Steady-state economy: Monetary and fiscal policies for ecological sustainability and social justice

Our current macroecomonic policies encourages a continuous economic growth. In this economic climate, insufficient growth leads to debt, unemployment and poverty. Economic activity depends on conversion of natural resources, which then returns to environment as waste. Our current levels of throughput exceeds the carrying capacity of our planet. Because of poorly structered economic institutions, the society is forced to choose between ecological catastrophe and misery. Transition into a steady-state economy, described as having levels of throughput compatible with the limits of the environment, is a must. This work contributes to developing a steady-state economy by adressing the lacking parts of current monetary and fiscal policies and recommending possible solutions. A steady-state economy, in a way that will support a sustainable prosperity, ensures non-cyclical and debt-free vertical money creation via the public sector. A steady-state economy must balance the spending and lending of money with the recovery of said money, not for revenue purposes but for the purposes of accomplishing the goals of the monetary policy. The priorities of a steady-state fiscal policy must be strategic public goods investments, taxation of economic rents and ecological harms and implementation of progressive taxation mechanisms. This work also considers a number of institutional reforms including a "Commons Trust" for regulating the throughput and a "Monetary Committee" for strictly regulating the money supply.