You want to increase the purchasing power of workers? A 50% Discount policy at retail sale all of which is rebated back to the merchant granting it to the consumer mathematically doubles everyone’s purchasing power, ends inflation forever, doesn’t cost the merchant an additional penny and makes participating in the economy an opportunity to self-actualize gratitude instead of resentment. Thats all. Then tax any greed flation at a rate of 100% and redistribute that revenue to the individual or enterprise who had to bear the additional cost of such anti-social behavior. Create the Department of Competition, Innovation, Boycotting and The Public’s Bully Pulpit that gives weekly press conferences that points the finger at corporate malfesence and then we can have actual ethics in the economic system. Lets have an economy that is gracious and wise and yet sovereign. A Wisdomics-Gracenomics if you will. In the human world there is only freedom amongst known and enforceable barriers. Thats why you can’t walk into a theater and yell Fire! What we have now with “free” market theoretics is actually chaos/no real and effective barriers along with financial dominance

Of the moment, of perception in the moment.

Kate Raworth is an intelligent and thoughtful economist like your former guests of Keen, Hudson and Mosler, and I agree with virtually all of their system’s analysis. The problem is none of the above begin at the actual starting point for deep and meaningful change and that is conceptual analysis that leads to the identification and application of what everyone says they want to see which is paradigm change. New paradigm concepts identify the core applicable aspect of the core problematic area of the pattern under analysis. New paradigms are, ironically, a single concept that strategically applied resolves the anomalies of the current paradigm and changes the complexities of the entire pattern. For instance, helio-centrism instead of geo-centrism or homesteading, urbanization and agriculture instead of nomadic hunting and gathering. Until you identify the new paradigm and its specific applications its cart before the horse and, albeit interesting, endless intellectual babble over dualities that do not resolve. However, paradigmatic analysis like wisdom insights are deep resolving simplicities that enlighten thirdness greater onenesses. Quiz: the beneficial aspects of every historical paradigm change have always been an aspect or aspects of the natural philosophical concept of grace. So what aspect of grace would apply as the new concept for the economy and the money system, and when and where might be the best point in the economy to implement/apply that concept?

When you not only resolve the deepest current economic problems plaguing everyone, but make participating in the economy a continuing and universally participated in opportunity to experience/self-actualize the highest natural philosophical/spiritual concept humans have ever conceived, as well, and with a single policy (the 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale)…you know you’re onto something big, VERY big.

That Big is what I refer to as a mega-paradigm change which is one that is immediate, continuous, universally experienced and whose beneficial effects cross over into other systems, bodies of knowledge and areas of human endeavor in addition to the primary one under analysis.

The new monetary paradigm of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting is probably only the third such mega-phenomenon in the history of the human species. The first two being when:

1. humanity emerged from the mere “ethic” of survival at all costs into self awareness and ethics and
2. the change from nomadic hunting and gathering to homesteading, urbanization and agriculture.

Me: As per usual your systems analysis is correct, but equally per usual your follow through with applied philosophical/paradigmatic analysis is lacking. The last monopoly paradigm (salvation via the Roman Catholic sacraments ONLY) was ended by the idea that one could have a Direct Personal Relationship with god AKA The Reformation. Look for the ideas BEHIND the systems that enforce their realities and their anomalies, then apply the new idea and voila! resolution and positive change. Steve, you’re the smartest system’s analyst on the planet. Please utilize applied philosophical/paradigmatic analysis and you could become the WISEST analyst on the planet.

MR: How is it possible that in 2024 we have a system of monetary administration that doesnt produce an annual budget to forecast movements in its largest accounts, inflation adjusted.

Nor is there a Chief Monetary Officer responsible for producing an annual monetary budget.

My golf pro publishes his forecast for annual movements in green fees, merchandise, labour and expenses, with an adjustment each year for inflation.

Lack of full independence at the top of our monetary economy is done with the support of large political donors for one reason: Enforce scarity on the population to reduce the value of labour.

Me: If you were the chairman of the FED or the CEO of a “too big to fail” bank, would you want to embrace a new paradigm that mathematically and continuously resolved the major problems of the economy and the money system that you profit massively from? No, you’d ignore, laugh at, condemn as absurd and resist it, unless, you valued wisdom over even science, logic, mathematics and self interest. Take the applications and benefits of the new paradigm directly to the mass of individuals…right along and in addition to the truths discerned via system’s analysis…and let there be light!

MR: Not quite. There are policy people who read this blog and, according to Ann, are working for reform. But someone has to sponsor the political process and fund elections. Gives me hope.

Me: Good, I’m all for hope and even reform…so long as the reformist is also open to integrating their movement into the true object which is the new operant/resolving applied concept AKA a new paradigm. We don’t have that, and until we do we’ll fiddle around with mere reform and continue to go no where fast exactly like we’ve done with climate “change” for 50 years. I’ve appealed to Steve, Stephanie Kelton, Ann, Ellen Brown, Scott Santan, Michael Hudson etc. with little engagement. Much of that can be laid at the door of being busy with their own “movements” but inability/unwillingness to see beyond the cynical cultural horizon of our current increasingly anomalous paradigm for inquiry, Reductivist Science Only, and so to see that the integrative mental impulse and discipline of Wisdom/Paradigmism is the superlative means of discerning both facts and truths. As I often say: “Science is wonderful, necessary and delicious…and it exists entirely within the digestive tract of Wisdom.”

The latter being aspects of the natural philosophical concept of grace…as well as aspects of the temporal/physical universe is the route to both the experience of god and the kind of scientific open-mindedness which is always a signature of scientific break through.

Abstraction is indirect and once removed from temporal universe reality/experience, and thus a hindrance to direct knowledge/experience. Instead of saying god’s grace is the answer (which is valid but abstracted) we need to say grace is THE DIRECT EXPERIENCE of god, or THE EXPERIENCE of god is found in the present moment where god, being omni-present, always is.

Copernican Helio-centrism actually didn’t resolve the anomalies as well as Ptloemaic geo-centrism until Kepler found that orbits were eliptical instead of the orthodoxy of perfect circles and the fantasy of epicycles. Science is still required after paradigm change…because the cosmos itself is emergent. Of course emergence is an aspect of the natural philosophical concept of grace as in emergent trinity/thirdness greater oneness and flow.

Again, grace is the operant concept and reality to always keep in mind.

Saw you on the Steve Keen podcast a few days ago and I really appreciated your thinking, particularly regarding integrative thinking and the need to analyze on the paradigmatic/applied conceptual level. I consider Keen to be the best economic thinker extant, but until that last podcast he seems to have resisted analysis on that level. Economics has a plethera of problems, but I think we can all agree that Finance/Money is where the core of the core problem exists. I believe that problem is the current paradigm that says new money can only be created and distributed as debt, in other words Debt Only. Two of the signatures of historical paradigm changes are that:

1) the old and the new paradigm are always in complete conceptual opposition and

2) the new paradigm solves the anomalies of the old because its application results in a complete inversion of temporal universe reality (for instance helio-centrism instead of geo-centrism and nomadic hunting and gathering to homesteading, urbanization and agriculture).

I have written a book entitled Wisdomics-Gracenomics: The New Monetary Pardigm and Its Policies which is available on Amazon. Among its policies is a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale utilizing the same accounting operations that the banks use to create all new money only as debt…in other words with a burden to repay. In this case the retail merchant opts into the policy and gifts the consumer a 50% discount on virtually every item and opens a T account labeled Retail Sales Discounts and the monetary authority/government simply rebates the entirety of those discount amounts back to the merchant thus zeroing out the account and making them whole on their entire price. This single policy would invert chronic erosive inflation into, hold you’re breath…beneficial price and asset deflation as in a complete inversion of temporal universe reality. So what is the concept in complete opposition to Debt Only as in the burden to repay? Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting. So there is the new monetary paradigm concept…applied.
There are numerous other policies in the book like a sliding scale of required investment of gifted money in order to mitigate the increase in consumption into what I call eco-bonds at 6% that would supplement the mega fiscal deficits necessary to invest in R & D to confront climate change…and enabled by the termination of inflation by the 50% Discount/Rebate policy. Many other policies also found in a small but pungent book.

I look forward to communicating with you about these things, and hopefully about how we can begin a mass movement to communicate their benefits and so get them implemented. The new monetary paradigm’s time has come.

Indeed accounting is a powerful temporal universe reality anchoring discipline especially when it is wielded by banks to enforce their monopoly paradigm of Debt Only as in the burden to repay in the creation and distribution of new money.

But what if utilizing the accounting equation we credited 50% of the price of virtually everything to the consumer at retail sale, and the government rebated that credit back to the merchant granting it to the consumer? That would macro-economically implement beneficial price and asset DEFLATION which is a destruction of the profit-making orthodoxy that deflation is bad for commercial agents, and enlightens the fact that retail sale is the sole aggregative as in universally participated in/personally economically effecting point in the entire economic process (worthy of a non-Noble prize in economics if I do say so myself) and is thus the perfect place to implement the above monetary policy because:

1) it mathematically doubles everyone’s purchasing power and so

2) potentially the demand for every enterprise’s goods and services,

3) ends inflation forever and last but not least

4) transforms the often onerous experience of going to the store to buy something into the greatest opportunity to self actualize gratitude for a gift since meditation and prayer. Exactly what an increasingly hostile and chaotic world needs.

I have a few questions. – As far as I understood, your suggestion would result in creation of “rebate money” by Govt so that money will become public’s savings (on purchases). Is it correct? – I assume that nothing can stop merchants from increasing prices, especially when rebate-driven demand will increase. So, how the proposed policy will “end inflation forever”? Thank you.

Me: You assume wrongly. In order to opt in to the discount/rebate policy and all of the other benefits of the new paradigm like greatly reduced personal, corporate and eliminated payroll taxes retailers will have to pledge that they would not raise their prices. In my book there is also a tax/rebate policy on any business to proceeding business where any revenue garnered from arbitrary price increases (greed -flation) will be taxed at 100% and rebated back to the proceeding business who suffered the additional costs. Repeated breaking of these reasonable stabilization of such personal and commercial benefits will result in loss of their discount rebate and tax/rebate privileges. I also suggest a new govt. department I refer to as The Dept. of Competition, Innovation, Boycotting and The Public’s Bully Pulpit that will have weekly press conferences pointing their finger at any transgressors and recommending the public boycott those businesses that are trying to game and destroy their 100% increase in purchasing power. If this takes an army of Bill Black style forensic accountants….wonderful!!!. As for any complaint that this is oppressive govt. please spare us. We’ll see how many right wingers refuse to sign up for the $1000/mo. universal dividend on “principle”…especially when you cant’t opt into it thereafter for 5 years if you don’t do so initially. And even then, no one is forcing them to keep the benefits of such. They can always pay full price for a $500k house instead of the $125k they’d get it for with the discount at retail and the debt jubilee at note signing.

AT: Thank you Steve.

You did not answer my 1st question, so I’m assuming implicit Yes.

Me: Sorry, yes the money created by the government or central bank, whichever is mandated to create and distribute the rebate monies, saves the consumer half the price. In the case of the Gift/Debt Jubilee policy at point of loan signing the bank sends the owner or home builder the remainder of the $250k and then the government would gift 50% of the total interest earned on the term of the note immediately to the bank which they could pocket as revenue in exchange for reducing the note by 50% to $125k.