Sadly, the British government remains very deliberately wedded to the myth that it needs to run to the nearest lender every time the stationery cupboard gets low on pencils. (The feudal aristocracy of the private economy would have it no other way.)
This is 100% correct. In a fiat currency system with no gold backing, the equilibrating mechanism is no longer interest rates per se, but the level of the free-floating currency relative to other currencies (esp the $). In such a situation, the relevance as far as the UK is concerned is the extent of foreign (i.e. non-sterling) borrowings on the debt. In the UK's case today, it is a non-factor. Virtually all of the borrowing is being done in sterling, so there is no question as to whether the UK government can continue to service the debt because, as the sole issuer of the pound, it can always service the debt. I also suspect that at some point, sterling becomes sufficiently low relative to other currencies, and that may well attract additional inflows from institutions/individuals, who view sterling based assets as "cheap".
That the UK government is highly unlikely to face a 1970s style currency crisis in which the IMF might have to be called in DOES NOT, however, vindicate the strategy adopted by the Truss Administration. The new policies announced last week by Kwasi Kwarteng offer the worst of all possible worlds: they do nothing to address the gaps in the supply chains that did so much to create the inflation in the first place. To the extent that this package delivers expansionary fiscal stimulus, it is directed to the wrong people. The benefits largely accrue to the cohort with the highest savings propensities, so it's terribly inefficient and will also likely exacerbate prevailing inequalities (and the UK is one of the most unequal economies in the G7, in fact it might be THE most unequal and this fiscal plan will make it worse). In fact, as the Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, noted the other day in the FT, "research by the IMF has shown that higher income inequality is associated with lower and more fragile growth. It is obvious why. Concentrating income among fewer people — those least likely to spend it and drive the economy forwards — undermines workers’ health and education, the crucial components of a productive workforce."
Likewise, as Stephanie pointed out in her previous piece, there is a substantial body of economic work illustrating that "trickle down economics" is fiscally inefficient in terms of delivering decent bang for the buck to foster greater economic growth. So to the extent that the tax cuts induce any kind of spending response, we'll get more demand that will likely go to the wrong areas (e.g. prime London property), as opposed to funds that will generate more equitable growth and prosperity.
I'd caution against using the term "trickle down economics". I've been following the characters who champion what is about to happen in UK for several months now to try and understand what is in their head. "Trickle down economics" is a pejorative and a slur. It doesn't exist as a concept in the literature. It is the same dismissal as "printing money" is to MMT - and elicits the same response: "you haven't read the literature have you". People who use that phrase will be considered know nothing cultists who, like the 1976 Labour government, just don't understand the programme.
"The only problem is, there is no economic school of thought that actually advocates this logic.
As the US intellectual Thomas Sowell notes:
‘It is not just in politics that the non-existent ‘trickle-down’ theory is found. It has been attacked in the New York Times, in the Washington Post and by professors at prestigious American Universities – and even as far away as India. Yet none of those who denounce a “trickle-down” theory can quote anybody who actually advocated it.’"
Plus it is considered an appalling Americanism in the UK.
What they are trying to do is this:
"The principles, as first set out by Nobel prize winner Robert Mundell, and then Reagan’s economists, were essentially that:
1. monetary policy should be responsible for dealing with inflation;
2. tax policy should be set to ensure good incentives for work, investment, and economic output (rather than prioritize demand management or debt management); and
3. regulatory policy should be set to avoid needlessly harming the supply of goods and services.
In today’s mini-not-a-budget-budget in the UK, Liz Truss and her new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng pivoted UK policy to such a supply-side approach. They reiterated the Bank of England’s independence and responsibility for controlling inflation. They put a 2.5 percent target for economic growth as their major government priority. And they set out tax and regulatory policy plans to try to boost the growth rate towards that end."
There's plenty to address there. Remembering that UK Labour still believes in 1, and therefore implicitly supports the other MMT that is incoming - the Monetarist Mortgage Tax. That was trailed in a hastily re-written UK Telegraph leader from Friday morning that mentioned half way down "Not everybody in the UK has a mortgage". I wish I'd snapshotted that before they rewrote it.
The intention is that the money flows *upwards* through as few hops as possible and is saved sooner rather than later. That reduces the need to tax, while simultaneously decreasing the consumption flow, freeing up real resources for the 'investment' they believe their tax policy adjustments will magically bring forth.
It's a matter of ideology. As far as I can gather the intent is to use monetary policy to squash AD, which will release resources (that's the 'savings' they talk about). Then private sector investment will be induced by jiggling with tax policy which will use up the resources so released.
So you have a sort of indirect 'tax and spend' approach.
If the savings pass through London property that makes no difference - higher asset prices just means the market needs to make more assets. Once the asset swaps have finished, Sterling still has to be spent or saved. The intent is that the money ends up with those that save.
Like you I don't see how it works, because it seems to be based upon the 'build it and they will come' belief of how demand arises. Why would you invest in business when your customers are struggling to meet their mortgage payments?
Perhaps you should look at Arthur Laffer's comments in the 80's about Trickle-down. He wrote his Trickle-down nonsense on a napkin for Reagan the simpleton.
The key to understanding 1976 is that the government of the day was still operating in the Bretton Woods mindset and were trying to defend the $2 to the £ exchange rate. There were several dollar loans obtained by the UK throughout the 1960s and the 1970s to defend the exchange rate all of which were paid back. The difference in the mid 1970s was that the world had fully changed to the floating rate era, particularly in the USA, and the UK hadn't caught up. The 1970s Labour government was a government out of time in more ways than one.
The characters in charge now won't care too much if the pound slides. From their point of view that just puts more pressure on the Bank of England to do what they need the Bank to do - massively hike interest rates.
I'm in full agreement with the thrust of liberal/progressive reforms like MMT etc., but how many times do I need to reiterate that reforms are all too easily gamed and/or morphed into some "new" orthodoxy that serves the same master?
All of the leading edge reforms revolve around money, debt and finance. That tells you that they are onto the problem. All they need to do is up their analytical game to the level of the paradigm. Paradigmatic analysis is counter intuitive to the current dominant paradigm for investigation, that is, science, in that it is wholistic instead of reductionistic. Science of course is wonderful, necessary and delicious...and it exists entirely within the digestive tract of paradigmatic analysis. So I'm not in any way advocating dropping science...just utilizing a more comprehensive temporal universe changing method. New paradigms are single concepts that change the nature of entire complexities. In this sense they are the ultimate human integrative of opposites phenomenon. Like wisdom insights, they are deep simplicities..
Scientific analysis of macro-economic theory tells us the problem is about money, debt and finance. Now we just have to find the single concept (which is historically in complete conceptual opposition to the present problematic paradigm) that most efficaciously applied changes the entire system under analysis.
Practical analysis tells us it's about governments being run by the ruling elite who own the politicians, creating laws that immensely benefit their wealth, control and power thereby leading to the grotesque income & wealth mal-distribution of today.
Absolutely correct. But we've known that since forever. I tire of both elite domination and progressive cynical pissing and moaning. That's why we need to awaken to the possibilities of the policies of the new monetary paradigm that in the words of The Godfather are "an offer they cannot refuse". How's that? Just do the simple math on a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale. It immediately doubles every employed person's purchasing power and so simultaneously potentially doubles the actually available demand for virtually all enterprise's goods and services. In order to opt into the rebate aspect of the policy a retailer would have to pledge not to raise their prices unless their total costs exceeded the huge cost savings that the other policies of the new paradigm would enable like: a) $1000/mo. universal dividend for every adult that gives them $2000/mo. worth of purchasing power...for life. Hence making payroll taxes for welfare, unemployment insurance and social security even more obviously redundant and irrelevant than they already are in a sovereign fiat monetary system like we presently have, b) our taxes do not pay for government and with inflation being macro-economically eliminated that fact can then be driven home even more so by cutting individual and corporate taxes hence getting the cooperation of enterprise instead of trying and failing to force them to cooperate by a taxation ONLY orthodoxy....that has not and undoubtedly never will work (And if any business model cheats the retailer loses their rebate privileges and all other business models lose their tax cut incentives and they will also be taxed at a rate of 100% on any revenue they may have garnered from any inflation.) c) The retailer and prior business models MUST opt in because if they decline they have to get 100% of their price from consumers when they can walk next door and only pay 50% of it at the non-opter's competition. (And why wouldn't they want to opt into the rebate and tax incentives program in the first place...it's the definition of "good economic times" for them as in lots of demand and much lowered taxes. d) Retail sale is universally participated in by every individual agent and being the terminal ending and cost/price summing point is also the most aggregative point in the entire economic process, hence a policy implemented at that point has macro-economic effect. e) The 50% Discount/Rebate policy perfectly mimics the private banking accounting means of money creation except it's created as monetary gifting making the policy the very expression of the new monetary and financial paradigm (Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting).
There are other policies that help to integrate and stabilize the new paradigm into the economic system even though historically everything adapts to a new paradigm (because it's so universally beneficial) ...not the other way around as with reforms.
Honestly, I don't see how that can work. It seems more like a band-aid than a cure.
1. Assuming/guessing a 20% profit margin on average, which could be much more for some products/services and much less for others... How will you divvy up the rebate?
2. Who will pay the difference?
3. How will it get paid?
Aren't we better off using capitalism to overcome capitalism with the following.
1. Taxing all Wealth down to some maximum limit like $10 Mil for those that excel, like Bezos, Musk, Gates, Buffet, Entertainers, Athletes, etc. Maybe $2 Mil or so for the next tier.
Same for Income with some cap or 100% tax after some limit.
1b. Eliminate all artificial categories of cashflow ex. dividends, cap gains, interest, etc. into ONE category of Income.
2. Reclaiming public ownership of all our natural resources.
3. Worker-owned Enterprises via Worker-Coops preferably or ESOP's for natural monopolies and oligopolies. Government would retain an ownership stake based on capital required and assets needed. Utilities, Insurance etc are incredible cashflows which the Moneyed Interests use for leverage so they can acquire even more assets.
3b. Once a product or service is commodified it should be a Worker-owned and operated enterprise overseen by the government with the gov't retaining an ownership interest based on the capital or assets required.
4. Converting all our Treasuries to Publicly-owned banks which have all been privatized, except the publicly-owned Bank of North Dakota.
With $3 Trillion in city, county & state budgets/cashflow running through their own Public Banks there could be $30 Trillion of lending available minus current debts.
5. Eliminate ALL Real Estate & other major corporate tax-incentive socialism for wealthy individuals & corps.
Let's call-out all corporate subsidies, tax breaks, grants for what they are, Corporate Socialism.
Socialism is bad for we the people but Corporate Socialism is great for the Ruling Elite.
6. Eliminate compound interest rates.
These moves would eliminate the cashflow Big Money Interests use & need to buy up everything and to pay their debt service. They have so much cashflow and assets, often with government corporate socialism, they don't know what to do with it except play Rocket Man, Make War, or other such nonsense.
This isn't an entire list, but these would go a long way to undercutting the excesses of capitalism.
This would eliminate the huge wealth and income disparities by using the current system.
1) Profit margins are not really relevant and except in various areas like pharmaceuticals not that problematic. The price at retail sale is what is reduced by 50%. That benefits EVERYONE...TREMENDOUSLY.
2 and 3) A monetary authority, either the FED or some other one mandated to do so would create the rebates and credit the retailers for every cent of their discount to consumers. The money would be created ex nihilo, exactly as it is done now, just not MONOPOLISTICALLY as ONLY DEBT like the private banks do.
In my book I detail a sliding scale of reduction of the personal rebate percentage depending upon yearly income. I also enable the highest personal and corporate tax rates to be greatly reduced for high income earners IF they contribute 70% of their incomes to a set of communally agreed upon charities and social projects that they derive no personal benefits from.
Some of the things you suggest have cogency, but mutual benefit will almost always evoke more cooperation than merely and only punishment. And I hasten to add that resolving the most underlying economic problem, namely Finance's monopoly monetary paradigm, like the effect on neurotics when they confront their most underlying irrational mental computation, will enable the dissipation of many attending irrational behaviors.
Your idea does nothing to structurally fix Capitalism, it only mollifies somewhat the deleterious affects of it. It still allows a handful of individuals to control/manipulate the system.
If I was to pick one item in my list that is doable over time, it would be Public Banking that would seriously undermine a main, possibly the main source of the Moneyed Interests cashflow which could be terminal to Capitalism over time. The Public would decide how to use the money. Hopefully it would be to fulfill an agreed upon set of Basic Human Needs/Rights.
My #2 would be to eliminate compound interest. Like your suggestion this would be drastic, unlike public banking which would slowly squeeze them. While this may cause bankruptcy of some large businesses including some of the largest banks initially, this would be good. These businesses would become Worker-owned Enterprises with some agreed upon government ownership percentage, and Publicly owned banks having the ability to direct lending to large scale projects/goals.
The fly in these ointments are the Moneyed Interests understand this and will never willingly surrender their control, like Kings & a handful of Queens. So we need to take it from them at the ballot box.
I participated in three different group discussions of what these Human Needs are, and all 3 agreed upon 20 or so requirements to fully participate in contemporary society. Some were Nourishment, Homes, Energy, Info Access/Internet, Self-fulfilling Work/Careers etc. These HN’s could be a goal of Socialism or some system that accomplishes this.
Lots to agree with you in this post. It seems to me that a combination of a true public national bank that would serve human purposes like homes and other big ticket consumer items and state level public infrastructure banks as Ellen Brown has recently come out advocating might enable the system to evolve toward making the money system an over all public utility.
The reason I like a public consumer national bank is it would not require interest. That way you could implement another of my policies of the new paradigm, namely a 50% Discount/Debt jubilee at the point of loan signing. That way you'd get 50% off a 400k home at retail sale and when you signed the mortgage you'd only owe $100k at an interest rate of 0%. That would make George W. Bush's ownership society a reality instead of the Indebtedness society that Finance morphed it into. You could also get a $60k Tesla for $15k and $50k worth of solar panels for $12.5k. Integrating debt jubilee continuously into the economic process prevents private debt build up and doesn't allow private banking to become so entrenched and acculturated that they are able to dominate societies for 2000 years like they have since Rome. Decentralized state infrastructure banks seem like a good thing to me also, but the mega projects necessary to combat climate change would need to be funded by the fiscal deficits made possible by terminatedly ending inflation with a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale and the kind of tax and regulation regime I've suggested here before.
You're absolutely right that Finance will not go away quietly. As they say: "When you're going for the king, you better make sure you kill him." And the ballot box is of course the right way to accomplish the killing. All the more important then that we create the mass social movement that communicates the incredible benefits of the new monetary paradigm to the individual and that simultaneously benefits enterprise so that they join the movement and you enable a revolt of the bourgeoisie while maintaining a dynamic and innovative profit making system...that remains subject to the sovereignly powerful yet benificent state which is committed to an economy and society firmly aligned with the NATURAL philosophical concept of grace as in love in personal action and systemic policy.
I didn't realise people were still pretending MMT was a suitable policy. Of course, the Govt could simply print money and has always been able to do that. The check and balance to this is that people quite like their money to be worth something.
New paradigms always destroy old, worn out orthodoxies like austerity is the answer to inflation. Hence the 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale. Just do the math, if you dare. Having your mind blown while scary, ends up almost always being a beneficial experience. Try it, you'll like it.
Sadly, the British government remains very deliberately wedded to the myth that it needs to run to the nearest lender every time the stationery cupboard gets low on pencils. (The feudal aristocracy of the private economy would have it no other way.)
This is 100% correct. In a fiat currency system with no gold backing, the equilibrating mechanism is no longer interest rates per se, but the level of the free-floating currency relative to other currencies (esp the $). In such a situation, the relevance as far as the UK is concerned is the extent of foreign (i.e. non-sterling) borrowings on the debt. In the UK's case today, it is a non-factor. Virtually all of the borrowing is being done in sterling, so there is no question as to whether the UK government can continue to service the debt because, as the sole issuer of the pound, it can always service the debt. I also suspect that at some point, sterling becomes sufficiently low relative to other currencies, and that may well attract additional inflows from institutions/individuals, who view sterling based assets as "cheap".
That the UK government is highly unlikely to face a 1970s style currency crisis in which the IMF might have to be called in DOES NOT, however, vindicate the strategy adopted by the Truss Administration. The new policies announced last week by Kwasi Kwarteng offer the worst of all possible worlds: they do nothing to address the gaps in the supply chains that did so much to create the inflation in the first place. To the extent that this package delivers expansionary fiscal stimulus, it is directed to the wrong people. The benefits largely accrue to the cohort with the highest savings propensities, so it's terribly inefficient and will also likely exacerbate prevailing inequalities (and the UK is one of the most unequal economies in the G7, in fact it might be THE most unequal and this fiscal plan will make it worse). In fact, as the Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, noted the other day in the FT, "research by the IMF has shown that higher income inequality is associated with lower and more fragile growth. It is obvious why. Concentrating income among fewer people — those least likely to spend it and drive the economy forwards — undermines workers’ health and education, the crucial components of a productive workforce."
Likewise, as Stephanie pointed out in her previous piece, there is a substantial body of economic work illustrating that "trickle down economics" is fiscally inefficient in terms of delivering decent bang for the buck to foster greater economic growth. So to the extent that the tax cuts induce any kind of spending response, we'll get more demand that will likely go to the wrong areas (e.g. prime London property), as opposed to funds that will generate more equitable growth and prosperity.
I'd caution against using the term "trickle down economics". I've been following the characters who champion what is about to happen in UK for several months now to try and understand what is in their head. "Trickle down economics" is a pejorative and a slur. It doesn't exist as a concept in the literature. It is the same dismissal as "printing money" is to MMT - and elicits the same response: "you haven't read the literature have you". People who use that phrase will be considered know nothing cultists who, like the 1976 Labour government, just don't understand the programme.
"The only problem is, there is no economic school of thought that actually advocates this logic.
As the US intellectual Thomas Sowell notes:
‘It is not just in politics that the non-existent ‘trickle-down’ theory is found. It has been attacked in the New York Times, in the Washington Post and by professors at prestigious American Universities – and even as far away as India. Yet none of those who denounce a “trickle-down” theory can quote anybody who actually advocated it.’"
Plus it is considered an appalling Americanism in the UK.
What they are trying to do is this:
"The principles, as first set out by Nobel prize winner Robert Mundell, and then Reagan’s economists, were essentially that:
1. monetary policy should be responsible for dealing with inflation;
2. tax policy should be set to ensure good incentives for work, investment, and economic output (rather than prioritize demand management or debt management); and
3. regulatory policy should be set to avoid needlessly harming the supply of goods and services.
In today’s mini-not-a-budget-budget in the UK, Liz Truss and her new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng pivoted UK policy to such a supply-side approach. They reiterated the Bank of England’s independence and responsibility for controlling inflation. They put a 2.5 percent target for economic growth as their major government priority. And they set out tax and regulatory policy plans to try to boost the growth rate towards that end."
There's plenty to address there. Remembering that UK Labour still believes in 1, and therefore implicitly supports the other MMT that is incoming - the Monetarist Mortgage Tax. That was trailed in a hastily re-written UK Telegraph leader from Friday morning that mentioned half way down "Not everybody in the UK has a mortgage". I wish I'd snapshotted that before they rewrote it.
The intention is that the money flows *upwards* through as few hops as possible and is saved sooner rather than later. That reduces the need to tax, while simultaneously decreasing the consumption flow, freeing up real resources for the 'investment' they believe their tax policy adjustments will magically bring forth.
That is a fair comment. I will avoid the term going forward.
But labels aside, I still think my underlying analysis is rhe correct one regardless of preferred terminology. Would you agree?
It's a matter of ideology. As far as I can gather the intent is to use monetary policy to squash AD, which will release resources (that's the 'savings' they talk about). Then private sector investment will be induced by jiggling with tax policy which will use up the resources so released.
So you have a sort of indirect 'tax and spend' approach.
If the savings pass through London property that makes no difference - higher asset prices just means the market needs to make more assets. Once the asset swaps have finished, Sterling still has to be spent or saved. The intent is that the money ends up with those that save.
Like you I don't see how it works, because it seems to be based upon the 'build it and they will come' belief of how demand arises. Why would you invest in business when your customers are struggling to meet their mortgage payments?
When I query this with believers, Chapter 23 of Sowell's book is quoted. (https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/thomas-sowell-on-the-trickle-down-myth-workers-are-always-paid-first-and-then-profits-flow-upward-later-if-at-all/)
Perhaps you should look at Arthur Laffer's comments in the 80's about Trickle-down. He wrote his Trickle-down nonsense on a napkin for Reagan the simpleton.
We need Trickle up... No More Trickle-down
If it looks like TD, and walks like TD, it's Trickle-down
Thanks for the nod Stephanie.
The key to understanding 1976 is that the government of the day was still operating in the Bretton Woods mindset and were trying to defend the $2 to the £ exchange rate. There were several dollar loans obtained by the UK throughout the 1960s and the 1970s to defend the exchange rate all of which were paid back. The difference in the mid 1970s was that the world had fully changed to the floating rate era, particularly in the USA, and the UK hadn't caught up. The 1970s Labour government was a government out of time in more ways than one.
I wrote it up in a blog a few years ago. https://new-wayland.com/blog/uk-borrowed-foreign-currency-from-imf-in-1976/
The characters in charge now won't care too much if the pound slides. From their point of view that just puts more pressure on the Bank of England to do what they need the Bank to do - massively hike interest rates.
I'm in full agreement with the thrust of liberal/progressive reforms like MMT etc., but how many times do I need to reiterate that reforms are all too easily gamed and/or morphed into some "new" orthodoxy that serves the same master?
All of the leading edge reforms revolve around money, debt and finance. That tells you that they are onto the problem. All they need to do is up their analytical game to the level of the paradigm. Paradigmatic analysis is counter intuitive to the current dominant paradigm for investigation, that is, science, in that it is wholistic instead of reductionistic. Science of course is wonderful, necessary and delicious...and it exists entirely within the digestive tract of paradigmatic analysis. So I'm not in any way advocating dropping science...just utilizing a more comprehensive temporal universe changing method. New paradigms are single concepts that change the nature of entire complexities. In this sense they are the ultimate human integrative of opposites phenomenon. Like wisdom insights, they are deep simplicities..
Scientific analysis of macro-economic theory tells us the problem is about money, debt and finance. Now we just have to find the single concept (which is historically in complete conceptual opposition to the present problematic paradigm) that most efficaciously applied changes the entire system under analysis.
Practical analysis tells us it's about governments being run by the ruling elite who own the politicians, creating laws that immensely benefit their wealth, control and power thereby leading to the grotesque income & wealth mal-distribution of today.
Absolutely correct. But we've known that since forever. I tire of both elite domination and progressive cynical pissing and moaning. That's why we need to awaken to the possibilities of the policies of the new monetary paradigm that in the words of The Godfather are "an offer they cannot refuse". How's that? Just do the simple math on a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale. It immediately doubles every employed person's purchasing power and so simultaneously potentially doubles the actually available demand for virtually all enterprise's goods and services. In order to opt into the rebate aspect of the policy a retailer would have to pledge not to raise their prices unless their total costs exceeded the huge cost savings that the other policies of the new paradigm would enable like: a) $1000/mo. universal dividend for every adult that gives them $2000/mo. worth of purchasing power...for life. Hence making payroll taxes for welfare, unemployment insurance and social security even more obviously redundant and irrelevant than they already are in a sovereign fiat monetary system like we presently have, b) our taxes do not pay for government and with inflation being macro-economically eliminated that fact can then be driven home even more so by cutting individual and corporate taxes hence getting the cooperation of enterprise instead of trying and failing to force them to cooperate by a taxation ONLY orthodoxy....that has not and undoubtedly never will work (And if any business model cheats the retailer loses their rebate privileges and all other business models lose their tax cut incentives and they will also be taxed at a rate of 100% on any revenue they may have garnered from any inflation.) c) The retailer and prior business models MUST opt in because if they decline they have to get 100% of their price from consumers when they can walk next door and only pay 50% of it at the non-opter's competition. (And why wouldn't they want to opt into the rebate and tax incentives program in the first place...it's the definition of "good economic times" for them as in lots of demand and much lowered taxes. d) Retail sale is universally participated in by every individual agent and being the terminal ending and cost/price summing point is also the most aggregative point in the entire economic process, hence a policy implemented at that point has macro-economic effect. e) The 50% Discount/Rebate policy perfectly mimics the private banking accounting means of money creation except it's created as monetary gifting making the policy the very expression of the new monetary and financial paradigm (Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting).
There are other policies that help to integrate and stabilize the new paradigm into the economic system even though historically everything adapts to a new paradigm (because it's so universally beneficial) ...not the other way around as with reforms.
Honestly, I don't see how that can work. It seems more like a band-aid than a cure.
1. Assuming/guessing a 20% profit margin on average, which could be much more for some products/services and much less for others... How will you divvy up the rebate?
2. Who will pay the difference?
3. How will it get paid?
Aren't we better off using capitalism to overcome capitalism with the following.
1. Taxing all Wealth down to some maximum limit like $10 Mil for those that excel, like Bezos, Musk, Gates, Buffet, Entertainers, Athletes, etc. Maybe $2 Mil or so for the next tier.
Same for Income with some cap or 100% tax after some limit.
1b. Eliminate all artificial categories of cashflow ex. dividends, cap gains, interest, etc. into ONE category of Income.
2. Reclaiming public ownership of all our natural resources.
3. Worker-owned Enterprises via Worker-Coops preferably or ESOP's for natural monopolies and oligopolies. Government would retain an ownership stake based on capital required and assets needed. Utilities, Insurance etc are incredible cashflows which the Moneyed Interests use for leverage so they can acquire even more assets.
3b. Once a product or service is commodified it should be a Worker-owned and operated enterprise overseen by the government with the gov't retaining an ownership interest based on the capital or assets required.
4. Converting all our Treasuries to Publicly-owned banks which have all been privatized, except the publicly-owned Bank of North Dakota.
With $3 Trillion in city, county & state budgets/cashflow running through their own Public Banks there could be $30 Trillion of lending available minus current debts.
5. Eliminate ALL Real Estate & other major corporate tax-incentive socialism for wealthy individuals & corps.
Let's call-out all corporate subsidies, tax breaks, grants for what they are, Corporate Socialism.
Socialism is bad for we the people but Corporate Socialism is great for the Ruling Elite.
6. Eliminate compound interest rates.
These moves would eliminate the cashflow Big Money Interests use & need to buy up everything and to pay their debt service. They have so much cashflow and assets, often with government corporate socialism, they don't know what to do with it except play Rocket Man, Make War, or other such nonsense.
This isn't an entire list, but these would go a long way to undercutting the excesses of capitalism.
This would eliminate the huge wealth and income disparities by using the current system.
Pleasee just basic answers, not a manuscript.
1) Profit margins are not really relevant and except in various areas like pharmaceuticals not that problematic. The price at retail sale is what is reduced by 50%. That benefits EVERYONE...TREMENDOUSLY.
2 and 3) A monetary authority, either the FED or some other one mandated to do so would create the rebates and credit the retailers for every cent of their discount to consumers. The money would be created ex nihilo, exactly as it is done now, just not MONOPOLISTICALLY as ONLY DEBT like the private banks do.
In my book I detail a sliding scale of reduction of the personal rebate percentage depending upon yearly income. I also enable the highest personal and corporate tax rates to be greatly reduced for high income earners IF they contribute 70% of their incomes to a set of communally agreed upon charities and social projects that they derive no personal benefits from.
Some of the things you suggest have cogency, but mutual benefit will almost always evoke more cooperation than merely and only punishment. And I hasten to add that resolving the most underlying economic problem, namely Finance's monopoly monetary paradigm, like the effect on neurotics when they confront their most underlying irrational mental computation, will enable the dissipation of many attending irrational behaviors.
Your idea does nothing to structurally fix Capitalism, it only mollifies somewhat the deleterious affects of it. It still allows a handful of individuals to control/manipulate the system.
If I was to pick one item in my list that is doable over time, it would be Public Banking that would seriously undermine a main, possibly the main source of the Moneyed Interests cashflow which could be terminal to Capitalism over time. The Public would decide how to use the money. Hopefully it would be to fulfill an agreed upon set of Basic Human Needs/Rights.
My #2 would be to eliminate compound interest. Like your suggestion this would be drastic, unlike public banking which would slowly squeeze them. While this may cause bankruptcy of some large businesses including some of the largest banks initially, this would be good. These businesses would become Worker-owned Enterprises with some agreed upon government ownership percentage, and Publicly owned banks having the ability to direct lending to large scale projects/goals.
The fly in these ointments are the Moneyed Interests understand this and will never willingly surrender their control, like Kings & a handful of Queens. So we need to take it from them at the ballot box.
I participated in three different group discussions of what these Human Needs are, and all 3 agreed upon 20 or so requirements to fully participate in contemporary society. Some were Nourishment, Homes, Energy, Info Access/Internet, Self-fulfilling Work/Careers etc. These HN’s could be a goal of Socialism or some system that accomplishes this.
Lots to agree with you in this post. It seems to me that a combination of a true public national bank that would serve human purposes like homes and other big ticket consumer items and state level public infrastructure banks as Ellen Brown has recently come out advocating might enable the system to evolve toward making the money system an over all public utility.
The reason I like a public consumer national bank is it would not require interest. That way you could implement another of my policies of the new paradigm, namely a 50% Discount/Debt jubilee at the point of loan signing. That way you'd get 50% off a 400k home at retail sale and when you signed the mortgage you'd only owe $100k at an interest rate of 0%. That would make George W. Bush's ownership society a reality instead of the Indebtedness society that Finance morphed it into. You could also get a $60k Tesla for $15k and $50k worth of solar panels for $12.5k. Integrating debt jubilee continuously into the economic process prevents private debt build up and doesn't allow private banking to become so entrenched and acculturated that they are able to dominate societies for 2000 years like they have since Rome. Decentralized state infrastructure banks seem like a good thing to me also, but the mega projects necessary to combat climate change would need to be funded by the fiscal deficits made possible by terminatedly ending inflation with a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale and the kind of tax and regulation regime I've suggested here before.
You're absolutely right that Finance will not go away quietly. As they say: "When you're going for the king, you better make sure you kill him." And the ballot box is of course the right way to accomplish the killing. All the more important then that we create the mass social movement that communicates the incredible benefits of the new monetary paradigm to the individual and that simultaneously benefits enterprise so that they join the movement and you enable a revolt of the bourgeoisie while maintaining a dynamic and innovative profit making system...that remains subject to the sovereignly powerful yet benificent state which is committed to an economy and society firmly aligned with the NATURAL philosophical concept of grace as in love in personal action and systemic policy.
I didn't realise people were still pretending MMT was a suitable policy. Of course, the Govt could simply print money and has always been able to do that. The check and balance to this is that people quite like their money to be worth something.
The people have no or little say in this, therefore not a serious check & balance.
New paradigms always destroy old, worn out orthodoxies like austerity is the answer to inflation. Hence the 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale. Just do the math, if you dare. Having your mind blown while scary, ends up almost always being a beneficial experience. Try it, you'll like it.
"Can “It” (1976) Happen Again?
With apologies to H.P. Minsky for twisting the phrase."
Behold the ghost of Hyman Minsky! It speaks ...
"No, apology not accepted. Make up your own attention-grabbing headline!"
Found Hyman's book in the stacks back in 1983 (I think). Unread, dusty.
Reading it was truly a revelation - especially compared to the rational expectations rubbish thye profs were cramming down our gullets.