• Help Joe Walk Again for Economic Justice. Just a reminder, if you haven’t already done so, to visit the GoFundMe campaign and consider making a contribution and spreading word out among your social media networks. It’s off to a good start, but it’s still just a start.
• Unrealized Capital Gains Tax. An idea that is now being bruited about is to impose a tax on unrealized capital gains of the superrich, which “they” say will only apply to the thousand richest people in the U.S. This is one of those really, really, really bad ideas that only gets worse the closer you look at it. First off is a problem with the idea itself. An “unrealized gain” is a gain that has not been realized (duh). It’s all on paper. In order to pay a tax on an unrealized gain the taxpayer will either have to realize the gain (or enough of it to pay the tax) or take the tax out of other income. This can have devastating effects on the global economy. For example, the twenty-five richest people in the U.S. have a combined net worth of $1.6 trillion, plus a few hundred billion or so, virtually all of which is in the form of corporate equity. Let us assume that the cost basis is 25% of that . . . which is incredibly high and totally unrealistic, but it will make our point, “capital gain” being the difference between cost and current value. The proposal is for a 28% tax on unrealized capital gains, which we’ll lower to 25% for ease of computation. This means that (at least in aggregate), there is $1.2 trillion and change in unrealized capital gains to be taxed. 25% of that is $305 billion. The single largest daily trading value on the New York Stock Exchange was $169 billion in 2013. Dumping nearly twice that amount — or even threatening to — would cause a financial firestorm throughout the world that would make the Crash of 1929 look like a bull market in comparison. A far better idea would be to rebuild the tax base with the Economic Democracy Act.
• Monitoring Bank Accounts. Here’s how it seems to go. A new funding proposal is bruited about that sounds okay until you actually think about it, then a modified version is presented that sounds a bit better, but still has the same basic flaws; as the original proposal, the idea is finally scrapped, and we’re back to Square One with trying to figure out how to keep the Keynesian fantasy universe running when it constantly contradicts reality. That seems to be the problem with the proposal to require banks to report all transactions over $10,000 to the IRS . . . which would mean that the IRS would be able to “search” anyone’s bank accounts without having to show probable cause. In effect, everyone who has transactions in excess of $10,000 (the original proposal was $600 . . .) would be considered guilty until proven innocent, the presumption of the IRS being that you must have obtained the money illegally until and unless you can prove otherwise. Of course, a better idea might be to use commercial banks as intended . . . to create money for self-liquidating projects, and do it in a way that creates new owners instead of new criminals, such as with the Economic Democracy Act..
• Hortense and Her Whos. In case you’ve been wondering how you might advance the Just Third Way by introducing it to legislators at any and all levels of government, we’ve made it easy for you, with the “Hortense Hears Three Whos“ initiative. Visit the explanatory website, and consider downloading the postcard to send to people in government. Don’t worry if you think they won’t be open to it, as the postcard is intended to get them to open their eyes.
• Economic Personalism Landing Page. A landing page for CESJ’s latest publication, Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, has been created and can be accessed by clicking on this link. Everyone is encouraged to visit the page and send the link out to their networks.
• Economic Personalism. When you purchase a copy of Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, be sure you post a review after you’ve read it. It is available on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble at the cover price of $10 per copy. You can also download the free copy in .pdf available from the CESJ website. If you’d like to order in bulk (i.e., ten or more copies) at the wholesale price, send an email to publications@cesj.org for details. CESJ members get a $2 rebate per copy on submission of proof of purchase. Wholesale case lots of 52 copies are available at $350, plus shipping (whole case lots ONLY). Prices are in U.S. dollars.
• Sensus Fidelium Videos, Update. CESJ’s series of videos for Sensus Fidelium are doing very well, with over 150,000 total views. The latest Sensus Fidelium video is “The Four Pillars of a Just Market Economy.” The video is part of the series on the book, Economic Personalism. The latest completed series on “the Great Reset” can be found on the “Playlist” for the series. The previous series of sixteen videos on socialism is available by clicking on the link: “Socialism, Modernism, and the New Age,” along with some book reviews and other selected topics. For “interfaith” presentations to a Catholic audience they’ve proved to be popular, edging up to 150,000 views to date. They aren’t really “Just Third Way videos,” but they do incorporate a Just Third Way perspective. You can access the playlist for the entire series The point of the videos is to explain how socialism and socialist assumptions got such a stranglehold on the understanding of the role of the State and thus the interpretation of Catholic social teaching, and even the way non-Catholics and even non-Christians understand the roles of Church, State, and Family, and the human person’s place in society.
• 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 32 different countries and 36 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Australia, and. the Philippines. The most popular postings this past week in descending order were “News from the Network, Vol. 14, No. 41,” “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “Win the Battle, Lose the War?” “JTW Podcast: The Great Game of Business,” and “Reply to a Relativist, Part II.”
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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