“Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer! Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.”
It is true that history repeats itself, and now we have come full circle, again.
The Sunday Telegram (Worcester, MA) of June 24 had a front page regarding the investment returns of state employees, and the front page of the Business section was about the loss of the American Dream and the rising rates of foreclosures. My goal is to show you how these two events are historically and mathematically related, and why planes fly into banks. The events of 9/11, the ultra-cost of paranoid security, and the impossible situation for young people who are being preyed upon by lenders, universities, mortgage companies, corporations and even their own parents is creating a marketplace that is not sustainable. Unlike colonial times, however, there is no King to blame. The only people we can blame is ourselves.
The simplest way to understand the problem is that the central bank both creates a national currency and devalues the currency by the way it manages it. Since taxes are to be paid in the same currency, the perpetual burden of inflation is placed on the working people. All the efficiency in the world fails, and eventually the best and only job available is to work for the government, either directly or indirectly. Numbers have become so overwhelmingly important that we manufacture goods just to throw them away.
The government swells as the people get progressively poorer, creating two distinct classes of people and two types of buildings. We have buildings to hold large groups, but not for people to live in. Government workers have pensions, health insurance, and cost of living increases, while the working people are ever burdened with paying for these benefits. The working people lose their houses while government workers and suppliers plan early retirement and purchase a second home. The government eventually becomes an advocate for idle gluttony, supporting infrastructure improvements for golf courses, ball parks, dinner and art districts. Taking care of the rich becomes the only industry available, which eventually leads to men like Donald Trump building luxury condominiums and casinos. The private sector becomes corrupted by the public sector.
Inflation, however, provides no escape, even for the rich. Their high lifestyle comes with a high overhead, and it is as impossible to maintain a rich lifestyle as it is a poor one. Inflation eats everyone alive, rich and poor, but the burden falls disproportionately on the poorest.
Fraud makes the situation worse, but that is just the rich stealing from the rich. It is the expectations behind the fraud that is a farce. People want to believe that 2+2=5 when they invest (boom), and are surprised to discover that 5=2+2 as well (bust.) Math has no mercy, and the formula in your favor also works against you. Whatever gain is made must come at someone else’s expense, and eventually it will be made at your or your children’s expense.
Profit is a system of cost-shifting, not a system of trade. It is our failure to trade that creates a situation where planes fly into the misnamed “trade” building. Even the United Nations is built around the concept of profit, intellectual property and the bias of rich nations. It represents a political farce layered upon a mathematical farce, the same as for national and state governments.
The gap between the rich and the poor is not a mystery; the system itself creates both the consolidation of wealth as well as the inflation. Both results are hard-wired into the currency system and the situation has reappeared here because the US Constitution recreated the same financial attributes as the previous constitutional monarch. The perpetual budget crisis is a world-wide and historical phenomenon because money has always been understood, coined, and used in the same predatory way for profit, rather than for trade.
Fraud is telling a lie. A farce is believing a lie, thinking it is true. There is no one person to blame, we are all participants in the farce. The faith in profit is the same as the faith in a King as superior to all men was previously. Profit, taxes and inflation are all intimately linked. Each one drives the other.
Our problems do require intellectual rigor and moral courage to solve. Fortunately, history also repeats itself in a positive regard, too. We can have a renaissance; the choice is ours. We must simply combine our compassion with the correct strategy.
Many are living in Hell right now, and there is a good chance that many of us will be going to Hell, too, and taking our children with us, as we teach and engage in profit-taking, capital gains, interest and usury. The children both pay for and repeat the sins of their fathers. Funny how that works, eh? The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The first lie ever told was to eat the apple, the second lie ever told was to sell them for profit.
As Isaiah wrote, “If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land, but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.”
Once a problem is properly diagnosed it is easy to fix. Unfortunately, our new Governor in Massachusetts, like leaders and entrepreneurs before him, has not made any choices that indicates he understands the problem.
