| Subject: | [socialcredit] social credit: over and weakly stated | | Date: | Friday, August 1, 2008 10:06:55 (-0700) | | From: | william_b_ryan <william_b_ryan @.....com>
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Wally Klinck has recently very graciously circulated photocopies of Maurice
Colbourne's *The Meaning of Social Credit*, which, under a different title, is
reportedly the book that inspired Aberhart to adopt Social Credit, thereby
changing world history.
It contains the typical seventy-five percent retail discount assertion that, in
my estimation, is so overstated as to be ridiculous. A definite turn-off to
people with ordinary common sense and education. In this proposal new money is
being created by the credit authority in the amount of seventy-five percent of
retail sales. One wonders where all the money is going and how this could not
result in massive inflation. A more realistic discount I think would be on the
order of no more than 2.5 percent, so the Social Credit proposal is overstated at
least by a factor of 30 to 1.
Another problem is the weakly stated A + B theorem. The following statement is
typical:
"The essential problem is that the consumer is charged in prices, quite
properly, with capital depreciation, but, quite wrongly, not credited with
capital appreciation."
I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. What, for example, is meant by
"capital appreciation"? One would suppose that somehow the dividend and
discount is the crediting to consumers of "capital appreciation." One thing for
sure, this is not the justification for the dividend and discount given in
Chapter 10 of *Credit-Power and Democracy*.
http://geocities.com/socredus/compendium/chapter10.txt
Social Crediters had decades to firm up their argument in terms that made sense.
Professional economists once took the Social Credit argument seriously, and
devoted chapters in their books refuting the Social Credit argument for endemic
underconsumption. The famous economist the late Robert Heilbronner devoted
chapters in his macroeconomic college textbooks until he stopped publishing
textbooks in the 1990s. During the past fifteen years, for the first period
since 1918, professional economists have completely ignored Social Credit. I
think the reason for this for the large part is the lack of anything new from
that camp. They have said everything they are going to say on the matter until
something new comes along.
In fact, perhaps the strongest argument for A + B ever presented is not from
anyone identified with the Social Credit movement, but the obscure P. W. Martin
in 1924.
http://geocities.com/new_economics/martin-douglasist
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social credit: ove
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