Easy as 1-2-3-4

the four essential components of a single legislative Act any nation could enact to transform the societal outcomes of its existing economic system

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Every nation on Earth has, as part of its economic system, a central bank. Any nation on Earth could therefore, via a single legislative Act, make its economy completely self-regulating while eliminating unemployment and poverty (for all adult citizens) as well as taxes/public debt (if total government spending were limited to its current per capita level) and at the same time increasing sustainability — all at no cost to anyone, without having to redistribute anything, without imposing any limit on income/wealth, and without requiring people to change their behavior in any way. A new Monetary Agency could be created to administer this monetary paradigm, but a central bank would certainly do for that.

The following linked articles (all here in Medium, none behind the paywall) provide details about the proposal.

“Economic System Not the Problem” “22 min read” emphasizes how this proposal fits within the existing economic system of any nation.

“Two Possibilities for MMT” (‘Modern Monetary Theory’) “17 min read” relates how this proposal connects with that conceptual construct.

“Paradigm Shift” “22 min read” is the most technical offering, emphasizing how this proposal makes the amount of the supply of money (as currency) a “fully exogenous variable.”

“Same Economy, Way Better Outcomes for Society” “15 min read” goes into more detail as to actually implementing the proposal, using the U.S. for illustrative purposes (somewhat out of date in some details at this point, but still useful).

There are options and stopping points within this paradigm — it is not all-or-nothing — but for any iteration of the paradigm, the Act would involve four essential components:

1. Authorize a permanent ‘quantitative easing’ (QE): money would be created as needed without involving the creation of debt. (Creating money without creating debt is what made ‘quantitative easing’ something new when it was instituted as a response to the financial crisis of 2008.)
2. Choose the purpose(s) to which that money would be put. (To accomplish all of the above goals it would be used to fund a minimum guaranteed income for adult citizens — not paid to all, but available for any — and to fund all government, from central to local, at the current per capita rate of total government spending.)
3. Establish the rules necessary to govern the creation and disbursement of that money so as to bring to fruition the choice(s) in (2.). (Since QE has already been invented, the only totally new thing would be the way the money would enter the economy — its disbursement — which would be determined by the purpose(s) to which the money would be put.)
4. Close the monetary loop. (With a large, regular, ongoing flow of money into the economy, to prevent the accumulation of too much money in it there would have to be a limit on the hoarding of money, meaning some method would have to be established for returning money to its point of origin, i.e., the central bank — or the Monetary Agency.)

To be clear, each of the linked articles does address all of those steps in the context of funding a guaranteed minimum income and (all) government.