| Subject: | Re: [socialcredit] how big our claims? | | Date: | Monday, August 8, 2005 08:01:09 (-0700) | | From: | William B. Ryan <w_b_ryan @.....com>
|
| In reply to: | Message 2415 (written by Triumphofthepast) |
And what's wrong with abolishing taxation (i.e.,
letting government take its downsized money needs out
before the dividend is paid)?
----------------------------------
There are several aspects to this question. One of
them is that government is filling needs that wouldn't
exist under Social Credit--so the scope for government
would be less than it is today.
As to taking money out for government before the
dividend is paid, well, I think that completely
inverts the thrust of the Douglas argument, which is
economic democracy. I say the thrust because the
other day Wally sent a Fig Tree article where Douglas
suggested that government might do just that.
Let government attempt to tax what they feel they need
to do their job. What's wrong with that?
As a general principle we want to limit concentrations
of power.
Requiring government to tax before they spend places a
significant restriction on the potential tyranny that
is government.
The reason is that levying a tax is not the same thing
as collecting a tax.
We demonstrated that at the Boston Tea Party.
-
--- Triumphofthepast@aol.com wrote:
Subject: how big our claims?
Date: Monday, August 8, 2005 08:46:49 (EDT)
From: Triumphofthepast <Triumphofthepast@aol.com>
Dear Friends,
Joe made the point but I reiterate it. I suggest to
John that he look around and start toting up instances
of the all-pervading waste that he can see on all
sides during the ordinary course of any day. The
following is from my chapter in Tony Cooney's upcoming
new edition of "Social Credit: Economics."
"The phenomenon/problem that obsessed Douglas the
engineer and to whose solution he devoted his entire
life is what he calls the tragedy of human effort, the
gross waste of people's labor. Douglas quotes a
statement of H. L. Gantt that the U.S. industrial
system was 5% efficient.1 That means 95% waste. That
would mean we were at that time working twenty times
harder than we had to to get the same results.
Without committing ourselves to particular numbers,
anyone not wearing blinkers can look around and see
the same phenomenon today.
"We see myriad jobs that do not actually produce any
product or service for human satisfaction; whole
industries that are mere unnecessary adjuncts to, or
parasitic on, real production (or adjuncts to
adjuncts); incomprehensible legislation providing jobs
for armies of lawyers and spawning the
Alice-in-Wonderland world of the civil "service";
massive labor diverted from actual production to
unproductive commercial warfare; vast resources
diverted to seducing the public; the absurdity of a
country's "living on its exports"; the crime of
product destroyed to keep prices up; the heartbreak of
wonderful inventions killed in the womb; the insult of
"job creation" promoted as something desirable.
"We see all the cars and roads and petroleum used to
get people to and from these unnecessary jobs. We see
processing, packing, transport, distribution, and
retail processes expended to put a jar of apple-sauce
on the shelf when you could make a superior product at
home by popping an apple into the oven. All this in
the context of a technological capability that the
engineer knows better than anyone could happily
disemploy people. Yet despite all this technology at
our disposal and all this investment of resources, our
cities are still shamed by the specter of homeless and
starving people, and even a middle-class family is but
one illness away from economic ruin. The tragedy of
human effort cries out for an explanation."
I put it to John that he is underestimating the
all-pervading nature of the problem and therefore the
huge relief that could be brought about by fixing it.
Depending who he's talking to, he might want to make
more modest claims, but among ourselves, we dare to
make big ones. And what's wrong with abolishing
taxation (i.e., letting government take its downsized
money needs out before the dividend is paid)?
Michael
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