The underlying overall purpose of the war of independence the people of the English colonies fought in America against the king of England, his armies, and his empire, was to attain equality for their people; equality among themselves and with their English compatriots. Unfortunately this noble goal has not been achieved. Extreme, and even simply visible inequality, however stable or variable, is indeed the most threatening problem facing humanity today, and will likely remain one even if and when it is finally tamed, and reduced, unless harnessed, and constructively exploited, for the common good, given that due to its different but obvious degrees of unfairness and material and emotional impact, as the case may be, penetrating of all social goals and aspirations, it will always constitute a negative motivational value, capable of dangerously inflaming the affected layers of society, when perceived as fixed and immutable, which will likely always be the case for a significant minority of the have nots, much like the common star gazer of all times has perceived them.



Taxation is certainly a valid tool that can be used to reduce inequaity. I like the fact that Stiglitz is opening a fresh approach to taxation. However, I don't believe that manipulation of the economy -and all that it entails including negative externalities- to seek the greater good should be done through the tax code. This approach is not direct enough and is subject to the usual corrupting effects of special interest lobbies. Rather, I feel that the economy should be free to run its course under a legal framework that restricts it from generating significant negative externalities by directly prohibiting and limiting activities that would give rise to them, the use of licensing of activities that require regulation, and by ensuring that all such costs be included in pricing. Taxation should be through a simple and pervasive consumption tax, government funding should depend almost exclusively on this tax, and government spending should be determined democratically by broad budget categories and include a compensatory consumption allowance for those contributing the bottom 1% of per capita GDP.



Taxation is of obvious world importance in this century of growing confrontations between the rich and the poor, in which general social peace will be attained only if we can fast establish a privately led Private Public global articulated system for sustainable development: That is, a system for comprehensive, fair, and environment friendly development. It is also fitting to note that the development and dissemination of an effective proposal for such a system would necessarily require and include a proposal for a complementary major global tax reform through which the public sector could yet make its greatest contributions to development in the XXI century.



But it would seem that H.G. Wells' visionary novel of 1895, "The Time Machine" was eerily predictive of the world in 2018 with an ironic twist: The Eloi in developed countries happily consume nearly all that is produced by their Morlocks, but without the risk of becoming their meal, or so it seems... or does it? The Morlocks, in turn, are facing starvation in these very countries, having to fiercely compete for survival, not only with each other, but with their counterparts in underdeveloped and developing countries, hand to hand, as these modern slaves have no recourse but to work for even lower wages than they, to satisfy their own growing Eloi classes, who strive to attain their richer counterparts' standards of living, all under the unquestioned paradigm of unrequited free trade, as they all destroy the planet... Dust to dust.



Project Syndicate's 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 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.



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.



Fortunately, 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.



In sum, the world the baby boomer generation's grandparents knew as children has been obliterated by a century of recurring monstrous wars, concurrent with exponentially increasing revolutionary scientific and technological discoveries and inventions, and massive economic, social, political, and legal changes which for many signify development. These changes have occurred in a stark and pervasive moral and ethical vacuum, in the context of unconscionable, unsustainable, and monotonically increasing welfare disparities between the rich and the poor. The world as we know it now is at the historical fork between the threshold of recovery and the brink of a new conflagration, indeed at a very promising and very threatening tipping point, and begging for drastic global financial, economic, and social redress, which only the most comprehensive multilateral and national governance reforms that would redefine the social contracts in the East and the West, the North and the South, and between them, could satisfy.



https://www.academia.edu/37590896/PROJECT_SYNDICATE_-_INEQUALITY_-_2017120801



https://www.citizengo.org/en/signit/7489/view



https://www.academia.edu/37260570/TRUTHOUT_-_Comment_to_The_Stiglitz_Code_-_2014052901



https://www.academia.edu/37258100/TRUTHOUT_-_Lack_of_Class_Consciousness_in_an_Era_of_Record_Inequality_-_2013020101



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



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



https://www.academia.edu/35570658/ANDEAN_AIRMAIL_and_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/23094646/OFA_-_At_the_Brink_of_Recovery_or_Conflagration_The_World_at_a_Tipping_Point_2011111506