While under the neo-classical economic fiction taxes are required to support infrastructure. In actual practice taxation is primarily a way to control the accumulation of wealth, that the US tax code should return to being more progressive and leveling is a small step toward reality. Expenditures by a sovereign government with a sovereign government, ie not the the current participants in the European Monetary Union, hence the impending defaults on sovereign debt acquired under a non-sovereign currency, the Euro. The is no real or practical impediment to sovereign governments with a sovereign currency to attach sovereign budgets to taxation revenues. I know that this is confusing to most people, and this is a downstream effect of being trapped in the neo-classical economic twilight zone. Soooo, taxes only represent "solidarity" within that same neo-classical zone. Given the effects of corporate capture there is no guarantee that such "revenue" will be spent for infrastructure a'la commons elements. The MMT paradigm operates as a commons without taxation being fused to the use of revenues for infrastructure budgeting. There is a huge difference between sovereign deficits and sovereign debt under a sovereign currency,a nd controlled by a sovereign government. The proof is in how the collected taxes are tallied, and then deleted as digital units. This is the reality of reserve accounting as it is current abused by the central banking cartels. MMT simply adopts the real time, real practice as a sovereign process. Yes, Elizabeth Warren is a positive example, and she is primarily an academic. How she will do in the rough and tumble of corporatist politics is another. She may have to significantly dumb herself down to even be understood at the level of the current political posturing here. If she acquires some political traction, all the better, and she needs to be a transition figure toward establishing sovereign economies as commons. This principle will then more easily transfer, I would suppose, to jointly cooperating with other countries to operate within a global commons engagement. One of my main points relative to the CRX as a educational process, is to create a learning environments so that people can directly experience the difference between a debt/credit based currency compared to a asset, commons, bases currency. Until then the fiction of neo-classical and a privatized currency will be supposed to be reality, while the actual practices under sovereign and democratic commons are considered to be fictions. Reversing course and departing the looking glass, "off with their heads," zone. in appreciation, Tadit On Mon, 26 Sep 2011 06:59:33 -0400, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:
*Friday, September 23, 2011* *Elizabeth Warren Puts the Kibosh on GOP *<http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/669655/elizabeth_warren_puts_the_kibosh_on_gop%27s_%22class_warfare%22%3A_nobody_in_this_country_got_rich_on_his_own%22/#paragraph7> SARAH SELTZER - AlterNet *I do not know anyone else in public life who makes the central points more clearly, or who represents compassionate life-affirming policies more effectively. I have donated to this woman's campaign and I urge you to do the same. This is the kind of public servant we need in the Congress.* Newly-announced senate candidate Elizabeth Warren is proving her progressive street cred on her "talking tour" with powerful and sensible talking points on the usefulness of government in people's lives. She's doing the activists who petitioned for her entrance in the race proud.
Would that all Democrats could be this feisty!
Here's a transcript, via rumproast:
I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.”-No!
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.
You built a factory out there-good for you! But I want to be clear.
You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.
You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.
You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.
You didn’t have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea-God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.
But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.