Ethics applied to Economics

.

There are three major economic systems that prevail in the world today.

Regulated Capitalism, as is found in the United States, Britain, and most European countries.

State Capitalism (also known as Communist Capitalism) as seen in China and Vietnam.

Gangster Capitalism, which they have in Russia and in Hungary, where oligarchs comprise the administration that runs the country.

We recently (in 2020) came very close to getting Gangster Capitalism in the Unites States.

Your views?

Not every economic system is capitalist, and capitalism does not necessarily have to do with the real economy.

There is no such thing as regulated capitalism, but only a system controlled by monopoly capitalists, in which the financial system forms its own system.

State capitalism is a mixture of capitalism and communism in that the state - the government - is capitalist, but commands communism from the non-governing.

Gangster capitalism can be both monopoly capitalism and state capitalism. Classical capitalism exists only for the middle class, which is why it is fought, exploited by monopoly capitalism (upper class) and by state capitalism (upper class) as well as by commanded communism (lower class). This will later lead to a new feudalism, has already done so in part.

[tab]By the way, you have confused Hungary with Belarus or Ukraine.[/tab]

.

Here are three links showing results of research done at the Wharton School of Economics and Business:

knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/art … ic-income/

sp2.upenn.edu/discover/pres … the-answer

budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/i … c-modeling

Your discussion of these findings? Tell us your views….

.

Here are three links showing results of research done at the Wharton School of Economics and Business:

knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/art … ic-income/

sp2.upenn.edu/discover/pres … the-answer

budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/i … c-modeling

These studies are an excellent contribution to both The Philosophy of Economics and to Applied Ethics.

Your discussion of these findings? Tell us your views….

.

Be sure to view this discussion/ debate between two professors of Economics on the topic of the strengths and weaknesses of each: “Capitalism vs. Socialism”. It seems that both Economists discussing these topics want a better life, a quality life, for the people who live in the ethical economy. This is a profound discussion in which the speakers define their terms …something rare in a talk on the Philosophy of Economics. Check this out:

youtube.com/watch?v=w6Hp-R4s8Fk

Enjoy!!!

.

Be sure to view this safe-to-open video and get this book! It is super-excellent:

c-span.org/video/?511249-1/ … h-hoarders

Reviews of this book by Chuck Collins may be found here:

amazon.com/dp/150954349X#customerReviews

I do agree with Andrew Boyd who referred to this book as “a solid expose & plan of action.”

Let us know what you learned from the recommendations offered by Collins, the author, and give us your impressions as to whether this work is a beautiful example of Ethics Applied to Economics.

Okay?

Here is some food for thought worthy of your attention:

Take a look inside this book: Stephania Kelton, THE DEFICIT MYTH

Scroll down here, for a look inside the book:
amazon.com/Deficit-Myth-Mon … =4&depth=1

…or here:

amazon.com/Deficit-Myth-Mon … 50219011&s

Read all these reviews:
amazon.com/Deficit-Myth-Mon … ll_reviews

Would you give this book a positive review?

I would.

What are your views on Modern Monetary Theory? [She really presents it clearly - and simply - doesn’t she!! With many people these days asking “How pay for these policies and govt. programs?” the little book couldn’t be more timelly :exclamation: :exclamation: ]

Some ethical wrongs (when Ethics is applied to Economic), are Under-investment, underemployment, and under-consumption (i.e., stark poverty.)

Yet these errors are exactly what a columnist for Barron’s financial weekly writes is why we should all be aware of the points made in the book, THE DEFICIT MYTH by economist and teacher Stephanie Kelton. {{For details, see recent above post which has a link to some positive, constructive Reviews.} Her points are valuable for us to understand, as she explains and elucidates Modern Monetary Theory in plain language.

We ought not be afraid of govvernment borrowing and spending especially at a time like we are experiencing right now! We cannot currently afford myths about the deficit.

Do you agree?

No.

I wrote:

Then I asked: “Do you agree?”

During conditions of high unemployment the economy is not yet “in the groove.” It is not yet really rolling along. Productivity is much lower than it could be.

As a student of the new paradigm for Ethics I would like to see everyone working at projects they love. …thus being quite productive. In effect, I want everyone to love their jobs. It’s a high-ideal I hope for. and work for. I would argue that when people work at jobs they hate it does not maximize productivity.

What will it take to get the economy rolling again? What could “grease the wheels?” It is a fact of Economics that if money is put into the hands of those who are hungry, or those who cannot pay their rent due to ‘being in the hole’ financiAlly – and many thousands are in that situation currently in the USA – those folks spend the cash, or the government debt-waiver, right away. There is then turnover of currency. This “greases the wheels.” This turnover means the economy is humming along! Until there is full-employment government deficits are very appropriate. This process is how the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower built the interstate highway system, for example.

Congress votes to pass a Budget; but it is fiction until it is actualized by people going to work to make it happen. What incentivizes them to do this is the government money that is handed out. This is called the Debt: it is the deficit that the deficit-hawks say they’re worried about. Yet when the cult-leader, Trump, cut taxes for the wealthy, thus enormously raising the deficit, there were hardly any protests from the same crowd that is fearing now: crying out “How will we pay for the program Joe Biden wants??!!”

Ethics teaches that love drives out fear.
If one - even a Trump supporter - understands Modern Monetary Theory, he will not be afraid. He will readily agree on these truths that are discussed in this post. This rquirres a high-degree of awareness which, unfortunately, some may lack. Will they read Kelton’s little book, The Deficit Myth, with an attitude of wanting to learn something new? There is reason to doubt they will.

Don’t you think ‘good economic system=wealth’ and ‘bad economic system=poverty’ is a bit… simplistic?

All economic systems will create both wealth and poverty, the question is simply how the process of growth is distributed among individuals. Who has that wealth, and who suffers the poverty?

The essence of economics is to determine, as accurately as possible, what is the most efficient way to satisfy human wants and needs, both individually and communally. Production is the central concept in economics and it is the most accurate and reliable way of measuring everything that contributes to producing more wealth. In a free market, the majority of people will benefit as the productive assets and the capital goods go to those who can most usefully utilize them. Socialism seeks to put the “means of production” in the hands of the people. There are, however, fundamental problems with this philosophy. The “means of production” are a natural resource - land, mines, raw materials. It is not likely for a group of people to simultaneously own a resource and also know all the best ways of utilizing it, so capitalist systems recirculate surplus wealth towards an upper class with the skills and knowledge to use it to drive research and development for future technologies, increasing surplus even more. (It is not possible to predict what the next technology will be, but in our lifetime, it is reasonable to believe that the major energy source will change from oil to a variety of other energy sources - nuclear, hydroelectric, wind and solar. In the event that oil was to be depleted to a point that its price was too high, an alternative fuel source must be discovered and developed, requiring a great deal of research and development. Only capitalist states with great surplus wealth will be able to afford to create these new earth-saving energy technologies, which will be another victory for capitalism.)

In the Marxist system, there is no incentive to produce for the good of all, only to extract as much value from the others as possible, which is often called communism. In the corporate model, production, investment and reinvestment are largely divorced from the people whose value is created. In the case of welfare states, everyone is assumed to be needy and the system is geared toward reducing this neediness through redistributive programs that only serve to increase the amount of need. This last option is the most likely to ensure the continued poverty of the masses. If the state owns land or raw materials and redistributes it towards its own citizens, this is not necessarily the best way to utilize it. The market system is in many ways self-correcting, as those not producing do not benefit from the growth in production.

The main political difference between capitalism and socialism is between those who advocate the free market and those who advocate central planning. Free markets have a long history of producing wealth, which is then shared with society. The problem with central planning is that the people responsible for the planning don’t always have the knowledge to see where society is headed and are often the cause of the problems of society, and that is why central planning is not a system that people are particularly attracted to. The success of the free market requires the people to invest in capital goods in order to generate more wealth. The free market is more likely to work when the productive resources are owned by those who can use them to produce the most value, incentivizing people to invest. However, with government regulation, land acquisition, taxation and the rest of the apparatus of political economy, the government can effectively control the means of production. The United States is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, yet the welfare state is strangling the productive economy.

The “UBI” or Universal Basic Income (in the form of a NIT) was something that Milton Friedman and others in the Libertarian camp were promoting. But what is required is an economic system that gives everyone, no matter how poor or even destitute, the opportunity to work. Work is the best antidote to poverty.

It was Minsky’s view that markets were not able to “self-regulate” and it was this that lead to the collapse of the market bubble and an economic crash in the US in 2007-2009. The reason this didn’t happen in other countries was that they had their own forms of financial controls, for example the Swiss ban on short selling, the European ban on naked short selling, and the U.K. ban on hedging, which were all removed at the time of the US’s crisis. The idea that the crisis was due to a failure of financial controls seems very narrow minded to me.

The crisis was a collapse of a market bubble, with a huge increase in volatility. The UK and most other countries did have regulations in place at the time and yet the markets in the UK had bubbles.

In a capitalist economy, wealth is created when people work; work to produce value, and people’s lives improve as a result. In socialist systems, the incentive is completely different: people are paid to work, but instead of doing something that will increase the supply of value (or create surplus), they spend their time doing things like learning and teaching Marxist theory and how to be oppressed.

–SHOGGOTH-1.

AYY LOL it made a joke.

We learn from a passage found at Amazon Books, and I quote:

In this book,”Peter Barnes argues that because of globalization, automation, and winner-take-all capitalism, there won’t be enough high-paying jobs to sustain America’s middle class in the future. Therefore, to survive economically, our middle class needs—and deserves—a supplementary source of nonlabor income. For this need, Barnes proposes to give every American a share of the wealth we own together— starting with our air and financial infrastructure. These shares would pay dividends of several thousand dollars per year—money that would not be welfare or wealth redistribution but legitimate property income.”

In order to read reviews of a creative, well-argued, relevant and timely policy suggestion by Peter Barnes to relieve homelessness and other forms of extreme poverty click on this link. This is a libertarian idea and solves several problems at once. …such as how to decrease pollution. Check this out:
amazon.com/Liberty-Dividend … merReviews

What are your views on this proposal for a Citizen’s Dividend?

I have learned that at the end of next month a more-updated and improved argument for this “Citizen’s Dividend” proposal will be published and be available for you to review. Here is a notice of the exact date of publication:

amazon.com/Our-Fair-Share-E … oks&sr=1-1

That concisely-framed thesis in a relatively brief space is entitled OUR FAIR SHARE.

The book’s author is Brian C. Johnson. I heard him speak once, describing his case for the citizen’s dividend as a way of relieving homelessness – which is becoming an epidemic problem in these (cuurrently-disunited) United States.

Check it out.
Let us know what you think of this concept, this social policy proposal, designed to help the poorest of the poor climb a few rungs up the opportunity ladder. Every individual adult citizen would get the dividen, even the wealthy. To them it wouldn’t mean much …just “pocket change.”

What say you?

No.
Wealth is created by adding value to raw resources, and in the mobilisation of human effort to achieve that goal. Value is added by creating useful things that can be consumed or used to make tasks easier.
The economic “system” is not creating any wealth but is the means by which value is exchanged.
This is a common and dangerous misconception which validates market speculation in which money is rearranged whilst no work is done. People can earn money, whilst not creating wealth. This is the evil of the system which can cause poverty and inequality. Wealth is stolen.

Yes.
A bad system, such as the one we have, enables people to paracitize the industry of others and steal the wealth created by real work. Take a look at the stock market.

Depends how you define “economic value”. It might be clearer to say that money has primacy over wealth, since “economic value” can be construed as money.

The danger with this statement is that the economic system shields people from thinking that their actions are immoral.
For example a person speculating on the stock market is taking money out of the economy but not creating wealth. He has been convinced by himself and others that he is doing a useful job, since he erroneously thinks he is creating wealth for himself and his family, and that this is good for the economy. There is an ideological conspiracy to promote that activity since the rich depend on it fro their own benefit.
I’m not talking about a group of people in a smoke filled room plotting their own future, but a silent conspircay in which ordinary people find justification for their actions from a smorgasbord of available rationales.

No. Ethics is already in place and it is employed to shield the abusers from the reality of the situation. FOr example, whilst the West loot the third world of resources, there is ethical support that tells the rapist that he is also “developing” local capacity. IN effect all he is doing is building a road so that he can more efficiently loot the minerals.

I think UBI is a good start, and that only the rich should be taxed, since they get all the benefits.
I do, though, wonder if we really need to move towards something completely different.

Since I first posted the above, I have learned more about the proposal. I will grant it is visionary.

The ‘Citizen’s Dividend’ would come from a Wealth Fund, modeled after the sovereign wealth fund that the state of Alaska has. Theirs is based upon the oil resources/ Where would the funding originate for this national fund? The source proposed in this fresh, new concept is: every business that uses public benefits in some way would be expected, and urged to, donate a contribution to this Wealth Fund. The amount of this donation is: five percent of their profits. They keep 19/20ths and give - for the good of the nation - 1/20th. The amount of the dividend to which every adult in the country who is a citizen is entitled to get as an equal grant would fluctuate depending upon business conditions and national productivity; so there would be no guarantee of the amount of the Citizen’s Dividend. This feature differentiates this concept from a UBI idea.

No doubt this concept would meet with much resistance when businesses initially hear about it. Yet if you and others campaign for it, as the Suffragettes did for the right of women to vote, or the gays did for the recognition of the concept of Gay Marriage, or even for the right to live in peace and not be abused for their gender identity …then eventually the concept of a Citizen’s Dividend may take hold, may be taken for granted as a good idea: a wise social safety-net.

Many justifications for the new concept are given in this little book which explains why the national Wealth Fund is needed. It turns out that virtually every business takes advantage of public resources, such as the street in front of their building, or the commercial structure of exchange guaranteed by the government which existed before their company was founded.

So go to this site, safe-to-open, take a look inside the book; start reading it. amazon.com/Our-Fair-Share-E … =4&depth=1

The central aim of the author is to make our national motto “Out of Many One” more of a reality. At this time it would be good for The United States to achieve more unity. At present there is at this ppoint in our history too much division and disunity. This "one simple small change proposed could do it :exclamation: The book is entitled: Our Fair Share.

hat are your views on this novel concept? Do you approve, or disapprove? And, if you care to, please tell us why you arrived at your conclusions.

There have been some new developments since I wrote the above post.

The athor, a Princeton graduate, has received a very-favorable reception since the book was publiished. He made the front-page of the book section of The Chicago Tribune; and has been invited to present the case for his proposal on several speaking platforms.

I got a copy of the book, started reading, and found “I couldn’t put it down!” The book is very-well, even excellently, written: It is extremely readable, is well-documented and footnoted to back up and justify every claim made! The title, once again, is OUR FAIR SHARE. I especially was impressed by how willing and ready the author was to adapt and adjust the benefit, the Citizen’s Dividend, to what would realistically make an acceptable impact with respect to what citizens want and need. Philosophical Pragmatists would be pleased!! The efforts proposed are ethically-sensitive as well as realistic and ‘in touch.’ It anticipates objections and criticisms and has a counter-argument for each.

If you obtained a copy of this book, or its audio, or ebook for Kindle version, and looked it over, what was your impression of it?
I, for one, would like to be informed of your experience with this fresh, novel, visionary yet practical, proposal. …and tthe argument made for it.

Here, for your convenience, is a link to the work:
gGo to this site, read the reviews, and reflect upn, consider, the proposal set forth:
amazon.com/Our-Fair-Share-E … 767&sr=1-1
https:.

Have just become aware of a new development as Ethics is applied in the Economic/Financial field:

Workers who are owners, in the worker co-op movement, now have a new tool at their disposal. They can take advantage of this free course to enable them to make better presentations for recruiting more personnel to join the business. See this page for further details, and take the free course if you want to be a part of the movement:
courses.institute.coop/p/financ … ff3747cd62

Let us know if this was helpful in your spreading the word that something good is happening on the American scene.
Are you doing anything to help make the world more ethical?

Came upon this very-interesting article which you may find to be helpful on the theme of this thread.

Check it out. Let us know your impressions of it.

[b]See: - earthbound.report/2012/10/17/a- … tribution/

Your feedback is requested…[/b]

Professional philosophers draw distinctions between concepts. It is part of what they do.

The writers of the essay linked to in the previous post, just above, function as philosophers. In fact they do some serious philosophy: they draw a distinction between two concepts. Those concepts are “distribution” and “predistribution.”

Here is another report that does the same:

https://equitablegrowth.org/predistribution/

These writings define the difference in these two social policies, and they argue well that predistribution is the better path to take.

An example where this predistribution policy works in practice is in Japan. The discussion in the earlier link, the one in the preceding post, explains why it is a success there. This concept is a case of Ethics applied to economics.

Hope you enjoyed reading both reports.

Was the distinction made clear in those reports? Do you now grasp the distinction? Do you agree with their conclusion?