Reforming the Language of Money

["John Gelles" <johng@xxxxxxxxxx>]

    o  Money talks.

    o  Money is more like language than any other thing
        you would compare it to.

    o  Money arrives spontaneously whenever war and
        murder not longer serve to get what you want.

    o  People get so used to money--if it works--that
        you can use it ahead of producing what it will buy
        --as well as afterward.  Using it ahead of time is
        what credit is all about.

    o  Owning money imposes the risk that it will be
        worthless except as paper, metal, or memory.
        Owning debt is the same--it may become worth
        no more than air.

    o  Listening the the commission to strengthen social
        security headed by Parsons and Moynihan is
        like listening to Alice in Wonderland. They are
        constantly talking of money as money and rarely
        as money connected to the things it can buy.

    o  If the pensioners and pensioners-to-be of this
        nation could speak money as the language of
        what their pension will by buy--they might
        wake up to the importance of production and
        price. They might see the hope of automation
        -- and despair of actuarial accounting as a
        lone God of Reason in this political game.

    o  Some on the left hope and see now that war
        has changed so much of the right's agenda--
        that the Bush Parsons Moynihan commission
        can be counted out  I certainly hope so.

    o  Yet on the left are some with the crazy notion
        we should leave the system--with its regressive
        high tax on wages and work--alone.  What is
        the matter with them?

    o  To strengthen social security we must insist on
        entitled (voluntary) retirement no later than 60
        years of age and a pension no less than auto-
        mated production can afford--remembering
        that deprivation after retirement is not
        necessary to motivate work.

        In other words, in today's numbers, we need
        a minimum pension of $1,500 a month for
        every mouth to feed--with free full medical
        care and a funeral.

    o  The notion that the money for these pensions
        should come from payroll taxes or investment
        accounts is nuts. The money will come from
        future production of the things it will buy.

        To organize that future production today's
        economy must be a mixed one--of production
        for profit in open markets--and of subsidized
        production and investment, as necessary.

        How do you organize the subsidized part of
        the system?  The same way we sent men to
        the moon and back.  Only, instead of most
        taxes, indexed unloaned savings may work
        better to prevent inflation--and keep up
        production at the same time.

        John Gelles