This is your periodic reminder

that as soon as you use the word "money" you are talking about a centralized social instrument, no matter what.

No matter what context, no matter what form, no matter what "backs" it, no matter what "algorithm".

You say "money", you are talking about a centralized social instrument

no

matter

what.

But good luck with all that!

LOL

Just a reminder

There is a thing called Odious Debt.

Odious Debt is not debt that is unpayable because the debtor is poor or lazy, but it is debt that is unpayable due to the rigging of the lender; the accumulating interest is insupportable to the very nature of transaction. You could say it is perversely disproportionate to human scale.

A loan itself is an extended transaction, and the benefit for the lender is in proportion to the degree of time that they can stretch it out. They don't want the transaction to come to a completion. By doing this with unchecked impunity, Odious Debt breaks and distorts the very proportionality by which we sustain the value of money as such.

Jubilee is not just debt cancellation: it is debt cancellation in recognition that debts extended in time beyond all reason is Odious Debt and will kill everyone, including those who have paid off their debts.

Student loan debt is Odious Debt. It is also doubly Odious Debt because student education in itself is a future economic investment which benefits everyone, however remotely. It's not like someone taking out a loan for a car or for a Jacuzzi. To lump student loan into any other loan category is sick and deplorable. At most, student loans should be interest free, as well as due date free.

Just as the government got people into the country here in Canada by offering to potential immigrants interest free loans to work a piece of land, to be paid back only when the farmers had secured themselves financially and were doing well. Why would the government do that? It's not rocket science: because it was advantageous to the country, economically, and in every other way. Ditto education.

Conservatives wringing their hands about how debt forgiveness wouldn't be fair, and it would be unequal, are invoking the very "socialism" they themselves denounce . Anything to do with equal opportunity these conservatives label as "socialist" or "communism". Yet here they are commanding that people bleed themselves dry to pay what in most cases they have already paid (and in some cases paid multiple times over) and not have it cancelled because otherwise it wouldn't be equal with those who have paid their debts. Conservatives are the worst freaking communists. LOL.

People framing debt forgiveness as though it was socialists forcing the hand of the lender and taking the money that belongs to the lender - LOL.

There is no such thing as "sacrificing the economy". But there is such a thing as sacrificing your ideology and your fear. That is, your fear of losing your idea of the economy.

An economy can be rebuilt/restarted/re-set literally overnight. This is why the Great Depression was not mere fallout. It was deliberately sustained through the contraction of the money supply. The money supply was squeezed more and more with each passing year.

The Great Depression wasn't some fallout from "inflation". There is no such thing as an economic fallout over a ten year period. It is impossible. The Great Depression was deliberately sustained. There. Was. No. Money.

There was no money because the private banks were squeezing it out of the system. It was asset stripping. The "calling of arrears". It was a decade-long power grab. And it wasn't that the power-grabbers were merely saving their own skins. The point of the parasite is to parasitize the host.

You think that the general population worrying about the economy has anything on the fears of the 1%? The 1% is the bracket that feels every tick on the seismograph over and above anyone else. The more power and wealth you attain, the more the fear of losing - no, not all of it - the more the fear of losing the least amount.

You can take that as a form of consolation. The widow with her mite will always be a billion times more generous than a billionaire donating even half his fortune.

If the criminals who sustained the Great Depression had done what was right instead, it would not have meant their impoverishment. Not at all. You see, they wanted to continue their wicked accumulation; they viewed their sacking of the nation as "automatic".

The Ring came to ME!

People mention the Great Depression like it was an economic failure/tragedy that happened in some once-upon-a-time that looked like a black and white photo in some high school textbook.

What we call the Great Depression was in truth a crime against humanity.

Money is a transaction token. Any value, any definition one wishes to say of money - "money is a unit of labour saved", etc. etc. - is already assumed under "transaction token".

Let me put it this way: when two people engage in a transaction with each other, are either of those two people, by engaging in the transaction, seeking to impoverish themselves?

We already bring and assume all the values. Money is a transaction token. And the 1% know and understand that fact very well.

What needs to happen in pandemic is to keep things puttering along. Cancel debts, mortgage payments/loans in whatever ways, whether it's total cancellation, or suspension until pandemic is completely past. And that, in tandem with some form of UBI (for the duration of pandemic), while shutting out from monetary aid the big corporation billionaires.

All that would be to ensure that those businesses and jobs are there to "return to". Ample money supply needs to be circulating in order to keep things puttering along while the country is in lockdown.

The powers don't want this for the simple reason that they know how good it will look. Imagine that: they know and fear that right-and-just emergency measures with a view towards solidarity in a crisis will outshine decades of so-called free market trickle down triple-ply financialized capitalism. LOL.

But this is guaranteed: if you "re-open" the economy while pandemic is still happening, you will crash the economy. That is an absolute guarantee. I'm sure those in favour of "re-opening" would later scapegoat the lockdown measures.

Also, but more importantly, if you "re-open" the economy while a pandemic is happening, you are confirming that economy beyond all dispute as an economy of death.

It is well within the power of the Republicans to do what is right. The truly sick thing is to realize they won't do it because it would cast a light back upon the previous decades, and people would start thinking new thoughts.

"No matter what our politicians do, the people are slowly learning..."

If you want some clarity, understanding, truth, and not isolate/quarantine yourself in the sectarian hothouse of conspiracy theory and apocalypticism (which feed into the rise of fascism and genocidal scapegoating) then you have to watch Richard Wolff and Michael Hudson:

"...a system whose time has come and now gone." --Richard D Wolff

"The real economy is going to be sacrificed to the financial sector." --Michael Hudson

"Every crisis contains both danger and opportunity: the opportunity to move out from the danger." --Pope Francis, interview with Austen Ivereigh

Fan of Chesterton and Belloc?

Well both of them wanted every person, ipso facto, to have three acres and a cow. From the get go. Without cost and without debt.

So good luck to those shaking in their boots about UBI while desperately trying to maintain their standing as Catholics.

Universal basic wage, citizen's income, social dividend, citizenship revenue, guaranteed revenue - whatever you want to call it, in whatever the form, these are not new and they are not theories and they are not about supplement. Check out the Social Credit history of Canada for starters.

It's an inclusive Primary Transaction. And there is always a Primary Transaction in every economy no matter what. The question is: who, what parties, is that Primary Transaction going to be between?

The point of the principle of UBI (or whatever you want to call it) is not so much wealth redistribution; the point of it is that it leads to an economy that is immanently maintainable. As many people owning as possible. It can take hits without cataclysmic seismic shifts and the upending of the country.

It's kinda sorta like the bottle deposit system. The problem that people have with UBI (or whatever form of social dividend) is that it is not sexy. And that's always why people reject an answer and solution that is actually proportionate to reality - because it is simple and not sexy.

It's like buying an older Chevy truck pre-2000 instead of buying the latest model with all the new electronics and planned obsolescence built into the transmission, literally planned to the kilometer: the old truck is repairable, servicable, maintainable, will last not only a lifetime, but multiple lifetimes, while the other? The repairs are so expensive you may just as well switch over your lease to next latest model. And to the next latest after that. And none of those trucks will you ever actually own.

Everything, everything, everything on this good green earth needs at some point to be maintained, serviced, repaired, restored, kept in check, re-balanced, etc. The economy most certainly included. And there's something to be said how the emphasis is as much on basic as on universal.

And it's not sexy.

And just admit it, you champs of subsidiarity don't actually believe in subsidiarity.

Always remember

The Great Depression was not fallout.

It was deliberately sustained.

The entire premise of taxation is protection. It's a public transaction that's supposed to regulate and honour the man-made social instrument called money.

The man-made social instrument called money is totally transactional from beginning to end: it does not come into existence without a transaction, it does not move from party to party without a transaction, it does not sit in your bank account without a transaction. When you put your money in the bank you are not putting it into a safety deposit box; you are making a transaction. And even when there is a "crash" or a "bail out" - that too is a transaction, a transfer of wealth, ones in which one party forces the other party into being an absolute liability, when they themselves are the ones liable for the crisis.

If everything is privatized then taxes are nothing but theft, and our system of government nothing but plutocracy, and the people you vote for nothing but lapdogs to anonymous rich people.

The protection that is taxation must itself be protected. It is protected (and honoured) by government initiating the adventure of evidencing public wealth (infrastructure, health care, public bank, etc.) in resistance to private entities seeking to define wealth to their own benefit (fractional reserve lending, gold standard, rent/insurance economy, etc.)

People refer to those rich people as the go-getters, the ones who work hard, etc. That's not the case at all. They are merely people who have done the trick of defining wealth to their own benefit.

What if the Profit Motive was connected to standardization of quality rather than to its degradation?

Put another way: what if the government issued punitive taxes on producers who seek higher profits by watering down/substituting/planning obsolescence in their products, and incentivized producers who met quality standards?

The removal of The Cost of Doing Business - or deregulation - would need to be accomplished in tandem with rewarding quality standardization.

Then you would have competition of parties aiming for quality, rather than competition of parties aiming for profit. The Profit Motive will be infected with other considerations.

Why common good capitalism?

Yeah, just the common good, thanks. I don't need it several times removed.

The common good is a more concrete reality than the GDP or the Stock Market.

GDP and the Stock Market have become little more than superstitious time delay/expiry dated advance lotteries that conservatives idolize a hundred times more than ancient Aztecs running their lives to complex astrological patterns. Like the enlightened shamans ruling the lower class, the conservatives warn that if any of this very complex system is ever undone (don't sign those climate pacts!) it will spell absolute ruin.

The Pope recognizing like a sane person that there exists complex marriage situations, with a view towards regularizing and reconciling - screw that! Time to get on board with the Restoration bitches! Oh what's that? Change the economy? You naive little underling! The economy is vast and complex the likes of which you hardly understand! Remove one thread and the whole thing will spell ruin for all!

LOL

The common good is also more specific and local in its end, whereas the others uproot and homogenize.

The common good is also more lasting, definitive, stable, whereas the others can disappear tomorrow, are amorphous from day to day, and are ever volatile, like those whimsical pagan gods who one day are benevolent and the next day demand your children's blood.

Free Trade

It ain't trade, and it ain't free.

Free Market

It ain't a market, and it ain't free.

And no blame to local establishment businesses who shut down shop because the offer is just too rich and are replaced with rows of communist-era-style condos

But we need borders to protect the public interest! Immigrants must come through the proper way! We must have national sovereignty!

Alright.

And what about foreigners laundering their money across the border and inflating real estate so that the legal citizens who actually work here are subject to a foreign-interest feudal rent economy in which the value of their productions and labours is sucked dry and they are forced into debt just in order to be able to have a place to live in and food to eat?

But the inflation of real estate is good for the economy!

LOL.

Huh, imagine that

Guernsey or bust

When the private commercial banks create the money, then your government is nothing but a shill.

Look to Guernsey. Stop ignoring the Public Bank of Canada Act. Kill the Federal Reserve and outlaw fractional reserve lending.

Or perish utterly.

Universal Basic Income

"We think that, in a system where a (more social) conception of property would be in force, this axiom ('nothing for nothing') would not be able to survive. Quite to the contrary, the law of usus communis would lead us to establish that, at least and foremost, what regards the basic material and spiritual needs of the human person, it is proper for people to get, for nothing, as many things as possible... The human person being served in his basic necessities is only, after all, the first condition of an economy which does not deserve to be called barbarous.

"The principles of such an economy would lead to a better understanding of the profound meaning and the essentially human roots of the idea of inheritance, in such a way that... all men, upon entering into the world, could effectively enjoy, in some way, the condition of being a heir of the preceding generations." --Jacques Maritain, Integral Humanism

"Finally, it is this equal condition of being coheirs of everyone's efforts which makes it feasible for all people to get, as much as possible and at no cost, a share of the basic material and spiritual goods that are required for human existence." --Jacques Maritain, Principles of a Humanistic Economy

Ox guts

But! But! The gold standard! The gold standard!

We need to go back to the Gold Standard!

LOL.

Protection

The issue of protection has faded from the economics discussion because we have lost the shrewdness of our ancestors. One of the primary purposes of government is to protect the people, to protect the common good. The notion that the economy is not used to determine the well-being and moral state of a people - or to put it another way - that grave evil and harm cannot take root in a people through their economy, is very foolish.

The ancients recognized it, but the idol of the Free Market today keeps people blinded and bound. Our ancestors of long ago and not-so-long-ago had no problem stating that the private monopolization of the economy has very detrimental effects on human life all the way around. They had no problems stating so while being free from the armchair alarmism that pontificates at every drop of the hat about the threat of socialist doctrine that reduces man to a part completely determined by the economy. That's because our ancestors retained a capacity for shrewdness.

But among the conservative circles today cowed into unthinking deductionism by the hyper-inflated threat of socialism repeat the same old formulas about the free market and inflation and taxes and the gold standard and the invisible hand (lol), and there is a level of cupidity there that is really astounding.

Older interview but really good

"The money that has been inflating prices has been the commercial banks inflating real estate prices, inflating education prices, inflating prices for stocks and bonds...the inflationary money creation is by the commercial banks, not by the government. And nobody is talking about that. It's the banks that are creating money. Somehow people have believed that inflation is very good if what's going up is the price of your home. But then when the price goes down, what's really gone up is your debt. And what people thought was an asset boom and net worth and wealth creation - as Alan Greenspan said - it turns out to be debt creation. It's the private debt that is the residue of the bubble economy. Instead of trying to resolve that problem, by writing down the debts to the ability to pay, by writing down housing debts to the real value of the house or the current mortgage, or writing it down to the one quarter of your income - that used to be normal and is normal in other countries - by refusing to roll back the private debt and write it down, the government is pushing austerity here just exactly as the pound is doing, as the euro zone is doing. So all you have to do is look at Greece and Spain and Ireland and you say is this going to be America's future under this kind of pretense that government debt is bad and bank debt is good - run into more debt, that will save us - it's as if they believe the Americans can borrow their way out of debt. That's the current policy." --Michael Hudson.

Write down the debt

The government has the sovereign privilege. It is not like a household budget.

Public spending does not require taxes. Print the money and spend it into the economy - public infrastructure - without going through (tying everything up to) the private banks that financialize everything that ought not to be financialized.

We had in Canada the social credit system from the early thirties which got us out of the depression and which built our entire infrastructure, until Trudeau decided to ignore the Public Bank of Canada Act and went to the private banks. Within just two years of doing this the debt soared many, many, many times over the amount of debt that Canada had up until then even from its inception as a country.

Stop feeding the F.I.R.E. sector (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) as though we needed it. We don't. It is not the real economy.

Debt deflation is what's happening - together with asset price inflation.

Understand that term, "debt deflation". We don't have inflation, but debt deflation.

When will people wake up? Michael Hudson is one of the few I watch who actually talks sense.