RE: Debt Ceiling...Action

[someguy]

I mean hey, you call up everyone and say you ain't gonna' pay what you owe...Hahahahaha! See how they like it...

Im going to offer an alternative that maybe you and some others here haven't thought of... Did you ever think that maybe we could still be paying off what we owe, and not go more into debt? That doesn't mean that we have to cut SS or medicare, simply that we could freeze spending at what it is/was. Its pretty simple, but nobody seems to even consider it. I guess the mainstream media is at fault as well as the mainstream political parties for hyping this issue up to make people think that we need to go more in debt to pay off our debt, and/or that we need to cut SS and medicare right now to pay off our debt. Both are BS points of view.

[rossmen]

i have yet to see the math on this tea talking point. when i do it in my head from my own memory it doesn't add up. and it doesn't take into consideration paying increased interest on the debt. has anybody done a serious consideration of this possibility or is it just partisan bs?

Im going to offer an alternative that maybe you and some others here haven't thought of... Did you ever think that maybe we could still be paying off what we owe, and not go more into debt? That doesn't mean that we have to cut SS or medicare, simply that we could freeze spending at what it is/was. Its pretty simple, but nobody seems to even consider it. I guess the mainstream media is at fault as well as the mainstream political parties for hyping this issue up to make people think that we need to go more in debt to pay off our debt, and/or that we need to cut SS and medicare right now to pay off our debt. Both are BS points of view.

[someguy]

i have yet to see the math on this tea talking point. when i do it in my head from my own memory it doesn't add up. and it doesn't take into consideration paying increased interest on the debt. has anybody done a serious consideration of this possibility or is it just partisan bs?

On the other hand, we could always cut some spending... Military perhaps. Maybe some frivolous federal programs. I just don't see how going more in debt helps to pay off the debt.

[Speak2Truth]

Dixon, I appreciate that you mentioned waste in military spending. Surely it is abundant in education spending, health care fraud, the Post Office and everything else run by Government, which can simply seize our dollars to keep funding the fraud and waste. Government is not obligated to run on any real budget - when they invariably waste more, they invariably raise our debt limit to indebt us to China. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could eliminate government inefficiency, waste and fraud? We can't - which is why we don't want Government taking over more and more of our society.

However, military spending is a matter of national survival. China is using OUR money to accelerate its military technology development and can now kill our aircraft carriers with weapons against which we have no defense. Their ICBM nuclear missiles benefited greatly from US-supplied guidance systems.

Think about this: The world has not fallen to Islamist aggression because US military might turned it back. The Middle East is not owned by Saddam because US military might stopped his blitzkrieg. The world is not enslaved to Communists because US military might has repeatedly put a stop to their aggressive rampages. Every time we stop these oppressive conquerors, we hand control back to the people of the nations we have rescued.

Do you think that, as of today, the Communists and Islamists have given up, so nations of the world will not rely on US military might to rescue them tomorrow?

What happens if China or the Islamists become capable of effectively thwarting US military dominance? What becomes of our world when THEY become dominant?

Some of you might be okay with watching the rest of the world be conquered and subjugated under Communist tyranny or murderous Islam (not a slam, Barry - just try being "gay", "liberal" or a woman who dresses in style and dates guys in the Muslim lands, government-sanctioned death usually ensues). However, the USA would not be safe either. Even today, China is taking ownership of the USA and Islam is securing its strength inside our borders. When either feels ready to challenge us on the global stage, we'll be fighting for our survival abroad and on US soil. They make no secret of their intentions - the only question is "when".

Spend whatever it takes to ensure the US military is prepared to defend us and our interests against whatever can be thrown at us. That is the MANDATE of the US Constitution. All else is available for budget cuts - and you would be hard pressed to find Constitutional permission to do just about any of it anyway.

["Mad" Miles]

Just about every mainstream economist/expert says that cutting spending under current stagnant conditions of no growth and massive unemployment, is a recipe for intensified disaster.

The much vaunted FDR cutback in '37? is often mentioned. Whatever kind of fiscal conservative or fiscal liberal one is, the time to cut is when money is circulating and taxes and fees are coming in. Cutting now doesn't just cut spending, it cuts jobs and cuts confidence. It puts the brakes on economic activity, whether just maintaining current flows or stimulating growth.

This is a low demand side recession. Structurally shifting a post-industrial economy to service industries with consumption being the economic driver, the work of over forty years of capital pursuing the highest return on investment. That won't be turned around or adjusted for, anytime soon.

And to make a shift to a steady state, or slow controlled growth economy, will require spending. Can current spending be juggled around? Or do new sources of revenue have to be "found".

With political/ideological gridlock preventing any real effective decisions, all the discussion of spending vs. cutting, debt vs.deficit (they really are not the same, but the "conservatives" talk as if they are), revenue vs. hobbling the "job creators" only serves to sustain the gridlock and prevents action. (The job creators line is a total crock by the way, the "job creators", i.e. the extremely wealthy, have plenty of moolah, and they're not spending it on employing Americans, they're holding on to it, or investing it where labor is cheap and pliable, or they're sinking it into tangibles, real estate, etc.).

And the debate talks about America as if we're a stand alone economy, other than the fact that China owns a big chunk of our Treasury bonds. But so do lots of other countries and lots of other foreign corporations. It's a global economy. What happens here, effects everywhere else, and vice versa.

Retail solutions, tinkering at the margins, will not cut it. That's what the S&P dude was saying last night on CNN, they downgraded because of the political crap that is preventing a reasonable economic policy. Plus they'd already said last March that if a plan to adjust the debt to spending and to GDP ratios was not agreed on, they would downgrade.

And since we're one of, if not the, biggest economic forces on the planet, and a major source for others to float their own debt by buying ours, how we balance spending with income is a global issue.

If history is prologue, I predict that this most recent crisis of overproduction, will precipitate a further plunge in investor confidence and an economic crisis of even greater global proportion. It won't be the first time, but the process has already been going on since '08 (if not '01).

The right wing fringies wail about the FED, but I never see them acknowledging why the FED was established. To create a financial entity that can borrow, when no one else is willing to, to smooth out, not prevent, the extreme fluctuations in capital markets that had been going on for decades. The crashes of 1877, 1898 (? I think sometime around then).

No, it didn't stop the 1928 Crash, but market controls on speculation did not exist then. And then Hoover's response, the standard conservative "we're spending too much, nothing is coming in, the debt is ballooning, cut back!!!", further depressed the economy, on a global scale by the way. Weimar? Hitler? WWII??

The only response in a downturn that has shown any results in bringing major economies back, has been Keynesian pump priming, via government investment in infrastructure, education, research, jobs. It worked in the early thirties (and then FDR listened to the paranoid conservatives and pulled back, with disastrous results), it worked in WWII, it worked in Japan and Western Europe (eventually) via The Marshall Plan and whatever the Japanese version was. It worked in the sixties with the space program and the arms race and massive investment in education, secondary and higher, it worked in the late eighties and nineties with tech and the internet (plus the dot.com bubble, the funding of a consumer service economy with borrowed equity on residential real estate), and when those speculative bubbles busted, we've seen the results.

Nothing has replaced the last bubble of mortgage credit debt swaps. The derivatives market that crashed three years ago..

The world, which is now universally capitalist since the mid-eighties in China and the late eighties in the post Soviet Union countries (I celebrated the fall of the wall, do not think I am mourning the passing of one-party military dictatorships with State Capitalist economies, I oppose the political systems of those which still exist) in that global capitalist economy, growth is funded by deficit spending. Either by governments, or investors who have confidence in their investments, or at least think they're savvy enough to pull out of speculative finance markets before the herd does.

That's the reality of the "Free Market" economy. (Everyone knows already that there ain't no such thing as the Free Market, never has been, never will be. All markets are chartered, warranted, sanctioned, subsidized, regulated, monopolized or some combination of all that. It's a theoretical, ideological construct. Not something that exists in the real world. Markets? Yeah. Free? Only for those raking it in and who are able to call the shots.)

So, all the conservative blather about, we can't spend more than we make! It's not that simple, sometimes, often, for people to have something to spend, first they need a job, that pays a living wage or better. And others have to borrow to create the situation where that's possible.

Micro-economic analysis does not make for Macro-economic understanding or policy.

Unless one has a microencephalitic condition, then it might seem like they're the same.

A central factor that I haven't mentioned above, and tends not to get discussed in the mainstream debate, is resource depletion and limitations. Which drive up the cost of essential ingredients for our industrial/post-industrial economy. Oil being the central, primary resource that is dwindling and as a result going up in price. I know Peak Oil gets discussed/debated here in Waccovia, but how much have you heard about it in the national debate?

I link the price rise of barrels of sweet, light crude to the downturns of '01 and '08. It was going up last spring and early summer. Some blamed the "Arab Spring" and the Libya intervention, some said it was just manipulation to rake it in for the summer driving season. Whatever the case the price of oil drives markets and affects investor confidence and outlook.

Other major limited resources are clean water, arable land, the damage to agricultural ecosystems from climate change / global warming. Then there are the Rare Earth Minerals that the one booming industry going (other than oil and food and weapons and slaves and gems and gold and ....) depends on.

These are factors which are clearly having an effect, and have at least since the Oil Crises of the mid to late seventies. Yeah, I know those were man-made, not natural restrictions, OPEC was holding the west hostage for a bigger cut and possibly as a move in the Cold War. (And the real nutbars probably link it to the conspiracy to impose a global Caliphate and shove Shariah down the throats of humanity. Crap, I haven't heard that one, and now I've given them the idea!! Oops... Can I get a cut of Glenn Beck's residuals now?)

Whatever the source of rising prices for essential resources. The price increases have a core effect on the economy. Guess what China has been buying up at inflated prices for the last decade or two? Guess why Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and initiated the war throughout Asia and the Western Pacific?

[Iolchan]

Waking Up Homeless


(by Mark Walter Evans)

- North Coast Xpress, December, 1994 -

The U.S. Congress has once again eased itself out of the annual budget crisis by raising the Debt ceiling. This means that the U.S. Treasury Department must print more interest-bearing bonds to borrow more credit-money from the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank, in order to finance the expensive operations of the Federal Government.

Despite much hoopla and Demo-Repub pie throwing that highlighted the supposed "differences" between the two major capitalist parties, the Republican-controlled Congress raised the Debt-ceiling while imposing a "balanced budget" in seven years upon the Democrat Clinton. This was to avert a more serious crisis; however the ultimate crisis can only be postponed.

In case you have not noticed, this crisis keeps returning every year, and every year the Debt spirals upward because the problem is inherent within the System itself. The present government of the United States is a bankrupt entity and no amount of borrowing or raising the Debt-ceiling up to the stars can hide that fact or prevent the inevitable breakdown. The real question is:

What can the people do when the ultimate budget-crisis occurs? The question itself may reveal a certain degree of political naivete, I know. It is very probable that the people, as a whole, can effect no positive changes in the System or alter the agenda that the capitalist class, and the international bankers and cartelists have already planned.

The Capitalists Have An Agenda

And they have a highly refined game plan; they also have already studied the problem of the Crisis of Capitalism for years. Once, long ago, the American people themselves had a little strength. During the period of the Popular Front, for all its flaws, radical historians and academics in the United States devoted themselves to studying the causes of the American Revolution and to vindicating it from a Marxist perspective. By all accounts, there were genuine economic reasons for the colonists to rebel from Mother England.

From the standpoint of an Institutional analysis, also, there were key institutions located in the City of London that exerted an oppressive influence upon the inhabitants of the Colonies in North America. These institutions, which included the Bank of England, the London Board of Trade, the British East India Company, and the Crown itself, were analyzed in detail by Marxist academics in the 1930s. (*Several articles to this effect are included in the chapbook " The Causes of the American Revolution," in the series Problems in American Civilization, published by D.C. Heath and Company, Boston, 1950.)

Today, many of the wires of the global capitalist system are still pulled from across the Atlantic. Much of the pull for Debt-collection originates in Europe, as well, since many of the bondholders (stockholders in the banks holding the interest-bearing bonds which comprise the "debt") reside there. Today however, the institutional apparatus for the economic rendering of America's internal economy in the service of Debt-collection is far more entrenched, and the oppression itself far more internalized than it ever was during the time that America was an overt colony of Britain, oppressed by bad king George.

Today, the institutions that directly oppress the American people fiscally are located in New York City and Washington, D.C. - in particular, the Federal Reserve Bank and its collection-agency, the Internal Revenue Service.

It is important to remember that the money taken in annually by the I.R.S. only services the interest on the National Debt. Today, if the I.R.S. audits you, you are made to feel that it is your personal failure that you have failed your lawful duty to pay your reasonable share of taxes that you personally, have sinned and fallen short of the American Dream. Seen in this light, the song and dance that the Demo-Repubs do every year is ludicrous and hypocritical. Democrats pose as "friends of the people" and oppose the further slashing of social programs by the Republicans, who pose as "fiscal conservatives."

Meanwhile, the Democrats mortgage the future to the bond-holding class through Keynesian deficit financing while feigning to adhere to the last vestiges of their false specie of New Deal "socialism." The Republicans, also, serve the interests of the bond-holding class, who must receive their pound of flesh out of the budget and whose interest-payments must be delivered on time, no matter how many people starve, go without medical care, go without decent educations, and are ultimately sent to prisons or work-camps because the policy-makers see no other future for them. So much for "taxes"!

This vicious strong-arm, debt-collection austerity is erroneously marketed to the American people as "The Republican Revolution." It is a far cry from the Republicanism of Abraham Lincoln, who during the Civil War authorized the issuance of 440 million dollars' worth of Debt-free Fiat currency backed neither by Gold nor by Bonds, but by the credit and faith of the collective People of the United States.

In March of 1884, the U.S. Supreme Court, in spite of heavy pressure to the contrary from Wall Street, ruled that these Notes, popularly termed "Lincoln Greenbacks," could lawfully be issued and re-issued by the Treasury Department under a broad interpretation of Article I, Section 8, Clause 5, of the Constitution.

The Root Of The Dilemma

In part the confusion over this issue began back in 1787 when the founding fathers met in Philadelphia to draft the Constitution. They decided, quite deliberately, to abridge the Articles of Confederation, (written in 1777) and deny to both the Federal Government and to the various States the power to emit "bills of credit" (paper currency); powers which were formerly vested in both the State and Federal governments under the Articles of Confederation. This was perhaps the most important single deed of the Convention. Both John Fiske in The Critical Period in American History, and Charles Beard in An Economic Interpretation of The American Constitution, address this issue - from different sides of the coin, so to speak. The Continental Congress of 1777 had been a revolutionary body. In a certain sense, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was a counter-revolution.

Thomas Jefferson was not present at the Constitutional Convention because he was the Ambassador to France at the time. Jefferson held a fundamentally different conception of the ideal Commonwealth and the Treasury thereof than his noted adversary Hamilton, whose policies prevailed both at the Convention and in the administration under Washington. In 1791, the year that also witnessed the birth of the bond-market on Wall Street, Hamilton, as Secretary of the Treasury, created the first privately owned Central Bank, the Bank of the United States.

Jefferson wrote late in life that his deepest regret about the Constitution was that Article I, Section 8, Clause 5, did not specifically empower the Federal Government to print paper currency as money. Thomas Jefferson wrote: "The issuing power of money should be taken from the banks and restored to Congress and the people to whom it belongs. I sincerely believe the banking institutions are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies."

There Is A Solution

Actually, the solution to the annual budget crisis is so simple that any schoolchild could think of it. Indeed, many have. The solution is for both the State and the Federal governments to be empowered to issue currency and to write checks against no funds (cash on hand, or gold in the vault) as they were empowered to do under the Articles of Confederation and as the {money market} Federal Reserve Bank of New York is now empowered to do. There is no law that states that the government must issue interest-bearing bonds to sell to banks in order to borrow "credit-money" created by private banks. According to the Supreme Court decision of March 1884 (unanimous opinion delivered by Justice Gray), the Federal Government can issue, and re-issue debt-free currency.

It was the Federal Government, in the first place, that granted charters to the commercial banks, allowing them to create Credit-Money by multiplying their deposits. If banks are empowered by the government to create money, then the power to create money originates in the collective power of the people. The problem is that the people as a whole are collectively unconscious of their power as a mass because they have been kept ignorant.

The contradiction is that this Congress, in the current Empire-phase of American development, has even less will than the Congress of 1791 to serve the real interests of the people or to buck the bankers and capitalists who seem to hold the real reins of power.

It is the energy and labor of the People, taxed by the State that has fed the leisure class who for generations has lived off the interest generated by the bonds, which "back" the National Debt. Most people would agree, if they truly understood the issue, that it is not fair for a class of people who merely inherited the right stock in the right banks, to collect this enormous expanding annual dividend from the midst of the Federal budget. It is this Class, not the so-called "Welfare-cheaters" on the bottom of the social pile, who constitute the greatest specie of leech upon the body politic. And until more Americans wake up to this realization, more Americans will continue to wake up homeless.

- Mark Walter Evans -


"There is none so ignorant as he/she who will not see { learn, study, read, etc.}"


Hey!
Educate
Yourselves!

Homework :
Download,
Read:

[jbox]

someguy..."So now that the debt ceiling has been raised, and the stock market has plummeted, our AAA rating has been down-graded, do you still believe that our economy would have been worse off if we hadn't raised the debt ceiling and lived within our previous purse?"...
--------------------

Of course no-one has a crystal ball...But, yes...Some stated several days before that the damage was already done...
I still wish Obama would have given the finger to the Repubs. at least 2 weeks ago if not sooner and invoked the 14th and let people's heads explode over whether that was 'constitutional' or not (some said yes, some thought no)...But, I figured he wouldn't do it...That's not who he is, that's not what he does...

I still think those (whatever political persuasion) who thought it was okay to NOT raise the debt ceiling are absolutely out of their freakin' minds...Along with it not being Constitutional...
Of course all the major countries of the world started freakin' out...

I mean hey, you call up everyone and say you ain't gonna' pay what you owe...Hahahahaha! See how they like it...

The 'tea-baggers' ALWAYS yack about being strict Constitutionalists, and why the Dems. didn't hang them with this regarding the debt ceiling is beyond me...Maybe because they don't care about the Constitution either...I don't know...

Most of all I blame the 'liberal', 'progressive', 'moderates' - the whiny, wimpy complainers who couldn't get off their butts and vote in November...All they could do was complain about Obama, and not gettin' their own way after not even 2yrs!!...All the while the 'we hate Social Security tea-partiers' were angry and getting organized to vote!!...
No-wonder why 'liberals', 'progressives' have a spoiled brat reputation...'Cause so many of 'em are whiny and wimpy as hell...

The Repubs. WHOLE agenda is to make things worse...block anything half decent that Obama might even try to do...And people couldn't even get off their butts to vote against THAT?!!...
I wish the dead founding fathers, women, labor rights/civil rights activists, would come back just to haunt those lazy asses!!...Whoever they are!!
I was one of those people 'screamin' not to let more of these 'market as god', kill SS, and medicare jerks in the gov't...But, I'm just another nobody who's got nothin'...

I don't care how bad it is next year, or how much those people who voted for Obama hate him now...The other alternative is much worse in my book, and we are in political/economic war...If people who don't want to see complete Corporate control can't get off their butts and stand up for themselves, or at least for someone and get involved and vote...Then maybe this country is doomed...

And that reminds me...Voting day in Wisconsin is coming up this next Tuesday!...And there's some good people running against the Walker agenda!...They always need a dime!...

Thanks for asking...I went ahead and vented a little...:)

Yep, I feel like Peter Finch in Network: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" So, what power do we the people have? It's at the ballot box and it's time to wipe the slate clean. Woolsey retiring? Good thing because as an incumbent I'd vote her out. Feinstein, Boxer, Pelosi, Reid adios. Boehner, McConnell, Paul, Bachman tootaloo. Throw the whole lot out and maybe the politicians will listen to the people. The trouble is the incumbents are so easily reelected and a 25% approval rating seems to be not much of an impediment. What do you do when the entire national gene pool is on the slippery dumbing down slope and the body public is so goddamn stupid they keep reelecting the same tired corrupt ideologues?

[Iolchan]

Scales On the Eyes

"Mad " Miles wrote:
The right wing fringies wail about the FED, but I never see them acknowledging why the FED was established. To create a financial entity that can borrow, when no one else is willing to, to smooth out, not prevent, the extreme fluctuations in capital markets that had been going on for decades. The crashes of 1877, 1898 (? I think sometime around then).

No, it didn't stop the 1928 Crash, but market controls on speculation did not exist then. And then Hoover's response, the standard conservative "we're spending too much, nothing is coming in, the debt is ballooning, cut back!!!", further depressed the economy, on a global scale by the way. Weimar? Hitler? WWII??

The Cover story of why the Fed was established - and the Reality of what was created are two different things. Furthermore, the FED was not created to borrow for us - it "Creates" Bank Credit and demand deposits out of thin air, and puts Us in hock to its wonderful stockholders in the process... It is "We the People" who must {because of the Federal Reserve System,} do the borrowing - from the FED. To let you in on a little secret; which is no Secret at all: the "National Debt" is the Property and Corporate Asset of the Stockholders of the Federal Reserve Bank.

Fact: The National Debt was only One {1} Billion Dollars in 1913; the Year that the legislation that "Created" the FED was passed.

Fact: By 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt came in, it stood at about Eighteen {18} Billion.

Fact: By 1940, when World War Two had begun, it had reached Fifty {50} Billion Dollars.

Fact: By the time World War Two was over, and F.D.R. died, the National Debt had risen to Two Hundred and Fifty {250} Billion dollars.

Question: Do you begin to see a pattern here? The growth of the National Debt from 1933- to 1945, was all done by "Keynesian Deficit Spending." That is what made all this "growth" possible: the phenomenon that economists refer to as "the float." Regarding John Meynard Keynes, himself - a little factoid: He was on the Board of Directors of the Bank of England. So his "Cover" as a so-called "Socialist Economist" was pretty much hogwash.

Actually, the Old Left always knew that the establishment of the Federal Reserve System, in 1914, represented a kind of bloodless financial coup by Wall Street over Constitutional money. That is the reason that Jerry Voorhis and Robert LaFollette Jr., two prominent old leftists with political clout on the Hill - who both wanted to Nationalize the Federal Reserve Bank - were booted out of office in 1946, by the instrumentality of two young Mob Lawyers fresh from the Navy and the South Pacific - Richard M. Nixon & Joe McCarthy - both of whom were financed by Big Money. Here is what Jerry Voorhis, a bona fide Old Leftist, wrote about the Federal Reserve:

Jerry Voorhis On The Federal Reserve:

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES SAYS:

"Congress shall have power to Coin money and regulate the value thereof."
Congress does no such thing, which is the heart of our trouble. Private banks
coin our money and regulate its value. In doing so they take from the government
and people of the United States a large chunk of their sovereignty, a large chunk
of the taxing power, and the key to a prosperous economy without inflation.
For example, in testimony before the Banking and Currency Committee
of the House of Representatives in 1935, Marriner Eccles,
then Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board itself, said:

"In purchasing offerings of Government bonds, the banking system as a whole
creates new money, or bank deposits. When the banks buy a billion dollars of
Government bonds as they are offered - and you have to consider the banking
system as a whole as a unit - the banks credit the deposit account of the
Treasury with a billion dollars. They debit their Government bond account a
billion dollars; or they actually create, by a bookkeeping entry, a billion dollars."

Mr. Eccles' statement is exactly as true today as when he made it.
Here is how it works : The private banking system of our country creates
our money in the form of demand deposits on the banks' books.
The reason it is able to do this is because no bank is required
to have in its vault anything like the amount of money
which its depositors think they have in the banks.

Banks are only required by the Federal Reserve System,
which the banks are sure they own, to have in their vaults
anywhere from $1 to $1.50 for every $10 of demand deposits on their books.
That is for every $1 or $1.50 which people - or the government -
deposit in a bank, the banking system can create out of thin air
and by the stroke of a pen some $10 of checkbook money or demand deposits.
It can lend all that $10 into circulation at interest just so long as it has the $1
or a little more in reserve to back it up.

This is, of course, the "fractional reserve system" of banking.
It is more or less controlled by the Federal Reserve System,
whose only stock is held by the private banks of the Federal Reserve System.
Not a single share of such stock is held by the government
or people of the United States, although if "national sovereignty"
means anything at all, these banks of issue should be the property
of the nation.

But what actually happens when our government engages in deficit financing?
The obvious way the government can get more buying power into the people's
hands is by itself putting more money into the stream of commerce than it takes
out in taxes. The tragedy of the situation is that, up to date, the only way our
government has enabled itself to spend more money than it takes in has been
by forcing this sovereign nation to borrow its own credit from private sources.

This has been true, despite the fact that if deficit financing accomplishes its
purpose at all it will increase production and trade, enhance tax revenues,
and broaden the base of government credit.

To the extent that government bonds are sold for cash to individuals,
or institutional purchasers other than banks,
the government is taking out of circulation approximately as many dollars
as it will put back in when it spends the money.

To accomplish its purpose, deficit financing must result in the creation
of new money, and the use of it to increase mass buying power.
Only if this happens will there be any stimulation of idle plants
to go back into production, or more employment.

Under these circumstances what ought to happen is that the credit
of this great nation should be drawn upon directly by the government,
not that it should go more deeply into debt.

For the credit of this or any nation is squarely based upon and derived from
the production of wealth by the nation plus the power of the government to tax.
A nation like the United States thus possesses an almost unlimited amount of credit.
Otherwise it could not possibly have persuaded investors to buy $480 billion
of government securities.

By whatever percentage it can be anticipated that production and hence potential
tax revenues will increase as a result of deficit spending, by that same amount
the credit of the nation and its government will be increased.
This same percentage of the volume of money previously in circulation should appear
on the books of the Treasury as a credit entry to be drawn upon just like tax revenues.
To do that would he nothing more than rational and proper bookkeeping.
It would also be morally right bookkeeping.
And it would make some sense of Mr. Nixon's
"Full employment budget" idea.

But this is not what happens at all. Instead the sovereign government
of the United States goes hat in hand to the private banking system
and asks it to create the new money that the economy needs.
The government gives - the word is used advisedly -
it gives to the banking system, including the Federal Reserve banks,
government bonds, the debt of all the people.
Interest-bearing bonds, that is,
bonds bearing as high an interest rate under today's regime
as the banks decide to demand. Else they won't buy the bonds.

The banks "buy" the bonds with newly created
demand deposit entries on their books - nothing more.
It is fountain-pen money and considerably more inflationary
than would be the same amount of dollar bills created by the government.
The deposits the banks create with which to own the people's debt
are backed by nothing except the bonds themselves!

In other words, they are backed by the credit of the American people.
What the government has "borrowed" from the banks,
what the people must for years pay interest on,
is nothing more nor less than the credit of the nation,
which obviously the nation possessed in the first
place or the bonds themselves would be no good!

At long last, a few years ago the Federal Reserve made tacit acknowledgment
of these facts. As a direct result of logical and relentless agitation by members
of Congress, led by Congressman Wright Patman
as well as by other competent monetary experts,
the Federal Reserve began to pay to the U.S. Treasury a considerable
part of its earnings from interest on government securities.
This was done without public notice and few people,
even today, {1973} know that is being done.

It was done, quite obviously, as acknowledgment that the Federal Reserve Banks
were acting on the one hand as a national bank of issue, creating the nation's money,
but on the other hand charging the nation interest on its own credit -
which no true national bank of issue could conceivably,
or with any show of justice, dare to do.

But this is only part of the story. And the less discouraging part, at that.
For where the commercial banks are concerned, there is no such repayment
of the people's money.

When the commercial banks create money, as they do when they acquire government
bonds, they levy a tax on every person in the United States. This is so because
every new dollar that is created makes every dollar previously in existence worth
somewhat less than it was worth before. This is the very heart of inflation.
It is also taxation without representation with a vengeance. Until this system is
changed, our debt will continue to skyrocket without limit and the fixing of debt
limits by the Congress will continue to be an exercise in utter futility.

More, Including
a Progressive Solution...

And, as far as the Fed not stopping the Crash of 1929, put this in your pipe and smoke it:

https://www.worststockmarketcrashes....crash-of-1929/

John Kenneth Galbraith, a Keynesian Economist himself, and many other serious academics have, over the years, attributed the Crash of 1929 to the policies of the Federal Reserve Bank, itself :

https://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/bierman.crash

https://www.google.com/search?q=1929...fe=images&tbs=

Sincerely,
Mark Walter Evans
www.paleoprogressives.org

[lynn]

Miles..."And I repeat, President Obama is no Liberal. He's a neo, Straussian (IMHO) beholden to his Corporate fundraisers. Most, if not all, of his appointments and policies show that very clearly. He's clearly a smart guy. The question is, how much difference does that make?"...

Of course Obama is a corporatist guy...I never stated he wasn't..
The 'righties' see him as 'liberal', and the tea-party' types really do think he's a socialist (and/or marxist).
I mean my god...This is the crazy schizophrenic weirdness in the political/economic realm in our country right now...He's a Corporatist hack and a socialist/marxist, 3rd world dictator, and Muslim.
Sh*t, my head is splitting!...:)
Definitions these days are useless as far as public dialogue goes...Just depends on what one's vantage point is.
And in the midst of all this hating Obama from all sides, he's tryin' to get re-elected!
Holy Moly...I sure don't envy him!...

Obama is still a much better choice as far as I'm concerned, (so, I'm a baby murderer socialist for that, or a corporatist supporting hack)......And I'm thinking Supreme Court, and Congress...and look what just happened with Women's family planning...NEVER would ANY Repub. these days EVER do such a thing...
And he gave Elizabeth Warren a place...Thank goodness!!!...
There are still a few important differences where some things are concerned...And I really wish 'lefties' or who-ever would recognize that...
The new 'extreme righties' are hell bent on destroying SS (or privatizing it), medicare, the education system, the EPA etc...They are convinced this is a good thing...I'm convinced it's a crazy ideology...
I agree with them there are serious problems in this Gov't that can be absolutely despicable, and deplorable as we all know - I share those sentiments with them, but their 'solutions' scare the begeezus out of me...
I'm kind of a 'moderate' type...any kind of 'extremism' scares the cr*p out of me...So, Obama is kind of the more sane one in the room as far as I'm concerned...I think he'd be fine putting some good regulations for Corporations in place...but, as we know the Wall Street brats and their lobbyists have too much power right now...and the extremists don't want any regulations at all...He's trying to balance on a tightrope as far as I can see...
------------
someguy...."Im going to offer an alternative that maybe you and some others here haven't thought of... Did you ever think that maybe we could still be paying off what we owe, and not go more into debt? That doesn't mean that we have to cut SS or medicare, simply that we could freeze spending at what it is/was. Its pretty simple, but nobody seems to even consider it."...

I totally agree that we can't keep going more into this debt - people are right about that...How we deal with it though is what's at issue...
The rightie 'extremists' don't want any taxes raised at all...
In my opinion...We all need to pay some more through taxes if we want to cut down on the debt, and cut some major stuff back...Sacrificing isn't fun, and the battle is about how we are to do that, what to cut etc...
-----------------------------------------------------------

"Yep, I feel like Peter Finch in Network: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" So, what power do we the people have?...Throw the whole lot out and maybe the politicians will listen to the people. The trouble is the incumbents are so easily reelected and a 25% approval rating seems to be not much of an impediment. What do you do when the entire national gene pool is on the slippery dumbing down slope and the body public is so goddamn stupid they keep reelecting the same tired corrupt ideologues?"...

Well, I'm not one of those 'throw all the bums out' types - cut my nose off to spite my face...There's decent people there, and I want them to stay there...
You ask...What kind of power do 'we the people' have?...Don't you know the answer to that question?...
Look what about 58 new people in Congress just did...They got the whole worlds attention!...That's what a whole lot of organized anger and one election can do...I already went on my rant about that...
Seems we just aren't dealing with the bottom line problems of corruption in the first place...Need to have the right regulations in place on Wall Street, and change the citizens united decision somehow...

P.S. If you haven't watched the Frontline documentary 'The Warning" I highly recomend it...We were warned about the derivitives market - one major mess that was coming down the pike...but of course the Wall Street 'greeders' slammed that down!...
And...socially, and politically speaking...I think both 'libs', and 'conservatives' have very important valid criticisms of each other, and good things to contribute).
----------
Suggested listening...
Show on KGO w/ Lynn Jimenez...Sunday, August 7th 1pm. - 4pm.
Talking about the debt ceiling thingy...And interesting author who researched 800 yrs. of economic history...
Program will be archived at their website for a week...

[Iolchan]

lynn wrote:
And...socially, and politically speaking...I think both 'libs', and 'conservatives' have very important valid criticisms of each other, and good things to contribute).

Bravo. Yes. Wisdom.

Truth Transcends Party Politics.

[Iolchan]

Jerry Voorhis On The Solution
To The Federal Reserve/Debt
Quandry
:

What ought to be done?

Banks should lend existing money. But, as the Constitution clearly requires, the money (or credit) of the nation should never be created by any private agency, but by an agency of the nation itself. It is the duty of Congress to provide for this by a carefully drawn statute.

The stock in Federal Reserve Banks should be purchased by the government from their present private bank owners. The Federal Reserve should then become our national bank of issue. It should create reserve Bank Credit as it does now. But that credit should be credited to the United States Treasury, not charged against it and the people as debt. As much such new credit should be created each year as is needed to keep our economy running at or near capacity - and no more than that. A stable price level could result.

Then and only then can we expect to overcome recessions, to put our people to work, and do this without the artifice of inflation and the ever-increasing debt which are incapable under the present monetary system of ever being paid off.

=Jerry Voorhis, The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon, 1973=

How To Nationalize Credit :

Congress [could] provide for governmental purchase of the capital stock of the 12 central Federal Reserve Banks from the member banks which now own it. This would cost $144,000,000 in round figures, and would correct the present anomalous situation of a privately owned bank of issue. The Federal Reserve Banks could then create money in the form of "Federal Reserve Bank credit" entries on their books just as they do now. A "National Credit Central banks' books in favor of the United States Treasury. To such an account would be credited each year such amounts of newly created "Reserve Bank credit" as would provide the increased purchasing power needed to maintain economic balance and a stable price level.

The Treasury would draw checks against their account and pay them out to those to whom the government owed money, thus getting it into the purchasing power stream. In this way the whole nation would derive the benefit from the creation of the additional supply of money which its own growth had made necessary. No interest bearing debt would be incurred, but only a bookkeeping transaction between two public agencies. Should inflation threaten so that it was desirable to reduce the volume of money in circulation, the process could be reversed and the Treasury could transfer a portion of its tax revenues to the central banks for cancellation and retirement of the requisite amount of money to restore stability.

= Jerry Voorhis, Beyond Victory, 1944 =

[Iolchan]

Amendment XXVIII & Apologia

Latest Draft:

AMENDMENT XXVIII

Money and Credit – Congress Asserts Power To Coin Money, and Emit Bills of Credit

[SECTION 1.] The Congress hereby asserts the power, granted in this Constitution, to coin money, and to regulate the value thereof. - And further, to emit non-interest-bearing bills of credit directly through the Treasury Department on the Credit, and in the Name of the People.

[SECTION 2.] The U.S. Congress hereby authorizes the U.S. Treasury to issue a sufficient quantity of Fiat “dollars” to purchase back the capital stock of the Federal Reserve Bank from the private owners, by eminent domain.

[SECTION 3.] The Federal Reserve Bank shall henceforth cease to exist as a private and public institution. All of the books, documents and records of the Federal Reserve Bank, and of the U.S. Treasury Department shall be transferred to the U.S. Congress, and the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank shall be made Subject to the most minute Congressional and e-Public Examination. A New Institution, the “Common-Wealth Central Bank” of the United States of America, shall henceforth function as a Sub-Treasury Central Bank of issue.

[SECTION 4.] The U.S. Congress does also hereby authorize the U.S. Treasury to recall, by eminent domain, all outstanding U.S. Treasury Securities, constituting the “National Debt,” and to Convert them by Fiat, into a new species of dollar-denominated, and non-interest-bearing credit instrument, to be termed "National Credit Receipts." All U.S Securities owned by individual persons shall be redeemed, at face value, in credit, on the books of the Common-Wealth Central Bank. However; all outstanding U.S. Treasury Securities originally purchased from the Federal Open Market Committee by Banking Corporations at Treasury bond-auctions, shall be discounted to seven percent of their “value” and be accounted as balances on the Books, and by the Credit, of the Common-Wealth Central Bank of the United States of America.

[SECTION 5.] The U.S. Treasury, and the Common-Wealth Central Bank of the United States of America [as the fountainhead of Credit Creation in the nation] shall henceforth Issue as Money only non-interest-bearing, fiat Treasury Notes, and Mint Coins of pure Specie, stamped with their weight and fineness. The books, accounts and records of the Treasury shall continually be open to public scrutiny. The Congress, in order to promote the General Welfare, shall find creative – and equitable - ways to invest and spread the new National Wealth. There shall be no further issues of Treasury Securities, or Bonds.

[SECTION 6.] Each of the State Treasury departments, of each of the fifty States, are also hereby empowered, by the same creative principle [formerly given by charter to banks] to create Credit within their own jurisdictions, in the form of checks, signed by the State comptrollers, in accordance with appropriations made by the State legislatures, for the purpose of maintaining State institutions, infrastructure, and salaries.

[SECTION 7.] In accordance with the provisions of this Article, all banks and financial institutions in America shall receive new charters from the Treasury. The U.S. Treasury and the Sub-Treasury Common-Wealth Central Bank {and the State Treasuries} shall henceforth have the unique and sole power within the nation to create Credit – a function formerly granted by the government [ and thus erroneously delegated ] only to Banks. Henceforth private banks may charge interest, to service accounts.

[SECTION 8.] In Sum, this Article defines, and enhances the powers granted to Congress and the Treasury, under Article I, Section 8, Clause 5, of this Constitution. Furthermore, it amends and modifies Article II, Section 10, Clause 1, to empower State Treasuries to create
[a limited amount of] non-inflationary Credit, in the form of check-book money in order to meet the pressing needs of the States.

Apologia

Why We Need Amendment XVIII, Now


Amendment XVIII does several things that are timely:

Amendment XXVIII Re-Asserts the Constitutional principle that Congress – the Representatives of We, the People - should control, and be the ultimate Arbiter over the Creation of Money and Credit.

Amendment XXVIII Nationalizes the private ownership of the Federal Reserve Bank, and subsumes the creative functions of that institution into the Treasury Department, creating a Sub-Treasury “Common-Wealth Central Bank” - to be established and dedicated to the Interest of the People – not Wall Street.

Amendment XXVIII Authorizes Congress to recall the National Debt, and transforms, by Congressional Fiat, the fraudulent “National Debt,” held by prime banks in the form of U.S. Treasury Securities, into an actual National Blessing in the form of trillions of Dollars of “Common-Wealth” to be deposited in the New “Common-Wealth, Central Bank” by recalling, and transforming the U.S. Treasury Bonds, by Fiat, into a new, non-interest-bearing, dollar-denominated credit instrument: the “National Credit-Receipt.”

Amendment XXVIII cleans out the Augean Stables of the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank, and opens the Books, Documents, and Records of those Institutions to the minutest Public Scrutiny. Amendment XXVIII also asserts “…there shall be no further issues of Treasury Securities, or Bonds.”

Amendment XXVIII opens, once again, the Treasury Mints to the free coinage of silver and gold. The new Commodity Money coins shall be stamped with their weight and fineness, not denominated in terms of “Dollars.”

Borrowing a page from the Articles of Confederation, Amendment XXVIII grants, once again, to the State Governments the power to create Credit within their own jurisdictions. This will be of great help to the infrastructure and to Health, Education, and Welfare within the fifty states. And it will serve the Interest of the People; though it displease the banking elites and their minions.

Since State governments are empowered to grant charters to State Banks, which enable these Banks to create Credit, States also should be empowered to Create, with the stroke of a pen, sufficient Credit within their own jurisdictions to assist Human needs.

If Amendment XXVIII intended only to restore a lawful system of Constitutional money - with Fiat Treasury Bills replacing the interest-bearing debts known as "Federal Reserve Notes," then indeed, no Amendment would be necessary. The Constitution already provides Congress with the power to issue such notes as interest-free money. Also, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Julliard v. Greenman (110 U.S. 421, 448) in 1884 ruled that: “Congress is authorized to establish a national currency, either in coins or in paper, and to make that currency lawful money for all purposes, as regards the national government or private individuals.” {A broad interpretation of Article I, Section 8, clause 5, of the Constitution.}

An elegant solution, Amendment XVIII, also Nationalizes the National Debt; and transforms the Treasury Department into a Treasury of Common-wealth; and fills the coffers of this new institution with several trillions of "dollars" of Credit & establishes a new specie of credit-instrument, a dollar-denominated "National Credit Receipt" to be just as serviceable as “Dollars” on the international market.

Amendment XVIII makes a distinction between the U.S. Savings Bonds that were purchased by Ma and Pa bond investors and those U.S. Treasury Securities that were purchased by the Prime Banks at Bond Auctions held under the auspices of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve’s Window on Wall Street. Commercial Banks have always utilized the “multiplier” of the fractional reserve system to purchase U.S. Treasury Securities at cents on the dollar.

In recognition of this Fact - that such transactions are, and have always been, from the beginning, Fraudulent - AMENDMENT XVIII renders the outstanding “Debt” that is “owed” to the Prime Banks of this – and every other Nation - at a mere 7% [Seven per cent] of the face value of such Fraudulent, Banker-secured paper “Debt.”

This reduction of the Debt to a Sum that is payable in Credit, on the Books of the new Sub- Treasury Central Bank-of-Issue, the “Common-Wealth Central Bank” is, in Reality, exceedingly fair and Just, in recognition of the Fraud that has been committed by the Community of International bankers, in foisting the former system upon the unsuspecting Public.

Thus, AMENDMENT XVIII allows a large amount of Credit to be created on the books of the new Common-Wealth Central Bank - as compensation for that portion of the investment of the Banks in the National Debt, that might actually be deemed ‘legitimate.” This gives the Prime Banks some Credit - but no Stock - in the new Institution.

The aggregate effect of these Reforms is to establish an Institution that benefits All Americans - and not just the small elite who were fortunate to inherit the right stock in certain Wall Street Money Market Banks.

Amendment XXVIII dissolves the Federal Reserve Bank into the United States Treasury Department, and subsumes the creative, credit-creation function of the Federal Reserve into the new Sub-Treasury "Common-Wealth Central Bank." Henceforth, the Treasury shall not be compelled to issue interest-bearing Treasury Securities to "back" all of the paper "dollars" that the Federal Reserve currently issues. Instead, the Treasury shall issue non-interest-bearing Treasury notes, as Abraham Lincoln and John Fitzgerald Kennedy were able, for a short time, to do.

Significantly, Amendment XXVIII also grants the fifty States the power to create credit within their own sovereign jurisdictions, to meet their crushing deficit burdens, instead of having to float endless bond issues and borrow more "money" at interest from banks and investors of the bond-holding class. The Articles of Confederation, drafted by the revolutionary Continental Congress of 1777, allowed the States this power - and it should be restored to the several States, in order for there to be a healthy society in North America.

Thus, Clause 9 reads: "Furthermore, it amends and modifies Article II, Section 10, clause 1, to empower State Treasuries to create [a limited amount of] non-inflationary Credit, in the form of check-book money in order to meet the pressing needs of the States."

Sincerely,

Mark Walter Evans,
Hood Mountain,
California

[Hotspring 44]

You are correct, but color has nothing to do with it.

Every president, Dem or GOP, since Ronald Reagan has been little more than a spokesperson for the moneyed elite. Here's a brief but shocking clip of Reagan publicly taking orders from his literal corporate master...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTcL...ature=youtu.be

I sure do remember that Ronald Reagan line item veto bunch of BS.

[Hotspring 44]

Of course Color has nothing to do with it. The Man's Color - and the hype that his handlers invoked & ladled out about the Legacy of Martin Luther King, and Abraham Lincoln - was merely the means by which the Wall Street Derivitives-Market Bankers got away with the Heist - and have been able to pacify and dupe so many Liberals, until Now.

I agree with all but one part of that statement; The, "until Now". Unfortunately, too many are still duped.

[lynn]

"I agree with all but one part of that statement; The, "until Now". Unfortunately, too many are still duped."...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oh boy, we've got more armchair psycho-therapists on board...
More Obama sucks posts...For the millionth, upteenth time...
How original...

So, what are you whiners going to do?...
Continue to whine, p*ss and moan about Obama...
And let someone like Bachmann, or Perry get voted in?...
Yep, that's one of my greatest fears right now...

At least Obama, is running his *ss around the country right now...
He's at least workin' for it a little bit...

[Iolchan]

Excerpts from:

The Key to World Peace - and Plenty,

by

Elsa Peters Morse

Money is defined as the sum total of currency and demand deposits. Money as such is a social instrument - a basic utility. It is the medium for easily exchanging goods and services and storing the value of wealth.

Therefore, to have a sound economy, money must be issued - and its value controlled by the government for the general welfare of the nation, and its people. Money should not, as now, be issued as debt against the collateral of private and public wealth by private business institutions at interest for their private profits.

Few people understand how a dollar bill is issued into circulation as debt. Nor have they been informed how the billions of dollars of the national debt are set up on the books of the private banks under capitalism as a loan to the nation at no financial cost to the banks and yet drawing interest.

This is how a dollar bill is issued: When Mr. Small-Smith goes to the bank to borrow $100, he puts up his cow, or car, or wages as collateral. Then the bank makes a double entry in his account - a debit for $100 and a credit-deposit for $100. Mr. Small-Smith signs on the dotted line that he will pay back the amount of the $100 loan, with interest or forfeit his collateral. Then the bank gives Small-Smith a checkbook and he is ready to draw out his loan or $100 deposit - in one dollar bills or ten dollar bills, as he wishes.

The banking system keeps bills on hand for such transactions they are printed at the Treasury at the cost of less than 1 cent per bill - whether in dollar or thousand-dollar denomination. A similar transaction takes place when Mr. Great-Trust goes to the bank to borrow a million dollars or when the government borrows a billion dollars.

The money of modern capitalist civilization is created as debt-credit on the books of the institutions that have the concession of issue. In the process, debt is created, credit is created, and checks and paper bills are put into circulation as money.

U.S. Senate Document No. 23

United States Senate Document #23, 1939, by Robert L. Owen, former Chairman of the committee on Banking and Currency, United States Senate,
reveals the facts on the issuing of money under capitalism:

The Constitution of the United States gave the Congress the broad power
exclusively to create money. It is of the greatest importance to note that the failure of the Congress to exercise this sovereign power led to the creation of money by privately owned individual banks acting in cooperation with their borrowers.

The modern use of the word "money" was clearly stated by the Honorable
Marriner S. Eccles, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal
Reserve Bank System, before the Banking and Currency Committee of the
House of Representatives:

"The banks can create and destroy money. Bank credit is money; it is the money we do most of our business with, not with that currency which we usually think of as money. In purchasing offers of Government bonds, the banking system as a whole creates new money, or bank deposits. When the banks buy a billion dollars of Government bonds as they are offered - and
you have to consider the banking system as a whole, as a unit - the banks credit the deposit account of the Treasury with a billion dollars. They debit their Government account a billion dollars, or they actually create, by a bookkeeping entry, a billion dollars.

"Take note that debt and credit are interchangeable terms in that double- entry book keeping system. The failure of the Congress of the United States to create the money required by the people for the transaction of a greatly expanding volume of business naturally caused the people to resort to the
manufacturing of money through the banks by loans.

"The people were compelled, of course, to pay for such accommodation, or creation of credit, by the banks ... [the people were fraudulently betrayed into using this system of issuing money.] Six percent interest was established in most States as a legal rate of interest for loans . . . Thus the credit money built up by this checking system was based on debt, subject to interest [profit] and compound interest. This made the system hazardous.

"In the United States the banks were permitted, on an average, prior to the Bank Act of 1935, to make loans to an extent of 10 times as great as the currency [gold] which they have available in vault or reserves held for them by other banks. As a consequence, the banks made loans against mortgages, on cattle and horses, houses, the hypothecation of stocks, goods, and on those assets deemed bankable assets. But usually the bank took security in excess of the amount of the loan."

Robert Hemphill, former credit manager of the Federal Reserve Bank of
Atlanta, Georgia, testified:

"If all bank loans were paid, no one would have a bank deposit and there would not be a dollar of currency or coin in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on commercial banks.

"Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit... When one gets a complete grasp upon the picture the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible - but there it is. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it is widely understood and the defects remedied very soon."

The 1930-1934 Depression - USA

In 1932 during the Great Depression, every bank in the U.S. was closed, but one, because there was not enough gold to redeem the paper notes in
circulation. To prevent a nationwide run on the banks and cause national
economic collapse - the collapse of capitalism - the government gave the
order to stop redeeming paper money in gold. Then the gold notes were
exchanged for new notes reading "redeemable in lawful money" (or other
paper notes) - and not as formerly "redeemable in gold."

The gold was then buried in Fort Knox and the money of the U.S. became
based on all commodities, instead of one commodity, gold.

The system of pump-priming the economy through debt, otherwise known as
credit expansion, is technically called deficit financing. Deficit financing through government spending or borrowing by increasing the public debt is now necessary to subsidize the whole profit system economy - the economy of the entire capitalist world.

The profit in interest charges, in the issuing of the nation's money as public or private debt, creates another gap between cost and prices, this time the production of money. And this gap is bridged by debt and more debt - a disastrous spiral.

Deficit-Financing

In the United States, the Federal Reserve Banks and their affiliated banks are privately owned and operated. It is a banking cartel. It is not the property of the United States government, as many people believe.

This private banking system, taken as a whole, has the concession of issuing the nation's debt-credit money at interest to its stockholders. - And the banks and associated loan corporations have the privilege of issuing debt-credit money to private corporations and private individuals - at interest-profit to their stockholders. This is true in every capitalist country of the world.

It is important for all people to understand the system of the private issuing of the nation's money under capitalism - as debt - and its overall effect on the economy.

To illustrate again: when a capitalist government spends $80,000,000 for eighty $1,000,000 missiles, government bonds are issued at the Treasury for this amount and are "given" to the banking system as a whole to create a credit demand deposit for the government, for this amount on the books of the bank. Then the government proceeds to issue checks against this account for the labor and materials, which go into the construction of the missiles.

Suppose the bonds draw 2.5 % interest and run for 40 years. By the time they are due, the people will have been taxed and will have paid the bankers (or the private holders of the bonds) $80,000,000 in interest, for which they have done nothing but make a bookkeeping entry.

So the 80 missiles cost the people $160,000,000 - one half for the missiles and one half for interest profit to the bankers. So it is with all public improvements - roads, dams, houses, schools and with wars or military expenses - all are financed by bond issues carrying the interest profit toll.

The servicing of the public debt, or the paying of the interest charge, (profit to the banks or other bond holders) on the capitalist nation's state, city or county bonds - is reflected in higher and higher tax rates as the debt load deepens. The injections of debt-credit money are steadily increasing throughout the entire capitalist world.

All money should be issued directly by the nation - by the government - and not run through the books of the banks as a dole to the bankers and a debt to the people, thus throttling the overall economy through the toll of interest in the debt-profit system of loaning money.

As long as capitalism exists, it is obvious the debt can never be paid off, for then there would be no money in circulation. And any attempt to reduce it will bring a corresponding drop in the national prosperity. To get rid of debt the people must get rid of the profit system.

Deficit financing keeps capitalism running - but with mounting problems.
Capitalism's financial techniques are now based on a cycle of capital expansion with rising debt and inflation, with the ratio of debt tending
to increase.

As the injections of debt-credit money increase to astronomical figures,
inflation takes place, and the economy becomes increasingly unstable bringing economic insecurity to all. This intensifies the struggle between the wage earners to cover the high prices to life and their employers - the profit-takers - to keep up profits, causing every-rising inflation.

In spite of the growing instability of the capitalist economy, capitalist nations continue to attempt to keep the profit system running. But no matter whether they struggle to survive through a military program, cold-war economic tactics, foreign aid, East-West trade, or the welfare state with or without market controls - the debt problem will deepen.

To have a sound economy both goods and services and money should be issued and their value controlled by the government for the general welfare of the nation and its people.

- Elsa Peters Morse, "The Key to World Peace - and Plenty,"
Summit Press, San Francisco, 1960 -

[Speak2Truth]

Deficit financing keeps capitalism running - but with mounting problems.
Capitalism's financial techniques are now based on a cycle of capital expansion with rising debt and inflation, with the ratio of debt tending to increase.

This is where the posting falls apart. It is not the capitalist system that is indebting us, it is the unlawful printing of our currency by a private corporation that receives interest back on the mere printing of paper. Additionally, it is the seizure of our assets by politicians to use at their whim.

The capitalist system produces great prosperity for the whole people because goods become inexpensive and the expenses are borne by those who implement the services.

When Abraham Lincoln restored true, lawful capitalism and control of our currency, the enemies of free capitalism (and US prosperity) had something to say about it:

"If that mischievous financial policy, which had its origin in the North American Republic, should become indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without a debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized governments of the world. The brains and the wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed, or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe." - London Times

Look at who is working to indebt us: the Federal Reserve in collusion with our own politicians. Now you know who the enemies of your prosperity truly are.

Capitalism frees you to prosper and live in abundance.

They're actively taking that away from you, your employer and your nation. They're actively FORCING upon us the last stage of this progression...

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of
history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations
always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."

[Iolchan]

Well, We Disagree...

Iolchan wrote:

(Quoting Elsa Peters Morse:)


"Deficit financing keeps capitalism running - but with mounting problems. Capitalism's financial techniques are now based on a cycle of capital expansion with rising debt and inflation, with the ratio of debt tending to increase."

Speak2Truth wrote:

This is where the posting falls apart. It is not the capitalist system that is indebting us, it is the unlawful printing of our currency by a private corporation that receives interest back on the mere printing of paper. Additionally, it is the seizure of our assets by politicians to use at their whim.

The capitalist system produces great prosperity for the whole people because goods become inexpensive and the expenses are borne by those who implement the services.

O yes, it is the Capitalist System that is making Bond-slaves of us. And that is precisely the Heart of the Issue. The so-called "Capitalist System" has been in place since 1694 in the English-speaking world; ever since the establishment of the Bank of England.

To say the "capitalist system produces great prosperity for the whole people because goods become inexpensive and the expenses are borne by those who implement the services." is a most amazing statement. This might have been true at one time - when there was actually competition among many competing businesses for a piece of the Action. As recently as the early days in Silicon Valley, there was still a fair amount of this still happening; perhaps because it was a new, growth industry. But it is not often the case in today's world, when so many fields are ruled by Monopolies and Cartels.

Let us make a distinction, Vik Man, between the form of Capitalism that you favor - which is entrepreneurial, petit-bourgeois Private Enterprise, and the Beast that is Capitalism, in Reality. Most of us agree on this, really: the Family Farm, Ma & Pa Greasy Spoon Diners, Entrepreneurs, Inventors, Small Manufacturing Concerns, and the whole host & variety of Small businesses, that are commonly termed "private enterprise," are a Good thing. It is what used to be called "Americana" back in the old days before the Civil War. Since then, there has been an on-going War between Monopoly Cartel Capitalism & Finance Capitalism, on one hand, and, on the other - "Private Enterprise" - the paradigm of which you are so fond.

The Monopoly Cartels, working in tandem with the Wall Street and Philadelphia banks, interlocking with the Railroads, began waging a winning war on small holders and the forces of private enterprise during the Civil War. The big engines of Industrial Capitalism in America were consolidated during the Civil War. Railroads, Steel, and Industry were a prominent part of this combination at the time. The whole pile interlocked with five or six major Wall Street Banks. It still does. These Banks were termed the Money Trust, in a book written in 1913 by the elder Lindbergh, the congressman from Little Falls, Minnesota.

We must make distinctions here, Vik Man. Even as one can not categorize all "leftists" as fellow travelers - or dupes - of the "Communists," neither can one lump together all forms of Capitalism in one pile, and pronounce the whole stinking pile to be somehow, Sacred.

Nor have all forms of "left" Radicalism in America always intended the disruption of American Society or the breaking of the Middle Class. Populist Socialism - a Mid-western phenomenon, organized in the 'teens, 'twenties, and 'thirties of the last century a prolonged effort to save the Family Farm. The Non-Partisan League in the Dakotas, and the Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota opposed the depredations of Banker, & Cartel Capitalism.

Speak2Truth wrote:
When Abraham Lincoln restored true, lawful capitalism and control of our currency, the enemies of free capitalism (and US prosperity) had something to say about it:

"If that mischievous financial policy, which had its origin in the North American Republic, should become indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without a debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized governments of the world. The brains and the wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed, or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe."
- The London Times

Actually, the thing that Lincoln did, during the Civil War - printing 449 million dollars worth of Fiat, non-interest-bearing "Greenback Dollars" - was Radical, and Revolutionary. No previous president had ever done it - although Jefferson, at the end of the War of 1812 had written, in a letter to his friend James Madison, that it ought to be done. It was an epiphany that Jefferson had late in life; when it was too late for either either himself - or Madison - to implement.

For Lincoln to have done this, under the financial stress of the Civil War, was contrary to the whole course of his early career as a politician - for Lincoln began his political career, in 1830, as a "Henry Clay Whig." Henry Clay was an advocate of the Second Bank of the United States - which was a privately owned Joint-Stock Bank, like the Bank of England, or the Federal Reserve Bank.

For you to aver : "Lincoln restored true, lawful capitalism and control of our currency..."is really an amazing statement, Vik Man, and I can say, truly, that I've never heard it put that way before. If you think that dirigist, government "control of our currency" is the proper definition of "true, lawful capitalism," then I am somewhat bewildered as to how to proceed. On the one hand I could commend you and say,"Would that all people would think like you." On the other hand, I know a little about how the Real World actually works.

And in Reality, Capitalism - by definition - means a privately-owned joint-stock Central Bank; like the Bank of England, or the Federal Reserve Bank.

Now the quote from the London Times, from the 1860's, is good, Speak2Truth, and should get more circulation.To the best of my knowledge, the first time that quotation was included in a book was in the seminal work by Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Sr., "Banking, Currency, and the Money Trust."

Congressman Lindbergh, from Minnesota, and his colleague and ally, the Senator from Wisconsin, Robert LaFollette, Sr., were both excommunicated from the Republican Party during World War One, for the heresy of being against the War. In this, they resemble our contemporary, John Jenkel, of Graton. The books of the elder Lindbergh - all of them - were seized and burned, and the plates destroyed, under the orders of Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, in the Spring of 1918.

Mark Walter Evans

[Speak2Truth]

Wow, you're covering a lot of ground there!

Awright...

Capitalism: an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchangeof wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively orstate-owned means of wealth.

Yes, it's important to make distinctions. Capitalism can thrive quite nicely without all the other institutions that have been built by money-lenders to bleed away the gains produced by the capitalists. It was a change to capitalism and away from that other system that rescued the Jamestown colony from starvation and death, resulting in that colony's still-remembered Thanksgiving Feast.

Capitalism is freedom from bond-slavery, from others seizing the gains of one's own efforts.

What you're complaining about is not Capitalism - it is what has been DONE TO us to take away Capitalism.

The Federal Reserve is not Capitalism - it is a whole different scheme altogether. Government playing favorites in the corporate world, seizing the assets of some to hand to others, perhaps driving American oil drillers out of the Gulf to invite Brazil to come take our oil... that's not Capitalism.

The rivalry between Apple and Microsoft was Capitalism up until the point the government FORCED Microsoft to bail out Apple because of Apple's failed business practices.

Socialists are rather easy to define. Socialism is: a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

Once a person or group of people assumes the authority to control another person's stuff... they're not Capitalists, they're Socialists. And they deserve a swift kick in the arse while being shoved forcefully out the door.

[rossmen]

hate to be picky s-no-t, but you have confused pilgrims and the virginia company, an example of english proto capitalism. your other definitions are equally all your own. get together with your wording, or just be in your own teareality. plenty of company there, here you read silly!

Wow, you're covering a lot of ground there!

Awright...

Capitalism: an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchangeof wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively orstate-owned means of wealth.

Yes, it's important to make distinctions. Capitalism can thrive quite nicely without all the other institutions that have been built by money-lenders to bleed away the gains produced by the capitalists. It was a change to capitalism and away from that other system that rescued the Jamestown colony from starvation and death, resulting in that colony's still-remembered Thanksgiving Feast.

Capitalism is freedom from bond-slavery, from others seizing the gains of one's own efforts.

What you're complaining about is not Capitalism - it is what has been DONE TO us to take away Capitalism.

The Federal Reserve is not Capitalism - it is a whole different scheme altogether. Government playing favorites in the corporate world, seizing the assets of some to hand to others, perhaps driving American oil drillers out of the Gulf to invite Brazil to come take our oil... that's not Capitalism.

The rivalry between Apple and Microsoft was Capitalism up until the point the government FORCED Microsoft to bail out Apple because of Apple's failed business practices.

Socialists are rather easy to define. Socialism is: a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

Once a person or group of people assumes the authority to control another person's stuff... they're not Capitalists, they're Socialists. And they deserve a swift kick in the arse while being shoved forcefully out the door.

[Iolchan]

In Sum...

Iolchan wrote:

Q: To Whom Do We Owe IT;
This so-called "Debt?" ?

Iolchan wrote:

Waking Up Homeless


(by Mark Walter Evans)

- North Coast Xpress, December, 1994 -

The U.S. Congress has once again eased itself out of the annual budget crisis by raising the Debt ceiling. This means that the U.S. Treasury Department must print more interest-bearing bonds to borrow more credit-money from the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank, in order to finance the expensive operations of the Federal Government.

Despite much hoopla and Demo-Repub pie throwing that highlighted the supposed "differences" between the two major capitalist parties, the Republican-controlled Congress raised the Debt-ceiling while imposing a "balanced budget" in seven years upon the Democrat Clinton. This was to avert a more serious crisis; however the ultimate crisis can only be postponed.

In case you have not noticed, this crisis keeps returning every year, and every year the Debt spirals upward because the problem is inherent within the System itself. The present government of the United States is a bankrupt entity and no amount of borrowing or raising the Debt-ceiling up to the stars can hide that fact or prevent the inevitable breakdown. The real question is:

What can the people do when the ultimate budget-crisis occurs? The question itself may reveal a certain degree of political naivete, I know. It is very probable that the people, as a whole, can effect no positive changes in the System or alter the agenda that the capitalist class, and the international bankers and cartelists have already planned.

The Cover story of why the Fed was established - and the Reality of what was created are two different things. Furthermore, the FED was not created to borrow for us - it "Creates" Bank Credit and demand deposits out of thin air, and puts Us in hock to its wonderful stockholders in the process... It is "We the People" who must {because of the Federal Reserve System,} do the borrowing - from the FED. To let you in on a little secret; which is no Secret at all: the "National Debt" is the Property and Corporate Asset of the Stockholders of the Federal Reserve Bank.

Fact: The National Debt was only One {1} Billion Dollars in 1913; the Year that the legislation that "Created" the FED was passed.

Fact: By 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt came in, it stood at about Eighteen {18} Billion.

Fact: By 1940, when World War Two had begun, it had reached Fifty {50} Billion Dollars.

Fact: By the time World War Two was over, and F.D.R. died, the National Debt had risen to Two Hundred and Fifty {250} Billion dollars.

Question: Do you begin to see a pattern here? The growth of the National Debt from 1933- to 1945, was all done by "Keynesian Deficit Spending." That is what made all this "growth" possible: the phenomenon that economists refer to as "the float." Regarding John Meynard Keynes, himself - a little factoid: He was on the Board of Directors of the Bank of England. So his "Cover" as a so-called "Socialist Economist" was pretty much hogwash.

Actually, the Old Left always knew that the establishment of the Federal Reserve System, in 1914, represented a kind of bloodless financial coup by Wall Street over Constitutional money. That is the reason that Jerry Voorhis and Robert LaFollette Jr., two prominent old leftists with political clout on the Hill - who both wanted to Nationalize the Federal Reserve Bank - were booted out of office in 1946, by the instrumentality of two young Mob Lawyers fresh from the Navy and the South Pacific - Richard M. Nixon & Joe McCarthy - both of whom were financed by Big Money. Here is what Jerry Voorhis, a bona fide Old Leftist, wrote about the Federal Reserve:

Jerry Voorhis On The Federal Reserve:

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES SAYS:



"Congress shall have power to Coin money and regulate the value thereof."
Congress does no such thing, which is the heart of our trouble. Private banks
coin our money and regulate its value. In doing so they take from the government
and people of the United States a large chunk of their sovereignty, a large chunk
of the taxing power, and the key to a prosperous economy without inflation.
For example, in testimony before the Banking and Currency Committee
of the House of Representatives in 1935, Marriner Eccles,
then Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board itself, said:

"In purchasing offerings of Government bonds, the banking system as a whole
creates new money, or bank deposits. When the banks buy a billion dollars of
Government bonds as they are offered - and you have to consider the banking
system as a whole as a unit - the banks credit the deposit account of the
Treasury with a billion dollars. They debit their Government bond account a
billion dollars; or they actually create, by a bookkeeping entry, a billion dollars."

Mr. Eccles' statement is exactly as true today as when he made it.
Here is how it works : The private banking system of our country creates
our money in the form of demand deposits on the banks' books.
The reason it is able to do this is because no bank is required
to have in its vault anything like the amount of money
which its depositors think they have in the banks.

Banks are only required by the Federal Reserve System,
which the banks are sure they own, to have in their vaults
anywhere from $1 to $1.50 for every $10 of demand deposits on their books.
That is for every $1 or $1.50 which people - or the government -
deposit in a bank, the banking system can create out of thin air
and by the stroke of a pen some $10 of checkbook money or demand deposits.
It can lend all that $10 into circulation at interest just so long as it has the $1
or a little more in reserve to back it up.

This is, of course, the "fractional reserve system" of banking.
It is more or less controlled by the Federal Reserve System,
whose only stock is held by the private banks of the Federal Reserve System.
Not a single share of such stock is held by the government
or people of the United States, although if "national sovereignty"
means anything at all, these banks of issue should be the property
of the nation.

But what actually happens when our government engages in deficit financing?
The obvious way the government can get more buying power into the people's
hands is by itself putting more money into the stream of commerce than it takes
out in taxes. The tragedy of the situation is that, up to date, the only way our
government has enabled itself to spend more money than it takes in has been
by forcing this sovereign nation to borrow its own credit from private sources.

This has been true, despite the fact that if deficit financing accomplishes its
purpose at all it will increase production and trade, enhance tax revenues,
and broaden the base of government credit.

To the extent that government bonds are sold for cash to individuals,
or institutional purchasers other than banks,
the government is taking out of circulation approximately as many dollars
as it will put back in when it spends the money.

To accomplish its purpose, deficit financing must result in the creation
of new money, and the use of it to increase mass buying power.
Only if this happens will there be any stimulation of idle plants
to go back into production, or more employment.

Under these circumstances what ought to happen is that the credit
of this great nation should be drawn upon directly by the government,
not that it should go more deeply into debt.

For the credit of this or any nation is squarely based upon and derived from
the production of wealth by the nation plus the power of the government to tax.
A nation like the United States thus possesses an almost unlimited amount of credit.
Otherwise it could not possibly have persuaded investors to buy $480 billion
of government securities.

By whatever percentage it can be anticipated that production and hence potential
tax revenues will increase as a result of deficit spending, by that same amount
the credit of the nation and its government will be increased.
This same percentage of the volume of money previously in circulation should appear
on the books of the Treasury as a credit entry to be drawn upon just like tax revenues.
To do that would he nothing more than rational and proper bookkeeping.
It would also be morally right bookkeeping.
And it would make some sense of Mr. Nixon's
"Full employment budget" idea.

But this is not what happens at all. Instead the sovereign government
of the United States goes hat in hand to the private banking system
and asks it to create the new money that the economy needs.
The government gives - the word is used advisedly -
it gives to the banking system, including the Federal Reserve banks,
government bonds, the debt of all the people.
Interest-bearing bonds, that is,
bonds bearing as high an interest rate under today's regime
as the banks decide to demand. Else they won't buy the bonds.

The banks "buy" the bonds with newly created
demand deposit entries on their books - nothing more.
It is fountain-pen money and considerably more inflationary
than would be the same amount of dollar bills created by the government.
The deposits the banks create with which to own the people's debt
are backed by nothing except the bonds themselves!

In other words, they are backed by the credit of the American people.
What the government has "borrowed" from the banks,
what the people must for years pay interest on,
is nothing more nor less than the credit of the nation,
which obviously the nation possessed in the first
place or the bonds themselves would be no good!

At long last, a few years ago the Federal Reserve made tacit acknowledgment
of these facts. As a direct result of logical and relentless agitation by members
of Congress, led by Congressman Wright Patman
as well as by other competent monetary experts,
the Federal Reserve began to pay to the U.S. Treasury a considerable
part of its earnings from interest on government securities.
This was done without public notice and few people,
even today, {1973} know that is being done.

It was done, quite obviously, as acknowledgment that the Federal Reserve Banks
were acting on the one hand as a national bank of issue, creating the nation's money,
but on the other hand charging the nation interest on its own credit -
which no true national bank of issue could conceivably,
or with any show of justice, dare to do.

But this is only part of the story. And the less discouraging part, at that.
For where the commercial banks are concerned, there is no such repayment
of the people's money.

When the commercial banks create money, as they do when they acquire government
bonds, they levy a tax on every person in the United States. This is so because
every new dollar that is created makes every dollar previously in existence worth
somewhat less than it was worth before. This is the very heart of inflation.
It is also taxation without representation with a vengeance. Until this system is
changed, our debt will continue to skyrocket without limit and the fixing of debt
limits by the Congress will continue to be an exercise in utter futility.

More, Including
a Progressive Solution...

Iolchan wrote:

Jerry Voorhis On The Solution
To The Federal Reserve/Debt
Quandry
:

What ought to be done?

Iolchan wrote:
Amendment XXVIII & Apologia

Iolchan wrote:

Excerpts from:

The Key to World Peace - and Plenty,

by

Elsa Peters Morse

[Speak2Truth]

hate to be picky s-no-t, but you have confused pilgrims and the virginia company, an example of english proto capitalism. your other definitions are equally all your own. get together with your wording, or just be in your own teareality. plenty of company there, here you read silly!

I don't think so.

The people sent to the Jamestown colony lived under enforced Socialism. That's why they starved. The Governor, having observed the destructive force of collectivism, changed things for the better by instituting Capitalism, which was the private, rather than collective, ownership of the product of labor. Here's more...

Private Property Saved Jamestown, And With It, America
https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8236

Collectivism created starvation in Jamestown. Switch to Capitalism saved the colony, producing prosperity.
https://steeplemedia.com/blogs/son_o...iled-once.aspx

The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tired sundry years ... that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing -- as if they were wiser than God.
...
For this community [so far it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for others men's wives and children without recompense ... that was thought injustice.

This is the real problem with seizing the fruit of a man's labor to redistribute to others - it destroys incentive. That's just human nature. It takes away the incentive to produce in abundance, a quality best nurtured by simply leaving a man in control of what he produces and leaving him free to sell or barter to others. That's what ultimately saved Jamestown:

Dale's most important reform was to institute private property. He allotted every man three acres of land and freed them to work for themselves. And then, the Virginia historian Matthew Page Andrews wrote, "As soon as the settlers were thrown upon their own resources, and each freeman had acquired the right of owning property, the colonists quickly developed what became the distinguishing characteristic of Americans – an aptitude for all kinds of craftsmanship coupled with an innate genius for experimentation and invention."

John Rolfe, the husband of Pocahontas, said that once private property was instituted, men could engage in "gathering and reaping the fruits of their labors with much joy and comfort." The Jamestown colony became a success, and people from all over Europe flocked to America.

This was an example to the Founders of the USA, among many other examples, that inspired them to prohibit collectivism and ensure protection of private property Rights.

"The utopian schemes of leveling [redistribution of wealth], and a community of goods, are as visionary and impracticable as those that vest all property in the Crown. [These ideas] are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government, unconstitutional." - Samuel Adams

[rossmen]

both these sites are political with revisionist history containing very little actual information about the first two english colonies. no wonder you confuse jamestown and pilgrims. your definitions of capitalism and socialism are superficial, essentially meaningless. the knowledge base you use to make your points is so limited that i'm not sure you can understand the other people writing with you.

I don't think so.

The people sent to the Jamestown colony lived under enforced Socialism. That's why they starved. The Governor, having observed the destructive force of collectivism, changed things for the better by instituting Capitalism, which was the private, rather than collective, ownership of the product of labor. Here's more...

Private Property Saved Jamestown, And With It, America
https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8236

Collectivism created starvation in Jamestown. Switch to Capitalism saved the colony, producing prosperity.
https://steeplemedia.com/blogs/son_o...iled-once.aspx

The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tired sundry years ... that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing -- as if they were wiser than God.
...
For this community [so far it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for others men's wives and children without recompense ... that was thought injustice.

This is the real problem with seizing the fruit of a man's labor to redistribute to others - it destroys incentive. That's just human nature. It takes away the incentive to produce in abundance, a quality best nurtured by simply leaving a man in control of what he produces and leaving him free to sell or barter to others. That's what ultimately saved Jamestown:

Dale's most important reform was to institute private property. He allotted every man three acres of land and freed them to work for themselves. And then, the Virginia historian Matthew Page Andrews wrote, "As soon as the settlers were thrown upon their own resources, and each freeman had acquired the right of owning property, the colonists quickly developed what became the distinguishing characteristic of Americans – an aptitude for all kinds of craftsmanship coupled with an innate genius for experimentation and invention."

John Rolfe, the husband of Pocahontas, said that once private property was instituted, men could engage in "gathering and reaping the fruits of their labors with much joy and comfort." The Jamestown colony became a success, and people from all over Europe flocked to America.

This was an example to the Founders of the USA, among many other examples, that inspired them to prohibit collectivism and ensure protection of private property Rights.

"The utopian schemes of leveling [redistribution of wealth], and a community of goods, are as visionary and impracticable as those that vest all property in the Crown. [These ideas] are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government, unconstitutional." - Samuel Adams

[Thad]

I don't think so.

The people sent to the Jamestown colony lived under enforced Socialism. That's why they starved. The Governor, having observed the destructive force of collectivism, changed things for the better by instituting Capitalism, which was the private, rather than collective, ownership of the product of labor. Here's more...

Private Property Saved Jamestown, And With It, America

America was quite fine for the past 10,000 years before the creeping crud settled , America was ruined when the Europeans arrived.

Tribal Society is the best way to grow Children.

[Shake]

Forget the details gents. There is, and never has been, a truely free society nor a truely socialist society. The simple evidence of life around us clearly supports the notion that individuals left to their own peaceful pursuits will benefit others (as well themselves) to a far greater degree than any government forced "system" ever could, and it's so obvious that is not even debatable (IMO)

A socialist system can only be "successful" to the extent that they allow, or turn a blind eye to the natural capitalist actions of human beings. I am in the great "socialist" experiment that is Vietnam at this very minute as I type this and there is wonderful private, free market activity all around propping up the morally bankrupt regime even as the gov't takes credit for it all- LOL!!!

That said, I completely support voluntary socialism. Let's all take care of each other because we like each other!

[Iolchan]

Shake wrote:

Forget the details gents. There is, and never has been, a truely free society nor a truely socialist society. The simple evidence of life around us clearly supports the notion that individuals left to their own peaceful pursuits will benefit others (as well themselves) to a far greater degree than any government forced "system" ever could, and it's so obvious that is not even debatable (IMO)

A socialist system can only be "successful" to the extent that they allow, or turn a blind eye to the natural capitalist actions of human beings. I am in the great "socialist" experiment that is Vietnam at this very minute as I type this and there is wonderful private, free market activity all around propping up the morally bankrupt regime even as the gov't takes credit for it all- LOL!!!

That said, I completely support voluntary socialism. Let's all take care of each other because we like each other!

I love this. It reminds me of this:



Populist Socialism Reconsidered


( Revised, by the Author; from 1992)

The late Max Scherr, editor of the Berkeley Barb, holding court in the Mediterraneum coffee house in the '60s, used to maintain that there were roughly eight different kinds of Socialism in the American political experience. He maintained that even the John Birch Society held positions that were, unconsciously, Socialist. While Max was pontificating to the Capuchino Brigade, the Black Panther Party was receiving the brunt of the F.B.I. Co-Intel-Pro operation attacks during the late 'Sixties and early 'Seventies.

But the form of Socialism in America that historically received the most deadly treatment of any Third Party movement in American history - even to the suppression of their literature* and subsequent history - was the Movement which grew out of the Non-Partisan League, in North Dakota, which crossed the state line and morphed into the Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota. This is ironic, because the League was not an armed movement.

The Non-Partisan League, like Jazz, was a purely American accident. As Jazz was a melding of Cajun (Acadian, Scotch-Irish, and French) fiddle music with Afro-American field hollers and African thumb-harp music in the melting pot of Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi River, so the League was a product, in the upper Mississippi Valley, of the miscegenation of an indigenous American; Jeffersonian radicalism descended from the American Revolution, with the first wave of socialist ideas from Europe that penetrated North America, blowing into the Mid-west around the 1880s.

In the Prairie Socialism of the Non-Partisan League and the Farmer-Labor Party, traditional, western, Jacksonian Concerns about the Control of Credit and Money, that had remained in the terrain of the Prairie states, as concerns inherited from the times of the Whigs and the Jacobins, surfaced. In the Farmer-Labor Ideology, the two radical American political traditions of the nineteenth century - Jeffersonian Radicalism, and Lincoln Greenback Radicalism merged together - and then, mingled again with the "Class-Consciousness" found in the social doctrines of German Social-Democrats, and English Fabian-Socialists, whose organizers crossed the Atlantic, and spread their teachings in America beginning in the 'eighties of the nineteenth century. This marriage produced a unique hybrid, known, academically, by the name, "Populist-Socialism."

This was before the term "Socialism" had become such a dirty word to the Masses in America. It was Lenin and Stalin, and their co-workers, who accomplished that.

The League, first organized in 1915 in North Dakota by several socialist organizers who had left the Socialist Party because it did not adequately address the needs of the farmers, organized quietly and almost unnoticed for several months. Formulating a Five-Point Platform, the League, as a "non-party" Party, vowed to support any candidate of any party who would support their Platform and to work against any candidate who would deny or oppose their Platform.

The Platform, which called for State-owned grain elevators, a State Bank, and State-owned hail and fire insurance companies (for the spring wheat) was clearly the reflection of the agrarian concerns of the farmers of North Dakota. It was also the most Revolutionary and Radical State Platform that has ever been formulated, drafted, and effectively enacted into Law - and into Realization - in the whole course of all American history.

From inauspicious beginnings in the mind of single individual, a failed flax farmer named A.C. Townley, "with an idea and a Ford," in the sub-zero tundra of North Dakota in the winter of 1915, the Non-Partisan League grew and organized, and quickly became a force.

A marvelous book, entitled Political Prairie-Fire, by Robert Morlan, published by the Minnesota Historical Society, is must reading for all organizers who would learn the secrets of the amazing growth of this movement. The black and white art film "NORTHERN LIGHTS" also takes you there.

What is Socialism?

The root of the word Socialism comes from the Latin Socius, meaning 'friend' and 'neighbor,' and derives from the time before the Roman Republic (until roughly 75O B.C.) when the people of Latvium, living in extended families, were a classless society of Yeomen. They were farmers who helped each other in time of need. Thus, primitive, grassroots Socialism, does contains within itself the spiritual principle of loving your neighbor as yourself, which is the essence of all true religion.

Authentic, local Socialism is something that individual people participate in; not wait for a Lenin or a Stalin to impose upon them. It is voluntary. Thus, it resembles the scene in the film "WITNESS" where the Amish farmers get together to raise a Barn in a single day. The principle at work here is called Mutual Aid.

Authentic Socialism would entail a return to an egalitarian society, where the social, cultural, and institutional mechanisms that perpetuate inequality, oppression & chauvinism, have been eliminated from the systemic functioning of human institutions. Populist Socialism believes, intrinsically, both in private enterprise, and in land tenure vested in families. It was a movement whose roots grew out of American soil, having its base amongst farmers, who were passionately concerned with retaining their farms, and passing them on to their children.

As the Commentary on the 1934 Farmer-Labor Party Platform, stated, "Farmer-Labor Platform Seeks not "Confiscation" but "Redistribution" - the argument being made that every nuclear family should have some acreage - a Family Farm - to sustain themselves on. {Four Acres of arable Land, per couple, is actually doable in the Present, balancing the current population of the Earth with the available Land on the Planet.}

Authentic, Ideal Socialism, is not Bolshevism, Stalinism, Nazism, or Maoism - which are all undeniably evil movements which called themselves "Socialist," and which actively practiced mass-murder on folks who wouldn't march lock-step with their programs. All of these movements contributed to the Negation of Freedom and Dignity, and murdered scores of millions of souls in the Twentieth Century.

Each of those evil forms of 'Socialism' were sponsored by the Masters of Capital, on both sides of "the pond." The owners of the cartel monopolies always continued to do plenty of business with the dictators who managed these evil slave plantations which were set up by the capitalists - both to exploit the industry and raw materials, human & mineral, of the nations in which these experimental "systems" were established, as cultures in so many Petrie dishes, and - ultimately, to discredit the Idea of Socialism, itself. It was an elegant solution, indeed.

Today, the chief economic institutions that perpetuate the inequities of the class system are these same Multi-national Cartels: Industrial, Pharmaceutical, and substance: Grain, Oil, Diamonds, Steel, Gold, Silver, Nickel, Copper, Tin, Tungsten, et cetera... But especially the Banking Cartels, which have appropriated unto themselves the power to create Credit out of thin air.

The Central Banks in the West function as fronts for rich and powerful families who own the controlling stock - the "Class A" stock - of Prime Banks. The Prime Banks in England and America serve as the Capital pool for the World Bank, and the I.M.F.

Since the control of Credit has been privatized, the U.S. Government perpetuates a System where a few families are allowed to pass on to their heirs Bank-Stock that collects tidy dividends from the international debt of every nation.

To the Non-Partisan Leaguers, and the early Farmer-Laborites, the obvious first step towards achieving the "Cooperative Commonwealth," the concept popularized in Edward Bellamy's book Looking Backward, was to nationalize Credit, and create a Public Central Bank, open and accountable to the People. These folks envisioned a Treasury of Common Wealth so open to the People, that a Town Hall meeting could be held in the inner sanctum.

This same vision could possibly become the seed for a potential, non-violent, Gandhian, Town Hall, Reform movement in America, in the Present, with the twin aims of Monetary Reform and Land Reform.

During the First World War, League candidates, Robert LaFollette, Sr., and Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., along with Eugene Debs, took a principled stand against American involvement in the war and braved rotten eggs and tomatoes, and sometimes bullets and imprisonment, as well as tarring and feathering.

[ This is the kind of fervor and courage that we need to be inspired with today, after years of BushLeague Fascism, and its continuance, in Obama administration Neo-Liberal Fascism, and post-Neo-Con Empire-building madness.]

The elder Lindbergh was considered the chief economic theoretician of the League and of the early Farmer-Labor Party, which, by 1932, had grown to become the largest radical-left third party ever to appear in American history, let alone the 20th century. It was fully 15% of the entire electorate, at the height of the Movement, in 1934-5.

In the election of 1916, the League captured control of the Republican Party in North Dakota, elected the legislature, and elected their candidate as governor in North Dakota. In a single session of the State Legislature, they enacted all five planks of the Platform of "State Socialism," including the foundation of the State-owned Bank of North Dakota, which continues to this day. The New York Times wrote in 1918, in genuine trepidation, of "Bolshevism on the Prairie."

Today the times have changed. Many of the issues have changed, though some remain. The Private Banking industry still lends fictitious "Credit" to people, hypothecated on Real Estate as collateral. Agribusiness, International Finance, and the Grain Cartels are certainly still around and have virtually eliminated the Family Farm and the small farmers, who were the basic interest group who organized the League and were fully half of the Farmer-Labor Party.

Crucial lessons may yet be gleaned both from the amazing organizational acuity - and the
subsequent pitfalls of this movement.

Could a five-point platform today, as the basis for non-violent, revolutionary political change on a national and global level, address the pressing needs all the common people in North America - and indeed all the people of the World? Could such a Movement take state power in the United States today?

That is the Question.

The following five-point program could be a possible Agenda for a Coast-to-Coast Non-Partisan League in the present:

1. The Government, of the People, for the People, and by the People, should issue sufficient non-interest bearing U.S. notes to purchase back the capital stock of the Federal Reserve Bank from its current private owners. In agreement with Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5, of the U.S. Constitution, henceforth the Government of the People should control its own credit and cease issuing interest-bearing notes, bonds, and securities. Pension-fund, and Ma and Pa and holders of U.S. Savings bonds should be paid off in full, but no bank or trust company holding securities against the U.S. Government debt shall be paid more than Seven Per Cent in full, on the bonded indebtedness of the face value of the U.S. Treasury Certificates they were holding, when the Debt-Repudiation finally takes place.

It must take place, Citizens ! We must Force it on Congress, if it is the Last thing we do.

2. The American People should move for immediate legislation to cancel All fictitious International "Debt" owed by any nation - including this nation - to the Prime Banks of the First World. And to Declare, Collectively, in chanting, resonant Unison, that the Year 2012 shall be, not only the Day of Reckoning: but also, the Year of Jubilee - for the release of all nations from the bondage of debt to the international commercial banks.

3. We should also move to take decisive steps to dismantle the military budget & press towards immediate peace-time conversion of the industrial sector towards the pressing needs of our own decaying infrastructure and millions of homeless citizens, needy families and also, increasing numbers of newly-needy elderly.

4. The People must consider and address the issue of Land Reform, and Move, to Liberate the millions of acres that were fraudulently given to the Railroad corporations in violation of the Homestead Act of 1862, as well as the additional millions of acres that were swindled by the timber barons by fraud, - again, in violation of the Homestead Act of 1862 - which theft, is described in the book, Looters of the Public Domain, by Steven D. Puter.

These lands should be made available for Homesteading to every American who wants a Homestead. A just and reasonable Portion is Four Acres per Couple. Furthermore, we should endeavor to provide Just Compensation - in land, not money - for lands stolen from all the tribes of Native Americans.

5. The People must begin the painful process of learning how to live on the earth in a manner that does not destroy it. We must learn again the ancient rhythms of seed-time and of harvest. We must strive to create a sustainable civilization upon the earth, in the World-After-Oil. This last point is both a turning inward, and a return to ancestral patterns that existed before the invention of the internal combustion engine and the automobile. It is a point that can only be done by each and every individual him or herself. It is, nevertheless, highly political. UN-Agenda21 does not want us to live in rural areas. We, the People, however, must Insist that We Must. Thus, Land Reform, the Slogan being "Four Acres and a Tax-break" is the Genuine Arena of the Authentic Revolution, in the Present.

- Mark Walter Evans -


- Published in the North Coast Xpress, 1992 -
and amended, August, 2011

Creative Commons @ Mark Walter Evans, 2007.

* Footnote:

During the period from Labor Day of 1934, until the end of 1935, a schism developed within the Farmer-Labor Party itself that became known as the Townley-Liggett Revolt. During the Winter of 1935=1936, the protagonist, Walter W. Liggett, was killed with a machine-gun, in Minneapolis. I wrote about this history in a trilogy of articles, An Old Triangle, Down the Hall of Mirrors, and Putting it all Together.

[ The first of which was published in the North Coast Xpress in April of 1997. Subsequently, Michael Parenti, who, ironically, is on the Board of Directors of Project Censored, was instrumental in causing the Editor, Doret Kollerer, to not publish the two subsequent articles in her (then) bi-monthly,the North Coast Xpress. Subsequently, in the Spring of 2007, this author encountered a very high incidence of hacking - and next-day removal of these articles whenever this one {me-uns} attempted to post this Trilogy of articles on Indymedia websites around the Country. Notably, on the Indymedia websites in New York City, Minneapolis/Twin Cities, & Washington, D.C.]

From the Calverton Papers, at the 42nd Street library, Marda Liggett Woodbury found a letter to V.F. "George" Calverton from Edith Liggett dated Feb 3, 1936, stating:

"...Incidentally, A.C. Townley warned me about this being run over. He said there isn't a Chinaman's chance of my being shot - but he showed me a long list of anti-Olson Farmer-Laborites who in the past six months have strangely happened to be run over or have their cars wrecked or thrown in the ditch by state Highway department cars..."

To my knowledge, no one has ever recorded this aspect of the Townley-Liggett revolt in any book, except Stopping the Presses, the book my mother wrote. And I, who am merely the bearer of a family tradition, am left alone to tell you of this "long list" of unsolved highway murders; incidents of a hit-and-run nature; and incidents of cars being driven by old "Wheel-horses" (of the Non-Partisan League days who were among the activists in the Insurgency,) being made to run off the road into embankments of snow, or being made to skid, while crossing frozen, brittle iron bridges, by Minnesota State Highway Trucks, being driven by governor Floyd B. Olson's own apparatchiks; his left-cover Corpos.

There was not only a bloody purge of an Insurgent Revolt in the Farmer-Labor Party, but there was also the suppression of the History & literature of - and about - this Insurgency. My grandfather's newspaper, "The Mid-West American" was also purged out of the Library of Congress. At least, when I finally arrived there, in the Spring of '86, it had been removed. It was Absent - and there was No Record of it ever having been there.

The Mid-West American, was essentially the primary Journalism within the Insurgency known as the Townley-Liggett Revolt. The Editor, Walter W. Liggett, stated repeatedly, that he sent his weekly newspaper to every member of Congress, and every Senator - at his own expense, in frank and coin. I'm sure he did not omit to send a copy every week to the Library of Congress itself.

The run of the Insurgency was, essentially, from Labor Day in '34, until the time of my grandfather's Assassination on December 9, 1935. He had been one of the founders of the Movement that began as the Non-Partisan League; (1915 to 1922) that developed into the Farmer- Labor Party of Minnesota.]

- Mark Walter Evans

[Hotspring 44]

...5. The People must begin the painful process of learning how to live on the earth in a manner that does not destroy it. We must learn again the ancient rhythms of seed-time and of harvest. We must strive to create a sustainable civilization upon the earth, in the World-After-Oil. This last point is both a turning inward, and a return to ancestral patterns that existed before the invention of the internal combustion engine and the automobile. It is a point that can only be done by each and every individual him or herself. It is, nevertheless, highly political. UN-Agenda21 does not want us to live in rural ares. We, however, Insist that We Must.

- Mark Walter Evans -


- Published in the North Coast Xpress, 1992 -

Creative Commons @ Mark Walter Evans, 2007.

some "info" (links) RE: UN-Agenda21 with a local twist covered in one of the links:
THE NORTH BAY BOHEMIAN NEWSPAPER DID A SMEAR ARTICLE ON ROSA KOIRE ON JUNE 15, 2011

Post-sustainability: the condition of environmental, political, social, and economic systems after the imposition of Communitarianism.

"Here's something you may not have heard of yet:
A one trillion dollar federal program to enable local governments to purchase vacant residential, commercial, and industrial properties from banks and demolish them. Why?": (https://www.democratsagainstunagenda...1-and-you.html)



SOUNDS LIKE SCIENCE FICTION...OR SOME CONSPIRACY THEORY...BUT IT ISN'T.

[Speak2Truth]

both these sites are political with revisionist history containing very little actual information about the first two english colonies. no wonder you confuse jamestown and pilgrims. your definitions of capitalism and socialism are superficial, essentially meaningless. the knowledge base you use to make your points is so limited that i'm not sure you can understand the other people writing with you.

See, it's nice of you to say all that but what I did is present the FACTS regarding what happened at the Jamestown colony. I am using words according to their definitions, which can be quite easily found at Dictionary.com

Voluntary communal living is not Socialism. By definition. If I share some stuff with whomever I choose, that's a good thing, so long as it is voluntary, and it reflects true Christianity. If you read up on how Jesus prescribed people should live among one another you'll find it is just that - being good and helpful to one another and sharing with those less fortunate.

Unfortunately, Socialism is something shaped by the likes of scum like Karl Marx, who was most interested in fomenting a violent revolution to overthrow existing systems in order to build a communal control of goods - with himself in charge of those goods. He proposed this enforced seizure and redistribution of goods, this Socialism, because he absolutely hated to work. He just wanted to get his hands on other people's stuff. He was a moocher angrily disappointed that "marrying up" did not result in his Mother-in-law's wealth flowing down.

I appreciate the historical information provided by Iolchan. It's good stuff. However, I am using the word "Socialism" as it is defined and practiced. It is State control over the means of production and distribution of wealth, essentially using force to compel people to hand over their goods to bureaucratic masters who can then divvy up the spoils as they see fit. That brought ruin and starvation to Jamestown. Capitalism, in which the laborer actually owns the product of his labor, produced prosperity.

Let's not try to put a warm, fuzzy glow around Socialism by confusing it with "voluntary sharing". It isn't.

[Speak2Truth]

3. We should also move to take decisive steps to dismantle the military budget & press towards immediate peace-time conversion of the industrial sector towards the pressing needs of our own decaying infrastructure and millions of homeless citizens, needy families and also, increasing numbers of newly-needy elderly.

Those who beat their swords into plowshares end up plowing for those who do not.

What if this idea was set in stone 100 years ago? Which flag would fly over our capitol today - the NAZI or Japanese?

Do we imagine that ambitious conquerors are a thing of the past - while ignoring Islamist Iran's weapons transfers to nations south of our border and hostile invaders crossing our own borders to seize control of US soil?

This notion must be rejected outright for it assumes the world has become safe for a prosperous and DEFENSELESS USA. No chance.

The rest of the ideas are interesting - especially removing land from Federal control. Give The People access to harvest the minerals and resources and make productive use of the land.

As to the idea of living with nature... do we really have few enough humans to be able to do that? Or, would the human population have to be pared down considerably to fulfill the vision of the Georgia Guidestones?

https://www.thegeorgiaguidestones.com/Message.htm

1. MAINTAIN HUMANITY UNDER 500,000,000 IN PERPETUAL BALANCE WITH NATURE

Really, who is going to handle the job of getting humanity down to that number? Ambitious Leftists have murdered over a hundred million humans in the past century yet failed to murder enough to accomplish this vision - people invariably ended up fighting for their own Right to Life.

It makes sense that people should be educated into limiting their own population, voluntarily, to prevent the Easter Island disaster from being repeated on a global scale. Do you see ANY likelihood the entire planet's population can be convinced of the necessity of this? I say no. Therefore, that goal requires mass murder. Are you prepared to pull the trigger on innocent men, women and children to fulfill that grand "living with nature" vision? I'm not.

I have a Natural Right to use whatever force is necessary to defend my person and my property against those who would threaten either. So do you. If you feel it is worth killing people to achieve that grand vision, you could volunteer to take personal action to get one person closer to the goals of that human population reduction.

[rossmen]

one of your silly political citation's compares indentured servitude to socialism. the other compares religious refugees and their effort to live by their belief to socialism. yes i understand the one dictionary definition of socialism you cited. the meaning of this word has been expanded by the political hashing you seem so fond of. you can call any modern mainstream usa pol you want a socialist, and this is another meaning of the word. i have no interest in arguing the meaning of words. when someone like you plays with the meaning of words to count political coup i get irritated. because you are silly, you make no sense, and you want us to take you seriously! a new word i just learned; idiocracy!

See, it's nice of you to say all that but what I did is present the FACTS regarding what happened at the Jamestown colony. I am using words according to their definitions, which can be quite easily found at Dictionary.com

Voluntary communal living is not Socialism. By definition. If I share some stuff with whomever I choose, that's a good thing, so long as it is voluntary, and it reflects true Christianity. If you read up on how Jesus prescribed people should live among one another you'll find it is just that - being good and helpful to one another and sharing with those less fortunate.

Unfortunately, Socialism is something shaped by the likes of scum like Karl Marx, who was most interested in fomenting a violent revolution to overthrow existing systems in order to build a communal control of goods - with himself in charge of those goods. He proposed this enforced seizure and redistribution of goods, this Socialism, because he absolutely hated to work. He just wanted to get his hands on other people's stuff. He was a moocher angrily disappointed that "marrying up" did not result in his Mother-in-law's wealth flowing down.

I appreciate the historical information provided by Iolchan. It's good stuff. However, I am using the word "Socialism" as it is defined and practiced. It is State control over the means of production and distribution of wealth, essentially using force to compel people to hand over their goods to bureaucratic masters who can then divvy up the spoils as they see fit. That brought ruin and starvation to Jamestown. Capitalism, in which the laborer actually owns the product of his labor, produced prosperity.

Let's not try to put a warm, fuzzy glow around Socialism by confusing it with "voluntary sharing". It isn't.