Roger E.A. Farmer is right: "The solution is not to get rid of free markets, but rather to redesign institutions. And to get that right, we don’t need fewer economists; we need more." Project Syndicate's 2013 article "Gaming US Fiscal Reform" by Mohamed A. El-Erian, brings to mind that the dissonance between academia, big business, and government in the U.S. is of such magnitude that the innovative grand bargain in Congress required to permanently avoid the fiscal cliff, as the People rightly expect, will never happen without a repeat of the Grand Depression of the 30s, because it would demand far-reaching changes in the current economic, social and political model tantamount to a new Social Contract, given the long-standing inequitable distribution of production, and gross imbalances in welfare, these being unstoppable changes which are not envisioned and much less discussed in the halls of power, and which must seemingly be, by their very nature, de facto. The model is obsolete; this is evident. The formal apparatus must yield and adapt, or it shall collapse. What is not mentioned in articles dealing with poverty and its links to distribution of production, about the impending effects of unemployment in the eurozone, and the world, is the need to increase productivity and production, in all of its currently affected countries, and that this requires increased demand, and that the shortest route to this is consumption, and that the only route to this, in the immediate horizon, is economic stimulus through an impulse increase in the disposable income of the people, with the assurance of continuity in the mid term horizon: economic –cash- stimuli through 30-day consumption –debit- cards issued by governments against new debt –or by the European Central Bank- through commercial banks in all target countries. Furthermore, given the paradoxical reality that warring is a known quantity, ever present in the American folklore, and a recurring phenomenon in practice, whereas large scale Private-Public Partnerships for Development, and peace, are simply not, I believe that recent movements such as the Ninety-Nine Percent Declaration should take into account the wider global economic and social protest context. This threatening groundswell, which must be addressed, is exemplified by the "Los Indignados" of Spain, begun on May 15, 2011, that has spread not only to the USA, in the form of Occupy Wall Street, begun on September 17, 2011, but to the UK, is being amplified by other movements, in the First World, in the context of the European crisis, and is widening its reach to very many other countries in it and in the Second, Third, and Fourth Worlds, echoing the current global revolution begun earlier that year in the Arab Spring. Indeed, it appears that the world has reached a point where the paradigms of national and supranational government in the fields of finance, industry and commerce, justice, and security, at both levels, established at the end of World War II through global institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, have on the one hand reached a certain level of philosophical irrelevance, and on the other, a level of practical incompetence, a la Peter Drucker. In this situation would also fall, under their own weight, sooner rather than later, the old British Commonwealth of Nations, the Organization of American States, the Commonwealth of Independent States created by the Russian Federation after the Soviet Union's demise, with its recent Eurasian Economic Community, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, currently without any counterweight, and even the European Union, preceded by its Euro Zone and nascent fiscal union, and the probably hundreds of dependent organizations, treaties, and multinational projects. That the "Recent stock market sell-off foreshadows a new Great Recession" in the U.S. as foreseen by professors Steven Pressman of Colorado State University and Robert H. Scott III of Monmouth University in their article of March 19, 2018 in THE CONVERSATION, may very well be. The question is, what can be done to prevent it, or to stem it, where, how, and on what scale? In my view, the world can no longer solve its most pressing problems -threatening anthropogenic climate disruption and global warming and universal income polarization with extreme inequality- on a piecemeal, national, and country by country basis, when the world's real economies -the U.S., China, the EU, and Russia- are globalized. Clearly, acceleration of socioeconomic inclusion and concerted investment for development to make it possible must be envisioned and constructed on a global scale without further delay. At the crux of world peace, and planetary rescue, would be tax reform, via Sole Consumption Tax (SCT), that would enable eradication of absolute extreme poverty and relative extreme poverty, through regular income redistribution ensuring the attainment of autonomous survival with increasing welfare potential for the poorest, that would irreversibly approach that of the richest, voluntary population stabilization, voluntary production and consumption stabilization, and carbon emissions stabilization. In this context one must consider that Multilateral organizations, and others, though imperfect, rose to give hope to millions upon millions of disenfranchised survivors of the war, and have evolved into a network of powerful and effective institutions serving the peoples of some 200 countries, in all manner of adverse contexts and circumstances, and staunchly facing clear threats like imminent wars, epidemics and new infectious diseases, cyclical global warming and anthropogenic climate disruption. All in the quest for comprehensive environmentally-friendly development to secure peace and prosperity on a global scale. No individual has the right to arbitrarily or autocratically and needlessly devolve, or deflate, or destroy, this crucial multilateral societal structure, and worse for the sake of self-aggrandizement, a condemnable purpose not only crassly counter-productive and irrational from every point of view, but a clear and present betrayal of humanity, in peace time, much in the vein and in the nature of war-time crimes against humanity. Also, clearly the basically unfettered capitalism of today is a failed socioeconomic system that is exterminating the poor and enriching the rich at an increasing pace and will lead in short order to civil unrest, and soon after, to global revolt, warfare and total social chaos. This perverse result is built into the system given the unbalanced, unfair, and self-reinforcing upward-flow nature of its income and wealth distribution system in society which cannot and will not be contained through the simplistic and shortsighted solutions offered by the progressive taxation systems implemented today. A cursory analytical look at Thomas Piketty's Thesis clearly suggests that the intrinsic nature of Capitalism ensures that the rich will get richer and the poor poorer, ad infinitum, till annihilation of the poorest, in any society in any country, unless, again, taxation through a Sole Consumption Tax (SCT) is used to regularly redistribute the wealth created in all societies, within societies, in such a way as to preempt consumption by the poorest from falling below the threshold of autonomous survival with monotonically increasing welfare potential, that would bring their share of wealth consumption irreversibly and asymptotically closer to consumption by the richest of the rich over time. In addition, authentic imagination, creativity, and thus inventiveness and innovation, are still the province of the human mind, but AI embodied in computers, particularly those performing as brains in all manner of robots, and those involved in far-reaching decision-making, as in government, are rapidly gaining momentum in the takeover of human affairs. This will likely have the perverse effect of increasing inequality between the people in the various layers of society in all countries, and between countries, with severe disruptive and destabilizing effects in both spheres. This, unless note is taken at the corresponding political decision-making echelons, of the fact that who should take credit, or be given credit, for production, is far less important than who should receive its benefits; that intellect or capital developed and contributed through personal effort or through shared enterprise, should continue to be creditworthy, and praiseworthy, and still be considered mostly responsible for the level and quality of production at this time, but should no longer be the prime criteria for its distribution, which is an entirely different matter, the truth of which shall become more evident as the machine-contribution to production rises and the human contribution in all terms declines and the return on capital increases. Capitalist assignment of work and its rewards has clearly proven to be perverse in the twenty-first century world, as Thomas Piketty has abundantly shown. But disrupting or dismantling working domestic or international financial, economic, or legal institutions, systems, or treaties, that have held the world together for seventy years, and purport to do so indefinitely, without having a clue as to what would take their place, simply because someone feels the impulse to leave his mark in history, would have been unthinkable a year ago. BREXIT's opting out of the world's largest trading accord, which remains very sound, having been extremely successful, for some sixty years, based on magic thinking, at best, and perhaps merely to gain political notoriety, instead of reforming or restructuring it from within, would also have been considered patently absurd, till less than four years ago, and is today beginning to be perceived that way by a growing part of the people of the UK. Perhaps, it is time to consider bold visions of how prosperity for all could be reached as proposed by the Mathematical Model and Simulation for "A Partnership for Development with the United States of America" that would articulate Private Sector and Public Sector entities pertinent to environmentally-friendly holistic socioeconomic development in the American Hemisphere, bringing together its 35 nations, in a concerted effort to reduce and eliminate the existing ominous welfare gap, led by the Private Sector, for profit. Model and Simulation developed in Excel in 1999, and subjected to its subsequent versions through Excel 2003 and its updates through 2014. Some macros may not work appropriately today. Such a system would have to be considered under a philosophy that would include the likely possibility that the capitalization imbalance between the northern hemisphere, and the southern hemisphere, developed countries and the underdeveloped, and between OECD countries and the rest, suggests that something may be failing in the capital markets’ capacity to arbitrate investments: It would seem that it does not function effectively, and that the not so uncommon perception of increasing relative backwardness of the Third World is true. If so, beyond investigating its causes, it is necessary to investigate the attributes, achievements, and plans of existing multilateral and governmental poverty eradication and economic development organizations, and of their private counterparts, and the regulatory environment, in order to determine the need and opportunity for the creation of new private-public systems to increase the north-south investments rate. God help us all.



https://www.academia.edu/37250044/TRUTHOUT_-_Magic_thinking_in_an_era_calling_for_drastic_economic_policy_changes_-_2013010602



https://www.academia.edu/37328185/STRATFOR_-_Europe_Unemployment_and_Instability_My_Commentary_-_2013030502



https://www.academia.edu/37324664/STRATFOR_-_Europes_Crisis_Beyond_Finance_-_My_Commentary_-_2011111501



https://www.academia.edu/36677672/PROJECT_SYNDICATE_-_Should_We_Really_Care_About_Inequality_-_My_comment_2018041801



https://www.academia.edu/13062623/Informal_Proof_of_Thomas_Pikettys_Thesis_-_2014060802



https://www.academia.edu/36677530/PROJECT_SYNDICATE_-_Is_multilateralism_finished_-_My_comment_2018051701



https://www.academia.edu/36314694/BUZZFLASH_-_Thieves_in_the_Suites_-_Todays_Captains_of_Corporate_Capitalism_-_My_comments_-_2018032701



https://www.academia.edu/35570658/PERUVIAN_TIMES_-_My_comment_to_Acting_Now_For_The_Future_-_Food_for_thought_at_a_time_when_thought_feeds_on_itself_-_2018010201



https://www.academia.edu/13062837/La_Reforma_Tributaria_del_Siglo_XXI_The_XXI_Century_Tax_Reform_-_2011100411



https://www.academia.edu/34448122/PROJECT_SYNDICATE_-_Saving_the_International_Economic_Order_-_My_Comment_-_Crossroads_Between_Old_and_New_-_2017090201



https://www.academia.edu/23946856/FACEBOOK_-_Staving_off_the_impending_effects_of_unemployment_through_increased_consumption_2013031903



https://www.academia.edu/12823841/Mathematical_Model_and_Simulation_for_A_Partnership_for_Development_with_the_United_States_of_America_-_December_1999



https://www.academia.edu/12412727/WOLL_-_THE_ROLE_OF_INVESTMENT_PROMOTION_ORGANIZATIONS_IN_THIRD_WORLD_DEVELOPMENT_-_VI_-_2007103102