Just a thought - what if all the money collected in taxes by the government was used to fund our actual healthcare, pensions, education, and social security? A huge portion currently goes to serving interest demands on the national debt. Whatever you think of Alex Jones, whether you consider him right-wing or not, there is insight everywhere, and Aaron Russo is remarkably authentic and elucidating:
(alternative version on Vimeo here)
“… Why are we allowing these private bankers to make the money for our country? It makes no sense! Why are we paying interest to these banks to make money for us, when the Government can do it itself, without paying interest, and without all that debt…”
Or watch «America: Freedom to Fascism», a smorgasbord of insights and challenging thoughts that will make you think differently about money, wealth and the economy. Gold-backing seems to be the obvious choice to go back to, but as Money as Debt Part III argues (see from 1:54:10), this could just mean history repeating itself and is not a true innovative step. If government issued money instead of borrowing it from private corporations, humongous amounts of interest being paid to private bankers could be saved, Freedom to Fascism argues that this would completely remove the need to (illegitimately) charge income tax on wages and salaries. But this would still be a centralist approach, subject to inertia and large-scale corruption, and dependent on the politicians’ honesty and competence. Governments would still be at liberty to create all the money they want to spend on wars. And like gold-backed money, it would also still be a single uniform commodity, “manifesting all the inherent mathematical defects of lending at interest and twice-lent money.” (Money as Debt Part III)
The ultimate solution proposed by Paul Grignon is self-issued credit - barter networks, time banks, regional voucher schemes (“currencies”). If these get “too successful”, they get squashed by the conventional monetary authorities - which must be seen as a good sign that they’re on to something. The basis of a functioning, sustainable monetary system would be that the definition of money is changed to “something redeemable for something specific from someone specific”…
Some quotes
From the movie «America: Freedom to Fascism». As often with these pithy nuggets of wisdom, they are unverified, probably apocryphal or spurious. They are still beautiful and it is proven or at least plausible that they are paraphrases of things these people really said or wrote. There’s nothing wrong with being inspired by them, even if their authenticity is dubious.
“The government should create, issue and circulate all the currency.
Creating and issuing money is the supreme prerogative of government
and its greatest creative opportunity.Adopting these principles will save the taxpayers immense sums of interest
and money will cease to be the master and become the servant of humanity.”~Abraham Lincoln
“If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency…the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property, until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
~Thomas Jefferson
“The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough money to buy it back again.
However, take away from them the power to create money, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money.”
~Sir Josiah Stamp, Former Director of the Bank of England
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
~Henry Ford
The industrial revolution and exploitation of fossil resources created a huge bubble of productivity and wealth and allowed world population to surge impressively. It also allowed, and required, an explosion in money supply, that subsequently went out of proportion and got hooked on the idea of perpetual, exponential growth. The primary purpose of a tax is to put a levy or charge on a scarce good. (The German word for tax is “Steuer” literally “a steering”.) So why don’t we tax the things that we want to use less of - like conventional (fossil) energy, or land surface area, inversely based on ecological integrity (so you’d pay much less tax on forest floor than on areas sealed with tarmac)?