The year just past
was full of newsworthy events, so this end of year news roundup is a bit longer than most. Fortunately, it is also full of substance, so it won't seem so very long:
•
Just Third Way Hour.
A
significant advance for
the Just Third Way was initiating a podcast.
Started by student intern Bryan Vosper, the
job of host was ably assumed by Dave Hamill.
He has taken a short hiatus for the holidays, but the production of new
podcasts will resume almost immediately after the New Year.
In the meantime, you can access all the
podcasts to date by clicking on this link, and then on the tab “Related Tracks”
(there is probably a way to get around this two-step process, but we haven’t
figured it out yet).
By the way, if you’re
in to film history, the Neil Shulman interviewed on podcast Number 9 is the
Emory University Medical School professor who wrote the screenplay for Doc
Hollywood (1991), a movie starring Michael J. Fox, with a large number of “name”
co-stars, including David Ogden Stiers, who played Dr. Charles Emerson
Winchester III on the M*A*S*H television series.
• Tenure Granted. Kudos to Dr.
Stephen Chanderbhan, Ph.D., a supporter of CESJ, who received tenure. Steve is an Aristotelian-Thomist who has
expressed interest in finding out more about the Just Third Way, which is
framed within the Aristotelian-Thomist natural law tradition. By coincidence, we are meeting with him today
to discuss CESJ’s upcoming Red Star Over
Bethlehem.
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| Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht |
•
Infrastructure in the United States.
U.S. infrastructure was given a “grade” of
D+.
The price tag for bringing things up
to par (according to the experts) is trillions and trillions of dollars.
Naturally, nobody knows where to get the
money, but that’s only because they’re not looking at making actual people
owners of the infrastructure and putting things on a for-profit basis.
With modern technology, it should be
relatively easy for regular users of roads, bridges, airports, and so on, to be
billed regularly for their actual use, while others pay at the point of use, as
is the case with many toll roads today.
Commercial banks could extend financing and rediscount the loans at the
Federal Reserve, creating new money backed by the infrastructure itself.
Hjalmar Schacht halted the hyperinflation in
Germany in the 1920s by doing something similar, but without the direct citizen
ownership, and still managed to create the strongest currency in Europe for the
next twenty years.
• Treasurer of Australia. An
advisor to the Treasurer of Australia expressed interest in learning more about
the monetary and fiscal policies of the Just Third Way.
• Labour Party of Western Australia.
The Labour Party of Western Australia considered forming a working group
to study the Just Third Way.
• Just Lead Conference. Norman
Kurland and Dawn Brohawn gave presentations at the April 8, 2017 “Just Lead”
Mansfield Institute Conference in Louisville, Kentucky. The event went very well, with approximately
130 attendees. The group also visited
the second largest magazine printing company in the United States, Publishers
Press. The CEO expressed a great deal of
interest in “Justice-Based Management,” the Just Third Way approach to establishing
and maintaining economic justice in the workplace.
 |
| "You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it." |
•
Universal Basic Income.
There
was (and continues to be) a lot of noise circulating about the basic income
plan.
It sounds very nice to say that
everyone should have enough to live on as a fundamental human right.
The problem is, however, that people who
produce what others consume without getting anything in return tend to get
resentful.
This sets up an “us v. them”
mentality, and demands that all those people not working be punished or
eliminated.
As Abraham Lincoln noted in
his debate with Stephen Douglas, it’s against nature for some to work and
others to benefit: “It is the eternal struggle between these two principles —
right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have
stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to
struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine
right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself.
It is the same spirit that says, ‘You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll
eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who
seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their
labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is
the same tyrannical principle.”
As the
first principle of economics and Say’s Law of Markets make clear, no one can
consume what has not been produced . . . and anyone who consumes without
producing can only get it from those who produce.
 |
| Carter Glass of Lynchburg, Virginia |
•
No Need for Glass-Steagall? According to an April op-ed in the
Wall Street Journal, there is no need
for Glass-Steagall or similar legislation because the risk in the system is
under control.
The problem is that
Glass-Steagall was never about risk, but about a well-designed financial system
with good internal control, with external control (
i.e., government regulations) kept to a minimum as a backup to the
internal control.
Clearly the move has
been away from control of any kind, internal or external, and toward the sort
of
laissez faire capitalism that
quickly becomes the greatest advertisement for socialism, with the various
accommodations between the two systems eventually degenerating into the curious
amalgam Hilaire Belloc called “the Servile State,” in which only a tiny
élite own or control capital . . . and
thus other people.
• Just Third Way Talk. Dr. Norman G. Kurland gave a talk in April on
the Just Third Way to graduate students at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, enrolled in
INTL 5400, a graduate course in international political economy. Dr. Thomas Kleiner of Webster University
arranged for Norm to speak. The talk
went exceptionally well.
•
Dinner With Zuckerberg.
Daniel Moore, a member of the CESJ network in
Newton Falls, Ohio,
had
a surprise guest for dinner late last week: Mark Zuckerberg, FaceBook founder
and billionaire.
Dan reported that
the evening went very well, and he managed to mention toward the end that he
(Dan) knew about a new economic initiative (the Just Third Way) that might be
consistent with Zuckerberg’s interest in education as a way of bringing out the
best in everyone.
There may be some
follow-up, as Dan says he plans to stay in touch with his unexpected visitor.
 |
| Moses Maimonides |
•
The Disappearance of Philosophy.
Related to an interest in education is the
continuing decline in religious practice in many parts of the world (See
Matthew Hennessey, “A Catholic World Fades Over a Lifetime,”
The Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2017,
A13).
A fundamental principle of the
philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (Christian), Moses Maimonides (Jewish), and
Ibn Khaldûn (Muslim) — along with most other people through history who follow
the philosophy of Aristotle (Pagan), including Mortimer Adler, co-author with
Louis Kelso of
The Capitalist Manifesto (1958) and
The New Capitalists (1961) — is that religious faith (and thus
practice) should be solidly based on the natural law discerned by reason; that
reason is the foundation of faith.
Unfortunately, the “new things” of the modern world,
i.e., the new ways of believing based on
opinion derived from faith (“the Will”) instead of knowledge derived from
reason (“the Intellect”) — a concern of every modern pope — have convinced many
people that religion is not relevant to a world that has largely jettisoned
absolutes, especially moral absolutes.
This
is why, for example, Pope Pius XI declared at the start of his pontificate, “
There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism
which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism.” (Ubi
Arcano Dei Consilio, § 61.) Restoring
Academia to teach principles of justice could, therefore, go a long way toward
restoring religious practice.
This is
why CESJ would like to see
an
encyclical on the principles of economic justice as well as implement the
“Justice University” concept.
• Falling Productivity. The
Hudson Institute reported that, despite positive economic growth, the rate of productivity
has been falling drastically for at least ten years. (Marie-Josée Kravis, “The Great Productivity
Slowdown,” The Wall Street Journal,
May 5, 2017, A15.) This is baffling
until we realize that most of the “economic growth” over the past decade has
resulted from considering the incredible rise in stock market prices as
“growth,” whereas such speculative gains produce no marketable goods or
services.
•
Mid South Building Supply, Inc.
Mid South, headquartered in Springfield,
Virginia, won awards for its efforts to communicate an ownership culture in
four of the seven categories for which it was eligible, two “winners” and two
“runner ups.”
There being no third place
or honorable mention, that means Mid South took home nearly a third of the awards
given in their eligibility range.
It won
“Best Video” for an excellent short that displayed the Mid South worker-owner
spirit.
Many people had trouble
believing an amateur, a fellow Mid South worker-owner, produced the short
film.
It also won for “Best Total
Communications.”
The company placed
second in “Best Series of Special Events” and “Best Total Communications.”
In his acceptance speech on behalf of the
company, Drew Tavss, president of Mid South, made a special point of mentioning
the debt the ESOP community owes to Louis O. Kelso, Senator Russell Long, and
Norman G. Kurland.
• Senator Susan Collins. During the opening session Thursday morning,
conference attendees were shown a video of Senator Susan Collins (R, Maine)
praising the ESOP for being an excellent way of stimulating economic growth and
creating jobs in ways that do not require government stimulus. Senator Collins also gave due credit to Kelso
for inventing the ESOP.
•
Cost of ESOPs.
One downside to the ESOP has always been the
cost of installing a qualified Plan, with most of the complexity (and thus
cost) coming from the fact that plans have always been customized to fit the
wants and needs of each company adopting an ESOP.
In contrast, there are only a few ways to
have (for example) an Individual Retirement Account, which is a personal
qualified plan.
For a number of years,
then, the IRS and the DOL have been looking into the possibility of having plan
documents “pre-approved” which would cut costs (and the time required for approval)
immensely.
An IRS spokesman at the ESOP
Conference noted that he had never heard of a plan document that had been
submitted without at least one thing wrong with it.
A pre-approved template with absolutely no
changes permitted from a range of options would greatly streamline the process
of getting a plan approved, taking hours instead of weeks or months to go
through the process.
Of course, anyone
who wanted a custom-designed plan could have it, but would have to pay for
custom work, as well as custom approval, relegating it to the category of a
special request . . . which the IRS is willing to do for about $25,000, instead
of a nominal fee for a pre-approved plan.
• CESJ Literature. CESJ participants at the conference were able
to hand out some literature about the Capital Homestead Act, which is a way of
extending the ESOP concept to everyone, not just those who work for
corporations.
•
Film on Louis Kelso.
Joyce Hart, the award-winning film maker
responsible for
The Sisters of Selma documentary, is pursuing a film on the
expanded ownership paradigm.
She has
made significant contacts throughout the expanded ownership community, and is
thinking of broadening the subject to include a more comprehensive treatment of
what CESJ calls the Just Third Way.
•
Pope Francis.
A law professor at the Catholic University of
Argentina sent us a link to
the
message Pope Francis sent to the recent Plenary Session of the Pontifical
Academy of Social Sciences held April 28 through May 2, 2017 that had the
theme, “Towards a Participatory Society: New Roads to Social and Cultural
Integration.”
While the message makes no
mention of widespread capital ownership as the best means of delivering justice
and for most people to participate in society — something Aristotle, Leo XIII,
Pius XI, and many, many others stressed almost to the point of redundancy — there
is language that can be understood in a “Just Third Way way” as coming up to
the brink, but not quite managing to make the final leap.
That is, there is language that paves the way
for acceptance of
the
three principles of economic justice, but does not mention the principal
application of those principles, widespread private property in capital, which
is absolutely essential to their successful implementation.
Conclusion: Pope Francis has made an
excellent start, now he needs to get down to brass tacks and give guidance on
some specifics,
e.g.,
Capital Homesteading.
• Global Outreach. Great efforts were made to introduce the
concepts of the Just Third Way to leaders throughout the world. Materials were sent to leaders in Italy,
France, Belgium, Guinea, Burundi, Germany, Great Britain, the Republic of
Ireland, and a number of other places abroad, as well as a number of U.S.
states and commonwealths. The idea is to
reach out to leaders and open doors for a meeting at high levels, meaning a
level high enough to do something other than shake hands and smile for the
camera.
•
Puerto Rican Debt.
The Puerto Rican debt restructuring —
tantamount to a Chapter II bankruptcy — could result in privatizing the port
facilities, airports, and so on.
The
Just Third Way position on this is, anything that is owned by government can
(and should) be owned by the citizens.
All the citizens, though, not some ultra-rich plutocrats who will use
what should be regarded as the public patrimony for personal benefit.
With the “magic” of corporate organization
and modern finance, it is entirely feasible for every citizen in a city, state,
region, or even the entire world to be a direct owner of any and all
infrastructure, and to receive dividend income generated by user fees and the
profits from development.
If Puerto Rico
wants to divest itself of its infrastructure — and the Commonwealth is in a key
position for world trade as the “Gateway to the Caribbean,” it can do so both
profitably and for the public interest by doing so in a way that makes every
Puerto Rican a capital owner.
•
Illinois Debt.
The situation is a bit different in
Illinois.
The state’s economy is still
relatively sound.
Its revenues are ten
times the annual service on its debt.
So
what is the problem?
The legislature
can’t seem to pass a budget.
A possibly
superficial analysis suggests that the state and the people of Illinois are
being used as pawns in a political struggle.
And even if it did, there are underlying problems having to do with
unfunded pension liabilities and the hostility to non-government action.
The solution?
Why not take a page from the book of Illinois’s most famous son, Abraham
Lincoln?
Lincoln oversaw what many consider
one of the greatest economic initiatives in history, the 1862 Homestead
Act.
Land, however, is limited, and by
1893 Frederick Jackson Turner could, with a great deal of justification,
declare the closing of the land frontier.
What is needed today is the opening of the effectively unlimited
industrial and commercial frontier with a “
Capital
Homestead Act” — an initiative in which Illinois could lead the way.
• Monetary and Tax Reform. Before there can be a Capital Homestead Act,
however (or as an integral part of the Act), there needs to be a complete
reform of the monetary and tax system.
The tax system should have a single rate for ALL income above a level
needed to meet ordinary living costs, plus a deferral to accumulate capital up
to a level of capital self-sufficiency.
The tax system should not be
used for “social engineering.” New money
should be created in ways that help ordinary people become owners, and must be
asset-backed, elastic, and uniform and, above all, stable. It is monetary and economic insanity to have
a currency that fluctuates in value constantly.
It makes as much sense as having a yardstick that changes length from
day to day. The banking system should
not be used to finance government; that is the job of the tax system.
•
National Cooperative Business Association. Joe Recinos will be attending an
international
convention on cooperatives sponsored by the National Cooperative Business
Association in Washington, DC the first week in October. He wants to talk about how the Just Third Way
and cooperatives fit together. Joe has
also been working on arranging a meeting for Norman Kurland with the NCBA’s new
president.
• Fort Belvoir Talk. In July Norman Kurland and Dawn Brohawn gave
a talk at Fort Belvoir in Northern Virginia on principles and applications of
Justice-Based Management to the Management 5500 course on “Institutional
Learning.” Following the final
presentations by the graduate students, Norm gave a talk outlining the
principles on the macro scale, and Dawn spoke on applying the principles on the
micro scale in an institution. The talk
went well.
• Leslie Dean Price. In
August, CESJ was saddened to learn of the death of Leslie Dean Price of the
CESJ Board of Counselors. Mr. Price was
founder and Chairman of Equitech International, LLC, a Virginia-based systems
integration firm whose mission is to meet the challenge of R. Buckminster
Fuller: “How do we make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest
possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the
disadvantage of anyone.” The firm, made up of accomplished architects,
engineers, scientists, professional managers and a network of advanced
technology companies, focuses on the integration and commercialization of
advanced proven technology components to meet the world’s energy, water, waste
disposal, telecommunications, human dwelling and other life support and
community needs.
•
National Cooperative Business Association Reception.
In October, Norman and Marie Kurland attended
a reception hosted by the National Cooperative Business Association in
Washington, DC.
Joseph Recinos, who has
been working with the NCBA, arranged for the invitation, and also made certain
that Norm and Marie met with the president and other key people in the
organization.
People seemed very
interested in what Norm had to say, especially about money and credit being key
to expanded ownership and optimal participation in economic life.
Tax reform is critical, of course, but
without reform of the money and credit system, tax reform will go nowhere: it
is a fact of life that you must first have something to tax before you can tax
it; taxation doesn’t create money, any more than does government itself.
It just shifts it around in increasingly
complicated ways that desperately need to be simplified.
• Just Third Way and Paraguay.
Also in October, the CESJ core group had an introductory telephone
conference with a Fulbright scholar in Paraguay who is interested in setting up
an exchange student program, possibly in January or July of 2018.
•
Citizens Land Cooperative.
The CESJ core group had a skype meeting in November with three concerned
citizens in Poland and Ukraine to discuss applying the “
Citizens
Land Cooperative” (also called “the Citizens Land Bank”) concept in
Ukraine, where people are worried that the “economic warlords” will end up
owning all the land and control economic growth.
On top of everything else, the government is
burdened by debt and cannot create more debt-backed money to finance economic
growth, so we recommend that the banking system be reformed to phase out the
current government debt-backed money, and substitute a money supply backed by
private sector hard assets.
By allowing
the private sector to finance growth out of existing productive potential
instead of the government’s swiftly disappearing ability to tax in the distant
future, the economy could be put on a much sounder basis, and a foundation laid
to protect the sovereignty of every child, woman, and man.
To prevent people with money right now from
buying up all the land, a Citizens Land Development Corporation or Cooperative
could be the owner of all the land (with existing owners selling at a fair
price to the Cooperative, and leasing it back with a non-transferable, 99-year
lease with renewal option), and every citizen owning the land by owning the
Cooperative.
•
Garry Davis Film. In late November, the CESJ core group went to
see a special showing in downtown Washington, DC of My Country is the World, a
documentary about the World Citizen Movement” of Garry Davis.
The film is not yet available for public
showing in all venues (they still need to raise some funds — not very much,
actually — to purchase some copyrighted material,
e.g., film clips with historical figures talking about Davis and
his vision.
If you’re interested in
advancing the project, feel free to get in touch with
director/producer Arthur Kanegis via
his website.
Whether or not you
agree with Davis’s position or activities, the film (and his life) raises some
issues you might want to discuss.
•
Just Third Way Panel Discussions.
Dr. Norman Kurland went to Atlanta, Georgia, to attend a conference, “
Advancing
Human Rights 2017,” presented by the
Human
Rights Network. Dave Hamill, who took over as host of the Just Third Way
Hour podcast, also attended and recorded sessions for future episodes of the
show.
Norm took the opportunity to meet
with key politicians and leaders in the community to help them see the
advantages of rebuilding Atlanta — or any other city — in accordance with the
Just Third Way program.
CESJ friend
Onaje Muid was instrumental in getting Norm invited and arranging for his
participation on the panels.
•
Ten Battles Every Catholic Should Know.
CESJ’s Director of Research signed a contract
for a book deal with a major Catholic publisher.
Coming out in two weeks, the book,
Ten Battles Every Catholic Should Know,
is written from a Just Third Way perspective, but is not the book’s focus.
Instead, the Just Third Way is a subsidiary
theme, illustrating how lack of widespread capital ownership leads to political
as well as economic instability.
The
publisher is
TAN Books, an imprint of Saint
Benedict Press.
Ten Battles Every Catholic Should Know
is currently available for pre-order, for delivery in mid-January.
It’s available now for pre-order from
Amazon
and
Barnes
and Noble.
According to Amazon (and Barnes and Noble may have the same deal), if
the price goes down before the official release, the savings will be passed on
to the customer.
•
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 37 different
countries and 49 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, Canada, India, and Peru. The
most popular postings this past week in descending order were, “No Room in the
Inn,” “Mere Income,” “The American Chesterton, VI: The Logic of Christian
Socialism,” “Whence Cometh This Demand?, I: Supply and Demand,” and “News from
the Network, Vol. 10, No. 51.”
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.” If you have a short
(250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the
blog — do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#
