How many of you enjoy paying taxes? I don’t see any hands raised. Most of you who are the audience for my writings are Democrats, Liberals, and/or Progressives. If you’re like me you’ve always had difficulty in convincing people that income taxes are the dues we pay for living in the greatest country in the world. Even that doesn’t cheer up a fellow taxpayer. It doesn’t really cheer me up.
What is the deal with taxes? Do we need to pay them at all? Lots of folks already protest and refuse to pay. The rest of us usually consider them malcontents. Some of them even go to jail. After reading “Web of Debt” by Ellen Hodgson Brown, I am sorely tempted to join the protest.
According to Brown and many historians and economists, most taxes are unnecessary if we do what Thomas Jefferson recommended. Jefferson wanted the United States government to manage and print the currency of this country rather than being stuck on a commodity standard with private concerns in charge of decisions. In other words, if the government would control the money supply, the government would be able to run on the income generated by that activity. No taxes!
At this point, the government prints currency at the direction of the Federal Reserve. The Fed is a private corporation controlled by private investors…bankers. In addition to controlling printed money, the Fed creates bookkeeping entries that make up 97% of our “money supply”. This portion of the money supply is folded into what is called M3. This made up money is what we use rather than having our money tied to a commodity like gold. It’s also why we have to pay taxes – so that the bankers can keep creating money from nothing that we pay for in our efforts.
The government, in our system, is ostensibly the people. Would you rather have us controlling the money supply or would you prefer leaving it to bankers, speculators, and gamblers? If we, the people, via our government control the currency, we won’t need taxes. The biggest scam in U. S. history is not Madoff or any other single investor/speculator. The biggest scam ever is that foisted upon the people of the U. S. and the rest of the world by bankers in the Ponzi scheme called central banking.
The simple cost to print our currency runs about four cents per bill. The Fed pays the government that cost. Everything else is theirs to use. What a deal! Would you take it? I would. The difference is that the banker-speculators are in the game to create scarcity, competition, and inflated wealth for the very few. If another small percentage of people get wealthy through some fluke, well, that’s OK as long as the masses remain under control.
As Americans, our national dream was one of abundance and wealth for the greatest number. We have been seduced by the notion that any one of us can be a rich person if we wish. That idea is incredibly naïve. The playing field is so slanted that only a relative few can do so while the great majority will only get by while squabbling about free will, free markets, and free lunches.
Where there is apparent scarcity, there will always be people who have to fail no matter how hard they work. The game is musical chairs – there will always be fewer chairs than are appropriate for the common good. In abundance there is true prosperity for those who wish to work and share.
One solution to our current dilemma is to bail out our government, that is, bail out we the people. Take back the functions of the Federal Reserve. Continue to coin money as we do now. Start managing our own currency in addition to simply printing it. Manage the remaining bookkeeping and realize the abundance of those activities that are now reserved to the fat cats. Based on what we are seeing in the financial sector, I can’t believe we would do worse.
I hope that many of us read Brown’s book. If you can convince me that her ideas are wrong, please do so. I’d really like to see an alternative that increases prosperity for the rest of us and the rest of the peoples of the world while respecting the planet.
