"C. H. Douglas Major Clifford Hugh ""C. H."" Douglas MIMechE, MIEE (20 January 1879 – 29 September 1952), was a British engineer and pioneer of the Social Credit economic reform movement. C.H. Douglas was born in either Edgeley or Manchester, the son of Hugh Douglas and his wife Louisa Hordern Douglas. Few details are known about his early life and training; he probably served an engineering apprenticeship before beginning an engineering career that brought him to locations throughout the British Empire in the employ of electric companies, railways and other institutions. He taught at Stockport Grammar School. After a period"
"economic theories of an Englishman, C. H. Douglas. His theories became very popular across the nation in the early 1930s. A central proposal was the free distribution of dividends (or social credit), called ""funny money"" by the opposition. During the Great Depression in Canada the demand for radical action peaked around 1934, after the worst period was over and the economy was recovering. Mortgage debt was significant because farmers could not meet their interest payments. The insecurity of farmers, whose debts were increasing and who had no legal protection against foreclosure, was a potent factor in creating a mood of"
"time Major C.H. Douglas, a British engineer and social philosopher, developed a new economic philosophy which he labelled Social Credit. At the heart of the philosophy was a firm belief in the importance of individual freedom, but also that the monetary system had to be changed so that the market system could function properly. In short he combined monetary reform and basic income. The Beveridge report, published in 1942, stated that social insurances should be the main system in society for economic security. Besides that the report also proposed a selective system for those without access to social insurances. Beveridge"
"take into account cases when only large companies are viable because of the nature of an industry, as in the case of natural monopolies like electricity distribution. It also accepts that mergers and acquisitions may improve consumer welfare; however, it generally prefers more economic agents to fewer, as this generally improves competition.) Social credit is an interdisciplinary distributive philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas (1879–1952), a British engineer, who wrote a book by that name in 1924. It encompasses the fields of economics, political science, history, accounting, and physics. Its policies are designed, according to Douglas, to disperse economic and"
"economists a draft proposal titled ""A Program for Monetary Reform"". The Chicago plan and ""A Program for Monetary Reform"" generated much interest and discussion among lawmakers, but the suggested reforms did not result in any new legislation. Douglas is probably best-known to economics students as the co-author of the 1928 article with Charles Cobb that first laid out the Cobb-Douglas production function. As the 1920s drew to a close, Douglas got more involved in politics. He served as an economic advisor to Republican Governor Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania and Democratic Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York. Along with Chicago"
"Corps. It was while he was reorganising the work of the Royal Aircraft Establishment during World War I that Douglas noticed that the weekly total costs of goods produced was greater than the sums paid to workers for wages, salaries and dividends. This seemed to contradict the theory of classic Ricardian economics, that all costs are distributed simultaneously as purchasing power. Troubled by the seeming difference between the way money flowed and the objectives of industry (""delivery of goods and services"", in his view), Douglas set out to apply engineering methods to the economic system. Douglas collected data from more"
"Social credit Social credit is an interdisciplinary distributive philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas (1879–1952), a British engineer who published a book by that name in 1924. It encompasses economics, political science, history, and accounting. Its policies are designed, according to Douglas, to disperse economic and political power to individuals. Douglas wrote, ""Systems were made for men, and not men for systems, and the interest of man which is self-development, is above all systems, whether theological, political or economic."" Douglas said that Social Crediters want to build a new civilization based upon ""absolute economic security"" for the individual, where ""they"
"economics. He also carried out extensive research into the history of economic thought. His 1962 article ""Information in the Labor Market"" developed the theory of search unemployment. Paul Douglas, economist and Democratic senator from Illinois for 18 years, was uncomfortable with the environment he found at the university. He stated that, ""…I was disconcerted to find that the economic and political conservatives had acquired almost complete dominance over my department and taught that market decisions were always right and profit values the supreme ones… The opinions of my colleagues would have confined government to the eighteenth-century functions of justice, police,"
"idea is grasped, the criminal absurdity of the party system becomes evident."" C. H. Douglas was a civil engineer who pursued his higher education at Cambridge University. His early writings appeared most notably in the British intellectual journal ""The New Age"". The editor of that publication, Alfred Orage, devoted the magazines ""The New Age"" and later ""The New English Weekly"" to the promulgation of Douglas's ideas until his death on the eve of his BBC speech on social credit, 5 November 1934, in the ""Poverty in Plenty"" Series. Douglas’s first book, ""Economic Democracy"", was published in 1920, soon after his"
"increases in productivity. As human labour is increasingly replaced by machines in the productive process, Douglas believed people should be free to consume while enjoying increasing amounts of leisure, and that the Dividend would provide this freedom. Critics of the theorem, such as J. M. Pullen, Hawtrey and J. M. Keynes argue there is no difference between A and B payments. Other critics, such as Gary North, argue that social credit policies are inflationary. ""The A + B theorem has met with almost universal rejection from academic economists on the grounds that, although B payments may be made initially to"
"Dow theory The Dow theory on stock price movement is a form of technical analysis that includes some aspects of sector rotation. The theory was derived from 255 Wall Street Journal editorials written by Charles H. Dow (1851–1902), journalist, founder and first editor of ""The Wall Street Journal"" and co-founder of Dow Jones and Company. Following Dow's death, William Peter Hamilton, Robert Rhea and E. George Schaefer organized and collectively represented Dow theory, based on Dow's editorials. Dow himself never used the term ""Dow theory"" nor presented it as a trading system. The six basic tenets of Dow theory as"
"C. H. Douglas was the first article to be published in the magazine ""New Age"", edited by Alfred Richard Orage, critiquing the methods by which economic activity is typically measured: It is not the purpose of this short article to depreciate the services of accountants; in fact, under the existing conditions probably no body of men has done more to crystallise the data on which we carry on the business of the world; but the utter confusion of thought which has undoubtedly arisen from the calm assumption of the book-keeper and the accountant that he and he alone was in"
"an early stage, but assumed further importance following the Royal Visit 1939 where he spoke with the King on the topic. Aberhart became interested in politics during the Great Depression in Canada, a time which was especially harsh on Albertan and Saskatchewan farmers. Particularly, he was drawn to the Social Credit theories of Major C. H. Douglas, a British engineer. From 1932 to 1935, Aberhart lobbied for the governing political party, the United Farmers of Alberta, to adopt these theories, but it is doubtful that Aberhart fully understood the theories. The basis of Douglas's A+B theorem is that prices rise"
"they had made. He published his observations and conclusions in an article in the magazine ""The English Review"", where he suggested: ""That we are living under a system of accountancy which renders the delivery of the nation's goods and services to itself a technical impossibility."" He later formalized this observation in his A+B theorem. Douglas proposed to eliminate this difference between total prices and total incomes by augmenting consumers' purchasing power through a National Dividend and a Compensated Price Mechanism. According to Douglas, the true purpose of production is consumption, and production must serve the genuine, freely expressed interests of"
"Charles Cobb (economist) Charles Wiggins Cobb (1875–1949) was an American mathematician and economist and a 1912 Ph.D. graduate of the University of Michigan. He published many works on both subjects, however he is most famous for developing the Cobb–Douglas production function in economics. He worked on this project with the economist Paul H. Douglas while lecturing at Amherst College in Massachusetts. In 1928, Charles Cobb and Paul Douglas published a study in which they modeled the growth of the American economy during the period 1899-1922. They considered a simplified view of the economy in which production of output is determined"
"Monetary reform in Britain Monetary reform is the process of fundamentally changing policies regarding money. It can include changes to the money creation process, fractional-reserve banking, financial institutions, financing of the economy and Social Credit among other things. In the years around 1920 the British engineer C. H. Douglas developed a theory on banking and welfare distribution, a theory which he called ""Social Credit"", and which soon became the cornerstone of an international movement with the same name. However, Douglas himself warned against viewing the Social Credit solely as a scheme for monetary reform. Personally he preferred to describe it"
"a position to assign positive or negative values to the quantities represented by his figures is one of the outstanding curiosities of the industrial system; and the attempt to mould the activities of a great empire on such a basis is surely the final condemnation of an out-worn method. In 1920, Douglas presented the A + B theorem in his book, ""Credit-Power and Democracy"", in critique of accounting methodology pertinent to income and prices. In the fourth, Australian Edition of 1933, Douglas states: A factory or other productive organization has, besides its economic function as a producer of goods, a"
"the United States at the time. While his first models of production were static, in 1925 he published a dynamic ""moving equilibrium"" model designed to explain business cycles—this periodic variation from overcorrection in supply and demand curves is now known as the cobweb model. A more formal derivation of this model was made later by Nicholas Kaldor, who is largely credited for its exposition. Much of classical economics can be presented in simple geometric terms or elementary mathematical notation. Mathematical economics, however, conventionally makes use of calculus and matrix algebra in economic analysis in order to make powerful claims that"
"economics, that all costs are distributed simultaneously as purchasing power. Troubled by the seeming difference between the way money flowed and the objectives of industry (""delivery of goods and services"", in his opinion), Douglas decided to apply engineering methods to the economic system. Douglas collected data from more than a hundred large British businesses and found that in nearly every case, except that of companies becoming bankrupt, the sums paid out in salaries, wages and dividends were always less than the total costs of goods and services produced each week: consumers did not have enough income to buy back what"
"critique of Keynesian macroeconomics, and the idea of rational expectations, first proposed in 1961 by John F. Muth, opposing the idea that government intervention can or should stabilize the economy. The Policy-Ineffectiveness Proposition (1975) of Thomas J. Sargent (1943–) and Neil Wallace (1939–), which seemed to refute a basic assumption of Keynesian economics was also adopted. The Lucas aggregate supply function states that economic output is a function of money or price ""surprise."" Lucas was awarded the 1995 Nobel Economics Prize. Lucas' model was superseded as the standard model of New Classical Macroeconomics by the Real Business Cycle Theory, proposed"
"and creator of the Phillips curve, invented the MONIAC, a hydraulic computer which simulated the British economy. This is the inspiration for the term. Even earlier, in 1891, Irving Fisher built a hydraulic machine for calculating equilibrium prices. Initially, the phrase, ""hydraulic macroeconomics"", was associated with Keynesian economic models that did not display household or firm optimization. Hydraulic macroeconomics Hydraulic macroeconomics is an informal characterization of certain types of macroeconomic study assuming aggregate social wealth (demand or supply) as somewhat smooth, constant and homogeneous. The term was first introduced as hydraulic Keynesianism by Alan Coddington in classification of theoretical research"
"History of macroeconomic thought Macroeconomic theory has its origins in the study of business cycles and monetary theory. In general, early theorists believed monetary factors could not affect real factors such as real output. John Maynard Keynes attacked some of these ""classical"" theories and produced a general theory that described the whole economy in terms of aggregates rather than individual, microeconomic parts. Attempting to explain unemployment and recessions, he noticed the tendency for people and businesses to hoard cash and avoid investment during a recession. He argued that this invalidated the assumptions of classical economists who thought that markets always"
"while Alberta (and much of the western world) was in the depths of the Great Depression. He soon began promoting it through his radio program on CFCN in Calgary, adding a heavy dose of fundamentalist Christianity to the Social Credit theories of C.H. Douglas. The basic premise of social credit is that all citizens should be paid a dividend as capital and technology replace labour in production; this was especially attractive to farmers sinking under the weight of the Depression. Many study groups devoted to the theory sprang up across the province, which united into the Social Credit League of"
"Donald Douglas (founder of the Douglas Aircraft Company) declared, ""Here's proof that free men can out-produce slaves."" In thousands of international dollars, at 2014 prices. Source: Goldsmith data in Harrison (1988) p. 172 All figures in millions of tonnes GDP provides insight into the relative strength of the belligerents in the run up to, and during the conflict. Romanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Albanian GDP calculated by multiplying the GDP per capita of the four countries in 1938 ($1,242 for Romania, $2,655 for Hungary, $1,595 for Bulgaria and over $900 for Albania) by their estimated populations in 1938: 19,750,000 for Romania,"
"15 July 1920 Orage wrote: ″We should be the first to admit that the subject of Money is difficult to understand. It is 'intended' to be, by the minute oligarchy that governs the world by means of it."" After the First World War Orage was influenced by C. H. Douglas and became a supporter of the social credit movement. On 2 January 1919 Orage published the first article by C. H. Douglas to appear in ""The New Age"": ″A Mechanical View of Economics″. Orage had met P. D. Ouspensky for the first time in 1914. Ouspensky's ideas had left a"
"article ""The Delusion of Super-Production"" appeared in 1918 in the ""English Review"". Among Douglas’s other early works were ""The Control and Distribution of Production"", ""Credit-Power and Democracy"", ""Warning Democracy"" and ""The Monopoly of Credit"". Of considerable interest is the evidence he presented to the Canadian House of Commons Select Committee on Banking and Commerce in 1923, to the British Parliamentary Macmillan Committee on Finance and Industry in 1930, which included exchanges with economist John Maynard Keynes, and to the Agricultural Committee of the Alberta Legislature in 1934 during the term of the United Farmers of Alberta Government in that Canadian"
"mechanics of money creation and its impact on society"". Monetary reform in Britain Monetary reform is the process of fundamentally changing policies regarding money. It can include changes to the money creation process, fractional-reserve banking, financial institutions, financing of the economy and Social Credit among other things. In the years around 1920 the British engineer C. H. Douglas developed a theory on banking and welfare distribution, a theory which he called ""Social Credit"", and which soon became the cornerstone of an international movement with the same name. However, Douglas himself warned against viewing the Social Credit solely as a scheme"
"and are in turn influenced by them until a steady state (equilibrium) of all variables involved is reached or until an external shock throws the system toward a new equilibrium point. Because of the autonomous actions of rational interacting agents, the economy is a complex adaptive system. Keynesian economics derives from John Maynard Keynes, in particular his book ""The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money"" (1936), which ushered in contemporary macroeconomics as a distinct field. The book focused on determinants of national income in the short run when prices are relatively inflexible. Keynes attempted to explain in broad theoretical"
"Antebellum South"" by American economists Alfred H. Conrad and John R. Meyer, which caused a firestorm of controversy with its claim, based on statistical data, that slavery, being economically efficient and highly profitable for slaves owners, would not have ended in the absence of the U.S. Civil War. The new economic history revolution actually began in the mid-1960s and was resisted because many incumbent economic historians were either historians or economists who had very little connection to economic modeling or statistical techniques. Areas of key interest included transportation history, slavery, and agriculture. Cliometrics became better known when Douglass North and"
"Keynesian economics Keynesian economics ( ; sometimes called Keynesianism) are the various macroeconomic theories about how in the short run – and especially during recessions – economic output is strongly influenced by aggregate demand (total demand in the economy). In the Keynesian view, aggregate demand does not necessarily equal the productive capacity of the economy; instead, it is influenced by a host of factors and sometimes behaves erratically, affecting production, employment, and inflation. Keynesian economics developed during and after the Great Depression, from the ideas presented by John Maynard Keynes in his 1936 book, ""The General Theory of Employment, Interest"
"by regulation. In his 1931 book ""The Costs of the World War to the American People,"" Clark first broached the concept of the economic multiplier, the idea that ""all expenditures give rise to subsequent income effects and that their aggregated sum can always be expressed as a multiple of the original disbursement."" In this work Clark developed the idea of multiplier effects for foreign trade and capital investment in advancing this thesis that the actual cost of World War I to the American people substantially exceeded the sum of nominal expenditures by the government upon the war. Clark expanded upon"
"the National Dividend and abolition of wage slavery suggested by Douglas. In an effort to discredit the social credit movement, one leading Fabian, Sidney Webb, is said to have declared that he didn’t care whether Douglas was technically correct or not – he simply did not like his policy. In 1935 the world's first Social Credit government was elected in Alberta, Canada led by William Aberhart. A book by Maurice Colbourne, entitled ""The Meaning of Social Credit"", had convinced Aberhart that the theories of Major Douglas would facilitate for Alberta's recovery from the Great Depression. Aberhart added a heavy dose"
"the Economic History Association, among others, and he is on the board of directors of the ""Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics"", ""Constitutional Political Economy"", ""Journal of Policy Reform"", ""Public Choice"" and ""Business and Politics"". His research interests focus on political economy, new institutional economics, regulation, and the application of rational choice theory to legal, legislative, and constitutional institutions. The bibliographic database IDEAS/RePEc ranks him among the top 5% of economists according to different metrics, including average rank score, number of citations, and number of distinct works. His most cited research article, co-authored with Nobel Memorial Prize laureate Douglass C."