Guaranteed Income and Supply Side Econ.

["John Gelles" <johng@xxxxxxxxxx>]

    o  A robust supply side economics regime is NOT
        just cutting taxes to permit higher potential private
        investment.  Such investment will only be likely
        if real profits are in store for investors. Else,
        tax cuts will generate higher real profits for the
        few (who are rich) now--without systematically
        increasing the output pie (to make it possible to
        raise the minimum standard living by law.)

    o  By a "robust supply side regime" we mean all
        the difficult legislation and direction it will take
        to protect the entrepreneurial element of a
        profit-driven system of production (including
        anti-trust and low interest loans, etc.), as well
        as, the subsidized cooperative production of
        national priority items--including projects too
        big to depend on profit as we know it.

        The regime includes the profound public and
        private systems that dovetailed in such past
        projects and schemes as the transcontinental
        railroads, Panama canal, TVA, lend-lease,
        Marshall plan, NASA, and all the vast
        engineering details one must get right to be
        rich in the weapons of war and the industrial
        base for peace and war.

    o  Only with such robust supply side regime can
        one boast, as Henry Liu does, as follows:

"The math is actually quite simple.  A guaranteed
income of $20,000 per capita for an economy of 259
million will cost $5 trillion per year. (The US GDP is
in excess of $9 trillion.  The GNP [may be $2 trillion
higher.] )
" [Now] if income creates demand and demand
creates supply, there will be a booming economy with
a minimum guaranteed per capita income of $20K
or $80K for a family of four.
"The rest is obfuscation."
        -- Henry C.K. Lliu, 17 Dec 2001

    o  We all, on PKT, join in this boast--but at our
        intellectual peril. We know damn well demand
        does NOT create supply.  If it did, poverty
        would not be possible.

    o  Our Thatcherite opponents know damn well
        supply does NOT create demand. If it did,
        poverty--as we know it-- would not be
        possible.

    o  Henry Liu is too smart to say, "the rest is
        obfuscation" -- yet he did say it !

        The rest is DETAIL-- and EVERYTHING
        is in the details.  That's what he really meant!

    o  Money, I say is like language. Anyone can use
        one. But, as Carnap noted, "the logical syntax
        of language is SCIENCE" !   Most writers are
        bogged down in ILLOGICAL languages.

    o  Foremost among these illogical tongues is eco-
        nomics.  Those conversant with it have yet to
        help set the stage for people to create the supply
        of what we ALL need--or for people to create
        profitable demand for as much supply as we
        HAVE !

    o  One of our major problems is that some who
        speak economics have sound specialized
        knowledge in a very small segment of the big
        reality involved. And so they dismiss all that
        does not easily fit their own narrow reality.

    o  The problems of engineering a system to satisfy
        both the supply and demand sides of a modern
        production system (to put food on the table and
        sound money in your jeans) are deep, wide and
        dynamic, i.e., ever-changing.

        They seem as far from solution today as
        they did after V-J day, when we scrapped
        management by objectives and went back to
        constructive destructive consumerism--so that
        funds for education and national security would
        be provided by shopping for nail polish down at
        the mall.
                     After all, who needed logic when
                     the war was over?

            John Gelles