This is a very important post, especially the final paragraph regarding those who control money controlling all else.
There is common ground between the social crediters and the binarians in the desire to shake this control loose from the financial types.
One can see the influence of the banker/investor class in the President's Social Security proposals. I can see why many on this list and the ownership list resist anything to do with them. However, I believe that the way to break the bankers is to use this issue as a trojan horse by
1. creating an equal employer contribution (rather than one linked to income) to be credited to both traditional social security and to a personal retirement account
2. offering the option of investing personal retirement accounts in employer stock (with union or association representation - or some other way to exercise group power)
3. allowing union members and individuals with existing 401(k) plans to invest their accounts in these plans (and allow more active group and individual voting of 401(k) shares) rather than a government sponsored account
4. ending the cap on social insurance contributions in the US.
This is a trojan horse because eventually employee-investors will have voting control of companies, rather than investment managers who have cozy relationships with firm CEOs. This will begin to diminish the power of the financial sector. Employee-owned firms will also follow their European counterparts and offer financial services to employees (mortgages, insurance, payroll lines of credit, education loans) so that the banking sector will further diminish.
When households have greater ownership, they will be the owners of the B in the A+B, shaking loose some of these funds for consumption. If the government debt can be retired through higher taxes on the wealthy (who now hold a large share of it). With the debt retired, the Fed could shift its discount window operations from government securities to binary debt finance using the discount window (though I would offer this to employee-owned firms rather than households). Presumably, for the stake of stimulus, it could also issue a social credit once it is freed of the responsiblity of propping up the Treasury.
As employee-ownership expands, it will extend to multi-nationals and expand into other countries - especially in the developing world. As this happens a single currency and banking system becomes possible and with it an international social credit. Until there is a global system, I am not sure if a social credit could be accomplished. After it is, such a credit would be ideal for distributing the profits from an international reserve system and would be vitally necessary for spurring world economic growth.
Comments?
Michael Bindner
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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
