industrial geniuses like Elon Musk, Donald Trump, or Mark Zuckerberg (they
retain status at the top of hierarchies), and instead improves the lived
experience of *everyone.*
There are obstacles from the conservative and liberal side both that boil
down to this particular justification:
*Work hard or die.*
How do we get around that one?
-Chance
On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 10:31 AM, nysa71 <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Dave,
>
> I'm beyond delighted to see someone else here understand MMT. It can not
> be emphasized enough, IMO, that the general public needs to understand it.
>
> On one technical note, it's not even as complicated as "printing" money.
> Most money is just created via keystrokes ---- marking up accounts in bank
> computers.
>
> Even paper money doesn't add net financial assets to the economy. It
> simply transfers numbers from a balance sheet at the central bank to
> numbers on pieces of paper you can carry around in your pocket.
>
> Money is a unit of account. It's the numbers that's the money, not the
> paper, (anymore than it's a spreadsheet or a computer screen).
>
> Also, (in finding a way to connect MMT to psychology), "money", in a lot
> of ways, is analogous to a Token Economy in applied behavioral analysis.
>
> Again, I was delighted to read your comments!
>
> ~ Jason Bessey
> On Thursday, May 31, 2018, 9:34:15 AM EDT, Dave Pruett <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> Dear All,
>
> I've not weighed in much on the conversation because much of the
> discussion, in psychological terms, is beyond my ken. But I would like to
> weigh in on the current economic thread.
>
> Jason has very succinctly pointed out the inherent instability in
> capitalism, it's innate tendency to make the rich richer and the poor
> poorer. When the old Soviet Union existed as a counterweight to laissez
> faire capitalism, capitalism had to maintain a kinder, gentler facade.
> After the collapse, no holds have been barred with the result that the
> world's oligarchs have increased their wealth and power to the detriment of
> nearly everyone else, here and elsewhere. So, as Jason points out,
> governments should intervene, to stabilize the system. Unfortunately,
> ours, by "neoliberal economics" and in decisions like "Citizen's United"
> and the recent tax law, has intervened decidedly on the side of the wealthy
> and the oligarchs. Inequality in the US is at a level that often triggers
> revolution.
>
> There is a missing piece to the economic landscape, however, that offers a
> legitimate way for monetarily sovereign nations to intervene in
> economically beneficent ways. The notion is counterintuitive, because most
> of us are under the mistaken impression that federal budgets are analogous
> to family budgets. Expenditures must be balanced by income. Families,
> however, cannot legitimately print money. Sovereign governments can. The
> argument against this is that printing money is inflationary, Weimar
> Germany being the oft-cited example.
>
> Modern monetary theory (MMT) holds that the printing of money is allowed
> and is inflationary only when the country is at full production and full
> employment. Abe Lincoln financed the Civil War by printing "greenbacks" and
> Hitler built his war machine with fiat money. Indeed, recently, the US has
> printed trillions of dollars for the Afghan and Iraq wars and the 2008
> bailout, yet inflation remains low.
>
> MMT sees the federal budget as essentially the inverse of the family
> budget. Taxation is necessary not to generate revenue but to slow the
> economy if it becomes overheated. MMT proponents would say that we always
> have enough money for our priorities, which in an ideal world would include
> infrastructure, universal education, universal health care, and many other
> common goods. In this light, austerity measures should be seen for what
> they are: political tools not fiscal responsibility. And the recent tax
> overhaul, which will increase the national debt by $1.9T exposes, voted for
> those who previously touted "fiscal responsibility," exposes the sham.
>
> --
> C. David ("Dave") Pruett
> Professor Emeritus
> Department of Mathematics & Statistics
> James Madison University
> 540-246-3087 (Home)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Author of *Reason and Wonder* (Praeger, 2012)
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__reasonandwonder.org&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=CzpsBnyvtPZQxQAjnxL3MhmAVOsH2te2NyI5jjf7vjs&s=1Adrq3a-9GSJOxNdQBi0IiweW2d3P3Bsroup97inmKY&e=
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__reasonandwonder.org&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=5ZTed4uTCuG9Jzta-ei5WGSmHLRH1pXlJBeUvsOvPyQ&s=g4qV-i5WCislTnY1vDkDzXk0PyaKSZwXUusYf9yJTqg&e=>
> and/or https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.amazon.com_author_woksape&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=CzpsBnyvtPZQxQAjnxL3MhmAVOsH2te2NyI5jjf7vjs&s=jrHmOaZQc5RfjiERnxMb679iF1yxPW01iPNhsl3DN9o&e=
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.amazon.com_author_woksape&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=5ZTed4uTCuG9Jzta-ei5WGSmHLRH1pXlJBeUvsOvPyQ&s=SrUtK2c4MqMd6qlcKZfGQx17HFPHCHctAWcEGW3-ocQ&e=>
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