|
Printing Money
Printing money is what governments do
(with the aid of banks) in order to con billions of dollars out of the people without them noticing.
Here's how part of the scam works.
Imagine that you want to be the mayor of the
town and that you have to convince the people to vote for you to get the job.
So, most secretly, you print some money with your printing press that you hide
in your garden shed. And you use this money to pay some of the town's labourers
and some of its businesses to build a new bridge across the river.
"Hurrah!" shout the voters.
"What a wonderful man you are! You bring us such beautiful gifts. We shall
vote for you!"
But what they do not realise fully is that it
is they who have paid for the bridge, and it is they
who have actually put their backs into building it!
You did nothing.
By printing the money to pay for the bridge,
and putting that money into general circulation, you have simply devalued the
money in everyone else's pocket to exactly the same amount as the cost of the
bridge.
The people paid for the bridge with their own
money, and with their own sweat.
But you get the credit for it!
Neat, eh?
In the real world such political shenanigans
lead to something called inflation. The money in your pocket, the money that you
earn, and all the money that you have saved are simply devalued by this
inflation.
In fact, it is just a well-hidden form of tax.
It eats away at your money, bit by bit, but
over the years it amounts to a very considerable sum.
And most of the electorate does not really
notice it happening.
What a great scam!
In the very early 1970s, here in the UK, old
folks whose life savings amounted to, say, £20 000, could have
bought a whole four-bedroomed house in London! Ten years later (and assuming
that they invested this cash in a deposit account) they would have been lucky to
have been able to buy an apartment less than half the size.
Basically, those old folk were just robbed of
nearly half their life savings - often made throughout 40+ years
or so of work.
And what could they do about it?
Nothing.
The central banks are also part of the scam.
So, let us go back to the town where you have
just successfully been elected the mayor.
Hmm. Somehow you've got to make some money for
yourself.
So you say to your brother, "I know what
we'll do! You print the money in your garden shed,
and lend it out at interest to the townsfolk so that you can make a profit. And I'll
get a piece of the action!"
"What a good idea!" says your
brother.
So he prints the money (devaluing everybody
else's) and he makes a profit from the interest by lending it out to the people - i.e.
from the very money that he
actually stole from the villagers in the first place by devaluing their
currency!
But you want a piece of the action too!
So you go to your brother and say to him.
"Please Brother. Print some money especially for me, because I want to build
a new hospital to sucker the electorate into voting for me again. Oh, and by the
way, I would also like to propagate a war to help my friends in the oil and
weapons industries. I will definitely need some money for that too."
(e.g. USA The
US government also provided a $3.8 billion loan to Poland, on very favorable
terms, to finance the purchase of 48 F-16s, which are manufactured in President
Bush's home state of Texas.)
"I can print as much money as you
like!" chirps your brother most happily. "But I will charge you a
little interest on the deal."
"That's fine by me," you reply to
your brother. "Why the Hell should I care? After all, it is not my
money that I will be using to pay you back the interest. It will be those
suckers who voted for me who will have to foot the bills. Besides which, I'll
probably be doing a different job in a few years time - probably in the very oil and
weapons industries that I have supported most handsomely with the money
that you created. And so it will be some other mayor who will end up having to
pay
back all the debt. In the meantime, however, I also get the credit for building the
hospital!"
It really is a terrific scam.
And it cost you nothing!
You and your brother created nothing - except
paper - but you managed to spend a whole fistful of money, earn interest on it,
and then, to top it all off, you manage to get elected into office by convincing
the people what a jolly good fellow you are.
This is like sneaking into the back of people'
houses, stealing some of their money, and then popping round to the front door
and offering them a free gift if they vote for you - or offering them a loan
with the money that you have just stolen from the back of the house!
But it's their money. It's what they
worked for.
But your government does this sort of thing all
the time.
It steals your money by printing money.
And so it is that both central banks and
governments are in cahoots with each other to take, by stealth, money from the
people (printing money ->inflation -> devaluation of their currency) and
to earn profits (from interest) on the basis of the money (equal to the
devaluation) that they have sneakily stolen from the people in the first place!
And then the government gets your votes because you have not seen what the
politicians have been doing behind your back.
To get some idea of just how much larger than
even this is the racket, bear in mind that if you take out a typical long term
loan to buy a house or a business, the amount that you pay back in
interest alone is usually much greater than the cost of the building
that you are actually purchasing.
Putting this another way: The amount of blood,
sweat, tears, effort and work that you have to
endure in order to pay off the 'interest mongers' and the 'money-handlers' is
actually much greater than that required to purchase the building!
In other words, you will spend more of your
years labouring to pay off the people who did nothing but lend you the money for
the property than you will spend paying off the people who actually sweated away
to build it!
The bricklayer gets a dollar, but the bank
gets three!
What kind of system is that?
And when you think of all the millions upon
millions of properties and businesses around the world that are bought in this
manner, you can surely see that we are talking about hundreds of billions of
dollars every year going to those groups who create and build, well, nothing
really.
They do nothing but lend you the money!
Well, OK. The above is an oversimplification
because in dynamic economies people do need to be able to borrow money if they
are going to jump on the housing ladder or set up new businesses. And borrowing
mechanisms need to be put into place - and paid for.
Nevertheless, a significant percentage of the
world's transactions is based on money that the banks and the governments in
cahoots together simply created out of thin air - thereby devaluing (stealing) your
money in the process.
And an example of the long term consequence of
engaging in this sneaky form of theft can be seen right here ...
USA Social
Security, Medicare: those two programs alone have created a $25 trillion
unfunded liability. The people hoping for those benefits have to pray the
taxpayers will continue to be chumps. That’s how all chain letters work.
Sheldon Richman
Now, not only does the government
sneak in taxation by printing money, it also does its best to conceal what it
does with it.
As just one example of this,
every year, here in the UK, the Inland Revenue sends me its tax bill. It tells
me what I have to pay and how this amount has been calculated. I am told that
for seven years I must keep all my receipts and any documentation relating to
my incomings and outgoings, just in case the Revenue decides that it wants to
look at them.
But how come they don't send me a breakdown of what they're doing with my money?
For example, if I pay £5,000 in taxes, I would like to know how much of it is
going on education, how much of it is going to pay for defence, and how much is
going toward social security benefits.
Breaking down my £5,000 into 15 or 20 areas like this would empower me. It
would empower everyone to know where their money was going.
By doing this, taxpayers could see, every year, what went up and what went down.
They could see how much they paid for this and how much for that. They could
then vote at elections with more knowledge about the issues and so they would
come to better conclusions.
And this would be such a simple thing to do! A tiny little subroutine in the
Revenue's computer program could easily apply the relevant percentages for
government expenditure to everyone's tax invoice and print out the figures
showing people where their money was being spent.
So why doesn't the government do this?
When people hear our politicians talking about millions spent here and billions
spent there, it doesn't mean anything to them. The numbers are too large and
everybody pays different amounts. And so the taxpayers learn nothing about what
it really means to them.
The government could solve this information deficit within a month. A few lines
of computer program just before the invoice is actually printed, and away we go,
it would print a simple breakdown for all of us. People would then know where
their money was going.
And this really would inform and empower them.
£1342 for education. £746 for defence. £1768 for social security benefits.
But, knowledge is power - which, presumably, is why the government does not want
to give people such information.
|
