My understanding of MMT - Please point out any errors

[stone]

Gumby, I just want to be clear that I really appreciate your efforts in explaining the MMT position and what is more bothering to give so much critical energy to unpicking my "stonelandia" wafflings. Cheers

You are right in that I am saying that deficits pay for the aircraft carriers by devaluing the USD not in the end but instantaneously. To get into the Forbes 100 or whatever the net worth required pretty much mirrors the government debt doesn't it?

The MMT position is that saving is the accounting record of investment. To my mind an asset tax system makes productive investment tax advantaged. There is then no capital gains tax and no tax on investment income or corporate profits (and no income tax or sales tax so you have more of your wages left to save). If you have funded the creation of new assets then whilst they are still being created, they won't yet exist to be taxed (eg developing a new technology, training staff etc). Only if your saving is the accounting record of you in effect paying people to sit unemployed will you be subject to the full asset tax without any income from the asset to pay it with.

I also agree with the standard MMT line that pay-as-you-go pension etc arrangements are much the simplest and most efficient systems.

[Gumby]

Gumby, I just want to be clear that I really appreciate your efforts in explaining the MMT position and what is more bothering to give so much critical energy to unpicking my "stonelandia" wafflings. Cheers

It's mutual. I enjoy hearing about Stonelandia as well! It's refreshing to hear your fresh take on monetary/fiscal policy. Still trying to figure out what the food's like there!

I also want to be clear, that I don't fully understand — or necessarily believe — the prescriptive side of MMT yet. The JG is very theoretical, even though many MMTers believe it's essential to maximizing the productive capacity of a fiat nation. The "JG" is the "Theory" in MMT. I've really just focussed my knowledge on the "MM" part to help better understand our fiat economic reality.

You are right in that I am saying that deficits pay for the aircraft carriers by devaluing the USD not in the end but instantaneously.

Instantaneously? I don't believe any serious economist believes the Quantity of Money Theory is correct in the short term, right?

Anyway, Moda brought up a good point a few weeks ago, that the short term interest rates (less taxes) seems to a decent job of protecting people from the ravages of normal inflation. Even if you stuck your money in a boring bank account (or risk free Short Term Treasuries) you would have done ok, in real terms, even though today's dollar is supposedly worthless now.

I recently saw an MMT article from Cullen Roche and he finished it by saying:

So what’s the bottom line – debt matters! For an autonomous currency issuer, debt doesn’t create a solvency constraint. After all, there is no such thing as the US government “running out”? of US Dollars.  That’s impossible.  So it can always service its debt needs by creating more dollars. But what it could cause via the issuance of too many dollars is very high inflation.  Some will argue that inflation is a slow default, but that’s simply not true.  For instance, we often hear that the US Dollar has fallen 90% since 1913.  But that’s highly misleading.  What people always fail to note is the fact that living standards have soared in the USA since 1913.   So, while the CPI rises almost every year and the money supply grows with time, there’s no factual evidence for the idea that inflation destroys lives.  The last 100 years thoroughly disprove this notion.  What could happen with time is that the US government could print dollars in excess of our productive capacity and generate a sort of negative feedback loop perhaps leading to lower living standards and even hyperinflation.  This would surely be disastrous for the USA, but that’s a very different phenomenon than benign inflation or default
Source: http://pragcap.com/debt-matters

I suppose you see this as trickery. And in many ways it is. But, this "trickery" managed to rally a nation into doing some pretty great things over the last century. Most of the people in our nation are easily fooled by politicians, and by our media, so it's not surprising that we've all been bamboozled into building a superpower over the past century. I'm not trying to say that America is perfect or that we haven't made bad decisions. We have obvious problems now due to some recent bad decisions. I'm just saying that I wouldn't throw out the entire system because a few people screwed it up.

To get into the Forbes 100 or whatever the net worth required pretty much mirrors the government debt doesn't it?

Indeed. But, I don't think Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are causing immediate inflation. At least, I hope they aren't. Most of the people in the Fortune 100 are there based on their wealth and investments. Warren Buffet lives a frugal life, but he has billions of dollars in investment wealth. My guess is that he wouldn't pay very much asset tax — which somehow seems unfair.

The MMT position is that saving is the accounting record of investment.

Hrmm.. I thought the MMT position of saving was government risk-free savings accounts (i.e. Treasury Bonds)? I don't know if MMT really focusses on investment wealth, because wealth and money are two very different things. Particularly since every investment just causes a transfer of money into another bank account somewhere. And didn't Harry Browne point out that not everyone can realize all their wealth (i.e. cash in) simultaneously?

Anyway, the money you invest still needs to live in a bank account somewhere, even after you invest it. For instance... Let's say you invest in an IPO. You pay the company for its stock, and the money goes into their bank account. All it did was go from your bank account to the company's bank account. Unfortunately, that businesses now has the burden of an asset tax if it doesn't start spending that money as soon as possible. It can't very well save it's money in a bank account for a future acquisition (like Apple is doing with tens of billions of dollars in the bank). So, the company invests, or buys some staplers and paper, and starts paying employees. The investment target, the stapler company, paper company and the employees deposit the money into their bank accounts, and now they all have the burden of an asset tax if they don't spend that money. Where is there ever an incentive to save? Everyone's just trying to invest or spend the money constantly. That's good for the economy, but it seems like a very risky way to save for college or retirement. Saving and Investing are two different things. Case in point, the PP is 50% risk free assets.

Don't you think funds and investors still need a risk-free way to save so that they can adjust their risk tolerance? That's what government bonds are for!

To my mind an asset tax system makes productive investment tax advantaged. There is then no capital gains tax and no tax on investment income or corporate profits (and no income tax or sales tax so you have more of your wages left to save). If you have funded the creation of new assets then whilst they are still being created, they won't yet exist to be taxed (eg developing a new technology, training staff etc). Only if your saving is the accounting record of you in effect paying people to sit unemployed will you be subject to the full asset tax without any income from the asset to pay it with.

So, then I guess I would ask you two questions:

1) How would investors be able to invest in risk-free assets? If I am managing a $5 billion retirement fund, and I want 20% of it to be in risk-free assets that isn't being taxed away by an asset tax, do I buy government bonds? And if so, is the government able to invest that money back into the private sector to prevent it from being idle?

2) I'm probably misunderstanding you, but isn't the asset-taxable money supply always the same? If the base money supply in Stonelandia's private sector was $8 trillion. Wouldn't the government still collect the same amount of asset tax, regardless of whether most of the $8 trillion was sitting in a company's bank account or an employee's bank account? The second the employee, or the company, invests or spends that money, it just goes into another bank account account where it can be taxed. It's just a game of hot potato, but the potato always winds up somewhere taxable.

[MachineGhost]

The MMT position is that saving is the accounting record of investment. To my mind an asset tax system makes productive investment tax advantaged. There is then no capital gains tax and no tax on investment income or corporate profits (and no income tax or sales tax so you have more of your wages left to save). If you have funded the creation of new assets then whilst they are still being created, they won't yet exist to be taxed (eg developing a new technology, training staff etc). Only if your saving is the accounting record of you in effect paying people to sit unemployed will you be subject to the full asset tax without any income from the asset to pay it with.

In absence of all other taxes, why would an asset tax be preferable to a universal transaction tax?  Penalizing profits over expenses seems like the wrong incentive.

MG

[stone]

Gumby and MG, check out the Warren mosler "Deadly Innocent Fraud 5: We need savings to provide for investment" . That quote that "savings is the accounting record of investment" is a direct quote from that:
http://mosler2012.com/wp-content/upload ... deadly.pdf
"this innocent fraud undermines our entire economy, as it diverts real resources away from the real economy.....Think of it as the person trying to save by not spending his income losing his job, and not getting any income, because his employer can't sell all the output."

Gumby, I guess if you have got the impression that Warren Buffet wouldn't pay much asset tax then I've done a truely dreadful job of describing it . What I was suggesting it would be was a flat % of all assets each citizen held in whatever form where-ever they were held as well as of the nation's treasury bonds and bank reserves held by foreigners. So if Warren Buffet owns $40B worth of assets, then his annual tax bill might be 5% of that so $2B or whatever (is it currently $2M or something like that?).

[stone]

MG an asset tax would not be a tax on profits. It would be a tax on market value. So you would pay the same amounts of tax on say 1000 acres of farmland irrespective of whether you left in fallow and so got no income from it with which to pay the tax or used it productively so that you could pay the tax and also buy your neighbours farm that he had to sell because he had left it fallow and so had no means with which to pay his tax. The point is to ensure that assets are controlled by those who get them earning and also so that asset values are a function of the earning capabilities of assets rather than being a function of asset bubbles. It also means that it is only the holding of assets that gets taxed not the  creation of new real assets.

The MMT position is that saving is the accounting record of investment. To my mind an asset tax system makes productive investment tax advantaged. There is then no capital gains tax and no tax on investment income or corporate profits (and no income tax or sales tax so you have more of your wages left to save). If you have funded the creation of new assets then whilst they are still being created, they won't yet exist to be taxed (eg developing a new technology, training staff etc). Only if your saving is the accounting record of you in effect paying people to sit unemployed will you be subject to the full asset tax without any income from the asset to pay it with.

In absence of all other taxes, why would an asset tax be preferable to a universal transaction tax?  Penalizing profits over expenses seems like the wrong incentive.

MG

[Gumby]

Gumby, I guess if you have got the impression that Warren Buffet wouldn't pay much asset tax then I've done a truely dreadful job of describing it . What I was suggesting it would be was a flat % of all assets each citizen held in whatever form where-ever they were held as well as of the nation's treasury bonds and bank reserves held by foreigners. So if Warren Buffet owns $40B worth of assets, then his annual tax bill might be 5% of that so $2B or whatever (is it currently $2M or something like that?).

Stone.. Sorry, my head is going to explode. Walk me through how I would "save" for retirement using a Stonelandia Permanent Portfolio. Let's say I start with $100,000 (4 x $25,000) invested in Cash, LTTs (do they exist in Stonelandia?), Gold and Stocks. For simplicity, let's say I don't add anything to the portfolio and just want it to grow a moderate amount in real terms over the years. Is real growth possible in Stonelandia after taxes? And if so, how do we tax the individual assets and income from the Stonelandia Permanent Portfolio? Can you walk me through it? I'm clearly having trouble following what's taxed and what isn't.

[stone]

Gumby, all assets are taxed at the same flat percentage of their value. So if the asset tax were say 5%, and you had $100k in cash, $100k in LTT, $100k in gold and $100k in stocks, then your annual tax bill would be $20k.

[stone]

Gumby, remember this is instead of all other taxes. In the UK we pay a 75% sales tax on gasoline (I spend £50 per week on gasoline), 20% sales tax on most other things, a 20% to 50% tax on income, capital gains tax also any stocks we own are paying corporation tax and payroll taxes etc.

[stone]

Gumby, I totally agree that the quantity theory of money is bunk when it comes to goods and services. To try and explain what I was getting at, imagine each of the wealthiest 50 Americans was given a trillion dollars tomorrow. I don't think that that would increase the cost of groceries or ipods or apartment rentals. It would mean that a garage mechanic (to use Medium Tex's chosen barometer) would have to work many more lifetimes in order to earn enough to become one of the wealthiest 50 Americans. If money is power (and in many ways it is) then you would have diminished the garage mechanic's stake in the USA even though he might be just as able to afford pork chops or whatever. Relative wealth does shape what the economy does. As a customer the garage mechanic now has much less consumer power. If you were setting up an engineering company wouldn't you now look differently on making a widget that helped the garage mechanic rather than helped a wealth management system  for the new trillionairs?
Deficits do pump money in without mopping it up again. The economy gets distorted into simply trying to harvest those deficits. Many of the richest people are financiers who basically simply have used money to gather up and accumulate the money from deficit spending. Basically deficits boil down to welfare transfers to such people.

[stone]

Gumby, I don't think the USA's superpower status can be ascribed to deficit spending. In the 1950s and 60s, in relative terms, the USA was probably just as much a super power as it is now. I think you gained that status by having a very strong domestic economy where Americans produced goods and services for Americans to consume and you did that in the post war period before Nixon abandoned the peg to gold.

[moda0306]

stone,

All through that time, we had a very solit trade balance, which helps immensely with not having to deficit spend as much.  I'm not saying that answers everything, but having a trade deficit is like a hole in the bottom or our savings accounts... and we need deficit spending to sustain the same level of economic activity here.

I think since the quantity theory of money only works of long-term periods, there very likely where all the base money & private savings at its level in 1945 (expanded massively during WWII), along with small trade surpluses and expanding private sector money, was able to work just fine to grow the economy until balance sheets started to see strains. as the level of base money became too sparse.

Even though MMT can't REALLY work in periods of gold standards, a strong link to the psychology still occurs, where people tend to look at their own balance sheet and cash flows, not that of their government, as their MAIN consideration in how/when to spend money.  In this manner, even in a gold standard, deficit spending when balance-sheets are hurting can probably still have the affect of making people feel richer, and more capable of investing/spending.

[stone]

Moda, don't you think it might have been that there were plenty of good jobs in that period and extremely high taxes on the top end that kept the money circulating around. It was the massive deficit spending to fund the Vietnam war that caused the gold peg to need to be abandoned. Before that Americans were making stuff to sell to each other and foreigners in return for imports. Vietnam meant that all of that productive effort instead got diverted to the war effort.

[Gumby]

Gumby, all assets are taxed at the same flat percentage of their value. So if the asset tax were say 5%, and you had $100k in cash, $100k in LTT, $100k in gold and $100k in stocks, then your annual tax bill would be $20k.

Gumby, remember this is instead of all other taxes. In the UK we pay a 75% sales tax on gasoline (I spend £50 per week on gasoline), 20% sales tax on most other things, a 20% to 50% tax on income, capital gains tax also any stocks we own are paying corporation tax and payroll taxes etc.

Ok.. But what happens when you reach the age of 65? If you didn't invest properly, you've lost money and you've been paying taxes on those investment savings all along — so your savings are really in the toilet (much worse than if you were only taxed on your gains).

If you did manage to be lucky enough (or smart enough) to invest properly, now you have a next egg. But, that next egg loses 5% or 20% of its value each year in addition to your living expenses and any expense ratios. If you reached the age of 65 and you no longer have any income, it seems like your nest egg could evaporate quite rapidly (since you wouldn't have any income to counteract the asset tax).

Also, if everyone has to convert 5% or 20% of their entire wealth into a liquid asset in order to pay their taxes each year, wouldn't you have a liquidity problem? The land owner with zero income would be unable to raise the cash needed to pay his taxes. He couldn't very well sell off 20% of his land easily if it were uncultivated or too rocky to farm. Warren Buffet and other billionaires might need to liquidate 5% or 20% of their wealth each April — along with everyone else. Would there be enough money supply to absorb the conversion of assets into money? Would their be enough buyers? This could cause seasonal liquidity issues and market problems as everyone was selling their assets simultaneously to pay their taxes.

Wealth is really an illusion. We can't all realize our wealth at the same time because the second we try to realize it, we become a seller. When there are more buyers than sellers, this causes the value of something to go down. That's what irrational exuberance is all about.

[Gumby]

Gumby, I don't think the USA's superpower status can be ascribed to deficit spending. In the 1950s and 60s, in relative terms, the USA was probably just as much a super power as it is now. I think you gained that status by having a very strong domestic economy where Americans produced goods and services for Americans to consume and you did that in the post war period before Nixon abandoned the peg to gold.

I guess you missed Deadly Innocent Fraud #5

To further make the point, if general McArthur had proclaimed after WWII that since Japan had lost the war, they would be required to send the US 2 million cars a year and get nothing in return, the result would have been a major international uproar about US exploitation of conquered enemies. We would have been accused of fostering a repeat of the aftermath of WWI, where the allies demanded reparations from Germany that were presumably so high and exploitive they caused WWII.

Yet for over 50 years, Japan has in fact been sending us about 2 million cars per year, and we have been sending them little or nothing. And, surprisingly (?) they think this means they are winning, and we think we are losing.

Same with China- they think they are winning because they keep our stores full of products and get nothing in return. And our leaders agree and think we are losing.

This is madness on a grand scheme!

Source: http://mosler2012.com/wp-content/upload ... deadly.pdf

[moda0306]

stone,

I definitely think there's some good observations to be made around all the prosperity and growth we saw while simultaneously running high tax rates.

It's one of the reasons I'm still trying to think you haven't gone completely mad thinking that a 7% asset tax would work in the real world... 

[stone]

Gumby, the MMT idea that being a net importer is fantastic used to be their main "difficult to defend" position before the JG got that award. Personally I think balanced trade works best for everyone. Each country needs to maintain expertise and capacity. I think it creates a dangerous situation when any given country becomes overly reliant on trading partners. That can lead to exploitative terms of trade developing. Let's imagine that some time in the future China has the ability to make everything and anything and they supply all of the goods to the USA in return for USD that they pile up endlessly. By then the USA might have forgotten how to make stuff for itself let alone kept up with new technological developments or have factories in place. At that point China could say that on reflection they were going to just focus on exporting to India or wherever or not exporting and that they had sufficient USD reserves. Then the USA would have to resort to just selling agricultural commodities etc at the world price and might not then be able to import stuff anymore.

Having a system that makes running large trade deficits impossible ensures that things don't string along for long enough that a calamitous distortions develop. 

[stone]

Gumby, wealth is only a nebulous illusion when the price of the assets it is based on are not properly grounded in their earning potential. The asset tax would ensure that asset prices reflected their ability to throw off enough income to pay the tax. Currently asset prices exhibit the bizarre distortion that being more expensive often does not make them less attractive. An asset tax would mean that people would only pay a price that meant that the asset actually was an asset rather than simply being a tax burden. Remember people would be having a lot more spare cash to save as their wouldn't be the other taxes. They would have to find something to use as a store of value. An attractively priced asset would get snapped up and an overpriced asset would see its price correct. I also think that there would be a lot more actual investment ie spending money on creating new assets rather than on simply bidding for pre-existing assets.

I don't think that our current system of throwing people's retirement planning to Wall Street's wolves works at all. I personally agree with the standard MMT idea that pay-as-you-go provisions for providing for the elderly is the best system. I think running the capitalist system needs to be about having capitalism serve the real economy without the diversion of trying to magic up 4% real return growth of people's pension savings that in reality just ends up feeding a ballooning parasitic financial sector that keeps all of those returns and more for itself.

Remember, the bottom line is that no more tax is being taken out than with our current system and that unlike our current system, economic activity such as providing goods and services is not being taxed at all.

[moda0306]

stone,

Shouldn't people to buy/sell assets based on whatever reasons they see fit, not some government's idea of what "enough income" is?

In your world, owning gold as insurance would cost you 7% of the value of that gold every year, simply because the government has deemed it an insufficient asset to hold.

Likewise, there'd be very little stock of common currency savings when 7%  of that value is being eroded.

Instead everyone would effectively be forced to invest in ridiculously risky assets just to efficiently save their money.  Things that generate low "income" but are relatively safe stores of value would be very, very unappealing in this world, and in a way that is extremely artificial.

You might eliminate a lot of debt with this system, but you'd be skewing the market in massive ways against people who simply want to be safe with their money.

[stone]

moda, you would still want to have reserves to use for rebalancing/money management. You would look to the total portfolio returns just as now. So let's imagine you had 50% cash: 50% stocks or whatever and stocks gave a higher rate of return because the valuations were a chunk lower than now. The annual savings accumulation that a working person made after all taxes might be much the same. The only difference would be that holding assets in itself would not in itself magic money out of nowhere unless you were an exceptional investor. Ofcourse now it doesn't magic money out of no where it magics money from the rest of the system. My main point is that current investment returns are a pure artifact of government deficits. There is nothing capitalistic or free market about them. They are a socialist welfare transfer to asset holders. That is hidden by the fact that the asset price bubbles are so volatile and unpredictable that only elite deficit harvesters such as Goldman Sachs and Renaissance Technologies are able to capture them. Even they have to waste vast resources with thousands of PhDs in the effort.

[stone]

moda, I think it is important to bear in mind that baby boomer pension savings growth does not reflect something that can happen unless a huge cohort of people all together pile into an asset market that previously had much less participation. We shouldn't look to their experience as something that "the system" will perpetuate. Also I think we are blessed with using the PP. It is not a strategy that could be extended to cater for everyone and still work as it does. Volatility capture gains fall into its lap from all the poor souls in the market who inadvertantly buy high and sell low. 

[Gumby]

Stone. It's been fun visiting Stonelandia. But, I'm due back on the planet Earth later this afternoon.

You obviously have disdain for Money Illusion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_illusion

It's certainly smart to think about things for their real productive value. But, the overwhelming majority of humanoids don't think that way.

Money illusion can also influence people's perceptions of outcomes. Experiments have shown that people generally perceive an approximate 2% cut in nominal income as unfair, but see a 2% rise in nominal income where there is 4% inflation as fair, despite them being almost rational equivalents. However, this result is consistent with the Myopic Loss Aversion theory. Further, money illusion means nominal changes in price can influence demand even if real prices have remained constant.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_illusion

Most humans are fooled by Money Illusion. I agree with you that it is trickery. But, that is how our minds are wired. Almost 99% of the population is coaxed into contracts and deals for irrational nominal returns. That's how our society works.

Your disdain for Money Illusion has caused you to dream up a science fiction novel where no one earns interest and no one makes a profit from their assets unless they find a way to put their assets to work. It's a very noble goal, but it's not what people are wired to want. Money Illusion tells us that people are willing to choose an easy nominal gain — even though they may have a real loss.

Somehow those rules don't apply in Stonelandia. So, good luck retiring on that unproductive waterfront property, or buying that unproductive sports car you've always dreamed of. Instead of paying a one-time sales tax, your citizens will have to pay an annual tax on everything they enjoy or try to save with. I suppose sports car manufacturers will have to lay off workers since the expensive sports cars are a bigger money drain. Sorry landscapers and garden nurseries, your shrubs and perennials aren't very productive, so they're going to be taxed every year they sit unproductively in a citizen's front yard. Guess those businesses will have to lay off some workers too. Find another job, artists — you won't be able to make a living selling annually taxable and unproductive artwork. So much for culture. So much for that wine cellar with unproductive wine bottles collecting dust in them not creating enough jobs every day. I guess wine makers won't have the revenue they are used to anymore and will have to lay off their workers and cut back production. Better not let those wines age — the more you wait, the more taxes you'll have to pay...

Consider one idea. Perhaps Money Illusion causes us to have a convenient excuse to spend money on all the unproductive assets we dream of owning some day? Should we be punished for having a wine cellar or an expensive piece of art? Sure seems like it in Stonelandia. Makes me wonder why anyone would choose to live there. What exactly are the benefits of Stonelandia again? No asset bubbles? Perhaps Money Illusion tells us that people actually want nominal asset bubbles and don't care what the consequences are.

I'm just rambling, but I think I'd like to go home now. I have a 1996 Chateau La Mondotte Saint-Emilion that needs to be turned

[stone]

Gumby, I think most people simply want to earn a living and spend what they earn. I do notice the money illusion and I do think it is exploited for all that it is worth. The problem is that if you aim to pander to tricksters and parasites then they will entirely take over and nothing useful will get done. We are all fond of trying to understand how money works etc. I think most people want and deserve a system that doesn't reward those who understand its complexities at the expense of those who have got better things to do.

[Gumby]

Gumby, I think most people simply want to earn a living and spend what they earn. I do notice the money illusion and I do think it is exploited for all that it is worth. The problem is that if you aim to pander to tricksters and parasites then they will entirely take over and nothing useful will get done. We are all fond of trying to understand how money works etc. I think most people want and deserve a system that doesn't reward those who understand its complexities at the expense of those who have got better things to do.

But that's not our reality. Nor will it be. People actually want the potential for nominal returns and wealth preservation. It's how we are wired. Money Illusion proves it every day.

Nobody wants never-ending annual losses on the things they enjoy and cherish.

The more I hear about Stonelandia, the more it sounds like a dreary work camp that constantly takes everything you ever acquire, or save, away from you.

[moda0306]

The more I hear about Stonelandia, the more it sounds like a dreary work camp that constantly takes everything you ever acquire, or save, away from you.

I'm starting to agree... we are to believe that deficits (simply spending in excess of taxes) is a huge market manipulator, but the following aren't:

1) A 7% tax on GROSS assets.
2) A possible illegalization of interest-bearing debt contracts, in spite of what two free parties would prefer to engage in.
3) A redistribution system that tries to keep demand up, instead of via expanding the money supply, by redistributing more and more wealth faster and faster to ensure enough demand that we work at full capacity.
4) Hoping that a black market doesn't manifest itself along the way, giving the savvy a HUGE leg up on those who pay their taxes.

I like an idea of a .5-1% asset tax on the uber-rich... I also like the idea of a citizen's dividend (though one could argue that administered social safety nets work better for stability puprposes)... but we can't let those things be the fundamental core of our monetary/fiscal system in combination with balanced budgets, hopeing that if we keep forcibly stirrng the economy fast enough that it will never dry into a depression.

[Gumby]

The more I hear about Stonelandia, the more it sounds like a dreary work camp that constantly takes everything you ever acquire, or save, away from you.

I'm starting to agree...

Hey, wait a second.. What do you mean we're "being detained"..?!?  Stone said we could leave any time we wanted to! Call the embassy, Sir. You'll see. There's been a serious misunderstanding. We are tourists. Hey, where are you taking us?! We just want to go home!!

In all seriousness. I can't imagine what the landscape would look like. I would imagine that it would be an ecological disaster. Everyone would be chopping down trees and destroying ecosystems trying to squeeze a profit out of every acre of land.