HOMESTEAD: Asset-based social policy in The Atlantic

["Keith Wilde" <keithwilde@sympatico.ca>]

I have read the article in The Atlantic and endorse the recommendations of
John and Rodney.  Note in particular that it mentions Michael Sherraden and
Ray Boshara who were central figures in the report I posted recently on a
government conference  in Ottawa on the subject of  asset-based approaches
to  poverty.  As John Logue observed (in "Homestead") it is indeed
interesting that governments seem to be looking at the idea at this time.  I
was quite surprised to find an announcement of the program (which was not
advertised outside a close circle of policy wonks).  I have seen comment in
the press recently that Bush is likely to use the idea in his upcoming
election campaign, somewhat in the same way as Blair was elected on a "Third
Way" platform in the UK.

But note also, in my report, the observation in the Ottawa program that
policies of this kind (intent) are constrained by the fact of having to
depend on the tax system as their only available policy instrument.  That
is, use of monetary and financial levers as suggested by Kelso and Adler is
not an option for many (most?) governments.  I have discovered, in fact,
that monetary policy is not considered to be part of the domain of policy
studies and public administration in countries governed in the British
parliamentary tradition.  Alan Zundel has confirmed to me (privately) that
the same is generally true of political science conventions in the U.S.
This has bearing on an exclamation I saw recently by Wally Klinck that it
may even be against the law to criticize the institutional framework that
puts monetary policy in the hands of private sector bankers (including the
Bank of Canada and other central banks).

Keith Wilde

----- Original Message -----
From: Rodney Shakespeare <Rodney.Shakespeare1@btopenworld.com>
To: <ownership@cog.kent.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 7:30 AM
Subject: OWNERSHIP: Fw: MONETARY: BE in the AM


>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Médaille" <john@medaille.com>
> To: <monetaryreform@cog.kent.edu>; <monetaryreform@cog.kent.edu>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 3:33 PM
> Subject: MONETARY: BE in the AM
>
>
> > Binarians (and everybody else) ought to check out the article in this
> > months Atlantic Monthly by Michael Lind, "Are We Still a Middle-Class
> > Nation?" which calls for a "capital wage".
> >
> >
> > John C. Médaille
> >
> > "A dead thing can go with the stream...
> > but only a living thing can go against it."
> >          -G. K. Chesterton
> > http://www.medaille.com/distributivism.htm
> > john@medaille.com
> >
> > To subscribe to this or another of COG's discussion groups register at:
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> > with a single line in the body of the message that says:
> > unsubscribe monetaryreform
>
>
> To subscribe to this or another of COG's discussion groups register at:
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>

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