It seems that all the policy dialog about the future of the US economy is constrained by very old fashioned and rigid thinking about the mechanics of economic progress, and a focus on monetary and fiscal tools that are unbelievely clumsy and ineffective. Something very different is possible ... and very much needed. People-Centered Economic Development is thinking outside the box ... and TrueValueMetrics provides the measurement system to end the tyranny of profit, stock prices and GDP growth.

Jeff Mowatt commented on '#Keynes101rewind Investment,...'

Peter, in the context of debt and taxation

IF AMERICANS DON'T LISTEN TO OBAMA THEY ARE TOAST FOR THE REST O

Ann, I want to show you an extract from a letter that I faxed to a candidate for the US Vice-Presidency in 2004. His name was John Edwards. I did not write the letter of course, I did this because the author was unable to do so himself at the time, it reads:

'I had intended to give you this after you win the White House, but it now seems that you might need it to get there: how to correct the economy and relieve poverty without raising taxes, as Kerry has now been cornered into pledging will not happen. Everyone is wondering about that, and are in fairness quite skeptical as to how or whether that can be accomplished.

Under conventional schemes, I suppose it really does seem implausible. We have a burgeoning and potentially fatal public debt. Truth be known, no one on either side has been completely honest about how we're going to deal with that. Bush Inc. has pretty much ruined the Clinton economic triumph, turning a fat surplus into a fat deficit once again, this time with no realistic end in sight. That point hasn't been played up nearly enough, and I respectfully take exception with you, Kerry, and your campaign staff for not doing so. We cannot keep this up, and no one has yet sounded the alarm. You and Kerry have carefully avoided the T word - taxes - while allowing the Bush side to run rampant on the unspoken B word - borrowing. It's pay now - taxation - or pay later - borrowing - and you've let the Bush side run unchallenged on that point. Tax and spend, or, borrow and spend. Which is better? The former means fiscal responsibility now, the latter means dumping it on children, grandchildren, and beyond. Either way, increased taxation is inevitable, unless we come up with a huge economic miracle the likes of which has never been seen before.

That may or may not be reasonable, so let's not kid ourselves privately about that. But, it may be possible, though not under Bushites who, as I've asserted time and again, simply do not care about the future of America. On that point, I diverge from your and Kerry's opinion: both of you obviously care about America's future, and I don't think either of you grasp that anyone in the titular position of US president might not share that same concern. You seem to assume that Bush Inc. MUST care due to their position, whereas I would argue that you're both engaging in logical fallacy. On that point, for the moment, we can at least agree to disagree, bearing in mind of course that I'm almost always right about such things. You and Kerry are in the thick of battle with heavy ordnance flying all around, while I'm safely tucked in exile although wishing I were there. My mother is heartbroken that this is the case, and for that I'm not entirely sure I can ever forgive American circumstances that made it happen. But, at least, I'm still alive, and she hasn't had to bury her child as have many, many mothers due to the egregious, ill-begotten war in Iraq - American and Iraqi mothers, mind you.

Your final ticket and the ticket to economic transformation in America is, oddly enough, American people.

I worked through this theme eight years ago, in a paper for Clinton's reelection steering committee. After 35 pages of methodical analysis, and six weeks of debate with any and all challengers in Chapel Hill area prior to the paper being finalized and released, it reduced to a concept called people-centered economic development. No one along the way prevailed in any debate on the matter, and no one since then has disagreed in any way with the conclusions. In fact, since 1998, Yale, Stanford, Duke, Harvard, and Oxford business schools have embraced the arguments in the paper as a new, formal economic paradigm. The government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain has, as of 2002, included the paradigm as formal UK economic policy. Those are all under the shortened banner of 'social enterprise.'

No gonzo mode here, my friend. It's true, and it birthed officially in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, September 16, 1996 - which turned out to be the same day, seven years later, that you announced your candidacy for US president.

For the moment, I'm not going into people-centered economic development, nor social enterprise. These are now full-blown master's level programs in our most respected universities, and plenty of information is available there. Precursor information is available on my web site, which you presumably know about as of a year ago, when I laid my life on the line to protect my own beloved and to raise hell about economic rights in the United States of America.'

The writer refers to his fast for economics rights in 2003, in which I'd try to help him raise awareness In 2005, the recipient opened the Center on Poverty Work and Opportunity on the UNC campus in Chapel Hill.

In 2008, as a presidential candidate, Barack Obama announced that he'd be setting up a social enterprise agency and innovation fund. It would be funded he said by closing tax loopholes and ending the war in Iraq.

Early in 2008, direct contact was made with the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where Obama and Biden sat. Drawing attention to what he was still doing the writer reminded then of a strategy plan which set out the case for a social enterprise agency, innovation fund and an argument for using the funds being spent each week in Iraq, to be deployed to benefit people. This cartoon seemed particularly apt, at the time