‘Economic Democracy’ to Solve World Money Woes To Be Explained at Canada Conferences
0 Comment Basic income alternatives, C.H. Douglas, economic democracy, economic justice, ending poverty, fighting poverty, income gap, Pilgrims of St. Michael, price gap, social credit, UBI theories
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Overview from Mark Anderson — THE TRUTH HOUND
ROUGEMONT, Quebec—Social credit, best described as economic democracy, is seen by a growing number of people as the particular kind of economic reform that can rework the world toward equity and prosperity and cancel the deep-seated dynamics that produce the warfare state, because it’s based on reality and not on speculative market mechanisms and bogus free trade pacts.
Discovered by the late Scottish engineer Major Clifford H. Douglas in the early 20th Century, social credit is a philosophy derived from the natural order which calls for specific economic policies. At its core, it pertains to the mutual trust we have in each other (real credit) to freely produce what’s needed for the common and individual good of all.
Ontario resident Oliver Heydorn, Ph.D., author of the book “Social Credit Economics,” noted on page 497 of the book that social credit exists within the realm of “economic functionalism” because under a social credit system, the economy at all levels would finally function normally—largely because today’s weak consumer purchasing power would be restored to a proper functional level so that this purchasing power is aligned with productive output.
AN OBJECTIVE OPTION
Heydorn added that under the dominant “monopoly of credit,” or “creditism,” the people are given the false options of Marxist socialism on the left, a mixed economy in the middle, and “free-market” capitalism on the right. However, social credit stands outside that entire misleading model.
Social credit, therefore, is not socialism, nor is it monopoly capitalism. Dr. Heydorn wrote that while socialists are correct in pointing out modern capitalism’s flaws, socialist-style solutions, such as they are, involve the radical centralization of economic ownership under the state and a depletion of individual freedom—while social credit opposes that and calls for “radical decentralization of economic power and wealth, which means economic independence and freedom for the individual,” as Heydorn noted.
In other words, reflecting the late Christian writer G.K. Chesterton’s observation that there aren’t enough capitalists, most people, under social credit by way of genuine free enterprise, could realize the economic upward mobility that the current rigged capitalist order reserves for the privileged few.
Currently, the paltry purchasing power among Americans, Brits, Canadians, Europeans and those from the other industrialized nations falls far short of the quantity of available products and services. Or put another way, the total prices of all available goods and services far exceed our collective ability to buy all that output and liquidate the prices so the “economic wheel” can turn naturally. As a consequence, everyone has to mortgage the future (i.e. use credit cards, refinance their homes, etc.) to pay for things in the present.
Furthermore, the totality of debts at all levels, public and private, far exceeds the amount of money in existence with which to pay those debts.
As Douglas noted, and as Heydorn explains in his books and at his website Socred.org, social credit would increase everyone’s purchasing power mainly through a citizen dividend comprised of newly created interest-free money issued through a publicly controlled National Credit Office, to supplement existing wages and salaries. Other tools help not only to keep prices stable but to lower them. Leisure would be increased since citizen dividends would be issued based on the value of production with regular labor but also with automated machinery. Under social credit, the idea is to radically reduce the prevalence of the “work state” that consigns most people to lives of excessive, obligatory labor, often not of their choosing.
TO END THE ‘WORK STATE’
As Douglas recognized, the “work state” ideology, which is itself a form of government, postulates that income can only come from human labor. But that unduly regiments society and keeps people in formation so that their fear of losing employment overrides higher moral imperatives. This is seen as a major reason why most people won’t challenge “the system” and why there are plenty of people willing to work in jobs that extend the dominance of some segments of the population over other segments. Simply put, if you pay people well enough to enforce a police state as state agents in various agencies, they’ll do it since their survival instincts are heightened. And the severe defects in the current economic order guarantee fresh crops of “criminals” that justify that very same police state.
Social credit would not be means-tested welfare for some. Rather, it would be a basic “floor” for all, regardless of class, in order to provide a solid measure of security against poverty, so everyone could stop toiling for mere survival and pursue their higher calling by realizing their true potential in the career, or personal pursuits, including spiritual endeavors, of their choice. And the increase in the money supply under social credit would be on equal par with production (in concert with other cost-control mechanisms that would serve to reduce prices) to prevent price inflation.
MIND ‘THE GAP’
Price inflation can happen when too much money chases too-few goods, but that would not be the case under social credit. Indeed, social credit helps fill “the gap” between weak purchasing power and mountains of goods (full stores, empty wallets).
That gap testifies to a deflationary spiral, in which “interest drain,” amid a money supply consisting almost completely of bank loans, siphons money out the economy as fast, or faster, than money enters the economy. This state of affairs enables the banks to commandeer society by keeping everyone on a labor-and-debt treadmill.
UPCOMING MEETINGS
The Pilgrims of St. Michael, a Catholic order which since the 1930s has operated out of Rougemont, Quebec, just east of Montreal, has carried on Douglas’s insights through its magazine, The Michael Journal, for decades (www.MichaelJournal.org).
The Pilgrims also have reprinted and collected numerous books and pamphlets to call attention to the economic liberation inherent in democratizing the monetary system in order to get all peoples and the business community off the treadmill created when virtually all money enters the economy as interest-bearing loans.
Important 2016 dates of meetings of the Pilgrims of St. Michael are as follows:
- July 21st to July 29th: Week of Study, at the Pilgrim’s House of the Immaculate, Rougemont.
- July 30th, 31st & Aug. 1st: Annual International Congress, same location.
- Aug. 21st to 28th: Week of Study in English only, same location.
- To reach the Pilgrims, call 450-469-2209 in Canada or 888-858-2163 in the U.S., or email mail@MichaelJournal.org The address is: 1101 Principale St., Rougemont QC, Canada, J0L 1M0.
After Defeat of Swiss Basic Income Proposal, Let’s Name the Real Problems, Find the Real Solution
By THE TRUTH HOUND / Mark Anderson
The June 5 Swiss ballot proposal to introduce a guaranteed basic income—an unconditional allowance for everyone in that neutral Alpine nation—was defeated largely on the basis of the Swiss government’s claim that the idea would “cost too much.”
Reuters added: “Swiss voters rejected by a wide margin . . . a proposal to introduce a guaranteed basic income for everyone living in the wealthy country after an uneasy debate about the future of work at a time of increasing automation. (Emphasis added).”
Yet, the plutocratic Financial Times acknowledged, “The Swiss may have just voted to reject a proposal for a guaranteed minimum income . . . but that hardly means the idea is dead. Pilot projects and feasibility studies are in the works across the developed world, from the Netherlands [and Finland] to California. In Canada, the federal Liberals, along with governments in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta have expressed interest in the concept.”
However, the nearly universal misunderstanding of money is a major obstacle. For too long we’ve allowed a small coterie of bankers and “court economists” to hold the secrets and “tutor” us. So, it’s time for total openness.
First, regarding the claim that the Swiss proposal would’ve been too costly, what’s entirely omitted from the discussion is that the proposal (and similar proposals elsewhere) appear to call for re-distribution of existing money—taking money from certain sectors through taxation and re-allocating it to the people at-large.
The implication is that the money supply is basically static and that re-distributing limited funds would require tough budget decisions—sparking tax hikes and associated spending increases in several areas; hence the claim “costs too much.”
But a successful basic-income plan can and must be based on the creation of new money, or “distributism,” not on reshuffling existing money, which is “re-distributism.” That’s the “state secret” that no one wants to touch.
The issuance of new money needs to happen to overcome the huge “gap” between today’s paltry purchasing power and the massive mountain of debt and the towering totality of prices on all available goods and services. We have full stores and empty wallets. (Ideally and importantly, governments should reclaim their interest-free money-creation rights and forbid private central banks from creating money any longer).
Given such matters, the social credit movement—rarely mentioned in basic-income circles—took root in the early 20th Century via Scottish engineer-author C.H. Douglas and American academic-author Gorham Munson, among others. As it became widely evident that a basic income to supplement employment earnings was (and still is) needed, social credit proponents were quick to explain their concept of introducing new money to bridge that gap and provide a universal allowance with new money.
The amount of money would be equated with production data so empowered consumers could boost overall demand and liquidate inventories, which keep factory orders flowing properly. Yet the amount would not exceed the quantity of available goods, thereby avoiding a type of price inflation.
Our price increases mainly come from the cost-push process, where excessive taxes, interest charges and operational costs are pushed on to the end consumer—meaning that “printing too much money” is not the inflation-causing bogeyman that so many fright artists claim it is.
This is especially important to point out, given that the world largely operates on an all-borrowed money supply, wherein new loans are constantly taken out to pay off old ones, public and private—a vicious cycle which stacks debts ever higher and depletes purchasing power via “interest drain.” Price increases and money shortages have become institutionalized.
As for the automation paradox, social creditors and other visionaries for years have spoken of the “wage of the machine,” meaning that we must cancel the rule that income can only come from jobs via human labor.
Instead, under social credit, a basic income would come in the form of a regular dividend paid to the population at-large calculated, as noted above, on production output—regardless of whether that production required human labor or whether it was largely or completely automated. That critical distinction means increased leisure time along with better income, which makes automation a friend, not a foe.
Other social credit components would stabilize and lower prices. Thus, increased leisure, much more spending power and lower prices are all within reach, which could foster a renaissance in human thought and action because the unforgiving yoke of the obligatory “work state” would be lifted off our backs. See www.Socred.org
Put another way: We were born to do more than just go to work, pay bills and die.