strantor
100 W
I wrote this and posted it on facebook. I thought I would share it here, as I am spreading awareness:
I tagged everybody I know in that post. Not just random facebook "friends" - people that I actually know personally very well. I got a total of 4 people to reply. Nobody cares about this stuff. Nobody wants to talk about it. I was appalled.Ever wonder why it gets harder and harder to live every year?
Most of my life I have been, like most people that I know, under the impression that the people on the streets and the people on welfare are there because they aren’t motivated. They don’t try hard enough. They would rather sit back and let someone else do all the work while they sit at home and be paid to do nothing. While I’m still sure that’s the case in a lot of instances, I have started to reflect back on my own situation. There have been a couple of times, where if I didn’t have a family, I would have been on the streets or welfare. And as time goes by, it seems that despite my best efforts, I am getting ever closer to being poor(er). From my perspective, with the job that I have, and the amount of effort I put into it, I should not be having any money problems, but problems abound. I have been seeking the answer to the question “why does it keep getting harder and harder?” I will now attempt to explain the epiphany that I have just recently made.
Do you have a dollar in your wallet, or in your bank account? If so, do you know where it came from? how it was created?I’ll tell you; at some point, someone took out a loan from a bank, and that dollar was created. It could have been a home loan, car loan, business loan, or government stimulus loan, any kind of loan. In any case, someone is paying interest on that dollar in your wallet. That’s how money is created; when people take out loans. Contrary to popular belief, money is created by private banks when they issue loans. It’s not created in the government mint, or solely by the FED (the fed is a private bank BTW, not a government agency). Banks create this money out of thin air and then expect to be paid interest on it. They just type it into existence on a computer screen. Well, where does the money come from to pay off the loan? It comes from somewhere else, maybe a paycheck, which also at some point down the line originated in the form of a loan. So we are paying off loaned dollars with loaned dollars. Banks only generate the amount of the Principle. You take out a loan for 10,000$, the bank creates 10,000$, not the extra 5000$+ for the amount of the interest. So where does the money that is supposed to pay the interest come from? IT DOESN’T! It does not exist! ALL the money in circulation is the principle of one giant loan, and there is NO money in circulation to pay the interest on this giant loan.
Even if everybody everywhere in America, or the face of the entire planet for that matter mystically woke up tomorrow morning with an unquenchable drive to be productive, get off welfare, go get a job, and pay their debt to society, and they actually DID this, there would still be a portion of people filing for bankruptcy, losing their homes, losing their cars, not paying student loans, etc. because THERE IS NOT ENOUGH MONEY ON THE PLANET TO PAY ALL THE LOANS. Yes, even if everybody stopped protesting, and went out and got a job (assuming there are jobs to be had), there would still be “losers” despite their best efforts. It is mathematical fact. Now, I’m not saying the protesters are right. In my opinion, they are mostly a bunch of entitlement seeking lazy idiots. The occupy movement is angry at some of the right people, but has completely missed the boat on WHY. They are protesting rich people in general. “you have money, you should give it me” – that’s their general message as I have interpreted it. I have read up on their demands and gripes, and nowhere did I see anything about the Fractional Reserve System (that’s what it’s called by the way, this system of creating money by the banks, google that). They just want the rich to “pay their fair share” – fair share of WHAT? Interest?
The banks: The banks know that not everybody can pay their loans. And they don't mind. See, they have the legal right of counterfeiting; so they counterfeit as much as they want, and loan it to you. When you default, they get your house, or car, or whatever. They get REAL GOODS in exchange for FAKE MONEY. This is only the first in a long list of perks the banks get. Another perk, is that as they are pumping out all these dollars, they are diluting the power of the money. They jack the inflation sky high and cause the cost of everyday items to go up, so that you have to keep coming back for more loans for things that you otherwise could have just paid for outright. One more perk of being a bank, is connections. All the major banks are connected via a network, with the FED at the center, so they can effectively be considered one giant bank. So when you take out a car loan and you take your check and give it to the guy at the car lot, he takes it and deposits it in his bank, which is linked with your bank, so effectively the giant bank created 10,000$, and then the 10,000$ was turned around and given right back to it; BUT you still owe the bank 10,000$ + INTEREST. And the most important perk of being a bank, is that you get to rule the world. Yes, I said it. EVERYBODY is in debt to the banks. Including, and to an unfathomable extent, THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. Do you think that the government considers YOUR demands as much as they consider the BANKS’ demands? If you owed trillions of dollars to guy A and nothing to guy B, and they had conflicting interests, who would you try to make happy? You are naïve if you think that the government doesn’t cater to the banks.
So, that’s why it gets harder and harder every year. Banks drive down the value of the dollar, and the public further into debt. We’re all working indirectly for the banks night now. Even if you don’t have a cent of debt; your house & cars are paid off, you have a steady job, etc. you are still under the bank’s thumb because they decide how much your money is worth. That’s why I have to work 60-70 hours per week at SKILLED LABOR, and barely afford to pay my rent, not own my own car, and feel like I’m sinking lower and lower, maybe to the point I won't be able to feed my family one day, when men of my grandfather’s day could graduate high school (or not graduate) and be able to afford a house and a reasonably comfortable life, working 40hrs/week doing UNSKILLED LABOR. Every day the banks get richer and the poor get poorer. The government has done nothing to stop this. They could have at least made sure that minimum wage followed with inflation.
Back to the occupy movement; The problem DOES lie with the banks, and with the paychecks of the CEOs; not because just by virtue of CEOs being RICH, but because the CEOs are UNFAIRLY rich. They used to have a term for this fractional reserve and loaning money at interest practice; USURY, google that too. I don’t think that mindset of “Don’t be angry at the bank CEOs because they are rich; they earned it, you didn’t” holds any water. The banks might not be STEALING money out of your pocket, as is usually how the defense goes, but they are stealing the VALUE of the money that you DO have, that you DID earn, and demanding even more. Did you know that the dollar is only worth 4 cents compared to when it was introduced?
This is all quite silly when you consider that money is NOTHING. It is a unit of measure. A unit of measure to represent a trade value of goods/services. An able bodied young man such as myself saying that he can’t afford a house because he doesn’t have enough money, is like a contractor saying that he can’t build a building because he doesn’t have enough inches. We are working our asses off in pursuit of a deliberately fabricated scarcity of measurement units. Its utter nonsense!
What can we do about it? STOP USING THE INFLATED MEASUREMENT UNITS! Being that money is a unit of measure, it is (or should be) infinite. What is the total number of meters? There is no total. There are infinite meters. SO WHY IS THERE A FINITE AMOUNT OF MONEY? I think I’ve covered that, but it’s because the banks generated the finite amount to keep you on a hamster wheel.
So, what can we do about it? Well, I think the permanent solution is rather obvious. But in the short term, you can TRADE. Goods and services. As much as you can. Use craigslist. Don’t use dollars to pay for anything you can get away with trading for. There is only so much you can trade, and finding a trading partner who has what you want and wants what you have is tough. There are trading communities with Mutual Credit Systems (google that) and there are alternative community currencies popping up all over. SPREAD AWARENESS. Most people who I know have not heard this information. The more people “in the know”, the more likely change will come. DON’T BE COMPLACENT. This problem is not going away until someone does something about it, and you don’t care, nobody else will care either.
please correct me if I'm wrong about anything here, and please let me know if you have any more ideas about what we can do individually to mitigate this problem.
Thanks,
-Charles Staton