Bgrinna,

I have to admit I’m a bit of an idiot savant, when it comes to understanding the world. I’ve spent my life working on various farms, mostly with horses and read as a habit. I long ago realized the details are infinite and so I realized that if I understand the processes and patterns, they would explain the details.

With a field like economics, I know there are very many people who have spent lifetimes studying the details and trying to make sense of them, so I’m at best a generalist.

71 was a consequential year, as the post war growth peaked out. The reasons were many, but going off the gold standard was more an effect of inflation, than a cause. Johnson funded the Vietman War and the Great Society on loose money, so it was already baked in the cake.

My primary argument about money is that what it really is, is a contract and the whole gold versus fiat debate only obscures the problem. Whether it’s legally backed by a commodity, or simply government debt/promises, it is still a voucher system. So when we view it as a commodity, then the assumption becomes that it is something that can be owned, as private property, rather than the public utility it actually is.

This isn’t socialism, but a simple fact of operation. Markets need money to circulate, so when we are constantly trying to take it out and save it, then ever more has to be added and the speculative bubble of precariously invested money grows ever larger.

Think of it as a road. You can have the most expensive car on the road, but you don’t own the road. When we assume money to be private property, this creates a situation where positive feedback draws this stored money into large pools, giving those with the most the power to gather ever more, as well as turn the whole economy into the production of this notational wealth and money goes from being a tool(voucher system) which enables mass societies to function to being its god.

Possibly a useful analogy is that money serves as a lubricant to the engine of the economy, not the fuel. As such, it keeps all the various parts interacting smoothly, with a general store from which it is drawn and squirted where it is most necessary, but flooding the engine with it would only blow up the engine. Think of it as high blood pressure.

Looking at where the Federal Reserve is going, I suspect it will eventually become obvious that printing lots more such vouchers will not cure what ails our society.

Billionaires are not the cause of this, but an effect. It can’t be argued as a matter of fairness and equity, because then it becomes “Socialism! versus Free Markets!” It has to be a matter of explaining how the system functions.

Regards,

John