News from the Network, Vol. 16, No. 17

 

We know there is a depressing sameness about the weekly news items . . . but there’s also a depressing sameness about the refusal to adopt the Economic Democracy Act:

What’s Wrong with the World

Once upon a time G.K. Chesterton published a book he titled What’s Wrong with the World.  While the book was intended to oppose socialism and a bit of capitalism, it has been taken by many people as promoting the very thing it was primarily intended to counter: Fabian socialism.

JTW Podcast: Economic Independence

Today we have Dawn K. Brohawn and Michael D. Greaney on The Frontline with Joe and Joe talking about “Economic Independence.”  Of course, the best way is to adopt the Economic Democracy Act . . . so why aren’t the powers-that-be doing it?

News from the Network, Vol. 16, No. 16

Mostly what’s going on in the Global Justice Movement is preparing for the April 29, 2023, conference in Bridgeport, CT, on the Economic Democracy Act.  As the webpage lets you know, the event is free and will be livestreamed, so be there or be . . . not there.  Not that we’re letting up on other efforts to get the Economic Democracy Act adopted:

Let’s Talk About Consumption Taxes

Especially this time of year it’s common to hear proposals about how to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service and institute a simpler, kinder way of taxing people . . . like a flat tax, or a consumption tax.  Now Representative Buddy Carter has come up with a new twist: a flat rate consumption tax.  As he says,

JTW Podcast: What is Ownership

 

Getting past the rather bizarre and kind of gross story about the severed foot, it helps illustrate the difference between the right to be an owner, and the rights of ownership.  This video is pretty good about the rights OF ownership, but really weak on the right to be an owner in the first place.  This can lead to massive confusion and causes some people to think that because the rights OF ownership are almost infinitely flexible, the right to be an owner is equally so.

News from the Network, Vol. 16, No. 15

Now that Easter is over and the pinch of high egg prices has somewhat ameliorated and people are fed up (literally) with chocolate bunnies, it’s time to get back to the real world of Keynesian economics . . . just kidding.  Keynesian economics is more of a fantasy than the Easter Bunny, for Easter comes with or without chocolate eggs or bunnies, but a Keynesian economy can’t even exist without the Great Defunct Economist’s fantasies, as he himself admitted.  We have to lie to ourselves until the lie becomes reality, as Keynes declared in 1931.  He gave it a century to work, and the situation is worse than before.  Time is running out, and the only hope is to adopt the Economic Democracy Act:

Helicopter Money

 

A recent book about money — and that coincidentally costs a lot of it — is John Cochrane’s The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level, which came out in January of this year from Princeton University Press after being revised.  It seems that new data keep flowing in that require the basic theory to be tweaked continuously or it will drift too far from plausibility and some typos seem to have sneaked into the original version.

JTW Podcast: How to Win n Argument

Here is a podcast about how to win an argument by getting “buy-in” from others, giving the example of how Misterrogers saved PBS.  It doesn’t have much to do directly with the Economic Democracy Act . . . except maybe how to convince people how to go about getting it:

News from the Network, Vol. 16, No. 14

 

Christians celebrate this as “Holy Week,” but it also applies to everyone else if you’re talking about the economy and the world situation as “Wholly Weak.”  Of course, if people wanted to turn things around, they could start demanding the Economic Democracy Act, and it’s still not too late:

Human Rights v. Property Rights

Some time ago we took part in a conference during which a participant made the statement that he was for human rights, not property rights.  This, while it garnered a large measure of applause, didn’t make any sense.  It was a little like saying he was all for meals but was against eating.  The startling fact that surprises so many people, especially today, is that property is a human right; only human beings are natural persons, and therefore only human beings have rights.

JTW Podcast: Harpoon Brewery ESOP

And now for something completely different . . . not.  In this short video produced by the ESOP Association — which is not a “stock OPTION group,” but a “stock OWNERSHIP group,” something completely different — the narrator mentions “the Silver Tsunami,” a wave of retiring business owners who are potential clients for ESOP providers.  Of course, there are ESOPs and ESOPs, and even the ESOP itself is a stepping stone on the way to the Economic Democracy Act, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a keystone as well: