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Personal Equity

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One of the virtues in People’s Economics, which is still evolving, is “equity.” This is a complicated word that has taken on several meanings, but the most important ones are a sense of fairness and a kind of “ownership” stake.

Talking about this as “social equity,” or a belief that all social and political systems need to be fair and that everyone needs to feel they have a stake in greater social success, is not very controversial. There is some politics which revolves around pure individualism and denies or diminishes any need for social equity, for sure. But this is not what the US or any democratic republic was really founded on. It is a denial of an integrated and cooperative world, and I am simply going to reject it out of hand.

But what does any of this mean in practical terms? A bit of an experiment is starting to take hold that may answer this question.

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Owing the Future & the Past

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This article, a repeat from seven years ago, is actually more relevant today as the federal debt spirals out of control without even a solid crisis to explain it.

Those of you who are regular readers know that one of the basic principles of Barataria is that over the long haul there are very few surprises.  Great empires come and go, economies hum along and then break, and new technologies add sparkle to our lives – but people are still people.  When we take a strong half-step back, far enough for some perspective but not so far back we can’t keep our hands dirty, just about anything starts to make sense.

Today’s piece is a small summary of one small part of a breathtaking interview with Dr. Lacy Hunt of Hoisington Investment Management, conducted by Kate Welling and published by John Mauldin.  The original article is a must read, but it takes hours to read, digest, and re-read.  But there is one part that demands more discussion – and has a killer graph.

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A Model for Federal Equity, not Debt

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Given that the stock market appears to finally be taking a pause after a decade long run, this may seem like a terrible time to talk about subtleties like debt versus equity or how to finance federal debt. Yet this is exactly the time when something like what is proposed here would be useful for the government and investors alike.

Our national debt is financed through a complex system with fixed interest and market trading which is cumbersome and difficult. Worse, it ties the government down to fixed costs which are currently taking up 329B$ per year in interest payments, nearly $3,000 per household.

In short, there has to be a better way to manage the 21T$ or so of debt. Step one would be not creating more, but here is a plan for managing the potentially crippling debt we already have.

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Equity & Debt

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. As Barataria has discussed before, business cycles are not only real but heavily define the world in social and technical development terms. These cycles are, in purely economic terms, changes in availability and attitudes towards debt.

It is more than a little chilling to think that progress naturally comes in waves because of something as mundane as debt. But a system defined by money supply which has features that are destabilizing and work against sustainability and resilience is a large part of what we might call “capitalism.” The equilibrium of markets is pushed and pulled by the availability of capital.

One important feature of Fourth Wave Industrialization has to be that these cycles will need to be broken and greater monetary stability has to be achieved for a truly open market. This is likely to mean that equity will have to be favored over debt. But what, really, is the difference?

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War Debt & Collapse of the Empire

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History is consistent in one important way. Empires always fall, and there are three main causes for the collapse. Succession crises, corruption and debt are what eventually bring them down. And the cause of debt is always an insatiable appetite for war – either from a need to defend the borders or expand them.

In the US today, there is no concern about succession, as our Founding Fathers made sure that wasn’t an issue. Corruption is certainly an issue, but it’s nowhere near Roman levels at this time. Debt, on the other hand is mounting rapidly.

What is the cause of that debt? Despite many deflections, it’s not caused by taking care of people. Our debt can be directly traced to our appetite for war.

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