What is Social Credit in easy terms?

[steyr_m]

I heard about Social Credit and looked it up. Reading Wiki (and other sites), it isn't really easy to follow. I don't want to trudge through heavy economics for the next while. Does anyone have a simple few sentence explanation?

[Glass]

Interesting read and yes it does kind of bend the mind a little bit. The way I read it is this:

The guy who thought it up was kind of for independence of people or sovereignty but also for socialism but not through parasitic behaviour but more through those alturistic ideals we were taught about the future. Machines would do more work, people would have more leisure time.

He thinks that industry is there to produce what we need, however other people think industry is there to deliver full employment. In other words to engage people in activity.

Now for some reason we as a society desire full employment to be achieved because we feel anyone who is not working but getting money is a leach or parasite on the rest of us.

He seems to believe that if our industry is producing all we need and it does so without everyone working then that is ok and that the people who still get "money" but are not working are ok as well. It is an interesting position because it comes back to the question of distribution.

We all focus on the distribution of wealth (well being) and are all working to ensure enough it distributed to us, when there are others who do no work but still get some distribution of wealth. They obviously get everyone's back up because we see them as freeloaders. What we should be looking at is the distribution of leisure and why those who get 100% leisure i.e. they are unemployed are still getting some wealth (well being).

If there was a redistribution of that, more people would have more leisure while still getting wealth or money. It would be more in line with that eutopian ideal where we would be creatures of leisure and our industrial systems would still produce what we need without our working so many hours. So instead of striving for full full time employment we should be striving for full part time employment, where everyone is employed but the need to work 40, 50 or 60 hours per weeks was not necessary.

These economic theories are very interesting to consider because some come at it from the supply/demand angle. Demand drives supply or in some cases supply drives demand. How over production influences supply which drives demand. If things are over supplied they are cheaper and people will consume (demand) more because they are cheaper. Look in many peoples garages or even wardrobes to see piles of things that were bought simply because they were cheap.

I get the impression that he is saying because we have improved our industrial systems so much with high production for low inputs that we really should hold that against ourselves but enjoy it. It is our inheritance.

I am not convinced about the issue of money. I'm not sure I can explain it in anyway other than how he explains it. But my thoughts are that at the moment we treat our economy as an inflating system. Ever more production to match every increasing demand. Now demand should be due to population growth and not so much on whims, desires or cheapness. Then there is the anomaly that a large portion of that increasing population is excluded from the economy because of the lack of opportunity. To keep the system inflating it has to then substitute the real demand that should be there through opportunities of the new population by skimming (taxing) the value of the money that is there. This decreases buying power and drives more work to get more money. If you put a tax on the transaction of money you can increase the flow of money it in two ways. You can increase the % of tax or you can increase the velocity of it. How many times it changes hands in a given period of time. The higher the frequency of transactions the quicker the money value is reduced by the tax.

I think in a nut shell this theory is about the distribution of work load. I'm sure everyone would like less work for the same buying power and would also like some of the slackers to do more or some work for the same buying power.

I think the key issue is that all these systems can be gamed. The only true effective supply/demand economy in my opinion is the subsistance one, however it is a basic system delivering basic necessities. Reap what you sow but it does get influenced by the vagaries of nature and that is what our bigger economic systems are designed to hedge against. They are supposed to over produce so there is surplus when nature works agaisnt us. Just because we have an over supply doesn't mean we should consume it all now or make poor consumption choices of producing things that do not assist with creating that surplus.

Well there are my thoughts. Interesting concepts. I have only skimmed the wiki but I think I got the gist of it. Would be interesting to see what others think about it.

[steyr_m]

Thanks for that well thought out response. I feel I should go a bit deeper into it....