Sleepy, i wasn’t aware of this other party but if they are advocating the same thing that’s to the credit of DSC ultimately, although it’s a big IF?
I don’t think other parties are saying the same thing but i know what you are meaning, and yes of course, refute one nonsense and another one will take its place, and there’s a truth in that no matter how dum the current dismissal may be, which i’ll ignore here unless you really want those addressed?
I rather think Joseph Geobbels would be completely envious of the new media systems now serving private interests just as he was, and they are far more encompassing than what he was playing with.
Thks, even.

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“Sleepy said “The Democratic Party of New Zealand have a very similar policy platform of yoursâ€?……..yep, that’s because Democrats for Social Credit was the Democratic party of New Zealand. You obviously missed my links?”

Apologies Evan, I meant the Direct Democracy Party of New Zealand.
http://www.ddp.co.nz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=46

Of course people desire all those things, but all other parties promise those same things as well, and the Social Credit Party has the added challenge of educating the populace of the current banking, finance, and economic realities, whilst contending with their critics dismissing them as the “funny money” party.

“New Zealand Democratic Party for Social Credit

An old favourite. Earned 21 per cent of the vote at the 1981 election but won only two seats. Acquired a reputation as the “funny money” party because of its economic policy.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10339555

“Funny money from Coralie Leyland, the elderly face of Social Credit, who got heckled with “print more money”. She does need to go home and knit and stop finding foreign banking conspiracies. She wasn’t the local candidate though, I guess there is only one straight-jacket in the party.”
http://libertyscott.blogspot.com/2005/09/aro-valley-electoral-meeting-verdict.html

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Sleepy said “The Democratic Party of New Zealand have a very similar policy platform of yours”……..yep, that’s because Democrats for Social Credit was the Democratic party of New Zealand. You obviously missed my links?

“Although I greet the renewl of the Social Credit movement as a political force, I don’t think that in the current political climate it has any chance of making the necessary 5%”

Oh, we would do much better than making 5%.
Whenever people find out what we represent, it’s greeted with a yes in my experience. Independent Worker’s rights: an economy that inherently rewards and distributes wealth(employers and employees both on same team, both workers, no finance power in the middle); not one that rewards finance and concentrates it( it is the difference between someone working fulltime and not being able to pay their powerbill in time, like a recent tragic case, or working full time and owning thier own home, supporting their entire family while wife raises family if desired and being able to afford family holidays, more leisure time etc).
A commonwealth built into the system, not being more dependent on one or the other of individualism or various degrees of collectivism but both, making them essentially one and the same and in unison as they really are. Sustainable growth, democracy not bureacracy, a people’s media etc
We are not the party that will get “Moonshine the Monetary Reforming Morepork” advertised on msm, or acknowledgement by the media for one reason; we advocate a clear and logical path for the distribution of NZ’s wealth for all to share in with the framework of capitalism working as it’s suppose to work, to the benefit of all and not a few, basic neccesities available as a right, not a consumer priviledge.
New Zealanders gave over 20% of the vote to Democrats for Social Credit(which lead to mmp) and they didn’t even understand the platform, that is a clue is it not?
And the world needs it, someone has to lead:

http://www.democrats.org.nz

“New Zealand is an island nation. We are in the position of being able to set our own standards, determine our own direction and live according to our beliefs without unduly affecting any other nation. We can make our own rules. Our geographical isolation liberates us: we can please ourselves, and act courageously in our own best interests.

Unlike the Local Government Rates Inquiry report, Democrats for social credit monetary reform policies give New Zealanders the freedom to choose an independent future.”

Stephnie deRuyter
Party Leader

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Evan.

Apologies for not addressing you until now. I am familiar of the work of Clifford Hugh Douglas, who I learnt of from reading Death Grip by Michael Rowbotham, and Healthy Money, Healthy Planet by Deidre Kent, which forms the basis of my views on Economics. Although I greet the renewl of the Social Credit movement as a political force, I don’t think that in the current political climate it has any chance of making the necessary 5% and will only have a chance if they combine with likeminded political parties as a voting bloc. The Democratic Party of New Zealand have a very similar policy platform of yours and according to its leader has received interest from the Republican Party in merging.

“All of this was to counter Douglas because they saw that if Douglas came in with the social credit and the National Dividend, the power of the bankers and financing the production/purchasing power gap would be cut off at the knees.”

Alongside that they refer to the hyperinflationary printing of money by the Weimar Republic between the World Wars so as to tar the Social Credit movement with the same brush, whilst ignoring the fact that the reason the German government printed money in such huge quantities was to escape the onerous war reparations imposed by the Versaillies Treaty, whilst suffering the effects of the Great Depression. Some things never change, eh? Funny how US industrialists were only too happy to invest in Germany after Hitler came to power. Hmm.

“(’I know the secret of making the average American believe anything I want him to. Just let me control television…. You put something on the television and it becomes reality. If the world outside the TV set contradicts the images, people start trying to change the world to make it like the TV set images…..’

Hal Becker, media ‘expert’ and management consultant, the Futures Group, in an interview in 1981)”

He would likely admire Joseph Geobbels, the Nazi propoganda minister then.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.�

“Economic Democracy has to be built into the system, independent, not dependent, on people. It’s the only way Democracy has ever worked.”

Thats my belief too, but as long as we have the hogs in charge of the trough and the foxes in charge of the henhouse, true democracy has not got a chance.

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Gerrit, it is out of courtesy to your reference to what i posted only that i’m bothering replying to your post, not for any desire to reconcile chalk and cheese!
If you are remotely serious in wanting to understand the very simple and harmonous principle of Social Credit debt free capitalism, go to http://www.democrats.org.nz and post your confusion over there and it’ll get answered; but if you stop and think, it may come to you from what is posted here. Philosophically, your argument is why would people do something that they don’t have to? The answer to that is why did people start forming agrarian societies over 2000 B.C. years ago?

2)Over half a century ago, a financial and industrial backed Fascist regime was able to use IBM machines to catalogue and isolate an entire race over the whole continent of Europe, which it occupied. Where did the strength for this situation to fully manifest come from, just more dumb politicians?

A couple of quotes: “And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to recieve a mark on their right hand, or in their forehead: And that no man might buy or sell save he had the mark.”-Revelation 13:16
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72S87-dWka4&mode=related&search=

“look how stupid everyone is, we can do whateva we want to do”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXL5kYZ2bTU&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvtOzxt6uZM&mode=related&search=

Three cheers for debt based democracy!!!
Beauracracy, of the people, by the people, for the “elite” class.

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samiuela

“You seem to have read something about Marx’

Yes I have actually only started reading Das Kapital in the last few days. I’ve known of his writings since high school, although the education system that I studied under (extremely conservative, American Christian education), understandably, wasn’t particularly complementary towards the rationalist philosphical movement that Marx was a member of.

Alot of he wrote is true today as it was 150 years ago, but the world has also changed markedly. He either was not aware of the concept of fractional reserve banking or didn’t envisage the complete delinking of money from a commodity value, which was completed when Nixon told international markets that the US dollar was no longer exchangeable for gold, he probably couldn’t imagine women’s emancipation let alone women’s suffrage or feminism, he certainly wouldn’t have imagined to the extent the material possessions, that even the poor can accumulate in the Western world, nor how universal education and healthcare could be distorted for corporate ends, plus he assumed no limits of resources.

Personally I identify myself as a Green Syndicalist as I believe the class struggle, domination of economic affairs by the “capitalist” elite, and environmental destruction are inextricably linked.
http://www.cvoice.org/shantz.htm

“Abit off subject but if you have read alot of marx like i, and i would assume many on this forum, have. then i would advise also reading some of the work by Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, the three together are considered the grandfathers of modern sociology and they, together, present a very well rounded view on society and what makes it tick, marx by himself focuses too much on class structure and because of that looses alot of perspective (and accuracy).”

Thanks for the recommendations Sapient. I’ll make a point to look into the writings of those two that you cited. Perhaps you’d like to read this analysis of Marx.
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-marx.htm

“…for mental health disorders, alot of the increase is due to better meathods of detection and wider classifications.”

I did not mean to imply that the transformation of work is responsible all the increases mental health disorders in recent times, but as you say the un/employment related stresses are responsible for a good portion.

“It is this stumbling block that is often overlooked. It doesn’t matter if it is communism or capitalism – you have to pay somebody (they need to eat while building the factories) to set up the infastructure – factories, plant and equipment, transport system to get goods to purchasers, housing for workers, public transport to get workers to their work and most importantly to shops to buy the goods produced by the fellow workers, etc., etc., etc.”

Gerrit.
People forget that Marx wasn’t a hopeless utopian, anarchist, he acknowledged the need for “market” to both produce/purchase goods and services. What his writings were, was a critique of the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the elite capitalist classes (hmm some things haven’t changed) and a roadmap of how to achieve a more equal apportioning of both. In fact he wrote of the necessity of implementing a progressive, graduated income tax. Can’t have a tax on something that doesn’t exist, but then he hadn’t envisioned a fiat based fractional reserve banking system.

Like I said to samiula previously, people don’t just work to meet their basic needs, but to have leisure time and experiences, personal mobility, communications with widely dispersed loved ones, often it enables them to contribute to the public good, they are able to feel proud of their accomplishments, it enables them to achieve a higher level of status or influence etc etc. i.e they enjoy working, NOT bcause they want to see mere digits on their bank statement.

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BJ.
You may wish to avoid the coupling of ecological wisdom and justice with the social justice agendas, but these things are impossible to separate. You cannot exercise one without accepting the other.
================
If resources shrink and those with good land, resources and power to support them kill off those without, that is ecological wisdom.

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Gerrit,

You are correct that labour required to build the infrastructure, produce any raw materials (metal, oil or whatever) also has to be factored in to the value of the product.

In a capitalist economy, the cost of the capital is (hopefully) covered by the accumulated profits. Furthermore, most capitalists won’t be happy if the profits only recover the cost of the capital, they will want a return over and above that.

To be fair to Marx, he mainly wrote about the capitalist economy, and wrote very little about how a communist economy would work. Perhaps his most well known work on communism is “The Communist Manifesto”, but this pales into insignificance when compared to the number of pages he wrote in Capital, and other works analysing the capitalist mode of production. Mind you, the Communist Manifesto is much easier reading than the other works, which are rather dry, in my personal opinion. Therefore, to claim that Marx was “proven wrong” because the economies of the Eastern European countries were so inefficient misses the point that Marx mostly wrote about capitalism.

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Samiueli,

“Therefore, you will understand that Marx believed that the value of products and services is, on average, determined by how much labour goes into creating the products and services.”

Dont forget to add in the cost of labour to create the infastructure, buildings and equipment needed to provide the goods and services.

These are usually capital costs that needed to be provided before you can generate income (and are able to collect taxes) from the goods and services.

It is this stumbling block that is often overlooked. It doesn’t matter if it is communism or capitalism – you have to pay somebody (they need to eat while building the factories) to set up the infastructure – factories, plant and equipment, transport system to get goods to purchasers, housing for workers, public transport to get workers to their work and most importantly to shops to buy the goods produced by the fellow workers, etc., etc., etc.

In a capitalist society the providers of the start up capital will want a return on their investment while in a communist system the state does not.

Even,

The social credit system is like all monetory distribution systems in being totally reliant on the right balance between tax payers and tax recipients.

Unless you address how you would maintain that balance (and make it worthwhile for the tax payers to get out of bed and generate the taxes) then I cant see your system working at all.

Your raygun example shows that state servants are more interested in arms production rather then alms distribution. That is not the fault of the monetory system, just the dumb politicians.

“so enjoy your personalised RFI chip when it’s made available for your own good of course”

No wonder nobody takes social creditors seriously when you come out with statements like that.

Even in the country with the biggest database computer capacity they cant get one state department to talk to another. An illegal immegrant can work in the USA, pay taxes, get a drivers license, work for a union and still not be picked up by their much vaunted homeland security system.

What you are forgetting with the chipping business is the pure volume of information arriving every second in a database somewhere. That information has to be queried into meaningful data and then some tax recipient has to do something with that information. No, those chipping system simply fall over under the weight of information and the inability to action it.

Have a look at the growing problem of toll evasion on major Sydney highways and how incapable the toll operators are in collecting the fines.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/revealed-toll-road-freeforall/2006/09/19/1158431711219.html

Now mutiply this by a billion world wide and you have the reason chipping is not going to work. You simply cannot digest all the information flowing into the system and then enforce it.

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Sleepy

Actually you did say “no punitive taxes” or something like that about a zillion posts ago and I took that as a maybe you didn’t mean it the way it came out sort of statement. It does make a difference and the Greens proposal of taxing polluters and taxing energy use/abuse would seem to fit reasonably well with the rest of your system.

Which is why I have been so hard on you in some ways. I needed to know where the gelt was coming from, even if I agreed with the rest of your thesis.

Now I have to digest this, for with the loop complete it looks much more like some Green party proposals than it did at first.

respectfully
BJ

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Samiuela, i’m no authority but……
I don’t think Marx was about taxing the productive sectors(workers) of society in place of the more unproductive sectors.
Mayby if you study Marx, that’s what the conclusion is presented as these days.
I could explain the social dividend from a Social Credit economy, and some fundamental re-alignment that would cause; but i’m annoyed that no one else seems to understand, on the thread, a pretty simple mechanism that has been inferred so i shan’t!
Let’s just say the last year has seen a record amount of wealth put into the arms race around the world with new technologies including rayguns, (that’s what we need isn’t it?) for a systemic reason and debt based democracy continues to concentrate the wealth of it’s peoples into smaller and smaller hands….so enjoy your personalised RFI chip when it’s made available for your own good of course.

p.s. i got my spelling right and that’s probably all that matters:)

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sleepy,
abit off subject but if you have read alot of marx like i, and i would assume many on this forum, have. then i would advise also reading some of the work by Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, the three together are considered the grandfathers of modern sociology and they, together, present a very well rounded view on society and what makes it tick, marx by himself focuses too much on class structure and because of that looses alot of perspective (and accuracy).
as for mental health disorders, alot of the increase is due to better meathods of detection and wider classifications, while it is true that the stresses of the modern capitalist world do alot of damage, that is more due to an inability of most people in these times being unable to cope with the stressors, the result being… stress.

although, funny thing is, you seem to be in about the same place ideologicaly as me

sapient

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SleepyTreehugger,

You seem to have read something about Marx … maybe you even think you are a Marxist? Therefore, you will understand that Marx believed that the value of products and services is, on average, determined by how much labour goes into creating the products and services.

OK, if you accept the above premise (and it is not widely accepted amongst Western economists, but that is another issue), then you will realise that the UBI you advocate must represent a certain amount of labour, somewhere in the economy. The only way such a UBI could be sustainable is if workers are prepared to sacrifice a portion of their labour to maintain the UBI (because there will always be some people who can’t work for whatever reason). Now so far, what I have said is not radical, taxation for social welfare programmes is an example. However, you seem to claim that the UBI can somehow be sustained without a tax on the productive elements of the economy. This is just not possible, unless you reject the premise that the value of products and service is determined by the labour required to create them.

Now I’m not saying that the above argument is correct, but I got the impression you were supporting Marx’s ideas. Therefore, I just wanted to point out how a Marxist might criticise your idea of a UBI which does not require a tax on the productive sectors of society.

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bjchip

Perhaps it may appear that I am a naive, idealistic, utopian hippie, I assure you, I am not.

“A basic income for fogging a mirror. Does this make sense? What does it cost society?”

The question is not, what does it cost society, but how much does it save it. You must have noticed a vast increase in the prevalence in mental health disorders and the attendant prescription of antidepressants and other related medication over the last few decades. There are many studies linking the increase with the “transformation” of work and attendant uncertainty that comes with it. People aren’t worried about their jobs per se, but about how they are gonna meet their next payment on their mortgage/rent, car, how they are going to put food on the table etc.
http://www.mhsip.org/nimhdoc/socioeconmh_home2.htm

“Effectively the cost of raising a child appears to be rendered zero by such policies.”

I proposed a minimum basic income sufficient to support an individual, not a family, with an emphasis on minimum, and if people who are unwilling or unable to find work, decide to have a family, they must meet the needs of the extra family members out of their combined income by being taught skills that will equip them to rely on themselves if need be, rather then the supermarket for food, the Warehouse for clothes etc. I think its preferable to the current policy of subsidising the breeding of the poor by redistributing income from those that are slightly better off.

The causes of inflation are a) speculative activity that merely reprices the assets to favour the prospective buyer when he in turn sells it b) when demand outstrips supply, which is caused by an expansion in buyers or c) a contraction in supply caused by the inputs being put to different uses, the change of land use in Europe and America for the production of biofuel is a good example of this. A minimum basic income will create none of these scenarios.

“You further assert no taxes… BB must think he’s died and gone to heaven… but the costs of government can’t be provided this way but by debasing the medium of exchange.”

I did not say that there should be no tax. In my opinion taxes should be used to provide benefits to wider society (land tax, capital gains tax), to counteract market inefficiencies (taxes or subsidies for inefficient/efficient resource use), and to ensure that costs of production are not able to be socialised to the wider community (carbon tax, pollution tax). What it is used for at the moment is to privatise the benefits and socialise the costs. Education/research is a particularly apt example.

“They are WORKING as hard as they can with what they have and there are many many workers, but their productivity is not great per-capita.”

Thats the problem with aggregate statistics, people are able to justify the poor pay that Chinese workers are being paid by citing a statistic that lumps the productive worker in with the rest of the population, without taking into account the fact that the majority of the country is “undeveloped” and thus deemed “underproductive”.

“Marx erred when he expected the state to whither away and die. Jefferson understood that dynamic better, but the economic effects and class warfare issues were somewhat opaque to him.”

I’m not calling for the abolition of either governments or finance, but feel that both should be severly restricted as they can too be corrupted for ill purposes.

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Sleepy

A basic income for fogging a mirror. Does this make sense? What does it cost society? I am not convinced, for it must cost somewhere. One cost will be unrestrained population growth. Effectively the cost of raising a child appears to be rendered zero by such policies. You say the costs will be apportioned more fairly but I see no mechanism in this thread, where they are apportioned at all.

You assert that we can borrow it from our central banks… and repay it with what? If the debt is not paid it WILL give you currency inflation. Yes, you’ll be able to measure it. You won’t be able to stop it. You further assert no taxes… BB must think he’s died and gone to heaven… but the costs of government can’t be provided this way but by debasing the medium of exchange. You are palming a card someplace in your process and it is not laid out well enough for the sleight-of-hand to be identified , but if it is ever attempted the result will show it up pretty fast.

OTOH, the use and misuse of the central banks by governments and others, is no joke. Their control over everything has played out with every bit of the evil consequences that are to be expected when some people are given such absolute controls. Perhaps this bad idea is a valid counterpoise to that one… but the fact that the banks now “lend money into existence” is simply a mistake. You offer this problem as a solution. The banks should not be able to lend money that does not exist… it is not something that can be created from thin-air.

Your argument about Chinese productivity (with samiuela) holds no water. The people of China (in much the same ways but in greater degree as the people of New Zealand) are prevented from reaching their maximum productivities by the absence of reliable and adequate infrastructure. They are WORKING as hard as they can with what they have and there are many many workers, but their productivity is not great per-capita.

The lesson that the current structures and rorts of the central banks are wrong does not in any way make your extension of the “we can print all the money we need” meme correct. Marx erred when he expected the state to whither away and die. Jefferson understood that dynamic better, but the economic effects and class warfare issues were somewhat opaque to him.

I don’t think your answer AS GIVEN here is valid. I think your criticisms of the current situation are well-founded and that there may well be another path to travel that we might choose but I don’t see a complete answer yet.

respectfully
BJ

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“it doesn’t really matter if we have a capitalistic or socialistic or communistic economic system because we already have the technology to produce what we need. The difference between these systems is merely a shuffling of bosses among elites”

“Yes. Douglas said that. He said all of those issues are management and production. They’re all the same anyway once you take them out of the social context and look at the actual macro-economics of the company.”

I happen to think that socialism and in some cases communism, are socially more inclined to give more ameilorative social outcomes, but it depends greatly on having a wise, generous King and group pschology will win out in the end, and until that downfall, the system will still be frustrating in not providing the optimum outcomes to the population.

Economic Democracy has to be built into the system, independent, not dependent, on people. It’s the only way Democracy has ever worked. That’s not to say i don’t believe in people, i do, but people not interested in status, income will not get near positions with that emphasis over those that are( apart from the odd instance, here and there that do happen and when it all rarely all comes together, you have a celebrated leader etc) in the current debt based environment.

People have traits that differentiate them from animals, it’s what can make us the fittest of all and guardains of the rest; or by the degrading those traits, the unfittest of them all and the destructor of the rest. It’s the environment we create and choose to live in that determines this.

http://www.democrats.org.nz

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“Some groups, however, were more aggressive. The American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, which represents more than 1,000 corporations, submitted several dozen pages and rejected most of the draft law. And, according to their own English translation, they also gave the Darwinian advice, “that the fittest survives is the basic principle of all creatures.â€?
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3017/fights_over_chinese_labor_reform/

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bjchip

“Don’t confuse justice with the concept that someone must pay.
One is a desireable outcome and the other is as I see it, a law of nature.
Which is why mucking about with the currency itself is not a good idea.”

I’m confusing no such thing. I am NOT advocating the free dispensing of money to all in sundry and to hell with the consequences any more than I am saying that there will be no costs. What I AM saying is that a) it will ensure that the costs will be apportioned more fairly than they currently are and b) the costs won’t be nearly as onerous as the dissmissers of the idea say it will be.

The aspirations of the Greens will NOT be able to be met without a drastic reform of the current economic and financial systems despite how trendy it is to say so, how much fiddling around the edges that popular Green parties like the German Greens do, how much bleating and handringing is done by aging rockstars and Hollywood actors, and how many world government forums you go to, in the end its not gonna make a jot of difference, without drastic change.

I think people often forget that money was intended as a voluntary means of exchange between two consenting parties, but what it has mutated into is a form of economic extortion. No different now than it was during the Middle Ages and the Age of “Reason”. Actually its becoming very much like the age of autocracy, where a small number of people are controlling a disproportionate share of the wealth, particularly land through their suborning of governments, who provide them favours in the guise of helping the wider community. The latest debacle of the Subprime real estate market is a classic example of this.

http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/2032.html

Everyone

Despite how trendy it is to assert to the contrary, Marx’s concepts of Dialectic Materialism and the class struggle have NOT been disproven and social darwiniasm was not defeated with the overthrow of Italian and German fascism due to World War II. Both fascism and social darwinism are very much alive and well.

BUFFETT: It’s class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn’t be.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/10/buffett/index.html

“There’s class warfare, all right,� Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.�
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html?ex=1322197200&en=0cf857b8cb918674&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

“Paul Krugman: Class War Politics”
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/06/paul_krugman_cl.html

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Toad can you please upload my post.

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sapient.

Thanks for your clarification.

samiuela.

“Whatever, if you don’t have the labour to produce these things, you simply won’t get them, no matter how much money you print.”

People don’t work merely because government’s coerce them into it or even to merely satisfy basic human needs such as food and shelter, but to participate in leisure activites, personal mobility, etc etc. Forms of a universal basic income have been implemented in the United States with much success, but it has not gained wide popularity, because it conflicts with powerful entrenched interests i.e. politicians, government beauracrats, financiers, and corporate interests.

“The New Jersey test results were similar. They determined that in a national guaranteed income program:

· The reduction in labor supply is likely to be quite modest, less than 10%, at most.
· Any reduction will be distributed across many workers rather than concentrated among a few.
· The degree of reduction will not be very sensitive to the particular guarantee and tax rate chosen.”
http://www.usbig.net/papers/013-Sheahen.doc

“The reality is, profits generated in the banking industry do come from somewhere, as you correctly point out.”

Read this interview of Bernard Litaer, who oversaw the creation of the Euro.

“Furthermore, I believe that greed and competition are not a result of immutable human temperament; I have come to the conclusion that greed and fear of scarcity are in fact being continuously created and amplified as a direct result of the kind of money we are using.
For example, we can produce more than enough food to feed everybody, and there is definitely enough work for everybody in the world, but there is clearly not enough money to pay for it all. The scarcity is in our national currencies. In fact, the job of central banks is to create and maintain that currency scarcity. The direct consequence is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive.

Money is created when banks lend it into existence (see article by Thomas Greco on page 19). When a bank provides you with a $100,000 mortgage, it creates only the principal, which you spend and which then circulates in the economy. The bank expects you to pay back $200,000 over the next 20 years, but it doesn’t create the second $100,000 – the interest. Instead, the bank sends you out into the tough world to battle against everybody else to bring back the second $100,000.”
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=886

jh

That guy in the article that you linked to reveals his ignorance of current, modern, financial realities.

“Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital writes, “In current theory, the excess cash piling up around the world is like manna from heaven. Don’t believe the hype. Liquidity is merely a euphemism for inflation. Asset prices, including stocks, are simply rising to reflect the diminished value of the currencies in which they are traded. Wealth is not being created, merely re-priced.”

“If that had been your question, I could have saved us both a lot of time by merely sending you to Online.wsj.com, which reports that, “‘Margin Debt’ Hits Record $353 Billion on NYSE”, which means that, “Investors are borrowing record sums of money to finance trades on the New York Stock Exchange.”

http://www.kitco.com/ind/Daughty/jul202007.html

“As a Big Swinging Dick hedge fund with the most stellar partners and a huge capital base, LTCM was able to convince banks to lend them money at rates that were not available to lesser mortals (including investment banks like Salomon Brothers). LTCM used this credit to leverage their capital base by a factor of twenty to thirty times. In the first few years this allowed LCTM to make spectacular profits for themselves and their investors.”
http://www.bearcave.com/bookrev/genius_fails.html

Another article in support of a universal basic income.
http://thewatermelon.org/content/view/93/32/1/3/

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