[SOCIAL CREDIT] continuing discussion
The term itself was the title of a book by Houston plastic surgeon Jacques Jaikaran. It is the theory that interest is the cause of the disparity between prices and purchasing power. The advocates of the theory argue that banks should be prohibited from creating money, but should only re-lend government money on deposit with them. The government money is placed into circulation through government spending. Jaikaran was (maybe still is) deeply involved with right-wing extremist groups. One of them was the self-styled Republic of Texas. Jaikaran was convicted of tax evasion and sent to Federal prison. He is out of prison now and has resumed his medical practice. He called me once and we met at a coffee shop. I disagreed with something he said and never heard from him again. -- Houston Chronicle, 7/22/98 A Kingwood (TX) plastic surgeon, a financial adviser for the Republic of Texas separatist group, was convicted Tuesday of failing to file federal income tax returns for 1992-94. Jacques Jaikaran faces up to three years in prison and $75,000 in fines. He denied he is a member of the Republic of Texas (see note below), saying he's affiliated with a group called the Constitution Coalition of Texas. Jaikaran attracted federal agents' attention when he tried to arrange for the Republic of Texas to purchase a compound in northeast Harris county, said Internal Revenue spokesman Steve Yost. The four-story building features machine gun turrets, a bomb shelter and an operating room. They were going to make it the Republic of Texas capital, Yost said. The Republic of Texas, which has links to right-wing, antigovernment militias, believes that Texas was illegally annexed by the United States in 1845 and should be a separate nation. Members have no allegiance to the United States, float their own currency and refuse to pay income taxes. The group's leader, Richard McLaren, was arrested last year after a hostage-taking resulted in an armed standoff with officers in rugged West Texas. McLaren was subsequently convicted on state and federal charges and sentenced to 111 years in prison. And earlier this month, three men linked to the group were arrested in a bizarre plot to kill President Clinton and other officials by injecting them with a cactus thorn coated with a deadly virus. U.S. District Judge Sim Lake will sentence Jaikaran in about 90 days. -- From Amazon: Reviewer: A reader from Pittsburgh, PA United States I met Dr Jaikaran on a plane from Houston to Atlanta. Among other things, he claimed that no single doctor has ever helped a person, and the medical profession was a business. This enraged the passenger in front of us, who eventually refused to speak to us. Dr Jaikaran also claimed that life expectancy dropped dramatically 3,500 years ago, at the same time of Noah's flood, where God told Noah that we could start eating animals (before that, according to OT wisdom, men were vegetarians, and had a life expectancy of 1000 years). He also tried to convince the very nice woman sitting next to me that the medical profession was worthless, although she was about to begin her residency program in Atlanta. -- Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt, June 23, 2002 Reviewer: Michael L. Foudy from Falls Church, VA USA Frederick Soddy wrote a book in the 1920's with the same title as my review. Dr. Soddy was writing about the monetary system in England and he reached the same conclusions as Dr. Jaikaran. Dr. Soddy also won the Nobel Prize in Physics for work involving the discovery of Isotopes. Dr Soddy was clearly a very bright man, but after reading his book I must tell you he was obviously better with numbers and physics than he was with the English language. Jacques Jaikaran, on the other hand, can write. Dr. Jaikaran and Dr. Soddy reached identical conclusions about money and the way it works in our society, but after reading Debt Virus you'll have a clearer, more understandable picture than you will after wading through Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt. This is an important book that anyone who earns, saves, invests or uses money (obviously I mean everyone) ought to read. I interviewed Dr. Jaikaran for a radio show I once hosted and have heard him speak back in 1995. He taught me more about money than I had previously learned in four years as an undergraduate, three years in law school and twenty-five years of business. And, he did so in an engaging, easy to understand manner. Dr. Jaikaran (he's a medical doctor by the way) learned about money, after becoming a successful surgeon, when he was invited to join a bank board. Being a responsible person, he actually read the materials he was given by the bank, the FDIC, the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve. Then after he resigned from the bank board and after the bank later failed, he translated all of that into English you and I can
[SOCIAL CREDIT] do your homework, please!
---The fact that I receive an interest payment for depositing money that has already been CREATED is of no importance to Social Credit. --- It is of no importance to the understanding of reality. When you look at the sequence of individual transactions like you do here you miss the macroeconomic perspective--that we meaningfully consider rates and not individual transactions. Rates are aggregate flows. They are the net difference per unit time when looking at the economy as a whole. All the elements of a dynamic process are occurring at the same time. We analyze them by comparing them statistically. One way to do that is to graph them on the same chart against time. If you do that you will see that income is falling as compared to the costs of production which is explained through A+B. You will also see that the flux--a rate--from loans does not diverge from its reflux--a rate--regardless of the rate of interest. You will see that interest is merely the bankers' share of the profit received by firms from consumers. The greater the net rate of interest collected the greater the bankers' share in respect to other firms, and the lesser the share of the other firms. You will see that profit is not a tangible thing extracted from the wheel of commerce but numbers recorded in account books, that firms are always spending, in normal times, more than they are receiving in terms of cash flow--yet are always recording a profit. But you will not see any of that unless you think. Before that you will have to read. For example, the words from the beginning of this paragraph to this sentence. Then it might be possible for you to have questions that will further the discussion so we might learn rather than go round in circles. ---Did Douglas advocate abolishing the money creation facility of the banking/financial system? - -- No. I know you think otherwise so find where he said otherwise. That's your homework assignment. Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 ==^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html ==^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Douglas quotes
Bill, I am not sure to whom this posting is directed. It was in reply to Joe. -- I have never said that Douglas stated that interest or bank financing should be abolished. My posting the Douglas quotes was to show that Douglas recognised: (a) That the deficiency in purchasing power (B) was being filled by further loans (debt), True -- (b) That banks did create money out of nothing Which means merely that it is a matter of contract rather than for example mining and smelting something tangible from the ground and coining it. -- (c) The when that new money is created the banks claim it as their own, A matter of philosophy that we seek to change. -- (d) That when it is lent it creates a debt From the borrower to the banker. It also creates a debt from the banker to the depositor whomever that might ultimately be. -- (e) That the only way interest can be repaid to the bank is for it to come from the same source - the banking system, which can only be through further debt. It's also the only way that principal can be repaid. The money received by the recipient of the money borrowed from the banker is already on its way back to the bank, so is not available to repay the principal of the borrower without further borrowing by others in the economy. The false inference is that money must be borrowed to pay interest and not other purposes--such as continuing operations, so that debt compounds because of interest. Debt does compound but it compounds because of labor displacement that can be accommodated through consciously applied accounting adjustment--not possible now because of the lack of a national capital or credit account. Interest is merely the allocation of profit between banks and other firms when looking at the economy as a whole. Profit is not a tangible thing but the function of the rules of accounting. It is meaningful--like the score at a football game is meaningful--but not a tangible thing, as would be the case if M - C - M'; profit = M' - M. The fact is that in terms of cash flow (which are rates), M is normally greater than M', not less than M', yet firms in the aggregate book profit continuously--which is exactly opposite to what seems must be intuitively true. It comes down to how credit is counted through time. The process is poorly understood by economists and accountants both. I am convinced that Douglas grasped it almost completely. Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 ==^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html ==^
Re: a cohesive group {was Fw: [SOCIAL CREDIT] A MATTER OF INTEREST]
Dear Douglas interested folk, I, as a member of the Topica Social Credit list, will send this message only once. --- 1. The teachings of Douglas are already diffuse and difficult to comprehend. --- [reply] Be that as it may, we are trying to determine what they are. -- 2. Mr. Ryan must come to grips with his need to control conversations and/or dissipate the discussion into minutia. --- [reply] Not minutia but key elements. Many of those who style themselves social crediters are in disagreement with Douglas on the key elements. I know, Curtiss, you don't believe in moderation and don't moderate your own lists, but this is a moderated list. I've not forwarded a great number of messages from people who just want to toot their own horns. For example, from Wes Burt, who regularly cross-posts the same message to multiple lists that he has repeatedly posted for several years with only slight variation. As soon as I didn't forward his latest slight variation he unsubscribed--which should tell us he never intended to engage in a dialog but simply toot his own horn with the one note he has tooted for years. He is not the least bit interested in reading the messages that are posted by others. Not control but direct; I am trying to direct the conversation back to Douglas. -- 3. It is my opinion that we are more likely to, eventually, affect economic policy if we act TOGETHER. --- [reply] Why should that make any difference at all? Shouldn't it matter if the ideas actually make sense and can work without doing harm? Many of the ideas touted here would utterly wreck any economy that tried to implement them. I don't think that is the case with even a single idea that Douglas advanced. -- This (childish) division that has occurred may simply lead to our undoing, --- The division was there all along, I've merely exposed it. The division is between most of the social crediters and Douglas. The undoing had already occurred long ago. There is no meaningful social credit movement though there once was. There will not be a meaningful movement again without going back to Douglas and starting afresh. -- and there is an underlying (Douglas) message that is much too valuable to be lost. --- What is that message? Tell us what you think it is. -- - Original Message - DATE: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 16:44:52 From: W. Curtiss Priest [EMAIL PROTECTED] [snipped] Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 ==^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html ==^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Communication problem with Maj. C. H. Douglas.
[Wally] I think you will find that it is faithful to Douglas's ideas but presented in a more direct style intended to clarify various aspects for the average reader. I do not believe it is faithful to Douglas's ideas at all. The 1935 essay was much better than the one from 1957. I think it will be useful to go through them point by point and compare them to each other as well as to Douglas. I think we can learn from the discussion much to help us understand why the social credit movement failed as it did, and what can be done to revive it. -- [Wes] At the macro level of economic analysis, there is no deficiency of financial income. Say's Law still holds! Kirchhoff's Laws still hold! (Kirchhoff, Gustav Robert, 1824-1887, patron saint of electrical engineers). I am quite familiar with Kirchhoff's laws and they are irrelevant to economic analysis. We are dealing in the domain of social not physical relationships. We are modeling the flow of social relationships as they evolve through time, not electrons. If you want to use metaphors from electrical or electronic theory, you would be better served by adapting them from the theory of semi-conductors rather than conductors. Think of holes that have no tangible existence, yet are real. Credit is an intangible. It is moreover a social not a physical construct. -- - Original Message - DATE: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 11:22:45 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wally, You are indeed a hard working man! First the evidence of your hard work. My comments then follow. On Thu, 03 July 2003 01:18:22 -0600 you write: Wes, I regret that you are having difficulty in reading the files which I forwarded and have no explanation for the problem. You do have the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your system, do you not? No other similar complaints have been received (?) In any case, if you have re-subscribed to [EMAIL PROTECTED] you will see the complete text of Murray's Chapter 8 as I posted it a day or two ago. I think you will find that it is faithful to Douglas's ideas but presented in a more direct style intended to clarify various aspects for the average reader. Thanks for your references. I don't have time to comment at the moment. Sincerely Wally ~ Second note from Wally ~~~ And on Thu, 03 July 2003 01:39:13 -0600 (18 minutes later) you write: Wes, For some reason each line of your message to me has =20 at the end. I have no idea what may or may not be wrong with your software. On Social Credit, the basis of its analysis is that there is indeed a very significant and growing deficiency of financial income as compared to financial costs. What is important, is the ability to liquidate financial costs as they are created. It is of no help that billions of money may be created as debt by bank loans as income and may equal or even exceed the value of existing financial production costs. If that income is created by banking institutions as a debt to be charged against future production cycles (and prematurely cancelled as it is), it does not cancel production costs but merely transfers them as a charge to be recovered from future production cycles. I can only suggest that you study whatever competent Social Credit discussions of Douglas's A+B Theorem you may have access to in order to comprehend what he was getting at--I know it is elusive because it deals with a dynamic as opposed to a static situation. If you cannot agree with this, then I suggest that you submit a counter analysis from your own perspective. Sincerely Wally ~~ End two messages from Wally Thanks again for so completely summarizing the gap between C. H. Douglas and The Optimum Policy (TOP), which I have tried to illustrate in the eight figures posted to the URL below by W. Curtiss Priest. Let me first dispose of our communications problems in the order mentioned in your notes. Adobe Acrobat Reader is not installed on my computer but is available on Mrs. Burt's new computer. I just tumbled to the idea of copying your attached file to a 3.5 disk and printing it out on the other computer. Perfect. I'll read it as soon as this thank you note is sent. JUNO seems to be withholding my web access for a while, but now I have no need to look in the Topica.com archives for the complete text of Murray's Chapter 8 which you posted a day or two ago. Juno is working on the problem, I hope. I have seen the =20 figures at the end of lines recently, but I can't find the file. The returned copies of my notes to you were perfectly clean, I am happy to say. I am confident that Thomas Paine, Karl Marx, C. H. Douglas, John M. Keynes, W. B. Ryan, John Gelles, et al, were all trying to solve the problem you describe as a, very significant and growing deficiency of
[SOCIAL CREDIT] Fwd: Re: [gang8] The Southwark dimension
-- - Forwarded Message - DATE: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:04:45 From: "Gunnar Tomasson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Dear Michael: First, let me note Krehm underscores the point which I raised at the outset of exchanges with Rodney Shakespeare on Gang8 some months ago: The notion that everybody must become a capitalist is a morbid one. It stems, I believe, from the bizarre notion of the Binary Economics people that machinery itself produces wealth. It doesnt. In other words, Capital is not an independent Factor of Production - hence Keynes's 'sympathy' for "the pre-classical doctrine that everything is produced by labour, aided by what used to be called art and is now called technique, by natural resources which are free or cost a rent according to their scarcity or abundance, and by the result of past labour, embodied in assets, which also command a price according to their scarcity or abundance. It is preferable," Keynes concluded, "to regard labour, including, of course, the personal services of the entrepreneur and his assistants, as the sole factor of production, operating in a given environment of technique, natural resources, capital equipment and effective demand. This partly explains why we have been able to take the unit of labour as the sole physical unit which we require in our economic system, apart from units of money and of time." (General Theory, Ch. 16) Now to your comments: I thought the key was HOW the economic surplus was to be paid out: as stipulated and fixed interest payments, or as flexible earnings. Could the latter reading be what was meant? If not, SHOULD it be what was meant? As I see it, the very concept ofsuch "economic surplus" cannot be divorced from the "bizarre notion of the Binary Economics people that machinery itself produces wealth." For if "everything is produced by labour", then"economic surplus" cannot arise so long as "labour" receives a dollar's income for dollar's worth of labor. So what the Binary Economics people must be talking about is an income transfer mechanism akin to the interest rate mechanism under contemporary monetary arrangements whereby the purchasing power of "a dollar's income for dollar's worth of labor" is dilutedso thatsome may reap where they have not sown. The social welfare system is such a mechanismand, sinceit "takes" from some and "gives" to others, people will hold different views on its adequacy or fairness. Cloaking such differences in the jargon of Binary Economics serves no purpose. Gunnar - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 8:34 AM Subject: Re: [gang8] The Southwark dimension Dear Gunnar, The paragraph you cite is indeed ambiguous. But before I went on to your paragraph, I read it to mean that the state could use interest-free credit to create Public Enterprise, whose EARNINGS would become a flow of revenue potentially to "the people" (I guess this means the biggest campaign contributors, as today, or foreign creditors). I thought the key was HOW the economic surplus was to be paid out: as stipulated and fixed interest payments, or as flexible earnings. Could the latter reading be what was meant? If not, SHOULD it be what was meant? Michael The gang8 list is devoted to Creditary Economics.To unsubscribe, email: gang8-unsubscribe @yahoogroups.comYour use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT The gang8 list is devoted to Creditary Economics.To unsubscribe, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. - End Forwarded Message - Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail!Login To Lycos Mail
[SOCIAL CREDIT] Fwd: Re: [gang8] The Southwark dimension
-- - Forwarded Message - DATE: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 11:33:21 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: In a message dated 7/11/03 10:05:46 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Dear Michael: First, let me note Krehm underscores the point which I raised at the outset of exchanges with Rodney Shakespeare on Gang8 some months ago: The notion that everybody must become a capitalist is a morbid one. It stems, I believe, from the bizarre notion of the Binary Economics people that machinery itself produces wealth. It doesn’t. In other words, Capital is not an independent Factor of Production - hence Keynes's 'sympathy' for "the pre-classical doctrine that everything is produced by labour, aided by what used to be called art and is now called technique, by natural resources which are free or cost a rent according to their scarcity or abundance, and by the result of past labour, embodied in assets, which also command a price according to their scarcity or abundance. It is preferable," Keynes concluded, "to regard labour, including, of course, the personal services of the entrepreneur and his assistants, as the sole factor of production, operating in a given environment of technique, natural resources, capital equipment and effective demand. This partly explains why we have been able to take the unit of labour as the sole physical unit which we require in our economic system, apart from units of money and of time." (General Theory, Ch. 16) Now to your comments: I thought the key was HOW the economic surplus was to be paid out: as stipulated and fixed interest payments, or as flexible earnings. Could the latter reading be what was meant? If not, SHOULD it be what was meant? As I see it, the very concept of such "economic surplus" cannot be divorced from the "bizarre notion of the Binary Economics people that machinery itself produces wealth." For if "everything is produced by labour", then "economic surplus" cannot arise so long as "labour" receives a dollar's income for dollar's worth of labor. So what the Binary Economics people must be talking about is an income transfer mechanism akin to the interest rate mechanism under contemporary monetary arrangements whereby the purchasing power of "a dollar's income for dollar's worth of labor" is diluted so that some may reap where they have not sown. The social welfare system is such a mechanis m and, since it "takes" from some and "gives" to others, people will hold different views on its adequacy or fairness. Cloaking such differences in the jargon of Binary Economics serves no purpose. Gunnar Dear Gunnar, Your point is good that capital is not an independent means of production. Perhaps the tendency of economists to cut everything apart reflects their own autistic character, along with the polarized ideas that economies must be either socialist or libertarian rather than a mixed combination. "Capital" like "wealth," has come to mean property claims, either physical or now, increasingly, financial in character. Of course, the essence of Marxism is that a workers does NOT receive a dollar's wage for the dollar-value of labor. That is where profits are created in the Marxian scheme. Even if workers DID receive dollar-for-dollar, they would still be exploited by rentiers, whose rent and interest claims have no counterpart in out-of-pocket costs of production and hence are socially unnecessary. You are right that Binary Economics cloak s what is in reality a transfer function, dissolving it into an amorphous social rhetoric. Does Social Credit do this too? If so, how would either system be expressed non-amorphously? As the classical economists would say, what is the INCIDENCE of these social welfare payments? And once there is an incidence of such payments, is there a form of exploitation involved? Michael Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT The gang8 list is devoted to Creditary Economics.To unsubscribe, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. - End Forwarded Message - Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail!Login To Lycos Mail
offlist--Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Fwd: Redistribution
It appears you are not comatose. -- - Original Message - DATE: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 20:59:40 From: Keith Wilde [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Michael, Did you read the two-part critique of binary ecoonomics posted yesterday by Bill Ryan before writing this? If not, it is my impression tht it may cast light on your questions--especially from the last Kelso nd Kelso book, baout "Democracy and Economic Power". Keith - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Social Credit Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 10:02 AM Subject: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Fwd: Redistribution Michael Bindner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2003 07:02:28 -0700 (PDT)From: Michael Bindner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Subject: RedistributionTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I was reading The Capitalist Manifesto last week and I came upon some interesting passages in the last two chapters about using redistributional income taxes to hasten the Capitalist Revolution. It seemed clear in my reading that Kelso and Adler believed that redistributional income taxes could be of assistance in bringing about the revolution and that tax reform to rely less on personal and corporate income taxes would come after the Capitalist system was well established, although these tools would still exist to break capital monopolies (as well as inheritance taxes). My question to the Kelsonians is this: is there a writing where his opinion on these matters changed? When I look at the CESJ literature on Social Security Reform it appears to me that they seek an end to both progressive income taxes. Is this a Kelsonian position or is it unique to CESJ? In my reading of the Manifesto, I also see that the question of large families is mostly ignored (although it appears that CESJ gets around this by starting capital homestead accounts at birth rather than during the career, which is what Kelso and Adler proposed in the Manifesto. It seemed that Kelso and Adler would not have made these accounts universal when they wrote their manifesto, at least initially, but would have started with those professional men (they do not mention women) who are able to make their investments wisely. I am wondering if there is any treatment available which addresses the evolution of their theory from its past to its current form (which seems very different in some respects). I am also interested in when Value Based Management was developed, and who developed it. It is actually somewhat in line with my own management theories, although I am a bit more of a leveler inside the firm (since I would have managers bid for their positions in open auction and have workers vote to break ties). Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail!Login To Lycos Mail
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] to Victor
Victor, the attachment didn't come through. I think it is because of limitations with the Topica server. It does not archive attachments, sometimes it won't transmit them. If you will send it to me at this address I'll convert to to plain text and forward it to the list. Bill -- - Original Message - DATE: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 17:27:56 From: Victor Bridger [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Social Credit [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Bill. the difference , I think in our approach is: (1) I have stated that interest can only come from subsequent creations of credit (ie. bank lending). If at any time I borrowed from a bank with an attached repayment of interest and from that point on no new lending occurred there would be insufficient money to repay someone's debt. (2) I still adhere to my statement that money is not an asset (at least not in Social Credit) terminology. It is a claim, a means by which an asset or anything else may be obtained. By itself money is a nothing and I agree with Douglas that it is psychological in that it can be anything we want it to be provided it is acceptable by others, as per our definition of Money. (3) I have attached in PDF an extract from Douglas's Monopoly of Credit in which he clearly accepts that money is a liability not an asset. He refers to Fixed Assets and Money Assets in his following explanation but the use of Money Assets is a reference to the fact that these Assets can be converted to or are a claim on money and also included Cash at call. It is simply a recognition that Money is or should be a reflection of reality i.e., those things he has shown under assets. Vic Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 ==^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html ==^
[SOCIAL CREDIT] Fwd: ¾ÀíÈËʵÎñ¹ÜÀíÌåÑéÌØѵӪ
This is the sort of stuff you get withoutmoderation. This was forwarded to me by thePost Keynesian list which is normallymoderated. The moderator apparentlywent unconscious and let this one through.Or perhaps he clicked the wrong button. Itis obviously mass email spam.-- - Forwarded Message - DATE: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 00:19:32 From: ÁÖÏÈÉú [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: ¡°½ðÅƾÀíÈËʵÎñ¹ÜÀíÌåÑ顱ȫ¾°ÌØѵӪ ¡¶ÈçºÎ×öÒ»Ãû³öÉ«µÄÖ÷¹Ü¡·µÚ¶þÆÚ 2003Äê8ÔÂ8-10ÈÕ±±¾©(ÈýÐǼ¶¾Æµê) Ö÷°ìµ¥Î»£º±±¾©º£ÇàºëÒãÆóÒµ¹ÜÀí¹ËÎÊÓÐÏÞ¹«Ë¾ ¿Î ³Ì Ä¿ µÄ: ¡¡ ÉíΪÖ÷¹ÜµÄÄú´øÁì×Ų»Í¬³ÉÊì¶ÈµÄÔ±¹¤Ê±£¬ÄúµÄ¹ÜÀíģʽÊÇʲô£¿ÄúÓÖÈçºÎÅжÏÄúµÄ²¿ÊôµÄ³ÉÊì¶ÈΪºÎ£¿ÔËÓÃȨ±äÁìµ¼ÀíÂÛ£¬Í¸¹ý¿Æѧ¹¤¾ßÓëÀÏʦµÄÒýµ¼£¬ÈÃÄúÁ˽âÁìµ¼ÕßÓë±»Áìµ¼ÕߵIJîÒì,ÈÃÄúѧϰÈçºÎÌá¸ß²¿ÊôµÄ¼¨Ð§£¬½ø¶ø´ïµ½Òò²ÄÊ©½ÌµÄÄ¿µÄ¡£Í¬Ê±ÀûÓÃÓÐЧµÄÐÐΪ¿Æѧ¹¤¾ß£¬ÈÃÖ÷¹ÜÁ˽âÔ±¹¤µÄ¹¤×÷ѹÁ¦³Ì¶È¡¢¹¤×÷ÂúÒâ¶ÈµÈ£¬ÒÔ¶ÔÖ¢ÏÂÒ©£¬´ïµ½×éÖ¯Á¼ÐԵĻ¥¶¯Óë³É³¤¡£²¢ÈÃѧԱÉî¶ÈÁ˽â×Ô¼ºÓëͬʵľö²ß¶¯»úÓëÐÐΪ¹ì¼£,ÐÖú×Ô¼º¼°×éÖ¯´ïµ½ÓÐЧµÄ¹µÍ¨.ÈÏʶ×ÔÎÒµÄÌØÖÊ,·¢»Ó±¾ÎÒÖ®ÓÅÊÆ ¿Î ³Ì Éè ¼Æ£º ¡¡ ÏÈʹÿλѧԱ¾ùÁ˽â×ÔÒѵÄÁìµ¼ÐÍ̬ÔÙ½ø¶ø˵Ã÷²»Í¬ÐÍ̬µÄÌص㡣͸¹ýʵսÑÝÁ·£¬Ê¹Ã¿Î»Ñ§Ô±µ±³¡¸ÐÊܲ¢Á˽âÈçºÎÔËÓò»Í¬µÄÁìµ¼¼¼ÇÉ¡£ÒÔ·Ö×éÌÖÂÛ¡¢Ðĵ÷¢±íÓë¾Ñé·ÖÏíµÈ·½Ê½½øÐÐ. ¿Î ³Ì ʱ Êý: ¡¡ 6¿Îʱ/Ì죬¹²¼ÆÈþÌì¡££¨8ÔÂ10ÈÕΪҰÍâÍØչѵÁ·£© ¿Î ³Ì ÄÚ ÈÝ: ¡¡ Ò»¡¢¹ÜÀíµÄ¸ÅÄîÓë¾ÀíÈ˵ĽÇÉ«ÈÏÖª ¶þ¡¢Öвã¹ÜÀíÈËÔ±µÄÖ°Òµ·¢Õ¹µÀ· Èý¡¢ÓÐЧµÄ²¿ÃÅÈËÁ¦×ÊÔ´¿ª·¢ 1¡¢ ¼¤Àø£º×ÔÎÒ·ÖÎöºÍÈËÐÔµÄÔÙÈÏʶ£ºÄãÁ˽â×Ô¼ººÍÏÂÊôÂð£¿Ðµķ¢Õ¹Ë¼Â·--ÊÚȨ¸³ÄÜ£ºÎªºÎÊÚȨ ¡îÊÚȨµÄ·¢Õ¹¹ý³Ì ¡îÊÚȨ·ç¸ñ ÈçºÎÊÚȨ£º¸öÐÔ»¯µÄ½â¾öÖ®µÀ2¡¢ ÓÐЧµÄÔ±¹¤Ö¸µ¼ÓÐЧָµ¼ÕߵĻù±¾ÌØÕ÷ ÓÐЧָµ¼µÄ±êÖ¾ ÓÐЧָµ¼µÄÒòËØÖ¸µ¼½â¾öÎÊÌ⣺ÓÐЧ½â¾öÎÊÌâµÄ²½ÖèÖ÷¹Ü×÷Ϊָµ¼ÕߵĽÇÉ«£ºÑµÁ·Õß¡¢¹ËÎÊ¡¢¾ÀÕýÕßÓÐЧָµ¼µÄ¹Ø¼üºÍºËÐÄ£¨°¸Àý·ÖÎö¡¢¹²Í¬½»Á÷ºÍ½²½âÏà½áºÏ£©3¡¢ ÓÐЧµÄÎÊÌâ·ÖÎöºÍ¾ö²ßÖƶ¨--°¸Àý·ÖÎö£ºÄãÊÇ·ñºÍËûÓÐÏàͬµÄ¾Àú£¿Ôõô°ì£¿4¡¢ ÈçºÎ×öÒ»Ãû³öÉ«µÄÍŶÓÁìµ¼ÈË--°¸Àý·ÖÎö£ºÍŶӽ¨Éè¶ÔÓÚÁìµ¼ÈËÀ´½²Òâζ×Åʲô£¿ ËÄ¡¢´Ó¹ÜÀíÕßµ½Áìµ¼È˵Äת»»£º 1¡¢ÅàÑøÄãµÄÁìµ¼ÓÅÊÆ£º ÈçºÎÅàÑøÓÉÄÚ¶øÍâµÄÁù´óÓ°Ïì ÏȽøµÄ˼Ïë¹ÛÄîºÍ˼άģʽ2¡¢ÄãÔÚÄ澳ϵıíÏÖ·ÖÎö£º ·´Ó¦·ç¸ñ ·´Ó¦·ÖÎö ÄãµÄ³¤Ïî ¸Ä½ø·½Ïò Îå¡¢¹ÜÀíÈËÔ±µÄÖÁ¸ß¾³½ç£º½¨Á¢Ò»¸öѧϰÐÍ×éÖ¯ 1¡¢Íⲿ·ÖÎö£º¾Óª»·¾³µÄ±ä»¯ 2¡¢ÄÚ²¿·ÖÎö£ºÖªÊ¶ÐÍÔ±¹¤µÄ¿ìËٳɳ¤ºÍ֪ʶÐÍÔ±¹¤µÄÌصã3¡¢±ä¸ïÖеÄʤË㣺Óë±ä¸ï¹²Îè ʲôÊÇѧϰÐÍ×éÖ¯£¿ ÈçºÎ½¨Á¢Ò»¸öѧϰÐÍ×éÖ¯£¿ Áù¡¢½¨ÉèÄãµÄ¹ÜÀíÍŶÓ--Áìµ¼¾ÍÊǽÌÁ·£º 1¡¢½ÌÁ·Ê²Ã´ 2¡¢ÈçºÎ×öÒ»Ãû³öÉ«µÄ½ÌÁ· 3¡¢ÓÐЧµÄ½ÌÁ·¼¼Êõ Æß¡¢ÍŶӽ¨ÉèÓ빵ͨ¼¼ÇÉ(Ò°ÍâÍØչѵÁ·¡ªÃÜÔÆË®ì) £º 1¡¢¸öÈË·¢Õ¹ÑµÁ· 2¡¢ÍŶӹµÍ¨ÑµÁ· °Ë¡¢½² ʦ ½é ÉÜ: ÂíÏÈÉú£¬ÏȺó±ÏÒµÓÚÎ人´óѧÆóÒµ¹ÜÀíרҵ¡¢Ó¢¹úÂü³¹Ë¹ÌØ´óѧÈËÁ¦×ÊÔ´¹ÜÀíרҵ¡£ÃÀ¹ú¸»À¼¿ÂÁÖ-¿Âά¹«Ë¾¡°¸ßЧÄÜÈËʵÄÆ߸öÏ°¹ß¡±¸ß¼¶ÈÏÖ¤Åàѵ½²Ê¦¡£ÃÀ¹úÁìµ¼Óë¹ÜÀí·¢Õ¹ÖÐÐĸ߼¶½ÌÁ·£¬µÂ²¨Åµ¹ú¼Ê˼άѵÁ·»ú¹¹¸ß¼¶ÈÏÖ¤½²Ê¦¡£Ä³ÖªÃû»á¼ÆÊÂÎïËù¸ß¼¶×Éѯ¹ËÎÊ¡£±»¡¶ÖйúÇàÄ걨¡·ÆÀΪȫ¹úÊ®¼ÑÅàѵ¹ËÎÊ¡£ÔøÈÎij´óÐ͹úÆó×ܾÀíÖúÀí£¬ÁªÏ뼯ÍÅ¡¢±±´ó·½Õýµç×ÓÓÐÏÞ¹«Ë¾¸ß¼¶Åàѵ¾Àí¡¢ÅàѵÖÐÐÄ×ܾÀí¡£ÏÖÈιú¼Êij֪Ãû×Éѯ»ú¹¹¸ß¼¶×Éѯ¹ËÎÊ¡£Éó¤ÁìÓò°üÀ¨ÈËÁ¦×ÊÔ´¿ª·¢Óë¹ÜÀí¡¢ÆóÒµÎÄ»¯ÓëÅàѵÌåϵ½¨Á¢¡¢ÍŶӽ¨ÉèÓ빵ͨ¼¼ÇÉ£¬ÓÈÆäÔÚÌáÉýÖи߲ã¹ÜÀíÈËÔ±¸öÈËÉú²úÁ¦¡¢¹ÜÀí¼¼ÄÜÒÔ¼°Ë¼Î¬¼¼ÇɵĽ¨Á¢·½ÃæÓÐ×ÅÊ®·Ö¶ÀµÀµÄ¼û½â¡£Í¬Ê±ÏÖ³¡Ìṩʵ¼ù¹¤×÷Öа¸Àý½â¾ö°ì·¨¡£Ôø·þÎñµÄÆóÒµÓУº±±´ó·½Õý¡¢ÁªÏë¡¢Öйú¹¤ÉÌÒøÐС¢Õã½Òƶ¯¡¢°×ɳ¼¯ÍÅ¡¢CISCO¹«Ë¾¡¢ÉñÖÝÊýÂë¡¢Öл¯×ܹ«Ë¾¡¢¾©Â×·¹µê¡¢²³º£Ê¯ÓÍ¡¢ÖйúÃñº½¡¢Öйú·ÄÖ¯½ø³ö¿Ú¹«Ë¾¡¢Öйúº½Ì첿¡¢Õã½Òƶ¯Í¨Ñ¶¡¢ÙðÖÝú¿ó¡¢Öйú¹ú¼ÒʯÓÍ¿±Ì½¾Ö¡¢Öйú´ó·¹µê¡¢º£ÄϺ½¿Õ¹«Ë¾µÈ ¾Å¡¢Åà ѵ ·½ ʽ »ÃµÆͶӰ¡¢°¸Àý·ÖÎö¡¢Ë«Ïò¹µÍ¨¡¢ÒÉÄѽâ´ð¡¢Õë¶ÔÐÔ½²½â¡¢²ÎÓëÑÐÌÖ¡¢ Å·ÃÀʽ Ê®¡¢ÑÐÐÞ·½Ê½ td width="100%" bgcolor="#FFF7FF" style="border-style: solid; border-width: 1; padding-left: 4; padding-right: 4; padding-top: 1; padding-bottom: 1"ÊÕ ·Ñ ±ê ×¼: ·ÑÓãº2680Ôª/ÈË£¨º¬½²¿Î·Ñ¡¢ÍØÕ¹·Ñ¡¢×ÊÁÏ·Ñ¡¢Îç²Í£©»áÎñ×éÐÖú°²ÅÅסËÞ£¬·ÑÓÃ×ÔÀí!²Î ¼Ó °ì ·¨: ²¦´ò×Éѯµç»°Ë÷È¡±¨Ãû»ØÖ´£¬Ìîд±¨Ãû±íÁ¬Í¬»ã¿îµ¥¸´Ó¡¼þ´«ÕæÖÁÖ÷°ìµ¥Î»£¬¿îµ½ºóÖ÷°ìµ¥Î»½«·¢ËÍ¡¶²Î»áÖ¸ÄÏ¡·¡£°´»ã¿î±¨ÃûÏȺó˳Ðò°²ÅÅÑÐÐÞ°à×ùλ¡£±¨Ãû½ØÖ¹ÈÕÆÚ£º8ÔÂ6ÈÕ£¬Ç뽫»ØÖ´¼°»ã¿îµ×µ¥¾¡¿ì´«ÕæÖÁÎÒ¹«Ë¾£¬ÒÔ±ãÎÒÃÇÍ×ÉÆ°²ÅÅ»áÒé¸÷ÏîÊÂÒË¡£ÁªÏµµç»°£º010¡ª¡ª88923748¡¢51875077 ´« Õ棺010¡ª88923748Áª ϵ ÈË£ºÁÖÏÈÉú¡¢ÍõС½ã Email:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ½üÆÚÅàѵ¿Î³Ì£ºµÚÎåÊ®ÆÚÊг¡ÓªÏú¸ß¼¶¾ÀíÅàѵ°à£¨2003Äê8ÔÂ28ÈÕ¡ª¡ª31ÈÕ£©Àí²Æ¼¶²ÆÎñ¹ÜÀíÓëÆóÒµÄÉË°³ï»®¸ß¼¶Åàѵ°à£¨2003Äê8ÔÂ20ÈÕ¡ª¡ª24ÈÕ£©Äú¿ÉÀ´µçÀ´º¯Ë÷È¡ÏêϸµÄ¿Î³Ì×ÊÁÏ£¡£¡£¡ Èç¹û¸ÃÓʼþ¸øÄã´øÀ´²»±ã£¬Ç뽫Ëüɾ³ý£¬Ð»Ð»£¡ - End Forwarded Message - Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail!Login To Lycos Mail
[SOCIAL CREDIT] discuss Social Credit?
Cambell, this discussion does very much relate to social credit, for a number of reasons, as I informed you off list. I am trying to separate the cult-like accretions to social credit from the substance of the Douglas message. It is my contention that much if not most of what many of those who call themselves social crediters think is social credit cannot be substantiated from anything Douglas wrote or said. So there is the cult of social credit (with sacred texts written in a language that the priesthood doesn't understand) and there is Douglas social credit. They are not necessarily one and the same. You posed a question to me that I answered on June 30. I gave you then what should have been a simple assignment relating to your question. You may get assistance from others. Please complete the assignment and report back to us one way or the other. If you do not it will become apparent that it is you who really doesn't want to discuss social credit: --- [Rayfield] Did Douglas advocate abolishing the money creation facility of the banking/financial system? --- -- [Ryan] No. I know you think otherwise so find where he said otherwise. That's your homework assignment. -- - Original Message - DATE: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 16:28:32 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Social Credit [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Are we ever going to discuss Social Credit? Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] What If?
These are good questions. I have inserted some brief comments below [comment] Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 14:42:44 - From: Bernard Daly [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [LibDem_SocialCredit] What If? If under social credit government makes up the shortfall in demand for home produced products by issuing money, then distributing this money in the form of a citizens income, will the citizens income vary according to the size of the shortfall? -- [comment] The short answer is yes. We should expect the shortfall to generally increase as a function of time with labor displacement. Would this not create a good deal of economic uncertainty? -- [comment] Just the opposite. Furthermore, what if people spend this citizens inc not on home produced things but foreign goods because of monopolistic conditions in world markets, TV advertising etc. -- [comment] That is indeed a problem potentially. At the very least the credits must have limited negotiability in terms of foreign content. But there would remain the problem that the credits intended for spending on domestic production might free up the already existing purchasing power for increased spending on imports or investment overseas, which would negate the intent of the social credits. In the absence of import and capital controls the continuing disbursement of significant volumes of credit could quickly lead to balance of payments issues and accelerating inflation in consequence. Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
[SOCIAL CREDIT] Fwd: [LibDem_SocialCredit] Re: Land and Liberty - Islamic Econom
- Forwarded Message - DATE: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 18:58 +0 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ken Palmerton) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dear Bill. Greetings. Forgive me, but your name is new to me. But you have asked me to comment, which I would like to on this and subsequent posts I have received from you. As an individual trying to make some sort of sense from our crazy world I came eventually to study the dismal science at an age when most were starting to look forward to their pensions. I come originally from Jersey in the channel Islands, which with my family we fled the war time occupation by the fascists. It was never clear to me why it was so difficult to return. I too accepted the reason to be that it was a tax haven, and all the rich wished to live there. A simplistic reason certainly. And false. But it was some time later that i learned more of its differences to the mainland, rooted in its history. Which turn out to be concerned with its method of creating its own money supply. Low taxation being a result. My involvement with trades union activity as a student nurse led me to the British Liberal party, which I have been a member of ever since. At that time Beverage was still around, and Keynes was not long dead, both influential Liberals, so their thinking was part of what was being passed on to the youngsters such as I. You say that you are not aware of the association between Georgism and British Liberalism? At the beginning of the twentieth Century there was a sizable group of MPs within the party who described themselves as Single Taxers. They argued that the only taxation necessary to discharge the functions of the State could be levied from the taxation upon land alone. They were Georgists. In fact the election of 1906, which was a Liberal land slide victory, was fought largely upon the slogan The land belongs to the people, the title of a song, sung to the tune marching through Georgia still sung lustily at our annual assemblies to this day. Unfortunately much of the detail, and even understanding of what it all means is now lost to most party members, with the last detailed policy issue being removed from the preamble to our constitution in the 1980s upon our merger into a new party with the Social Democrats. That policy was concerning the taxation of site values. Much more to say, but I think I would like to ask you about the Alaska situation, which from your subsequent posts I understand you are very familiar with. I gave some time to study this at the time of its inauguration, but getting accurate information at the time proved difficult, so I do not know the whole story, and I would now very much like to. Please keep in touch. Ken. - End Forwarded Message - Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] [LibDem_SocialCredit] What If?
Replies inserted [in reply] -- Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 13:44:44 +0100 (BST) From: Bernard Daly [EMAIL PROTECTED] At the very least the credits must have limited negotiability in terms of foreign content. How on earth do you propose this should be brought about? -- [in reply] Technically it is very simple. The negotiability would be limited in the manner of American food stamps, which may be spent only on certain approved items. The difficulty is that subsidies in aid of local content are presently illegal under international trade agreements. -- Exchange controls etc seem very passé and indeed dirigiste (excuse my French). Social credit says money would be simply created on the basis of presumably statistics on the pervious period showing the deficit in demand. -- [in reply] Assuming the hypothetically closed economy. -- But one of the problems the Keynesian demand managers of the 60's and 70's found was that of time lags, all running at different paces. Credit created for the previous period might be totally unsuitable for the forthcoming one. -- [in reply] The problem with Keynesian-style demand management is that it relies on increasing government debt which is inevitably tracked (time lagged) by increasing taxation to amortize the debt or cutting back government services--negating the transient benefit and ultimately compounding the problem. Social Credit demand management does not augment debt but rather offsets it so the benefit is permanent. Bill -- - Original Message - DATE: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 13:44:44 From: Bernard Daly [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] At the very least the credits must have limited negotiability in terms of foreign content. How on earth do you propose this should be brought about? Exchange controls etc seem very passe and indeed dirigiste (excuse my French). Social credit says money would be simply created on the basis of presumably statistics on the pervious period showing the deficit in demand. But one of the problems the Keynesian demand managers of the 60's and 70's found was that of time lags, all running at different paces. Credit created for the previous period might be totally insuitable for the forthcoming one. Let me clearly state, I'm not against social credit, just trying to go through it in my own mind to get things clearer. Devil's advocate if you will. Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] What If?--Paine, George, and Douglas.
-- Bill, didn't the Aberhart government try to have a 'ticket system' similar to what you're describing? Wasn't there some problems with its acceptance by merchants? -- The Social Credit government issued stamp scrip notes called Prosperity Certificates. See the attached photocopy also archived at http://www.geocities.com/socredus/compendium . I think their biggest problem--apart from the fact they were based on Silvio Gesell's harebrained idea of disappearing money--was that the banks wouldn't accept them for deposit or in payment of debt to the banks. I think the federal authorities prohibited the Alberta government from accepting them in payment of taxes. They nevertheless did circulate somewhat in facilitation of trade, as should be evident from the visible wear and tear to the note in the photograph. It is definitely not in mint condition. -- -- I realize the conditions were very different then, and a massive propaganda effort was being waged against Social Credit and its entire viability. And I'm not saying such a set-up wouldn't, or couldn't work. It may work very well indeed nowadays. -- Douglas's ticket metaphor describes the system as it presently exists and has existed for many years. This is from his King of Norway address archived at http://www.geocities.com/socredus/compendium : The modern economic production system is not a system of individual production and exchange of production between individuals. It is more and more the synthetic assembly, in a central pool, of wealth consisting of goods and services which are preponderantly due to the use of power, to modern scientific processes and all sorts of organisations and other constituent contributions of each one of us which will occur to you. The problem is not to exchange the constituent contributions of each one of us to that central pool, because in fact our contribution to that central pool, in the ordinary sense of tangible economic things, is becoming smaller and smaller. The correct picture - the incontestably exact picture of the modern production system - is, to my mind, based upon a kind of typewriter with a decreasing number of operators who are tapping the keys, and, by tapping these keys, fewer and fewer operators can produce all that we require. Through the power of the sun (oil power, steam power and so forth consist of what is generalised as solar energy) the so-called curse of Adam is being transferred from the backs of men to machines, so that a small number of persons operating on this machine of industrial production, can produce all that is required for the use of the population. And the problem is not to exchange between the number of the population, who are less and less required to push keys, but it is to draw from this central pool of wealth by means of what can be visualised as a ticket system. -- -- And possibly overcome the problems you alluded to as the 'two-jobs'. But I wonder if there might be some problems, too? Would having two types of 'money' cause the more universally acceptable type to still end up going where we were trying to prevent it from going? -- - Gresham's Law which applies to the extent money remains a medium of exchange with perceived commodity or quasi-commodity value intrinsic to its nature. To the extent money is a ticket the law does not apply. Food stamps merely clear back to the account of the issuing authority. Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^ prosp.jpg
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] What If?--reply to Bernie
Brief replies inserted [reply 08-01-03] below: -- Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2003 04:25:17 +0100 (BST) From: Bernard Daly [EMAIL PROTECTED] Re: What If?--Paine, George and Douglas. What interference? You receive a ticket that admits you to a specific performance at a specific theater. Has your life been interfered with or has it been enhanced through the receipt of the ticket? Presently, the seats at the theater that are empty are wasted. The social credits allow them to be filled. With all due respect Bill, this is rather specious logic. It is expected in both my society and yours (and I suspect most others) that if you give me a gift, you can't then dictate when and how I can use it. -- [reply 08-01-03] Please answer the question: Has your life been interfered with or has it been enhanced through the receipt of the ticket? -- Let me propose another what if. Your vouchers are distributed as a citizens income, and are circulating around the home economy. Then some bright spark, or sparks, create a market exchanging your vouchers for one or many other currencies. You now have leakage, what are you going to do? Have the Feds arrest him? -- [reply 08-01-03] Tickets do not circulate but are redeemed, so the question of leakage will not arise. It is indeed illegal to trade in food stamps. People who receive food stamps might want to trade them for cash so they can purchase cigarettes. Social credits are issued against the productive capacity of the nation and are redeemable against that productive capacity. -- The stuff from Thomas Paine was fascinating. I've often thought there must be a missing link between SocCred and Georgism and sort of knew it went back to Paine, but I didn't know how. But was Paine talking about SocCred? Surely SocCred says money is simply issued by government fiat equal to deficient demand, unbacked by anything. -- [reply 08-01-03] Not so. The social credits are backed by latent productive capacity. -- Paine's proposals, like the classical Liberal economists, sought to back money issue with a tangible commodity. I can't see why the value of the land stock at any given time would necessarily equal the amount of the deficiency of demand in that period. -- [reply 08-01-03] You misinterpret what Paine said. Please read it again. The tangible commodity represented by the bonds only *fractionally* backs the money. So there is mere *correlation* between wealth and money. Note the differences between Paine's proposal and current practice. The money is backed by bonds issued by private individuals in fulfillment of tax obligations, rather than by government to fund expenditure. The money is disbursed as dividends directly to individuals rather than expenditure for government services. The disbursement of the money creates the fund from which the bonds may be redeemed. -- Incidentally, an interesting variation on Paine's proposals is an idea I have mentioned on both this site, and the Truefreetrade site, that is money backed by renewable energy. -- [reply 08-01-03] The renewable energy concept floated about is as harebrained as it comes. Not only labor but energy is being displaced from the productive process with increasing efficiency. Basing money on energy suffers the same inevitable fate as basing it on labor. Bill Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] What If?--Paine, George, and Douglas.
I would like to hear more about the proposed voucher system. Of course, if the banks will not accept them for deposit and the government is prohibited by the federal authorities from accepting them for taxes, there will be problems of acceptability. If the banks will not go along with the program, it basically means you will have to set up an alternative banking system, perhaps through the post office. The existing banks will see them as competitors and do everything possible to suppress them. It means you have to assert sufficient sovereignty to take control of the situation, which Alberta was unable or unwilling to do. Bill -- - Original Message - DATE: Fri, 1 Aug 2003 22:55:15 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Social Credit [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Joe wrote:-] -- Bill, didn't the Aberhart government try to have a 'ticket system' similar to what you're describing? Wasn't there some problems with its acceptance by merchants? -- [Bill Ryan replied:-} The Social Credit government issued stamp scrip notes called Prosperity Certificates. See the attached photocopy also archived at http://www.geocities.com/socredus/compendium . I think their biggest problem--apart from the fact they were based on Silvio Gesell's harebrained idea of disappearing money--was that the banks wouldn't accept them for deposit or in payment of debt to the banks. I think the federal authorities prohibited the Alberta government from accepting them in payment of taxes. They nevertheless did circulate somewhat in facilitation of trade, as should be evident from the visible wear and tear to the note in the photograph. It is definitely not in mint condition. -- Hello Bill, Thanks for sending the photo re:- the Prosperity Certificate. As I recall reading somwhere this wasn't a Douglas idea at all, but something Aberhart had picked up from reading Gesell. And introduced on his own, after disregarding Douglas's advice. I believe it was brought in early on in Aberhart's first term, and there were several problems with acceptability. Later on though, after Byrne came over, I believe they attempted to introduce a 'voucher' system that was more in line with Douglas's 'tickets'. There was still a problem with acceptability, but apparently some headway was being made. Until the wartime restrictions and rationing interfered. Manning apparently abandoned the effort after he became Premier. There were a couple of good books out a few years ago about this whole period. One was called Major Douglas and Alberta Social Credit, in which the author, Bob Hesketh, makes some conclusions I don't particularly agree with, but does a credible job of documenting the events. The other was Politics and Public Debt: The Dominion, the Banks, and Alberta Social Credit. This was written by a fellow then employed as an auditor by the Bank of Canada, and showed just how serious the private Banks viewed the advent of Social Credit. And some of the efforts undertaken by them to try to contain and destroy it. Joe Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Is this the ticket?
(James K. of UT is the son of John Kenneth, originally from Ontario.) The first real chance to field test the social credit idea in the United States since the Great Depression will be to cover the looming Social Security and Medicare deficits projected for coming years. Since the current surpluses to the trust funds will gradually change to deficits through the progression of time and evolving demographics, it is necessary to introduce the social credits only gradually as the deficits arise. The doubters and skeptics who say it cannot work and can only result in accelerating inflation might agree to that gradualist approach in the spirit of compromise --if only to disprove the inflationist idea once and for all. In the interim--powerful political support can be built for this alternative to cutting benefits or raising taxes. We have therefore a unique historical window of opportunity that should not be squandered. -- - Original Message - DATE: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 19:41:02 From: Keith Wilde [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The text below is copied from a very recent article by Texas political economist James K. Galbraith. His description of the real American Model prompts me to ask a question of Bill Ryan: Some of your recent postings have pointed out that the redeemable ticket idea is difficult to apply in a world where manufacturing activities are always sliding off to the latest opportunity to exploit slave labor, raiising again the spectre of de-industrialized America. There is employment in the U.S., but it tends more and more to be in service occupations. This are more difficult to move off-shore. Is this immense sector therefore an opportunity to apply the Social Credit ticket idea? Keith Wilde [snipped] The real American model: soft budgets in the social sectors The soft budget constraint is an idea familiar to students of central and eastern Europe in the late years of communist rule. It described the condition of state-owned heavy industry under the communist regimes: entities that could not make profits, could not compete on international markets, and yet were so central to the social fabric of the system in which they were embedded, including its provision of social services, that they could not be allowed to fail. These entities became widely-deplored dependencies of the state budget and the state banks. Yet to millions, they provided the rudiments of a comfortable and secure life, the threads of which have not been picked up in the post-socialist orders that since emerged. A brief examination of key American institutions shows that the concept goes very far toward explaining the structure and conduct of the US economy in the past twenty years, and particularly in the prosperous period of the late 1990s. But the institutions to which it is best applied in America are very different from those in eastern Europe. Indeed, the keys to the American model lie not in industry, but in those sectors providing social amenities to the middle class: health care, education, housing and pensions. Health care, in the United States, consumes some 13% of GDP. A typical figure in Europe is 8-10%; in the UK the number is 7.3%. What few Europeans understand is that health expenditures within the direct US government budget consume 5.8% of GDP. But whereas in (say) France a not-much-larger proportion of total output supplies medical services to the whole population, in the United States the direct public commitment is only to the elderly and disabled, the poor, and to veterans. For the rest of the covered population, medical care is paid out of private insurance, which enjoys tax advantages. Overall, the tax-financed share is just under 60% of total health expenditure, or nearly 8% of GDP. The scandals of American health care do not lie in insufficiency of care (quite the reverse!), but rather in two notorious facts. The first is that some 44 million persons lack either public or private insurance. This part includes many Latinos, who tend to avoid contact with the welfare system, as well as younger working people. Hence, deficient pre- and peri-natal care is an important problem. The second is the rapacity of the private actors in the system drug producers, doctors, nursing home operators, and insurance companies notably. Nevertheless, it is precisely the presence of those actors, and their political power, that has made the American health care system into the economic powerhouse that it is. Higher education in the United States consumes about 2.25% of GDP. The figure for European countries is typically closer to 1%. Again the US spends more on public higher education as a share of GDP than do most Europeans: 1.07% as compared to 0.97% in Germany or 1.01% in France. But then in addition there is the private share, another 1.22% of GDP, centred on institutions whose multi-billion dollar endowments are highly
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Honest money. A red herring for Americans?
...our democratic political process has not been able to correct the 3% of GDP shortage of purchasing power, the 2.3%/year natural rate of inflation, and the 4% to 10% unemployment rates which the US economy has suffered for more than a century. - These percentages are about right and are explainable through the A+B Theorem. Basically, it works like this: What is called HPM (high powered money, base money or reserve money) is injected into the economy when the central bank purchases government securities through the so- called open market from a select group of dealers at the very top of the food chain. So the money trickles down from Wall Street into paychecks and employment benefits. The process is grossly inefficient. Just as with a drip coffee maker, much coffee remains in the grinds--and is wasted. The central bank could--and should--disburse a measure of HPM directly to the people in the form of dividends, to allow consumption to keep pace with the increasing productive capacity that finance and technology have ultimately enabled. -- Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 06:40:41 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Honest money. A red herring for Americans? To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: A few friends and many devious defenders of the status quo (DDotSQ) who want the US economy to crash so they can buy America at bargain prices. Good day folks, With this message I hope to open a public debate on The Optimum Policy for avoiding the crash which the DDotSQ are actively promoting by stonewalling that public debate. On Mon, 4 Aug 2003 Rodney Shakespeare, co author of Binary Economics, writes to my old friends at the Christian Money list [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Sabine, I only read this quickly but it seems to me that the argument is largely for a gold and silver money system. Am I wrong? Just because somebody understands how fiat money is issued today (and interest added), does NOT mean that they understand connections between the money supply and productive capacity let alone with social and economic justice. Too much apparently monetary reform thinking concerns itself with just one or two aspects of the situation. Rodney Shakespeare. - Original Message - From: Sabine Kurjo McNeill [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 7:07 AM Subject: Fw: honest money We are not alone! Sabine www.intraforum.net/money - Original Message - From: Alexander Baron [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, August 03, 2003 11:17 AM Subject: honest money Source: LewRockwell.com http://www.lewrockwell.com/ Bring Back Honest Money by Rep. Ron Paul, MD http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul118.html E-mail: http://www.house.gov/paul/mail/welcome.htm Ron Paul in the US House of Representatives, July 25, 2003 Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce the Honest Money Act. The Honest Money Act repeals legal tender laws, a.k.a. forced tender laws, that compel American citizens to accept fiat (arbitrary) irredeemable paper-ticket or electronic money as their unit of account. ~~ Balance of Ron Paul's text deleted by Wes Burt ~ I wholly agree with Rodney Shakespeare in his rejection of a monetary cure for what ails the US economy. The facts reported on the US economy by Sabine Kurjo McNeill, Alexander Baron, Lew Rockwell, Ron Paul, Dr. Edwin Vieira, Alan Greenspan, Stephen T. Byington, Salmon Chase, and Stephen Field in the messages above, are all perfectly true. But the complexity of a system with 285 million active members seems to exceed the comprehensive power of most human minds. This mixture of truthful reporting and complexity may be the primary reason why our democratic political process has not been able to correct the 3% of GDP shortage of purchasing power, the 2.3%/year natural rate of inflation, and the 4% to 10% unemployment rates which the US economy has suffered for more than a century. If a complex system malfunctions because of a defect of omission, there is no known method of analysis which can directly identify that defect, if the analyst is ignorant of the original design specifications of the system. Such complex systems as a global economy, a national economy, an industry, a corporation, or a family farm all follow the principles of Binary Economics (BE) in that the capital plant acts in tandem with the workforce to produce a total output of wealth ($/year) more than an order of magnitude larger than the initial value-added ($/year) by labor. Remove the capital plant which the workforce has built to date, and the value-added ($/year) by labor alone could not feed a population of 285 million people. Some of you may recall that the binary, or tandem,
[SOCIAL CREDIT] understanding cartalism
In the attempt to understand what the cartalists (Mosler) are trying to say, I've appended a stylized diagram depicting the macro economy from the creditary perspective. T1 represents the period of credit expansion; T2 the period of steady state; and T3 the period of contraction. Disbursements pertain to those of firms in the aggregate considered as a sector in respect to consumers. Government is included in the sector considered as a special type of firm. Please note that during the period of expansion cash disbursement exceeds receipts at every point in time. The differential represents accumulation to cash balances throughout the economy. Since government keeps its books on a cash flow basis, it records continuing *deficits*. Since private firms keep their books on an accrual basis, they record continuing profit in the form of credits to their equity accounts. So in translation to a common language--assuming a normally functioning economy--government *deficits* are equivalent or analogous to what the private sector calls *profit*. The government deficit does not *cause* the private sector profit. But rather, both government deficits and private sector profit are accommodated by the general availability of bank credit. So what Mosler said below in a letter to Mr. Bartley of the Wall Street Journal cannot be correct: **First, from 1st year macro: govt. surplus = non govt deficit and vice versa, of course. This is the accounting identity for all national income accounting. Much like balancing your check book. The left side must sum to the right or an accounting error has been made. Therefore, when govt. runs a surplus of, say, 250 billion, non govt net financial savings drops by the same amount, to the penny.** -- The attached diagram is archived at: http://www.geocities.com/socredus/cash-flow3.jpg The full text of Mosler's letter quoted above is archived at: http://www.geocities.com/socredus/mosler-02-02.txt Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^ cash-flow3.jpg
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] website address
I believe you subscribed by clicking the link. I apologize if the invitation was deceptive. I never actually read it. It was generated automatically by Topica. You can unsubscribe just as easily, by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of every list message. Some introductory materials are at http://www.geocities.com/socredus/compendium We discuss the social credit movement from the historical perspective, C. H. Douglas and related matters in general. You are not required to agree with anything that is said to participate. No agreement is inferred by subscribing. Critical commentary is welcomed. Bill Ryan - Original Message - DATE: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 23:55:23 From: Aart R de Lange [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Please let me know your website address. I want to look at it before I subscribe. ardl. Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] still on Question 2
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 09:18:05 -0500 From: Wray, Randall [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: still on Question 2 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] bill you still are not getting it. the fed and treas adopt operating procedures to ensure: a) treas hits $5b balance at the end of each day b) fed hits overnight rate target almost moment-by- moment c) treas checks never bounce d) treas can always spend up to amt authorized by legislature (regardless of tax revenue) all else is boring acctg and politics. randy - Reply: a, b, c, and d are undisputed. What remains open for discussion is the spin put on them. Nothing about these facts is inconsistent with the standard spin that: a) treas hits $5b balance at the end of each day *BECAUSE* Treasury deposits sufficient funds from its commercial bank accounts daily to maintain the balance in covering the checks that it writes during the day. b) fed hits overnight rate target almost moment-by- moment *BECAUSE* it has the monopoly determining reserves through open market operations. To force the rate downward, it sells securities. To force it upwards, it purchases securities (mostly derivatives like repos and swaps). It fine tunes through tremendous churning so its target is hit almost moment-by-moment. c) treas checks never bounce *BECAUSE* just like you or me, it makes sufficient deposits (from tax collections and securities auctions) to cover them. d) treas can always spend up to amt authorized by legislature (regardless of tax revenue) *BECAUSE* any shortfall in tax revenue is covered by selling securities. It is indeed politics, or still was until the retirement of Wright Patman and Henry Gonzales. It was the matter of intense conflict during the nineteenth century. The question is (or was so long as bona fide politicians still discussed it): Where is the locus of power; is it with the banking fraternity, or the elected representatives of the people? You avoid the question by aggregating the balance sheets of the Treasury with the Fed, and speak as if the question doesn't matter. It can be answered by observing what actually happens. Treasury covers the checks it writes almost dollar- for-dollar from tax collections and security auctions. Whether it should or shouldn't is an entirely different question. To my knowledge, the only time there was significant deviation from this practice (at any rate since the beginning of the last century) was during WWII. The Fed announced (privately) that it would support the war effort and make available any and all funds needed to further that effort. Treasury delivered special issue low coupon bonds directly to the Fed in any amount that Treasury wanted to deliver, and Treasury's account was correspondingly credited. The private commercial banks were required to subscribe to an equivalent quantity of low coupon bonds directly from Treasury, also bypassing the ordinary markets. Transactions were continued in the ordinary markets to keep up appearances. This technique to finance the war was kept secret from the nation's enemies (and also from Patman's committee), which restricted themselves to orthodox techniques to their disadvantage. In terms of finance, the most orthodox of all the belligerents was Germany . Britain was possibly slightly less orthodox than Germany. Japan's was similar to Germany in that it supplemented orthodox finance with plunder. (Russia was off the chart since it was purely a non-market command economy.) The effect of requiring the commercial banks to subscribe to securities equivalent to those subscribed to by the Fed was to lock up reserves accumulating from deficit spending during the war that could have otherwise fueled inflation. As they matured and were redeemed post war, reserves were thereby gradually released into the system, not only foreclosing the possibility of post-war depression, but sustaining continued prosperity and American dominance for decades. - Original Message - DATE: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 09:18:05 From: Wray, Randall [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: bill you still are not getting it. the fed and treas adopt operating procedures to ensure: a) treas hits $5b balance at the end of each day b) fed hits overnight rate target almost moment-by-moment c) treas checks never bounce d) treas can always spend up to amt authorized by legislature (regardless of tax revenue) all else is boring acctg and politics. randy Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here:
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] still on Question 2
***To force the rate downward, it sells securities. To force it upwards, it purchases securities (mostly derivatives like repos and swaps).*** Actually--that's just backwards. To force the rate down, it purchases. To force it up, it sells. -- - Original Message - DATE: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 12:25:16 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], Wray, Randall [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 09:18:05 -0500 From: Wray, Randall [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: still on Question 2 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] bill you still are not getting it. the fed and treas adopt operating procedures to ensure: a) treas hits $5b balance at the end of each day b) fed hits overnight rate target almost moment-by- moment c) treas checks never bounce d) treas can always spend up to amt authorized by legislature (regardless of tax revenue) all else is boring acctg and politics. randy - Reply: a, b, c, and d are undisputed. What remains open for discussion is the spin put on them. Nothing about these facts is inconsistent with the standard spin that: a) treas hits $5b balance at the end of each day *BECAUSE* Treasury deposits sufficient funds from its commercial bank accounts daily to maintain the balance in covering the checks that it writes during the day. b) fed hits overnight rate target almost moment-by- moment *BECAUSE* it has the monopoly determining reserves through open market operations. To force the rate downward, it sells securities. To force it upwards, it purchases securities (mostly derivatives like repos and swaps). It fine tunes through tremendous churning so its target is hit almost moment-by-moment. c) treas checks never bounce *BECAUSE* just like you or me, it makes sufficient deposits (from tax collections and securities auctions) to cover them. d) treas can always spend up to amt authorized by legislature (regardless of tax revenue) *BECAUSE* any shortfall in tax revenue is covered by selling securities. It is indeed politics, or still was until the retirement of Wright Patman and Henry Gonzales. It was the matter of intense conflict during the nineteenth century. The question is (or was so long as bona fide politicians still discussed it): Where is the locus of power; is it with the banking fraternity, or the elected representatives of the people? You avoid the question by aggregating the balance sheets of the Treasury with the Fed, and speak as if the question doesn't matter. It can be answered by observing what actually happens. Treasury covers the checks it writes almost dollar- for-dollar from tax collections and security auctions. Whether it should or shouldn't is an entirely different question. To my knowledge, the only time there was significant deviation from this practice (at any rate since the beginning of the last century) was during WWII. The Fed announced (privately) that it would support the war effort and make available any and all funds needed to further that effort. Treasury delivered special issue low coupon bonds directly to the Fed in any amount that Treasury wanted to deliver, and Treasury's account was correspondingly credited. The private commercial banks were required to subscribe to an equivalent quantity of low coupon bonds directly from Treasury, also bypassing the ordinary markets. Transactions were continued in the ordinary markets to keep up appearances. This technique to finance the war was kept secret from the nation's enemies (and also from Patman's committee), which restricted themselves to orthodox techniques to their disadvantage. In terms of finance, the most orthodox of all the belligerents was Germany . Britain was possibly slightly less orthodox than Germany. Japan's was similar to Germany in that it supplemented orthodox finance with plunder. (Russia was off the chart since it was purely a non-market command economy.) The effect of requiring the commercial banks to subscribe to securities equivalent to those subscribed to by the Fed was to lock up reserves accumulating from deficit spending during the war that could have otherwise fueled inflation. As they matured and were redeemed post war, reserves were thereby gradually released into the system, not only foreclosing the possibility of post-war depression, but sustaining continued prosperity and American dominance for decades. Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] stupid mistake--question 2
bill 1. independence of the fed boils down to setting fed funds rate, that is all. the first time it bounces a treasury check, greenspan co. will be out. -- Reply: Treasury never forces the issue. It always covers the checks it writes completely from taxes and security sales. The more likely outcome from a bounced check (which itself is quite unlikely because the issue will never be forced) would be that it would be the Secretary of Treasury who would be axed for incompetence, not the Federal Reserve Board chairman. As Commander-in-Chief, I suppose, the President in theory could march the army down the street on his own authority, and arrest Greenspan in his office. Whether or not he could make it stick is an open question. It would be constitutional crisis of the first order. The tinpots couldn't even make the arrest of Hugo Chavez stick in a country where such arrests are standard practice. They are not standard practice in the United States which makes a religion out of the rule of law. -- and when all is said and done, the ffr matters very little. -- Reply: True. -- (also note that greenspan now has virtually no credibility in govt or in financial mkts--even the economist regularly ridicules him. better find another villain.) -- Reply: Did you not see the recent Greenspan testimony to the Banking Committee on CSPAN? I believe the streaming video is still available at http://www.cspan.org . Committee members were effusive with praise. Only nut-cases Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul dissented, who are taken seriously by nobody--repeat--nobody. The informed dissenters like Patman are long gone. Perhaps you could broaden your reading a bit beyond the Economist. -- 2. watch ffr carefully and you will see that a few minutes after a fed announcement of rate change, it instantly jumps to the target--whether or not there has been any buying/selling of treasuries. randy -- Reply: Regardless of what actually causes the change, they think--or claim--it is caused by the churning. Whether or not is not a consideration because inferred is the assumption it could be not. The Fed is constantly and simultaneously purchasing and selling securities (mostly in the form of derivatives of federal securities like repos and swaps) through the so-called open market. To effect a change of $20 billion in system reserves they conduct $3,700 billion in transactions, in ratio of 185 to 1. Whatever is in fact the intent or the result, there is no doubt it does enrich certain privileged beneficiaries of Wall Street. - Original Message - DATE: Wed, 20 Aug 2003 11:43:10 From: Wray, Randall [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: bill 1. independence of the fed boils down to setting fed funds rate, that is all. the first time it bounces a treasury check, greenspan co. will be out. and when all is said and done, the ffr matters very little. (also note that greenspan now has virtually no credibility in govt or in financial mkts--even the economist regularly ridicules him. better find another villain.) 2. watch ffr carefully and you will see that a few minutes after a fed announcement of rate change, it instantly jumps to the target--whether or not there has been any buying/selling of treasuries. randy Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
[SOCIAL CREDIT] Reply to Keith from Vic
The text below is forwarded from Vic Bridger. I have found that Topica is somewhat quirky and inconsistent in posting or forwarding messages. About two weeks ago, I myself suddenly stopped receiving messages from Topica to my mail.com accounts: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED] . That second address was my moderator account so moderation was effectively disabled. Probably several subscriber messages were lost. If you have had trouble receiving or posting list messages, please write to me directly at [EMAIL PROTECTED] - August 21, 2003 Bill, Re the attachment of the article by Keith Wilde could you just post my response as follows Dear Keith, In reply to your posting which contained the summary, If I have drawn the appropriate message from your essay, a more conventional way of talking about Douglas' political philosophy, in word usage familiar to me, would be to say that he opposed the ability of one special interest group to exert power over all other groups and individuals in society at large. Am I getting it yet?, my response is yes, you are getting it. Douglas mistakenly believed that all he had to do was draw attention to the flaw in the financial accounting system and that having done so it could be remedied. The attacks on him and his ideas finally forced him to realise that it was not so much a resistance to his ideas, although there were countless books articles and debates on his A+B Theorem, but a resistance to the underlying philosophy which opposed the ability of a group, any group, to make the individual subservient to that group. The means by which a special interest group, as you put it, controls people in society, individually and collectively is through money. Most of the support that was engendered in the early days came from socialists who were attracted by the idea of a National Dividend etc. One of the reasons the Labor Party in Britain were so vehemently against him was because their supporters were attracted to Social Credit, albeit for the wrong reasons. If ever a vindication is needed to support Douglas' contentions regarding the money power one has only to look behind the scenes in the Albertan episode. That is why, in his later years he devoted his efforts to draw attention to the fact that although finance and the money question was just as important as ever, it is the second trench to be taken. The first being to expose those controlling the money power, who not only controlled the people through that money power but also governments who are supposed to representing the people. Vic Bridger Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
[SOCIAL CREDIT] please elaborate
The conspiracy theory thing relates to your claim that the committee was putting on a dog and pony show. The committee members were in on the joke except Sanders and Paul and the rest of congress and the fed and the public and Greenspan, who is out of the loop. But in on the joke are the professionals at the fed and insiders like Mr. Mosler. Despite the Federal Reserve Act the fed is not really independent except for the fed rate. They say they determine the fed rate through open market operations but that has nothing to do with it, etc. ***i find the notion that greenspan runs the treas quite bizzaro.*** Who said that Greenspan runs Treasury? All I said was that Treasury covers the checks it writes totally from the combination of taxes and bond sales on a day-by-day basis. That seems to be empirical fact and you've shown nothing to the contrary except mere assertion. I say the central bank is the central bank and Treasury is the Treasury, and the central bank is the independent agency that has the monopoly in creating and destroying HPM. Some might say this statement by you is bizarro: ***there is no question but that greenspan knows almost nothing about the operation of the fed.*** It is true he is a presidential appointee in a weak position as compared to the special interests (financial/banking/Wall Street) which dominate the institution as opposed to the will of the people as expressed (potentially) by its elected representatives. ***you don't seem to understand how the advance-sale of treasuries occurs. it requires the compliance of the fed--which of course always does comply as it is not independent. all the professionals working at the fed know this.*** I ask you again to elaborate on this advance-sale process. - Original Message - DATE: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 09:36:26 From: Wray, Randall [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: bill i have no idea what this conspiracy is to which you refer. a good example of recent nyt articles on greenspan is by gretchen morgenson, 20 july suddenly greenspan is, well, mortal, but there are many others. they started almost the minute woodward's silly book came out. see recent jpke article by bell and wray for some details, and bell's articles in cambridge jnl and jei for fed operations. mosler's first paper, soft currency econ, available on his web cites and summarizes one of the fed operations people. i find the notion that greenspan runs the treas quite bizzaro. the churning is used by the fed to match actual and desired reserve holdings nearly minute by minute. outright purchases/sales would almost certainly lead to greater flux of ffr. does this matter? maybe not too much. are you really surprised to learn that congress doesn't have much to do with daily operations of govt? randy Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] please elaborate
Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 12:33:24 -0500 From: Wray, Randall [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: please elaborate bill ok i can see we've taken this as far as it can go. i did provide references to articles you can look up if you desire. randy -- ***see recent jpke article by bell and wray for some details, and bell's articles in cambridge jnl and jei for fed operations. mosler's first paper, soft currency econ, available on his web cites and summarizes one of the fed operations people.*** Okey dokey--I really wish you had explained how advance-sales demonstate the fed's lack of independence, as you asserted, rather than merely refering us to a slew of articles--some of which I know for a fact do not even mention the term advance-sales. Could you not still explain? Too much of your (meaning the Moslerite) case seems to be reverse-engineered from false premises to a parallel universe where the false premises apply. At any rate, that's what it seems to me. It does not look to be the method of science but metaphysics. As to the articles, I will indeed look up the ones I do not have. Thanks for the interesting conversation. Bill Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] W. B. Ryan, 07-03-03, Re: Communication problem with Maj.
Douglas certainly wasn't the first to observe that loans create deposits, though he did much to promote the concept among his contemporaries. The math by the way is from Douglas not me. Most economists-- especially those who call themselves Post Keynesian, now accept the concept. A single bank in a multi-bank system does not create net new deposits by itself when it grants loans. The concept applies to the banking system acting in unified whole as if it were one big bank with many branches. Individual bankers can't see this because they themselves individually hold deposits with other banks that cover withdrawals from their individual banks. In the modern system those deposits are kept with the central bank. Earlier, a country bank might have kept its account with a city bank. Typically, when an individual banker receives payment on a loan, it results in a credit to his account at the central bank. To him the money therefore goes somewhere and is definitely not cancelled. So there is central bank credit and commercial bank credit. Central bank credit is sometimes called M0 or HPM--high powered money. Commercial bank credit in checking accounts is simply called M1. It is all of it completely interchangeable and fungible bank credit that derives from loans (mostly but not necessarily) by the central bank and the commercial banks acting together. The concept is meaningful only as a rate--the rate of flow of loans in the aggregate as compared to the rate of flow in repayment in the aggregate. If the rate of loans is exceeding the rate of repayment-- money is being created by banks. It is not meaningful to say that an individual loan creates money and the repayment of that individual loan cancels money. - Original Message - DATE: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 14:10 +0 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dear William. Like most people that have been exposed to Social Credit ideas, and have not rejected them, I accepted for a long time the statement you repeat that Loans create deposits, and the repayment of loans cancels deposits, meant that money, after its creation, could be considered Un-created. Only after being challenged by John Tomlinson, a heretical practising banker, another colonial, now living in civilised Oxford, did I come to accept that no banker could face the prospect of having to write off his creation just because some miscreant had the temerity to pay off their debt. John patiently stuck to his attempt to explain the reality to me, and to John Hotson who he was in dispute with on this issue at the time. He explained that in point of fact this was yet another deviation from the accounting norms that bankers indulged in, and the returned debts were in fact not destroyed, but placed somewhere convenient to the banker awaiting revival as yet more money creation. Now I do not know what this does to your maths. I for one believe that if it is necessary to go into the realms of higher maths to attempt to refute what can be clearly demonstrated by eye in any high street, that there is a deficiency of effective demand, then there is something wrong in the forces of opposition to change and progress in this world of ours. Ken. Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
[SOCIAL CREDIT] South Africa
Modern economies are *creditary* not *monetary*. What we call money is merely some arbitrarily defined category of credit. What we typically think money is the form of credit we receive in our pay vouchers. In the broadest since, credit is trust and faith in the future. The financial/banking system goes through the rigmarole of buying and selling defined instruments of the intangible credit, as if they were quantifiable tangibles, obeying the law of supply and demand. In reality, the mechanism of credit is no more tangible and subject to laws of nature than are the rules of civil procedure down at the courthouse. The rules can definitely be changed if there is compelling reason to do so. The big message is that there is latent productive capacity that is perpetually wasted so long as we restrict ourselves by the current rules. Financially calling on that capacity will result in the more efficient utilization (displacement) of finite resources and labor, as the ratio of inputs decreases to outputs with implementation of improving technology. For more than eighty years the Social Credit slogan has been: What is physically possible is financially possible! The keyword is financially--not through dictatorship or strong-arm command. Increasing dividends to the people, who, through their spending and saving decisions in free markets, determine the course and direction of production. Free people in a free society enjoying life. Economic Democracy. It is the essential analogue to political democracy: universal suffrage, free ballots and equality under the law. South Africa can do it. A continental nation bounded by three oceans with super-abundant gifts of nature and humanity. She can declare her financial independence and build a prosperous future on her own for all her people. By doing so she will become the beacon of light to the entire world. ---original message Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2003 16:07:39 +0200 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Friday 22 Aug 2003 5:52 pm, Bill wrote: A single bank in a multi-bank system does not create net new deposits by itself when it grants loans. The concept applies to the banking system acting in unified whole as if it were one big bank with many branches. -- Thanks, Bill, for this. I have long been troubled by the fairly simplistic statement that ¨an individual loan creates money and the repayment of that individual loan cancels money.¨ Some little knowledge of our own South African Reserve Bank tells me that the matter is far mor complex than that. For the bulk of their liquidity requirements, individual banks (through their main branch) trade on the Money Market, and only when money is in short supply do the banks bid for credit at the the Reserve Bank auction. Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank employs all manner of instruments to regulate the liquidity in the system by taking money out when there is an over-supply and putting it back when there is a short supply, acting carefully to maintain the money supply at a level necessary to achieve interest rate targets, which in turn regulate the demand for cash, which circles back to interest rates. Very complex. What I am not clear on is where exactly the new money is created, and how it enters the money supply. I think, but I may be wrong, that it comes from Treasury bills, Land Bank bills, central government bonds and/or Reserve Bank debentures? Could this be correct? Anyway, thanks. I feel a bit more confident concerning this most fundamental concept in the SC argument. Jessop Sutton Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
[SOCIAL CREDIT] What is money?
Money isn't primarily medium of exchange because in the modern system it mostly redeems production into final consumption or in the direction of final consumption. Nor is it store of value but may be used to purchase stores of value in the form of durable goods or securities that contract for future income. Cash- on-hand is kept not for store of value but as working capital for day-to-day operations and consumption. It is therefore more in the nature of reserves between paychecks and sales receipts akin to the concept of insurance. Nor is it warehouse receipts for goods already produced and existing, but in generalized contract for *future* performance no matter how soon that future might occur. Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
[SOCIAL CREDIT] Aberhart links
This link contains audio clips (RealPlayer) from a documentary on William Aberhart in three parts. In part 2 is a dialog with a Professor Orthodox Annonymous from Aberhart's radio program. Part 2 also includes the voice of Earnest Manning. http://collections.ic.gc.ca/abpolitics/events/party_social.html -- Is anyone familiar with this novel? -- http://collections.ic.gc.ca/abpolitics/legacy/aberhart_summer.html That Aberhart Summer By Ken Tingley In Alberta, certain provincial elections have assumed mythic proportions over the years. This certainly holds true for the summer campaign leading to the landslide Social Credit victory on August 22, 1935. It inspired a novel, a play, and, in 2000, the reissue of the novel - a reminder that the fateful summer was a turning point in Alberta's history. Born in 1925, Bruce Allen Powe was raised in southside Edmonton, attending local schools before serving in the Canadian army in the Second World War. His novel, The Aberhart Summer, first published in 1983, evokes the emotions of those heady months in 1935 in Alberta. Last year, the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton produced Conni Massing's play adapted from the book, and now NeWest Press has republished Powe's book. T.C. Byrne, in his study of Alberta's revolutionary leaders, sums up his impression of the election campaign which raged during the Aberhart summer as the most bitter campaign in the history of Canadian politics. He believes such deep emotion was partly due to the heated polemics of Aberhart's famous radio addresses. Byrne also credits the source of anger and frustration that allowed Aberhart's transformation of a political battle into a type of religious warfare the despair of a people who, longing for a saviour and having found him, became hostile toward anyone or anything that might prevent his accession to power. Sociologist John A. Irving wrote the first comprehensive study of the Social Credit phenomenon in 1959, when memories were still fresh among the participants. Irving doubted the Social Credit movement would have succeeded had the people not previously developed a perception of its leader as a Man of God. William Aberhart was a school principal in Brantford, Ontario before moving to Alberta in 1910. Five years later he became a Baptist minister and high school principal in Calgary, and began broadcasting his influential 'Radio Sunday School in 1925. He opened the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute in 1927 and, two years later, on the eve of the Great Depression, founded his own fundamentalist sect, the Bible Institute Baptist Church. Bible Bill Aberhart preached Social Credit doctrine on his radio show as a way to end the Depression. Based on economic theories developed by Major C.H. Douglas, a Scottish engineer, Social credit held that since people lacked enough money to buy all the goods that could be produced by modern industry, governments should issue money to everyone in the form of social credits, to enable a return to economic prosperity. Aberhart created the Social Credit League, which promised each Alberta citizen a monthly $25 basic dividend. Social Credit won 56 of 63 seats in the 1935 provincial election. Aberhart remained the leader of the Social Credit Party until his death in 1943. Ernest Manning then succeeded him as premier until 1971. Interviews conducted by Irving during the 1950s confirm how deeply split the community was by the Social Credit movement. Social Crediters insisted that their speakers were threatened with physical violence, and one prominent Social Credit speaker told Irving that on several occasions he was warned that he would be beaten up if he spoke in certain towns. Even in farming communities, the customary courtesies of rural folk were often suspended. A farmer in southern Alberta related, If you were a U.F.A. man and your car was broken down on the road, a Social Crediter who came along would not help you. Such deep divisions were only somewhat less noticeable in the larger cities. Powe sets his novel, a story of political ambition, within this charged atmosphere. It is told through recollections of Doug Sayers, a veteran of the Depression and the Second World War. The setting is Alberta in the throes of political change. The narrative lines weave through the lives of real men of the time, such as Aberart and Manning. But it is also Sayers' story of shocking personal tragedy as he deals with the mysterious death of his best friend, Babe Roothe. He was the best and the brightest, Power says of the character. The novel's subtext is the approaching global war and growing political unrest at home. That summer, the newspapers were full of the Abbysinian crisis, Mussolini preparing to attack Haile Selassie's little country, the League of Nations powerless to intervene. Anti-Jewish riots were reported across Germany. Edmonton newspapers printed extras
[SOCIAL CREDIT] ponzi
***Doesn't this make the creation of money, to some extent, a Ponzi scheme - which crashes down when too many bad loans are made (such as for the creation of the dot.coms)?*** Not from what I said in that particular post. Ponzi finance means you are borrowing merely to pay earlier loans. The lending process is not by its nature Ponzi if the borrowing is for constructive purposes, such as organizing the factors of production into their more efficient combination, as ultimately judged by consumers in free markets. It is what economists call investment. The alternative is some permutation of a command economy where bureaucrats bark orders. Ponzi finance derives from the fact that loans in general do not self-liquidate if there is labor displacement, as explained through the A + B theorem. To correct that problem social credit proposes the Retail Discount and Dividend paid from the National Credit Account. Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] ponzi
***and how does money get into the national credit account? Further, what is done about the hording of B funds?*** Keep in mind that the banking system as a whole, to the extent it can be considered to be one big bank with many branches--has what is tantamount to an unlimited overdraft account with itself, against which it writes checks. The present arrangement is that they go exclusively toward funding loans. It's what we call the Monopoly of Credit. The Monopoly works against its own best interests since it is not possible for the loans to amortize in their totality so long as there is labor displacement. They don't know that. It's our job to so inform them. Some of those checks could fund dividends, which would enable the amortization of the loans. The National Credit Account carries a balance available to fund dividends that is estimated to be the totality of latent productive capacity. I don't know for sure what you mean by hoarding of B funds. I suppose you're referring to the B in A + B. The short answer is--nothing. The hoarding is compensated through the dividend (and retail discount) program so that prices equate to purchasing power. During normal times account balances are not hoarding but working capital necessary for day to day to day operations. There is a functional relationship between economic activity and the account balances that facilitate that activity. During abnormal times there is indeed hoarding in the ordinary sense of the word, but it is the effect and not the cause of the abnormality. Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] ponzi
Something like that; it is certainly not rocket science. First of all, we have to address the concerns of the skeptics, so the checks would have to be very modest in the beginning. Perhaps $100 or $25. That can be increased gradually as time goes on with increasing political acceptance. The infrastructure is already in place for the initial disbursements--the network for the existing entitlement programs and welfare programs, income tax refunds, etc. This was not the case in the early 1930s. Perhaps not equally to everyone at first, but targeting certain recipients whose spending would have the greatest stimulative effect on the economy and immediate benefit to themselves. Again, the reason for specific targeting is to address concerns of the skeptics. The ultimate goal would be equality, of course. I should say sending checks out weekly is not unreasonably difficult. My gripe with Alaska is they send checks out only once a year. Bill original message Pretend my degree is in public policy and finance rather than in banking (which is in fact true). What actions happen on what date by whom to distribute the national credit? Let me venture a guess and you can tell me if I am correct. Sept 15: Federal Reserve estimates amount to be distributed to national credit account. Sept 22: Federal Reserve transfers funds to U.S. Treasury to write checks for national credit. Oct-Nov: U.S. Treasury issues cheques or direct deposits credit cheques to individuals. Cheques and deposits are the same for each citizen, regardless of income. Is this a likely scenario, or would payments be spread out throughout the year, lets say quarterly. How large would you estimate each cheque to be? $100? $1000? Give me a ballpark. Michael Bindner Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] ponzi
Some comments [comment 08-28] are inserted below: -- The question still remains, who won't be benefiting from money creation if it is shifted to social credit? Is it bond traders or perhaps the federal treasury? How will it impact the economy to not use credit to create money? - [comment 08-28] That is not the proposal. -- It would seem to me that while the federal debt is in place, it would be hard to pay a social credit. - [comment 08-28] Why would the federal debt have anything to do with it? I'm afraid you're still thinking very much in conventional terms. Think in terms of the electric company or the phone company. You complain about something. To keep you happy they credit your bill in some amount. That amount that is credited to your account does not add to anyone's debt or take anything away from anybody, but keeps a happy customer. -- This is why I support shifting to a value added tax for general government - [comment 08-28] Which is just a sales tax on everything. The problem is not a shortage of taxes but a shortage of purchasing power. -- and to a personal income tax on all personal and estate income over $100,000 (not family income) to specifically fund net interest and debt retirement. - [comment 08-28] And where is the money to come from to pay the taxes? -- This income tax would sunset after the debt is retired - [comment 08-28] The problem is not debt but the inability to amortize the debt which is addressed by social credit. Social credit does not eliminate debt as a tool of finance but enables it to be amortized which is impossible so long as incomes are falling in respect to the costs of production. -- - and taxpayers could purchase self-liquidating bonds in lieu of paying taxes (surrendering the principal and interest - essentially prepaying their taxes). - [comment 08-28] Calling the bonds self-liquidating cannot make them self-liquidating so long as incomes are falling as compared to the costs of production. They cannot self-liquidate or amortize without extraneous credit (from the National Credit Account) in supplement to incomes. -- On my web page, www.iowafiscalequity.net, I also describe a regional organization for the goverment - with regional reserves tailoring monetary policy to each of 7 US regions. Ideally, these regional reserves would issue any social credit in order to stimulate the regional economy. At what level would the credit be? It might be as little as the profit of the regional government and reserve system (on land sales, resource royalties, electronic spectrum auctions and reserve operations) in excess of cost - [comment 08-28] So you define government profit to be the surplus of taxation over disbursement? That is impossible so long as there is a shortage of available purchasing power in the hands of the public from which to tax--which is inevitable with labor displacement. -- (since the VAT I am proposing contains a system of social service tax credits - [comment 08-28] And what is the source of those credits to the population, the profit or surplus of taxes over disbursements? What you are proposing is simply a transfer tax from one group of people to another. -- which would have the effect of providing a guaranteed family income of $12,000 per child or spouse at the regional and state levels, plus credits for faith based social service providers for mental health care/corrections and education - with most of these costs carried in the private sector most public sector activity would end in these areas). - [comment 08-28] Pipe dream due to the shortage of purchasing power in relationship to costs. -- The credit would likely come from both the governmental profit - [comment 08-28] Don't you mean government surplus? The term profit is meaningless in this context. -- and from money creation, although money creation would also be used for capital credit - either on the Kelsonian model to individuals or to employee-owned enterprises and local governments as a whole. - [comment 08-28] Which would be loans which are impossible to repay if incomes are falling in respect to the costs of production which makes the Kelsonian model just a pipe dream. The fact they may be interest free is irrelevant. -- The less these firms or governments use this credit, the more is available for payment. - [comment 08-28] Loans to firms or government which makes them the servants not the masters of finance especially if it is impossible to amortize the loans as demonstrated by A + B. -- Let me lay it out in a formula to be clear: government profit + money creation = discount window loans to ESOPs/cities
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] ponzi
***This could be done selectively as well, penalising luxury goods and subsidising essential basics.*** You could but it would mire you in endless debate and require complicated bureaucracy for enforcement. Penalizing luxury goods and subsidizing essential basics is not the purpose of the program which is to close the gap between prices and purchasing power. If you want to penalize and subsidize other programs can do that. It is simpler to look at gross sales figures at the point of retail. If the sales are X and the discount is five percent, the retailer is credited .05 X. It is the reverse of a sales tax except it is not charged against tax collections but is charged against the National Credit Account. The balance of that account is merely an estimation of latent capacity starting from the assumption that there IS latent capacity. There's no need for exact numbers. The difference is that social credit assumes abundance whereas orthodoxy assumes scarcity. The flow of dividends would start small and increase through time so unanticipated consequences can be handled as they arise--which they always will. ***There are other systems that could be used to distribute the National Dividend.*** In broad concept there are not--meaning the discount and dividend. Well, you could directly fund government projects. So then it becomes a debate on how much to give to government and how much to disburse as cash dividends to the people. The amount given to government removes from government a layer of answerability to the people. They can spend without the people's approval. Okay, they can go through the pretense of taking a vote for show. They can bribe whomever they want to stay in power. They and not the people say what's best for the people. We see something like this in many of the oil and mineral rich states, where revenue and royalties from the wealth goes directly to government. That means those in control of the government. Little of it seems to trickle down to the people. Rolls and skyscrapers, and mud streets in the hicks. I would much rather see government required to justify taxation to fund its projects. -- - Original Message - DATE: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 13:52:21 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: On Wednesday 27 Aug 2003 8:50 pm, Bill wrote: The National Credit Account carries a balance available to fund dividends that is estimated to be the totality of latent productive capacity. Bill, With all the national statistics produced monthly, quarterly, yearly, is there a short way by which this figure can be calculated? I would like to piggy-back on existing structures as far as possible. For instance, we have a VAT system which could surely be used to achieve (something of) the just price compensation, simply by reducing, zeroising, or ´negativising´ the rate. This could be done selectively as well, penalising luxury goods and subsidising essential basics. There are other systems that could be used to distribute the National Dividened. Jessop. -- Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] ponzi
Inserted comments [comments 08-29] below: -- On Thursday 28 Aug 2003 8:24 pm, William wrote: It is the reverse of a sales tax except it is not charged against tax collections but is charged against the National Credit Account. --- Jessop here:- The National Credit Account could simply pay an amount over to Revenue to replace the loss in Sales Tax or VAT. This entirely avoids setting up a separate delivery system for the Just Price procedure. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * [comments 08-29] There is no *loss* in sales tax or vat--they are entirely separate programs that shouldn't be co-mingled. The purpose of the National Credit Account is not to post credits to government but to post credits directly to consumers boosting effective demand for the products of industry which allows industry to recover the costs of production in free markets. -- William also wrote:- ***There are other systems that could be used to distribute the National Dividend.*** In broad concept there are not--meaning the discount and dividend. -- Jessop here:- I have in mind the South African setup where the entire land is delimitated in Municipalities, urban and rural. Municipalities collect rates and service charges from all owner- or occupier-entities. I had in mind that the municipal account could also serve as a vehicle for delivery of a National Dividend simply as a credit entry on the account. The municipal system, though already in operation, is still under development. Is my suggestion feasible? * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * ** [comments 08-29] The programs shouldn't be co- mingled. What's to prevent the rates and service charges from being simply increased thereby short circuiting the credits away from consumers to the benefit of bureaucrats? You've got to have checks and balances and you do that by having separate constituencies for the various programs who will separately fight to defend the programs that benefit themselves individually. Consumers as consumers are a constituency that should receive the credits directly because the purpose of the program is to boost spending by consumers not government. -- William also wrote:- Little of it seems to trickle down to the people. Rolls and skyscrapers, and mud streets in the hicks. I would much rather see government required to justify taxation to fund its projects. --- Jessop here:- I know, and I hate that. Corruption and grasping of politicians and officials is a curse. But I think that what I have outlined would circumvent that a little, at least no less than any other means of Social Credit delivery. * * * * * * ** * * ** * * * * * * Thanks, Bill, for your contribution. Jessop - [comments 08-29] Which is why it is not social credit if it goes directly to government. It should go to the people and let government try to tax the people. If it goes directly to government then government doesn't have to ask permission of the people to spend it (which the people will grant if the request is reasonable). We are trying to achieve economic democracy not benevolent dictatorship. Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Question for Keith Wilde
Eighty-five years ago Douglas was using the three percent figure--but then there were still some actual gold sovereigns in circulation. It's probably far less than that today unless you count the Fed accommodation of some portion of the federal debt as government money which might (or might not--we have to look at the actual numbers) bring it up to three. The United States government only gets credit to its account for the face value of the coinage it delivers to the Fed. It gets credit only for the cost of printing the notes it delivers. I keep reading in the crank literature (COMER, Rowbotham, etc.) that in Canada and Britain government gets credit for the face value of the notes. Perhaps you will verify if that is in fact true. It certainly isn't true for the United States. But even if it were true, the initiative in each case--I'm quite sure--is with the central bank not government, which delivers the notes only when ordered to do so by the central bank. Government isn't allowed to deliver the notes at will to fund its programs. It baffles me as to where Rowbotham gets the twenty- one percent figure for 1963. I have no idea what his reasoning or source for this is. He doesn't say in the book which seems a welter of factual error. Except for certain relatively minor details, it is my belief that the system in Britain, Canada and the U.S. are fundamentally identical. Indeed, that would include the EU and most of the world. Not only identical but integrated. That is to say, sovereignty in terms of financial policy is entirely in the hands of the banks even more so than was the case eighty-three years ago. original message This is not a direct answer to your question, but it may have some bearing on its origin. In The Grip of Death, pp. 260-61, Michael Rowbotham says: ...since 1963 cash currency in the UK money stock has declined from 21% to 3%. Why should this mean that the difference should be made up by banking and debt? If the economy runs principally on numerical money--credit--then a government has a duty to introduce some of this into the economy without a background of debt, JUST AS WITH COINS AND NOTES. The reforms proposed by Lincoln and Douglas were founded upon the supply of a medium of exchange by government, circulating debt-free... .Applying this principle to a modern economy, the responsibility on government to p[provide a nation's money stock CLEARLY SHOULD NOT BE RESTRCITED TO JUST ITS CASH CURRENCY. It is ridiculous for modern governments to identify their money supply duties with the issue of coins and notes when the use of cash is steadily declining. There is nothing inherently wrong with number money, just as there is nothing wrong with paper money. ...At one time paper money was perceived to be unstable and inherently defective. NOW, SINCE IT IS CREATED DEBT-FREE BY THE GOVERNMENT, PAPER CURRENCY FORMS A VALUABLE PART OF THE TINY DEBT-FREE INP[UT INTO THE ECONOMY. As credit, or number money, is now the dominant form of money, some credit must be created must be created debt- free and introduced into the economy. END OF QUOTATIONS FROM ROWBOTHAM Now I don't know how things work in the UK, but I am pretty sure that the Bank of Canada does not spend currency into the economy gratuitously--nor does the government pay cash (except possibly through graft to friends of powerful ministers). Banks collect old bank notes and send them into the Bank of Canada for incinerating, in exchange for brand new notes. And for any excess over the exchange, I am pretty sure they write a cheque. The idea of the central bank dishing out currency for free to commercial banks is utterly ludicrous. What was Rowbotham smoking when he wrote that? Keith Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Anti-Semitism
This was Finlay's take on the matter: But the nature of this anti-Jewish outlook must be probed, for it is doubtful whether it can be called anti-Semitism in the normal sense. -- John L. Finlay, *Social Credit: The English Origins,* 1972, pages 102-105. (notes omitted) ...What made Douglas fear organization and what made him insist upon the organic was his bold analysis of human nature and especially of human motivation. While holding that most people were good, socially minded creatures, he allowed the existence of a minority whose driving force was the pursuit of power. It was here in the identification of the power complex that Douglas showed his originality. In a pretotalitarian age it was difficult to conceive of anyone's being motivated by power for its own sake. Yet it was this point which Douglas had stressed from his earliest writings onwards, the second of his articles in the *English Review was entitled The Pyramid of Power. In that article he described the will to power and noted that it was particularly virulent in Germany. The war had encouraged the development of this will, and not only in Germany, so that a new danger faced the world. It was not merely an intensification of previous conflict, for there was a qualitative difference too. Strong and embittered differences of opinion resulting in some sort of conflict are nothing new in the history of civilization, Douglas noted, they recur with dreary monotony ...But there is definitely novel component in the present upheaval ...the cleavage is in the main horizontal and the issue is impersonal. In Douglas's view, then, groups were of two kinds. There were traditional natural groupings which predated the emergence of the novel component in the present upheaval and which were to be preserved as essential protection against the coming storm. They would tend to be small, and in fact Douglas once declared that no organization should exceed three thousand. On the other hand there were artificial organizations which had no real purpose but to provide the means by which the power seekers could arrange the people into a perfect hierarchy of obedience. It was for this reason that Douglas was so distrustful of democracy. Not that he was prepared to give up the concept itself. He declared his belief in the Democracy of the Common Will; what he rejected was the Democracy either of the Intellect or of the emotions, which lead directly to dictatorships. Thus he refused to distinguish between the extreme right and the extreme left. He sensed rather than understood that mass mobilization through the ballot box would lead to a Mussolini and a Lenin or Trotsky who are identical in their contempt for Liberty and passion for the rule of centralizing force. The same intuition led him to oppose the Work Study philosophy and its later manifestation, Technocracy, two movements which maintained that a planned approach to the routine of work at all levels could lead to tremendous increases in output. Such methods demanded a high level of organization and therefore were to be feared. A typical Douglas judgment upon these movements was that they were Syndicalist in essence and [did] not differ very widely...from ... Fascism. It was inevitable that sooner or later Douglas should seek to identify more precisely the power-seeking conspiracy. In the beginning he was restrained in his attitude towards it. But from an early belief that it might, Like Topsy, just have growed, he moved to attack a very deeply laid and well considered plot of enslaving the industrial world to the German- American-Jewish financiers. It was not long before the German-American element faded into the background, leaving the Jews as the real villains of the piece ...But the nature of this anti-Jewish outlook must be probed, for it is doubtful whether it can be called anti-Semitism in the normal sense. In the early days Douglas always denied any animus against individual Jews. Even in the 1930s he wrote: It must be emphasized that attacks upon the Jews as a body are wholly indefensible, except in cases where Jews act as a body while utilizing advantages which proceed from their incorporation as individuals in other nations. So far as this review is concerned, only their financial relationships are in question. On a latter occasion her asserted, The very last thing which I should desire ...would be the association of the Social Credit movement with Jew- baiting, and he acknowledged that the persecution of Jews would mean an irreparable loss to the rest of the world. He could praise individual Jews and thought highly of Sidney Hillman, the Jewish leader of the American Clothing Workers, whom he met in America and whom he described as one of the ablest labour leaders I have ever met. But later a harder line began to emerge. Conveniently, Douglas summarized his attitude towards the Jewish question as follows:
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Douglas's views on the Jewish Question A QUESTION.
Comments inserted below [In reply, Monday, September 1]. -- [Bill Ryan} Joe, you've completely missed the point. -- Possibly. [Joe] The question remains; if Douglas never existed, and it had been YOU who'd developed the Social Credit concepts, and explained them without any reference to the Protocols of Zion, or the philosophy behind the Theory of Rewards and Punishments - [Bill] This was Douglas' most important observation. -- Yes, but that's the point, ( or one of them! ), you think I've missed. I've read your posts on here for some months now, Bill. And you can do a very credible job of explaining 'social credit' in what you believe would be workable manner without ever touching on that. And I'm not saying for a moment the way you describe the economic concepts wouldn't be feasible. My question still is, if you or some other eminent economist had come up with these concepts, without any reference to anything 'semitic', how likely do you think they would be to be adopted? - [In reply, Monday, September 1] Introducing reserve money (high powered, MO, government money or whatever you want to call it) as dividends directly to consumers rather than exclusively through open market operations does not conflict with anyone's economic theory. It's entirely a matter of philosophy. -- [Joe] as a cornerstone of the 'Semitic structure of society', or made any references whatsoever to the Jews themselves, - [Bill] Identifying that philosophy with the Jews was his biggest mistake. -- Perhaps it was. But was he, or was he not, simply telling the truth? Remember now, the writings which most of those opposed to Social Credit seem to concentrate their fire on are Douglas's earlier ones. The ones most connected to his 'economic' proposals. The ones that appeared well before the Holocaust, or the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany. Yet when I read them, in the context in which they were written, there's nothing in them directly from Douglas that's 'anti-semitic'. - [In reply, Monday, September 1] Look, the truth can be told in many ways. If you want to make enemies you can tell it one way. If you want to make friends and influence people so you can actually accomplish something, you tell it in a manner that does not trigger paranoiac response. Eimar O'Duffy had the right approach in my opinion--abstract prejudicial terminology from the discussion like I'm sure Orage advised Douglas' for the third book. Instead of putting judeo-masonic-calvinist on one side and christian on the other of his chart, he substituted ancient Greek allegory: the conflict between Sisyphism and Procrusteanism. This is the politic approach because there aren't any ancient Greeks around to be offended by the terminology. But O'Duffy wrote in 1932. The damage had already been done in 1924 with the publication of Douglas' third book *Social Credit* with its references to the Protocols and Jews. The term social credit was already associated with anti-semitism rightly or wrongly and most probably wrongly, but even the great literary skill of O'Duffy couldn't fix it. See: http://www.geocities.com/socredus/compendium/hogan-1972.txt -- Unless that term is taken to mean anything at all any Jew is opposed to. - [In reply, Monday, September 1] The zionists apply the term to any Jew who opposes zionism. That struggle is irrelevant to social credit. And if it is taken this way, why should we have to countenance that type of a connotation? Are the activities of the Jews completely beyond all examination, even individual Jews, simply because they are Jews? If they are, then our society is indeed headed for trouble. - [In reply, Monday, September 1] The activities of the Jews. Hmm. It's apparent to me that you personally have a world-view where the Jews are in conspiracy against the rest of us. I am not at all convinced that Douglas had such a view. I believe he was arguing against a restrictive mindset or philosophical paradigm that entraps most of us. In that general sense even I will say there is a conspiracy. My criticism of Douglas is his lame brained terminology. Mindsets can be changed through logical argument, but what do you do about the Jews if it's more than mindset but part of their genetic being? If you begin to think in terms of conspiracies, where does it end? The revolutionaries who sent many to the guillotine were themselves sent to the guillotine by those who seized power from them who thought THEY were the conspiracy. Now, here's a REAL conspiracy theorist, by comparison to which the remnants of the social crediters are weak-kneed indeed: Western Destiny makes frequent mention of Maj. C. H. Douglas'
[SOCIAL CREDIT] (No Subject)
My point exactly. All the 'free-silver' Democrats moved to Canada in disgust after Bryan lost! Seriously though... -- Tens of thousands actually did. 1896 also marked the closure of the frontier. Free land for homesteading was still available in Western Canada. Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Fw: Goodbye from: socialcredit@topica.com
I don't know what is going on, Keith. Topica no longer transmits to my moderator account. It won't send list messages or moderator messages. Nothing will come to that address from Topica. So moderation has become effectively disabled. And there were the bouncing messages to Vic which should normally be an indication that his mailbox was full, which it wasn't and isn't. It could be that Topica's software is at fault. It worked beautifully before. I can't rule out sabotage. Bill -- - Original Message - DATE: Sun, 7 Sep 2003 12:29:46 From: Keith Wilde [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: - Original Message - From: Keith Wilde [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2003 12:27 PM Subject: Re: Goodbye from: [EMAIL PROTECTED] And just how and when did I do that? - Original Message - From: Topica Support [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2003 8:51 AM Subject: Goodbye from: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hello! You have successfully unsubscribed from Social Credit. If you're looking for newsletters or discussions that better suit your taste, start with Topica's home page. Check out our content channels or just search our site here: http://www.topica.com If you're interested in great deals on the products and services you want, check out our money-saving TopOffers here: http://www.topica.com/partner/sysmes1/channels/offers/ TRY, TRY AGAIN Is this all a big mistake? If you did not want to leave Social Credit, you can resubscribe by sending a blank email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or, if the problem was simply that you got too much email, why not try the digest version of the list? To subscribe into digest mode, send a blank email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] HELP DESK If you believe someone has used your email address without your consent, please contact Topica's Abuse Team at: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Still have questions? We're here to help. Simply email Topica's Customer Support at: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please include the email address of the list in question and the email address you use to subscribe to the list. Sincerely, Topica Customer Support Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Wants Critical Comment
Thanks for forwarding this, Chick. There are several things that are interesting about it. This organization is marxist-anarchist. They would eliminate government and money. The anarchist side of their beliefs actually overlaps Douglas' theory. Unlike them, however, Douglas was realist enough to know that you cannot eliminate government and centers of power but you should strive to minimize them and decentralize them with checks and balances. Schemes like a monetary authority with emphasis on the authority emanate from John Hargrave, not Douglas. Douglas would pay dividends directly to people. Others, like Hargrave, saw nothing wrong with allowing government to spend it into circulation which of course gives those in control of government supreme power. Since they believe there is no need for money, they obviously haven't spent very much time thinking about it as is evident from the following, which is primitive as compared to even Marx's analysis: ***In fact, there is no chronic shortage of purchasing power. Sufficient [purchasing power] to buy the product is generated as wages and profits in the course of production; slumps are not caused by an absolute shortage of purchasing power but arise when, because of falling profit prospects, capitalist firms choose not to spend all their profits on fully renewing or on expanding production. Nor can banks create credit; they are essentially only financial intermediaries, borrowing money at one rate of interest from people with cash to spare and lending this at a higher rate to those needing money to spend or invest, their profits coming from the difference between the two interest rates. *** Note: Topica does not archive attachments, but does [or is supposed to--Topica performance has been erratic lately] forward them. Some email software sends the body of messages as attachments so will archive completely blank with Topica. Also, some email software does not allow the receipt of attachments, so will be received completely blank. Your message came through okay to my Hotmail address but is blank in the Topica archive. I am therefore appending the article below in plaintext for the benefit of those who might have missed it. -- Socialist Standard Journal of the Socialist Party of Great Britain September, 2003 http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/sep03/ Major Douglas rides again Adam Buick In the course of our nearly one hundred years of socialist activity, one of the ideas that we have had to deal with from time to time has been currency crankism the idea that economic and social problems are caused by some flaw in the monetary system and that what is required to put things right is not to get rid of the profit system that is capitalism but mere monetary reform (of one kind or another, depending on which particular school the currency crank belongs to). Between the wars the most popular school of currency crankism in Britain was Social Credit, based on the ideas of Major Douglas (as he was known). His explanation for the slump of poverty amidst potential plenty, of unmet needs alongside idle factories and widespread unemployment, of piles of unsold goods being destroyed was simple, not to say simplistic: it was due to a lack of purchasing power, to people not having enough money to buy what they needed or to constitute a market worth catering for. The solution, too, was simplistic: distribute purchasing power free to people in the form of a social dividend paid by the government. Douglas believed that banks could create credit by the mere stroke of a pen, but that they deliberately kept money scarce so as to be able to charge a higher rate of interest. Hence his solution that the banks should be taken over by the government and their supposed power to create credit exercised but in the general interest, as social credit. In fact, there is no chronic shortage of purchasing power. Sufficient [purchasing power] to buy the product is generated as wages and profits in the course of production; slumps are not caused by an absolute shortage of purchasing power but arise when, because of falling profit prospects, capitalist firms choose not to spend all their profits on fully renewing or on expanding production. Nor can banks create credit; they are essentially only financial intermediaries, borrowing money at one rate of interest from people with cash to spare and lending this at a higher rate to those needing money to spend or invest, their profits coming from the difference between the two interest rates. This being the case, the main result of applying social credit would be roaring inflation. All the other problems of capitalism, including periodically re-occurring poverty amidst plenty, would continue unabated. They will only end when the means of production are brought into common ownership and democratic control so that they can be oriented towards
[SOCIAL CREDIT] News Flash!
News Flash! The Museum of London has announced a major exhibition, from October 2003, about London in the 1920s. A significant part of the exhibition will place the Kibbo Kift in a historical perspective and will feature some of the Kibbo Kift artifacts in the Museum's collection. http://www.kibbokift.org/ --- Music is important to the success of social movements. Attachment 1 is the Anthem of the Green Shirt Movement pulled from the site above. Renditions of it I'm sure were very stirring. The file opens in *Windows MediaPlayer*. For comparison purposes is attachment 2, the anthem of world socialism. Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^ wakenow[1].mid Description: audio/mid internaz1.mid Description: audio/mid
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Major Douglas: The Causes of War (BBC Nov 1934) CD Audio
The recording might (or might not be) still be under copyright, but copyright doesn't convey the right of censorship. Anyone can legally reproduce it without prior restraint. The copyright holder presumably would have the right of reasonable compensation for the use of his intellectual property and theoretically could assert a claim and seek damages if he has been damaged. The amount of compensation would be negotiable. Failing negotiation, it could ultimately be determined by a court of law. I'm sure a court would determine the value to be minimal inasmuch as the copyright holder destroyed his sole remaining copy on his own initiative. As to the size of the file, there are compression techniques that can reduce the size considerably. Doug Henwood compresses his half-hour radio programs into downloadable files less than seven megabytes http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html which is some twentieth the size of your file. A file of that size can be sent as an attachment from and to many email servers, or placed on the Internet for easy download. I would be glad to assist you in converting it into a readily accessible format. - Original Message - DATE: Tue, 09 Sep 2003 04:17:54 From: Wallace M. Klinck [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Victor Bridger [EMAIL PROTECTED],Frances Hutchinson [EMAIL PROTECTED],Jeremy Lee [EMAIL PROTECTED],William B Ryan [EMAIL PROTECTED],Michael Stephen Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED],Phillip D. Butler [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Hello All Again, Obviously, I cannot send a 147MB file by E-mail--so I am anxious for suggestions re delivery. Any suggestions Bill--or others? I can mail out copies of the CD if this is the only practical solution. Let me know if you would like a copy. My server says that Windows Messenger might be helpful--but I've never used it before. What to do next? Wally, appealing for help. [Text of my previous and unsuccessful transmission.] Hello All, I am attempting herewith to forward a WAV file and accompanying text for title (?) of the talk that Major Douglas delivered over the British Broadcasting Corporation in November of 1934 and which was subsequently printed in the B.B.C. publication, The Listener, on December the 5, 1934, entitled The Causes of War: Is Our Financial System to Blame? (14 min., 37 sec.) This is first time that I have attempted to produce and send an audio file. I assume that the WAV file is appropriate, or perhaps I should have sent an MPEG3 file instead (?). Bill, I expect that you are informed in this regard and any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated. Perhaps you or others might care to archive this item--but I draw your attention to the following: I obtained this speech many years ago as an old reel recording and had to dig out my ancient reel machines to resurrect it and import it into my computer for processing and output (I have also produced a CD) using Pinnacle's Clean 4 Plus program. Originally, I had noticed degradation on the reel about half way through and requested another copy from the B.B.C. to receive notice that it was no longer available--the implication being that it had been destroyed during housecleaning, if memory serves me correctly. When I played it this time, however, the quality seemed excellent and so this audio file came out excellent on playback from my computer and from a consumer CD sound player--much to my relief and somewhat to my surprise. Perhaps some things other than wine (for the record, I don't drink alcohol) do in fact improve with age! Anyway, I want to point out that the case on the reel from the B.B.C. was stamped For Listening Purposes Only and Broadcasting or Public Performance Prohibited without Consent of the B.B.C. The event occurred well over a half-century ago and the recording was apparently removed from the B.B.C. archives for destruction. Nevertheless, if any of you have any reservations about the use of this WAV file or any form of presentation which you might wish to derive from it, I would then recommend that you contact the B.B.C. to confirm with certainty what you may be free to do with it. Again, Bill, perhaps you could offer some advice--in the nature of an opinion without putting yourself in the position of offering legal advice as such. I hope that this file works for you--and that you enjoy it! I don't know that it is available anywhere else. Yours sincerely Wally Tel/Fax (780) 467-4885 Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Zarlenga: the dog that didn't bark
What is your point? -- - Original Message - DATE: Fri, 12 Sep 2003 14:05:54 From: Keith Wilde [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Are you trying to demonstrate that Social Credit is a sectarian religion after all? - Original Message - From: William B. Ryan [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, September 12, 2003 10:30 AM Subject: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Zarlenga: the dog that didn't bark Inspector Gregory: Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention? Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. The dog did nothing in the night-time. That was the curious incident, remarked Sherlock Holmes. From The Adventure of Silver Blaze by Arthur Conan Doyle Our famous sleuth discovered the name of an intruder by noting what the household dog did or rather didn't do in the night. Nothing. Because it didn't bark he knew that the intruder was known by the dog. Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Wants critical comment--Keith reads Zarlenga
***] The cash comes into general circulation when the Reserve Bank buys government stock from the government [*** Does it purchase directly from government or indirectly through the so-called open market as in the United States? That creates a rake off to Wall Street that is effectively interest paid even though it rebates what interest it earns on the securities it holds in its portfolio to the Treasury. It also means that the Fed not the Treasury calls the shots regarding monetary policy. If the SA bank purchases directly from government, does it purchase what it wants to purchase, or does the government sell it what it wants to sell? It comes down to who is actually in control and what institution is the real government for things more significant than deciding which potholes to fill. The question to Keith relates strictly to the currency. Certain people (COMER etc.) allege that in Canada the currency component of M0 is not bank credit but Treasury credit spent into circulation by government. In the United States the currency is merely token for central bank credit that is lent (through the purchase of securities) not spent into circulation. - Original Message - DATE: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 07:36:01 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: On Monday 15 Sep 2003 10:54 pm, Keith Wilde wrote: I presume you mean the question of whether or not any of the Canadian money supply is provided by government directly. I still do not have definitive answer to that--except for the one bald statement that Bank of Canada is responsible for the money supply. I'm not sure how coins get circulated once produced at the Mint--but suspect it is via The Bank. I expect to be getting back downtown next week sometime, after my radiation treatments are finished. - I presume most Central Banks operate in very much the same way. Over here, The South African Reserve Bank has the sole right to issue new note and coinage currency. The Bank issues new notes and coins according to the public´s cash requirements (aka ´till money requirements´). The cash comes into general circulation when the Reserve Bank buys government stock from the government or financial assets from the banks. In the process, credit is made available to government or banks who then draw cash as required to spend. The cash then has been spent into circulation. (Sources: SARB and ´Basic Macro-Economis´, by L J Fourie F van den Bogaerde, published by I L van Schaik.) Jessop. University of Phoenix Online. Free Information - Online Classes http://r.hotbot.com/r/lmt_uopo/http://servedby.advertising.com/click/site=563632/mnum=125825 This offer applies to U.S. Residents Only --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] newspeak newspeak newspeak
***]The question I was trying to clarify is, Who has the major control over the increase in the money supply -- the private banking sector or the government through its monetary policy? It seems to me that the government here has the major say, but who knows how much the financiers with the ´will to power´ can influence actions of men in government and in the Directorates? [*** The answer is the private banking sector. The government has no say whatsoever. They don't hide it. See http://www.reservebank.co.za/ Since its establishment, the Bank has always been privately owned and today has some 650 shareholders. The Bank has a Board of fourteen directors. Among them are the governor and three deputy governors, who are appointed by the Government for five-year terms. Three other directors are appointed by the Government for a period of three years. The remaining seven directors, of whom one represents agriculture, two industry and four commerce or finance, are elected by shareholders for a period of three years. Yes, it would appear theoretically that government appoints half the directors so that in principle government could take control of the bank's policy by amending the bank's charter so that it could appoint the majority of directors. But then it would come down to whether the government appoints directors from the banking industry, who are indoctrinated with the anti-inflation ideology of banking, or otherwise, or so it seems to me. When the Government's expenditure exceeds its income from various sources such as taxation, its deficit before borrowing must be funded. This funding is obtained by selling Government bonds to domestic institutions such as pension funds. Through its activities in these markets known as open market operations, the Reserve Bank can exert either upward or downward pressure on the general level of interest rates. Note that the Reserve Bank does not directly fund government spending. Through 'open market' operations it attempts to control interest rates in order to achieve economic stability--not full employment, a rising standard of living, the funding of government infrastructure projects, or anything else. The Bank is active in the domestic money and capital markets. Its activities are aimed at influencing the availability of money in the economy to achieve the monetary policy goal of low inflation. etc. Particularly, in South Africa, the government has no say. Since 1994 the Reserve Bank has become one of the most conservative central banks in the world in terms of stated policy: South Africa's approach to overall economic management changed significantly when the new government assumed office in 1994 and embarked upon a concerted effort to achieve macroeconomic stability. In the past there had been many attempts to achieve sustained growth and higher levels of employment by stimulating demand in the economy through expansionary monetary and fiscal policies... I see no significant structural differences between the United States Federal Reserve and the South African Reserve Bank. University of Phoenix Online. Free Information - Online Classes http://r.hotbot.com/r/lmt_uopo/http://servedby.advertising.com/click/site=563632/mnum=125825 This offer applies to U.S. Residents Only --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] questions for Keith Wilde
***] I am an unrepentant malthusian [*** Suffice it to say that Douglas was an unrepentant anti-Malthusian as am I. At the same time I am a conservationist. It is not a contradiction in terms but the difference in perspective between pessimism and optimism. Look at the rain forest of Amazonia that is being slashed and burned. The people who are slashing and burning are using a grossly inefficient agricultural technique that predates civilization. They are doing it to survive in a system in a world that has displaced them from the industrial system in which they are no longer needed. *** ] Every time I have encountered someone who claimed to be a thorough-going inductivist I have found him sneaking in assumptions, hunches, hoary dogmas that were at some time the product of armchair deduction. [*** No. We are not talking about deduction versus induction but the *inductive method* which is to challenge and test not only your deductions from your premises, but the very premises themselves. That means that you do indeed sneak in assumptions, hunches and hoary dogmas that are the product of armchair deduction. The less pessimistic characterization of that is inspiration. Without that there is no innovation and we remain stuck in the past. ***] His insistence on actual abundance based on cultural inheritance seems to apply mainly to them, with the rest of the world ignored and operating mainly (but implicitly) as a safety valve. [*** I must insist that you explain what you mean by safety valve in this context. The cultural inheritance is a resource available to anyone and everyone in the world. Surely we know how to route efficiently produced food to the people who are slashing and burning and destroying Amazonia, so they don't have to slash and burn. The abundance is both actual and realizable. It is not only labor but natural resources that are being displaced from the productive process--ever greater output in terms of input. That process is being impeded by negative, if I might say, Malthusian, attitudes, particularly in regard to the financial system that could make what is physically possible financially possible for the people of the whole world. ***] since it now seems impossible to implement a social credit solution in a borderless world [*** In a borderless world, yes, which is why we are against globalization. We want sovereign nations to act like sovereign nations. We want borders that are borders. By awakening and smelling the coffee, nations like, say, Ecuador, could take charge of the situation and rectify matters within their own borders--which doesn't fix things in the rest of the world, but does set the example for the rest of the world. --- Dunhedin transcribed to plain text, continued: [from the last paragraph of page 3 original pdf document] During the past year there was held in London--in 1933--one of the greatest conferences that ever met together, a world economic conference, and the entire agenda of that conference was to consider means of making the production of the world fit the consuming power of the world, not to make the consuming power of the world fit the production power of the world, but to bring down the production power of the world to the existing purchasing or consuming power of the world. *When the history of this period comes to be written it will, I believe, form a genuine puzzle to the historian to know how a group of sane men should meet together to discuss an agenda of that kind, and they could not do it if it were not that they are under the mesmerism of this deductive method of thinking which will not face the facts and will insist on operating under outworn and obsolete theories of what is the correct thing to do.* (Applause). I want to stress that point because it is frequently said that the world is in its parlous state because of a number of men--very limited, perhaps--who are so determined upon their own interests, that because of their own interests--their own selfish interests-- they will see the world go up in flames rather than allow things to be put right. Now that is a truth to some extent, but it is only a half-truth because you will find first of all that the most able and the most active at any rate of the upholders of the outworn financial system, are not men who are really making very much out of it al all. For instance, only a very short time ago--I think it has been increased now--the salary of the Governor of the Bank of England, who, so far as the people who are in the public eye are concerned, is probably the powerful man in the world, was only £1,500 a year, which for work of that kind and that importance is a very small salary, indeed, so I think you will agree. I think it has been raised now to something like £2,500 a year, but it is still trifling in comparison with what he is engaged upon. *It is not necessarily pure self-interest which is so dangerous in the world at the present time; it is
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] National Dividend Means Test?
Douglas never advocated a means test. The draft plan was an appendix to some editions of *Social Credit* first published in 1924, and should be interpreted in the context of the first desideratum as social credit is being introduced. See: http://www.geocities.com/socredus/compendium/money_and_the_price_system.txt The distribution by way of dividends of a certain amount of purchasing power, sufficient at any rate to attain a certain standard of self-respect, of health and of decency, is the first desideratum of the situation. The first desideratum is already addressed in the United States, if not in South Africa, which was most definitely not the case in the 1920 and early 1930s. I object to the very term means test as being exceptionally demeaning. It shouldn't be the responsibility of the recipient to prove he is qualified to receive it. His application should be taken to be prima facie evidence that he is. The burden should be on the bureaucrats to prove that he isn't. The dividend from its most rudimentary inception is a matter of right, not privilege. Original Message Follows From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] National Dividend Means Test? Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 09:35:52 +0200 On Monday 22 Sep 2003 7:31 pm, Bill wrote: ***] I like the idea of either not paying to those who have no need [*** Why? ***] or grabbing it back via the tax system. [*** Why? It´s a long story and I will come back on it later. My P.S. ties in with something else Douglas says, along with something being advocated in this country. But at this stage I´m afraid the P.S. has become a bit of a redherring. What I really am interested in is Douglas´ statement that ¨No payments of the national dividend will be made except to individuals, and such payments will not be made where the net income of the individual for personal use, from other sources, is more than four times that receivable in respect of the national dividend.¨ Did Major Douglas continue to advocate what is essentially a Means Test for receiving the National Dividend, or did this Proposal for Scotland represent a side-track? Jessop. -- Original Message Follows From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [SOCIAL CREDIT] National Dividend Means Test? Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 16:55:55 +0200 I find this paragraph from * Social Credit, Part III: The Design of Economic Freedom APPENDIX* rather interesting. Any comment? * * * ** * * DRAFT SOCIAL CREDIT SCHEME FOR SCOTLAND Any administrative change in the organisation of the Post Office should specifically exclude transfer of the money and postal order department and the savings bank. No payments of the national dividend will be made except to individuals, and such payments will not be made where the net income of the individual for personal use, from other sources, is more than four times that receivable in respect of the national dividend. The national dividend will be tax-free in perpetuity, and will not be taken into consideration in making any returns for taxation purposes, should such be required. Except as herein specified this dividend will be inalienable. * * * * * * Seems to contradict some thinking expressed on this list. Did Douglas recant at some later stage? Jessop. PS. I like the idea of either not paying to those who have no need, or grabbing it back via the tax system. _ Share your photos without swamping your Inbox. Get Hotmail Extra Storage today! http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] questions for Keith Wilde
***] No, the Malthusian issue does not reduce to optimism vs. pessimism. I think you didn't read me carefully enough on the nature of the dilemma. [*** Yes it does. I say that it does. Malthusians are tunnel-vision pessimists. They are the people who Douglas was talking about who reach conclusions from false premises who never let the thought enter their minds that their premises might be invalid. ***] I picked up that notion from remarks of yours over past weeks. It relates to your comments below about establishing borders. Without closed borders ISTM that the social credit solutions would be defeated by leakage. The rest of the world operates today as a safety valve (mine and sink) for G7 countries. Why would that relationship not continue, to some degree, after social credit were implemented in G7? [*** I don't understand at all what you're saying here. The 'rest of the world' operates today as a 'safety valve' (mine and sink) for G7 countries. How? Why? I think I know what you mean by the terms. By mine you mean we take their resources and by sink we send them our waste. I think that's what you mean, at any rate. But how and why? It is not what defeats social credit. It is what social credit will defeat. ***] Of course we do: Pay bigger subsidies to American and French farmers so the food can be dumped in Amazonia. [*** This is getting more and more bizarre, Keith. American and French farmers do not slash and burn. With improving technology fewer and fewer resources are consumed with increasing output. Can't you see-- with tunnel vision you cannot--that agriculture by the methods used in France or America has far, far less negative impact on the environment per unit produced that does slash and burn anti-technology in Amazonia? ***] I have no doubt that vast improvement is possible, but that will not revoke the Malthusian principle. [*** The Malthusian principle is entirely fallacious. It does not exist to be revoked. It is merely an assertion to be refuted. ***] It's a situation that requires eternal vigilance and a lot of social discipline. [*** Social discipline. What do you want, Keith, a benevolent Hitler with his euthanasia of useless eaters and life that is unworthy of life with the recycling of hair from the cadavers like good little tree huggers that are so, so concerned about waste? ***] That latter part my not be compatible with social credit political philosophy? [*** It is not. ***] If you are relying on this statement as empirical fact, you have some surprises coming from more recent research in the United States. (Virginia Abernethy at Vanderbilt University). [*** I just read Dunhedin in the last couple of days, Keith. It was entirely new to me. The argument regarding Malthus isn't novel but possibly was somewhat so sixty-nine years ago as an answer to Malthusianism. I'm sure it wasn't original to Douglas but remains a standard argument against Malthusianism today. I indeed would like to see empirical evidence to the contrary. I will indeed look up Abernathy at Vanderbilt. ***] Maybe you have forgotten that war and pestilence are the other two positive checks. AIDS is your ally, not to mention the occasional despotic terminator. [*** This is really becoming infuriating to me. What kind of demented philosophy is it that regards war and pestilence as positive checks, and that AIDS is an ally with the occasional despotic terminator? Keith, I knew that you did have some association with the Club of Rome. I knew that from day one after quickly bringing up your name on the Internet. Still, your statements above seem so extreme as to be in caricature of the neo-Malthusian argument, almost as if you are setting up a straw man to be knocked down. I didn't expect them from you if they are to be taken seriously. Are you putting us on? I did not expect to become engaged in a dialog over Malthusianism. However, I do see there could be something to be gained from such a discussion. I am open to suggestions as to where to begin. We could begin with Malthus' own crude Malthusianism. Or we could jump right in and tackle the Club of Rome's more refined modern version. I would rather begin the skirmish over its relationship to social credit, since this is a social credit list. Douglas picked a fight in 1934 that we shall continue today. Let's first talk about this border thing. The example I gave some months ago was the requirement of a clean smokestack that is unenforceable if your market is open to products from anywhere in the world. The solution is to restrict imports to protect the domestic manufacturer who has to recover his costs of production financially. If your borders are open it becomes a race to the bottom in terms of standards. Opening your borders encourages the defoliation of the rain forests, the squandering of delectable resources, and enslavement of foreign labor and the impoverishment of domestic labor. Protecting your borders does exactly the opposite.
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] questions for Keith Wilde
Setting aside the fact that I don't have the slightest idea what Simonized means--please enlighten me--I will dispute what you say about mountains of empirical measurement. I can see right now that for our discussion to remain meaningful we are going to have to begin with Malthus himself, which links directly into what are, from our perspective, the false axioms of classical economics. But before we do that, you cited one Virginia Abernethy at Vanderbilt University who would refute through recent empirical evidence this paragraph from Douglas' Dunhedin address of 1934: The thing began, of course, some time ago, with the theories of a gentleman by the name of Malthus, who had a theory that the increase of population pressed, as he put it, against the standard of living, that as you raised the standard of living so the population grew. There are people in responsible positions at the present time who are still putting forward that theory; whereas every fact, every statistic which it is possible to produce, shows exactly the opposite, that as the standard of living rises so the size of families decreases, and you will find always the largest families are those who live on the lowest standard of living; but facts of that kind bounce off a certain type of mind like peas off a steel plate, and they will go on putting forward the same theory. I have posted two of Abernethy's papers from the Internet relevant to this discussion at http://www.geocities.com/new_economics/malthusianism . One of those papers begins with this curious statement which goes to this researcher's bias: ABSTRACT: Within just the last few centuries, science and technology have enlarged human capabilities and population size until humans now take, for their own use, nearly half of the Earth's net terrestrial primary production. An ethical perspective suggests that potentials to alter, or further increase, humanity's use of global resources should be scrutinized through the lenses of self- interested foresightedness and respect for non-human life. Now, going back to old Malthus himself. I'll return to Abernethy later. Most of us have the vague recollection that Malthus said something like food production tends to increase arithmetically like 1,2,3,4,5 etc. but human population tends to increase geometrically like 1,2,4,8,16 etc. so obviously there is disjuncture. It seems to be self-evident. But in reality food production increases proportionately with population up to the limits of productive capacity, which is always increasing. That is to say, if population is increasing, say, 1,2,4,8,16, etc., then food production is increasing 1,2,4,8,16, etc. Since the Industrial Revolution, productive capacity of all types including food has *increased* exponentially as compared to the increase to population. That is demonstrable fact. I'm sure you will challenge me on this. The boundaries of the frontier are not limited by acreage within the fences, but discovery, technology and knowledge in multiple dimensions, which is what separates us qualitatively from colonies of ants, rabbits and amoebas in terms of potential. -- Dunhedin to plain text continued: [from last paragraph page 6 pdf document] *At the State Agricultural Investigation Department of Cambridge University they are confident that under certain conditions they could produce wheat which would grow 90 bushels of wheat to the acre. I do not know that it has actually been done except experimentally, but if it were that would be a cultural inheritance which would increase the wealth of all of us, and the point I want to make is that this wealth pool is a central pool to which both the living and the dead have contributed, and from which we all can, or ought to be able to, draw, as inheritors of this tremendous legacy of civilisation.* Now that is quite a different conception of an industrial and production system from that which consists of exchanging the production between individual producers. You only have to conceive of the progress being continued rapidly to its logical conclusion, and you get a state of affairs in which the wealth of the world will be produced by relatively few people, and that is going on quite directly and obviously, and the reason that we can do that is very largely by the importation of mechanical power into the production system. Now, we have this pool of wealth in the centre, and round this pool of wealth we have a surging mass of humanity of which, as the Chairman said, two-thirds is either on or over the border line of poverty, and you have what ought to make the situation patent to the eye of anyone, you have increasing insecurity amongst those who are above the border line--even those are no longer so secure in their living as they were. *The pressure of this system is acting on everybody, no matter what his state of life may be, and the insecurity is growing and the riots and the revolutions to which the Chairman referred, and which are increasing
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] National Dividend Means Test?
Jessop, I'm confused by this sentence of yours, ***] But R25-billion of the payments could be grabbed back from all taxpayers by a simple addition to their assessment, which brings the BIG almost within reach without increasing taxes. [*** By assessment you mean taxation, don't you? ***] Now, I would be naive to believe that we are going to change South Africa over to a Social Credit system overnight: in the meantime families are at near-starvation levels. [*** Okay, so in South Africa, unlike the United States, the first desideratum remains operative. Your job is to convince the authorities to give the social credit idea a chance, perhaps by organizing public opinion and bringing political pressure on the authorities. It is an emergency situation. They will say, okay, we will credit such and such an amount and see what happens if only to prove your harebrained ideas are wrong. So you will be operating under an effective budget restraint of that relatively small such and such amount that the authorities are willing to grant experimentally. So targeting the lower income levels with that such and such amount is not inappropriate in the beginning, and does not contradict the ultimate goal of equality. The point is to demonstrate that social credit is not inflationary and does not result in the doomsday scenario that the orthodox predict. You can start with a tiny little amount of social credit that targets those persons most in need, and gradually ratchet it up. As you ratchet it up you build constituencies for it that won't let it go, believe me. ***] The one major thing coming out of Douglas´ proposals is that value (SC) is available to be monetized and paid out as debt-free purchasing power to every citizen. That could fund the BIG without requiring any major changes to current ´wisdom´, and the advocates of the ´grab-back´ policy could also be happy. [*** But grab back is just redistribution through taxation which makes it something other than social credit. I can't be understanding you here. You seem to contradict yourself in conflating debt-free purchasing power with grab back. What am I missing? ***] but I will be long-gone from this earth before it comes into play [*** Well, it is true that any one of us could be dead before the day is out. But don't be so pessimistic, Jessop. I am convinced that a properly packaged social credit could spark public opinion quite rapidly. We know a lot more about public relations and organizing popular support than was available to Douglas in the 1930s. We know more about working with and bringing pressure on the authorities. All we need is a demonstration project somewhere in the world to get the snowball rolling. Original Message Follows From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] National Dividend Means Test? Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 10:11:30 +0200 On Wednesday 24 Sep 2003 8:02 pm, Bill wrote: I object to the very term means test as being exceptionally demeaning. I regret I introduced the term inadvisedly, more in amazement at Douglas implying it, than in approval: I also hold no brief for such a thing as a Means Test, even for a Social Pension. However, we have to confront actual situations, as Keith has wisely said: At some point, however, proponents for the mplementation of Social Credit via national policy changes will have to confront reality. I caused some consternation by saying: PS. I like the idea of either not paying to those who have no need, or grabbing it back via the tax system. I am talking from a real situation. Here in South Africa there is strong advocacy for a Basic Income Grant payable to all citizens (from taxes, of course.) For a BIG of a mere R100 per month, projections say it will cost R44-billion per annum out of a total Fiscal Budget of just over R300-billion, which seems unaffordable. But R25-billion of the payments could be grabbed back from all tax payers by a simple addition to their assessment, which brings the BIG almost within reach without increasing taxes. R100 is only about 15% of a bread-line income, but many, many people in rural areas make do with less even than R100 per month. Now, I would be naive to believe that we are going to change South Africa over to a Social Credit system overnight: in the meantime families are at near-starvation levels. The one major thing coming out of Douglas´ proposals is that value (SC) is available to be moneterized and paid out as debt-free purchasing power to every citizen. That could fund the BIG without requiring any major changes to current ´wisdom´, and the advocates of the ´grab-back´ policy could also be happy. I have read enough about Social Credit to believe that it offers a solution to many problems arising from the money system and the selfish thinking of those who control it, but I will be long-gone from this earth before it comes into play. Why not take one step at
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] National Dividend Means Test?
***] The National Dividend (or shall we call it the BIG?) is not included in your Income so is not subject to tax, but the ¨grab back¨ is added in to the Receiver's calculation of the Tax you owe him. Once in his hands, the grab back amount is not fed into the general Revenue Account but goes once more into the Social Credit account to go out in further payments of National Dividends (BIG´s). [*** Actually, let's definitely not call it the BIG. What we want is a dividend, not a grant. A grant implies that it is a gift. It is not a gift that is granted by the haves to the have-nots, but a dividend deriving from right of ownership that we all share drawn from realizable productive capacity as reflected in the national credit account--which will benefit everybody. That is the message we are trying to convey. As I understand what you are saying, the income- taxing process in South Africa is in three stages. 1) You report your income; 2) You are assessed an amount to pay based upon your reported income, and are sent a bill; 3) You pay the assessed amount. Is that correct? Your proposal--the amount paid to you in your dividend is not counted as income for taxation purposes, but is grabbed back in the assessment. The fact that it is not counted as income allows the grab back when paid to be routed to the social credit not the general revenue account so it can be re-cycled as dividends? How does this differ from a loan from a revolving fund? And what does it accomplish? I still can't be understanding you. Or perhaps I am. Count it as income. Tax it as income. Why not? That's the simplest way to do it. As your income increases from all sources, including the dividend, you become phased out of the various existing welfare and support programs as you reach their respective stop-limits. If the income tax is graduated, you pay more and more of your proportional income in taxes-- as does everyone else. The point is, the dividend does not derive from the expense column of anyone's ledger, neither private enterprise or government. It is credit paid to consumers from the national credit account. The credit can be spent for anything, goods and services from the private sector, or taxes to government for the services of government. The dividend checks themselves clear back to the national credit account--not government's account, not private enterprise's account, not the banking sector's account--thereby closing the gap between prices and purchasing power. In this respect it is nothing more than an accounting adjustment so that it reflects reality--which is what accounting is supposed to be about. As the accounting gap closes, the economy, as an economy, more and more approaches technical efficiency (which is always increasing)--thereby continually minimizing the meaningless exploitation of both labor and natural resources per unit output. -- This is the concluding segment of Dunhedin converted to plaintext: [from second paragraph of page 9 to the end of pdf document] There were £900,000,000 of deposits drawable by cheque in Great Britain, and the run of the banks exhausted all the gold in the country to the extent of just about £300,000,000. It was a very large sum of gold, and there was still £600,000,000 of deposits which were alleged to represent gold which could not be paid out. There were £600,000,000 of deposits which were alleged to have been deposited in gold for which no gold existed. They had been created by the process of issuing more receipts than there was gold. What happened? The bankers said, You cannot allow us to fail. Perfectly true, they could not be allowed to fail, they had a meeting in London, and it was decided that all debts must stand for three days, no one could demand the payment of debts for three or four days--I have forgotten which--and when the banks re-opened they were supplied with little white pieces of paper which said, This note is legal tender for one pound sterling. People took the notes, they drew a few of them out, and they had a look at them, and they found they did not know much about them and they paid them again. They worked perfectly, and from that time to this the convention that money is always represented by something alleged to be of value like gold, is completely smashed. What did they represent, those things that we all accepted as being good for £1. They represented a belief which was justified by facts that the general producing capacity of the country was responsible to the owner of one of those £1 notes to the extent of goods priced at £1. *In other words they rested on the general credit of the country.* *But to return to those notes--we can save time by moving on to 1928, when the last Treasury Note was issued, and all notes in Great Britain are now issued by the Bank of England. There is no longer such a thing as a Treasury Note in existence, in circulation at any rate, and all notes bear a picture of the Bank of England and the signature of
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Cartalism weak money and HPM
***/ I was referring to the situation which would exist if AMI proposals were adopted, not what happens now. \*** An important clarification. The greenbacks were indeed weak against bank credit and traded at a substantial discount in terms of specie. Banks would not accept them for deposit. Speculators purchased them with the expectation that they would eventually be redeemed with specie, which eventually did happen with the Specie Resumption Act of 1875. It was obvious who was boss from the git-go. They were declared to be legal tender for all debts except...interest on the public debt. -- ***/ Some extremists (greenbackers) envisage all gov expenditure being financed by unredeemable treasury notes. \*** It was not such an extremist position in the context of the times immediately following the Civil War. Government was a much smaller percentage of the total economy than it is now. It was thought that all money was government issued specie. There was little conception of the role of credit. Bank credit was thought to merely consist of banknotes backed one hundred percent by specie so it was thought to be merely proxy for specie, which of course we know it wasn't. The greenbacks could have substituted for specie if the banks had cooperated. What has happened within the division of labor of finance is that government has become excluded from that division--contrary to the assertions of the Moslerites. It didn't necessarily have to have happened that way. What we have now is central bank credit functioning as the monopoly source of quasi-specie within the division of labor of banking. It is what we call reserves which are required for inter-bank and inter-central bank account-settlement in the case of the U.S. dollar. It is spent into circulation by the central bank not for goods and services but for securities, therefore it does nothing to close the gap between prices and purchasing power resulting from the displacement of labor. There is no theoretical reason why government spending for goods and services needed by government could not serve the purpose of supplying reserves. It could not however be for all government spending; it would have to be limited to the amount needed for reserves. There is a third possibility: Instead of introducing reserves through the purchase of securities, the central bank could introduce reserves in the form of dividends directly to consumers. ***/ Whether as notes or deposits with the BofE, the (weak) money earns nothing. So everyone, including banks, tries to get rid of it by spending it. But it just bounces back, and inflation accelerates. \*** I disagree with this. It is the old velocity of circulation fallacy. The rate of inflation (ceteris paribus in the theoretically ideal economy) is directly proportional to the rate of injection of reserves in excess of the demand for reserves. There is no add-on effect whatever. There is no acceleration beyond the rate of injection. That is to say, the rate of inflation accelerates only if the rate of injection of reserves accelerates. Simply through the injection of reserves--through the right channels--you could engineer a constant inflation rate without fear of acceleration. Or, it could be zero inflation with full employment. There doesn't have to be a Phillips' Curve trade-off. Orthodox theory is that you have to err on the side of restraint--keeping the economy in the permanent state of underperformance--due to the fear that inflation would quickly accelerate out of control destroying the economy. There are more complete explanations for the historical examples of accelerating inflation. original message Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 08:35:29 +0100 From: Geoffrey Gardiner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [gang8] Re: Cartalism weak money and HPM Chris, I was referring to the situation which would exist if AMI proposals were adopted, not what happens now. Some extremists (greenbackers) envisage all gov expenditure being financed by unredeemable treasury notes. Whether as notes or deposits with the BofE, the (weak) money earns nothing. So everyone, including banks, tries to get rid of it by spending it. But it just bounces back, and inflation accelerates. I said the notes would exist for ever because Zarlenga does not approve the mopping up with bond issues, the normal practice, though you will recall that in TTM I doubted if the sterilising effect was as strong as thought by monetarists I know this is standard Friedmanite doctrine, but not all monetarist theory is wrong. Geoff _ Get McAfee virus scanning and cleaning of incoming attachments. Get Hotmail Extra Storage! http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA -
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] National Dividend Means Test?
***| They are talking about a BIG paid from taxes. |*** Which is why it will never go anywhere or accomplish anything, because it would require either more taxes which are impossible to collect to fund the BIG, or the diversion of taxes already being collected from other programs that have entrenched constituencies that will not let them go. The BIG effectively neutralizes the movement for reform. ***| What I suggest is just a simpler way of allowing some to benefit from the dividend and others not. |*** The simplest way is to simply target the dividend in its initial implementation to those most in need--the first desideratum. Why make it so complicated? What pitiful excuses for revolutionaries are the present leaders of South Africa! And so unimaginative in a land that is inherently one of the richest in the world. This deplorable situation was recently reported in the New York Times: Like most squatters, Thabang's mother, Mosele Malakoane, lives in a shack of caked mud, dung and rusty sheets of corrugated tin, its meager roof covered with black plastic weighted down by stones. Inside are a few sticks of wooden furniture, a shred of curtain hanging off a tiny window, a paraffin stove and the double bed she shared with her son. Thabang had two worn toys: a steam shovel and a small gray airplane. ***| I would be quite happy to give indiscriminately to all, but we will never achieve that. |*** Who says indiscriminate? And who says never? ***| In the South African political field we still have very strong feelings about the injustices of the past regime. There is still a strong desire for redress, which in effect means to withhold from the previously-privileged and give positions, status, services, social security, etc., to the previously disadvantaged. |*** And in doing so they have achieved a regime that in financial terms is substantially more orthodox than before. In this regard it is perhaps the most conservative regime in the world. In every statistical measure except for what we call in America call integration, the situation in South Africa is degrading. ***| We have an active Labour movement and a vibrant Communist Party whose constituencies are drawn from that previously-disadvantaged segment which constitutes about 90% of our population. |*** Not the ideologues and demagogues but the rank and file can be recruited to social credit, for it offers the real prospect of improving the situation. South Africa faces a fork in the road that will determine its destiny and perhaps the destiny of the world. One direction is increasing stagnation. One direction is increasing prosperity. It is up to us who see the truth to show the way because there's nobody else to do it. South Africa is at present in revolutionary ferment. It is a critical moment in history where bold leadership can make a real difference. ***| So they delisted. Their stated policy is that they are not out to make a profit, which is what shareholders would demand. |*** You still don't get it. The controlling block of shareholders names half the directors. The government probably ratifies their nominations for the other half. Original Message Follows From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] National Dividend Means Test? Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 15:56:41 +0200 A couple of points in response to Bill. [snipped] _ Share your photos without swamping your Inbox. Get Hotmail Extra Storage today! http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Swap
Keith, I'm not particularly informed on Malthusianism pro or con, though I definitely have opinions on the subject. I was not even aware of the name Julain Simon when you accused me of being simonized. Abernethy was new to me. Some Internet searching found one or two of her essays, one of which mentioned one Julian Simon. Further searching found the Wired article on Simon which I've now copied to http://www.geocities.com/new_economics/malthusianism/doomslayer-simon . I've found that the Wired article inspired Bjorn Lomborg to study the subject, eventually resulting in his book, *The Skeptical Environmentalist*. A New York Times article on Dr. Lomberg is archived at http://www.geocities.com/new_economics/malthusianism/lomborg.txt It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking of social credit as unbridled consumerism. It isn't. The same process that is displacing labor is displacing every resource utilized in production, in terms of units being inputted in ratio to consumable production. That is demonstrable fact. Presently, much of what is produced is wasted because it doesn't get into the hands of consumers due to financial factors alone. So production has to be ramped up from what is should be to enable consumers to receive sufficient production useable to them in order to subsist. Ceteris paribus, with social credit, the waste due to financial factors is eliminated, enabling real production in principle to be less than it is today to maintain subsistence at the level it exists today. We would however expect to utilize the productive capacity freed by the elimination of waste to raise the real incomes of those presently in subsistence, and the incomes of the public in general. I cannot understand how even a reasonable Malthusian could oppose the elimination of waste. But the radical Malthusians say it is pointless because the world is already past the point of sustainability, and there's going be a massive reduction in the world's population no matter what we do. The only way the die-off could be avoided is through a planned but rapid reduction in the world's birth rate so that the population of the world is reduced to a third of what it now is. It is an extremely pessimistic perspective. I would prefer to look at the glass as being half-full rather than half-empty. -- As to the question regarding the banker's perception, it's not particularly rocket science or profound. Generally, in a competitive fractional reserve system, when a banker extends a loan, it results in a debit to his reserve (or clearing) bank account, because the recipient of the loan writes checks that are deposited in other banks. So he always has to attract depositors to his bank to enable him to make further loans. But those other banks are extending loans that result in deposits in his bank. It is this big picture that individual bankers can't see. The theorem that loans create deposits applies to the banking system as a whole, not any one individual bank. It is like a concert orchestra where the conductor is the central bank; the source of reserves is the central bank, which is the only bank in the system that writes checks for loans that clear back to itself. So the flow of loans-- with resultant deposits that function as money--is the flow of loans from the system as a whole, including the central bank. It is difficult for any one banker (including the central banker) to see that. Original Message Follows From: Keith Wilde [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Swap Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 09:15:46 -0700 My neglect of Bill Ryan's call for a contemporary review of Malthus' challenge to utopian schemers is not due to lack of interest. As signalled earlier, I have other tasks pressing on me at the moment, and I would like to clear the decks before taking on this important subject as it pertains to Social Credit. IN order to get there more quickly, I propose a swap of services: I need Bill's best exposition on how it is that the banking system collectively increases the money supply without the individual banker being aware that he has done so. There have been two or three of these over recent months, and I am asking Bill to just identify them for me by date so that I can go back to them. On my side, a couple of quick comments now, to suggest the orientation of my argument that Malthus' analysis has not been countered effectively by the passage of time--plus a partial report on my assignment re the Canadian money supply. The argument of Douglas against Malthus that we have seen in these exchanges has become known as the demographic transition among combattants over the population issue. Virginia Abernethy wrote a book in refutation of the demographic transition more than a dozen years ago, based on the years of research she had reviewed as editor of a journal on population. (It doesn't work inside the most wealthy
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] swap
The correct citation for the Wired article on Julian Simon is at http://www.geocities.com/new_economics/malthusianism/doomslayer-simon.txt The NYT article on Lomborg is at http://www.geocities.com/new_economics/malthusianism/lomborg.txt Some parenthetical comments relating to these issues: The displacement of labor displaces the incomes that were formerly going to labor even if that labor is being displaced into alternative employment. That displaced income accrues to capital as increasing profits to the entrepreneurs who introduce the labor saving technology, but does not automatically translate into proportionally increasing income to the owners of capital. So the ownership solution is no solution at all. No fund exists from which full payout of earnings can be paid from profits inasmuch as profit accues to capital (or net worth) and does not exist in the form of money. A system with fully coopoerative ownership would require the social credit dividend as much as the present system to achieve technical efficiency in the financial sense inasmuch as the dividend is nothing an accounting adjustment to make everything mesh. The displacement of resources reduces the incomes of consumers exactly like the displacement of labor reduces the incomes of consumers in respect to the costs of production that are charged to consumers in retail prices, inasmuch as the displaced resources are owned by people who derive incomes through their ownership of the resources. Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
[SOCIAL CREDIT] douglas audio recording
Wally Klinck has graciously sent me the BBC recording of Douglas's 1934 radio address, The Causes of War. I believe it may be the only existing audio recording of Douglas. I've converted it to an easily downloaded file. Right click the designated link below, then choose save target as with your left mouse button. This will save the file to whatever folder you designate on your computer. The file is approximately 3.5 MB and will take approximately 15-20 minutes with a 56K modem to download through an ordinary dial-up connection. Be patient. It is in Real Audio format so you will need Real Player to play it. Right click this link to download the Douglas file: http://us.f1f.yahoofs.com/bc/3f92edf5_124e1/bc/My+Documents/douglas-1934.rmj?bfcvvk_AgtwAxDtl Note: If you do not have Real Player you may download it for free at http://www.real.com/realoneplayer.html?pp=choicesrc=100103r1choice_c1_3_2_1_1 _ Send instant messages to anyone on your contact list with MSN Messenger 6.0. Try it now FREE! http://msnmessenger-download.com --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
[SOCIAL CREDIT] marginalism
***Price is where marginal benefits + utility (aka market cost) = cost. (The whole point of marginalism and STV) Cost is another term for price. So...price + utility = cost is circular logic. Circular logic is impossible, therefore supply and demand is junk.*** Your argument is invalid not because marginalism is not invalid, but because you have falsely described marginalism. Marginalism is invalid because it is premised on the false assumptions that resources are scarce and demand is unlimited, so the two must intersect. Marginalism is perfectly logical premised on those assumptions. The new approach to economics is premised on the facts that resources are permanently abundant and the physical capacity to consume is permanently limited. Resources become abundant through continuing discovery, development and innovation. And it is physically possible to consume only so much per unit time. The limit to consumption is the point of satiation. -- smithaa02 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Capitalist Pig [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Thu, 23 Oct 2003 22:32:23 -0500, smithaa02 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've debunked marginalism, STV, and supply and demand all in one. Wow, I'm impressed! You should be... Price + utility can't equal price for that is circular logic. I wouldn't call it circular logic, I would call it a mistake. I have no idea how you could come up with such silly definition. Price is where marginal benefits + utility (aka market cost) = cost. (The whole point of marginalism and STV) Cost is another term for price. So... price + utility = cost is circular logic. Circular logic is impossible, therefore supply and demand is junk. Enter for a chance to win one year's supply of allergy relief! http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;6413623;3807821;f?http://mocda3.com/1/c/563632/125699/307982/307982 This offer applies to U.S. Residents Only --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Permanently abundant resources?
***Does this mean that you do not regard public goods and inadequately defined property rights as important sources of market failure?*** Not necessarily, but the focus of our attention is the financial system. -- ***Does this mean that you advocate laws against the corporate form of enterprise -- i.e., what used to be called the joint stock company.*** I was not referring to corporate dividends but what social credit calls the national dividend. We are in favor of corporate dividends--the more the better. As to the corporate form of enterprise, it is one of the great innovations that arose in the seventeenth century, along with banking and insurance. In the final analysis, they are all variations upon the common theme--pooled resources and shared risk. Each contains in rudimentary form the essential elements of the others, so there is no fine dividing line between them. Having said that, the corporation is a human construct that may be adjusted and improved to serve our purposes. The founder of social credit, C. H. Douglas, said on more than one occasion that holding companies should be prohibited. By that he meant corporations that own corporations. In his time the most typical holding companies were banks. In the United States today that is prohibited, although it remains common practice in Germany and Japan, I believe. Now, there are corporations that own corporations that own corporations, Enron and Tyco being newsworthy recent examples. It becomes a question of accountability that is difficult if not impossible in such complex structures. Jeff Skilling, Enron's former CFO, in Congressional testimony described Enron's collapse as akin to a run on the bank. It was indeed. Unquestionably, there should be exceptions. When Douglas wrote eighty years ago there were no pension funds or beneficial insurance funds. Perhaps the matter of limiting liability should be revisited. The stockholders of the original joint- stock companies, some of which are still in business today, were personally liable for the firm's debts. Limiting liability might be more detrimental to free enterprise than beneficial. -- - Original Message - DATE: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 09:20:29 From: Pat Gunning [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yes, but the particular set of rules is a human construct. It is something other than a natural phenomenon, awaiting discovery. The market in which there is undeniably a hidden hand is the function of that human construct that we can improve by consciously changing the rules. Agreed. The focus of attention for social credit is the financial system, or more specifically the banking or monetary system. We attribute most market failure not to free enterprise per se, but the financial system under which free enterprise operates. So we generally support laissez-faire in markets but intervention in finance. Does this mean that you do not regard public goods and inadequately defined property rights as important sources of market failure? Unlike Keynesians or socialists, we advocate the payment of dividends directly to consumers and let them decide themselves how they will spend it. Does this mean that you advocate laws against the corporate form of enterprise -- i.e., what used to be called the joint stock company. We regard Say's Law to be invalid for anything other than a barter economy. -- Pat Gunning, Feng Chia University, Taiwan; Web pages on Praxeological Economics, Democracy, Taiwan, Ludwig von Mises, Austrian Economics, and my University Classes; http://www.constitution.org/pd/gunning/welcome.htm and http://knight.fcu.edu.tw/~gunning/welcome.htm Enter for a chance to win one year's supply of allergy relief! http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;6413623;3807821;f?http://mocda3.com/1/c/563632/125699/307982/307982 This offer applies to U.S. Residents Only --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
[SOCIAL CREDIT] free markets
***Marginalism/STV disagrees... They state price is set where marginal cost = marginal utility*** No, they most definitely do NOT state that. Price is price. The profit maximizing, market clearing or equilibrium price is where marginal revenue equals marginal cost. That price arises only in the condition of perfect competition in the absence of monopoly. It is merely a theoretical model that on its own terms is perfectly logical. I've already informed you of this error. And I say that as an opponent of marginalism. The only thing you are demonstrating is that you are an ignoramus. -- ***That which exist but by the group. If I need another to pick a fruit from a tree, then the fruit of the labor is a product of the group and not the individual. Put another way it is the ensuing economies of scale resulting from specialization/barter. Since it a product of a group, then the case can be made that the group should decide how to apportion this resulting reward.*** The last sentence here does not follow logically from the first three. The benefits flowing from association accrue to the individuals making up the group. It is they as individuals who should decide on apportionment. They can best do that through free markets. -- ***Thus nearly all of our wealth is a creation beyond that of the individual, to which the individual can not have an objective (especially large) claim on such assets.*** The individual can legitimately have a claim that is greater than his own contribution because a) the whole is greater than the sum of its parts--what we call the increment of association, and b) the cultural heritage handed down from past generations. That claim is best expressed through free markets rather than bureaucratic dictat. So the truth is the exact opposite of your assertion. -- Enter for a chance to win one year's supply of allergy relief! http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;6413623;3807821;f?http://mocda3.com/1/c/563632/125699/307982/307982 This offer applies to U.S. Residents Only --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] National dividend?
First, many thanks to Professor Gunning for this interesting discussion. I hope he will indulge us for a bit longer, for I would like to clarify a few additional matters. For those who are interested, I've archived some background material at http://istorage.iomega.com/ Login: socialcredit Password: creditsocial I will leave this password current through Sunday. Open the folder gunningthread. There you will see the Northridge document, as well as some pages from a near contemporaneous Hayek paper that was included in his book, *Prices and Production*, and some pages from Gary North's 1993 anti-social credit polemic, *Salvation through Inflation*. North is a prominent Austrian with a Ph.D. in economics though he is in a non-academic position. -- Some of the professor's comments may seem bewildering to those of us more familiar with standard economic terminology. The bewildering aspect derives from the peculiar jargon of his Austrian background. However, it's mostly a difference in emphasis and language. All-in-all, it doesn't really differ too much from what we would call nineteenth century neo- classicism or marginalism. The Austrians are what the followers of Mises and Hayek call themselves. They call their method praxeology spelled with an e, not an i. -- This is a typical Austrian statement: **The proper starting point for considering the effects of a firm's existence is an imaginary economic equilibrium with no firm.** The fallacy here that underlies their entire methodology (as opposed to our methodology) is that it ignores the scientific concept of dynamic process. The question I should put to the generic praxeologist is this: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The practitioner of the scientific method would answer, Neither, for life is a continuum that is an evolving dynamic process. Conceptually, a dynamic process has no beginning or end. It is continuous, though historically there may in fact have been a beginning and may well at some point end. God may well have said something like, Zap, here is an elephant and from then on there were elephants. That is purely a matter of fact from the historical past, not the logical past. There is no contradiction so long as we realize they both might be perspectives of the same reality--one poetic--one material. Both can be simultaneously true on their own terms. I am quite aware that praxeology rejects such positivism. It is not scientific to arbitrarily choose any single element from a dynamic process as a starting point, for that starting point becomes the axiom to the exclusion of everything else that determines the conclusion. You can come to an infinite number of conclusions by assuming an infinite number of starting points. The scientific approach is to relate the elements statistically against time, so that every observable process becomes the function of their singular commonality, time. Time is the one reality that ties everything in the ponderable world together, and makes them comprehensible. Therefore, there are no employment functions; there are no meaningful production functions. And there are no functions of functions, like the bastard Keynesian ISLM, that are meaningful in the scientific sense, because time is abstracted from their equation. -- The corollary to the above statement is this: **I have no idea what you mean by a consuming sector or a banking sector. There are consumers and there are bankers.** Translation: I have no idea what you mean by a forest. There are trees and there are bushes and there are weeds. Which ignores the reality there are also birds and insects and animals bordering the homes of human families--tens of thousands of them-- and fires that occur in devastating effect only in the reality we call forests, that can consume them all. -- Having made these general points, let me address more specifically some of the professor's earlier comments: **You seem to be saying that an increase in saving relative to consuming would cause a deepening of the structure of production.** That would assume that saving is a cause. It is true that there is saving, investment, development, production and consumption. They are elements of a continuous dynamic process that is creditary, not monetary. That is to say it is contractual in that it contemplates future performance. No one element can be considered to the cause of any other. Human beings may intervene at any point to achieve what they want to achieve. That intervention becomes the cause of the change. -- **More resources would be devoted to the production of capital goods and less to the production of consumer goods.** Implicit is the false assumption that there is no improvement to process, discovery or innovation and there is only a fixed quantity of resources available for exploitation. Let me give you a just two dramatic examples of
[SOCIAL CREDIT] marginalism continued
All it says is that equilibrium is at the point where the supply and demand functions *intersect.* It says nothing about actual price at any actual point in time. From that the proper price is given as the equilibrium price, with deviation from such resulting in shortages and surpluses. Now this is circular logic for the proper price is needed to determine utility for how else do you determine marginal cost? -- Keep in mind that I am not a defender of marginalism. My criticism of you is that you do not properly characterize it, therefore your criticism is irrelevant in that it merely reflects your personal misunderstanding. It becomes particularly egregious because you start your own analysis from the very same premises as do the marginalists -- limited resources, unlimited wants, etc. Starting from those same premises the marginalist argument is quite logical and consistent. Yours is a contradictory hodge-podge. The marginalist argument is from the perspective of the profit-maximizing firm, not the economy as a whole. The vertical axis of their graph is demarcated in utils received and expended per accounting period, not dollars - though sometimes they will substitute the dollar symbol for the util in their expositions. The horizontal axis is demarcated in quantity produced per accounting period, not time. The accounting period is therefore undefined. It could be very short or very long, or something in between. They assume, in terms of the graph from left to right along the horizontal axis, the supply cost curve is sloping upward with increasing quantity produced per accounting period due to the assumed marginally diminishing productivity of labor and capital. The utility received curve is sloping downward due to assumed marginally falling demand from their customers with increasing quantity supplied per accounting period. The point where the two curves intersect is the point of realized profit maximization for the firm in terms of net utils received per undefined accounting period. The theory does not explain how utils are translated into dollar prices in actual markets. The hypothetical primitive economy is characterized by atomized producer/consumers who trade between themselves. The modern economy is characterized by multistage production where the means of production are differentiated from consumption. In such a system money is more in the nature of a ticket or claim check against a portion of that production rather than it is a medium of exchange. Money is money. It is not a claim slip, for claim slips have claim on something to which money doesn't. Everybody could one day decide to not use your currency, and you are out of luck. It is merely an overvalued commodity. -- Saying that money is money is a truism that does not define money. You arbitrarily say that it is not a claim slip, then define claim slips but arbitrarily assume that money does not fit that definition. Modern money is what modern money is, not what you say it is. Most people think of money as being the form of credit they receive in their pay vouchers. But that credit enables the final resolution of the process of production that is conducted contractually, not through medium of exchange. And the credit you receive in your voucher is itself a generalized contract or ticket. It is something quite different than the paper it is written on. FREE ADHD DVD or CD-Rom (your choice) - click here! http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;6413623;3807821;f?http://mocda2.com/1/c/563632/131726/311392/311392 AOL users go here: http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;6413623;3807821;f?http://mocda2.com/1/c/563632/131726/311392/311392 This offer applies to U.S. Residents Only --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Questions from Gunning
**One further question, Bill: Do you expect that the new money that is used to finance the national dividend or national credit office, or whatever, will cause an ultimate increase in consumer goods prices by raising consumer demand and costs of production? Have you neglected the time honored quantity theory of money which holds that, other things equal, an increase in the quantity of money tends to cause a nearly equivalent percent increase in consumer goods prices in the long run?** We specifically deny the quantity theory of money. It is meaningful only within the fungible commodity medium of exchange model where money is an independent variable. That money would be exogenous in Post Keynesian terminology. Modern economies are mostly creditary or contractual where prices are determined within the nexus of contracts where money is financially the dependent variable of those contracts. The process endogenously converts - meaning through market transactions - the individualized credit instruments of producers into credit instruments that are generally fungible - checking account money - which serve as the means of final settlement of contracts. Douglas used the ticket metaphor to describe the process. There is the flow of prices (A + B) to the point of retail in parallel to the flow of goods. Also in parallel is the flow of tickets (A) to consumers that allow them to claim those goods. The tickets are fungible, which means they are redeemable not only at the company store but any store, making the competitive mass production possible, enabling mass consumption. Most credit is therefore endogenous to the market and would remain so with social credit. The proposal is that a certain amount of credit be introduced exogenously (consumers' dividends and retail discounts that do not displace but supplement the endogenous credit) as an adjustment mechanism (control variable) to compensate for deficiencies in accounting. A + B is the analytical tool that explains the primary way those deficiencies come about. One of the consequences of those deficiencies is inflation, which is explained through the theorem. As paradoxical as it might seem, the dividend and discount are counter-inflationary if prudently implemented. ---original message--- Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 14:53:05 +0800 From: Pat Gunning [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Questions from Gunning [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: **So the government will print more money (or create it in other ways) and give part of it to consumers hoping or expecting that the consumers will use it to pay their debts (national dividend).** --- It wouldn't be government as government but perhaps it would be an independent public agency. Ideally it would be the central bank. It is not inconceivable that the banking system would do it on its own initiative without government prodding, because it would be in their own best interest to do so. The idea is not for consumers to pay their debts although they may do so from their credits that are theirs to spend as they like on whatever they like. The idea is to equate the flow of prices (A + B) flowing to the point of retail with credit flowing in the direction opposite from sales into consumption, thereby proportionately offsetting the costs of production. You do that by augmenting consumer incomes and subsidizing prices. -- **The government would also give part of the new money to retailers in exchange for reducing their prices to consumers...** Again, not the government as such but the national credit account that would have to be affiliated in some way with the central bank. It is not in exchange for reducing their prices but would effectively lower prices in real terms. It is a fixed percentage of the individual retailer's gross sales. The percentage would be the same for all retailers. -- **it would lend part of the new money to businesses to finance new production.** No loans are contemplated from the national credit account for either production or consumption. It is not in the banking business. Its sole function is to prudently grant credits to consumers or to the benefit of consumers at the point of retail. -- **Would you also make a law against buying consumer goods on credit and/or against investors financing production by borrowing not new money but existing money?** Of course not in either case. Wally's answers in this regard reflect his fundamentalist Christian aversion to debt. Neither a lender nor a borrower be is how Benjamin Franklin put it. Western Canadian social credit had a strong connection to fundamentalist Christianity. The founder of the Alberta party was a prominent radio evangelist who served as Premier until his death in 1943. In Quebec the movement had a strong Roman
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] final comment
Thank you for the citations to the three books in your concluding paragraph. They are new to me. I'll definitely look them up. -- **Regarding the exogenous-endogenous distinction, unless I missed something, you proposed to add exogenous money through the national dividend or national credit office. Obviously, you cannot add endogenous money. And you deny that this addition will displace endogenous money. Logically, this means that the total amount of money used to buy and sell things will rise. If you want to substitute the term credit or credit money, you may. But the result is the same. There is more of the stuff and people will want to use it to buy things. Other things equal -- that is, if there is no rise in production of goods -- prices would rise (subject to the usual caveats of the quantity theory of money). The program will be inflationary.** The common sense assumption is that the costs of production (defining them in the way accountants define them not the way economists define them) are equal to A, and correspond to the flow of goods into consumption. So it would seem if you increase A *endogenously* in respect to the flow of goods, that is inflation in terms of prices charged and ultimately paid for the goods. Similarly, if you augment A *exogenously* by printing it and giving it directly to consumers or more typically, government spends it and covers that spending later from taxation or just spends it, that too would result in inflation, by increasing the quantity of money currently being paid for the goods that are being produced, except in this second case firms will record fictitious profits, in contrast to the first case where there are merely increasing costs offset proportionately by increasing sales. In this second case the economy is most unstable though brisk. (costs of production = A) is proportional to the flow of goods defines *zero* inflation; costs of production that are increasing in respect to the flow of goods defines inflation that is *positive*. and also: A that is augmented *exogenously* also defines inflation that is *positive*. ---but It is our contention that double entry accounting defines the costs of production as A + B; not merely A, such that the recorded costs of production and the flow of purchasing power to consumers have different determinants that do not automatically coincide. The validity of this contention stands or falls within the manifold of accounting, not pure economics. So, given the validity of that contention - we've gotten nowhere discussing it so for the moment I'll move on in the train of logic - what has to be coordinated is not only the flow of the costs of production with the flow of goods in order to have price stability, but also the flow of purchasing power to consumers. That is to say, there are two ratios, not only one that we must analyze to see the big picture. The ratio of costs to goods; and the ratio of costs to purchasing power flowing into final consumption. They do not automatically coincide. The ratio that Douglas was most concerned with is this: A + B/A with A in both numerator and denominator which defines the coincidence of production and consumption. If the ratio of B is increasing to A, as a matter of pure mathematics, A is falling *exponentially* in respect to the costs of production A + B. This is a conclusion exactly opposite to the common sense view that A must always remain proportional to the accounted for costs of production because they are the same thing. A + B may or may not be increasing proportionately to the flow of goods. That is an entirely different matter that was discussed in *Social Credit* part 2 chapter 2 published in 1924. If, as a matter of policy, the authorities control the situation such that A + B is increasing proportionately to the flow of goods, A must be falling in respect the flow of goods (assuming there is labor displacement changing the ratio of B to A with lengthening in the structure of production), preventing consumers from purchasing all of them. But there is zero inflation. All the goods being produced are being sold but at a financial loss to the producers, who respond by decreasing production or scaling back their prospects for future production, scrapping endeavors that do not appear to be profitable. That scaling back is the result of falling financial demand, not real demand. It is an artificial limit on the realization of productive capacity. A quasi-equilibrium may be reached that we might call the condition of the permanently under performing economy. If, however, A is forced up by pressure from organized labor, facilitated by a banker policy of easy money or whatever, the ratio A + B/A comes closer but never completely to unity (because A is in both numerator and denominator), closing the gap somewhat between prices and purchasing
[SOCIAL CREDIT] Fwd: Re: Fix what's wrong
John, there is no point to having money unless there is something to spend it on. Part of the problem is that there is too much money over there that can only be spent to hire assassins to kill American troops. There are billions and billions of dollars over there that can't be spent in the West for goods and services, because it's counterfeit. For the past decade we've gone through the rigmarole of changing out our currency. We had to do that because the Bank of Iran, in its struggle against Great Satan churned out billions of dollars in near perfect American currency in various denominations, but mostly hundred dollar bills and twenties. Their presses were more modern than those possessed by the Bureau of Engraving, and had huge stocks of bank note paper nearly identical to that previously used by the Bureau of Engraving. The dirty little secret of central banks in the region, including Russia's, is that a large percentage (perhaps more than two-thirds) of the vault cash that forms the basis of their reserves can never be repatriated to the United States, because it didn't emanate from the United States in the first instance, but the Bank of Iran. Of course, when they first accepted the money they didn't know that. They now know it and know that we know it, so it is one source of American leverage in the region. At some hopefully near point we will be able to invalidate the Iranian dollars that fuel the fire sustaining the chaos. Some accommodation will no doubt be made with regional central banks that we will probably never read about. The war is being waged on many fronts. - Original Message - DATE: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 15:39:15 From: John Gelles [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Proceedings of PKT Forum [EMAIL PROTECTED], Proceedings of the Cyberspace Society [EMAIL PROTECTED], Sim Pol Discussion List ISPO [EMAIL PROTECTED], President George W. Bush [EMAIL PROTECTED], President Bush [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Is there anything wrong with the coalitions' plans for Iraq and Afghanistan? The plans say the people of these nations want political freedom -- and that political freedom cannot exist with free enterprise for producers and decent shopping for consumers. In other words, private property and human rights, both, are what we offer in place of totalitarian rulers and ideology (and hate) for breakfast, lunch and supper. Executing the plan, we are unable to deliver the jobs and the shopping we're selling. Why? Because we are unable to deliver them to a great many people at home. Both America and England and the rest of the UN member- ship owe a lot more jobs and more shopping to the workers and soldiers who make our system as good as it is. What is our problem? We know we can produce more and pollute less. All it would take is more money. And we know money is the least of our worries -- if we can insure domestic tranquility -- including organizing a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, all over these lands. The hang-up is scarce money, low wages, not a job for every willing worker, and the absence of the freedom from want we won in WW II. We now fight again for freedom from fear -- when the root cause of the struggle is that we never delivered the freedom from want that has been within our grasp for nearly a century now. Fools say inflation will destroy production if we produce all we can. Yet the more we produce the more people we can pay high wages IF only we gear purchasing subsidies to producers' output and consumers' needs. Why should tomorrow's purchasing power be hobbled by money not geared to the correct variables. Money geared to debt is only a beginning. A lot more money is needed -- geared to the highest non-inflationary price we have to maintain. Unmanaged commodity pricing, like what happens to coffee and cars, puts pressure on wages that keeps nations poor forever. But rational prices cannot exist without extra money designed to achieve them. If we don't move fast to employ with decent purchasing power the people we want to support democracy we shall soon lose democracy first, the environment next, and the liberty we pretend to champion -- but are afraid to examine in the light of experience. John Gelles - End Forwarded Message - FREE ADHD DVD or CD-Rom (your choice) - click here! http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;6413623;3807821;f?http://mocda2.com/1/c/563632/131726/311392/311392 AOL users go here: http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;6413623;3807821;f?http://mocda2.com/1/c/563632/131726/311392/311392 This offer applies to U.S. Residents Only --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE!
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Alaska Provisional Governing Council
Iraq, not Alaska. Enter now for a chance to win a 42 Plasma Television! http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;6413623;3807821;f?http://mocda1.com/1/c/563632/113422/313631/313631 AOL users go here: http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;6413623;3807821;f?http://mocda1.com/1/c/563632/113422/313631/313631 This offer applies to U.S. Residents Only --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] final comment-Gunning
**In any case, you say it is directed at all retail businesses. Do you assume that a uniform amount will be given to each business?** No, it is a flat percentage of each firm's sales, like a sales tax in reverse, except the program has no connection with the taxing authority; it is a cash credit, not a tax credit. If the firm's gross sales for the accounting period are X and the discount is two percent, the firm will be given a check for 0.02X. -- **Will rich businesses be given as much as poor ones.** -- In terms of the percentage on gross sales, yes. -- **Will successful businesses be given as much as unsuccessful ones?** Same answer. -- **Will self-financed businesses be given as much as those that borrow financing or issue shares of stock to get started and keep going?** Yes. -- **Will legal gambling and prostitution businesses be treated in the same way as other businesses?** The short answer is yes. But it does become more complex as a practical matter. The program has record keeping requirements that may not be enforced by other authorities. Businesses are not required to join the program which is national. The program is entirely voluntary and every firm has the right to join. The information provided to the national credit account is a public record available to any member of the public. I would expect that a great number of businesses that are willing to put a state sales tax certificate on their wall will be reluctant to put a national credit account certificate on their wall. I will expect that ANY business that refuses to participate in the state sales tax program will be reluctant to apply for inclusion in the national credit account program in any case. Those are the businesses that prefer to stay off the books in the alternative economy. -- **Bill proposes to distribute the money on the basis of gross sales, like Forbes' flat tax. This means that small retailers specializing in personal relations and service will receive small amounts while large retail stores that specialize in volume sales will receive large amounts.** Yes, exactly like the sales tax except it operates like a sales tax in reverse. Typically, smaller retailers specializing in personal relations and service are operating with larger markups than the retailers competing on price with less personal relations and service. The discount will benefit small and large retailers equally because it is based on gross sales, not profit. -- **If you base the redistribution process...** There is no redistribution. -- **When money is spent, it is received by someone else who plans to spend it or save it. Otherwise, a person would not want the money. It is not canceled in any sense that I know. When the barber takes my money after he finishes cutting my hair, our transaction is over. But he goes out and spends the money or he saves it. Suppose that I can't afford the haircut, so that I otherwise would let my hair grow long. Then the barber would not have my money to spend. If someone created new money and used it to pay for my haircut, the new money would be spent by the barber and would add to the total money demand for goods...** Complete agreement to this point in the narration. -- **...The new money would first drive up the price of haircuts; then it would drive up the prices of the goods that the barber tends to buy.** But complete disagreement with this. -- **To fully understand the effects of an increase in the quantity of money, other things equal, one must have a firm grasp on the entire market economy, in which scarcity presents itself in a very different way than it does to the hermit.** We reject the scarcity postulate. We start from the premise of abundancy. -- **People who think that they can understand monetary or credit phenomena without knowledge of economics are suffering from a delusion. Often, they think that the solution to a problem is to throw more money at it. The solution to the problem of scarcity, they think, is...** Which assumes there IS a problem of scarcity. The problem is scarcity amidst plenty - a completely unnatural condition. -- **...to produce a money tree. Will the money tree can benefit those who first receive the money, it harms others by reducing the purchasing power of their money. And if it is somehow given equally to everyone, its almost immediate effect is to reduce the purchasing power of all money.** -- That assumes that the pie is only of fixed size, and increasing demand made effective has nothing to do with the size. Our theory is that increasing demand made effective facilitates increase to the size of the pie. -- **When gold was used as money, the discovery of new
[SOCIAL CREDIT] Zimbabwe
The main problem is that Zimbabwe is no longer a modern economy; it has reverted to primitive barter. Talk about printing money? The money became so worthless they couldn't use it to purchase paper or ink to print it on. They literally ran out of both so the printing stopped. A first in the history of the world! There's not much hope to making things better until Mugabe is gone. But there are social crediters in Zimbabwe. Not too long ago the Social Crediter received a letter from Francis Feather, reproduced below. You are closer to the situation than we are, Jessop. Will you make an attempt to contact him if he is still around. Does anyone know? The Republic of South Africa is a more reasonable prospect at the moment. It is a modern economy in a land of enormous potential. -- Social Crediter No. 79 No. 2 March-April 2000 ***Recently we received a very interesting letter and a short article (see page opposite) from Mr. Francis Feather who emigrated to Zimbabwe in 1983 for health and family reasons. Both are reproduced below, very slightly edited for reasons of space. He was prompted to write, after a friend lent him a number of recent back issues of The Social Crediter and because his contact with Social Credit goes back a long way. His letter tells us that:*** ... in 1929, after being two years articled to a firm of Chartered Accountants and completing my Intermediate Examinations, economics became a major part of my Syllabus and I found therein a number of claims and assertions which I was quite unable to accept. I was aware of widespread unease at the time, as currently there were numerous movements in support of and opposition to Silvio Gesell, G. K. Chesterton and his Distributive movement, Henry George's Single Tax (Land Tax) etc. During 1932 The Accountant ran a debate through its columns on Social Credit (itself taking an opposing stance) conducted by - I think, a Professor Marshall of Manchester University. He was about the only opponent at that time, to my knowledge, who made the mistake of quoting Douglas accurately! Reading the instalments from week to week it seemed to me that it was Douglas who was writing sense and Professor Marshall who was on the wrong lines - and I contributed to the ensuing correspondence. So I visited my bookshop and bought whatever books by C.H.D. were then in print. I contacted The New Age and still have the volume containing the original serialisation of Economic Democracy. I even induced my economics lecturer to accompany me to a meeting in the Westminster Central Hall which Douglas addressed and he admitted to being impressed! I became a member of the London Social Credit Club run by Dr. Mitchell and her husband, Dr. Purvis, where some of my lifelong friendships were made. I subscribed to The New English Weekly, Social Credit, The Social Crediter, and New Democracy all from vol.1 no.1 and have the earlier volumes beautifully bound in green buckram. After qualifying as a Chartered Accountant, I sought a Bachelor of Laws Degree at London University, centered from in King's College, Strand, which was very close to the then secretariat offices (163a Strand) - where I frequently went for a cup of tea. Later, I joined the Education scheme and my certificate A (less advanced grade) signed by C.H. Douglas, A.L.Gibson (another Chartered Accountant) and Tudor Jones is dated 17th January 1938. I also attended the reception and Dinner in London to welcome Major Douglas back from one of his world tours. One of my prized possessions is a large photograph of that assembly. By now World War phase 2 was upon us and when it actually broke out it fell to me to liquidate the Social Credit Secretariat Ltd., in accordance with Douglas's wish. Then, my life dramatically changed. A partner, senior to me, was called up as a member of Officer's Reserve and I was thrust into his chair. I was enrolled into Dad's Army. Christmas 1941, the firm's offices were wiped off the map in the first fire blitz on London and my father, who was senior partner, did not survive the shock. Come 1945 with the first post war elections, I was pressurised into standing in Southend - on Sea and (thanks to CHD for all I had learned from him) I succeeded at the first attempt. I served 28 years on the County Borough Council - principally as Chairman of the Finance Committee - ultimately resigning in protest at the signing of Ted Heath's Local Government Amendment Act to abolish County Boroughs. To me, so obviously a step towards Regionalisation. Later, I withdrew from all political affiliations, requesting the withdrawal of my name from the list of Honorary Vice Presidents, in protest at the signing of the Masstricht Treaty. In 1978 I underwent a serious spinal operation and in 1983 emigrated to Zimbabwe where I joined my elder daughter and my son and their families. Never have I lost any of my interest in
[SOCIAL CREDIT] further questions and answers
The flat tax, advocated by Steve Forbes and others in order to raise revenue to finance the U.S. government, is clearly superior as a way for the government to obtain money than to impose a graduated income tax with numerous and complicated exclusions, deductions, and exceptions. But it does not seem to have a snowball's chance in the Saudi Arabian dessert of being accepted by voters in a democratic state.** Will the federal authorities ever put matter to the voters for a vote? Social crediters reject the very concept of an income tax inasmuch as they are generally against taxes. The Texas Constitution requires that such matters be put to the people for a vote through the amendment process. The people have rejected the income tax each time it has been put to a vote from the legislature. They approved the sales tax in the mid- fifties, however, after much debate as a necessary evil to fund the state budget. They took the politicians at their word. Previously, the local and state budgets were funded exclusively from property taxes. Before the income tax the federal budget was covered almost exclusively from tariffs. -- **Why would you expect anything different from your proposed national dividend plan?** Because from its inception it will be based on the principle of equality, like the sales tax. -- **Housewives provide cleaning services, childcare, etc. If you give subsidies to firms that sell these services at the retail level, you will discourage the housewife form of supply.** Those who provide services to others for remuneration would be qualified for participation in the retail discount program, including housewives. We are in favor of the displacement of labor. Washing machines, vacuum cleaners, microwave ovens, lawn mowers, fast-food restaurants, etc. have reduced the need for household labor. -- **An enterprising consumer may buy consumer goods from a retailer. Then, he can open up his own business to resell them. Will subsidies be given to the latter? Why not? If the retailer keeps good records, things that he sells that are purchased from him for resale rather than consumption are excluded from the sales tax he has to pay and collect. Presumably something like it would apply to the discount. Things that he sells for resale do not qualify for the retail discount. The person who resells those things will qualify for the discount if he is enrolled in the program. -- **And what kind of enforcement mechanism will you set up to deal with cheaters?** Disqualification from participation in the program. -- **Are diamonds goods for which retailers will receive subsidies for selling?** I don't quite see the point to this question. Diamonds are produced goods that are sold at retail and as such will qualify for the discount at the point of retail. -- Enter now for a chance to win a 42 Plasma Television! http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;6413623;3807821;f?http://mocda1.com/1/c/563632/113422/313631/313631 AOL users go here: http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;6413623;3807821;f?http://mocda1.com/1/c/563632/113422/313631/313631 This offer applies to U.S. Residents Only --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] USSR as a model?
Wes is a member of this and is invited to participate in the discussions. As moderator I didn't forward this specific message to the list because the very same message was forwarded to several other lists as he commonly does. I think practically everyone on this list already gets his messages. I myself get several copies. I have encouraged Wes to actually participate in our discussions rather than posting onesided monologues. As to what he means by this, I don't know. I seriously doubt he is proposing the Soviet system as a model to emulate: (WSB In nations with low levels of indirect taxation, like Japan and the United States, the compensated price would not be necessary. In the late great USSR, 92% of the public revenue was collected from indirect taxes on the capital plant. Subsidies were used to keep the price of necessities low enough for wage earners to buy the necessities. WSB) I invite Wes to clarify this matter in a posting to this list. ***The recent exchange of emails by Wally, Pat, and Bill on list [EMAIL PROTECTED] has persuaded me that the national dividend and compensated price of the social credit policy (SCP) should produce the same stable and efficient operation of a national economy as the much simpler optimum policy (TOP).*** Similarly, I don't know what he means by the much simpler crack because I have never understand what he is proposing. Perhaps he will tell us in simple declarative sentences. - Original Message - DATE: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 12:46:53 From: Pat Gunning [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: The message by Wes Burt, on which I am commenting in this email, was apparently sent to several lists and to others but not to the Social Credit list, which is the only one to which I subscribe. [snipped] Enter now for a chance to win a 42 Plasma Television! http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;6413623;3807821;f?http://mocda1.com/1/c/563632/113422/313631/313631 AOL users go here: http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;6413623;3807821;f?http://mocda1.com/1/c/563632/113422/313631/313631 This offer applies to U.S. Residents Only --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
[SOCIAL CREDIT] final comment-Gunning-sarcasm
**Thanks, Bill. I have been mistaken in thinking that you were an economist. This is where we part company. It is only in a world without scarcity that a money tree could take root. In such a world, there is no need for economists.** There is no need for sarcasm. Scarce does not mean zero. Abundant does not mean infinite. It simply means that resources are sufficiently abundant to accomplish what we want to accomplish. The old social credit slogan was: What is physically possible is financially possible. It goes to the validity of the marginalist approach which is a welter of false assumption and contradiction. Certainly time is a limiting resource. Starting from the abundancy postulate allows you to come to completely different conclusions than starting from the scarcity postulate in the chain of logic. Just as the rejection of Euclid's parallel postulate and its replacement by the Riemann postulate allowed Einstein to formulate general relativity. He couldn't have done so otherwise. I will admit that without the abundancy postulate social credit is incomprehensible. Anti-marginalism has a long and honorable history, back to the time of Veblen. In the 1920s and 30s it was called the new economics. Australian economics professor Steve Keen recently published *Debunking Economics* which takes up the anti-marginalist cause. Take a look at it. See: http://www.debunking-economics.com Original Message Follows From: Pat Gunning [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] final comment-Gunning Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:26:03 +0800 Thanks, Bill. I have been mistaken in thinking that you were an economist. This is where we part company. It is only in a world without scarcity that a money tree could take root. In such a world, there is no need for economists. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- **To fully understand the effects of an increase in the quantity of money, other things equal, one must have a firm grasp on the entire market economy, in which scarcity presents itself in a very different way than it does to the hermit.** We reject the scarcity postulate. We start from the premise of abundancy. _ Concerned that messages may bounce because your Hotmail account is over limit? Get Hotmail Extra Storage! http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] final comment-Gunning-sarcasm
**Well, if you want my opinion on this, you will have to define standard marginalism in your terms.** How about intro Nordhaus or Samuelson, any edition? Or perhaps Heilbroner's micro? I am simply trying to establish you as a legitimate proxy for the mainstream position in regard to marginalism, so I can use you as a sounding board. I think in regard to marginalism that Austrians are very close to the mainstream. Am I not correct? Old Economics 1. Resources are scarce. 2. Progress occurs through capitalist accumulation, 3. accomplished by parsimony, 4. resulting in the division of labor. New Economics 1. Resources are abundant. 2. Progress occurs through entreprenueurial initiative, 3. facilitated by credit, 4. resulting in the displacement of labor. The Process of the New Economics [1] Loan credit arises from the private contract between banker and entrepreneur, [2] creating a generalized claim against the community as a whole, [3] enabling the entrepreneur to organize the factors of production into their most efficient combination, [4] as ultimately judged by consumers through the democracy of the market, [5] the informational feedback mechanism being profit and loss. [6] Investment is the process of improving the quantity and quality of capital; [7] is facilitated by credit, [8[ driven by entrepreneurial initiative, [9] discovery of resources, and [10] invention of technology. [11] Saving is the process of acquiring beneficial ownership claims against capital, which generate increasing [12] income in the form of dividends or their functional equivalent, as [13] capital accumulates. -- Original Message Follows From: Pat Gunning [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] final comment-Gunning-sarcasm Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 11:48:18 +0800 Bill, I think that you misinterpreted my remarks. [snipped] _ Send a QuickGreet with MSN Messenger http://www.msnmessenger-download.com/tracking/cdp_games --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] final comment-Gunning-sarcasm
**A couple of weeks ago I was sure I saw what appeared to be an agreement between you two that natural resources are abundant.** I think you may be thinking of Professor Rosser over on the Post Keynesian list, which I believe you subscribe to. Good to hear from you. Original Message Follows From: Keith Wilde [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] final comment-Gunning-sarcasm Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 23:08:52 -0800 Well, this is a relief. A couple of weeks ago [snipped] _ Send a QuickGreet with MSN Messenger http://www.msnmessenger-download.com/tracking/cdp_games --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Austrian economics and the new economics
Thanks for this information. By the way, in using the term sounding board I didn't intend for you to be a strawman. A sounding board is something that you bounce off of. I am a firm believer in the Socratic method of adversarial discussion in that it helps all discussants - on all sides of the issues - to learn and sharpen their individual thought. That will occur even though there might never be formal agreement between them. Everybody benefits, even the observers who merely listen. Recently I have been focusing my thought on marginalism and need your help. Original Message Follows From: Pat Gunning [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Austrian economics and the new economics Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 17:16:44 +0800 I'm glad that I asked, Bill. The new economics in Veblen's time was the Austrian economics of the late 19th century [snipped] _ Send a QuickGreet with MSN Messenger http://www.msnmessenger-download.com/tracking/cdp_games --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] further questions and answers
**If I buy from a retailer at the discounted price, goods to sell in my unregistered Spaza shop, my customers get the benefit of the lower price anyway...** That's right, I hadn't thought of that. It is obviously correct. Thanks, Jessop. But what is a Spaza shop? The point is that as a general matter we want to apply the discount at the point of retail, with the metaphor being a negative sales tax, not a negative VAT. Ideally, both the dividend and discount programs should be in place and tested in actual operation with small dividends and discounts to the general population, so they are there to immediately compensate for a collapse of credit such as occurred in the United States within two years after the 1929 crash, when the money supply contracted by a third, paralyzing trade and commerce initiating the Great Depression that engulfed the world. Original Message Follows From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] further questions and answers Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 11:42:14 +0200 On Monday 10 Nov 2003 2:55 am, Bill wrote: **An enterprising consumer may buy consumer goods from a retailer. Then, he can open up his own business to resell them. Will subsidies be given to the latter? [snipped] _ MSN Messenger with backgrounds, emoticons and more. http://www.msnmessenger-download.com/tracking/cdp_customize --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
[SOCIAL CREDIT] Fwd: Query about US banks
John, I could answer your question off the cuff but would rather put it to the members of the [EMAIL PROTECTED] list , which has several capable economist members. I am separately sending you an invitation to join the list. On my end I will do some research so I can reply from an informed basis. - Forwarded Message - DATE: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 22:56:15 From: ERA [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: William B.Ryan [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Hi Bill, Haven't been in communication with you for a while, however thought you might be able to help me with this one. I have a question about American banks. How do they survive and make a working profit with interest rates currently running at one per cent? The Japanese banks have been running at almost zero for a long time, but it is no secret they are being propped up by the taxpayer. Can something similar be true in the US? Surely not! I realise that they gain about 25% of their income from fees and charges, but that leaves 75% to be accounted for. Perhaps the increased volume of loans in recent times accounts for part of the 75%, however it remains a mystery to me. Have the commercial banks diversified their spread of other investments to such an extent that they no longer need much interest income in order to prosper? Regards, John Hermann (Adelaide, Australia) - End Forwarded Message - Enter now for a chance to win a 42 Plasma Television! http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;6413623;3807821;f?http://mocda1.com/1/c/563632/113422/313631/313631 AOL users go here: http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;6413623;3807821;f?http://mocda1.com/1/c/563632/113422/313631/313631 This offer applies to U.S. Residents Only --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
[SOCIAL CREDIT] more on the debt virus fallacy
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bill Ryan) Subject: Re: TURMEL: #2 Money, Interest and Prosperity November 11, 2003 Okay, I found bowl. **If you have a bowl and you put a ball in it and then give the ball a little shove, it will travel up one side, gravity will bring it down and it will rock back and forth until it settles back to the middle. That's how engineers use negative feedback to bring back things which have been pushed out of normal operation back to normal.** Which is a demonstration of the concept of stable equilibrium. Turmel has failed to direct our attention to the source of negative feedback in this demonstration, however. There is merely momentum countervailed by gravity. No feedback. Turmel continues to claim that he is an engineer. In response to an earlier question he said he was a graduate of Carleton, I think. Will he give me permission to access his Carleton transcript and student records so I might confirm his claim? -- **If you turn the bowl upside down and put the ball at the top, one small push and the gravity will make the ball fall faster and faster. That's unstable.** Which merely demonstrates the concept of unstable equilibrium. There is also no feedback in this demonstration, merely the effects of gravity. -- **Both zero and negative feedback are acceptable while positive feedback is always unacceptably unstable.** Which does not follow from the two examples because neither contains feedback. Turmel arbitrarily asserts, both zero and negative are acceptable and positive feedback is always unacceptably unstable. Both assertions are complete nonsense. -- Drag on a falling object is *negative* feedback that increases to the square of the object's velocity, so is therefore exponential. It will increase to the point where the force from drag and the force from gravity equal. From that point downward the object is falling at its terminal velocity which is constant. So the change to that point is exponential but from that point downward there is nothing exponential about it whatsoever. But this is negative feedback that this eminent engineer says is acceptable. I wonder if he will admit that it also demonstrates that negative feedback can be exponential. What is it about the clock escapement that feeds energy into the pendulum that keeps it going with each tick of the clock that makes it always unacceptably unstable? Will this eminent engineer please supply an answer? It is definitely an example of positive feedback that for the first time made navigation across open oceans possible. What is it about the triode tube that makes it always unacceptably unstable? There is positive feedback from plate to grid which revolutionized communications, making possible the ultimate development of the very computers we use to scribble and view these messages. Edwin Howard Armstrong enrolled in electrical engineering at Columbia, and in 1913, while still an undergrad, made his first great discovery, regeneration...Armstrong discovered that the gain of a triode amplifier could be enormously increased by feeding some of the amplifier output back into the input, i.e. by using positive feedback. Given enough feedback, the amplifier became a stable and powerful oscillator, perfect for driving radio transmitters. Given a little less feedback, the amplifier became a more sensitive radio receiver than anything else at the time. -- **His latest assertion is that I'm wrong when I say positive feedback generates an exponential output. Like I said, Ryan's certifiably irrational. I have a gift for explaining super-sophisticated engineering really simply. The gifts are the gifts of the glib and successful con man. Turmel 1) falsely claims to be an engineer, which gives him the aura of someone who knows what he is talking about to whom we must defer even though we don't understand what this genius is talking about; and 2) he lies with a straight face. He is indeed good at what he does. -- More to the point is his assertion that interest is feedback. It is feedback in the informational sense only and derives from the conventions of accounting. Interest is merely the name that we give to profit going to the financier, which includes most of us through pension, insurance and mutual funds. Profit is positive feedback and loss is negative feedback because it informs us whether or not what we are doing is satisfying the demands of consumers. It is the very basis of the system of free enterprise. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Turmel) wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... November 10, 2003 Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 18:32:52 -0500 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Daniel Morin) Subject: Money, Interest and Prosperity To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] JCT: Dan, this post based on your questions has really stirred up a lot of debate on the USENET groups. can.politics and alt.fan.john-turmel get it all and you can even use Google search Groups for
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] [FixGov] Fw: Social Credit and Planning According To Wally
To get a good idea of what we are missing by defending the status quo, read Wally's message below and replace the words "Social Credit" with the words "The Optimum Policy" (TOP) as you read. Both sets of words, when implemented, would produce the result that Wally and all of us desire. But, "The Optimum Policy" requires only one third as much money to implement, and would restore and preserve the "work ethic" of the US workforce.--- Wes, I've been enduring your stuff for what? - three years now, and still don't have the slightest idea what specifically it is you are proposing to do. Tell us, finally - please please please - in simple declarative sentences. Whatever *it* is, you say *it* requires "only one third" asmuch "money" to implement. But the social creditproposals don't require any money at all, just simpleadjustments enabling demand to balance supply as a matter of accounting. So, it is the "work ethic" you want, is it? Find a time machine that will take you back to Soviet Russia, or perhaps to Auschwitz, where the sign on the main gate proclaimed: "Arbeit Mact Frei." -- - Original Message - DATE: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 11:30:00 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED]To: The wealthy, healthy, intelligent, and powerful folks, the WHIPs, who insist on "The Optimum Policy" for themselves and 50% of TOP for everyone else. Good day folks,To get a good idea of what we are missing by defending the status quo, read Wally's message below and replace the words "Social Credit" with the words "The Optimum Policy" (TOP) as you read. Both sets of words, when implemented, would produce the result that Wally and all of us desire. But, "The Optimum Policy" requires only one third as much money to implement, and would restore and preserve the "work ethic" of the US workforce.Foll owing Wally's post are two posts by Walter Hart, on the same subject, to two different mail lists, with a consequent loss of impact, IMHO. My sincere thanks to Wally and Walter for wrapping fresh words around my favorite topic. My apologies to Bill Ryan for posting to several lists.If there is any question about how long "The Optimum Policy" has been practiced by the WHIPs and withheld from everyone else, the attached file, Fig7-9d.gif, "The Whole Divine Law," will provide a few clews.Kind Regards,Wes BurtTo further explore "The Optimum Policy" illustrated at URL http://www.epie.org/cyber-soc/default.htm send a blank e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED].- Forwarded message --From: "Wallace M. Klinck" [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:24:29 + Subject: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Social Credit and PlanningDear Members of the Discussion Group:Social Credit is opposed to the policies of central economic planning and state ownership of the means of production. Social credit asserts that the essential problems of production have been solved long ago and that the primary economic problem is inadequate and faulty distribution. Any problems of production that may exist are primarily an inability to adequately respond because of a faulty system of distribution. This defect is considered to derive from a faulty financial system which can easily be rectified from a technical standpoint. Such rectification faces, however, unrelenting political and legal opposition by those who seek to centralize power over mankind--whether for erroneous reasons of misguided idealism, or the naked (or concealed) desire for power.Any system that util izes real capital (i.e., "tools") to produce wealth is capitalist. The Soviet union instituted the most capital intensive "economy" in that it gave preference to real capital projects over the production of consumer goods. The communist fetish for "work" resulted in the most oppressive form of "wage slavery" with little return for effort (as I have been told, "We work--but nothing seems to happen.") and the slave labor camp or firing squad if you were deemed to be an "anti-social" who questioned your obligation to serve the State. The "capital vs socialist" debate obscures the real issues and sets one part of society against the other, just as the "Left vs right" blinds and divides the people. Social Credit asserts that the problem lies with faulty finance which fails properly to deliver to the consuming public the results that flow from the productive system. The socialist s, those "knights in rusty armour" have never really appreciated the implications of the power age as it relates to the financial credit system (and more recently to the information revolution) which has provided a stupendous actual and potential physical abundance. Nor, (due to financial ignorance) have the finance-capitalists, modern industrialists and political
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] more on debt virus
A few points in closing: Of the five hypothetical examples, three from Turmel, one from myself - The right side up bowl, the upside down bowl and the ball rolling along the plane, and the terminal velocity example - Arguably, not one of them demonstrates any type of feedback properly defined. The two real world examples that I supplied definitely do: the clock escapement and the triode amplifier that demonstrate the beneficial effects of *positive* feedback that revolutionized the world we live in. The first for the first time enabled navigation across open oceans. The second enabled modern communications. Turmel's assertion that positive feedback is always unacceptably unstable is proven to be complete nonsense beyond the shadow of doubt. He furthermore claims that *interest* is positive feedback in the physical sense, which it definitely isn't. It is feedback only in the social sense that it is information that flows to entrepreneurs and their financiers. It is defined by consumer choice in free markets. It is measured through the rules of accounting. No analogy from the physical world therefore is relevant. Now on to the question of Turmel's honesty: He has repeatedly claimed to be an engineer, and continues to do so. In answer to an earlier challenge from me, he replied that he has a four-year B.S. in electronics engineering diploma from Carleton, I believe. In further query he admitted that he has never been employed even for a single day as an engineer, that he has always been self-employed as a professional gambler. He admitted that he has never been recognized as an engineer through the registration process in Alberta or anywhere else. But-- This is how he styles himself that you can see at the bowl link: http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel/bankmath.htm John C. Turmel, B. Eng. It is what in business and law we would call a deceptive trade practice. Registered professional engineers style themselves R. Eng. Presumably, Turmel hangs on the technicality that the B derives from the B.S. in engineering that he claims he possesses. But there is no accreditation anywhere in the world that styles itself, B. Eng. Possibly in the history of the world no one has every styled himself B. Eng. except for John Turmel. Purely and simply it is concocted to deceive, to fool those who don't look closely into believing he is really an engineer. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bill Ryan) wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... Okay, I found bowl. **If you have a bowl and you put a ball in it and then give the ball a little shove, it will travel up one side, gravity will bring it down and it will rock back and forth until it settles back to the middle. That's how engineers use negative feedback to bring back things which have been pushed out of normal operation back to normal.** Which is a demonstration of the concept of stable equilibrium. Turmel has failed to direct our attention to the source of negative feedback in this demonstration, however. There is merely momentum countervailed by gravity. No feedback. Turmel continues to claim that he is an engineer. In response to an earlier question he said he was a graduate of Carleton, I think. Will he give me permission to access his Carleton transcript and student records so I might confirm his claim? -- **If you turn the bowl upside down and put the ball at the top, one small push and the gravity will make the ball fall faster and faster. That's unstable. If you put the ball on a platform and give it a push, without friction, it will just continue in rolling steady state.** Which merely demonstrates the concept of unstable equilibrium. There is also no feedback in this demonstration, merely the effects of gravity. -- **Both zero and negative feedback are acceptable while positive feedback is always unacceptably unstable.** Which does not follow from the two examples because neither contains feedback. Turmel arbitrarily asserts, both zero and negative are acceptable and positive feedback is always unacceptably unstable. Both assertions are complete nonsense. -- Drag on a falling object is *negative* feedback that increases to the square of the object's velocity, so is therefore exponential. It will increase to the point where the force from drag and the force from gravity equal. From that point downward the object is falling at its terminal velocity which is constant. So the change to that point is exponential but from that point downward there is nothing exponential about it whatsoever. But this is negative feedback that this eminent engineer says is acceptable. I wonder if he will admit that it also demonstrates that negative feedback can be exponential. What is it about the clock escapement that feeds energy into the pendulum that keeps it going with each tick of the clock that makes it always unacceptably unstable? Will this eminent engineer
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Social creditors and the Ponzi game
It is however true that much debt will masquerade as equity. -- **It is as true in a barter society as in a money economy that a person can save by accepting others' promises. So long as the lender expects the promises to be kept, those promises are equity to him. There is no masquerade.** The comment simply pertains to peculiarity in definition within accounting. When a firm sells a bond it books the transaction to debt. When it sells a stock it books the transaction to equity. From the perspective of social credit analysis, that is debt masquerading as equity. -- **The borrower has agreed to give up her claim to future goods or work in exchange for the benefits she expects to receive from having the goods or purchasing power now. She may use her borrowings to buy consumer goods or to finance production of future goods.** It is true that the borrower might have a variety of reasons for borrowing. The entrepreneur's incentive is not to finance the production of future goods but to make a profit. -- **She may throw it in the ocean. It doesn't matter what she does with it.** Doing so may be in violation of the loan agreement and put the borrower into technical default if not jail for fraud. Very few loans are no strings attached we don't care what you do with it loans. -- **So long as the lender can expect to be paid back, it is equity. That is, it is part of his wealth. By contrast, the equity, or wealth, of the borrower has been reduced. I don't see the point in suggesting that there is a masquerade.** If the borrowed money is thrown into the ocean the borrower's wealth has indeed been reduced. But so has the lender's. Normally, the loan is based on the credit-worthiness of the borrower, which is reduced if the borrower self-destructs. The negotiable value of the borrower's note is reduced and will be so reflected (at any rate it should--a lot of hanky- panky has gone on recently in the field of accounting) in the books of the lender or the holder in due course. -- **We live in a society in which promises are made on the basis of expectations that other promises will be kept. One might say that the entire structure of production and exchange is built on the promises men live by, to use the title of Harry Scherman's book, which I recommended earlier. W. G. Langworthy Taylor called this the credit system. He rightly pointed out that, without it, the steadily increasing standard of living that we have observe in the more capitalist countries of the world could not have occurred. J. A. Schumpeter concurred, as did Veblen. Moreover, it is just simple common sense.**? Of course. -- **Such a complex and intricate network can break down, so to speak. The promises are made in terms of the common medium of exchange.** A relatively small percentage of transactions are conducted with what we usually think of as being money. Our mental image of money is merely the form of credit we receive in our pay vouchers. That is merely the fungible means of final settlement of contracts that concatenate through time from production to consumption out of the larger spectrum of creditary or contractual instruments. The modern economy does not require a medium of exchange. What it does require is more in the nature of a ticket or claim check against production at the point of sale into final consumption. Without that, everything stops. -- **If someone -- usually a government or central bank -- messes with the money and causes unexpected inflation or deflation** What do you mean by messing with the money? Presumably from the context it means unexpectedly changing the rate of inflation or deflation. So you have no problem with inflation or deflation per se. Correct? -- **The scheme you have in mind messes with the money. That is why I regard it as dangerous.** We propose to mess with those who are messing with money. Do you not also propose to mess with those who are messing with money by stopping them from messing with money? You apparently want to keep inflation or deflation to an expected level and there is no problem with either so long as it is expected. We say both are harmful, period. But this does get us back to the definition of inflation in Austrian economics which we do not share. You define inflation as any addition to the quantity of money. We define it differently. -- **Entrepreneurs try to earn wealth by capturing what they believe will be gains from exchange.** This is fundamentally a false definition of entrepreneurship. They do not look for gains from exchange because the modern economy is not primarily one of exchange of things already produced, but contract for *future* performance. -- **If you cannot tell why your policy is likely to work by referring to how you think entrepreneurs will act after the
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Social creditors and the Ponzi game
**The lender's wealth has not been reduced unless the borrower is unable to repay the loan.** It has been reduced if the borrower throws the money into the ocean, as is reflected in the valuation of the borrower's securities in the secondary market for notes, stocks and bonds. -- **My claim is that, at the time this transaction is made (and before B commences to use the borrowings), both saving and wealth are increased.** I invite you to revise this statement. It appears to be complete nonsense. Before anything is done with the money, both saving and wealth are increased? -- **What we may disagree about is whether the method used by the borrower's accountant to record the transaction is important insofar as one's goal is to understand the capitalist economy.** The power of double-entry bookkeeping has been praised by many notable authors throughout history. In *Wilhelm Meister*, Goethe states: 'What advantage does he derive from the system of bookkeeping by double-entry! It is among the finest inventions of the human mind.' Werner Sombart, a German economic historian, says: '...double-entry bookkeeping is borne of the same spirit as the system of Galileo and Newton' and 'Capitalism without double-entry bookkeeping is simply inconceivable. They hold together as form and matter. And one may indeed doubt whether capitalism has procured in double-entry bookkeeping a tool which activates its forces, or whether double-entry bookkeeping has first given rise to capitalism out of its own (rational and systematic) spirit.' -- **You (all) believe that you are smarter than the entrepreneurs. This is precisely why your arguments do not attempt to predict how real entrepreneurs are likely to react if the policies you propose are adopted. You assume also that, besides receiving distorted information, the entrepreneurs are too stupid to realize that the information is distorted.** Accounting is a technology whereas marginalism is hypothetical idealism. In the real world entrepreneurs use information supplied to them by their accountants not the practitioners of marginalism. Improving the technology of accounting will only help the entrepreneurial decision making process. We maintain that the money and credit system is part and parcel of that process. As to the crack about entrepreneurs being too stupid to realize they are getting distorted information, entrepreneurs know they are getting distorted information. It is the economists not the entrepreneurs who are too stupid to know the entrepreneurs are getting distorted information: It is common to hear adventurers in the different channels of industry assert, that their difficulty lies not in the production, but in the disposal of commodities; that produce would always be abundant, if there were but a ready demand, or vent. When the vent for their commodities is slow, difficult, and productive of little advantage, they pronounce money to be scarce; the grand object of their desire is, a consumption brisk enough to quicken sales and keep up prices... Adventurers is the translator's interpretation of J. B. Say's use of the French word entrepreneur. It would appear that Say was calling the entrepreneurs stupid. He proceeded to lecture them on money: Wherefore, it is products that you want, and not money. Which ignored the fact they needed money not goods to pay their bills. The silver coin you will have received on the sale of your own products, and given in the purchase of those of other people, will the next moment execute the same office between other contracting parties, and so from one to another to infinity; just as a public vehicle successively transports objects one after another. But if the number of public vehicles remain constant, it is impossible for them to transport an increasing quantity of goods per unit time. -- Original Message Follows From: Pat Gunning [EMAIL PROTECTED] [snipped] _ Great deals on high-speed Internet access as low as $26.95. https://broadband.msn.com (Prices may vary by service area.) --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Canada' experiment with social credit
Ken, the indidivual bank has to keep in lockstep with the banking system as a whole. That's why we call it the monopoly of credit. Original Message Follows From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [snipped] _ Is your computer infected with a virus? Find out with a FREE computer virus scan from McAfee. Take the FreeScan now! http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Canada' experiment with social credit
What is interesting is that you and the socialist Dougie are in complete agreement on this matter, which should tell us something about both socialism and Austrian economics. Is it any wonder that Hayek was affiliated with the London School of Economics, founded by the Fabians? original message Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 21:29:33 -0500 From: Daniel Morin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Canada' experiment with social credit To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The idea that banks can give money to people, surely just causes inflation . ... and create social poverty. I agree with you. For all you who think giving money to everyone is the solution to wealth, I encourage you to read http://www.mises.org. -Original Message- From: Victor Bridger [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 8:25 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Canada' experiment with social credit This is absolute rubbish. Vic Bridger - Original Message - From: douglas-McLellan Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 2:34 PM Subject: [SOCIAL CREDIT] Canada' experiment with social credit Did Canada not experiment with social credit in the 30's ands nearly go bankrupt . The idea that banks can give money to people, surely just causes inflation . Dougie . _ Is your computer infected with a virus? Find out with a FREE computer virus scan from McAfee. Take the FreeScan now! http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
[SOCIAL CREDIT] in still further reply to gunning
**What the A + B theorem does is to carve out a cross section of the market economy at a point in time, stop all the movement, and form theorems as if the said static cross section represents the steadily evolving market economy.** This assumption about social credit theory is patently false. Very little you say after this point therefore is relevant to social credit. The theorem concerns itself with the divergence between A and A + B through time -- that is to say, A and A + B are analyzed as functions of time in a continuous dynamic process. All that we may conclude is that you still don't have the foggiest idea what social credit is about. -- **I am convinced that in order to defend your belief properly, you must begin at a point where the idea to produce by means of a firm is first conceived. Under modern financial conditions, this is the point at which the idea in the mind of financing and producing entrepreneurs becomes actualized through the transfer of funds. These people must combine their knowledge and money in order to get a production process by means of a firm started.** This ignores the historical record since at least from the inception of fractional reserve banking in the seventeenth century. You refer to a transfer of funds. The banker in concert with the entrepreneur are able with the stroke of their pens to create funds that are generalized claims against the entire community. Without that ability modern capitalism would be non-existent. -- **I mean a person who saves by trying to earn an income on his savings. These two kinds of entrepreneurs are roles. It is possible that a single individual would finance his own firm. Since you are concerned with financing, however, it is appropriate to separate the roles.** The person who merely saves from his income is not an entrepreneur. Nor is the person who deposits his money in a savings account or purchases a bond or stock. There are indeed people who save and are able to later use those savings to start small businesses, at which point they become entrepreneurs. But it is mathematically impossible for that to be the norm in a modern growing economy considered in statistical whole. -- **To begin with an accounting identity that refers to a process that is already started and ongoing is a major conceptual shortcoming.** What accounting identity are you referring to? -- **It makes no sense to me to claim that slave wages are an inherent characteristic of the current capitalist system without examining the conditions under which those wages are determined.** Which is exactly what social credit does. -- **And it makes no sense to me to discuss those conditions without conceiving of the entire production process from start to finish -- i.e., from the point where the idea to produce occurs and financing is provided to the point where the product is sold and the proceeds of the sale distributed.** That's fine. That's what social credit does. But you start from the proposition that extrapolating from the cave man economy tells us all we need to know about modern capitalism. It is Zeno's fallacy of Hercules and the Tortoise, another example of reductio ad absurdum that is missing from your toolbag. -- **On the one hand, you have not satisfactorily explained how it is possible to increase the quantity of money without causing inflation.** It has been satisfactorily explained. You do not understand the explanation. Your mind is clouded with prejudice. I've offered to go through the argument step by step, without requiring you to accept whatsoever any of the premises. The only thing I do expect is for you to understand how the conclusions logically flow from the premises. You refuse to do that but continue to repeat the same stock phrases, like a parrot. Step No. 1: Understand the argument. Step No. 2: Argue about the premises. I have already agreed that starting from the classical premises Austrian economics is perfectly reasonable. But your premises are by no means self-evident. Moreover, a great number of self-evident truths have been demonstrated to be false through the scientific method. The most dramatic example I can think of at the moment is Galileo's demonstration that the speed of a falling object is proportional to the time it has fallen, not the distance it has fallen. There are educated people today do not comprehend the distinction. Do you? -- **you want to introduce new money into the system. The main long term effect of this is inflation.** But money is already being introduced into the system and the system of free enterprise could not exist unless money is introduced into the system. All we want to do is rationalize the process. -- **However, even the program was financed by existing taxes by means of reducing government spending, I have not
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] [FixGov] Social Credit and TOP According To Wes Burt
**This diagnosis, and the next one, should provide a standard test by which any third world village idiot will be able to tell who is on the side of the Angels and who is on the WHIP's payroll.**Dammit, Wes, this isn't helpful. The best that I can tell by digging into this rather lengthy most recent post of yours (that seems to repeat your previous posts ad infinitum), is that you are proposing some kind of tax scheme. But for the life of me I can't tell what.Perhaps somebody out there - if not yourself - will kindly tell us.-- - Original Message - DATE: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 18:35:32 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: The wealthy, healthy, Intelligent, and powerful folks, the WHIPs; who want 100% Capitalism for themselves and 50% Capitalism = Welfarism for their competitors, customers, and employees.Good day folks,I'll begin this note with Bill Ryan's last message to me,and then continue with my diagnosis of how Social Credit relates to the 2916 year old optimum policy (TOP) as a cure for what ails the US economy. On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 10:46:06 -0800 [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes, in part:Wes, I've been enduring your stuff for what? - three years now, and still don't have the slightest idea what specifically it is you are proposing to do.Tell us, finally - please please please - in simple declarative sentences.Whatever *it* is, you say *it* requires "only one third" asmuch "money" to implement. But the social creditproposals don't require any money at all, just simpleadjustments enabling demand to balance supply as a matter of accounting. End Bill Ryan ~~Bill has me at a severe disadvantage. With my 2.5/4.0 grade point average in mechanical engineering; and expired US patents in electronic circuits, optics, and distributed analog control systems, I would not know a "simple declarative sentence" if I stepped in one while dancing bare foot in the moon light through Pat Gunning's cow pasture. I have always thought that my eight figure global model of an industrial economy at the Website below was simpler and more declarative than many million of sentences could be. At least for that majority of Americans who might want a valid reason to change their minds about the status quo.But since the figures first became available in digital form in 1994, only two social scientists on the Internet have dared to post the global model on their Websites. In 1999, Derek Darves posted the figures in the freespeech.org Website just below an article by Noam Chomsky. In October 2002, W. Curtiss Priest posted the figures to the epie.orgWebsite, at the URL below, in the midst of all sorts of socially uplifting articles. The results were the same in each case. The two posters seemed to have drained their accumulated "social capital" by the very act of posting visual-aids on a subject which has historically been discussed and documented only with words, whole libraries full of words. From all this, we should conclude that the Internet, like the print media, radio, and TV before it, are all designed and operated by the dominant WHIPs to preserve the status quo. Nothing has changed since the 1890s, when the workforce changed its mind about the "Baker's Dozen," and the status quo continues to date in the US as shown by the 200 year profile of the US Consumer Price Index on Fig10b 10d.In addition to the 2.3%/year "natural rate of inflation" the century old status quo in the US is characterized by three other symptomatic economic defects:!, Unemployment ranging from 4% to 10%.2, Periodic injections of new money as shown on Figures 2-3, 10b, 10d.3, A perennial 3% to 5% of GDP shortage of purchasing power among parenting families.4, The above mentioned "natural rate of inflation."Who knows which is the chicken, and which the egg.I am delighted that the exchange of emails between Pat Gunning, Wally Klinck, and Bill Ryan, on various aspects of C. H. Douglas' Social Credit theory, have lured Ken Palmerton, Scott Horton, and Victor Bridger out of the closet. A good sized crowd is more likely to depart from the politically correct status quo than two recent graduates from Jesuit debating schools. It is hard to tell whether they are teaching subscribers (to list social credit) the principle of the "Family Wage" or the principle of "subsidiarity." Those principles are mutually exclusive.The cardinal remedial features of SC, the universal "Social Dividend" and the "Compensated Price" have been concisely described by the debate, and each feature targets a specific structural defect in the US domestic policy. The A+B theory, on the other hand, may be brought out of the closet, and concisely described, if the debate continues for a few more weeks. Please be patient while I enlist the assistance of
[SOCIAL CREDIT] a creature called rabbit
What I mean concerns the questions posed to Bill. Suppose that he supports the view that in the modern U.S. banking system, money creation by one bank is ordinarily offset by money destruction by the same bank or by other banks unless the Federal Reserve Board deliberately chooses to make it otherwise. Pat Gunning I do not support that view. I completely reject the money multiplier concept. The Fed is the concertmaster in the following sense: Imagine that all the banks in a closed system associate between themselves so that checks drawn on any one bank may be deposited in any other bank. One of the banks is chosen to be the clearing bank at which the member banks maintain clearing accounts that we will henceforth call reserves. All of the banks including the clearing bank continue performing the ordinary functions of banking. Each of the banks may grant loans without limit so long as it maintains a sufficient balance in its reserve account to cover checks that may be deposited in other banks. The clearing bank is the exception in that it is unconstrained by reserves because every check it writes clears back to itself and does not detract from its ability to grant loans. If each bank including the clearing bank expands credit in tandem with every other bank, clearings between banks will always net to zero regardless of the quantity of aggregate reserves. Therefore credit may be expanded without limit unconstrained by reserves so long as all the banks continue to operate in perfect tandem. If any single bank departs from the prevailing practice, it will gain or lose reserves to other banks, which enhances or detracts from its ability to grant further loans. Each bank therefore competitively attempts to gain reserves from other banks and attempts to avoid losing reserves to other banks. This juxtapositioning between banks would effectively place an upper limit on bank credit expansion were it not for the fact that the clearing bank writes checks for loans that clear back to itself. So the independent credit policy of the clearing bank sets the upper limit to system wide credit expansion. It is however the upper limit, not the lower limit, which is zero. Credit actually granted to the public is necessarily somewhere between zero and the upper limit subject to change in bank policy contingent on the demand for credit from members of the public. Douglas' theorem from *Social Credit* first published in 1924 holds as a statistical matter between zero and the upper limit which is continually shifting: In respect of financial institutions, let deposits = D, loans etc. = L, cash in hand = C, and capital = K. Then: assets = L + C, liabilities = D + K, so that L + C = D + K. Differentiating with respect to time: dL/dt + dC/dt = dD/dt; K being fixed, dK/dt = 0. Assuming cash in hand is kept constant, dC/dt = 0. Therefore dL/dt = dD/dt, which means that loans create deposits and the repayment of loans cancel deposits. -- 15 Nov 2003 11:17:07 +0800 Speaking of apparently misguided proposals, here's a puzzle. Can anyone solve it? What is wrong with the following proposal? I propose that we increase the quantity of money by just enough to finance a 10% subsidy to retailers of consumer goods. The result, I predict, will be approximately a 10% decrease in consumer goods prices. (This program is advocated by a movement called Social Credit. For those who might be interested, here is some background. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit Pat Gunning Professor Gunning posted this Saturday to his austrianschoolofeconomics group at Yahoo. All I can say is that it causes me to empathize with Eimar O'Duffy's allegory that man will be replaced by a creature called rabbit, certainly if this is a fair indication of the ability of man to communicate with man. We've been at this for how many days now with Professor Gunning, two weeks is it? For him to now so misstate the social credit position is to me beyond comprehension. O'Duffy may well have had it right. It certainly does indicate a failure to communicate. I am not however assigning blame as to who is at fault for that failure. Social Credit does NOT propose an increase to the quantity of money. It DOES propose a credit applied at the point of retail - as a matter of accounting - to enable demand to match supply. That's all that Social Credit proposes. The percentage is determined by what is required to accommodate that match. If nothing is required then the credit is zero, period. Social Credit analysis - based on the A + B theorem in the form of reductio ad absurdum - concludes there is a defect in the system of accounting which entrepreneurs use to measure the effectiveness of their decisions that is not resolvable at the level of the individual firm. Therefore, accounting adjustment at the macroeconomic level of the economy considered in statistical whole is required
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] a creature called rabbit
Misstatements of fact: For some reason, I was added to the list and starting receiving its emails. - Professor Gunning himself subscribed to the list at Topica. He was sent an invitation to which he replied affirmatively. Topic software then automatically sent a confirmation message to which he again replied affirmatively for a second time. Only at that point did Topica begin to transmit socialcredit messages to him. Bill claimed to be an economist. - I never claimed to be an economist. You will not find that claim in any message that I have ever posted to the list socialcredit. Nor have I ever privately communicated that claim to Professor Gunning. Having said that, it should be noted that the austrians have a traditional proclivity for withholding the term from anyone but themselves and their close relatives. This follows Mises who assigned the term only to the austrians and their predecessors. Which seems incongruous since Professor Mises' own advanced academic credentials were in law, not economics. I don't know why he posted the message here. - I am a list subscriber. I responded to a message posted to this list that directly related to social credit that contained several gross misstatements of fact. So, hopefully, we will be spared future cross- postings. - So much for an open mind. And -- So much for considering austrian economics to be anything other than cultic pseudo-science. It is very much faith based, as is evident from Gunning's commentary in the [EMAIL PROTECTED] archives. I will compile them and post a link to them later. For an example of the methodology, take note of his response to my message. It does not address even a single substantive point I made in my message. Merely an apology for list members having to endure my cross posting followed by further misstatements, this time about myself personally. I do sincerely thank Professor Gunning for an interesting and informative discussion. I will be cross posting this message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bill Ryan -original message- Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 11:12:50 +0800 From: Pat Gunning [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Re: [Austrian School of Economics] a creature called rabbit To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dear list: The posting by Bill Ryan relates to a debate we have been having on a different list -- the Social Credit list, which he moderates. For some reason, I was added to the list and starting receiving its emails. Since I had not heard of this Social Credit idea and since I have a strong interest in credit, I asked a few questions. Bill claimed to be an economist. One email led to another and another and eventually he and I were engaged in a debate. The final result was a complete impasse, as evidenced by the message relating to the Fed's ability to control the amount of bank money creation. He denied this; I affirmed it. Bill posted his message to his list and to this one. I don't know why he posted the message here. However, I have since unsubscribed to his list. So, hopefully, we will be spared future cross-postings. Sorry :-[ Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail! http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005 --^ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^
RE: [SOCIAL CREDIT] farewell
Brief comments inserted: -- Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 09:19:36 +0800 From: Pat Gunning [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Re: [SOCIAL CREDIT] farewell Thanks, Bill. That is what I needed to hear. Of course, I said nothing about a money multiplier. -- [Insert] You did not. I should have deleted that sentence before I hit the send button. -- What I said was clear and I said it more than once on the list. The Federal Reserve System (Fed) -- that is, the central bank of the U.S. -- regulates the banking system. -- Of course it does. My post was in reply to an entirely different point that you made: ...[M]oney creation by one bank is ordinarily offset by money destruction by the same bank or by other banks unless the Federal Reserve Board deliberately chooses to make it otherwise. I dispute that assertion completely. -- By this power it can and does control money creation by the member banks. -- [Insert] Only in the sense of the concertmaster that I described. Bank credit is the creation of the banking system including member banks and central bank acting in concert presumably in cooperation with the public. -- So far as I know, you are the only person claiming to be an economist who has denied this. -- [Insert] Well, there are indeed a great number of persons who do claim to be economists who concur. Apparently, you are not conversant with developments in the field (regardless whether you agree with them) since the nineteenth century. See for example http://www.geocities.com/new_economics/lavoe-draft-10-03.txt I do not by the way endorse the views expressed in that paper. I object to many of them. -- The Fed is not chosen by the banks as a clearing bank, although it has occasionally acted as if it was. It was a creation of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which was passed by the legislature. The act was most likely the outcome of rent-seeking by some of the larger banks at the time. -- [Insert] The Federal Reserve Act was the product of intense debate and power politics throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. To describe it as merely the result of rent seeking by some of the larger banks is rather shallow. -- Nevertheless, it created a power to regulate which has evolved into the current system in which the Board can and does limit the amount of money creation by member banks. -- [Insert] It definitely has regulatory powers. Whether it directly controls the amount of money creation by member banks is highly questionable. I believe it has broad power to determine the upper limit. -- In this message, you deny that the ruling Board of Directors does or can effectively regulate the bank money creation. To me, that is like denying that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service can effectively impose an income tax. -- [Insert] It can impose a tax but controlling the amount it actually collects is an entirely different matter. -- Moreover, your talk about upper and lower limits obfuscates. -- [Insert] That may seem so because you don't understand the argument. I've offered to go through it point by point. Between zero and the shifting upper limit banks may increase credit without limit. -- You did not directly answer the question. -- [Insert] I thought I did. This gives readers the impression that you agree with those on the list who apparently don't recognize that the Federal Reserve Board can and does limit money creation by banks. -- [Insert] I never said that the Fed can't limit money creation. I was addressing an entirely different point. -- Although this may seem like a legitimate debating tactic to you, I am not interested in debate for the sake of debate. -- [Insert] Neither am I. -- Your claim is far away from the truth and your obfuscation merely makes the task of education -- [Insert] The better word is indoctrination. -- , a very hard one at best, more difficult. Further discussion on any issue related to money and inflation with you is a waste of my time. -- [Insert] It probably is. But that would be due to your closed mind. I do not regard discussion on my part with you to have been a waste of time. -- Since the main practical argument against the social creditors is that their program to subsidize retailers with newly created money is inflationary -- [Insert] Not if income is falling in respect to the costs of production. -- and since you are apparently the economic adviser to most of those who hold the erroneous view to the contrary, I do not intend to write any more about social credit. -- [Insert] I'm nobody's adviser. I'm merely
