To: A few friends, a few lurking innocents, and many devious defenders of the status quo (DDotSQ). Good day folks, Our Judeo-Christian principle of subsidiarity teaches that the public revenue should not be disbursed to parenting families except as public education, or as means-tested welfare, or as means-tested unemployment compensation, or as exemptions from taxable income. The second and third of these four disbursements affect only a small part of the population. They could all drop dead and society would scarcely miss them. But, the first and last of these disbursements directly affect the great majority of parenting families, and thereby the well-being and culture of the whole society. The need for education, everyone understands. Unfortunately, too many understand only the need for education. The US $2,000/year per dependent exemption from taxable income is one of several regressive features of the US tax code. It adds zero dollars to the family budget in the zero% tax bracket, it adds $300/year per dependent to the family budget in the 15% tax bracket, and it adds $560/year per dependent to the family budget at the 28% tax bracket while the families in each tax bracket are spending $5,000/year or more to support each dependent. Even at $580/year per dependent the exemption amounts to only 11% of the feedback required to put a parenting household on a stable competitive financial footing with single, gay, lesbian, and celibate households. Any one for straight rights? This regressive $4440 to $5,000/year per dependent expense amounts to about 5% of GNP or about the amount of the US defense budget or the US public education budget. In other words, the US economy is operating with a 5% of GNP deficiency of purchasing power among its parenting families which is balanced by a 5% of GNP excess of purchasing power among all non-parenting taxpayers. That net deficiency of purchasing power among parenting families has not been significantly corrected by any of the remedial social or tax legislation of the twentieth century. The social security payroll tax at 15%, without exemptions, on earned income below $63,000/year and zero% on earned income above $63,000/year, has added to the unbalance of purchasing power between high and low incomes. The US has experienced a century of 2-3%/year inflation and 4-10% unemployment due to this technically incompetent public policy. If the American DDotSQ would like to experience twice as much inflation and twice as much unemployment, they could persuade the public to either privatize the public education system, or fund the defense budget with a $5,000/year per dependent English style poll tax. Such a move would put the DDotSQ in Libertarian Heaven with 4-6%/year inflation and 10-20% unemployment during the twenty-first century. After 2500 years of this teaching by our Judeo-Christian tradition, a Children's Allowance or Universal Basic Income in an amount sufficient to bring the economy up to zero inflation and full employment (the Swiss are presently at 1.3% and 2.7%) is unthinkable to the US voting public. There is no effective public recognition of this basic technical requirement for a stable, just, and prosperous society. In B.C.515, "The Decree Of Artaxerxes [King of Persia] In Ezra's behalf" excused the priests of the Jewish remnant from paying the first Mosaic tithe (the Lord's Tithe) out of the second tithe the received from the twelve tribes of Israel, as Moses had commanded the Levites in the Book of Numbers. Since that decree, there has been a continuous, willful, deliberate, and systematic effort by the WHIPs to keep the public oblivious of this technical requirement. Who else but American DDotSQs, Canadian Greenies, and European Royalty would support an effort to weaken the United States by impairing its reproductive process? That is how we try to depress the populations of such obnoxious species as cockroaches and rats, it does not work as well with people. Human birth rates decline only when people are comfortable and confident of their future prospects. This topic is the skunk at the lawn party in the media or on the Internet. Mail lists [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], and [EMAIL PROTECTED] are the latest, of many, which have proscribed my posts, leaving ten mail lists that are still willing to put up with a subscriber whose postings reach beyond the stated scope of the list, but may yet be of interest and concern to some of the list subscribers. It would be much easier to post to only one list where the discussion was focused on the systemic defect of omission in industrial nations which causes the "English Disease." If such a list does exist on the Internet, I would still want to post to multiple lists in hopes of reaching more people who want a solution, rather than another millennium of endless dialogue. Only three months were required in 1953 to knock this subject down for an international industry of interconnected sovereign corporations which is statistically equivalent to the global economy of interconnected sovereign nations. Can it be that there is no market for a stable, just, and prosperous society? Here are the ten lists which continue to distribute my posts: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (owner Douglas P. Wilson) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (owner Mike Nickerson) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (owner Sally Lerner) [EMAIL PROTECTED], (owner Russell Bishop) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (owner John Pozzi) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (owner Sally Lerner) [EMAIL PROTECTED], (owner Richard Kay) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (owner John C, Turmel) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (owner Téa-Louise Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED], (?) Just below, please find a listing of responses to my last four posts. A few were replied to off-list, but I am in debt to all who responded for their thoughtful contribution to my understanding of the subject. It is instructive to notice who among the frequent posters comments and who does not. I was particularly delighted by the number, and the prominence, of the bible reading folks who responded to the last post. It is comforting to know that one is not alone in finding worthwhile knowledge in western civilization's oldest and most widely published history book, and in each and every one of its several versions in order of their antiquity, Mosaic, Roman Catholic, Judaism, Islam, Orthodox Eastern Catholic, and various Protestant denominations. Notice that members of the thirteenth tribe (the priestly establishment) received the second tithe paid by the twelve tribes of Israel, which gave each member 4.5 times the average income of the twelve tribes. We pay members of congress about the same multiple of today's average income, but the Levites did not need to raise $1,000,000/year to get reelected every two or four years, they were appointed for life. Some things never change. Subj: Subsidiarity and the Basic Income, Date: 01/16/2000 * Tom Christoffel To: Wesburt * John Vandenberg To: Wesburt, list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. * Steve Kurtz To: list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Steve is a "true believer" in the effectiveness of the principle of subsidiarity for reducing birth rates, but the Europeans seem to favor a Basic Income or Family Allowance. Subj: Re: Subsidiarity and the Basic Income, Date: 01/19/2000 * Peter Goodwin, Brian Jenkins, David Wood, Christopher Hall, and Dave Restall - System Administrator, pooled their efforts to successfully persuade me to unsubscribe from list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. My postings on restoring financial stability to national economies are too far off-topic for this list. Subj: Which Way To CI/BI?, Date: 01/23/2000 *Farel Bradbury, To: Wesburt, list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Farel has a splendid web site on the way to achieve sustainability at <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/farel_bradbury>. Subj: Re: [lets] The Great Usury Debate, Or, When is it Usury? Date: 01/25/2000 * Charles CMT, To: list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. * Richard Kay, To: John Courtneidge, list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * Bernard Lietaer, To: John Courtneidge, list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. * Richard Kay, To: Wesburt, list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. * Mike Nickerson, To: Wesburt, * Stephen DeMeulenaere, To: list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Stephen has an excellent web site on local & community currency systems at <http://ccdev.lets.net> * Shann Turnbull, To: list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. * Stephen DeMeulenaere, To: Shann Turnbull, list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. * John Turmel, To: John Courtneidge, Bernard Lietaer, list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, and eleven other addresses. * Harry Pollard To: Russell Bishop, list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Harry Pollard's comment on list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> most concisely stated the task before us when he wrote to John Turmel: >> John, The problem we face has nothing to do with interest, or usury - which seems to be the pejorative description. It is that too few have Wealth to lend and too many want to borrow. This means the lenders have an edge over the borrowers. That's all. If Wealth was more held more widely, instead of being concentrated in relatively few hands, we would hear no more of the nastiness of usury, or of the burden of interest payments. So, the real issue to probe is why the large disparity in ownership of Wealth. I fear that we will never get to tackle that basic issue when we spend time arguing about the peripheral consequences of real problems. Harry << Let's not let false modesty or humble opinion stand in the way of our understanding what we are doing here. We are putting at risk our livelihood, and perhaps our lives, by asserting that the status quo is neither optimum nor acceptable, We are asserting that our public policy could be changed to produce all of the output (material product) which society desires with only 1/3 the present per capita consumption of water and energy (Switzerland has done it), and perhaps with only 1/3rd or less of the present direct labor. This present condition in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, with its 2-3%/year decline in the value of the medium of exchange, and with 4-10% of the workforce perennially deprived of a way to earn their living, is as old as the stories in our oldest history book. As Scripture says, the poor are always with us, because our public policy keeps them poor. One place to look for confirmation of the required corrective public policy is in those historically rare occasions when certain nations managed to make all of their citizens, not equally wealthy, but sufficiently wealthy to rise above the prevailing condition. Better researchers than myself will add their own examples, but the few cases which I believe had achieved that condition of "commonwealth" by assuring an adequate and properly structured feedback to its developing assets are: (1) The biblical nation of Israel from the giving of the Law at Mt.Sinai to the death of King Solomon; (2) Classical Greece, a slave society?; (3) Imperial Rome, a slave society?; (4) the United States from colonial times through the 19th century; (5) Japan, Germany, and western Europe from 1946 through the 1970s; and (6) China from the 1980s to date. A second place to look for confirmation of the required corrective public policy is in the standard pricing policy of our corporations which produce the goods and services that sustain our lifestyles. The ten corporations I worked for between 1947 and 1985 all used a 30% markup on direct manufacturing cost, and only recently I read that Wal-Mart Stores (Sam Walton's Story) also priced their goods with a 30% markup. If the cost of management is 30% of total sales and the cost of government is 30% of GNP or more, why do we perceive the world's corporations as becoming too powerful, without at the same time, noticing that the world's governments are becoming too weak to govern because of their neglect of this basic technical requirement for a stable, just, and prosperous society. To conclude this note, let me remind you of Harry Pollard's lament above: "that we will never get to tackle that basic issue (why the large disparity in ownership of Wealth) when we spend time arguing about the peripheral consequences of real problems," As evidence that many people never want "to tackle that basic issue," I submit below three excerpts from one of many equally qualified web sites: "Sustainable Economics," the bimonthly newsletter of the Economics Working Group of the UK Green Party, at URL <http://www.sus-tec.freeserve.co.uk/>. Each excerpt is followed by a request in the format: (WSB: The request. WSB) (1) http://www.sus-tec.freeserve.co.uk/#sixteen Banking? by M Chossudovsky The Worldwide scramble to appropriate wealth through "financial manipulation" is the driving force behind this crisis. It is also the source of economic turmoil and social devastation. In the words of renowned currency speculator and billionaire George Soros (who made $1.6 billion of speculative gains in the dramatic crash of the British pound in 1992) "extending the market mechanism to all domains has the potential of destroying society". This manipulation of market forces by powerful actors constitutes a form of financial and economic warfare. No need to re-colonize lost territory or send in invading armies. (WSB: I would ask M. Chossudovsky to say what drives the "Worldwide scramble." WSB). (2) http://www.sus-tec.freeserve.co.uk/#fifteen On Our Cultural Heritage, by W Krehm Even the language itself has been twisted to exclude all alternatives to "the one blunt tool." "Fighting inflation" has become synonymous with higher interest rates, and if you question high interest policy, you are automatically classed an advocate of inflation. Society has been dumbed down to the point where it is increasingly difficult to even express alternatives; the language has been preempted to prevent our doing so. From a strictly economic issue the problem has moved on to become a failure of public morality. (WSB: I would ask W. Krehm to say what is missing from society's knowledge. WSB). (3) http://www.sus-tec.freeserve.co.uk/#eight 8: Strategies of Inequality, by Nick S. (Freedom) The European Union defines poverty as affecting "people below half average income". The proportion below half average (#384.6/week,? WSB) income in the UK has grown in the last 35 years, from 10% in 1961 to 17% in 1995. In the report Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion, produced for the Joseph Rowntree Trust in 1998, the researchers Catherine Howarth, Peter Kenway, Guy Palmer and Cathy Street note that "no single indicator could possibly capture the complexity of poverty and social exclusion ... income, though, is unique in determining a wider range of choices than any other asset". They go on to observe that "the majority of individuals who experience persistent low income are dependent in part on at least one of the principal state benefits. In 1997, the average weekly payment made to claimants of either Income Support or Job Seekers Allowance was around £58. People spending two years or more on weekly incomes of this size suffer considerable deprivation. Furthermore, the weekly payment does not rise with time, so that as households’ goods and clothing wear out, money to pay for replacements must be found from within the same, limited, weekly budget which has to cover all the essential costs of food, heat, power and travel." (WSB: I would ask Nick S. to say why we are content to monitor "Poverty and Social Exclusion" instead of eliminating it. WSB). It was cruel of me to make those three requests. There is no earthly way those three gentlemen can comply with my requests if they do not share a common vision of a technically valid conceptual model of human society, a model which concisely illustrates the reproductive process of our species, and the ways that process may be impaired. And how could they share such a vision in a culture in which Dr. James Lovelock in collaboration with Dr. Lynn Margulis could formulate the Gaia Hypothesis, describing the earth's biosphere as "a self-evolving and self-regulating living system," at URL <http://www.magna.com.au/~prfbrown/gaia_jim.html>, without devoting a few lines of type to the reproductive process of our species as illustrated by the ten figure global model at URLs <http://www.freespeech.org/darves/bert.html>, <http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/3142/IR/items/>, and <http://plaza.powersurfr.com/Usalama/economics.html>. Perhaps Elisabet Sahtouris in her new book, EARTHDANCE: Living Systems in Evolution, will give the human reproductive process its proper place in Gaia theory. I am still reading, and hoping to find it. Kind regards to all, Wesburt
