Concordian economics

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <IMG SRC="05caa730.png" border=0 width="170" height="115" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <B>The Economic Process</B></div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <B>Concordian economics</B></div> <div> Welcome </div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Meet the Founder"><U>Meet the Founder</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Endorsements"><U>Endorsements</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id19.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter II of EP"><U>Chapter II of EP</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id20.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Bulletin Board"><U>Bulletin Board</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id21.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Related Links"><U>Related Links</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id22.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contact Us"><U>Contact Us</U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div>  <A NAME="an_introduction_to_concordian_economics"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A>An introduction to Concordian economics</div> <bR> <div> Concordian economics is a theory in progress of development. It is based on the revision of Keynes' model of the economic system, a work that was notably assisted for 27 years by Professor Franco Modigliani, a Nobel laureate in economics at MIT, and for 21 years by Professor M. L. Burstein, a Professor of economics at York University.. </div> <bR> <div> So far, its founder,<A HREF="http://www.carmine-gorga.us/index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.carmine-gorga.us/index.htm"><U> </U></A><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="http://www.carmine-gorga.us/index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.carmine-gorga.us/index.htm"><U>Carmine Gorga</U></A></FONT>, Ph.D., has produced a book and, at times in collaboration with others, a series of papers. The book is entitled <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="http://www.carmine-gorga.us/id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.carmine-gorga.us/id18.htm"><U><I>The Economic Process: An Instantaneous Non-Newtonian Picture</I></U></A> </FONT>(University Press of America, 2002). In it, the writer transforms the linear world of supply and demand, the world of the "dismal science," into an organic and dynamic set of human relationships: How do people produce wealth, how do they divide the ownership of that wealth among themselves, how do they use money to buy and to sell goods.</div> <bR> <div> The attention then is focused not on a simplistic observations of markets, but on the economic effects of the inner workings of economic justice.</div> <bR> <div> The most important papers are reprinted at<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" > http://www.carmine-gorga.us/id34.htm</FONT>. </div> <bR> <div> To best understand Concordian economics, one has to relate it to the conditions of the modern world. The essentials of this condition can be put quite simply. While the followers of Don Quixote (artists and the literati) chase windmills, the followers of Galilei (scientists and technologists) build windmills; and a chosen few -- the oligarchs -- concentrate on owning the windmills.</div> <bR> <div> The numbers are impressive. Summarizing the results of numerous studies and official government reports, Paul Krugman, the noted Princeton economist and columnist, has specified in the <I>New York Times </I>of February 27, 2006 that<FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <bR> <div> Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year.</div> <bR> <div> So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn't a ticket to big income gains.</div> <bR> <div> But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that's not a misprint.</div> <bR> <div> Just to give you a sense of who we're talking about: the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that this year the 99th percentile will correspond to an income of $402,306, and the 99.9th percentile to an income of $1,672,726. The center doesn't give a number for the 99.99th percentile, but it's probably well over $6 million a year.</div> <bR> <div> Aren't you at least a little bit curious as to how the oligarchs do it?</div> <bR> <div> <B>Hint</B>: They do it legally.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Double hint</B>: They do not corrupt judges and legislators.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Triple hint</B>: These results have nothing to do with the laws of supply and demand, but with the workings of the economic process as a whole.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> ***</div> <bR> <div> I am biased, of course, but that in a nutshell is the reason why I recommend my book so highly to any reader who is interested in what goes on in the world today. If one wants to understand what goes on in the world, one must understand the inner workings of the economic process. No, the above vignette of our economic condition is neither a new development nor a new revelation. The process has gone on for the last four hundred -- if not four thousand -- years.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> ***</div> <bR> <div> No book stands alone. <I>The Economic Process</I> is the pivot of Concordian economics, a set of propositions that builds a seamless canvass out of economic theory, policy, and practice. The book itself has its roots in a new/old system of logic and a new/old epistemology, fields that I believe contain the basic rules of civilized discourse. In turn, the book prepares the way for the implementation of economic justice.</div> <bR> <div> And what does economic justice recommend? The way I read it, economic justice recommends that one should be neither a Luddite, I do not believe in smashing the windmills; nor a socialist, I do not believe that “the state” will ever help us wrest the ownership of the windmills from the oligarchs. And that would be wrong in any case. I believe in the power of economic justice. I believe in the power of producing, distributing, and exchanging wealth in accordance with the principles of economic justice from this moment on. I believe in the power of these four economic rights and responsibilities to set things right in the modern world:</div> <bR> <div> 1. <I>We all have the right of access to land and natural resources</I>. This is a natural right. It belongs to us just in virtue of our humanness. Land and natural resources are our original commons. They belong to us all. This is an essential right, because without the possibility of exercising it, we are deprived of the possibility of participating in the economic process. And without participation in the economic process, we are marginalized; we are made dependent on the good will of others. The most direct way of securing this right is through the exercise of <B>the responsibility to pay taxes</B> for the exclusive use of those resources that are under our command. Hoarding idle land is the economic link between the tax on that land and the right of access to that land and its natural resources. Paying taxes on land and natural resources gradually encourages dis-hoarding and correspondingly opens up the resources of that land to all those who need them and can make use of them. Worrisome hoarding is that which occurs both downtown and in the belt surrounding major cities and towns: it is to leapfrog over this belt that people go to the suburbs in search for affordable land, thus creating overlong commuting lines and overstretched lines of communication and protection. Paying taxes on land values is a most fair form of taxation, because it implies returning to the community part of the value that is created, not by the individual owner, but by the community. And still there is no compulsion in this policy: pay more taxes and keep control of more land.</div> <div>              <U>Quick decoding key</U>: The oligarchs control an enormous portion of land and natural resources because they do not pay fair taxes on them.</div> <bR> <div> 2. <I>We all have the right of access to national credit.</I> Since national credit is the power of a nation to create money, and since the value of money is given by the value of wealth left over by past generations and the creativity of every person in a nation, national credit is the last frontier: the last commons. Without access to credit today one is made economically impotent. Worse, since this advantage is automatically granted to the few -- the so-called prime dealers -- it is automatically denied to the majority of the population who are henceforth condemned to pay a higher rate of interest, if they obtain credit at all. Of course, a loan should be extended only on the basis of <B>the responsibility to repay the loan</B>. And these loans will have a high chance of being repaid because they are issued at cost and are issued exclusively for capital formation, for the creation of new wealth -- not to buy consumer goods or financial papers or goods to be hoarded. Capital credit liberates, while consumer credit enslaves us.</div> <div>              <U>Quick decoding key</U>: The central bank creates money for the benefit of the oligarchs and then borrows money from them.</div> <bR> <div> 3. <I>We all have the right to the fruits of our labor. </I>This right should not be limited to the right to obtain only a wage. It should be extended to the right to the other major fruit of economic growth over time: capital appreciation -- as well as being subject to capital loss, of course. The only justification for reserving the right to capital appreciation to the stockholders, the owners of a corporation, and excluding the workers from it, can be found in the fact that today loans are given only to owners of past wealth (the catch-22 of today's economic reasoning). But from now on this right can be extended to people who do not have prior wealth through the right of access to national credit -- especially by legally transforming workers into owners through individually owned enterprises, ESOPs, and cooperatives. Of course, this right should be extended only in correspondence with <B>the responsibility to offer services</B> equal to projected compensation. And there will be an outpouring of such services because, while in a command and control economy workers are requested to check their brains at the factory entrance, in a Concordian -- and chaordic -- economy owners are legally and psychologically empowered to exercise their brains at their work post.</div> <div>              <U>Quick decoding key</U>: While workers receive the pittance of a diminishing wage, the oligarchs receive the blessings of capital appreciation.</div> <bR> <div> 4. <I>We all have the right to protect our wealth</I>. This right seems to be universally accepted, except in one case that matters most: in the case of the trustification process, the process originally conceived to create corporate trusts and repeated in a hundred subtle variations in industrial growth. There are two ways in which most corporations grow: one is through internal growth, and this manifestation ought to be protected in no uncertain terms; the other is growth by external purchase, and this manifestation ought to be prohibited in no uncertain terms. Why? Because this prohibition is the only certain way to protect the wealth of present owners. And if it is assumed that most stockholders of the modern corporation are happy to have their shares bought and sold on the market, it must be granted that growth-by-purchase takes wealth away from workers who have contributed to create that value -- and many times, in the trustification process, lose their work site as well. All in the name of efficiency -- a misnomer that stands for private financial gain garnered at the expense of shifting costs of living onto the community. Of course, this right ought to be purchased only at the cost of <B>the responsibility to respect the wealth of others</B>. These are two way streets. We cannot even attempt to restrain the Pac-Man economy, while we use Pac-Man instruments.</div> <div>              <U>Quick decoding key</U>: It used to be that the oligarchs would make money on money, now they use money to buy and sell entire corporations.</div> <bR> <div>      A disclaimer. Apart from necessary technical innovations and the glue that holds the various pieces of the canvas together, I must say that there is not a stitch of originality in these principles. They all stem from the thought of Benjamin Franklin, Henry George, Louis D. Brandeis, and Louis O. Kelso. Read them in rapid succession, and you discover that one picks up from where the other left off. Individually, they do not stand; but together they form a very sturdy compound; together they shape an unassailable, comprehensive, all-American economic policy concerning (1) land and natural resources; (2) money; (3) labor; and (4) physical capital.</div> <bR> <div> We at <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="http://www.concordians.org" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.concordians.org"><U><U>www.concordians.org</U></U></A></FONT> are not simply talking about these principles; we are starting a movement to implement them. Here are some of our guidelines. Feel free to create your own.</div> <bR> <div> Do not fight the Federal Reserve System; rather, show them that it is possible to have a different conception and administration of money by starting a Mutual Assurance Fund with your friends and progressing to the establishment of a community-wide Financial Interdependence Fund. Then pass on your very own Concord Resolution. For details, see <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="http://www.polis-tics.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.polis-tics.com"><U><U>www.polis-tics.com</U></U></A></FONT>.</div> <bR> <div> Do not fight City Hall; rather, ask your City Councilors to gradually shift the tax burden from buildings onto land. That is all that they have to do. For details, see <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="http://" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://"><U><U>www.urbantools.org</U></U></A></FONT>.</div> <bR> <div> Do not fight the oligarchs; rather, join them. Ask them not for a wage, but for a share of the profits -- a share of the ownership of the corporation in which you work -- and assume the risks of doing so. Gradually transform the Labor Movement into an Ownership Movement. For details, see <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="http://www.nceo.org" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.nceo.org"><U><U>www.nceo.org</U></U></A></FONT>.</div> <bR> <div> Do not fight the conglomerates; forget about becoming a globalist; rather, become a localist. Hold those pieces of the conglomerates that happen to be in your community to the fire of truth, economic justice, and economic freedom for all.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> ***</div> <bR> <div> Buy the book, if you can. Read it at the library, if you wish. Borrow it from a friend. Somehow get acquainted with the basic propositions of Concordian economics. If you have read thus far, you have already made a good start. Above all, join us in the effort to change the world -- in any way you can. Join us in the effort to create a Concordian world. There is plenty of exhilarating work to be done.</div> </td> </tr></table></body>