| Subject: | [socialcredit] What is the actual "gap"? | | Date: | Wednesday, February 6, 2008 09:51:20 (-0800) | | From: | william_b_ryan <william_b_ryan @.....com>
|
Wally Klinck has just circulated a paper from 1924 by
Francis L. Leet, L.L.D, a negative review of Douglas'
*Credit Power and Democracy,* where he makes the
following claim:
"...we are informed by Major Douglas that our own
Government is to print Treasury notes to the extent of
the value approximately of three-fourths of our
national output of commodities we feel how good the
assurance is that no inflation can or will result.
Also, as this is, beyond all question, the vital point
in his system, we cannot doubt that Major Douglas and
his collaborators have tested its soundness and
genuineness with scientific care and accuracy."
This is referring to the retail discount program. I
do not recall that in *Credit Power,* or elsewhere,
that Douglas said the discount should be an astounding
seventy-five percent. I may have missed it. Perhaps
someone more familiar with Douglas' work than I am
will cite exactly where he said it. It has, however,
been used from the very beginning to ridicule the
Social Credit concept profusely. You might remember
that we had a discussion a couple of years ago about
Frank Ramsey's paper, which was much admired by
Keynes, where Ramsey made the same claim, which I then
characterized as a straw-man type of argument--the
setting up of a ridiculous version of the theory, to
knock down.
I was therefore astonished to read in another paper,
which Wally circulated a few days earlier, the text of
Orage's BBC address from 1934, given, I think, a few
hours before he died, where he claims:
"The stream of Price-values to the shop-window moves
much faster than the stream of Money-tickets to the
shopping public, with the result that the annual
collective shopping tickets of the nation, called its
Income, are insufficient to meet the collective annual
Price-values created in its shop. Now this is a matter
of fact and not of theory; and it can be proved by
simple arithmetic. Our shop-keeper, for instance, has
told us that, at a rough estimate, our annual output
of Price-values is ten thousand million pounds and
probably more. And our taxing officials tell us, more
accurately, that our annual Monetary Income is about
two thousand five hundred million pounds. As four is
to one, so is our output of Price-values to the
Money-tickets with which to meet them. The nation’s
means of Consumption measured in Money-tickets, in
short, is at least no more than a quarter of its means
of Production measured in Prices."
It is indeed a matter of simple arithmetic, but where
the numbers appear to be quite arbitrary on Orage's
part. I would have thought that in more than eighty
years of political agitation, someone would have put
meat behind the numbers, in determining what they
actually are.
My guess, and it's just a guess, is that the actual
"gap" between "prices" and "purchasing power" is no
more than two or three percent.
Which is actually very profound and economically
significant, in its compounding effect over time.
It is counter-productive to overstate the case.
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What is the actual
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