Re: Capital: Its Presence, Use and Control

[John Gelles <jjgelles@xxxxxxxx>]

	Thank you Robyn Miller <lady-r@xxxxxxxxxx> for
	coming to the support of one old rentier and
	perhaps all living parents of the rest on PKT.

	If anything is implied by Per's tight linkage
	of labor to capital, it is the hope that the
	income of workers can be raised relative to the
	income of passive beneficiaries of pensions,
	dividends, interest and entitlements.

	Let us imagine that such benefits stopped. How
	much of their sum total would those in control
	allow to trickle down past the accounts of
	active bosses, to reach working men and women?
	About as much as was allowed to trickle down
	in Romania.

	Not the death of benefits based on good
	fortune, but the death of work itself --
	and replacement of human labor with human
	ingenuity, (vouchsafed to five percent of
	populations) in production, and a replacement
	of benefits based on work by benefits based
	on common sense and purpose, (as the necessary
	link between production and consumption), is
	the better thought for the day.

	Not that we will all be passive. But that we
	will all pursue decent ends as somebody's
	children -- not orphans.

	Per is my close friend -- his real thought
	is, I believe, that income from work, and
	work opportunity itself, in the current pre-
	fully automatic factory period, requires
	greater political support.  He notes that
	the Greenspan's of the World seem to offer
	excessive protection to bondholders and
	wholly inadequate protection to jobholders.
	Here I agree with him. But we must ask why?

	Why does money often command more respect
	than life itself?  Assuming it has powers
	no unlike the power of standing armies, how
	can that power be harnessed for human needs?

	Not by ending interest -- money today is
	nothing but the promise of interest.

	It can be harnessed by liberal programs that
	protect workers, pensioners and children
	from the mindless operations of a purely
	competitive market.

	A mixed economy and welfare state can be
	constructed with low taxes, low interest,
	high wages, and a high sovereign debt to GDP
	ratio -- based on the overarching principles
	of funtional finance (Keynesian), but not
	on every word Maynard may have written.


          John

      John Gelles  5706 Loma Vista Rd  Ventura, CA 93003
      Voice (805) 642-6675      Email  jjgelles@xxxxxxxx
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                     Common Economic Sense

        1. Saving, not unemployment, to fight inflation.
        2. Saving, instead of taxes, to fight inflation.
        3. Inflation protection  for savers and lenders.
        4. Keynesian financing  of national  priorities.
        5. High wages/Low taxes and interest/for growth.
        6. Microloans: A legal right to self-employment.
        7. Automation for a high minimum std. of living.
        8. Trade protection  for our defense industries.