Let's help design a new economic model for the U.S.

[bijou]

Ken Burch  (1000+ posts)        Fri Dec-26-08 03:41 PM
Original message
Let's help design a new economic model for the U.S. 
 Advertisements [?]We're the people. We're ordinary folks like anybody else. We've seen that the "free market" as we've known it, doesn't work anymore and needs to be replaced.

We also know that the old model of a state-controlled bureaucratic economy is not an improvement.

We need to take it upon ourselves, in the finest radical yet pragmatic American tradition, to create something better.

This thread is about taking a few moments to shape the future.

I'd like to suggest each person offer, say three ideas.

Mine would be broad strokes:

1)The new system must be democratic in its decision-making processes.
2)It must be inclusive, rather than exclusive in who it benefits.
3)It needs to include green and what have been called "sustainable" values, so that it is not tied exclusively to finite resources and the need to stimulate through global uncertainty and the occasional war.

This is a new America. This is a new era. WE need a new economy.

Let's all show what we've got here.
 

deaniac21 (1000+ posts)      Fri Dec-26-08 03:46 PM
Response to Original message
1. Socialistic capitalism with a major Stalinist accent.

SimpleTrend  (1000+ posts)        Fri Dec-26-08 03:55 PM
Response to Original message
2. A good intent. Time is money! 
 Edited on Fri Dec-26-08 04:14 PM by SimpleTrend
Maybe someone will come along with a bit of it, and another person, another.

Waxing snarkish: Everyone, every last human, needs their own money printing press!

Maybe it's not so snarkish after all. Every public corporation 'almost' has one. They print up stock and sell it to others. Why do people need to be restricted to only selling their labor and whatever property they own: public corporations aren't so limited.

However, the corporate model violates your rule number 2, so I'll shut up now.


Edit: couldn't keep my mouth shut. Perhaps money needs to be based upon something that every last person already has, instead of a so-called free market of central banks that are essentially exclusionary. Hmm. What do we already have, that our creator gives every last living thing? Time? (not my idea, it's been discussed for years) Hey, it's limited, so no inflationary issues to worry about.
Money should be fixed to time instead of gold or it's modern derivative, the free market.

Time is money!
 

SimpleTrend  (1000+ posts)        Fri Dec-26-08 04:43 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. My Three Ideas: salaries paid with Time-based money
 Edited on Fri Dec-26-08 04:48 PM by SimpleTrend
An economic system needs to acknowledge that some have spent more time learning than others, so wages, paid in time-based script, should be adjusted for the total number of years spent in education.

This would limit the pay of a doctor, for instance, to no more than somewhat under twice that (around 23/13ths) of a HS graduate. So payment to each and every and any person would be calculated based upon their total years spent in formal education leading to the initial degree that qualifies them.

1) Time is money, so script based upon time.

2) salaries are based upon time spent in formal education preparing.

3) Corporations could be formed by communally pooling interested parties time-based script, but they wouldn't be allowed to print their own money or stock, and they may be easily dissolved by regulators. Upon such a dissolving, any pooled script would returned to any "investors" in the ratios they were originally pooled after all wages owed are paid in full.

or maybe design one for North Korea

[Carl]

I have no idea what the simple primitive is advocating but am surprised that so far the topic has been shunned on the island.

Guessing because the op asked for specfics rather then the normal DUmmy bumper sticker quotes regarding socialism.

[Chris_]

I have no idea what the simple primitive is advocating but am surprised that so far the topic has been shunned on the island.

Guessing because the op asked for specfics rather then the normal DUmmy bumper sticker quotes regarding socialism.

Let me summarize the 3 points that will emerge:

1) Must benefit ME
2) Must make ME feel good
3) Must punish people who work harder than ME

[thundley4]

I see nothing about basing a persons salary on the actual product or benefits that a person provides.  In their thinking, a PHD in education or other liberal arts should make the same as and MD, or a lawyer. Then again, under their plan, we'll  have a Hell of a lot of overpaid Liberal Arts Majors flipping burgers. 

[Carl]

Let me summarize the 3 points that will emerge:

1) Must benefit ME
2) Must make ME feel good
3) Must punish people who work harder than ME

That does pretty well sum up their outlook on everything.

[bijou]

Let me summarize the 3 points that will emerge:

1) Must benefit ME
2) Must make ME feel good
3) Must punish people who work harder than ME

What Carl said. Spot on.

[comradebillyboy]

  "Let's help design a new economic model for the U.S."

What he really means by that title is: "Let's demonstrate that we don't know diddly squat about economic models and, more importantly, that we (us DUmmies that is) don't have a clue about the most basic economic concepts."   

[LC EFA]

SimpleTrend  (1000+ posts)        Fri Dec-26-08 03:55 PM
Response to Original message
2. A good intent. Time is money!
 Edited on Fri Dec-26-08 04:14 PM by SimpleTrend
Maybe someone will come along with a bit of it, and another person, another.

Waxing snarkish: Everyone, every last human, needs their own money printing press!

Maybe it's not so snarkish after all. Every public corporation 'almost' has one. They print up stock and sell it to others. Why do people need to be restricted to only selling their labor and whatever property they own: public corporations aren't so limited.

However, the corporate model violates your rule number 2, so I'll shut up now.


Edit: couldn't keep my mouth shut. Perhaps money needs to be based upon something that every last person already has, instead of a so-called free market of central banks that are essentially exclusionary. Hmm. What do we already have, that our creator gives every last living thing? Time? (not my idea, it's been discussed for years) Hey, it's limited, so no inflationary issues to worry about.
Money should be fixed to time instead of gold or it's modern derivative, the free market.

Time is money!

Please tell me this is sarcasm....

No one can really be that stupid, right ?

[Chris_]

What Carl said. Spot on.

You are not the first to confuse us.  Pithy, roguishly handsome, desired by women, envied by men.

[Servonaut]

Cool, a hippie version of Lucy and Ethel have a plan,

This will make interesting reading at work tomorrow.    

[bijou]

You are not the first to confuse us.  Pithy, roguishly handsome, desired by women, envied by men.

Heh. In fact I was trying to compliment both of you in one post, you for the original and Carl's reply which I couldn't improve on. Although now you mention it you two do have a certain resemblance ...  

[Peter3_1]

Obviously, they have no idea what drives a functional economic system, despite there being 5,000 years worth of examples. As well as 5,000 years of how to collapse an economic system as well. Hell, they don't even know what MONEY is!

Dangerously, NObama's idiots have no idea either, but seem to have grasped the idea of how to collapse an economic system very well indeed.

[USA4ME]

Ken Burch

Let's help design a new economic model for the U.S.

I've got one:  You DUmmies need to be shot, and then we'll call it even.

.

[miskie]

The problem with the current US economic model is its been polluted with socialistic ideas - The way to fix it is to go back to the way it was intended - I think this quote can be applied, especially the closing line.

"The error seems not sufficiently eradicated that the operations of the mind as well as the acts of the body are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." -Thomas Jefferson

If it picks your pocket, or hobbles you, it is bad. Socialism does both. Case closed.

[Vagabond]

Get the taint of socialism off of productive peoples necks and they flourish.  Hell even a good number of the welfare slackers would produce when told they could starve otherwise.

[franksolich]

Here's franksolich's ideas for a new economic model:

(a) everybody, including the subway cat, has to contribute to the well-being of society, mostly by having a job and paying taxes;

(b) everybody, including the subway cat, has to contribute to the well-being of society, mostly by having a job and paying taxes; and

(c) everybody, including the subway cat, has to contribute to the well-being of
society, mostly by having a job and paying taxes.

That's all it'd take, nothing more.

[JohnnyReb]

If DUmmies were in control, you'd all be lucky to have a mule to plow......not so lucky, you'd be lucky to have a fat Russian wife to plow.

[Chris_]

1. Socialistic capitalism with a major Stalinist accent.

Step one: Kill 60 million people
Step two:?????

[Carl]

I had to go back to look today and there was a few more posts.

Gregorian  (1000+ posts)          Fri Dec-26-08 05:55 PM
Response to Original message
4. Great idea.
   A new and different way of looking at "US". Everyone is on the same piece of dirt. And it's smaller than we all thought.

I would say that my model would be founded on something different and strange to most. You pretty much said it. Zero growth.


Let me just post this here, since I think it's phenomenal. 1% growth. It doesn't sound like much does it? Here is what 1% growth will do-

The time it would take for the human race to double it's size if it were growing at 1% is 70 years!!!!

Can you believe that? Nobody does. I did the math, and I'm freaking blown out of my skull. This means that even with the most minimal growth, we're going to be 14 billion people in not a very long time.

So, growth cannot be part of the economy under any circumstances.

Hard to ever say what the most idiotic thing I have ever read was but this one will do for the moment.

ayeshahaqqiqa  (1000+ posts)          Fri Dec-26-08 06:52 PM
Response to Original message
11. Green socialism with a commitment to education for all   
   Public transportation second to none,with bio-diesel buses in rural areas (like mine)Tip of the hat to Freedumb here linking to high speed rail hubs. Retrofitting old vehicles to run as hybrids or as air cars; solar energizing of homes-all this and more makes for green jobs. New vehicles are made by state owned factories run by the workers. A broad range of health benefits with a stress on wellness and prevention via a single payer system. Instead of the CIA, we have NGOs like the CAI (Central Asia Institute) going around the world working with locals both here and abroad to build schools, create technical training, and educate people about health and sanitation. Finally, hemp regains its rightful place as biofuel and marijuana is legally used by all those with a health need.
   

 

A couple of wisecracks and a boiler plate socialist screed but that is it.
Anytime the primitives are directly asked to explain in exact detail what they want and how it needs to work they grow strangely silent.

No surprise.

[FlaGator]

They really should have titled this thread "What can we do make American society look worse than a Mad Max movie?"

[BlueStateSaint]

I see four or so posts that deserve a H5.  I'll edit as I H5 y'all to let who know.  The Coach, for starters.  Freedumb, for a second.  Third, USA4ME.  Fourth, can't leave my neighbor out of this.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Finally, hemp regains its rightful place as biofuel and marijuana is legally used by all those with a health need.

To DUmmies, the heath need of marijuana is to to get high after they've come down from their last buzz.

[CC27]

They want mob rule.

[Chris_]

They really should have titled this thread "What can we do make American society look worse than a Mad Max movie?"

That is OK if it includes Tina Turner in her prime!

[Chris_]

Am I reading this right? 

5,000 or so of the country's most useless individuals, most of whom couldn't engineer an economic plan sufficient to live independent of mommy and daddy's basement, are proposing to engineer an economic "plan" for the rest of us? 

A "plan" radically different from the tried and true methods the rest of us learned from our fathers and their fathers before them?  And they expect us to just roll over and accept said plan, because they said so?  No questions asked?