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RohanGreySecondPaper 3 - 23 May 2012 - Main.RohanGrey
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Money and Unemployment | | | But is this view correct? Did the millions of productive workers who stopped getting out of bed in 2007 all transform into socially repugnant, Kafkaesque beetles? Did we collectively exhaust our supply of that precious job-creating element, “employaminium”? Of course not. Unemployment is a legal creation arising from an accounting system that records claims on real value in nominal amounts. Nothing in the natural world prevents individuals from contributing to the betterment of society. | |
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< | As prospective lawyers, it is our job to learn how to solve legal problems. To that effect, we might do better by spending less time memorizing the Econodwarf’s dogma (known as “Torts” in Polish) and more learning about how creative lawyers devise out-of-the-box solutions to pressing social problems. One example of such legal creativity is blogger-lawyer Carlos Mucha (a.k.a. Beowulf)’s brilliant proposal to take advantage of a little known but hugely important provision in the Coinage Act that completely eliminates the need for treasury debt and government borrowing. 31 U.S.C. 5112(k) authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to mint platinum coins “with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, may prescribe.” Under the clear wording of this statute, the Treasury tomorrow could create and deposit at the Federal Reserve a single $60 trillion coin to pay for the national debt, universal Medicare, universal education and a minimum wage job guarantee, while still leaving over $40 trillion for a rainy day. Of course, such a move would not be a panacea for every social problem. However, it would effectively eliminate the distracting question of government “funding” and allow us to focus on the truly political and messy issues of policy design and implementation. | >
> | As prospective lawyers, it is our job to learn how to solve legal problems. To that effect, we might do better by spending less time considering the Econodwarf’s dogma as axiomatic truth and more learning about how creative lawyers devise out-of-the-box solutions to pressing economic problems. One example of such legal creativity is blogger-lawyer Carlos Mucha (a.k.a. Beowulf)’s brilliant proposal to take advantage of a little known but hugely important provision in the Coinage Act that completely eliminates the need for treasury debt and government borrowing. 31 U.S.C. 5112(k) authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to mint platinum coins “with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, may prescribe.” Under the clear wording of this statute, the Treasury tomorrow could create and deposit at the Federal Reserve a single $60 trillion coin to pay for the national debt, universal Medicare, universal education and a minimum wage job guarantee, while still leaving over $40 trillion for a rainy day. Of course, such a move would not be a panacea for every social problem. However, it would effectively eliminate the distracting question of government “funding” and allow us to focus on the truly political and messy issues of policy design and implementation. | | | Conclusion |
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