Shrink the Economy and Encourage Real Wealth

Agenda for a New Economy definitely has me thinking quite a bit.

On one hand, shrinking the economy and encouraging real wealth by limiting the Money Supply would cause some crazy problems for liquidity, issuing debt, and would take us away from our spot as the number one economy in the world.

Korten makes some great points about how Wall Street is setup in a way to encourage greed. Free Market theory says that whenever a market has less restrictions it operates more efficiently. We've seen how Wall Street has the ability to take advantage of people, but when do we say "the buck stops here."

• What is that limit, that barrier, that cap where we start to trade utility for the greenback?
• How do we quantify the damage of an oil spill? (Is it only by cleanup costs & lost fishing revenue?)
• How do we decide when to provide bigger subsidies for electric vehicles?
• Is nuclear energy the way to go?

So many questions that we don't have a single answer for. It boggles my mind, but we don't really know how much of an impact certain policy has until it is actually implemented.

On that same topic, do we limit salaries?

My personal opinion is that I think it is offensive and selfish to be making over a certain amount of money. That being said, if I am going to risk everything and spend my life starting Alibaba or Amazon, I expect to make upwards of a few million dollars a year. If you're working 80+ hours week you should be paid more.

Yet, once you make a certain amount of money, your lifestyle does not change. Buying yachts and jets is the most wasteful act. If you really want to go on a yacht and have the money to spend rent one for a week, expense it to the company, save the money on taxes.

Where do we limit salaries is the real question. If someone works a commission based job and makes 10% on X Million $, if we put a cap we are capping business. That's something to think about. The truth is we won't really know until we try, but history and other countries have shown us that free market tends to always operate better in the long run than any other government influenced system.

Conclusion

There's a problem with how people spend money in the US and across the world. We need to stop being so wasteful as a society, even if it at the expense of some business. We are going to pay for the environment now or later, and I think it'd be much better to pay for it now and enjoy the benefits later.