PKT message, Reward for Risk, Work & Organization

REWARD FOR RISK, WORK & ORGANIZATION

The persistence of extreme individual poverty, and the poverty of ideas and substance (to support anti-poverty programs and national and planetary priorities,) drives Money Reform Movements (MRM's) to plump for—

deficit spending within a low interest regime
adding debt-free money (spent by nations into circulation) to loaned money (created by fractional reserve banking) as a means to pay for national priorities—and match aggregate demand to supply in a world where technology promises abundance
low taxes—with no revenue seeking taxes— except where enacted to discourage transactions (in place of a penalty) or to prevent counter-productive upward pressure on the price of necessities
monetization of federal debt that would otherwise slow recovery when growth or employment fall

Arrayed against MRM's are cries that inflation and less wealth all around are in store for any nation that intervenes in a market economy tied tightly to traditional views of money and monetary and budgetary policy.

These cries support money reward for taking risk and for working.

The reward for working they chain to free trade and the race to the bottom for wages and working conditions—the reward can fast become nil.
Reward for risk is what the market will bear.

Reward for organization is problematical:

private organization (including monopoly franchises) are praised when well rewarded.
Public organization—to reduce risk and take on the work of production and distribution of necessities (where profit is included in price which is made to reflect cost without random windfalls)—is discouraged in time of peace.

If the above is right, MRM's are perpetually in trouble. They want to organize money systems to support the public interest. But they fail to see the wide scope of organizational tasks they ask for when they radically alter our current simple-minded approach to federal budgets and taxes and to private sector prices, wages and profit.

It is overly optimistic to assume that what laws have helped to evolve can be cut loose from roots that are made of steel. If we are to align fair wages and profits as one, fixing gross profit high enough to cover cost, we assume responsibility for production and distribution of wealth—to see that they do not diminish. It is because they so often diminish that radical money reform is currently out of vogue. The last time it worked was to win WW II. It did not survive the 80th Congress.

John Gelles