Funding Priorities to Please Us All

["John Gelles" <jjgelles@xxxxxxxx>]

    -- Yes, I would be in favor of a  "wealth tax"  to fund
        education at all levels, (head start, etc.), and to
        reform regulatory agencies, that now cater to
        business interests, to instead see to the needs of
        workers and communities (like OSHA, EPA, etc.).
        I would also be in favor of some kind of social wage
        "law," tying the wages of labor to management's
        total compensation.   Then there's campaign
        finance reform to funded, as well.--
            -- Stolen from Ted Schmidt's last message

            I can agree with all the above, suggesting only
            that "wealth tax" be considered as but one way
            to fund the enumerated national priorities.

            There may be a better way.

            After all, a wealth tax has been suggested for
            decades, but has yet to gain popular appeal.

            What started as income tax against only the
            wealthy has ended up as payroll, income and
            death tax that are a mere pin-pricks to their
            wealthy avoiders, but which keep down the
            middle class and people far too poor to pay
            them (or find their way around them).

            I am suggesting a relative redistribution of
            wealth, in that the pie of total output would rise
            dramatically, (as government made growth in
            production and distribution of modern necessities,
            (of which the poor are often severely deprived),
            and of modern tools to "green" our industries
            and our lives.
                        The pie would grow as government
            funded national priorities in a way similar to the
            way we fund defense in wartime:  That is funded
            not with money in someone's pocket at the
            beginning of a production cycle, but with money
            created by the cycle itself.

            Such Keynesian funding does not require a
            "wealth tax", yet it raises the bottom very high up
            the economic ladder -- in effect accomplishing
            a painless but gigantic relative redistribution of
            power and wealth.
                        It gives to all, "you don't own me"
            money, to end wage slavery forever. (Often this
            "money in the bank" type independence is called
            "---- --- money" which carries its real power to
            our anglo-saxon verbal imaginations.)
                        And this method of funding priorities
            recognizes the Abba Lerner corollary to this
            fundamental Keynesian rule:

                    Government can spend ahead of its
                    revenues all that it takes to ensure
                    full employment and real prosperity
                    in a fair-to-labor democratic market
                    economy -- up to the point where
                    cheap money loses its power to
                    motivate work.

                    Whereupon the resulting money in
                    use must be re-captured in part to
                    restore money's attractiveness to
                    workers and owners of saleable
                    assets.

            As I have written countless times, we need the
            anxious rich, as well as the exploited poor, to
            see personal advantage in the above-type
            green democratic economic growth.

            It posits the recapture process mentioned
            above as including savings accounts whose
            deposits can't be lent to anyone but government
            -- and then only to raise supply in the fight against
            inflation in the price of modern necessities.

            The above plan would see the Lerner function
            of taxes, i.e., to prevent hyperinflation in the
            price of necessities, taken over by luxury
            industries. They would raise the price of luxury
            high enough to reduce its use of our time to a
            minimum.

            To make sure we are not robbed of our time,
            we of middle class lives, I would adopt Ted
            Schmidt's formulation above:

                    We must include in any individual estate
                    account (IEA) plan, a social wage
                    law, tying the wages of labor to
                    management's total compensation.

            Where does this now leave the super-rich?
            The share-holder who founds a company and
            is worth a billion dollars on paper?  It leaves him
            where he is. With a billion dollars as a counter
            force to men in politics and families of older
            entrenched wealth.

            Hit him for anti-trust, if he is as unlawful as
            William Gates. Let him try to improve the world,
            if his hero is Andrew Carnegie.
                        But before I would tax him down
            to my level I would want to be sure that a
            modern industrial nation is better off without
            the super-rich but, possibly,  under the spell
            of the super powerful voice who corrals police
            power to maintain order, or even the super
            powerful liar, like Newt Gingrich, who corrals
            legislative power in its moment of weakness.

            End taxes.  End poverty.  Impose fair labor
            standards.  Apply indexed IEA's to fight
            inflation, and contingency taxes if necessary.
            Then notice that the top one percent of the
            population will have, perhaps, ten not forty
            percent of the wealth.
                        But none of what they had in
            absolute wealth will have been distrurbed.
            Let them be rich Croesus and live among us
            who are far from poor.
                        How good can they play tennis?
            Can they carry a tune?  Do they really like
            other people?

                John Gelles
                 email    1944@xxxxxxxx
                     url    http://1944.org