rigorousintuition.ca

(Did a quick search, but didn’t see a topic like this. Hopefully I’m not being redundant... again ☺ )

Personally I don’t think it’s possible at this point without a great deal of pain, the trick being to find ways to fairly distribute said financial suffering. In other words, the opposite of what is coming out of Washington. With M3 plunging, unemployment higher than most realize, the debt beyond all reason, the deficit beyond all reason, GDP shrinking, housing still not fully collapsed, industrial capacity outsourced, a majority of the states nearing bankruptcy and so many other things, we’ve got a nasty road ahead, again, in my opinion.

The US is essentially bankrupt.

That said, and being nothing of an economist, I’ll throw the first layman’s pie, my own top-of-my-head cloud cuckoo land wish list, in no particular order. This list doesn’t include things which wouldn’t necessarily help the economy, but which would be healthy for a democracy, such as removing corporate personhood from practice, although this step may be necessary to achieve some of the things on my list. It also doesn’t include suspected suppressed technologies being released for humanities benefit as I, personally, can’t know for sure if these things actually exist or not. It also doesn't include a few things where I feel I have no good answer, such as immigration, where I only have opinions on what I don't want to see happen, such as Arizona's recent legislation, and only really facile ideas about what I favor: if they are here they should have basic human rights, living wages and conditions.

1) Cut military spending in half, ending all wars and occupations. More cuts to be made as what is determined to be truly necessary for defense.
2) Immediate spending on infrastructure repair and plans for additional public works targeting domestic energy production and infrastructure and environmental damage assessment, mitigation. Plan for expanded national railroad system.
3) Plan/support for localized food production and jobs.
4) End the ‘War on Drugs’. Legalize and regulate. Release all non-violent drug offenders on probation. Expand drug rehab clinics.
5) Prosecute and seize assets of corrupt financial institutions and corporations, including those guilty of environmental damages.
6) Seize control of the Fed. The government will then issue interest free money domestically, adjusting the money supply as is necessary to reflect the size of the economy.
7) Tariffs on all companies not solely based within the US. Pro-rated as a percentage of company spending/ investment outside the US. Possible exceptions for goods/services not possible or difficult to produce domestically. May need some flexibility here with regard to company’s host country’s financial situation. Must include living wage/conditions and environmental guideline in importation of any product.
8 ) Revisit tax structure with an eye towards taxing extreme wealth and corporate profits.
9) Nationalize critical industries.
10) Break up monopolies.
11) Public financing of elections.
12) Medicare for all. First new jobs in Medicare to be offered to former insurance industry workers. Medical supplies, doctor fees and drug prices subject to negotiation with Medicare.
13) Shore up and reform educational system.
14) Attempt controlled collapse of housing market, as prices are still well above historical baselines.
15) Aid, as is possible, to countries the US has dominated/damaged/destroyed in order to create good will and trading partners under living wage/conditions and environmentally healthy guidelines.

Would that "fix" it? I'm certainly not qualified to say. Obviously every one of those suggestions would require an analysis of cost, savings, and benefits, done with human rights and environmental impact taken into full accounting.

I know there's a lot of super sharp people on this board. I often feel I'm auditing a class I haven't done the prerequisites for. Looking forward to any comments.

I firmly believe we're in the middle of a much bigger emergency than we realize. I would get all liquid funds out of the markets and accounts and into food production, agriculture supplies, and emergency infrastructure immediately.

Wombaticus Rex wrote:I firmly believe we're in the middle of a much bigger emergency than we realize. I would get all liquid funds out of the markets and accounts and into food production, agriculture supplies, and emergency infrastructure immediately.

As for personal action I completely agree. Another important element will be community support, in other words being part of a larger group which can share resources.

16) Global debt forgiveness plan. The weight of loses must be borne by the financial institutions responsible, though in any case the global debt is far too large to ever be repaid, and so a great deal of it must be wiped clean. Plan for a fair distribution of remaining debt.
17) Public housing and welfare assistance. Perhaps a plan to utilize foreclosed homes for temporary housing, with rents adjusted, in some cases to zero, for lower income or unemployed people.

All of the above, plus ...

I've been thinking a lot about this, and we have to do some serious top-down stuff as opposed to bottom-up.

I.e. how in the world did the United States and the rest of the civilized world, in a very short period of time, end up with electricity almost everywhere? And natural gas? And phone lines?

They didn't wait around for rich people to put that shit in.

I've been meaning to research it and see exactly how it all went down. But however it went down, we need to do it again, with solar power, wind power, biofuel power, wave and tidal power, etc. etc. etc.

A whole new infrastructure, manufactured right here, employing people right here.

Then go back to the pre-Nixon period where we had many of the things you mention, i.e. tariffs, protectionism, actually building an economy with some walls to it so we can have some depth and height to it. The last 30-40 years have literally destroyed what this country had.

I posted in some thread a few weeks back an article about this. There was a name for it. The American school of economics or something like that. ??

Yeah. That's it. Sometimes my memory still works well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_(economics)

The 20th century is over. So completely over. It's time to rebuild this place for the new millenium. No more military bullshit, no more fossil fuel, no more superhighways and suburbia (see Kunstler), etc.

Which means getting rid of the empire. Closing the bases all over the world, closing down the M.I.C., which is really nothing more than a massive corporate welfare program. Other things mentioned in the OP.

No objection to any of your policy suggestions Forgetting2, love most of them, thanks for the thread. And WR is right, your and my problems are not merely or even most significantly economic.

A few policies to consider:

- increase taxes/royalties on extracted natural wealth (e.g. ore, fresh water, timber), reduce income taxes proportionally.

- tax & dividend on pollutants - tax polluters (including ghg's, nitrates, particulate carbon, carcinogens, persistent org.carbons) and pay 1/2 of proceeds to all citizens as an equal dividend, other half to fund ..

- green corps for un/underemployed + gap year-ers to retrofit housing, support social services, maintain infrastructure, remediate degraded land & waters.

- 'Tobin' taxes on all share & derivative markets to edge out speculative trading

- mandating transparency of government and govt. funded bodies, starting with those involved in mgmt of natural resources

Yes, complete and utter reform of Wall Street. Banks should be public utilities that do nothing but loan money as non-profits.

So yeah, we need to completely dismantle and reform, from the bottom up, the two most powerful sections of the current gangster economy.

I'm sure that'll go just GREAT.

Depends what we mean by "the economy." For at least a quarter century the meaning that's largely obtained has been indifferent to how almost everyone is faring in it. ("Jobless recovery"?) I think the pauperization of the middle class is forcing an end now to popular deference towards that "economy," which is a start.

Democratic control of the economy. That is, worker control of the economy. Plus a host of other things that i've written and defined and that i don't have the energy to post. Basically centering on the need to create a monetary standard that is inherent to human needs. Which I think is actually easier than economists proclaim. What's lacking is a total lack of imagination. Dispense with compromise. Become a eye/pie in the sky idealist, instead.

Just off the top of my head: tax the bejeesus out of corporations that move their manufacturing base (and customer service base) overseas; tax the arms makers heavily; create a public works program to create organic gardens in defunct city centers; give tax breaks to manufacturers that base their operations in the US; tax every financial transaction made on wall street; tax capital gains; nationalize the 'too big to fail' banks. Did I say stop the wars yet?

Nordic wrote:The American school of economics...

Which means getting rid of the empire.

I didn't know I had a school

I read Kunstler occasionally... and then I need therapy. Dmitry Orlov is also good re: the Soviet Collapse and how things might play out here and what to do to prepare oneself.

It really is time to rebuild, but the way things are going, things are going to get really ugly before we get to that place. I do believe, though, that ultimately the empire must and will collapse.

@ Jeff

True. In my mind, when I think of "the economy", I certainly don't buy a "jobless recovery", although there's a lot of people who still think as long as they're ok right here and now, "the economy" is peachy.

@ Occult

I was just having an argument with a couple of my "Santa Monica Liberal" friends, arguing for the tax system were the people paying the tax get to apportion where it goes (I'm sure there must be a name for that. The thing that was weird to me was that they couldn't get it out of their heads that no one would want to pay anything toward the military and the US would just cease to have any form of self defense.

@ Wintler

Excellent points.

Regarding the deference to "the economy", as an immutable thing which is the best that it can be, since this is America after all, that deference covers an array of things "American", as I think about it.

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
— Julius Caesar

The problem with the economy is worse than just an economic problem: it is a psycho-social problem, which arises from a series of deeply spiritual errors.

Because of this, "the economy" will likely never be fixed, because Americans will keep trying to fix the "machinery" of economics, without first fixing ourselves. Americans will, therefore, continue to extol greed as a virtue, excess as a right, and outright thievery as a sometimes acceptable means to supposedly worthy ends: power and riches.

Until we ourselves change, "the economy" will remain just one flagging legacy of an allegedly "great nation," a nation that never really was as great as its people have always somehow managed to claim.

Set a limit to "how much money there is". Surely arbitrary. But set a limit. Use that limit to get something done. Infrastructure, education, organic agriculture, retool all of the sprawl, turn all uninhabited strip malls into common gardens free of charge to all who contribute, teach others how to contribute if they don't know how. Just no money for anything. Get rid of money when it comes to issues of the common good. Perhaps a different currency for commercial purposes than those used for public purposes.

Then begin to build a high speed rail system that allows us to get back to our families which this current economic model had broken into shreds thus making us "successful" in 1999, but not in 2009 and beyond. Families are split up, because of capitalism. This shit owes us. Just imagine a world with so much less need or use for oil. There's this overpass I walk across to get home sometimes, just the thousands of cars and trucks you can see in a ten minute span is dizzying. I always imagine their fuel tanks. I then multiply my experience millions of times over, the world over.

Unfortunately any kind of populist movement will be automatically married to something racist, sexist, violent, terroristic as per the controllers benefit. Always need that all important scapegoat. Perhaps the Internet is what that is now -- the scapegoat. Must protect the old machine by using the new one to focus attention on how important the old machine always was.

We crossposted, simulist. You used the term machinery as well. Anyhow, on the same page with you. . .