EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH vs. ETHICS

Pridger didn't get all the details, but apparently a wrongful death suit has recently been filed in Illinois on behalf of an interested party in the case of the death of a single embryonic egg cell. It seems there is an Illinois law giving such embryos "human status." Based on that law a judge has ruled in favor of the plaintiff.

Wow! Human status for a single human cell! First thing you know partly developed embryos or even fully formed unborn human babies will be awarded human status too! The implications are downright scary. What would the "freedom of choice people" do?

If the law and wrongful death suit are upheld, the circumstance could bring embryonic cell research to a screeching halt. And how could the human race survive without it? Naturally, this has a lot of people in the scientific community in a dither — and not only because it might make a docile mortality the lasting law of the land! 

The way Pridger understands it, embryonic stem cell research is aimed at conquering several diseases, extending life-spans, and solving the perplexing problems of re-growing healthy limbs and other bodily organs. Ultimately, it is hoped that the necessity of death itself might be overcome. To stop this research would mean that none of us could hope to escape death, and many of us will have to die much sooner than we'd like. We'll continue to have to respond obediently whenever the good Lord calls us home, no matter how inconvenient or seemingly premature the call may seem.

If "human status" implies "human rights" and the "right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," wouldn't the crime of murder (or at least manslaughter or "wrongful death") attach itself to abortions as well as killing a cell?

Of course, this has been the "right to life" contention all along. It would be rather ironic if an ethical "technicality" having to do with embryonic stem cells would end up saving fully formed babies!

Stranger things have happened. Once the declaration that "all men are created equal" was almost universally construed to refer strictly to white men. Today it's almost a prosecutable hate crime to even think that way. Homosexual men and women are now on the brink of gaining equality too. Maybe tomorrow, unborn babies (considered sacred human life in more primitive times), will be considered human beings.

GAY EQUALITY

Homosexuals, who have commandeered the formerly pleasant word "gay" as their very own, are up for equal rights too. Not merely as men and women, like the rest of us, but as a distinctly separate, and "more" than equal, class within society. Having successfully despoiled the word gay for most of us, they are now doing the same number on the word "marriage."

Pridger had never harbored any ill feelings toward homosexuals as a class of people. He always looked upon them as just one of those strange quirks of humanity. Homosexuals, like everybody else, were to be judged by the content of their character rather than what they might do in private behind closed doors.

This shouldn't be taken as an insult. Some people might consider John Q. Pridger a strange quirk of humanity too. Fortunately, there is only one known to exist, and nobody feels threatened. But if similar specimens started tumbling out of closets by the millions, all over the nation, demanding equal rights for "John Q's"... well, that would be a frightening development (even Pridger admits it!). In time, there might even be a Pridger in the Oval Office or on the throne of global empire.

There have always been plenty of homosexuals. In fact, since they were considered to be abnormal, we believed society probably had too many of them. But then, a frightening thing happened — even more of them started tumbling out of closets by the millions. Before long, it was discovered that they were present in society in politically significant numbers. Naturally, since they had the voting franchise like everybody else, their political voice began to be heard.

Naturally, the loudest voices are always heard the clearest — and it's always the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. The war cry most of us heard was an in-your-face "We're queer and we're here!" — challenging, and finally shaking, the very foundations of society. 

It seemed that the "straight world" shrunk up to about a quarter of its former size — just as the white world seemed to crawl into a hole after Civil Rights. The homosexuals managed to get themselves designated as another oppressed minority, along with all non-Anglo Saxons, and women, and called themselves "Gays."

Another oppressed minority was rising up in open revolt — this time against the society and culture of the "straight" white man. Gay churches even sprung up to prove that homosexuals are just as good and Christian as straight white people.

In time, even Pridger started looking at Gays differently. Maybe they were are an abomination, after all. Maybe the passage in the Bible that said so really wasn't just part of a vast "straight" conspiracy to discredit men who had a propensity toward "unnatural" copulation with other men — presumed to be considered a sin because it brings forth no children and is obviously unclean (apparently even by the most ancient standards of hygiene).

Levi 18:22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it [is] abomination . 23 Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it [is] confusion. 24 Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: 25 And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. 26 Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit [any] of these abominations; [neither] any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you: 27 (For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which [were] before you, and the land is defiled;) 28 That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that [were] before you. 29 For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit [them] shall be cut off from among their people.

On the other hand, Pridger thought, God works his wonders in ways that sometimes challenge the intellect of man — to the extent that some men no longer believe in God, but only in their own intellectual prowess. Maybe the Gay revolution is part of God's plan, after all, and Gays are doing God's work. After all, times change.

As we all know, the global population problem has long been recognized as a ticking time bomb, and birth control, abortion, and AIDS, have proven only partly effective in retarding its progress. Perhaps the Gay revolution — and maybe even a temporary total Gay take-over of the world is the solution — a solution destined to be recognized as a politically correct, "Final Solution."

Maybe it's high time that all acts once considered abominations be encouraged and become common place, that we may all be cut off from the land.

We all know that the only true and real purpose of marriage is procreation and the nurturing of the young. Maybe it's time to stop it in its tracks, at least until the global population is reduced to a reasonable number with a sustainable future.

God, if he is paying attention, is bound to be aware of the population problem. Once he told his children to go forth, be fruitful, and multiply. But times have clearly changed. Perhaps he is now coming to us with another proposition, telling his Gay children, "Come forth out of the closets in your multitudes, and go forth and recruit more and more of your kind, and transform society! Save the earth from the human plague that threatens to destroy the Garden I prepared for all My worldly Creations."

Not that Pridger knows anything about God's plan. He can only assume that there must be one, and it must be superior to what man has thus far been able to accomplish on his own.

For the benefit of Pridger's Atheist friends, who may be offended by the notion of a God with an Intelligent Design, all such speculation and hypothesis can also be explained in purely secular terms — as either purely "natural phenomenon," or due to man's own ingenious tinkering. Evolution itself is probably a two way street — whereby even the fittest may fail to survive from time to time. AIDs and other troublesome and threatening diseases may be purely natural or man-made. Gay marriage may even be more natural than "holy" matrimony.

Aside from primitive man's reckless propensity for overpopulating the Earth, scientific man is perhaps getting just a little too arrogant, and too big for his breeches. (Among other things, saving and lengthening lives), Pridger suspects he has over-developed his own God-like attributes and capabilities, without first getting a proper handle on righteousness and wisdom — and in seeking to lengthen his days on earth, he may also be taking steps to make comfort room for himself at the expense of the less developed masses.

Has the machinery of making this a better world for an exclusive class of god-like humans been almost perfected? Are AIDs and SARS, and a growing assortment of other mysterious degenerative diseases, part of the machinery? Could the Gay revolution part of it?

These, of course, are imponderables from Pridger's standpoint. But he enjoys speculating on just what all the missing pieces of the puzzle might look like — and what the final picture will inevitably reveal. He wonders at what point enough of the missing pieces will be assembled to bring the picture into focus. And he wonders how much of the picture will have to be be complete even to make the already obvious apparent to a significant number of people.

DEBT - THE BIGGEST GAME IN TOWN

No — I mean the credit/debt game is the biggest game in the world. And its appetite is sufficient to devour the globe.

Good credit, of course, is a valuable thing. Among other things, it's sort of an official vote of confidence and stamp of approval — an acknowledgement of honesty and trustworthiness by the financial community. If a man is not considered a good credit risk, he's not considered very good at all. An individual who lacks good credit among friends either has no friends, or is not considered a friend to them.

On the other hand, debt itself — something good credit facilitates and the financial community vigorously encourage — is not good except in certain well defined circumstances. The credit industry, however, revels in blurring the line between constructive and destructive debt.

Constructive debt is debt incurred for good and productive purpose, such as starting a worthwhile business that is likely to pay the debt off with interest, and continue to render profits into the distant future. Borrowing money is often the only way for worthwhile enterprises to come into existence. It's also almost the only way for individuals and families to purchase a home or farm. Nobody contests the desirability of home, farm, or business ownership.

Destructive debt is unnecessary debt without a reasonable expectation of a greater return than the costs of interest on that debt. It is debt incurred simply out of the desire to have toys and creature comforts today what might have been purchased next month without incurring additional interest expenses.

In either case, debt is an obligation usually voluntarily contracted. And such a contract is morally binding on honest individuals. Nothing is particularly binding to dishonest individuals. Unfortunately, many erstwhile "honest people" allow themselves to be pulled into deeper debt than they are able to honor, especially in today's credit card society.

When the going gets tough, many supposedly "honest" people these days feel it is perfectly "smart" and even "ethical" (if not quite totally honest), to "go ahead, max-out all credit cards, and declare personal bankruptcy." Question the justification for this increasingly common tactic, and the answer is usually, "Everybody else is doing it." Just like everybody else is cheating just a little on income taxes, or failing to seriously search for a job as long as the unemployment checks keep coming, even though recipients are required to make written statements, or check boxes, on signed forms that bind them to search for and be available for work. 

The system nurtures this dishonesty — knows of it, and makes allowances for it. It makes dishonesty easy, relatively risk-free, and thus popularizes and effectively legitimatizes it.

Let's face it, almost everybody seems to say, "We all do it to a greater or lesser degree — and who is hurt by it?" Indeed, shysterism has been engrained into our national culture, along with other "freedoms" — and it seems nobody is fighting it. It has become endemic in our credit-based economy and welfare state society. Religion has died out, for the most part, even among the religious, and our collective morals have been eroded by a crass materialism and quest for ease and comfort which is never quite sufficient.

Almost nobody trusts the government any more. The government lies. It cheats. It coerces. But the government is the undisputed ruler, and setter of standards. Are the people supposed to be better than their government?

But our subject is credit...

Even in the case of constructive credit, there is such a thing as "too much of a good thing." For example (to choose a much admired whipping boy), Sam Walton had good credit which he used "constructively" to become a small retailer. But then he wasn't satisfied, and did even more. He developed an enviable line of credit, bought more stores, and risked everything to expand even beyond what his enviable credit facilitated. He gambled and won, and ended up his own banker and creditor, so he could have even more credit and expand beyond anybody's wildest imagination.

Ultimately, Walton's unlimited credit (along with his ambition and business acumen, of course — and dare we say greed?), enabled him to undersell the competition at every turn. Unfortunately, the competition was not just other corporate giants, such as Sears, Montgomery Ward, and  K-Mart, but Main Street America itself. In fact, Walton's attack (sold as giving consumers what they wanted), was initially aimed at small towns. Almost single handedly, and personally (with his small town modesty and appeal as part of his armor), he put tens of thousands of small town merchants out of business.

Though Wal-Mart is considered by many to be the most wonderful thing that has ever happened, it contributed greatly to gutting the nation of a great many of its independent retailers and made ghost towns of thousands of once vibrant small town business districts. 

This was facilitated by the availability of too much credit, which people like Sam Walton are able to leverage into a vast empires at the expense of many who had been satisfied to own and operate modest, family sized, retail businesses. If this is not an example of excess, and too much of a good thing, Pridger doesn't know what a good thing is.

While the population continues to mushroom, and the number of shoppers increase, the nation and world obviously doesn't have room for very many Sam Waltons. 

Sam Walton wasn't the real problem, but the system that facilitated and encouraged the growth of the Wal-Mart empire is. Other great commercial empires had been undermining and displacing individual free enterprise for a long time before Walton appeared on the scene. The availability of massive credit facilitates huge monopolies and business empires. It's an ancient story, in fact. But today it is literally a system globally empowered, with the active assistance of the Washington brain trust.

The Washington brain trust, of course, believes in "democracy," whether attained by hook, crook, or the point of a gun. And the nation's credit system has adapted itself, and become very democratic. Today, Americans are increasingly being encouraged to incur more and more debt. Incurring debt has become much more "American" than the idea of thrift or saving. Today it is no longer "A penny saved is a penny earned," but, "A penny saved isn't worth a dime!" Don't save the penny, go ahead and spend a dime. Modern democracy no longer discriminates as it once did — even the poor and incompetent are encouraged to incur debt. Yes, even if it is destructive debt — to mortgage their future for frivolous or selfish gratification today.

What brought this up was that Pridger recently received another of those credit card solicitations. This time it's not just for a prestigious platinum card and another paltry $10,000.00 line of credit — the offer is much more "generous." As the solicitation reads, "Congratulations. You have been invited to apply for a Banco Grande Equity Line of Credit. Act now and start saving with variable rates as low as 4.99% APR... Your line amount could be $65,621... secured by your home at 666 Tinker Hollow Lane." They had the exact address printed into their promotional letter, though I've changed both the address and bank name here to protect both the innocent and the guilty.

"Save" with variable rates as low as 4.9999%! — not on your money is a savings account, earning almost 5% interest, but by borrowing and paying almost 5% on the interest on money you borrowed. This is backwards folks, but there are a lot of people who don't get it. Since indebtedness has become so wide-spread, a lot of people are indeed obliged to try to "save" by "shopping" for lower interest rates.

Just imagine! Banco Grande has apparently gone to the trouble of either assessing the value of Pridger's home, or at least making an educated guess at its value based on his credit profile and/or other personal financial information available to them from various data banks. Lacking that, they at least know that Pridger owns his own home, and that the average home value of people with good credit who live on Tinker Hollow Lane is about $65,621.00.

The offer even hints at the possibility of a $275,000.00 line of credit (putting Pridger into the California home-owner class!). The offer even includes not only a credit card, but a checking account so that the money is extraordinarily easy to spend.

It's a new remake of a very old and popular scheme. What the Banco Grande is offering Pridger is a chance to "monetize" his home — a scheme akin to having his cake and eating it too. It's the same as taking out a mortgage, a second mortgage, or a "home equity loan." You get to spend the money that your home, or your equity in it, is supposedly worth, while continuing to occupy it as if you still really owned it. You even have the opportunity, if you handle things right and don't experience any misfortunes, to redeem it and really own it again at some future time.

What most people find particularly appealing to this scheme is that the federal government "allows" homeowners to deduct all the interest they pay on home equity loans at tax time. It appears to be a double bonanza!

Of course, for the privilege of having your cake and eating it too, you have to pay the facilitating benefactor (Banco Grande) interest on the money it has miraculously made available to you. The only down side to this (and you aren't supposed to trouble your mind about this right now), is that if you ever begin to fall behind on minimum monthly payments, and finally default, you home isn't yours any more.

Now Pridger might go for such a scheme if there was a guarantee that the monthly minimum payments would never be more than about one percent of the outstanding balance on the credit card debt. But this isn't the way it works.

Of course, Pridger could take the $65,621.00, buy the sailing yacht he's always wanted, abandon his home to Banco Grande, and sail off to the South Seas. The only trouble is that, even though Pridger abandons his home to Banco Grande, its billing department still wouldn't be satisfied.

Banco Grande would find that Pridger's house was nothing but a log shack in the woods and would cause it to be sold at a fire sale price, far below actual market value, just to be rid of it. It would continue to send monthly bills for the shortfall, plus ever-increasing interest. Though the bills would be returned "address unknown," Banco Grande would cause its collection agents to find Pridger and hound him to the ends of the earth to make him pay up. The yacht would eventually be seized by competent authority in Tahiti, or some other far off exotic place, and Pridger (if he hasn't assumed a new identity and made good his escape), would be slapped into the modern day equivalent to debtors' prison.

Pridger isn't all that adventurous. He'll continue to play his cards close to the table, forgo the $65,621.00 bonanza and remain totally debt-free. I Pridger can stay healthy until the moment of his demise, he might even pass his home to the next generation of Pridgers. Failing at this, sickness or the infirmities of old age dictate that that he be pulled under (kicking and screaming), by a sea of medical debt — finally forfeiting his home to the state upon his death. Death, taxes, and the impossibly high costs of medical care, are the only certainties in the United States of America. These things all come in due course. The debt incurred (through merely having existed), inevitably comes up for payment in the end. Not even the super-rich are able to buy out. No need to compound the difficulties of life, or needlessly hasten foreclosure, for the sake of a temporary ability to spend ahead of income and earnings.

Thanks a lot for the offer Banco Grande, but Pridger will pass.

NATIONAL DEBT - NATIONAL BLESSING?

WELL, IT'S ONLY MONEY...

We are truly a blessed nation according to some optimistic national debt apologists and voodoo economists. They are fond of pointing out that as long as the value of our national assets exceed the value of debt obligations, and our economy keeps "growing," so the piper can be paid, everything is fine. In short, as long as the nation is turning a profit, the creditors will remain content no matter the levels of debt and indebtedness.

Somewhere up the line, however, there is bound to be a point of diminishing returns. When the nation's profits can no longer deliver up the "monthly minimum payment" on the national credit card account, many people will be forced to change their tune.

As of 26 January 2005, our national debt stood at  $ 7,621,923,958,699.72 ($7.6 TRILLION!). That's about $25,799.68 for every man, woman, and child, in the nation. If we calculated the debt share for every "gainfully employed" individual, or (more significantly), for every individual "productively" employed in wealth building private industries, the figure becomes a lot more interesting.

The national debt is today increasing at an average of $2.05 billion per day! This is more than twice the total U.S. budget in the year 1910, when appropriations first broke the billion dollar mark. But that ain't so much. We now give that amount away each year to Egypt alone! 

The annual interest on the national debt is now bigger than the whole federal budget was only a single generation ago! In short, for all practical intents and purposes, our Washington brain trust has lost control over the fiscal affairs of the nation. The only real control that Congress seems able to exercise is its magical ability to continually raise the debt ceiling! 

For a little more historical perspective, back in 1979 deficit spending, mushrooming national debt, and inflation, had become a major political issues, and figured largely in Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign. When Reagan was elected on his fiscal conservative "balance the budget" platform, the national debt was "only" $826,519,096,841 ($826 Billion), or about $3,739.92 for every man, woman, and child in the nation at that time. The entire national budget in 1979 was "only" $563,960,833,788 ($564 Billion). 

It had taken the nation two centuries, and many wars (including the Civil War, Spanish American War, two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War) to accumulate that much debt.

So, here we are only a quarter of a century down the line with a $7.6 trillion national debt. In the last twenty-five years we've accumulated over nine times more debt than we had in the previous two hundred years!

The name for this exponential increase in the debt is called the "upright spike," and, as wonderful as it may seem to some, it's out of control! 

In 2004 the interest alone on the national debt was $321,566,323,971.29 ($321.6 Billion) — more than the entire federal budget as recently as 1974 when it was $311,728,034,120.95 ($311.7 Billion)!

The interest on the national debt is now the third largest item in the budget, after defense and social spending, and quickly coming into approximation with all income tax receipts — and, of course, growing. And interest on the national debt is the only really non-discretional item in the budget. In other words, the nation's creditors must be satisfied even before the Congressional payroll can be met, or the troops in the field can be paid.

It's very easy to see why Social Security is in trouble. In fact, it's easy to see that Social Security isn't the only fiscal problem that we have.

But there are many soothing voices out there to assure us that things aren't as bad as they may seem — that national indebtedness — the more the better, in fact — is really a blessing.

Along with ever-bigger government, ever-bigger spending, bigger giveaways, rising deficits, and unbelievable levels of public debt, the fundamental perception of debt and value have undergone a sea change, and the "science" of economics itself has adapted to "new economic realities."

The really smart guys (economists who actually have considerable influence in formulating national economic policy), tell us "No problem, the national debt is a good thing, and increasing it is good national business — as long as it stimulates economic growth at least a step ahead of our creditors' ability to collect."

"We don't ever have to pay it off," they tell us, "All we have to do is to keep rolling it over" — like a snowball. Rolling it over makes it bigger, of course, but that is no cause for concern. They assure us that's really good for the economy because credit (debt), is the engine that drives the economy forever onward and upward.

The new reality is that debt — and the credit engine itself — has become the officially acknowledged measure of wealth, and our monetary system has been transformed from into a pure credit system, unfettered by any artificial bonds to anything of real substance. And this is, indeed, the new reality.

Ironically, it was the tax and spend Democrats, during the Clinton administration, who at least momentarily produced the illusion of a balanced budget (even a projected budgetary surplus!), and hope (false as it may have been), for eventually paying off the national debt. Just how that happened has us all puzzled — perhaps only voodoo economists could understand. And as far as paying off the national debt is concerned, that was really never in the cards. Paying it off is literally impossible!

Without the debt, in fact, the nation would be flat broke! Without the debt, we'd have to go back to basics and start all over, and that is a clear impossibility!

Individuals and private corporations that incur debts must produce something that in turn produces the income necessary to repay, or at least service, their debts. The government, however, doesn't produce anything, except debt itself. At least, everything it does compounds debt whether anything is apparently produced or not. It taxes its citizen subjects in order to service its debts, while at the same time mortgaging their assets as a means to expand its credit limit!

The government, you see, is different from an individual. It literally has an unlimited line of credit, and its level of indebtedness is limited only by the alacrity with which Congress can raise the debt ceiling (and the willingness of people, corporations, and foreign governments to purchase bonds). And that, along with feverishly spending all the money the government is able to tax and borrow, is about the only thing "constructive" that Congress has been able to do for fifty years. Yes, our trusty mis-representatives in Congress have been a busy lot!

Pridger, of course, was pleased to learn that the national debt never has to be repaid, and that a growing public debt is better than a shrinking one. It's nice to know that even if Pridger's share of the public debt soars to a hundred trillion dollars, he and his children and grandchildren won't be called upon to help pay it off. Still, he cannot shake the nagging feeling that this debt is at least the shadow of burden — sort of a dark cloud hanging threateningly just above his head.

The feeling becomes particularly acute every time he files his income tax. Pridger isn't very brilliant, but he wonders why he has to make any tax payments at all if such payments would tend to diminish the rate at which the national blessing would otherwise increase.

In spite of the wonderful new economic realities, Pridger still keeps hearing some politicians, as well as run-of-the-mill worrywarts, saying the government simply must raise taxes in order to fund all of our national obligations, including the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Haven't they heard that bigger debt is a blessing? Have they missed the whole point?

Well, the whole thing is a little baffling, to say the least. Pridger doesn't know exactly what to think, but and as long as the government collects taxes, he will continue to suspect that the national debt is not the blessing we are being led to believe. Something seems to be fundamentally wrong with the way the nation now conducts its business.

Significantly, the term Voodoo Economics was coined by George H.W. Bush just before he joined the Reagan presidential team. The rest, of course, is history. The new economic reality is Voodoo Economics personified has been tightly and inextricably woven into national economic policy. What George Bush, the elder, was referring to was Reagan's proposal to increase revenues and balance the budget while cutting taxes — something that doesn't make any sense to devotees of big and growing government.

But let's clear up a possible point of confusion. There's a clear distinction between the "Reaganomics" (which Bush intended to discredit), and Voodoo Economics. Bush had merely inadvertently coined a fitting term for the economic and monetary processes with which had long held the nation, and "We the People" in perpetual debt bondage. Though it began tightening is grip significantly during the Reagan and post-Reagan years, Voodoo Economics is the "new economic reality" mentioned above, wherein the national debt is termed a national blessing.

There have been national debt apologists, of course, since the days of Alexander Hamilton. And the ongoing ideological and monetary theory conflicts with the Alexander Hamiltons vs. the Thomas Jeffersons and Andrew Jacksons of the nation (augmented by many who were simply confused), continued until the ideological battle was finally totally lost in 1913 with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act and the Income Tax amendment to the Constitution.

In 1913, the nation's fiscal destiny passed (finally unequivocally), from the incompetents in Congress to the shrewd operators of the Federal Reserve and the global money power for which it is an agent. While Americans and the world continued to believe that it was "as good as gold," the almighty U.S. dollar became the western world's primary reserve currency.

We Americans were duly proud of this, of course. But it was the worst thing that could happen to us and what passed for our currency. When the dollar became the world's predominate reserve currency, the American leadership began to believe that the United States had a duty to police, if not rule, the world. American treasure was spread around the world, and wherever their was American treasure, there was American interests. This seemed to be a blessing as long as the United States remained the world's greatest creditor nation. But then (surprise!), in the twinkling of an eye, all of a sudden we turned into the world's largest debtor nation, and a few people began to wonder how we could be both the world's leader and the the world's largest debtor. 

As we know, the great transformation happened on Reagan's watch. Though Reagan's agenda to balance the budget inevitably went totally haywire, his tax cuts were followed by significant increases in government revenues. The fact is, the processes of budgetary excess were already totally ingrained and far out of control long before Reagan was elected. Naturally, the national debt shot up like a rocket in spite of large increases in government revenues — and it didn't do this solely because of Reagan's increase in defense spending or Star Wars research, as we have often been told. It happened because the nation had been set up and had already been on the wrong track for a long time.

Though the national wealth was supposedly shooting up, that wealth was wed to debt, as a farmer's house and farm is wed to its mortgage. The farmer ends up in bankruptcy and foreclosure. But the nation merely ends up with a new set owners — like the farmer's farm. But nobody saw it happen.

The national debt shot up because Congress, in all its wisdom, had provided it with a jet engine and an autopilot. They had totally forgotten not only how to cut spending, but how to reduce the automatic increases in spending they had meticulously built into the major spending programs.

Our great foray into the welfare state, two decades before Reagan became president, launched the deficit's largest engine of automatic growth. As soon as it became accepted public policy for the government to "take care of the people" (rather than just provide a level playing field by which people were guaranteed the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) — a system with roots in both Marxism and Roosevelt's New Deal — government spending, and the budgetary processes, were certain to get out of hand and, in the fullness of time, self-destruct.

Much more importantly, however, this out-of-control process is due to the fact that a whole economic house of cards is based on a flawed premise — a monetary system owned and operated by alien interests for personal profit. This flawed premise, constitutes a foundation of sand upon which the great edifice stands. The basis of our monetary system is a variation of the famous ponzi scheme.

The greatest socialist experiment in world history, the late, great, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, has already self-destructed. One of the reasons that the Soviet Marxist system failed was that Marx himself had apparently overlooked something of vital importance — the nature of money itself. Had Marx or Lenin been a little more insightful, and worked out that riddle, the Soviet Union (in spite of its many other shortcomings), might not have collapsed as it did. But the USSR, in all its supposed sovereign power, and even after attaining military superpowers status, was nonetheless beholden for its survival on the very capitalist-controlled international financial system that has managed to maintain a controlling death grip on the rest of us.

Of course, Marx's failure was neither original nor unique. The founders of the United States, had likewise failed to work out what the nature of money ought to be in a free and independent nation. In spite of this national birth defect, however, the United States has continued to thrive and most of its people prosper.

The short explanation as to why is simply to credit the unique nature of the American Republic itself. While our founders may have failed to iron out the wrinkles of the monetary question, happily, they got a lot of other things right. 

The United States Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and its Bill of Rights, institutionalized the concept of individual freedom and liberty based on the premise that "all men are created equal" and are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

On the other hand, and in spite of America's example, Marx, as well as the founders of the USSR, unhappily, got a lot more wrong than they got right. Where the American system, "with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence," enthroned the people and placed limiting shackles upon government (at least rhetorically, if temporarily), the Soviet system, supposedly in the name of the proletariat, enthroned the all-powerful Soviet state and effectively made the people its servants.

The great contest between capitalism and Soviet communist socialism was a mere sham, but the contest between American style capitalism and Soviet style state capitalism was very real. In the end, it became obvious to the global moneymen (who had financed both), that the western capitalist model, based on private property and personal gain, could serve their purposes much more splendidly than they had ever imagined. They came to see that the western capitalist system could insure both their security while generating undreamed of levels of sustainable profits. Thus, they withdrew their support from the Soviet Union and its fate was sealed. President Ronald Reagan was given the honor of presiding over its speedy decline and pronouncing its ultimate death sentence.

So, here we are, the world's only remaining superpower, with a mandate from the hidden hand to pursue the final subjugation of the world to the "western capitalist model," in the names of global peace, security, democracy, and freedom from terrorism. The role of the United Nations itself (the very parliamentary machinery of global governance), is even being temporarily downgraded in order to give the United States leadership a free hand to accomplish the unfinished work of the global money power.

Obviously, the present American leadership is running into some problems, and there appears to be a growing opposition to pax-Americana within the American political establishment. But this is fodder for future posts. Back to the subject of money and debt.

HEALTH CARE AND THE SOCIAL SECURITY CRISES

While American capitalism won the Cold War hands down, nonetheless Karl Marx is undoubtedly rolling comfortably in his grave. The former Soviet Union and communist China may be taking to the capitalist road, but the good old U.S.A. has effectively come out of the great international contest as a convert. What we have now is nothing less than the United Socialist States of America. Oh, ours is a very imperfect socialist state, of course. We don't even think of ourselves as living in a socialist state, but both Social Security and the welfare state are evidence that we do, as spotty and inequitable as the system may be.

But American socialism is backwards socialism. The state doesn't own capital nor pay for production. From its inception it has paid non-producers, whether they are retired producers or welfare recipients who have never worked. And, of course, socialized health care and medicine is always just beyond the horizon.

Ironically, the nation initiated a socialized health care system early in its history — before socialism, as a political science and economic system, had developed. This was in the form of our Marine Hospitals, initially established to provide medical care to the nation's mariners. By 1878, the Marine Hospital Service had been greatly expanded and evolved into the U.S. Public Health Service, which we still have today. Unfortunately, the large U.S. Public Health hospital system that developed, which might have served as the ideal model for a real national health care system, was downsized during the Reagan years. Again, ironically, this was because by that time most mariners, like most other industrial workers, enjoyed the benefits of employer paid private health insurance — something that has been declining ever since.

Pridger, being a seaman, was also a beneficiary of the U.S. Public Health System. He appreciated the free medical and dental services it had provided him during his first two decades as a merchant mariner, and he thought it was a mistake to do away with them. By then, caring for seamen was only a very small part of the service's mission. The U.S. Public Health Service hospital system had been expanded to take care of a considerable percentage of the nation's poor who did not enjoy the benefits of private health care insurance. The U.S. Public Health Service hospitals did for seamen, native Americans, and the poor, what the Veterans' Administration hospitals continue to try to do for the nation's Veterans. 

Because the Public Health Service hospitals were staffed exclusively by Civil Service personnel, which included the doctors, scientists, pharmacists, etc., the government was able to keep an effective handle on costs while maintaining high professional standards. These costs, which included the costs of medicine, could be kept under control under the same procurement processes that included the nation's military and Veterans' hospitals, and (at least nominally), prevented pharmaceutical companies from taking advantage of the public trust.

It was after the great downsizing of the U.S. Public Health Service hospital system that private health care and insurance costs really started to take off. And now, only in hindsight, can we begin to see that the government destroyed a perfectly viable national health care system infrastructure just prior to the time national health care would be perceived as a national imperative.

Now, because health care costs have mushroomed in the private sector, due to factors actually having very little to do with health care, the perception is that such a national health system would be impossibly costly. And that is indeed the case, for all of the proposed solutions to the health care crises currently on the table envision the government merely paying the high prices the private health care system now demands — including the higher costs resulting from such things as out-of-control malpractice insurance costs. And it envisions having to pay what huge private pharmaceutical monopolies now demand for their products, even though they continue to enjoy the benefits of public subsidies to assist in their research and development programs, not to mention their global marketing programs.

So, while we're stumped with regards to socialized medicine and health care, nobody has thought to look a the viable solution which was once very much a working part of the nation's public health system. The solution is simply a federally owned and operated Public Health Care system of hospitals and Public Health Clinics. Of course, the states operate such clinics now, but they are not capable of fulfilling the greater national need to control health care costs on a national basis as well as provide free quality hospital care in publicly owned facilities.

Of course, one of the big stumbling blocks to national health care is that the public has the idea that it deserves the best medical services money can buy, no matter how inflated the cost may become through market forces, including malpractice insurance costs. This is the desire to have the cake and eat it too. The sad fact is, the "best that money can buy" will continue to be available only to those who have the money to pay for it — and, for better or worse, that's the way it should be, and will continue to be, even if we get a great public health care system.

American socialism came about in backwards fashion. And, as mentioned above, we frequently move backwards away from socialism in areas were socialism actually makes good sense. Rather than owning capital and paying workers for their labor, we set up a special tax and Social Security System for retirees. The next major step was the development of the modern welfare state — paying non-produces not to work.

The nice thing about socialism as a national model is that everybody gets to have his cake and eat it too. At least, that's the illusion. Because we have a very lopsided and imperfect socialist system, a lot of people (liberals mostly), continue to be disillusioned and very dissatisfied. And those people who still believe we live in the land of the free and home of the brave — as a "Give me liberty or give me death" people — are pretty delusional too. The American public as a whole has been successfully bought off while being sold down the river. Most of them, of course, still believe the story about being conducted up the river to more pleasant environs.

In spite of all the illusions and the disillusionment (and whether we are republicans, democrats, or socialists), most of us senior citizens (at least those who have failed to become independently wealthy during our working careers), can agree on one thing. We want to collect our Social Security and are willing to sell the national soul, if necessary, for the privilege. (Pridger doesn't worry about that, the national soul was sold out a long time ago.) To put the best face on it, however, Social Security is viewed as an appropriate return — both earned and invested — for a life of labor .

Presumably, those who have not spent their life laboring, or are independently wealthy, have no need for Social Security. But most of them accept Social Security anyway — including the the really well off. After all, it's and "entitlement."

When was the last time a super-wealthy man in government service turned down his salary and returned it to the Treasury as a patriotic act, to help pay down the debt? There was a time when such things actually happened, but not any more. Yet the government actively solicits voluntary contributions from the public to pay down the debt. The program doesn't seem to have may volunteers (the general public is getting to wise to fall for it as a patriotic act), but there are a few. Most contributors are probably poor, but concerned and deluded citizens. Of course, if a wealthy person does contribute, likely its because he could use another deduction to lower his taxes. If a kindergarten class in the poorest slums of New York City took up a collection of pennies, the government would gratefully accept it with great fanfare!

Social Security is unique in that it is a form of welfare funded out of the wages of those who will eventually collect it. Welfare, on the other hand, is a blatant transfer of wealth from producers to non-producers, to keep the disenfranchised from from becoming either too hungry or too unruly. Welfare became an imperative during the Civil Rights era for two main reasons: (1) as a means by which to buy the votes of the newly franchised, and (2) as a means by which the poor could be registered and controlled. Maybe three — (3) some people actually believe it was to help the poor, abolish hunger, save the children, and instill "dignity and independence" among a people (both black and white), who had always in the past had to take whatever employment they could find in order to feed themselves and their families. 

The government actually keeps track of the amounts deposited in Social Security for each individual. It's essentially a forced savings program guaranteed by the government, and this isn't such a bad idea given the savings habits of most poor working people.

Though Social Security taxes actually end up in the general revenue fund, rather than a real "Trust Fund," Social Security liabilities aren't considered part of the national debt. If they were considered part of the national debt, the debt would be much higher than what we see on the "National Debt Clock." The Trust Fund, however, is a separate set of books, and, unlike the national budget, receipts must equal or be greater than disbursements.

While the Social Security System was originally supposedly supposed to provide a supplemental retirement check to poor retirees, its importance to the working classes has increased dramatically with the passing of time.

For one thing, Social Security meant that working people could live better during their working lives, because the necessity of saving for their own retirement was effectively removed. As a result, poor working people have pretty much quit saving. What's the point in saving if the value of saved money evaporates faster that the paltry interest of a savings account accumulates? Social Security promises, and continues to pay, much more than the money involuntarily deducted from wages. For this reason, the involuntary nature of Social Security savings has not met with any serious resistance, except from those relative few fortunate enough not to need or even want what Social Security promises.

Social Security tends to encourage earlier retirement too. Some people believe they have more interesting things to do than working for a living. It has been, and continues to be, a great bonanza for many people, both deserving and not so deserving alike.

Pridger, being a member of that numerous and foolish class present in every society who failed to secure a Ph.D.; didn't have the foresight to save regularly; failed to make it big in stocks, bonds, or real estate; failed to invent anything of great value; or otherwise attain fame or fortune; looks forward to collecting Social Security too.

While Social Security may be in trouble, Pridger isn't too worried. Though he'll retire just before it supposedly "goes broke," he knows that Voodoo Economics can, and will, save the day.

THE SOLUTION THAT ISN'T

The proposal of at least partly privatizing Social Security — or creating "private investment accounts" — is not a solution to the Social Security System crises. The presumption is that the individually controlled private investment accounts will somehow save somebody some money. It is unclear whose money will be saved, the individual's or the federal government's.

Another presumption is that Social Security funds invested in the stock market are bound to grow, while money held in a government trust fund cannot grow. This is rather strange. If the government can't make money grow on trees, what can? Since we have a debt money system, the exponential growth of the national debt itself is the direct corollary of just how the government can indeed make money expand and grow. How is it that so many people, institutions, and foreign governments (the owners of the national debt), confidently loan Uncle Sam money with the expectation of being paid back in much greater amounts.

Why aren't Social Security funds used to purchase the same government bonds the government sells to everybody else? Then the Social Security Trust fund would be filled with government IOUs that pay interest rather that the present IOUs that apparently don't pay any interest at all.

Everybody who reads much about economics and the way the stock market works cannot but wonder if the real purpose behind the proposal privatization of part of Social Security is to provide the government a legal means by which to prop up the stock market, and a large fund by which to do it.

The only requisite for a continuously rising stock market is continued economic growth in the national economy, so the private accounts will benefit and a resurgence of the stock market bonanza. Even if it works, some retirees will be able to retire in splendid abundance while others will suffer from future Enrons, Global Crossings, WorldComs, and "DotCom" debacles.

Yet, this solution doesn't really appear to address the core problem, which is expressed in the question, "Where will the money come from to pay an increasing number of retirees as the number of workers paying into the system declines?" Now we're hearing the question, "How do we fund the huge costs of the privatization process?"

Aren't these private accounts supposed to be funded from a percentage of the very same involuntary tax payments now funding the Trust Fund account? The so-called solution, it appears, cannot be anything but another costly problem. If it is going to cost a lot to set up private investment accounts, why set them up in the first place? 

The Social Security system is, and always has been, fraudulent to begin with, since it is a sub-system of a fraudulent privately owned monetary monopoly. The Trust Fund has never been anything but a book keeping gimmick. If anything more substantial, it would be a vault full of government IOUs and a large ledger book.

The reason private investment accounts would not be a solution, but merely another costly problem, is that any Social Security funds that are diverted into private investment accounts would presumably not be available to the government to spend and replace with IOUs. This would mean that the general fund would have to borrow additional money by expanding bond sales. The Social Security System may appear to be saved in the process, by some sort of bookkeeping wizardry, but the deficit and national debt will grow by an amount commensurate with the amounts diverted to Social Security private investment accounts.

Chances are, however, that the government will figure out a way to spend the money in those private investment accounts too, and write IOU's that promise only to repay whatever the account may have increased or decreased to with the fluctuations in the stock market. It would become just another bookkeeping gimmick that would probably cost the public more than the current system without delivering higher returns to future Social Security recipients.

This brings up the national debt. This debt is a lot like the Social Security Trust Fund. It is comprised of a lot of IOUs in the form of obligation to honor outstanding bonds, treasury bills, and similar securities.

THE SOLUTION WOULD BE A RETURN TO GREENBACKS
AND SOUND ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES

Though we refer to Federal Reserve Notes as "good old greenback dollars," they aren't greenbacks. Not a single Federal Reserve Note can come into existence without putting the public deeper in debt. On the other hand, greenbacks were money printed and put into circulation debt-free by the Department of the Treasury. Even while greenbacks circulated as money (1862 through the 1960s) there was never nearly enough greenback money issued and put into circulation to satisfy the exchange needs of the nation.

Since 1913, and most particularly since we went off the gold standard in 1971, all of our former types of circulating currency (greenbacks, gold certificates, silver certificates, and national bank notes), have gradually been replaced by Federal Reserve Notes — all of which are debt paper representing an integral part of the national debt.

The greenback was intended to be a national, debt-free currency. But the the nation's bankers (both the big eastern banking establishment, and international banking houses of Europe), were hostile to greenbacks, because greenbacks cut out what they considered "their rightful slice" of the money pie. So the greenback, though it was allowed to survive in small amounts due to some support that it once enjoyed in the halls of Congress, was sabotaged by the bankers — not your friendly hometown bankers, of course, but the ones known collectively as the "money power."

The problem was that though the Declaration of Independence broke our political bonds to the mother country, it failed to break the financial bonds to the European financial powers. Nor did the Constitution adequately address the subject of money and a national circulating currency.

During the Revolutionary War, America's founders had little choice but to look to alternative powers in Europe to help in its fight for independence from England, thus the new nation came out of the war with an international debt burden. This, of course, made the new nation somewhat short of being truly independent. Then, of course, when peaceful relations were restored with the mother country, our financial ties to England resumed under the auspices of political independence. We remained tied to the international credit machinery of the day. We remain bound to it today.

Still, as an independent nation we had both the right and the opportunity to control at least our internal monetary system and circulating currency. Unfortunately, though our Constitution gave Congress the right to "coin money and regulate the value thereof" our founders lacked the necessary understanding of money and credit required to insure an independent monetary system.

The national financial crises born of the Civil War prompted some serious thought on the matter, however, and we almost got an independent monetary system in the form of "legal tender" laws and the greenback dollar. But the bankers outsmarted and outmaneuvered the backers of the greenback at every critical turn. Lincoln was assassinated, and his intended national currency policy died along with him. The National Banking Acts, which were enacted during the same period the greenback came into existence, cemented the control of the money power over the nation. The greenback was doomed, and the foundation for the Federal Reserve were put in place.

HOW THE GREENBACK WOULD WORK IN A RATIONAL WORLD

Pridger remembers being in the service, and how nice it was to get paid on a regularly basis for the first time in his life. He also remembers that a percentage of his small wages was deducted for income tax. He didn't know anything about how the world worked then, but how ridiculous it seemed to pay a tax to the very government of which the Navy was a military appendage. If the government couldn't afford to pay the full Navy wage, he wondered, why didn't the Navy just pay him a little less and let the government keep the money it needed? Why play games? What good could Pridger's small contribution do for the Treasury of the very government that owned the Navy who paid him? It made no sense then, and it still makes no sense.

Of course, like many people, Pridger was under the illusion that government printed money in almost unlimited amounts and could pretty much do with it as it pleased. It stood to reason that the Treasury was the fountain of unlimited wealth.

It came as a great shock to learn that the government was deeply in debt, and had no way of getting any money at all except by taxing people like Pridger. Didn't the various Mints coin and print money? And weren't the Mints owned lock, stock, and barrel, by the federal government? Didn't they own the dies, plates, bullion, and paper from which our money was made?

If so, why couldn't the government simply print up money and pay it to those to whom it owned wages, or to whomever it owed money for goods and services?

The fact of the matter is that it could — but can't. It could, because it has the right and power to do so, but can't because it has relinquished that right and contracted its money creation powers to private banking interests who preclude any such thing. Thus Uncle Sam, the very symbol of national sovereignty and independence, lives in a financial straight-jack. The only financial freedom available to him is his uncanny ability to incur ever-higher levels of debt.

You see, Uncle Sam must purchase every Federal Reserve dollar that circulates in the world before it can exist. Uncle Sam uses his good credit for all of these purchases. He does have the right to print and issue bonds representing this indebtedness to his various creditors. These are nothing more than promises to pay with interest. There is no way out of debt, because the debt can only be paid by incurring more debt. This endless scheme of spiraling debt is a very peculiar system indeed.

Under this system, Uncle Sam effectively buys money by selling bonds at discount. He does this by printing up a bond with a face value of say $10,000.00, and selling it at a discount — the very reverse of the usual practice of selling things for profit. Uncle Sam may sell the $10,000.00 bond for $5,000.00. But since the bond was created out of little more than paper combined with his need to spend, this is a pretty amazing thing. For almost no cost, Uncle Sam has acquired $5,000.00. But then, by the same act, he has committed himself to redeeming the bond at a future time (its "maturity"), for its full face value of $10,000.00.

In this way Uncle Sam has purchased a dollar for two dollars. Many would think this insane, because (quite frankly), it is.

This system is actually much worse than it initially appears. Because when Uncle Sam creates a $10,000.00 debt in order to get his hands on $5,000.00, he has done it because of the pressing need to spend that $5,000.00. So he spends it, and (surprise!) it's gone! In order to honor his promise to pay back $10,000.00 he has to print up a $20,000.00 bond so he can get his hands on the $10,000.00 needed to redeem the first bond when it come due.

Of course, when Uncle Sam Spent the $5,000.00, it didn't actually disappear. It was spent into the economy where it continued to circulate, greasing the wheels of commerce. This means that he can actually get some of it back by levying and collecting various taxes from the public. He gets what the market will bear, of course, but it is never enough. Yet, the fiction is maintained that government is funded through taxation — and that public debt is only necessary to cover temporary short-falls in revenue (caused, basically, by habitual Congressional mismanagement of the budget) — thus the various taxes we pay are necessary to the survival of government, and the old adage that "nothing is certain by death and taxes."

What if Uncles Sam, having an immediate need for $5,000.00, simply printed up that amount in greenbacks and spent them, without creating or incurring any debt at all? The greenbacks would circulate in the economy, greasing the the wheels of commerce. In fact, since Uncle Sam would have no need to repay anybody for the privilege of bringing the greenbacks into existence, the wheels of commerce would spin even better, because no taxes would have to be collected in a deceptive and crippling attempt to get some of the money back. If Uncle Sam had to pay the hired help, civil servants, welfare recipients, Social Security recipients, et. al., he would simply print up some more greenbacks and pay them. Simple as that!

Of course, this is economic heresy, and there are thousands of arguments why things do not, and cannot, work that way. A whole body of science has been established to present, expand, and expound, those arguments. But, at bottom, all of these arguments boil down to one thing. The international money power, which has long been the most powerful and omnipresent force in the world, is not about to allow its money monopoly to be undermined.

But a reckoning is long overdue. This reckoning, however, has been pushed back considerably by the (at least temporarily), by the apparently successful implementation of the the new international economic order. The seemingly infinite flexibilities of Voodoo economics applied on a global basis have given the appearance of permanence to a fatally flawed global economic system. Among other things, Voodoo economics entails creative bookkeeping. While a few major corporations have fallen due to such practices in recent years, the whole system of global finance is so broad and intractably complex, and so intimately intertwined in the day to day affairs of individuals, corporate institutions, and nations, that the system still has the appearance of being literally unassailable, and capable of carrying on in perpetuity. No alternatives appear possible, because accepted science says we live in the best of all possible worlds with regard to global finances.

In spite of this, sooner or later all Ponzi schemes run their course and become unsustainable. Some sort of reform is thus inevitable. Unfortunately, the strength of money power is so great that here is not a nation or people in the world today capable of totally dethroning it. What can be done, however, is the re-implementation of the nation-state system and internal national monetary reform of the nature once attempted in the United States. That is, national currencies, limited to internal commerce, exchange, and business.

It would be quite ironic, but nonetheless necessary, for the United States of America to once again had to declare its independence — this time from the very New World Order that it has helped to create.

We will largely bypass the traditional arguments against a "fiat" currency, meaning a money without intrinsic value based on precious metals, but nonetheless given value as currency by the fiat of government. All legal tender in the western world today is fiat currency for better or worse. In fact the age old general consensus that gold or silver content or backing is necessary to an "honest" circulating currency has played a significant role in preventing the kind of monetary reform that might have freed the people from the yoke of the money powers long ago.

Gold and silver, like most commodities, are both subject to large fluctuations of supply and demand — a situation that has literally plagued the western world for more than just centuries. These commodities are subject to hoarding, manipulation, and scarcities (both real and contrived). Perhaps more importantly, these metals have no fixed relationship, or even relevance, to a day's labor, or any of the necessities of life for the needs of commerce.

A gold standard for a national currency, in the first and final analysis, is ridiculous — at least if that nation doesn't have a monopoly on large gold supplies in the ground. Our nation started from scratch back in 1776. It had no gold to speak of, and it never got an ounce of gold except through market channels. For a long time, the government contented itself with not having a national currency which it had to back with anything. But, lacking any national currency or money, it had to tax commerce in order to gain enough money (in the form of gold and silver currency and foreign exchange), to meet its operating expenses and obligations.

When the nation finally did institute a national currency during the Civil War, in the form of greenbacks and national bank notes, the matter of gold or silver backing for the currency became an ongoing and often divisive national issue. At that time, the nation had access to a relative abundance of gold, due to the California goldfields, yet that gold wasn't acquired without cost. Every ounce had to be paid for, and shipped. And the same went for silver. So, since the government had to borrow money with which to buy gold, the national debt became unavoidably and inextricably wed to the nation's money supply.

The nation put itself in the impossible position of having the buy almost every cent of its own money in order to put it into circulation.

When gold provided the only backing for the dollar, no dollars could circulate unless backed by gold. But the government had to purchase the gold with which to back its currency. Now if money is gold, and gold is money, where did the government get the money with which to buy all the gold that it eventually acquired? If it had no money, but needed to have gold so it could have money, it was in a fix. Fortunately, ways and means were devised, and those ways and means have always meant incuring debt.

The fact is, if every last vestige of those metals evaporated from the face of the earth tomorrow, most people would hardly miss them. But if meat, potatoes, wheat, rice, corn, steel, coal, and oil are ever in short supply, we'll all begin feeling the hardship of a cold living room, idle automobile, and empty stomach. It matters not what we accept in payment for those life and comfort sustaining goods, as long as we have something that everybody recognizes as "legal tender."

Now that even the global money powers refer to gold as a "that barbarous relic," perhaps its time to slip the chains of gold and silver that they once affixed to our limbs. Why not, since they have slipped them themselves? One reason is that they slipped those chains only after fastening a noose tightly our collective necks. They are so confident that we cannot slip the noose that the subject doesn't even come up for discussion. When was the last time there any serious suggestion of the need for monetary reform anywhere in the Western world? The subject simply doesn't come up because all the people that count in the modern world have their financial wagons securely fastened to the ongoing money scam which has mortgaged the nation and the future of every citizen living under the present international monetary system.

In the United States the fiat money known as Federal Reserve Notes has been engrained as a creature of law, superseding the Constitution itself. Not even the Supreme Court has any leverage on the matter. As for Congress itself, it was the lawmaking body that sold the nation out in the first place, and isn't likely to admit to its mistake any time soon.

Money in the modern world is, of course, the creation and creature of law, and ought rightly to be the creation of government itself under its sole sovereign authority — and (like the government), a servant of the people.

Here, put in the simplest of terms, is how the monetary system would work if greenbacks were allowed to be our sole circulating currency.

A unit of money is like a ticket to the theater. The theater owner causes the tickets to be printed up, and accepts them for admittance to watch the show — regardless of how the bearer came by his ticket. The greenback dollar should be, and is, exactly same thing — a universally recognized ticket which the bearer can confidently use for payment of all debts, public or private; the wages of labor; and for the purchase of any and all goods that enter into trade channels.

It should have a scientifically fixed exchange rate and value against the prices of the most important common necessities of life traded in the marketplace, including human labor, so that when it is saved it will be worth as much at retirement as it was when earned or otherwise acquired.

In the case of money, the ticket is a bill of some dollar denomination, mandated by law to be "legal tender for the payment of all debts, both public and private." The government should simply print them and cause them to be circulated in sufficient quantities to satisfy the exchange needs of the nation.

The government would print the bills and spend them into circulation by using them in payment for all federal payrolls, including pensions and Social Security benefit payments. There would be no need to tax the public in order to pay the expenses of government or fund Social Security. In fact, doing so would no longer make any sense.

Such things bothered Pridger for a long time, but it finally made George Bush's economic and tax-cut and spend strategy make sense. If the the national debt is actually a good thing, and the bigger the better, tax cuts must be sound policy. There is rhyme to his apparent lack of reason. Take the tremendous costs of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the War on Terror, and Homeland Security, for example. Whether or not they ever accomplish any other good, they are still blessings in disguise because they increase the national debt.

So, why not just stop taxing people? If bigger and bigger debt is actually better, there's really no need for any taxes to be levied at all. If nobody paid any taxes, the deficits and the debt would get bigger much faster, and we'd all be better off! Then, of course, people like Pridger could take the money that he would otherwise pay in taxes and start a business, which would help grow the economy!

At this point, I might say, "But let's get real...," but I won't — at least not yet. We actually live in Neverland and never have to worry about paying off the national debt — so why worry? If debt makes the world go 'round, as the economic brain trust claims, we're in Hog Heaven.

The smart guys do have a point. They correctly point out that if we were to extinguish the debt, we'd really be in a bad way. Without it, we'd all be broke! This is so, because we live under a debt-based monetary system. Not a single dollar comes into existence but by the creation of debt. More money equals more debt, whether the government gets its hands on it and spends it or not. That's just the nature of the monster that our trusty leaders have created.

The economic brain trust tells us that as long as the economy continues to expand, debt left in its wake actually has no negative consequences. Business requires debt to expand, but when it expands it produces more economic growth and wealth. Thus we have a perpetual motion machine that grows as it feeds on itself. Truly an amazing thing.

What the smart guys neglect to mention is that infinite commercial growth in a finite and politically troubled world, with limited resources, is clearly impossible — but compound interest can go on as long as one accountant survives. Debt increases in good times as well as bad, once it really takes its head (as it has already clearly done), regardless of any commercial activity.

Even a small decrease in commercial activity, due to something like, "Whoops! Mad cow disease has gone global!" or "Hey, AIDS is really more of a problem than its greatest advocates thought!" or, "Can you believe that ADM's Russian, Brazilian, and Kansas wheat crops all failed this year!" or "Oh, my God! Who would have ever believed that China would do such a thing!" or "I guess genetically engineered and irradiated food wasn't such a good idea after all!" Any number of scenarios could slow things down significantly. But the debt wouldn't stop growing and people would get nervous and do strange things — like trying to collect outstanding debts, selling off stocks and bonds, dumping increasingly worthless dollars, etc.

Immoderation in all things, to the point of gross excess, has been the ground anchor of our commercial culture now for far too long. Yet we continue to act as though there will never be a serious correction or reckoning.

In the final analysis, the laws of economics must function much like the laws of physics, even if the dollar is made from self-reproducing silly putty. But we have forgotten the basic foundations of sound economics, such as "Expand on profits rather than debt", "Spend only earnings or profits, never capital," "A penny saved is a penny earned," or even, "Income = price X production." Insofar as these basics are perverted or neglected, there will someday be a reckoning.

At the very bottom of it all — that which serves as the very basis of the modern capitalist system — is a fundamental birth defect. That, of course, is in the form of the very money we use as a circulating medium, and fuels the economic system. Ours is a system based in both fraud and usury. Remember, not a single dollar can come into existence without generating more than a dollar's worth of debt, and this makes for an obviously impossible situation. One in which, regardless of the amount of wealth produced, it can never catch up with the debt which binds it.

The dollar you hold in your hand will buy a dollar's worth of goods and services in the marketplace, but the marketplace owes the creditors of the nation more than the dollar for the privilege of using that dollar.

An honest fiat dollar would be nothing but a bearer exchange ticket, worth a dollar's worth of good or services with no hidden burdens of debt behind it. The invisible creditor behind every dollar extracts his percentage regardless of all else, and that interest goes on in perpetuity — or as long as the dollar exists. In order to finally pay off the original dollar's worth of debt, more debt must be incurred. In this manner the creditor lives off of owner/operators of the marketplace.

In our case, the marketplace is the nation nation itself, and the customers are the people of the nation, who are also the owner-operators. In spite of that ownership (which was once free and clear, but now heavily mortgaged), all the money that circulates in their marketplace has to be borrowed from a creditor.

Now if those own-operators of the marketplace had been wise enough to print up their own marketplace exchange tickets, they would never have had to mortgage their assets and become the perpetual debtor to an unnecessary creditor. But they did not do that. The creditor, who was a shrewd operator, convinced them that they were incompetent to print and issue their own exchange tickets, and that he, the creditor, was uniquely qualified to do it. He would do if for a small fee and save them the trouble. In the end, the marketplace was mortgaged to the creditor and the owner/operator's ownership became a fiction.

This system and process is pretty difficult for ordinary people to comprehend, and with good reason.

Pridger first became baffled by our monetary system and the way government does business soon after he joined the Navy. His pay checks were issued twice monthly by the government through the United States Treasury, but he noticed something that was inexplicable. While the government paid him, he had to also pay the government. This, of course, was Pridger's introduction to the income tax.

It tax wasn't very much, but was nonetheless annoying — and it didn't make any sense at all. This, he was given to understand, was to help pay the expenses of government, which included paying the wages of navy sailors. It seemed ridiculous for Pridger to pay the government a small amount from the amount the government paid him. If the government, for some obscure reason, couldn't afford to pay the whole amount, why didn't it just pay a lesser amount, and keep what it needed?

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There was a time when a million dollars sounded like an awful lot of money, and a billion dollars beyond comprehension. But times change. The value of money shrinks as government grows. For example, today's dollar is worth about 4% of the value of a 1913 dollar. Just within Pridger's adult working lifetime, the dollar has been reduced to a tenth of its value. When Pridger was making $1.00 an hour as a youth, he was making about the equivalent of $10.00 an hour today. The same work today, however, would likely only demand the minimum wage of little over half that amount. So, obviously, in a critically significant way we've been slipping backwards rather than progressing. But, fortunately, we always appear to be enjoying the benefits of progress as we slip. In any case, we all know that we are much better off today than we were fifty years ago. But let's take a closer look.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Americans were amazed, and some outraged, when annual federal spending first topped the billion dollar mark. Today we yawn a figures that make a billion dollars seem like piggy bank change — and the national debt itself is expressed in multiples of trillions rather than mere millions or billions.