Thank you for a thorough — and thoroughly excellent — exposition. You did a great job in covering a lot of ground.

There is, however, an idea that you did not cover, one of which I am confident you’ve never heard. It’s mine. I’ve been working on it for some time. I’ve given up on getting an editor to allow it to be published.

Given what my proposal promises, why anyone would want to disregard it is beyond me to know. I do have to grant that, from the leftist perspective, it does ‘fail to punish’ the rich. Looking askance at it from the right, it provides the means to change the dynamics of power in the economy: taking control of the economy (and the profits from funding much of government) from the financial system, taking the power of taxation from government (which the plutocrats control), and taking control of the labor market from employers.

With my proposal enacted, the existing economy would become stable and self-regulating (with built-in safeguards against inflation). The DDI would provide the means to eliminate unemployment (at no cost to anyone), poverty (without having to redistribute anything), taxes (of all kinds), and public debt (at all levels of government). It would even help with sustainability, as total output would be governed, passively but effectively, by demographics — and only that. To be clear, there would still be no limit on income or property/wealth and no changes in economic behaviors would be required to achieve those outcomes. Otherwise, it has little going for it.

The idea is to implement a “democratically distributed income” (DDI). It would make a minimum income (based on the current median income, so in the U.S., say, $15/hr.; $600/wk.) like a right. Like, say, the right to vote, it would not accrue to everyone but would be available for an unlimited number of people. Like all rights, it would be free of cost. [Thinking about political democracy as a template for a really just economy is how I got to this idea.]

That would be accomplished by creating the money for the DDI as needed. The total of that income would form the supply of money (as currency) for the economy. The same entity that administered the DDI could as well directly fund (all) government (at the current per capita level of total government spending, forever).

I do understand that learning of an idea directly from its author like this somehow diminishes its credibility, undermines whatever authority it might have. I can’t do anything about that. For whatever it might be worth, I’ll pass along that I do have an M.A. in economics.

If your interest is greater than your skepticism, I do have a Web site, www.ajustsolution.com. (The link might not work.) I have also published relevant essays here on medium.com, including “Extending Democracy to Our Capitalist Economy to Transform Our Society” and “A Cure for the Ills of Capitalism.” I acknowledge that I am a better thinker than I am a writer — or a Web site designer/manager.