With the stock market bouncing
around like a rubber ball and the rest of the news almost completely focused on
the pandemic, it’s hard to find news items directly related to the Just Third
Way. That is why we’re not going to do
it:
• Just Third Way Around the World. Outreach is continuing to
introduce world leaders (or, at least, people who are acquainted with or have
some connection to world leaders) to Just Third Way concepts and possible applications. Recent outreach has gone out to people in
Germany, France, Slovakia, Lithuania, Hungary, Belgium, the Netherlands,
Austria, Italy, the Vatican, and even Russia.
The information shows how the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism
might be applied to ameliorating the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic,
and lay the groundwork for a subsequent restructuring of national economies and
even the global economy. A few thoughts
have been developed that are in the process of being fleshed out, e.g.,
tying aid to a business to turning workers into shareholders, leading in to
making every citizen an owner.
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| Wage system perfection: all work and no pay. |
• “Horrific” Jobs Report and Wall Street. It’s always possible that the gamblers
of Wall Street didn’t realize the
significance of the “horrific” jobs report that was just released. The Dow shot up in a fantastic surge that
gave hope to millions unable to distinguish between the real, productive
economy and the secondary stock market. In a modern Keynesian economy in which most
people’s income is tied to wages or welfare instead of capital ownership,
unemployment is an unmitigated disaster . . . if only because if people aren’t
producing something of actual value (even for someone else for wages),
there is nothing to consume. Government
can print up all the money it wants and redistribute via the “hidden tax” of
inflation, but if nothing is produced to redistribute, all the government is
doing is dividing up a shrinking pie into smaller and smaller pieces. If the government divides it faster than the
pie is shrinking, prices go up . . . combining with the increased upward
pressure as supplies go down. At some
point, this triggers “hyperinflation,” which is not merely high, even staggeringly
high inflation, but the surreal phenomenon in which the price level rises faster
than money can be created! Of course,
reorienting the income source for most people away from wages and back to
capital would refocus attention where it belongs: on production and the
opportunity and means for each person to be productive . . . but that means
abandoning Keynesian economics and its obsession with “full employment” and
adopting the Just Third Way.
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| Why not "investing for current income"? |
• Temporary Retirement Reforms. Although a case could easily be
made for making them permanent, the IRS has temporarily lifted tax penalties
for early withdrawal from 401(k)s, and is — temporarily — suspending Required
Minimum Distributions for people who have reached age 71½. What is needed, of course, is a major
overhaul of U.S. retirement law that shifts it from a “wage mentality” to an “ownership
mentality.” Currently, official policy
is that everything in a qualified retirement plan constitutes “deferred
compensation.” That is why contributions
to a qualified plan are recognized as expenses by a plan sponsor, or exemptions
from income for participants and beneficiaries, and as taxable income when
distributed. The assumption is that all
qualified plan assets will be distributed as taxable income, with nothing left
at death. The Capital Homesteading
concept is that income generating assets will be accumulated on a tax-deferred
basis, paid for out of the earnings on the assets themselves, and then the
earnings distributed as taxable income.
The accumulated assets will be retained to continue generating income
until the death of the “Capital Homesteader,” at which time the accumulated
assets will be distributed to the heirs and taxed as regular income, unless
rolled over into the recipient’s Capital Homestead Account.
• Another Slight Delay. Another short delay has been experienced with
the publication of Dignity, Power, and Freedom over the resolution of
some editorial questions. Nothing to
worry about. Unless you’re waiting for
the sequel. . . .
• Shop online and support CESJ’s work! Did you know that by making
your purchases through the Amazon Smile
program, Amazon will make a contribution to CESJ? Here’s how: First, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your Amazon account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington.” If you type anything
else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift through. Once you’ve typed (or copied and pasted) “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you will be taken to
the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• Blog Readership. We have had visitors from 46 different countries
and 44 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over
the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, Canada, Spain, India, and
Australia. The most popular postings
this past week in descending order were “How
to Argue With a Socialist (If He is G.B. Shaw),” “Own
the Future: A True Cure for an Ailing Economy,” “News
from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 12,” “How
Not to Stimulate an Economy,” and “Book
Review: A Field Guide for a Hero’s Journey.”
Those are the happenings for this
week, at least those that we know about.
If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a
note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into
the next “issue.” Due to imprudent
language on the part of some commentators, we removed temptation and disabled
comments.
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