Why don’t we double or triple tax everything? It’s unconstitutional to double taxation, but what the heck I guess Bernie can spend my money more intelligently than I can. NOT!!!
Correct. And let's also resolve the human civilization long problem of private debt overwhelming domestic economies. This is what Graeber and Hudson talk alot about, and is probably the biggest reason why empires have always invaded their neighbors to seize their assets in the hope that it would srabilize their economies.
The way to resolve this problem (like resolving inflation with beneficial price and asset deflation with the 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale) is to integrate debt jubilee into the economic process with a 25-50% debt jubilee at the point of loan signing for big ticket items. That way a $40k gasoline engine car would only cost the consumer $20k at retail and then get a 25% debt jubilee at loan signing meaning they'd only have to finance $15k. Any EV, or big ticket green product gets a 50% debt jubilee so a $60k Tesla is $30k at retail and $15k at loan signing. Likewise a $400k home is $200k at retail and $100k at note signing.
These policies officially make us smarter than the Ancients, instead of dumber like now, who occasionally reset their economies and social contracts with debt jubilees.
The new monetary paradigm has geo-political and hence trans-systemic beneficial consequences. That's why its one of probably only two other mega-paradigm changes in the entire history of the human species.
That bears a resemblance to a good old "taper tantrum"
I so treasure a good assumptive conclusion. I gather that the Federal Reserve, central and Regional Bank Directors should continue with the reins; not to mention private equity and hedge funds stoking the speculative risk pile-on.
More LSAP (Large scale Asset Purchases) QE or ZIRP with a "twist".
There's nothing like a stated goal of asset inflation.
I wonder if possibly bringing back the tea party for an encore, since they so successfully cut the taxes of the upperclassmen, effectively neutralize legislative/fiscal and regulatory policy, as well, laid waste to any people's movement.
Now that's the kind of success that for-profit healthcare, endless war, nuclear brinkmanship and environmental degradation could get behind.
Indeed, how dare those Bernie types suggest helping those deplorables, who, come to think of it, make up our collective society.
Spoken like a true capitalist. Capitalism has had it's opportunity and failed miserably.
Our planet is on fire due to capitalism, the global north has rape & pillaged the global south for centuries, global records of debt for most all governmental entities, corporations, private debt of all kinds, & the world is at war as we're hoping to avoid nuclear destruction... due to its PRIMARY focus on profit.
Follow the money and tax it. Of course the further up the income/wealth curve you are, the greater the ability to pay.
There would not be one nickel of capital in existence without Labor.
The capital tail is wagging the Labor dog because Liberalism is only concerned about Individual Rights with little more than a passing concern for Community Rights.
Liberty and Freedom are the primary concerns of Liberalism.
Liberty and Freedom for the Ruling Elite to accumulate vast amounts of wealth by manipulating governments to create laws allowing the rape & pillage of our Natural Resources, Human Resources and the commodification process.
This conversation leaves out the highly progressive nature of the SS benefit formula. Senator Sanders never mentions this in his speeches that the formula pays out proportionally higher benefits to lower and moderate beneficiaries; 90 and 32 cents per dollar vs 15 for upper income retirees. You can read on the SS site here https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/piaformula.html To remove the earnings cap would make this an even worse ratio for the wealthy. It would make them even less politically vested in the program as it pushes away from FDR's vision of social insurance towards greater and greater redistribution. Sanders wants the higher earners to subsidize/shoulder the responsibility of funding a retirement for everyone else.
Greg, I don't understand your concern for the wealthy. You remove the income cap and have plenty of money to support Social Security for the forseeable future with a couple of bucks leftover for Medicare . We're not talking about removing the current social security payout amount.
I also think you should means test, if not directly, you can easily get it back via the tax code.
I have to admit that I find this whole discussion about social security taxes to be needlessly confusing. I get the idea that making citizens "buy-in" via payroll deductions gives them a sense of "ownership" that would provoke outright rebellion if ever taken away. The logic starts to break down when folks think that they're somehow entitled to their employers' matching contribution. Social security checks are just money that the gov't wants its citizens to have so that no one lives in penury! Let's not make it any more complicated than that.
I love Bernie, but I have no idea what he's talking about when he wants the rich to pay social security taxes on their full income. The rich don't need the protection against poverty provided by soc. sec., which is why the income level is capped. By all means tax the wealthy but do so with the understanding that the gov't doesn't need their money (it CAN'T and DOESN'T spend it!). The point of taxing the rich is to reduce their political power. Why muck things up by illogically trying to boost their payments into a soc. sec. system that simply doesn't need their money?
Having said this, I wonder if it would be useful to make a distinction between federal gov't money that's SPENT, and gov't money that's SENT. Whether it's paper clips or spaceships, the gov't SPENDS for stuff that it needs or wants. The gov't deals with thousands of vendors nationwide. It can set the price it's willing to pay, even if that means building in a healthy profit margin for, say, defense contractors that it wants to make sure can stay in business. In other words, it's probably true that gov't spending may result in higher costs than necessary but doesn't actually cause inflation.
Soc. Sec. checks, on the other hand, represent money that's SENT to individual citizens who don't have the buying power of the federal gov't to dictate prices. This money ($1.2 trillion last year?) flows into the economy and private enterprise competes for it. Part of what happened during the pandemic was that a lot more money ($3 trillion?) was SENT to citizens (rightly so!) to cushion the calamity of not being able to work. And when the lack of workers led to supply chain problems, the spit hit the fan as lots of money started chasing goods and services that just weren't being produced.
Bottom line is, tax the rich to reduce the deficit if that makes you feel better. But the real reason to do it involves reducing their power. And since the wealthy have a high propensity to save, pulling their money out of the economy won't actually do much to curb the inflation we're currently experiencing.
If you paired a $1000/mo. universal dividend at the age of 18 with the 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale that would give every adult $2000/mo. of purchasing power....for life! Thus the payroll taxes for welfare, unemployment insurance and even social security are rendered redundant and can be eliminated for both individuals and enterprise. When was the last time you heard of such a politically and economically integrative and universally beneficial policy? Never is the right answer. That's because we don't analyze on the paradigmatic level.
Sounds like you're in favor of Andrew Yang's "freedom dividend" or some form of universal basic income--which is cool. I don't know what the "50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale" refers to, so maybe you could explain that. The problem with $1,000/month for everyone over the age of 18 is that it probably comes close to $250 billion/month, or $3 trillion a year. Those numbers don't scare me, but the possibility of fueling inflation does. What if we were to borrow the idea of "successive approximations" from psychology? In other words, no one would fear a UBI of $1/month, and everyone would be appalled by $1 million/month. So let's try some number in between that is probably going to be innocuous--say, $50/month. Then bump it up to $100/month over the following year, and so on, until we reach a monthly level that improves our quality of life without driving up inflation. We can haggle over the starting rate, but it seems to me it would have to be low enough so as not to scare the deficit hawks. The attraction for me is that this approach would be empirical--we'd actually see the effects in real time and make adjustments--either up or down--before any real harm to the economy could be done.
Yes a universal dividend philosophically aligns perfectly with the new monetary paradigm. With the 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale there is no possibility of inflation. Normal "beneficial inflation" is 1-3%. Presently if you consider the rate of inflation at 12% makes a $10 item $11.20, minus 50% equals $5.60. (In the new paradigm program there would be a reversal of most if not all of the present high inflation as one of the conditions for opting into the new paradigm policies and tax reductions.
The orthodoxy that increasing the money supply causes inflation is exploded because retail sale being at the terminal ending point of the entire economic/productive process where production exits the economy and becomes consumption has the macro-economic effect of implementing (amazingly so far as economic orthodoxy is concerned) beneficial price and asset deflation, and the rebate of the entirety of the discount back to the retailer makes them whole on their price, overheads and profit margins.
As I have posted here numerous times there are additional beneficial policies, opt in requirements that are "offers that enterprise cannot refuse" and regulations and tax incentives and disincentives that are a part of the program for the new monetary paradigm. Terminally ending inflation with the 50% discount/rebate policy is the key problem resolution that will be able to shut the mouth of all conservative/libertarian complaint about such. MMT would like to see bigger deficit spending. Well, with beneficial deflation a reality we could then run the kind of fiscal deficits necessary to fund the mega-projects for climate change and infrastructure refit.
Theorizing, even correctly about the mechanics of money creation as MMT does is fine, but a genuine paradigm change...changes the entire pattern of money and the economy.
Retail sales in the Us for 2021 amounted to $6.6 trillion. Are you arguing that the gov't should pick up 50% of the tab? That's $3.3 trillion. If you add another $3 trillion of annual UBI payments, that's over $6 trillion of "found" money being pumped into the economy in a single year. I'm all for making the average American better off, but this doesn't sound feasible. But I'm all ears if you care to explain how this will work.
Please forget all of the flimsy orthodoxies about inflation. With a 50% reduction of price at retail sale TO THE CONSUMER you're going to have deflation, UNIVERSALLY BENEFICIAL deflation FOR BOTH INDIVIDUAL AND COMMERCIAL AGENTS. That's not possible in orthodox profit making economic systems. But it is possible IF YOU INTEGRATE THE NEW MONETARY PARADIGM of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting strategically into the Debt Only based system.
Let me make this clear. I have learned a tremendous amount from people like Stephanie, Steve Keen, Michael Hudson, David Graeber, C. H. Douglas etc. But none of these very knowledgeable people and all of their correct economic critiques and reforms have analyzed the economy on the paradigmatic level. They've done a wonderful job with all of the complexities of the economy on the data gathering and theorizing level, they've all decided that the core issue and problem in the economy is money...but paradoxically the key to perceiving and understanding paradigms/paradigm changes...is simplicity not complexity. Why? Because paradigms are SINGLE concepts, like helio-centrism or agriculture, homesteading and urbanization, THAT CHANGE ENTIRE COMPLEX PATTERNS. That makes paradigms the most integrative phenomenon humans can conceive and understand. Integrative in that it is a single concept that, because it changes the most operant factor in a complexity, it changes the entirety of that complexity. And all of Modern MONETARY Theory, universal basic INCOME, Keen's Minsky's FINANCIAL Instability Hypothesis, Graeber's DEBT: The First 5,000 Years, Hudson's FINANCIAL Parasitism, Ellen Brown's Public BANKING attest to the fact that the operant problem is the MONETARY paradigm. But lets focus on the operant solution/paradigm concept and how, where and when to apply it...not just elucidate the problems and perhaps recommend reforms.
Steve, I don't want to blow you off because you might have something profound to say, but I urge you to be clearer in your writing. You write about UNIVERSALLY BENEFICIAL deflation FOR BOTH INDIVIDUAL AND COMMERCIAL AGENTS." What does this mean? Deflation scares traditional economists to death because it creates the danger of a production economy grinding to a halt. Why buy something today if you know it's going to be cheaper tomorrow? That's why producers love a little bit of inflation.
And you write: "IF YOU INTEGRATE THE NEW MONETARY PARADIGM of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting strategically into the Debt Only based system." I have no idea what this means. Can you spell it out in language a layman like me can comprehend? Thanks.
My point is that you're taxing an employer on a COST, not on profit or income. I don't understand the logic of this. Of course workers need to be taken care of, but why do it this way? Just give retirees the money they need to live a reasonable life, and then increase taxes on everyone (mostly the wealthy) if lowering the deficit makes you feel better.
Why not reduce the price of virtually everything by 50% at retail sale that ends inflation forever and have the FED or some other monetary authority rebate the discount back to the merchant giving it thus macro-economically implementing beneficial price and asset deflation into profit making economic systems??? If you want to tax, tax anyone who then arbitrarily raises their prices at a rate of 100% on any revenue garnered from such anti-social actions and if they're a retailer take away their rebate privileges and if they're any other business model you take away the personal, payroll and corporate tax cuts that would be enabled by other of policies of the new monetary paradigm (a $1000/mo. universal dividend at age 18) that the 50% discount/rebate policy implements.
Stephanie, I know you can do the math of the above policy. MMT exposes a lot of things about our fiat money system that need to be understood, but why not just expose the problems when by changing the monetary paradigm you can solve those problems and enable so much more? Up your game from just the theoretical level (which philosophically aligns with the new paradigm concept of direct and reciprocal monetary gifting...what are large deficits after all but monetary gifts to government contractors and individuals via various programs?) to the level of entire paradigm/pattern change?
Please we need to have an exchange about this. Too many converging crises not to open ourselves to overall beneficial changes.
amazing how many people, at least one, who reads you and doesn’t get it but then there is Bernie who pretends it isn’t so. I wonder what John Yarmouth has to say about Bernie’s proposal. I form one would like a total disconnect but that is wishful thinking.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like you would not agree with Senator Sander’s assertion that the Social Security expansion is needed in order to “make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years.” As a currency issuer the federal government can always meet their debts — correct? If the Social Security expansion is not needed for solvency, then what would the primary benefit be? Would the primary benefit be to take a step to close the income inequality gap?
Perhaps the problem is that by leaving the SS fund insolvent it becomes vulnerable to politics of the time. Its easy for me to see "Tea Party" philosophy reducing benefits to needed seniors for the false sacred grail of balanced budget.
Hmm interesting point. Along a similar line, I'm not sure if there are already legal structures in place where SS cannot operate in some regard if it isn't solvent. Maybe not bound by solvency in theory, but bound by it practically due to some legislature. Still, I think expanding SS for that reason would be kind of self defeating for MMT. Maybe Stephanie has talked about it elsewhere in her recent writing on SS -- I'll have to do some more research.
It seems that paying in more demands higher payouts for these with obscene incomes and longer lifespans. Seems this would deplete the reserves even faster
It seems that paying in more demands higher payouts for these with obscene incomes and longer lifespans. Seems this would deplete the reserves even faster
It seems that paying in more demands higher payouts for these with obscene incomes and longer lifespans. Seems this would deplete the reserves even faster
It seems that paying in more demands higher payouts for these with obscene incomes and longer lifespans. Seems this would deplete the reserves even faster
cuz he has some common sense
Because the so-called Progressive Caucus with supposedly 100 members supported a Corporate Democrat over a genuine Progressive Warrior, Nina Turner.
What do you think Bernie can do when your team is playing for the other side???
Why don’t we double or triple tax everything? It’s unconstitutional to double taxation, but what the heck I guess Bernie can spend my money more intelligently than I can. NOT!!!
Nobody is spending your taxes. Our text money is destroyed. It is is used to suck money out of the economy. Check how the economy really works.
Correct. And let's also resolve the human civilization long problem of private debt overwhelming domestic economies. This is what Graeber and Hudson talk alot about, and is probably the biggest reason why empires have always invaded their neighbors to seize their assets in the hope that it would srabilize their economies.
The way to resolve this problem (like resolving inflation with beneficial price and asset deflation with the 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale) is to integrate debt jubilee into the economic process with a 25-50% debt jubilee at the point of loan signing for big ticket items. That way a $40k gasoline engine car would only cost the consumer $20k at retail and then get a 25% debt jubilee at loan signing meaning they'd only have to finance $15k. Any EV, or big ticket green product gets a 50% debt jubilee so a $60k Tesla is $30k at retail and $15k at loan signing. Likewise a $400k home is $200k at retail and $100k at note signing.
These policies officially make us smarter than the Ancients, instead of dumber like now, who occasionally reset their economies and social contracts with debt jubilees.
The new monetary paradigm has geo-political and hence trans-systemic beneficial consequences. That's why its one of probably only two other mega-paradigm changes in the entire history of the human species.
That bears a resemblance to a good old "taper tantrum"
I so treasure a good assumptive conclusion. I gather that the Federal Reserve, central and Regional Bank Directors should continue with the reins; not to mention private equity and hedge funds stoking the speculative risk pile-on.
More LSAP (Large scale Asset Purchases) QE or ZIRP with a "twist".
There's nothing like a stated goal of asset inflation.
I wonder if possibly bringing back the tea party for an encore, since they so successfully cut the taxes of the upperclassmen, effectively neutralize legislative/fiscal and regulatory policy, as well, laid waste to any people's movement.
Now that's the kind of success that for-profit healthcare, endless war, nuclear brinkmanship and environmental degradation could get behind.
Indeed, how dare those Bernie types suggest helping those deplorables, who, come to think of it, make up our collective society.
You’ll never go broke making a profit.
Spoken like a true capitalist. Capitalism has had it's opportunity and failed miserably.
Our planet is on fire due to capitalism, the global north has rape & pillaged the global south for centuries, global records of debt for most all governmental entities, corporations, private debt of all kinds, & the world is at war as we're hoping to avoid nuclear destruction... due to its PRIMARY focus on profit.
Spoken like a true Socialist ( or Communist). Take your pick,
Follow the money and tax it. Of course the further up the income/wealth curve you are, the greater the ability to pay.
There would not be one nickel of capital in existence without Labor.
The capital tail is wagging the Labor dog because Liberalism is only concerned about Individual Rights with little more than a passing concern for Community Rights.
Liberty and Freedom are the primary concerns of Liberalism.
Liberty and Freedom for the Ruling Elite to accumulate vast amounts of wealth by manipulating governments to create laws allowing the rape & pillage of our Natural Resources, Human Resources and the commodification process.
Hopefully you won't have to keep flogging this horse for ever. Surely the light will come? Not holding my breath. Thanks as usual for the clarity.
This conversation leaves out the highly progressive nature of the SS benefit formula. Senator Sanders never mentions this in his speeches that the formula pays out proportionally higher benefits to lower and moderate beneficiaries; 90 and 32 cents per dollar vs 15 for upper income retirees. You can read on the SS site here https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/piaformula.html To remove the earnings cap would make this an even worse ratio for the wealthy. It would make them even less politically vested in the program as it pushes away from FDR's vision of social insurance towards greater and greater redistribution. Sanders wants the higher earners to subsidize/shoulder the responsibility of funding a retirement for everyone else.
I don't see the problem?
It's primarily an anti-poverty program (we used to have millions of elderly dying in abject poverty and now we don't).
Why wouldn't it be heavily weighted towards taxes on the upper percent of earners?
Also, social security payments should NOT be taxed, which they are now.
Greg, I don't understand your concern for the wealthy. You remove the income cap and have plenty of money to support Social Security for the forseeable future with a couple of bucks leftover for Medicare . We're not talking about removing the current social security payout amount.
I also think you should means test, if not directly, you can easily get it back via the tax code.
I have to admit that I find this whole discussion about social security taxes to be needlessly confusing. I get the idea that making citizens "buy-in" via payroll deductions gives them a sense of "ownership" that would provoke outright rebellion if ever taken away. The logic starts to break down when folks think that they're somehow entitled to their employers' matching contribution. Social security checks are just money that the gov't wants its citizens to have so that no one lives in penury! Let's not make it any more complicated than that.
I love Bernie, but I have no idea what he's talking about when he wants the rich to pay social security taxes on their full income. The rich don't need the protection against poverty provided by soc. sec., which is why the income level is capped. By all means tax the wealthy but do so with the understanding that the gov't doesn't need their money (it CAN'T and DOESN'T spend it!). The point of taxing the rich is to reduce their political power. Why muck things up by illogically trying to boost their payments into a soc. sec. system that simply doesn't need their money?
Having said this, I wonder if it would be useful to make a distinction between federal gov't money that's SPENT, and gov't money that's SENT. Whether it's paper clips or spaceships, the gov't SPENDS for stuff that it needs or wants. The gov't deals with thousands of vendors nationwide. It can set the price it's willing to pay, even if that means building in a healthy profit margin for, say, defense contractors that it wants to make sure can stay in business. In other words, it's probably true that gov't spending may result in higher costs than necessary but doesn't actually cause inflation.
Soc. Sec. checks, on the other hand, represent money that's SENT to individual citizens who don't have the buying power of the federal gov't to dictate prices. This money ($1.2 trillion last year?) flows into the economy and private enterprise competes for it. Part of what happened during the pandemic was that a lot more money ($3 trillion?) was SENT to citizens (rightly so!) to cushion the calamity of not being able to work. And when the lack of workers led to supply chain problems, the spit hit the fan as lots of money started chasing goods and services that just weren't being produced.
Bottom line is, tax the rich to reduce the deficit if that makes you feel better. But the real reason to do it involves reducing their power. And since the wealthy have a high propensity to save, pulling their money out of the economy won't actually do much to curb the inflation we're currently experiencing.
If you paired a $1000/mo. universal dividend at the age of 18 with the 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale that would give every adult $2000/mo. of purchasing power....for life! Thus the payroll taxes for welfare, unemployment insurance and even social security are rendered redundant and can be eliminated for both individuals and enterprise. When was the last time you heard of such a politically and economically integrative and universally beneficial policy? Never is the right answer. That's because we don't analyze on the paradigmatic level.
Sounds like you're in favor of Andrew Yang's "freedom dividend" or some form of universal basic income--which is cool. I don't know what the "50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale" refers to, so maybe you could explain that. The problem with $1,000/month for everyone over the age of 18 is that it probably comes close to $250 billion/month, or $3 trillion a year. Those numbers don't scare me, but the possibility of fueling inflation does. What if we were to borrow the idea of "successive approximations" from psychology? In other words, no one would fear a UBI of $1/month, and everyone would be appalled by $1 million/month. So let's try some number in between that is probably going to be innocuous--say, $50/month. Then bump it up to $100/month over the following year, and so on, until we reach a monthly level that improves our quality of life without driving up inflation. We can haggle over the starting rate, but it seems to me it would have to be low enough so as not to scare the deficit hawks. The attraction for me is that this approach would be empirical--we'd actually see the effects in real time and make adjustments--either up or down--before any real harm to the economy could be done.
Yes a universal dividend philosophically aligns perfectly with the new monetary paradigm. With the 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale there is no possibility of inflation. Normal "beneficial inflation" is 1-3%. Presently if you consider the rate of inflation at 12% makes a $10 item $11.20, minus 50% equals $5.60. (In the new paradigm program there would be a reversal of most if not all of the present high inflation as one of the conditions for opting into the new paradigm policies and tax reductions.
The orthodoxy that increasing the money supply causes inflation is exploded because retail sale being at the terminal ending point of the entire economic/productive process where production exits the economy and becomes consumption has the macro-economic effect of implementing (amazingly so far as economic orthodoxy is concerned) beneficial price and asset deflation, and the rebate of the entirety of the discount back to the retailer makes them whole on their price, overheads and profit margins.
As I have posted here numerous times there are additional beneficial policies, opt in requirements that are "offers that enterprise cannot refuse" and regulations and tax incentives and disincentives that are a part of the program for the new monetary paradigm. Terminally ending inflation with the 50% discount/rebate policy is the key problem resolution that will be able to shut the mouth of all conservative/libertarian complaint about such. MMT would like to see bigger deficit spending. Well, with beneficial deflation a reality we could then run the kind of fiscal deficits necessary to fund the mega-projects for climate change and infrastructure refit.
Theorizing, even correctly about the mechanics of money creation as MMT does is fine, but a genuine paradigm change...changes the entire pattern of money and the economy.
Retail sales in the Us for 2021 amounted to $6.6 trillion. Are you arguing that the gov't should pick up 50% of the tab? That's $3.3 trillion. If you add another $3 trillion of annual UBI payments, that's over $6 trillion of "found" money being pumped into the economy in a single year. I'm all for making the average American better off, but this doesn't sound feasible. But I'm all ears if you care to explain how this will work.
Please forget all of the flimsy orthodoxies about inflation. With a 50% reduction of price at retail sale TO THE CONSUMER you're going to have deflation, UNIVERSALLY BENEFICIAL deflation FOR BOTH INDIVIDUAL AND COMMERCIAL AGENTS. That's not possible in orthodox profit making economic systems. But it is possible IF YOU INTEGRATE THE NEW MONETARY PARADIGM of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting strategically into the Debt Only based system.
Let me make this clear. I have learned a tremendous amount from people like Stephanie, Steve Keen, Michael Hudson, David Graeber, C. H. Douglas etc. But none of these very knowledgeable people and all of their correct economic critiques and reforms have analyzed the economy on the paradigmatic level. They've done a wonderful job with all of the complexities of the economy on the data gathering and theorizing level, they've all decided that the core issue and problem in the economy is money...but paradoxically the key to perceiving and understanding paradigms/paradigm changes...is simplicity not complexity. Why? Because paradigms are SINGLE concepts, like helio-centrism or agriculture, homesteading and urbanization, THAT CHANGE ENTIRE COMPLEX PATTERNS. That makes paradigms the most integrative phenomenon humans can conceive and understand. Integrative in that it is a single concept that, because it changes the most operant factor in a complexity, it changes the entirety of that complexity. And all of Modern MONETARY Theory, universal basic INCOME, Keen's Minsky's FINANCIAL Instability Hypothesis, Graeber's DEBT: The First 5,000 Years, Hudson's FINANCIAL Parasitism, Ellen Brown's Public BANKING attest to the fact that the operant problem is the MONETARY paradigm. But lets focus on the operant solution/paradigm concept and how, where and when to apply it...not just elucidate the problems and perhaps recommend reforms.
Steve, I don't want to blow you off because you might have something profound to say, but I urge you to be clearer in your writing. You write about UNIVERSALLY BENEFICIAL deflation FOR BOTH INDIVIDUAL AND COMMERCIAL AGENTS." What does this mean? Deflation scares traditional economists to death because it creates the danger of a production economy grinding to a halt. Why buy something today if you know it's going to be cheaper tomorrow? That's why producers love a little bit of inflation.
And you write: "IF YOU INTEGRATE THE NEW MONETARY PARADIGM of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting strategically into the Debt Only based system." I have no idea what this means. Can you spell it out in language a layman like me can comprehend? Thanks.
I would argue that the employer SS contribution is a cost of hiring the employee and that the employee is entitled to it.
My point is that you're taxing an employer on a COST, not on profit or income. I don't understand the logic of this. Of course workers need to be taken care of, but why do it this way? Just give retirees the money they need to live a reasonable life, and then increase taxes on everyone (mostly the wealthy) if lowering the deficit makes you feel better.
Thanks for the reminder!! Couple policy pieces I've written describing similar approach on Social Security.
- Op-ed: Half of Americans have no retirement savings — here’s how Congress can look out for them. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/theres-a-way-to-save-social-security-but-it-involves-taxing-the-rich
- Growing inequality has shrunk Social Security’s tax base. Revitalizing it could restore solvency without cutting benefits. https://www.inequalityink.org/resources/Soc%20Security%20shrinking%20tax%20base%204.pdf
Why not reduce the price of virtually everything by 50% at retail sale that ends inflation forever and have the FED or some other monetary authority rebate the discount back to the merchant giving it thus macro-economically implementing beneficial price and asset deflation into profit making economic systems??? If you want to tax, tax anyone who then arbitrarily raises their prices at a rate of 100% on any revenue garnered from such anti-social actions and if they're a retailer take away their rebate privileges and if they're any other business model you take away the personal, payroll and corporate tax cuts that would be enabled by other of policies of the new monetary paradigm (a $1000/mo. universal dividend at age 18) that the 50% discount/rebate policy implements.
Stephanie, I know you can do the math of the above policy. MMT exposes a lot of things about our fiat money system that need to be understood, but why not just expose the problems when by changing the monetary paradigm you can solve those problems and enable so much more? Up your game from just the theoretical level (which philosophically aligns with the new paradigm concept of direct and reciprocal monetary gifting...what are large deficits after all but monetary gifts to government contractors and individuals via various programs?) to the level of entire paradigm/pattern change?
Please we need to have an exchange about this. Too many converging crises not to open ourselves to overall beneficial changes.
amazing how many people, at least one, who reads you and doesn’t get it but then there is Bernie who pretends it isn’t so. I wonder what John Yarmouth has to say about Bernie’s proposal. I form one would like a total disconnect but that is wishful thinking.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like you would not agree with Senator Sander’s assertion that the Social Security expansion is needed in order to “make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years.” As a currency issuer the federal government can always meet their debts — correct? If the Social Security expansion is not needed for solvency, then what would the primary benefit be? Would the primary benefit be to take a step to close the income inequality gap?
Perhaps the problem is that by leaving the SS fund insolvent it becomes vulnerable to politics of the time. Its easy for me to see "Tea Party" philosophy reducing benefits to needed seniors for the false sacred grail of balanced budget.
Hmm interesting point. Along a similar line, I'm not sure if there are already legal structures in place where SS cannot operate in some regard if it isn't solvent. Maybe not bound by solvency in theory, but bound by it practically due to some legislature. Still, I think expanding SS for that reason would be kind of self defeating for MMT. Maybe Stephanie has talked about it elsewhere in her recent writing on SS -- I'll have to do some more research.
It seems that paying in more demands higher payouts for these with obscene incomes and longer lifespans. Seems this would deplete the reserves even faster
It seems that paying in more demands higher payouts for these with obscene incomes and longer lifespans. Seems this would deplete the reserves even faster
It seems that paying in more demands higher payouts for these with obscene incomes and longer lifespans. Seems this would deplete the reserves even faster
It seems that paying in more demands higher payouts for these with obscene incomes and longer lifespans. Seems this would deplete the reserves even faster
You probably don't know the difference so I won't waste my time explaining it to you.