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Dan,
You ask if there has been a calculation as to what
the guaranteed income is likely to be. In the Seven Steps two basic
incomes are possible. The first basic income is from binary wide
ownership. There has been much debate on the amount of income it would
provide. Thus for reasons to do with the nature of binary economics and
its associated prescriptions, share payouts could be as much as eight or nine
times what is paid out at present (but people whose minds are fixed in the
existing paradigm never seem to understand this). Moreover, there are
questions e.g. as to what point in time it is wished to assess the income
and how long it would take to fully implement the binary economy (while a
non-binary sector continues). Furthermore, there are questions as to the
assumed pace of technical advance etc etc etc
Those things said, I expect that
most binary economists would generally agree that a substantial income
of, say, $15-25,000 per adult per year would easily be obtainable after 15
years or so of binary policy (and children would have their own, but
smaller, income, even a small income at birth, sufficient to cover basic
need). In another posting to this Group, Norm Kurland says that $30,000 is
achievable by the age of 65. Go to the Center for Economic and Social
Justice website at cesj.org and have a look at, for example,
Norm's A New Look at Prices and Money (this paper is also an appendix in the
Seven Steps book). I also recommend the cesj website for other matters
e.g. the Capital Homestead Act and Norm's Saving Social Security paper (in
another posting to this Group)
Now a crucial point about binary
economics is that it brings in all the new productive investment that is
required, balances supply and demand, creates new, more powerful
consumers from the previously capitalless AND does this with
interest-free (repayable) money and, in practice, removes the practice of
taking interest from large sectors of the economy (among other things, interest
is a big factor in causing inflation) Thus new assets and consumers are
brought into being money while the original money is paid back AND is
cancellable.
This creates a healthy economy
with deeply COUNTER-INFLATIONARY forces in the sense that there will be
more wealth, more wealth-creating capital, but a LOWERING of
prices.
At this point, Norm Kurland, for
example, and other binary economists, understandably prefer simply
that there be the binary counter-inflationary situation. However, Peter Challen and I with others realised that
if, instead, a STABLE level of prices is preferred, then the way is open to
introduce the Social Credit proposal to balance the binary counter-inflationary
effect. This means that debt-free money can be issued as the second basic
income sufficient to keep stable the level of prices. However, my view is
that there has to be the binary counter-inflation first (or, at least,
beginning to happen) before there can
be debt-free issuance.
Dan, you are right in referring to the Huber
and Robertson debht-free issuance proposal and the relationship between the
binary aspect and the Huber/Robertson aspect is expected to be greatly
discussed at a conference near Birmingham (UK) next week (I believe James
Robertson will be present). There is a very important point here
-- the Seven Steps are intended to provide a format within which most (if not
all) groups who understand monetary reform, basic income etc can find a home and
create a situation in which, by supporting the Seven Steps, they will achieve
their goals much more easily than if they continue (as at present), thinking
that their own proposal is absolutely right and everybody else is absolutely
wrong.
There is no compromise in the
Seven Steps but -- quite remarkably -- it allows Social Credit and Binary
Economics to co-operate (assuming that social crediters and binary economists
wish to co-operate), accepts the reality of market-driven economies and, even
more remarkably, should be acceptable to the Islamic world. The recent
conference in Malaysia (called by PM Mahathir) was highly significant because,
although nine tenths of the speakers were crying out for gold as national
currency there are problems with that (not least because gold proponents have no
solutions for poverty, rich-poor division, position of women etc).
(Significantly, PM Mahathir has ruled out gold for the national currency).
BUT Peter and I could claim (and, by golly, we did!) that the binary
aspects of the Steps are counter-inflationary thereby INCREASING the value of
money (that shook an Islamic conference that did not, at first, understand that
fiat money, (if made repayble and cancellable and directed at capital
investment), can INCREASE the value of money).
I should add here that
at the recent Malysia conference (concerned with the gold dinar and a
stable and just monetary system), NO proponent of debt-free money alone
(e.g. Social Credit) was invited and it was inconceivable that they would have
been because debt-free (non-repayable) money is viewed by Islam as both fiat and
inflationary. Peter and I (plus Bernard Lietaer
with his well-conceived terra based on a basket of commodites
(rather than gold alone) for valuing and settling international trade) were the
ONLY Westerners to be invited (with the exception of the leader of the British
Islamic party and Tarek el Diwany, the excellent author on the banking system
and interest). Peter and I generated much interest among the academics of
the International Islamic University who hosted the conference and we were
kindly received by the Prime Minister's special adviser on finance at a meeting
of well over an hour.
In summary, the Seven Steps
allow binary economics AND Social Credit AND Islam AND a lot of other groups and
lines of thinking to co-operate together. Assuming, that is, that they
wish to co-operate as opposed to continue to fight each other. As Norm
says, control over money and credit is the key to economic independence and all
who understand that (and that interest is largely unnecessary) should pull
together.
I ought to add that the Four
Demands paper (sent to this Group a year or so ago) was at the early stages of
thinking and the Seven Steps book was massively developed
thereafter.
Rodney Shakespeare.
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