I refer to Thomas Lunde's original subject and Ed Weick's comments on it.
I'll abstract one para:
(EW)
<<<<
This is an idea that goes way back to Major Douglas and the original social
credit. I don't think it can happen that way. The reason that the poor
have no money is that they are not on anyone's payroll. To get on a payroll
people have to produce something of marketable value. To enable them to do
that, you need investment.* Once you have investment and payrolls, savings
are possible and so is additional investment. Simply giving people money to
chase nonexistent goods in the hope that those goods will become existent is
extremely risky and potentially highly inflationary.
>>>>
Well said. The * is mine and leads me to say that there is another
component needed here also. You also need individuals able to respond to
changing skill demands. For this you need good education, for this you need
good early socialisation and for this we need a major redistribution of
educational resources away from the university end and towards the
playschools/ kindergarten end. I don't know about Canada, but in this
country and in America, this is just beginning to happen (privately and
governmentally) but it will probably take at least two or three generations
for this to become well and truly implanted in the social culture.
Keith
P.S. I hope FWers will forgive me when I sometimes accidentally use my
commercial signature. I'm not trying to advertise on the fly.
_______________________________________________________________________
Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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