Re: OWNERSHIP: Raising Kane - with terminology?

["Stephen V. Kane" <svkane@naisp.net>]

KW----->When Stephen used "underconsumption" I immediately inferred that he was appealing to a well-known theme in macroeoconomics which explains
>downturns in the business cycle as due to a general deficiency of demand relative to....etc  Perhaps I did not read Stephen's post with the same discrimination as Shann, but I didn't have the sense that he was restricting the notion to labor income. Am I out of order?

svk: Hardly.  The simple point i was trying to make was that b.e. seems to be a prescription that would work best in economic development where there are serious problems with underconsumption, as you and i understand the term to mean.  Regardless of the defects, perceived or real, of the production-consumption nexus we know now, a share scheme that pays out all earnings to people with high mpc's would be inflationary, ceteris paribus.  It exictes consumption, which i have argued infra is the exact opposite of b.e. implications.  BTW, Arthur Burns, the former Fed chairman made this 'inflation' argument in a curt, one paragraph response to Mr. Kelso's advance back in 1975.

Expanding a little, the introduction of a b.e. is a *process* that presents problems of its own.  There are myriad steps between here and there.  I favor an incremental, voluntary development of the institution.  I mean, if it's a superior form of economic organization, then the only barrier is to teach and inform.

Kelso was a product of the Depression-era belief in the capacity of government to do well.  I *completely* oppose this view, believing, as von Hayek did, that government intrusion into the economic life is a threat to freedom - whatever the good intentions might be.

vty, svk

ps...thanks for the cite on the paper critiquing More's Utopia.  I have read this book, and almost cited it in my 'utopia' post, but couldn't correctly cite the date, so i didn't.  He wrote that when.....something like 1550 wasn't it?  Very, very early.