The Second Coming of Parity in the American Economic System – Parity, we hardly knew ya

The Second Coming of the American System of Parity Economics – With your help , it’s just ahead.

Today it is nigh impossible that many, if any, ordinary people know the meaning of the term – A Par Economy. Yet it was ordinary people that birthed this Parity ideal back in the day – in their “outside the box” search for a workable means of improving the ‘prosperity’ of all Americans. To improve our Common Good.

And yet, all of the promise of that Par Economy – of Prosperity truly “Unlimited” – was long ago learned, then rationalized, and finally accepted as true and necessary social policy. That promise of Parity became law.

That weighty American discourse over both what a Parity-based ‘Par Economy’ is, and whether ‘Parity’ should become a major national socio-economic policy, or not, took place in the halls of Congress amid the turbulent beginnings of FDR’s New Deal government. 

There, with assembled lawyers, accountants, lobbyists and advocates present for all sides – this first actual legislating of an American System of Parity Economics into national law was agreed. [Agricultural Adjustment Act:  ch. 25, 48 Stat. 31 (1933)]

This Act legalized a base pricing system for a host of Agricultural crops – and along with that pricing floor came a workable program of ensuring the long-term viability of delivering greater wealth and income “equity” throughout the American Economy.  The Act said that Farmers, as Agricultural Producers, must be paid the full cost of producing our nation’s food – without mortgaging the farm. It starts there. With more equitable Earned Income. At the soil. 

It is by establishing this wage/income Parity at the ‘raw-materials’ foundation of the national economy, that the nation establishes for all practical purposes the money value of the dollar – “regulating the value thereof” – throughout the economy.  Thus, we re-establish our forgotten Constitutional money power to again stand for social equity and fairness. There, our Public Money power, first and directly, supports the farmer’s toil. Notably, at the same time a Par Economy reform ensures support for dramatic and measurable increases in America’s ‘national income’. 

By seeking to guarantee farmers – and ALL Raw Materials producers – an earned-income that was at par with those of industrial wages, we can provide a systemic grounded value to the laborer’s dollar against the violent swings of inflation and recession/depression suffered over the previous half century.  Parity re-pricing for farmers could positively enforce the Constitutional obligation of our government to regulate the value of the nation’s money. Which it is definitely NOT doing today.

It was this opposite – the enforced debt servitude of bankers and high finance at the Auction Barn  – that rallied the Parity movement’s pioneers to found the Raw Materials National Council (RMNC) in 1936.

The Council’s research was led by Agricultural Statistician Carl Wilken.  Council members included small businessmen, researchers, authors, farmers and community bankers who gathered together to learn from each other and to advance together their  ‘Raw Materials and Parity Economics’ message. 

Captured in this system among all raw materials producers, and across all economic sectors – Agriculture was being short-changed the most on its income, and thus indebted the most. Hundreds of Thousands of family farms are foreclosed every year.

Parity Economics laid the cornerstone of social equity and income-fairness under the entire economy—what no other economic policy or system of reform had ever done, or has done since. 

The government’s fair-income standard undermined the speculators and made the farmers earned-income gains possible throughout the entire economy –  when Parity was finally legislated in ’37 and eventually implemented in 1942.

From day one, legalizing fairness, legalizing equity and legalizing parity into our national wealth distribution system had its rightful enemies. Speculators, financiers and bankers – the Owning Class I call them – maintained their opposition to the law, and with their political power steadily eroded Parity from view – from 1952 to the present. 

Despite the success of the bankers in destroying Parity’s effectiveness, the law for ‘parity-pricing’ of raw materials is still on the books. Its “enabling” permanent National Emergency status was never withdrawn, or repealed. It remains the law of the land. But in 2024 farmers are not being paid the Parity price for their food production, more like one-third of that Parity price.

We need to, and can readily, remake America’s historic Prosperity Revolution. The law we need to advance societal equity is simply being ignored. More accurately, the Secretary of Agriculture, who has the authority to act, is failing to enforce the laws on Parity.

Conclusion – 

American labor has too long endured the income-sufferings of modern finance capitalism. It is time to ‘enforce’ and implement the Parity Economics law again, to re-balance wealth distribution via ‘earned-income’ by fairly rewarding our nation’s wealth producers.   

True national prosperity is both necessary and possible.

Joe Bongiovanni

The Money Apprentice

Member The Parity Economics Research Team at AMI-NORM

January 11, 2026