It seems the closer we get to the
end of the calendar year and the start of the holiday season, the harder it
gets to find Just Third Way news items.
Everybody tends to put important things aside until after the holidays
and as a result not only does nothing get done, nobody talks about it and there
is nothing to report except about the things you are going to do, or at least
hope to do. Even so, we have a few news
items:
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| You don't have to be a Goldigger of 1933 to be in the money! |
• Show Me the Money! The stock
market in the U.S. is at an all-time high, and so all the economic experts and
market mavens are proclaiming that “Happy Days are Here Again”
and “We’re In the Money”. The problem, of course, is similar to what’s
wrong with virtually every currency on Earth (we’d say “with every currency on
Earth” except we don’t know for certain): And that is? The rise in stock market prices as well as what
the currency stands for is based on . . . nothing! That is, stock market prices do not reflect
any increase in value of the company the ownership of which shares represent,
nor is the dollar backed by anything other than the government’s promise to
make good on the currency it issues and the demand deposits (checking accounts)
it creates out of future tax collections that might never materialize. It is interesting to speculate on how well a
candidate for president (or of anything else) would do if he or she adopted the
platform of the “Unite
America Party” and explained it properly to voters. We have a strong feeling that ordinary people
might actually find it attractive, if only for a change from the usual thing.
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| Hubert H. Humphrey, expanded ownership advocate |
• CESJ International Fellows.
As a result of attending an event for Hubert Humphrey Fellows at
American University a short time ago, CESJ has been talking to a number of
individuals interested in becoming Fellows at CESJ. In particular, three people from Morocco,
Afghanistan, and Pakistan who expressed interest in Just Third Way monetary and
financial reform along the lines recommended in CESJ’s Capital Homesteading
proposal are currently exploring the possibility of doing “distance Fellowships”
(i.e., over the internet), thereby carrying out a project as a team
without having to be physically in the same location.
• Book on Economic Personalism.
Our upcoming book on economic personalism is still scheduled for release
in the this calendar year, although there has been another delay by some of the
experts who are reviewing the text for accuracy. Evidently, the more highly placed an expert
is, the longer it takes him or her to get around to doing something.
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| "Christmas Time is Here!" |
• 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 29 different countries
and 40 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over
the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, Spain, India, Canada, and
the United Kingdom. The most popular
postings this past week in descending order were “Thomas
Hobbes on Private Property,” “Say’s
Law of Markets,” “The
Pons Asinorum of Binary Economics,” “A Whale
of a Tale,” and “The
Purpose of Production.”
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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