An excellent piece!
Thanks!
I definitely agree with the idea of a social safety net,
I wouldn’t say I agree with the average “
liberal’s” idea of a social safety net, but I definitely support a
guranteed income, partly because it achieves the basic underlying goal of a social safety net without all of the ridiculously wasteful bureaucratic paper-shuffling we have now.
and even more with the idea of a living wage that allows the common working man to live a life sufficient to reflect the respectability which his labor has earned him, and to allow him sufficient leisure time to develop his intellectual, artistic, and/or craftsmanship skills to the utter extent of his talent.
What annoys me to no end is that so many of the establishment liberal types who presume to speak on behalf of the “common working man,” and who promote the idea of a “living wage,” almost always insist on
taxing wages to death. Ever notice how Michael Moore, for instance, never speaks out against the horribly regressive payroll tax?
As to the few establishment liberals who do speak out against that tax, they always insist on replacing it with the horrendous carbon tax, even though that is
itself a job-destroying tax on labor:
http://globalgulag.freesmfhosting.com/index.php/topic,333.msg984.html#msg984Such should absolutely allow him to participate in public affairs as a significant and important citizen.
And that, of course, would undoubtedly offend countless right-wing ideologues, because I often hear them peddle the
aristocratic notion that only landowners should be allowed to vote. Then they wonder why so few take them seriously when they parrot empty slogans about “liberty.”
In particular, I believe that there is definitely a place for a fiat currency,
Well, that depends on the type of fiat currency one is talking about, because there’s a world of difference between the debt-free fiat currency that I and others propose and the debt-based fiat currency we have now:
http://globalgulag.freesmfhosting.com/index.php/topic,379.0.htmlas I believe that fiat currency, carefully apportioned to allow economic growth without any undue inflationary effect, is, in fact, commodity-based,
Actually, by definition, a currency is “backed” by a given commodity only if it’s “redeemable” in that commodity. To “redeem” money means to destroy it, and hence permanently remove it from circulation. The only thing for which debt-free Greenbacks would be redeemable is the payment of taxes, so in that sense they would be backed by the same thing that currently backs U.S. bonds -- the Constitutional taxing power of the U.S. government.
with the commodity being faith in the issuing society's economic future, which I believe to be as quantifiable and accountable a commodity as goodwill on a business balance sheet.
I’m not sure it would be wise to define “faith” in something as a “commodity,” because for most people the term commodity implies something tangible that one can actually see and touch. The key is to not fall into the Austrian School trap of defining money as a commodity to begin with:
http://www.monetary.org/refute.htm http://www.monetary.org/goldnewsletter.htmThe problem that this creates: how to prevent a deflationary tailspin in times of economic stagnation or downturn, when faith in the society's economic future (i.e., the commodity basis of carefully apportioned fiat currency) will have disappeared. At this point, civic investment funded by debt instruments may restore faith in the future, and, thus, kill the deflationary monster.
Funding things with debt instruments is the very thing that got us into this mess in the first place. That’s why Greenbackers such as myself advocate financing the construction and renovation of public infrastucture with debt-free money instead:
http://www.wealthmoney.org/articles/What-Would-Happen.html
