Naturally, everyone expects the current debt crisis to pass and then everything will be fine until the next time and the politicians want to keep spending money that doesn’t belong to them and creating an impossible burden for future taxpayers . . . meaning us next year. They keep kicking the can down the road, but the can keeps getting bigger and bigger, and the road keeps getting shorter and shorter. What’s the answer instead of the Band-Aid? Adopt the Economic Democracy Act:
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| Is the economy a "whited sepulcher"? |
• Which Economy Are We Talking About? Champions of the status quo are hurrying to tell everyone that the economy is in fine shape, thank you, and there is no danger of a recession, as depressions are now called . . . as if we haven’t been in one in one way or another since the 1870s. The problem is that the experts are very careful to look only at the economy that tells them what they want to hear, and that’s usually the economy of the rich, which is where the experts get their money. As for the rest of us, who are dependent on the generosity and whim of those who have or control wealth, no matter how well the stock market is doing, we’ve got to be looking over our shoulders to make certain that the monetary and wealth powers-that-be are sufficiently placated to give the rest of us jobs and welfare . . . which wouldn’t be necessary if we adopted the Economic Democracy Act so that people could meet their own needs through their own efforts and enjoy their own property in peace and safety.
• A Few Questions About Reparations. Yet another proposal is being bruited about to make reparation payments to descendants of Black slaves. The price tag is expected to be in the rather exclusive neighborhood of $14 trillion. Aside from the obvious question as to where this money is supposed to come from, and who gets it — for example, if being Black means you have suffered from the systemic effects of slavery even if you personally were not a slave, does that include everyone who is Black, even if they came to the United States six years ago from Africa and just became a citizen? Does a single payment cover the reparations for all time, or would this just be the first installment? Will it come due every twenty years? Every year? What about descendants? Are they due reparations if their parents fritter away the payment? Who defines “Black”? Who defines “slave”? Who defines “effects of slavery”? One possible way out of this seeming dilemma is to repair the system by passing the Economic Democracy Act, make everyone eligible, and stop worrying about who qualifies: everybody qualifies, and it won’t cost money, it will make money.
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| Just keep doing what got us into the mess in the first place |
• Krugman and Fun with Numbers. According to Paul Krugman, government debt isn’t like real debt that you have to pay. It’s money we owe ourselves, and no government pays its debts anyway, so it’s okay not to pay. If this sounds a little fatuous to you, then you obviously don’t understand high finance à la John Maynard Keynes. Of course, neither did Dr. Harold G. Moulton, then president of the Brookings Institution, when he published The New Philosophy of Public Debt in 1943, which demolished all of Krugman’s arguments before he made them. It’s a short piece, and copies can still be found, although they’re very rare. That’s because today’s politicians are terrified of anything that would take away their power, and that’s what Moulton and the Economic Democracy Act would do.
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| "I wuz framed." |
• The Treasury May Break the Law. Lawmakers are concerned that the U.S. Treasury may break the law and create money to keep the government running even if the current debt controversy continues. This is a somewhat surreal claim, and the U.S. Treasury only got into the position it’s in because the Congress acted unconstitutionally during the Civil War and later in World War I, the New Deal, World War II, etc., etc., and emitted bills of credit which it has no power to do. If the U.S. Treasury breaks the law, it’s only to permit the Congress to continue breaking the law as it has for the past century and a half. Of course, this would all be moot if we had the Economic Democracy Act, which would eventually allow us to start paying down the debt and ultimately to eliminate it altogether, but doing the obvious doesn’t seem to occur to anyone.
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| Germans are getting (more) depressed. |
• German Economic Woes. Due, evidently, to insufficient consumer demand and rising prices — a combination of cost-push and demand-pull inflation that baffles the experts under the label of “stagflation” — the German economy is facing a downturn. This sort of thing, of course, is entirely a “Currency Principle” phenomenon, in which money and credit are considered commodities having an existence independent of the human minds that create them. All — or at least some — of Germany’s problems could readily be solved if Say’s Law of Markets were to be restored through the passage of the Economic Democracy Act, which would return money and credit to a means of measuring value and carrying out economic transactions instead of being considered valuable in and of themselves, and thereby balancing production and consumption without anyone interfering in the natural link between what is measured and the unit of measure.
• Greater Reset “Book Trailers”. We have produced two ninety-second “Book Trailers” for distribution (by whoever wants to distribute them), essentially a minute and a half commercials for The Greater Reset. There are two versions of the videos, one for “general audiences” and the other for “Catholic audiences”. Take your pick.
• The Greater Reset. CESJ’s new book by members of CESJ’s core group, The Greater Reset: Reclaiming Personal Sovereignty Under Natural Law is, of course, available from the publisher, TAN Books, an imprint of Saint Benedict Press, and has already gotten a top review on that website. It can also be obtained from Barnes and Noble, as well as Amazon, or by special order from your local “bricks and mortar” bookstore. The Greater Reset is the only book of which we’re aware on “the Great Reset” that presents an alternative instead of simply warning of the dangers inherent in a proposal that is contrary to natural law. It describes reality, rather than a Keynesian fantasy world. Please note that The Greater Reset is NOT a CESJ publication as such, and enquiries about quantity discounts and wholesale orders for resale must be sent to the publisher, Saint Benedict Press, NOT to CESJ.
• 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 155,000 total views. The latest Sensus Fidelium video is “The Five Levers of Change.” 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 persons place in society.
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 well see that it gets into the next “issue.” Due to imprudent and intemperate language on the part of some commentators, we removed temptation and disabled comments.
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