Let's help design a new economic model for the U.S.

[Ken Burch]

We're the people. We're ordinary folks like anybody else. We've seen that the "free market" as we've known it, doesn't work anymore and needs to be replaced.

We also know that the old model of a state-controlled bureaucratic economy is not an improvement.

We need to take it upon ourselves, in the finest radical yet pragmatic American tradition, to create something better.

This thread is about taking a few moments to shape the future.

I'd like to suggest each person offer, say three ideas.

Mine would be broad strokes:

1)The new system must be democratic in its decision-making processes.
2)It must be inclusive, rather than exclusive in who it benefits.
3)It needs to include green and what have been called "sustainable" values, so that it is not tied exclusively to finite resources and the need to stimulate through global uncertainty and the occasional war.

This is a new America. This is a new era. WE need a new economy.

Let's all show what we've got here.

[deaniac21]

1. Socialistic capitalism with a major Stalinist accent.

[Trillo]

2. A good intent. Time is money!

Maybe someone will come along with a bit of it, and another person, another.

Waxing snarkish: Everyone, every last human, needs their own money printing press!

Maybe it's not so snarkish after all. Every public corporation 'almost' has one. They print up stock and sell it to others. Why do people need to be restricted to only selling their labor and whatever property they own: public corporations aren't so limited.

However, the corporate model violates your rule number 2, so I'll shut up now.


Edit: couldn't keep my mouth shut. Perhaps money needs to be based upon something that every last person already has, instead of a so-called free market of central banks that are essentially exclusionary. Hmm. What do we already have, that our creator gives every last living thing? Time? (not my idea, it's been discussed for years) Hey, it's limited, so no inflationary issues to worry about.
Money should be fixed to time instead of gold or it's modern derivative, the free market.

Time is money!

[Trillo]

3. My Three Ideas: salaries paid with Time-based money

An economic system needs to acknowledge that some have spent more time learning than others, so wages, paid in time-based script, should be adjusted for the total number of years spent in education.

This would limit the pay of a doctor, for instance, to no more than somewhat under twice that (around 23/13ths) of a HS graduate. So payment to each and every and any person would be calculated based upon their total years spent in formal education leading to the initial degree that qualifies them.

1) Time is money, so script based upon time.

2) salaries are based upon time spent in formal education preparing.

3) Corporations could be formed by communally pooling interested parties time-based script, but they wouldn't be allowed to print their own money or stock, and they may be easily dissolved by regulators. Upon such a dissolving, any pooled script would returned to any "investors" in the ratios they were originally pooled after all wages owed are paid in full.

[ogneopasno]

6. I don't think that makes a lot of sense. Formal education?

Would that include apprentice programs, OJT, and internships? And what of the oft-maligned liberal arts degree -- I majored in Russian language but worked in journalism. How would you figure for that?

[notesdev]

9. Hmmm

"I majored in Russian language but worked in journalism. How would you figure for that?"

Minimum wage, and that's being generous.

No offense meant to Russians.

[ogneopasno]

16. Really? Why would you say something like that?

[Gregorian]

4. Great idea.

A new and different way of looking at "US". Everyone is on the same piece of dirt. And it's smaller than we all thought.

I would say that my model would be founded on something different and strange to most. You pretty much said it. Zero growth.


Let me just post this here, since I think it's phenomenal. 1% growth. It doesn't sound like much does it? Here is what 1% growth will do-

The time it would take for the human race to double it's size if it were growing at 1% is 70 years!!!!

Can you believe that? Nobody does. I did the math, and I'm freaking blown out of my skull. This means that even with the most minimal growth, we're going to be 14 billion people in not a very long time.

So, growth cannot be part of the economy under any circumstances.

[ogneopasno]

5. It's unoutsourceable.

[valerief]

7. Eat the Rich. nt

[elehhhhna]

8. Capitalism is fine. It can pay for neosocialism.

Let's not confuse economic systems with political systems, or politics with governance.

[Yavin4]

10. Here's What We Need To Do

1. Government investment in social infrastructure. Universal Healthcare. First Class educational system from grade school through grad school. Public transportation. Better internet access for all citizens.

2. Build up the Mfg and Export sectors with tax breaks and even some subsidies so that our products can bring back some of the wealth we've sent abroad. Create mfg. zones wherein the citizens and businesses in those zones get generous tax breaks. If a business operates in a state like MI, hires more than 5,000 workers, then they pay no federal taxes.

3. Downsize the military to the point where it's a defensive military, not an empire building military.

4. Encourage investments in new environmental technology and other information technology initiatives through tax breaks.

5. Raise taxes on the uber wealthy back to before Reagan, and the only way they can get a tax break is to invest in companies described in points 2 and 4 above.

Capitalism can still work. It's the best economic model for generating the highest standard of living for the masses of people. But, we have to return to the way capitalism was regulated in the period after WWII and before Reagan. In that time period, capitalism was regulated for the benefit of all Americans, not just the wealthy.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

11. Green socialism with a commitment to education for all

Public transportation second to none,with bio-diesel buses in rural areas (like mine) linking to high speed rail hubs. Retrofitting old vehicles to run as hybrids or as air cars; solar energizing of homes-all this and more makes for green jobs. New vehicles are made by state owned factories run by the workers. A broad range of health benefits with a stress on wellness and prevention via a single payer system. Instead of the CIA, we have NGOs like the CAI (Central Asia Institute) going around the world working with locals both here and abroad to build schools, create technical training, and educate people about health and sanitation. Finally, hemp regains its rightful place as biofuel and marijuana is legally used by all those with a health need.

[conscious evolution]

12. There is an ec system

in one of RH Hienliens book.Can't remember the name of the book though.It was his first protonovel that didn't get printed till after his death.In it was a model for an economic sytem that always looked good to me.
I think it was a credit side system and several states actually implemented parts of it back in the thirties.I think Alaskas oil royalties to citizens is based on his model also.
I had a friend who was a proffessor of economics at Ga State U. and also worked for the Federal Reserve.He looked it over and thought it was promising and was going to get some grad students to look into it when he died of a sudden M.I. Oh well.

[Greyhound]

13. The first thing needed is the abolition of usury.

Anytime this is permitted, inevitably, a completely unproductive industry will rise around it and reduce or eliminate any benefit the rest of the system produces.

Another early step is to define our terms. For example, most people confuse or conflate currency with finance.

Next, I believe is to establish the goals of the system. What is it's purpose, who benefits, who pays?
:kick:

[KittyWampus]

14. How about the Trobriand Islanders' method of exchanging shells within a circle?

[Ani Yun Wiya]

15. The U.S. is not an island.

The entire world needs a new way of dealing with the issue of money and "economics".
It needs something wherein each citizen of each nation is where the "value" is understood to reside.
And the world certainly does not need one nation or some small group of nations dictating to every other nation "how things will be".