Nope, I've just posted the next exciting installment! Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Ray Harrell To: 'Keith Hudson' ; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION' Sent: Sunday, October 16, 2011 12:46 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] This week-end's G20 impasse
Looks like you two agree to disagree. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Sunday, October 16, 2011 7:05 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION; Ed Weick Subject: Re: [Futurework] This week-end's G20 impasse Ed, Comments below: At 21:35 15/10/2011, you wrote: (KH) It's no use infusing money into the economy if nothing actually happens -- which is what Bernanke has been doing for the past two and a half years to no avail. Being on a gold standard doesn't impede the creation of new money for economic change. The greatest economic (and social) change ever in the history of man took place in England during the 18th and 19th centuries when the gold standard operated. A whole society from top to bottom moved upwards and for the first time ever an avalanche of talent was released from the working classes. (EW)The great social change that took place in the western world during the 18th and 19th Centuries was due to tremendous technological and social change and not due to the gold standard. It certainly was! Without gold as the basic (most valuable) currency (and copper and silver as subsidiaries), the industrial revolution would never have got started. Large amounts of it had to be available for investment before innovations could get off the ground. This was available in London as a result of international trade with other countries (where gold was already the universal trading currency) and also a considerable flow of landowners' rents and profits (copper and silver mostly) that was fed into London via the countryside banks to exchange for gold (to pay for foreign luxury goods or skilled artists or industrial development somewhere else in the country, etc). The other great European seaports such as Amsterdam, Hamburg and Stockholm didn't have countryside banks behind them so this was the reason why the industrial revolution took off in England many decades before elsewhere in Europe. (EW) The cities became industrialized and people flocked from the countryside into the cities. As you've pointed out many times, a vast array of new goods, including consumers goods, military hardware and social infrastructure changed the ways in which people lived, fought and were looked after. And yes, Bernanke has been infusing money into the US economy. However, there is a very large difference between pouring out money letting it fall where it may and directing that money toward specific growth inducing purposes. The current American problem appears in part to be one of an inability to decide what to do with money that the Fed can make available. Politicians are at loggerheads on this, so much so that very little can happen. There have also been large shifts in power in the US over recent decades, and the question of who decides what - the politicians or the bankers - lurks behind the scenes. Obama has indicated that he would like to raise taxes on the incomes of the rich, but it's unlikely that he'll be able to do it. I don't think a revival of the gold standard would be very helpful now. Our current economic problems, if fixable, require decisions on questions such as whether the best course of action is debt reduction or stimulation via the injection of money into the economy, and, if the latter, what should be funded and how. (KH) Since the 1980/90s I think we're into a completely different ballgame now. But I don't think we'll be able to see the outlines clearly until the present currency mess is sorted out. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/10/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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