April 4, 2023
Dear Friends and Family,
This segment, without doubt, is the most important segment of this series. It deals with three important economic policies.
The short-term downside, per the excerpts, is inflation, which we are now experiencing. Many economists are attributing the inflation rise to the fact we had supply chains clogged following the pandemic and simultaneously greatly increased the money supply via the 1.9 trillion-dollar American Rescue Plan (which many economists say was not necessary) plus extending child care subsidies and student loan pauses. This created a situation where there was far too much money (hence increasing demand) chasing too few goods (a textbook set of causes for inflation). Newly enacted energy policies further decreased the supply of oil, adding additional inflation. The current proposed solution is not decreasing spending, but large tax increases to fund even further massive government spending. This is very consistent with MMT as explained in the excerpts.
Meanwhile the Federal Reserve is increasing interest rates to control the inflation, and each increase in rates puts more money in China’s pocket to fund more military as they own 12% of our debt (on which we have to pay interest).
The long term downside is for the U.S. to lose the reserve currency status of the dollar to be replaced by a different currency, potentially a Chinese currency, the euro, or a basket of international currencies. If the U.S. loses reserve currency status, U.S. inflation could erupt into hyperinflation given our high debt which would devastate the U.S. economy as the value of the U.S. dollar would decline significantly increasing the price of all imported goods. From my interpretation of the excerpts, interestingly, these perspectives are similarly held by both the World Economic Forum as well as its critics. I will be interested if you come to the same conclusion.
If I couple the learning from this week’s segment with the potential selling and buying oil in a currency other than the dollar from last week’s segment, maintaining the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is further jeopardized. Additionally, this past Wednesday it was announced that China and Brazil have negotiated a trade agreement wherein they use their respective currencies bypassing the U.S. dollar which historically is the medium of exchange being the world’s reserve currency.
[Note: More on digital currency – the 3rd policy element -- will be forthcoming in segment 10].
Next: Schwab’s Great Reset calls for resets in many aspects of the global framework: economic, societal, geopolitical, environmental, and technological. Stakeholder capitalism is the means by which he envisions these resets to be implemented, which is the focus of segment 8. Again, Schwab’s views will be articulated first, followed by his critics’ responses.
Happy Learning
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
This segment, without doubt, is the most important segment of this series. It deals with three important economic policies.
- Modern Monetary Theory (MMT): Don’t worry about deficits or the national debt, because the U.S. government can print and spend as much money as it wants to achieve the goals set by the U.S. government.
- World Reserve Currency: MMT is possible because the dollar is the World’s Reserve currency.
- Digital Currencies: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as the U.S. Federal Reserve are considering instituting digital currencies.
The short-term downside, per the excerpts, is inflation, which we are now experiencing. Many economists are attributing the inflation rise to the fact we had supply chains clogged following the pandemic and simultaneously greatly increased the money supply via the 1.9 trillion-dollar American Rescue Plan (which many economists say was not necessary) plus extending child care subsidies and student loan pauses. This created a situation where there was far too much money (hence increasing demand) chasing too few goods (a textbook set of causes for inflation). Newly enacted energy policies further decreased the supply of oil, adding additional inflation. The current proposed solution is not decreasing spending, but large tax increases to fund even further massive government spending. This is very consistent with MMT as explained in the excerpts.
Meanwhile the Federal Reserve is increasing interest rates to control the inflation, and each increase in rates puts more money in China’s pocket to fund more military as they own 12% of our debt (on which we have to pay interest).
The long term downside is for the U.S. to lose the reserve currency status of the dollar to be replaced by a different currency, potentially a Chinese currency, the euro, or a basket of international currencies. If the U.S. loses reserve currency status, U.S. inflation could erupt into hyperinflation given our high debt which would devastate the U.S. economy as the value of the U.S. dollar would decline significantly increasing the price of all imported goods. From my interpretation of the excerpts, interestingly, these perspectives are similarly held by both the World Economic Forum as well as its critics. I will be interested if you come to the same conclusion.
If I couple the learning from this week’s segment with the potential selling and buying oil in a currency other than the dollar from last week’s segment, maintaining the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is further jeopardized. Additionally, this past Wednesday it was announced that China and Brazil have negotiated a trade agreement wherein they use their respective currencies bypassing the U.S. dollar which historically is the medium of exchange being the world’s reserve currency.
[Note: More on digital currency – the 3rd policy element -- will be forthcoming in segment 10].
Next: Schwab’s Great Reset calls for resets in many aspects of the global framework: economic, societal, geopolitical, environmental, and technological. Stakeholder capitalism is the means by which he envisions these resets to be implemented, which is the focus of segment 8. Again, Schwab’s views will be articulated first, followed by his critics’ responses.
Happy Learning
Harley
THE GREAT RESET: IS DEMOCRACY (worldwide) IN DANGER?
ECONOMIC RESET & INCOME INEQUALITY– EXCERPTS: SEGMENT 7
SCHWAB: WHAT FUTURE ECONOMIC GROWTH COULD LOOK LIKE.
+The deep disruption caused by COVID-19 globally has offered societies an enforced pause to reflect on what is truly of value. With the economic emergency responses to the pandemic now in place, the opportunity can be seized to make the kind of institutional changes and policy choices that will put economies on a new path towards a fairer, greener future.
The pandemic has spurred renewed interest in this movement that wants to reverse the pace of economic growth, leading more than 1,100 experts from around the world to release a manifesto in May 2020 putting forward a degrowth strategy. Their open letter calls for the adoption of a democratically “planned yet adaptive, sustainable, and equitable downscaling of the economy, leading to a future where we can live better with less.” The technology to do more with less already exists. There is no fundamental trade-off between economic, social and environmental factors if we adopt this more holistic and longer-term approach to defining progress and incentivizing investment in green and social frontier markets.
SCHWAB: FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICIES:
+The artificial barrier that makes monetary and fiscal authorities independent from each other has now been dismantled, with central bankers becoming (to a relative degree) subservient to elected politicians. It is now conceivable that, in the future, government will try to wield its influence over central banks to finance major public projects, such as an infrastructure or green investment fund.
This is where Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and helicopter money come in: with interest rates hovering around zero, central banks cannot stimulate the economy by classic monetary tools, i.e., a reduction in interest rates – unless they decided to go for deeply negative interest rates, a problematic move resisted by most central banks. The stimulus must therefore come from an increase in fiscal deficits (meaning that public expenditure will go up at a time when tax revenues decline). The idea is appealing and realizable, but it contains a major issue of social expectations and political control: once citizens realize that money can be found on a “magic money tree”, elected politicians will be under fierce and relentless public pressure to create more and more, which is when the issue of inflation kicks in.
At this current juncture [Note: May 2020], it is hard to imagine how inflation could pick up anytime soon. The reshoring of production activities could generate occasional pockets of inflation, but they are likely to remain limited. The combination of potent, long-term structural trends like aging and technology (both are deflationary in nature) and an exceptionally high unemployment rate that will constrain wage increases for years puts strong downward pressure on inflation. In the post-pandemic era, strong consumer demand is unlikely. [Note: A little over a year and a half later inflation in the US was 8.7%].
SCHWAB: THE FATE OF THE U.S. DOLLAR.
+For quite some time, some analysts and policymakers have been considering a possible and progressive end to the dominance of the dollar. They now think that the pandemic might be the catalyst that proves them right. Their argument is twofold and related to both sides of the trust issue. On the one hand (managing the economy sensibly), doubters of US dollar dominance point to the inevitable and sharp deterioration of the US fiscal position. In their mind, unsustainable levels of debt will eventually erode confidence in the US dollar. Just prior to the pandemic. US defense spending, plus interest on the federal debt, plus annual entitlement payments – Medicare, Medicaid and social security – represented 112% of federal tax receipts (versus 95% in 2017). This unsustainable path will worsen in the post-pandemic, post-bailout era. This argument suggests that something major will therefore have to change either through a much reduced geopolitical role or higher taxation, or both, otherwise the rising deficit will reach a threshold beyond which non-US investors are unwilling to fund it. After all, the status of reserve currency cannot last longer than foreign confidence in the ability of the holder to honor its payments.
Are there any viable alternatives? The US remains a formidable global financial hegemon. But it is also true that many countries would like to challenge the dollar’s global dominance. In the short term, there are no alternatives. The Chinese renminbi (RMB) could be an option, but not until strict capital controls are eliminated and the RMB turns into a market-determined currency, which is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. The same goes for the euro; it could be an option, but not until doubts about a possible implosion of the eurozone dissipate for good, which again is an unlikely prospect in the next few years. As for a global virtual currency, there is none in sight yet, but there are attempts to launch national digital currencies that may eventually dethrone the US dollar supremacy. China is years ahead of the rest of the world in developing a digital currency.
Source: COVID-19: The Great Reset by Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret (2020).
CRITICS: RESET OPPORTUNITY: “This pandemic has provided an opportunity for a Reset. This is our chance to accelerate our pre-pandemic efforts to re-imagine economic systems that actually address global challenges like extreme poverty, inequality, and climate change,” Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said at a September 2020 UN conference. Trudeau appeared eager to embrace the radical transformation that Schwab had outlined in COVID-19: The Great Reset.
President Biden also found governing with expanded government powers interesting. “We’re at an inflection point, I believe, in the world economy, not just the world economy, the world, that occurs every three to four generations,” Biden said. “Now is the time when things are shifting and there’s going to be a New World Order out there.”
Source: The Great Reset: Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown by Marc Morano (2022)
CRITICS: MODERN MONETARY THEORY:
Currently, the face of modern monetary theory is Stephanie Kelton, a professor of public policy and economics at Stony Brook University. Kelton is about as well connected as an economist can be. In 2015, she served as chief economist of the Democratic Party’s staff on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee. Kelton was also the senior economic adviser to Bernie Sanders’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, and a member of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders’s “Unity Task Force,” which was given the responsibility of reforming the platforms of the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party.
Modern monetary theory might sound complicated, but it is actually very simple. According to MMT theorists, everyone should stop worrying so much about the national debt and deficits, because the U.S. government can print and spend as much money as it wants in order to achieve the goals set by the federal government’s bureaucratic masterminds and political elite. That’s pretty much it. Try to avoid dismissing MMT as a crackpot theory that no reasonable person would ever try to implement. MMT is appealing to many because of its potential to dramatically increase the power of government and fatten the pockets of the corporate class, not because it is supported by history or because of its academic merits.
Under MMT, debt and deficits are nothing to fear. They are encouraged, Kelton explained.
ECONOMIC RESET & INCOME INEQUALITY– EXCERPTS: SEGMENT 7
SCHWAB: WHAT FUTURE ECONOMIC GROWTH COULD LOOK LIKE.
+The deep disruption caused by COVID-19 globally has offered societies an enforced pause to reflect on what is truly of value. With the economic emergency responses to the pandemic now in place, the opportunity can be seized to make the kind of institutional changes and policy choices that will put economies on a new path towards a fairer, greener future.
The pandemic has spurred renewed interest in this movement that wants to reverse the pace of economic growth, leading more than 1,100 experts from around the world to release a manifesto in May 2020 putting forward a degrowth strategy. Their open letter calls for the adoption of a democratically “planned yet adaptive, sustainable, and equitable downscaling of the economy, leading to a future where we can live better with less.” The technology to do more with less already exists. There is no fundamental trade-off between economic, social and environmental factors if we adopt this more holistic and longer-term approach to defining progress and incentivizing investment in green and social frontier markets.
SCHWAB: FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICIES:
+The artificial barrier that makes monetary and fiscal authorities independent from each other has now been dismantled, with central bankers becoming (to a relative degree) subservient to elected politicians. It is now conceivable that, in the future, government will try to wield its influence over central banks to finance major public projects, such as an infrastructure or green investment fund.
This is where Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and helicopter money come in: with interest rates hovering around zero, central banks cannot stimulate the economy by classic monetary tools, i.e., a reduction in interest rates – unless they decided to go for deeply negative interest rates, a problematic move resisted by most central banks. The stimulus must therefore come from an increase in fiscal deficits (meaning that public expenditure will go up at a time when tax revenues decline). The idea is appealing and realizable, but it contains a major issue of social expectations and political control: once citizens realize that money can be found on a “magic money tree”, elected politicians will be under fierce and relentless public pressure to create more and more, which is when the issue of inflation kicks in.
At this current juncture [Note: May 2020], it is hard to imagine how inflation could pick up anytime soon. The reshoring of production activities could generate occasional pockets of inflation, but they are likely to remain limited. The combination of potent, long-term structural trends like aging and technology (both are deflationary in nature) and an exceptionally high unemployment rate that will constrain wage increases for years puts strong downward pressure on inflation. In the post-pandemic era, strong consumer demand is unlikely. [Note: A little over a year and a half later inflation in the US was 8.7%].
SCHWAB: THE FATE OF THE U.S. DOLLAR.
+For quite some time, some analysts and policymakers have been considering a possible and progressive end to the dominance of the dollar. They now think that the pandemic might be the catalyst that proves them right. Their argument is twofold and related to both sides of the trust issue. On the one hand (managing the economy sensibly), doubters of US dollar dominance point to the inevitable and sharp deterioration of the US fiscal position. In their mind, unsustainable levels of debt will eventually erode confidence in the US dollar. Just prior to the pandemic. US defense spending, plus interest on the federal debt, plus annual entitlement payments – Medicare, Medicaid and social security – represented 112% of federal tax receipts (versus 95% in 2017). This unsustainable path will worsen in the post-pandemic, post-bailout era. This argument suggests that something major will therefore have to change either through a much reduced geopolitical role or higher taxation, or both, otherwise the rising deficit will reach a threshold beyond which non-US investors are unwilling to fund it. After all, the status of reserve currency cannot last longer than foreign confidence in the ability of the holder to honor its payments.
Are there any viable alternatives? The US remains a formidable global financial hegemon. But it is also true that many countries would like to challenge the dollar’s global dominance. In the short term, there are no alternatives. The Chinese renminbi (RMB) could be an option, but not until strict capital controls are eliminated and the RMB turns into a market-determined currency, which is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. The same goes for the euro; it could be an option, but not until doubts about a possible implosion of the eurozone dissipate for good, which again is an unlikely prospect in the next few years. As for a global virtual currency, there is none in sight yet, but there are attempts to launch national digital currencies that may eventually dethrone the US dollar supremacy. China is years ahead of the rest of the world in developing a digital currency.
Source: COVID-19: The Great Reset by Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret (2020).
CRITICS: RESET OPPORTUNITY: “This pandemic has provided an opportunity for a Reset. This is our chance to accelerate our pre-pandemic efforts to re-imagine economic systems that actually address global challenges like extreme poverty, inequality, and climate change,” Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said at a September 2020 UN conference. Trudeau appeared eager to embrace the radical transformation that Schwab had outlined in COVID-19: The Great Reset.
President Biden also found governing with expanded government powers interesting. “We’re at an inflection point, I believe, in the world economy, not just the world economy, the world, that occurs every three to four generations,” Biden said. “Now is the time when things are shifting and there’s going to be a New World Order out there.”
Source: The Great Reset: Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown by Marc Morano (2022)
CRITICS: MODERN MONETARY THEORY:
Currently, the face of modern monetary theory is Stephanie Kelton, a professor of public policy and economics at Stony Brook University. Kelton is about as well connected as an economist can be. In 2015, she served as chief economist of the Democratic Party’s staff on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee. Kelton was also the senior economic adviser to Bernie Sanders’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, and a member of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders’s “Unity Task Force,” which was given the responsibility of reforming the platforms of the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party.
Modern monetary theory might sound complicated, but it is actually very simple. According to MMT theorists, everyone should stop worrying so much about the national debt and deficits, because the U.S. government can print and spend as much money as it wants in order to achieve the goals set by the federal government’s bureaucratic masterminds and political elite. That’s pretty much it. Try to avoid dismissing MMT as a crackpot theory that no reasonable person would ever try to implement. MMT is appealing to many because of its potential to dramatically increase the power of government and fatten the pockets of the corporate class, not because it is supported by history or because of its academic merits.
Under MMT, debt and deficits are nothing to fear. They are encouraged, Kelton explained.
Normally, I think people tend to hear deficit and think it’s something that we should strive to eliminate, that we shouldn’t be running budget deficits, that they’re evidence of fiscal irresponsibility. And the truth is the deficit can be too big. But the deficit can also be too small. And the right level of the deficit is the one that gets you a balanced overall economy. The one that allows you to achieve high levels of employment and low inflation.
Inflation Control: Admittedly, modern monetary theorists do spend a lot of time thinking and worrying about inflation. It is probably the thing the academic wing of the MMT movement is most concerned with. According to MMT, inflation is the warning sign of overspending, not deficits. It is possible to spend too much cash in modern monetary theory. It occurs when private sector entities and government both vie for limited resources and too much money is chasing too few goods and services in one or several parts of an economy. If inflation occurs, how should the government deal with this problem? Reduce government spending? Of course not. Instead, Kelton suggests raising taxes to “force us to cut back a little to make room for additional government spending.”
Stop for a moment and think about what this highly influential economist is suggesting. Under modern monetary theory, the government might need to battle inflation by destroying the wealth of the people, including the middle and working classes, in order to make room for more government spending.
Risk of Inflation: How do modern monetary theorists plan to stop inflation? Traditionally, when policy makers float the idea of expanding the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet or running the printing presses to fund a new government program, those of us concerned about the national debt brace for devaluation of our currency, commonly called inflation. In extreme cases, we are reminded of the recent rampant inflation in Venezuela in 2018 or stories from 1920s Germany, where money became so worthless that families wallpapered their homes with cash. To defend their position, they usually cite several arguments.
First, the U.S. dollar is a world reserve currency, which means countries across the globe use and accept the dollar when conducting trade, adding an extra level of stability that most other currencies do not enjoy. Second, modern Monetary theorists argue that most of the worst examples of hyperinflation were brought on by “very specific circumstances,” such as civil war or huge external debts denominated in a foreign currency. The U.S. dollar’s status as a world reserve currency defends against both of these threats, but especially the latter.
At present, elites at the Federal Reserve have essentially one major monetary lever in their toolbox, the baseline interest rate. During periods of economic malaise, the Fed “turns the dial” and lowers interest rates in an attempt to boost markets by infusing them with cash from lower-interest loans. When inflation creeps in, the Fed “turns the dial” in the other direction, raising interest rates to curb rising prices.
End of Dollar: Modern Monetary theorists try to soothe critics’ concerns about hyperinflation by saying that even if government bureaucrats and policymakers do not mange things perfectly in the future, the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency would protect Americans from a hyperinflation nightmare. There is no question that the dollar’s world reserve currency would help at first, but who is to say that the dollar would remain the global reserve currency in a universe in which the United States chose to embrace modern monetary theory?
If the United States were to aggressively travel further down the money printing road, as Stephanie Kelton and others have suggested, it is entirely possible – and probably inevitable – that other economic powerhouses like China would demand that international commerce occur using alternative currencies like the euro or the Chinese yuan.
If the government and the Federal Reserve continue to pursue an MMT system, the U.S. Dollar will become increasingly vulnerable to losing its world reserve currency status. This would likely cause the same hyperinflation that Kelton and other insist would never occur under their model, because countries would have no place to spend their greenbacks except in the United States, leading to an unprecedented flood of dollars returning to U.S. shores. This would drive up prices in key industries like real estate and likely send America into an economic depression that could exceed coronavirus lockdown levels, as hard as that is for many to imagine.
Digital Currencies: In January 2020, the WEF announced the creation of the very first “global consortium focused on designing a framework for governance of digital currencies.” In 2019, the director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and who currently serves as president of the European Central Bank, discussed the idea of developing a digital version of SDR [Note: Special Drawing Rate which is based on a basket of international currencies comprising the U.S. dollar, Japanese yen, euro, pound sterling, and Chinese Renminbi]. This concept, dubbed “IMFCoin” could easily become the world’s new reserve currency. The amount of power and control over the world that would come with the full embrace of an MMT system, especially if mixed with a digital currency, is almost too much to fathom.
It is also worth considering how digital currencies could be used to control economic behavior. If all currency were to become digitized and physical mediums of exchange were phased out, then banks, financial institutions, and governments would be able to track and control nearly every transaction in the world. Although there is no way of knowing exactly how they might try to use this unprecedented power, it is not hard to imagine how it could expand the authority of elites and impact regular folks on a daily basis.
The U.S. Federal Reserve is also strongly considering adopting its own digital currency. So, whether it’s elites in Europe and China making the rules or elites at the Fed, the point is, you won’t be the one in control of your economic decision making – at least, that’s how things seem to be shaping up. If international elites were to have authority over the world’s digital currency, they would have the power to control most of the global economic activity and, by extension, human behavior.
But if 2020 taught us anything, it is that the groundwork for a large-scale shift to modern monetary theory has already been laid. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. appears to be on the MMT train at this very moment, even though most Americans still have never heard of the concept.
CRITICS: FUELING THE GREAT RESET MACHINE: The Great Reset is a machine manufactured to usher in a new, highly sophisticated, technologically advanced 21st century brand of international fascism, one with a corporatist twist. But powerful machines like the Great Reset cannot operate without fuel. That is what modern monetary theory provides, by offering seemingly endless amounts of money that could be used to pay for just about anything government, corporations, and financial institutions can dream up.
COVID-19 created the conditions for the machine’s existence. Without an urgent global crisis that could normalize modern monetary theory and burn down well-established economic and societal norms, the world would never have allowed the Great Reset to emerge as a viable option. But as important as COVID-19 has been for the Great Reset, it is climate change that provides the key long-term justification for a far-reaching, sustained transformation of society. Without a decade-long “existential crisis” for governments and business leaders to rally around, the coronavirus pandemic would be nothing more than a fleeting public policy challenge – a large one, no doubt, but temporary and thus not useful for the sort of grand structural changes dreamed up by the Great Reset leaders. It is climate change policies, fueled by modern monetary theory, that ultimately provide the foundation upon which can be built the “new world order.”
Source: The Great Reset: Joe Biden and the Rise of 21st Century Fascism by Glenn Beck (2022).
INCOME INEQUALITY
SCHWAB: INEQUALITY IS A SYSTEMIC CHALLENGE:
+The 4th industrial revolution will generate great benefits and big challenges in equal measure. A particular concern is exacerbated inequality. The challenges posed by rising inequality are hard to quantify as a great majority of us are consumers and producers, so innovation and disruption will both positively and negatively affect our living standards.
Source: The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab (2016)
SCHWAB: INCOME INEQUALITY: +The decline in inequality happened because of one incredible powerful force: the huge economic leaps forward in incomes in some of the largest (and previously poorest) countries in the world. China, notably, went from being a low-income country to an upper-middle-income one since its Reform and Opening-Up. By its own calculation, it lifted some 740 million people out of poverty. India, too, knew various periods of rapid growth, and thereby managed to raise the income of many of its people. The impact of these two countries on global inequality has been all-encompassing. This clarifies the real problem posed by inequality today. Global inequality may have declined, but inequality within nations has drastically worsened.
In many people’s experiences, it matters much more how they fare compared to their fellow citizens than to the rest of the world population. In all but a few countries, national inequality has been rising and often rather fast. The social and economic outcomes of this worsening inequality in the US have been highly problematic. There are again many working poor in America, a painful outcome in the wealthiest country the world has even known – an emerging class, comprising the rapidly growing number of people facing lives of insecurity, moving in and out of jobs that give little meaning to their lives.
Source: Stakeholder Capitalism by Klaus Schwab (2021)
SCHWAB: THE EROSION OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT:
+For obvious reasons, a “good” social contract for China will be different from one for the US, which in turn will not resemble one for Denmark of Nigeria. However, they could all share some common features and principles, the absolute necessity for which has been made ever-more obvious by the social and economic consequences of the pandemic crisis. Two stand out: (1) a broader, if not universal, provision of social assistance, social insurance, healthcare and basic quality services; and (2) a move towards enhanced protection for workers in the form of mandatory benefits, a minimum decent wage and help to adapt to (the disruptive effects of) innovation. In addition, a critical aspect of a new social contract pertains to liberties and freedom, at least in democratic countries. There is a growing concern that the fight against this pandemic and the future ones will lead to the creation of permanent surveillance societies.
Source: The Great Narrative for a Better Future by Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret (2022)
CRITICS: THE RISE OF UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME:
Basic income held potential as a means of attacking inequality, but it had to be protected against hijacking by the beneficiaries of continued inequality. It had to be a complement to a robust social safety net—perhaps paired with a job guarantee – and not a substitute.
Biden gave it an important push. The $1.9 trillion stimulus spending package he signed into law in March 2021 included a provision that amounted to a version of basic income. Most American parents would receive a monthly check of $300 a month as part of an expansion of child tax credits. That provision was authorized for only a year, but the Biden administration aimed to establish it as permanent. Basic income had become mainstream.
Source: Davos Man: How Billionaires Devoured the World by Peter S. Goodman (2022).
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| democracy_7l_economic_reset_--_segment_7.pdf |