Die altruistische Kool-Aid BGE von Götz Werner schmeckt schal neben der Job Guarantee.

©dpa - Labergroschen Götz Werner

Warum soll man sich eigentlich nicht einmal einen Abstecher in die Vollidiotie von Götz Werner gönnen, um dann wirklich Gutes bei Ellis Winningham zu lesen? Man gönnt sich doch sonst nichts in der Bananen Republik der Plunse aus der DDR. Das Gesabber deutscher Ökonomen ist ohnehin ungeniessbar.

Aber zunächst wird doch der geneigte Leser interessiert fragen, Götz the fuck who???

Na, das ist doch ganz einfach DER Götz Werner, der Typ von der Drogerie Kette, der durch Ausbeutung von Tausenden von Mitarbeitern seine Milliarden gesichert hat. Jetzt schlürft er die Altruistik Kool-Aid und sabbert kontinuierlich über das Bedingungslose Grundeinkommen BGE bis zum Erbrechen. Hören wir einfach mal rein, was der Götz so im nüchternen Zustand volltrunken rüber bringt. Manege auf für ein bischen Götz Werner Sülze.

Arbeit ist keine Ware

01.11.2016

„Es gibt vier Mängel, vier Kardinalsünden in unserem Wirschaftssystem: Die erste besteht darin, dass wir Geld wie eine Ware betrachten, die zweite, dass wir Grund und Boden wie Ware betrachten, die dritte, dass wir Unternehmen wie Waren behandeln, und die vierte und wohl folgenreichste, dass wir Arbeit wie Ware betrachten. Arbeit ist aber an Menschen gebunden, kann also keine Ware sein. Grund und Boden können schon deshalb keine Waren sein, weil sie nicht beliebig vermehrbar sind. Unternehmen wie Waren zu verkaufen zu wollen, führt diese meist in die Überschuldung. Und das liebe Geld schließlich hat keinen unmittelbaren Gebrauchswert. Da wir diese vier Phänomene aber mental auf die gleiche Ebene wie die Güter und Dienstleistungen gestellt haben und vom Geldmarkt, Immobilienmarkt und Arbeitsmarkt reden, stecken wir in der Falle.“ Prof. Götz W. Werner in „Einkommen für alle“

Ich habe keine Ahnung, was Götz Werner raucht oder wie hoch sein Alkopops Konsum ist, aber wenn er mit Leuten verkehrt, die Geld als Ware betrachten, sollte Götz sein Umfeld wechseln oder anfangen, zu denken. Anders ausgedrückt, Götz Werner ist ein Vollidiot!

Geld ist ein Zahlungsmittel. Wäre es eine Ware, dann wäre der Preis für die "Ware € 10,-" wie hoch, Götz? Götz, hallo?

Neben diesem offensichtlichen Schwachsinn, und Götz Werners Blog ist voll von schwachsinnigem Gelaber, ist Götz ja der Apostel des BGE.

Doch irgendwann werden Idioten wie Götz Werner ermüdend und da trifft es sich gut, Bekanntschaft mit Ellis Winningham zu machen. Z. B. sein jüngster Blog Post

On the Reason Why a Job Guarantee is Rejected in Favor of a Standalone Basic Income Guarantee

Da heisst es u. a.:

Consider the US Dollar. At its very essence, the US Dollar is just a number, and numbers, as we know, are infinite. A Dollar exists only in one of three forms:

1.) Numbers in a reserve account at the Federal Reserve
2.) Numbers in a security account, also at the Federal Reserve
3.) Cash – Federal Reserve notes and coins

Na damit weiss man schon einmal, was Geld ist (1) ... und weiters

The US Dollar is not just paper and metal coin. In fact, when it comes to federal spending, paper dollars have nothing to do with the subject. The federal government doesn’t print cash to fund its spending. Cash is but a physical manifestation of a certain number (1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100) that was issued by the US Government. Today, paper US currency is issued to meet bank customers demand for cash. In other words, first the US Government spends by crediting bank accounts with numbers (1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100). Those numbers sit on an electronic spreadsheet called a “reserve account”, and they move back and forth between reserve accounts held at the Federal Reserve, ensuring that payments clear. Bank customers demand cash, so the US Government (The Bureau of Engraving and Printing) prints paper dollars. When a bank like Chase requests $2 million in cash, the Federal Reserve deletes the number 2,000,000 from Chase’s reserve account and then ships $2 million in cash to Chase. Chase then sticks the $2 million in cash in its vaults and then hands the paper dollars to customers when they ask for cash. Put simply, the US Government converts numbers in reserve accounts into pieces of paper which enables bank customers to carry around that number and buy things.

The US Dollar is a monetary instrument. 

Warum sind Typen wie Götz Werner so wahnsinnig gagga auf das BGE und lassen den Garantierten Job (Job Guarantee -JG) unerwähnt? Ellis Winningham gibt die Antwort.

When you demand a federal Job Guarantee, you are threatening to peg something that they absolutely adore (US Dollars) to something that they absolutely despise (labor), and they are going to demand that the politicians on their payroll reject the Job Guarantee in favor of another scheme. In this case, that other scheme, which is far more palatable to corporate America, the 1% and Wall Street is the Basic Income Guarantee.

 Das BGE dreht die Welt auf den Kopf. Gewöhnlich erbringt man erst eine Leistung und wird dann bezahlt. Das BGE hingegen wird vorab gezahlt. Dabei ist ein BGE als solches durchaus anwendbar in Verbindung mit der JG wie Neil Wilson zeigt.

Basic Income is based on the principle that people should be paid first and then perhaps do something later if they feel like it. That is a complete reversal of the principle of contribution that is in place in society. Everywhere else you have to be of service to others and put them in your debt first, before you receive anything of real value in return.

Yet there is no need to overturn the entire structure of the current economy. If those people who really believe in Basic Income want to put it in place under a Job Guarantee system then they can do so. Just endow a charity to give money to people. If the recipients then decide to work for others (perhaps working for the charity) they will receive the Job Guarantee wage which will then, in effect, end up being the advance payment for the following period rather than an arrears payment for the previous one.

Neil Wilson fragt auch, ob das BGE nicht im Grunde genommen Diebstahl darstellt?

Zurück zu Ellis Winningham, der den 'Currency to labor peg' anspricht.

A standalone Basic Income Guarantee without a Job Guarantee as “the” solution, is a steaming hot plate of status quo served with a side of status quo. There is simply nothing progressive about the Basic Income Guarantee when it is used in this manner. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a Basic Income Guarantee at all. The initiative can easily be combined with a Job Guarantee, but politicians refuse the proposal, because the Job Guarantee pegs the currency to labor.

Hier folgt EWs Argumentationskette:

What is Employment?

Most people think of employment in terms of a person who has a job. And that would be correct. But there is another sense to the meaning of the word that we must understand. In terms of a currency peg, when we say “employment”, what we mean is “to be used”. For example, gold doesn’t clock in at Walmart, stock some shelves and then receive a paycheck. See what I mean here? When you peg the US Dollar to gold, you are employing gold as a currency anchor. Therefore, any and all gold that the US Government can get its hands on is 100% guaranteed to be put to use. Let’s clarify this realty using what we’ve discussed so far.

 As we’ve mentioned, when you peg the US Dollar to gold, you need a supply of gold on hand at all times. You also must keep the amount of US Dollars in circulation consistent with the gold supply on hand at the fixed exchange rate. If the amount of gold on hand drops, then the amount of currency in circulation must also drop. If the amount of gold on hand increases, then you can increase the amount of currency in circulation. In other words, by pegging to gold, you automatically create a must-have situation for gold. Every ounce of gold that can be found must be put to use (employed), because it is the anchor for the currency that drives the monetary economy. Hence:

Pegging the US Dollar to gold means full employment for gold.
Pegging the US Dollar to British Pounds means full employment for the British Pound in the US.
Pegging the US Dollar to silver means full employment for silver.
Pegging the US Dollar to hamsters means full employment for hamsters.
Pegging the US Dollar to Kalamata olives means full employment for Kalamata olives.
And pegging the US Dollar to labor means full employment for humans.

Understand? Fantastic.

A Universal Basic Income, or a simple Basic Income Guarantee do not peg the US Dollar to anything. Essentially, they work to increase aggregate demand. They contain no inflation anchor, real or nominal. A Job Guarantee, on the other hand, actually pegs the US Dollar to labor. Human labor becomes the anchor for the currency, and as we now understand, should the US Government initiate a federal Job Guarantee, it would be pegging the US Dollar to labor, effectively forcing a situation of full employment in the United States. Now then, let us ask:

What’s one thing that corporate America, the 1% and Wall Street love more than anything?

US Dollars.

What’s one thing that corporate America, the 1% and Wall Street have a profound hatred for?

Full employment.

What’s one thing that corporate America, the 1% and Wall Street simply will not tolerate?

Say it with me: A situation of indefinite full employment.
Do you understand me?

When you demand a federal Job Guarantee, you are threatening to peg something that they absolutely adore (US Dollars) to something that they absolutely despise (labor), and they are going to demand that the politicians on their payroll reject the Job Guarantee in favor of another scheme. In this case, that other scheme, which is far more palatable to corporate America, the 1% and Wall Street is the Basic Income Guarantee.

 Die JG nimmt der Industrie die Möglichkeit, die Löhne unter den Level der JG Löhne zu drücken. Ja und genau das hat doch den Schlawiner Götz Werner reich gemacht.

____________
(1) Leute die zwischen Bargeld und Giralgeld allen Ernstes in Deutschland unterscheiden, haben 'fiat money' nicht verstanden.

Is Basic Income Basically Theft?

asks Neil Wilson in his excellent post. That question will sure irk the German high priest of the UBI, Götz Werner, the guy who made his billion by exploiting thousands of people. Bamm!

The Basic Income idea has some great marketing behind it and superficially appears to solve problems. Unfortunately the tricks used to promote it come straight out of the propaganda textbooks — attributing miracles to the policy when there are not justified.

The main trick is to compare an income guarantee to the broken system we have at the moment. The result is a miraculous increase in output. But that has nothing to do with the merits of Basic Income. It is just what would happen with any system of increased spending activity that knocks our monetary production systems out of the persistent slumps they always finds themselves in under ‘laissez faire’ conditions.

It’s only when you compare Basic Income with other managed economy schemes that the issues with it come to light.

....

 The rest of the economy will respond to the monetary stimulus and increase its output to its structural maximum, which for the purposes of this article we will assume is identical for both schemes. Whatever distributional outcome is required can be created in the Rest of the Economy via redistributive taxation, and the amount of stuff (goods and services) delivered to Participants is the same.

The difference is that the basic income scheme represents an extraction of goods and services from the Rest of the Economy, whereas the Job Guarantee represents an exchange of 37.5 Labour Hours per week for goods and services from the Rest of the Economy.

In other words the Basic Income participant gets paid twice in real terms. Once in terms of output from some part of the labour hours of the Rest of the Economy and once from their own 37.5 labour hours per week — which are self consumed.

Basic Income injects money into the Rest of the Economy, but without any increase in output available to others. So the total amount of money in the Rest of the Economy naturally chases fewer goods and services. If you are in the Rest of the Economy, you will end up getting less for your money. And we usually call that inflation, but perhaps it is really just a form of theft.

But, But, But

The argument then continues. Of course people are not going to self consume all their hours, but are going to go out into the world and do ‘good works’. But this is a fallacy of composition. There is no more likelihood of enough volunteer opportunities springing up than there are job openings — both due to the matching problem. Instead of hearing those in charge berating people to ‘start their own business’, we will hear them imploring people to ‘start their own charity’.

Since there is no active mechanism to create things to do that are of service to others, the amount available will converge at the usual suboptimal point and a section of the population will be left high and dry — regardless of their intent. Laissez faire works no better with activity than it does with money.

The Job Guarantee solves this by creating things to do. It takes activity to the people where they are and creates roles for the people as they are. If there is to be enough useful service available for everybody, it has to be produced with a managed process.

Exploiting others

The essential weakness of the Basic Income system is known, but hidden in platitudes. Many an article on basic income will highlight the ‘experiments’ that allegedly show wondrous benefits to the participating area.

German Götz Werner is a master of these platitudes. There is a lot of drivel on his blog (in German language).

Read the full post here.

German charity of Götz Werner buys someone a drink

We run a fund raiser to cover legal costs for a good lawyer to file a suit against the Jobcenter Munich. It is about free speech which the JC M together with the Munich court have a problem with.

So I turned to Götz Werner, the ex-CEO of the German drugstore chain DM. He now runs a charity because apparently, that's what people feel they need to do, once you have a billion or so (of other people's money).

That explains why he sports a Mercator 'Professor' title that he shares with among others a German TV news reader and a run-down feminist granny. So he's got quite illustrious company.

A website is as well his, where he touts the unconditional basic income (Bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen) and you can contact him via his representative Mr Christian Grether. Doing so I received a canned reply that Götz Werner is a pretty busy guy, gets lots of mail and a response may take a little:

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

vielen Dank für Ihre Nachricht an Prof. Götz W. Werner und das Unternimm-die-Zukunft Team. Da uns sehr viele Zuschriften erreichen, bitten wir Sie um etwas Geduld bis wir Ihre E-Mail beantworten können.

Freundliche Grüße

Christian Grether

vom Unternimm-die-Zukunft Team

That's German for "Thanks for contacting us but don't expect a fucking answer because THE GÖTZ is legend!" It's just a German habit not to answer.

That usually gets me set and turned on. So I waited deliberately for six weeks, no response as expected, and called on Christian again. Oh, Christian Grether is a widely interested dude and writes theater texts like here, so that could explain it. Christian did not disappoint in the least and did what he just had to do and that was sifting through his drawer and reply with another canned email. After all, can you blame Christian? You somehow have to get rid of these buggers. Here is Chrischan live:

vielen Dank für Ihre Nachricht. 

Lieder muss ich Ihnen mitteilen, dass juristische Hilfe oder eine finanzielle Unterstützung durch Herr Werner nicht möglich ist. Hintergrund für die Entscheidung ist zum einen, dass sehr viele Menschen, Initiativen und Vereine ihn um Unterstützung bitten und zum anderen, dass er sagt, dass man mit Projekten oder Initiativen innerlich substantiell verbunden sein muss, um diese glaubwürdig in die Welt zu bringen. Aufgrund der vielen Bitten und Anfragen ist es nicht möglich, sich mit allen Projekten, Initiativen oder Vereinen, so vertraut zu machen, um glaubhaft dafür einzutreten. 

Ich bitte Sie dafür um Verständnis.

Beste Grüße

Christian Grether

Presse- und Referentenanfragen an Prof. Götz W. Werner

Remember, our request concerned 'free speech' and so it appears the Christian selected the wrong canned email. It would indeed be a little odd to call 'free speech' something where "you must be connected to projects or initiatives internally and substantially" ("dass man mit Projekten oder Initiativen innerlich substantiell verbunden sein muss"). I love such BS.

According to the wisdom of Götz Werner 'free speech' can be seen as a 'project' and/or 'initiative'. Why not. Thing is, he just does not have the time to acquaint himself with that thought.

So here you have a billionaire who, for heaven's sake does he ever get tired, writes also a blog with inspiring posts like "What is missing when everything is there?" or "With willpower to your goal", yet free speech and a blog that criticizes a German government agency responsible for the supply of cheap labor and poverty, no that's not to the professor's liking. Reading a little more on his website you soon realize this guy is into drivel. More on that later when it gets really funny.

At this point it would be fair to ask why does he, who was the owner of the biggest drugstore chain, do all that when he cares so much about others? Why run a charity in the first place? If he were really serious he could set up a fund that disburses every Christmas € 10,000, 15,000 or 20,000 to every full-time employee as Xmas bonus. €5,000 for the cleaning ladies. He could offer 1% interest mortgages to his workers etc. etc. No, it has to be a charity and for a reason. Nothing gets close in terms of prestige. Even idiotic athletes now have one. Oh, and how do you like the Clinton Foundation?


You can not mention the name Götz Werner without saying at the same time 'Unconditional Basic Income'. That's his hallmark. However, once you start reading some posts about the UBI on his website you soon realize, the authors have no idea about economics, it is at times naive drivel and sometimes blatant nonsense. Like this sentence for example:

Mit den Gütern und Dienstleitungen entsteht das Geld, mit dem sie gekauft werden können. Dafür ist das Geld da. Es gibt so viel Geld, wie es käufliche Werte gibt. Sonst könnte man sie nicht kaufen.

It says 'with goods and services money is created (sic), with which they can be purchased. That's what money is for. There is as much money as there are goods. Otherwise you could not buy them.' You start wondering why is there inflation or deflation?

Some place else you read:

"Maschinenarbeit dagegen wird heute subventioniert, weil sie keine [der Lohnsteuer] vergleichbare Steuer zahlen muss, sondern eher durch degressive Abschreibungen gepuscht wird."

Google translate: 'Machine work on the other hand is subsidized today, because they have to pay no [income tax], but rather is pushed up by declining balance depreciation.' These weird reasonings made me stop reading after three posts.

Here is another goody:

"Wenn wir radikal auf Mehrwertsteuer umstellen wird das Land ein Arbeits-, Steuer- und Investitionsparadies." (Götz Werner, 2006) Basically it says, if we switch radically to VAT, the country will become a paradise of work, taxes and investments". It does sound somewhat eery, does it not?

Why does the replacement of one tax with another tax render a country to a paradise for investments?

It is obvious that G. Werner has never read Keynes and his law of consumption explained here:

The Keynesian concept of consumption function stems from the fundamental psychological law of consumption which states that there is a common tendency for people to spend more on consumption when income increases, but not to the same extent as the rise in income because a part of the income is also saved. The community, as a rule, consumes as well as saves a larger amount with a rise in income.

Abba Lerner puts it very plain what effect taxes have:

“The rational procedure is to judge all actions only by their effect and not by any vague notions of their propriety or impropriety. “By their fruits shall ye know them.” The effects of a tax are two fold. It increases the money in the hands of the government and, by decreasing  the money left in the taxpayer’s hands, it makes him spend less. The first effect is unimportant…..The important effect is the second, and the question of taxing or not taxing should be governed entirely by whether the effect on spending by the individual taxpayer is desired or not…”

Here the last quote from the Götz Werner website:

Auf die gesunkenen Preise kommt die höhere Mehrwertsteuer. Damit bleiben die Preise für den Verbraucher im Schnitt auf einem gleichen Niveau wie zuvor, und ein Grundeinkommen für alle ist in die Bedingungslosigkeit transferiert.

The decline in prices is offset by the increase in VAT. Thus, the prices for the consumer remain on average on a same level as before, and a basic income for all is transferred to the unconditional.

After this I gave up and instead searched if the word 'inflation' was mentioned somewhere and I came out empty. It is beyond me how anyone can seriously write about the UBI or in German the BGE without mentioning inflation.

This German here has clearly understood the mistake: Götz Werner buys someone a drink. (article in German)

Götz Werner could learn something from these guys and 16 Reasons Matt Yglesias is Wrong about the Job Guarantee vs. Basic Income.