I'm all for a Universal Basic Income, and MMT economics would allow that.
Eureka! :) Artists, poets, writers, and AT hikers could pursue their
passions, and as you say, it's no skin off the back of Elon Musk.
On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 1:56 PM, Chance McDermott <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> 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
>
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>
> On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 10:31 AM, nysa71 <000000c289d6ba14-dmarc-
> [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=hf8iZA044g8rlxzH3bdZ2_dmmX94t1KEUdUa05jTdEc&s=Mx5z6budxdY0CR8swR1j3v9euwipgShdcaEWaNdp3_M&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=hf8iZA044g8rlxzH3bdZ2_dmmX94t1KEUdUa05jTdEc&s=ojO9kEzODM8qyHi5eL7geLaUSY6kO46sEsRzMPmIzUA&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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--
C. David ("Dave") Pruett
Professor Emeritus
Department of Mathematics & Statistics
James Madison University
540-246-3087 (Home)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Author of *Reason and Wonder* (Praeger, 2012)
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