Save our sacrifices for when we really need them

Austerity, rationing, and "shared sacrifice" belongs to the realm of real resources, not to money or the readily-available things that money can procure.

If we run out of oil, we'll need sacrifices to ration oil until there are alternatives, such as more electric vehicles and public transportation.

If we have drought or disease that creates food shortages, we may need to ration and sacrifice to share the food until the next harvest.

If we run out of peace, we may need to sacrifice to restore freedom, as in World War II. 

But we have created rationing arbitrarily based on a perceived lack where none really exists, or where it can be easily remedied through the right incentive structures and funding. 

For example, there is a prevalent idea that we don't have the resources to provide health care for all citizens, so we have to either ration economically (i.e. only the rich get it), or via the government choosing who gets it.

But why do we say we can't train enough doctors and nurses to care for everyone? Are there not enough people who desire this career or is it just that we don't provide the path for them to get there or the incentives to make it worthwhile? 

Remember, a sovereign nation can always create the money necessary to pay for the full deployment of resources within that country. 

It's our narrow thinking and allegiance to bad economic ideas that clouds our vision and leaves huge segments of our society living as paupers when we have abundance all around us.

So how can we provide health care for all?

• We can pay for the education of as many doctors and nurses as we need if education costs are the reason for a lack of trained care givers.
• We can provide salaries at a level needed to attract them to the field.
• We can build medical facilities in under-served areas of cities and states.
• We can credit health savings accounts for all citizens with money to pay for health care.
• We can underwrite the costs of expensive and critical care.

The same applies to the unemployed in all fields. We say there isn't the money to employ them because the private sector hasn't found them jobs, but it isn't as though we have nothing productive for people to do in society. And it isn't as though we can't credit bank accounts with money from our national monetary system that was created for this very purpose. We have simply chosen not to because our outdated economic ideas tell us we shouldn't. 

Money is never scarce for sovereign nations. We can always afford whatever is for sale in our currency, including all kinds of labor. Even doctors and professors. Scarcity is for real resources - never for money. We certainly may need to sacrifice, ration, and share if we run into constraints of real resources, but let's save the austerity for then (and work hard to develop the alternatives and protections now so that we can prevent such scarcity in the first place!)

It is the height of folly to hold a nation in economic poverty while its real resources lie idle.

If it makes sense, then spread the word. Ignorance is a cruel master that must be overthrown with truth. 

2015: A year to learn hope-filled economics

Conservative economics has forgotten that spending equals income.

One business's income is another person's spending. In the aggregate, income = spending. 

If spending falls, income falls. If income falls, businesses cut investment and costs and lay off workers.

Conservative economics has taught that we must reduce spending even more to grow income... Huh???

...all because of tragically mistaken concepts of how money works. 

Such as the mistaken belief that governments only spend what they first take from the private sector. This has not been true since we left the gold standard and stopped having what was essentially a fixed exchange rate by tying our money supply to the availability of a somewhat rare commodity. That made as much sense as tying our drinking water supply to the amount of dinosaur fossils we could find.

Government spending is also simply another business's income. It is a net increase in private sector wealth. The government can buy and deploy otherwise unutilized resources. It can spend when sales/incomes are needed to avoid contraction.

It is essential whenever the economy lacks sufficient spending to purchase all the output of a fully employed society.

We need to rethink what we think we know. 

Redefine what it means to be Conservative or Liberal based on a correct view of money, and a world of possibilities will open up to us. 

A path to prosper while solving our nation's social, economic, and environmental challenges. 

We can afford to put people back to work. 
We can afford to shift our energy to a sustainable supply. 
We can help other nations prosper without harming our own. 
We don't need to go to war over resources.
We can afford to educate our children and working adults without burdensome debt. 
We can afford to provide health care to all our citizens and help doctors return to a focus on patient care.

Greed (an apt word to describe Western capitalism) is not good, Gordon Gekko. 
Selfishness does not provide a sound platform for economic prosperity and societal well-being.
Exponential growth through resource extraction at lowest cost is not a sustainable or just system.
Free trade for the poor and protectionism for the wealthy is not a righteous or sustainable global economic system.
Unemployment for the youth is not a solution to an economic crisis, nor will it bring nations back to prosperity and growth.
Reduced investment in public infrastructure, research, and education will not lead a nation forward to a prosperous future.

I met a fork in the road between Western capitalism and Marxist socialism, and I realized I was on the wrong road. The highway to sustainable prosperity is found on a different track entirely. 

When presented with two false choices, the "lesser evil" is still just evil. 

2015 is a year to learn hope-filled economics. It will take all of us to bring the changes we all desire, but they are there for the taking.

Angst in Freedonia: are there no alternatives to austerity?

As neighboring countries, the Kingdom of Moronia and the republic of Freedonia could not have had more different monetary systems. What wasn't apparent at first was just how significant those differences were when it came to how they could deal with both difficult and prosperous economic times. 

Moronian austerity

Moronia, with its gold-based money, was constantly at risk of the depletion of their reserves of gold. This occurred especially when the nation desired to import more goods than it exported (since it had to pay for them in gold) - and this almost always happened when Moronia was at war (Moronians often waged war). To stem the outflow of gold, wages would plummet, rations would be imposed, imports would be minimized, and after a painful adjustment they would start exporting again to restock the gold reserves. 

Over time, the people of Moronia noticed that every time this happened, the large industrial business owners would end up with more and more profits, while the workers never recovered their wages from the downturn. They weren't too happy with all the wars and falling incomes. 

To avoid revolt, the king of Moronia consulted his advisers and business leaders, and they came up with a clever strategy: they would broadcast repeatedly through all possible media the message that "There Is No Alternative" (they called the propaganda campaign TINA, which was later satirized by a popular folk band). The message was harsh, but (so it went) the alternative would be much worse. The only way to survive and compete in a global economy is with lower wages and higher productivity (i.e. longer hours and worse worker conditions) in order to keep the nation's economy strong. 

The Moronians, who were accustomed to suffering (many believed it was virtuous), thought the logic was irrefutable and they dutifully accepted the King's meme. They held out hope that perhaps one day they would join the ranks of the wealthy if they just worked hard enough.

Freedonia

Meanwhile, Freedonia was experiencing a very different dynamic. The had set up their currency (the "Liberties") based not on a promise to convert to gold (a promise they knew they could never keep permanently, especially if they were forced into war -- Freedonians hated war), but on the simple notion that a tax imposed on the population would drive demand for the newly created currency (you can read that story here).

Freedonia traded with other nations (even Moronia), but they always preserved their sovereign right to protect national interests by limiting trade when necessary. Rather than using gold, goods and services were bought and sold at the going currency exchange rate between them and their trading partners. Other nations had followed their lead in forming their own national money of account, and each currency would fluctuate in relation to the others based on a variety of factors. Usually, this took the form of Freedonia's national bank holding onto currency reserves of the nations they sold goods (in selling them goods, they were "buying" that nation's currency), and the reverse would hold for nations they mostly imported from.

Over time, Freedonia became prosperous and also a net importer. They were sending more Liberties abroad than they were receiving back. Their trading partners were holding more and more Liberties (usually in the form of interest-earning government bonds). It looked like they had a mountain of debt owed to other countries but they understood that it simply represented their trade partners' desires to hold their currency in exchange for selling them products. Of course, this also meant that Freedonia was able to keep more of their nation's resources and production for their own enjoyment, in addition to receiving the work product of other nations.

But then came the big recession. 

Banks were in trouble, and the economy was hurting. People were losing their private sector jobs as businesses tightened their belts (fortunately, most found temporary work & a basic income through the national job guarantee program). Businesses stopped investing, and there were some saying the government should also pull back on many of its ambitious projects, especially the national high-speed electric rail system powered mostly be renewable energy. To many, stopping spending just seemed to be the logical response when times are tough. At least, that's what businesses and households do. 

Do sovereign nations with their own currency have to behave this way too?

The export debate

Like all freedom-loving peoples, Freedonias had a lot of opinions across a wide spectrum of values and ideals. One such group, which after the crisis became a fairly vocal minority, emphasized the values of discipline, hard work, & self reliance. Many of them had started their own businesses and had succeeded, or had overcome obstacles in their lives and moved on to success in various fields. They looked over at Moronia and began to wonder if they had something right. 

Perhaps what was needed, they proposed, was to lower wages, work harder, and boost exports to earn the way back to prosperity. They began to question whether the job guarantee should be taken away since it provided a base wage that the private sector couldn't really go below. Seeing an opportunity to lower costs and boost profits, some of Freedonia's leading CEOs and business organizations joined the chorus. 

TINA was a hot topic of debate in bars across the land. 

Many others in Freedonia were more concerned about the darker side of the policies across the border in Moronia. Since the great recession, unemployment had skyrocketed and was taking a very long time to recover. Wages were falling and more and more people were losing their life savings just to stay afloat. Many were no longer able to provide an adequate living from the jobs that were available, and were relying of food pantries and donations for assistance. Crime, domestic abuse, and even mental illness were on the rise. Youth were dropping out of universities because they couldn't afford to stay in school. This wasn't the land of liberty the people of Freedonia wanted. 

Was there really no alternative, they wondered?

So they turned again to study how their monetary system could be used to help them recover from the recession and grow their economy. Did they really need to take the austerity path in the hope their suffering will lead to more exports and, one day, higher wages again?

What they discovered surprised them.

Comparing exports to government purchases

They decided to run an experiment. Freedonia was very good at making trains, so they compared what would happen if:

1. a new train was exported to Moronia, or 
2. a new train was bought by the Freedonian government.

Option 1: 

• Moronia places an order for a train with a large train manufacturer in Freedonia
• Moronia only has gold, but the businesses wants Liberties to pay suppliers and employees, so the Bank of Freedonia takes the Moronian gold and then issues new Liberties by crediting the bank account of the train manufacturer. 
• A number of businesses in Freedonia work together to make the train (there are many small and medium businesses involved in the supply chain)
• These businesses have to hire additional good paying jobs
• The businesses see profits increase
• Finally the train is shipped off to Moronia

The end result is that there is a NET INFLOW of Liberties into the economy from outside the Freedonian domestic private sector economy.

Great, this is exactly what the supporters of the Moronia Austerity Plan predicted!

Option 2: 

• The Freedonian government places an order for the same train. 
• In this case, the Government simply credits the bank account of the train manufacturer with newly created Liberties, which only the Bank of Freedonia can issue. 
• The same manufacturer and suppliers make the train.
• The same number of new, higher paying jobs are created.
• The same profits made and workers paid. 
• The train, however, stays in Freedonia to the benefit of the people

So once again, the end result is still a NET INFLOW of Liberties into the economy from outside the Freedonian domestic private sector economy.

What's the difference? 

• In money terms, there is none! Fiscal policy has virtually the same effect as foreign trade in stimulating the economy.
• In "real" terms, one could argue that the Freedonian's are actually better off having worked to produce a train they use themselves rather than one that is sent to help Moronians (especially since Moronian trains are mostly powered by non-renewable energy, which has been causing pollution in the neighboring regions of Freedonia!)

Some still worried about the so-called "national debt"? It seemed to be a big issue for Moronia with their gold-based money. So once again, they set out to evaluate the two scenarios to see how they impacted Government Bonds. 

Option 1:

Moronia used gold to pay for the train so the Bank of Freedonia now has a stock of gold as an asset on its balance sheet, but it also issued new Liberties (a liability in accounting terms) to the train manufacturer. All just entries in a computer - keeping track of money units.

If the buyer was another nation, the Bank of Freedonia would hold an account of that nation's currency instead of gold. 

In some cases, the buying nation might already have Liberties accumulated from selling goods to Freedonia. In this case, those Liberties would have been converted into a government bond so they earn interest. That nation would then sell some of its stock of Government Bonds to make the purchase. Who will buy those Government Bonds? Quite simply, the train sale caused bank accounts in Freedonia to increase. This causes bank reserves to increase, and banks prefer to earn interest on excess reserves, so they buy bonds in equal portion to the injection of Liberties - i.e. exactly the same number that the other nation sold to make the purchase.

In an economy like Freedonia where money is issued by the government, there are ALWAYS enough buyers for any Government Bonds because the money has been injected into the banking system first. 

Option 2:

Well, you may have figured this out what the Freedonians discovered: the same bank accounts are credited for the sale with new Liberties, which causes the same increase in bank reserves, which creates the same demand for an interest-earning alternative to holding excess reserves, which leads to the same Government Bond being purchased as in Option 1.

In other words, it makes no difference whether Liberties came from trading with another nation (exports) or from a government purchase (fiscal policy). 

And Freedonians already knew that what Moronians called "government debt" was simply a record of all the interest-earning injections of money - whether initiated through foreign trade or from direct purchases from their government. In both cases someone in the Private Sector increased their savings via an investment in Government Bonds!

Austerity angst abandoned!

Freedonia had their answer! 

• They didn't need to take away the job guarantee that was providing essential income and work for those who lost jobs in the recession. 
• They didn't need to lower wages and join the austere Moronians in a race to the bottom of worker pay in order to sell exports cheaper than other nations.
• They didn't need to cut funding for education or research that were part of their vision to have Freedonians lead the world in innovative ideas and technologies.
• And they didn't need to stop investing in their important infrastructure projects that were laying the groundwork for a prosperous future.

Of course, this wasn't about digging holes in the ground and filling them up to create work. The train was needed, along with so many other things. The question was whether they had to "get money" from someone else to help their economy or whether they had the ability to help themselves. 

How did the train get built? They simply created the money by crediting bank accounts, because Freedonians had a sovereign currency. And it works just as well as exporting!


With this debate settled, the Freedonians began to think again of all the things they wished to do as a nation that they would have done of they had a booming export business and money flowing in to their economy. 

They remembered again why it was that they created the sovereign currency in the first place. It was for exactly this moment - so they could fully deploy their national resources in ways that were to the benefit of their people and that the private, profit-seeking entrepreneurs and businesses couldn't do themselves. 

Rejecting austerity and carefully investing in their people and nation, through good times and bad, was the fiscally responsible thing to do.

Living in Fearguson or Hopeville

What we do in response to fear, is very often worse than the things we fear themselves, which are all too often phantoms of our minds and media. 

In economic terms, our response to the fear of inflation causes us to destroy jobs and with it, human lives.

Our response to the fear of deficits causes us to cut off the hand that feeds us, hurting the poor the most and ruining our future by cutting back on investment. 

Our response to the fear of tyrannical government leads to the dismantling of essential protections and regulations that reign in private sector abuses and hazards.

Our response to the fear of enemies, domestic and foreign, leads to an increasing police state and global militarized presence, often with first-strike intent, often breeding more violence.

Hope has no room for fear. 

Hope in people. Hope in the poor. Hope in the youth. Hope in rejuvenated neighborhoods. Hope in cities. Hope in governments. Hope in businesses. 

Hope in ourselves. 

Hope acts. Hope builds. Hope has vision. Hope grows. Hope restores and rejuvenates. Hope respects. Hope honors. Hope includes. Hope invests. 

Hope always wins. 

Freedonia & Moronia: A Sovereign Currency Parable

In the emerging but scattered country of Freedonia, the people decided one day that they wanted to band together to protect their freedom as a nation, their individual rights, and to grow their economy together. They establish a constitution to form a government, courts, police, an army, and the ability to empower their government to build roads and infrastructure needed for defense, well-being, and commerce. They also wanted a way to provision for their elderly and needy. 

With their constitution in place, they excitedly asked for volunteers to come and perform all the work needed in the new government … but no one stepped forward. They were all too busy working to meet their own needs and run their farms & businesses.

Freedonia's economists convened and suggested that the government create and issue a national form of money to pay for their needs. So they created a national currency called ‘Liberties’ and printed the first issue of notes. Before long, they were proudly announcing the new money to the people, promising to give it to anyone who would come and fill the government jobs and build the roads and other infrastructure projects. Again, to their dismay, the people all declined. The new money had no value to them and they’d rather keep working their fields and making their goods.

Now there was one wise history professor who had studied all the economies throughout the ages. She urged the new Freedonia government to 1) create a small tax on every household (initially suggesting the amount of 100 Liberties), 2) require that the tax can only be paid back in Liberties, and 3) ensure the new tax was collected. They debated the radical proposal (Freedonians love to debate), wondering if it would work and if the people would accept it. Eventually they all agree to proceed. The people of Freedonia had followed the debate and were well informed; the new tax passed in a national vote. Most of Freedonia really wanted a functioning government with its institutions that would protect property rights and help facilitate commerce, and to accomplish their collective goals for a great nation. 

To their surprise, as soon as the tax was imposed, applications for all the work came flooding in and businesses were also willing to accept Liberties in payment for their goods and services. Everyone was willing to work for wages in Liberties because they all now needed them to pay the Freedonia government tax. Many people even began saving lots of Liberties for future needs.

They noticed something else that was new... unemployment has been created! People were looking for work to earn Liberties but couldn't find enough jobs. 

The government quickly got busy issuing new Liberties whenever it needed to build a road, a hospital, or to pay judges, court staff, police, and the army. Even those not working for the new Freedonia government now accepted Liberties as payment for goods and services because they knew they needed them to pay their taxes, or they could exchange them with someone who did need them. Before long, everything in Freedonia became priced in Liberties and it become the standard unit of accounting and the sole means of trade throughout the land.

A sovereign currency was born!

The Freedonians marveled at the simple yet effective tool they had created to facilitate the provisioning of their collective needs. The small tax would regularly remove some of the Liberties that the government created when it spent, but not all of them. Occasionally, they had to increase the tax to remove more of the Liberties from the economy when it was “overheating”, but most of the time, they had to keep the taxes low and even spend more Liberties to make up for the amount that were being saved by the people. 

They realized that since every business and household now used Liberties, whenever too many Liberties were saved, businesses couldn’t sell all their goods and had to lay off workers. No one in Freedonia wanted to be unemployed or to waste idle labor when there were so many things they could do, so they found endless creative ways to get their people working again that benefited society. They simply issued new Liberties to pay for this work and to make up for the Liberties that were being saved. Everyone was employed that wanted to work.

Now the neighboring king of Moronia, who still used gold coins in his kingdom that he dug from his mines, borrowed, or received when exporting to other countries, was amazed at the success of Freedonia and went and met with the government to find out how their amazing new currency worked. 

He had so many questions...

How did you get these Liberties to be accepted? Did you promise to convert them into gold? 

No! We simply created a small tax that could only be paid in Liberties, and that created the demand for Liberties throughout our land. 

But don't you have to borrow the Liberties from the people in order to spend them? 

No! The people of Freedonia had to first obtain Liberties from the government before they could pay them back for taxes they owed. We never needed to borrow because we control the creation of Liberties ourselves. Sometimes we choose to give people a chance to hold Liberties in a special account and earn interest. It might look like borrowing, but it's really a policy choice to give interest to savers and our foreign trading partners.

Well then, was the government of Freedonia restricted from issuing new Liberties until the last ones have been collected back from the people in taxes? 

No! We could issue as many Liberties as needed for whatever the people authorized. Remember, we are a public monopoly - the sole issuer of Liberties on behalf of our people!

Okay, but you could issue too many Liberties at once, right? Your currency is surely going to fail when you keep making more of them. I saw how big the number was getting.
No, dear king. It appears you can't see past your gold money. Yes, in theory we could just create endless Liberties, but we only do what is in the interest of our people. We have put in place a budget process to make sure we only issue what the people want and to ensure our people are fully employed and the economy is productive.

But surely issuing more new Liberties than those you tax back from the people causes prices to rise? 

No! A lot of people want to save Liberties for retirement and other needs, so we have discovered that we actually need to issue more than we tax just to keep everyone employed. We also buy goods from other countries and they receive our Liberties in exchange, which means we need to issue more back home to make up the gap and keep everyone employed. Since we pay them interest (remember how we described "borrowing" earlier), they are happy to keep saving our money in exchange for selling us their goods. 

Still dazzled by his gold coin collection, the confused king of Moronia hurried home, fearful his subjects would rob his vault in his absence.

Meanwhile, the people of Freedonia had begun making plans for more schools and universities to train their next generation for the needs of the future, more hospitals and medical centers to provide care for their growing population, plans to care for their elderly with housing and income, and a new rail system that would enable them to move goods and people rapidly around the nation and facilitate trade.

Their best days lay ahead!

Money lessons from the military

It is a bit of a mystery why we treat our military and our federal government in such polar opposite ways. 

The military is granted a virtually unlimited budget, while our federal employees and programs are constantly under attack to eliminate or reduce their budgets.

The military and its employees are considered our national heroes and held in highest esteem (and honor is certainly due for their courage and sacrifice), yet many other federal departments and employees are often derided or even despised, despite the lifelong sacrifice many give to serve us. 

We are greatly exercised over the rise in size and power of our elected officials and government programs yet we often have little concern about the size and power of our military and the industrial complex that it supports. 

Both are part of our "government", but we seem to love one and hate the other. We seem to have two standards when judging the separation of powers. 

Why?

Perhaps it is because the military parades its employees and hides its generals & policies, whereas the federal government parades its officials & policies and hides its workers?

Perhaps we need to take a page from the military's playbook and push out on social media a "hero of the day" featuring our teachers, FAA engineers, court judges and staff, environmental workers, and bank regulators. Perhaps if we made them our heroes we would begin to see the good we actually do together, and we would inspire more of the best to step forward and serve.

Do we realize the sacrifice of those who give up higher paying jobs in the private sector to educate our children or expose pollution in our drinking water or fight an army of lawyers and smear campaigns to expose criminal activity in financial institutions? 

Our brave soldiers deserve our respect, and so do our public officials. Perhaps by doing so, we would elevate service and responsibility and efficiency and all the things we deserve and wish for from our government. Perhaps we reap what we sow.

Whatever the reason, a parable may help us see that what works for one can, in fact, be used for the other, opening up possibilities of national well-being and prosperity.

Protecting freedom by sidelining the army

We easily recognize a foreign threat when something blows up: Pearl Harbor; World Trade Centers. 

But freedom is no less under attack when our financial system is blown up by runaway deregulated financial institutions. When 800,000 people are losing their jobs every month as was the case after 2008. When savings and retirements are wiped out or taken fraudulently. When education is out of reach financially without a lifelong debt burden. When the jobs available don't pay for the cost of living, let alone providing for our children's futures. When one medical problem leads to bankruptcy and poverty for an entire generation. Freedom is under attack and out of reach for tens of millions of Americans today.

So what can we learn from the part of government we call the military?

Imagine if our free land were attacked by two powerful nations from each coast, and we responded as follows:

• Since we are afraid of giving our military too much power, we decide not to allow it to intervene in our defense. "It's just too much power in the hands of government officials." 
• We need money so we cut the military budget and have the armed forces stay on their bases.
• We instead give tax breaks to citizens and businesses so they can go to the market and buy guns and ammunition to protect themselves.
• If enough people do this, we believe we will create strong free market-based militias to fend off the invaders, although we realize the enemies will probably have made huge inroads into our land by then. 
• We realize that many people in many parts of the country may never actually be able to fend for themselves but that's just the cost of ensuring that the military doesn't use the war to take over the whole country and we lose our freedoms. 
• The wealthier pockets, especially the corporations that have more resources, will be able to protect themselves. The smaller businesses and population see these safe areas and ask for help, and the corporate militias do so in exchange for taking over the small businesses.
• Of course most citizens simply build bunkers, hide, or cloister together in small scattered groups and so few unified militias actually form and so the tax breaks have no effect on stimulating a strong resistance force.
• Eventually, the corporations sue for peace with the invaders, working out a way to keep growing while leaving the population under occupation. A new equilibrium forms with a relatively stable land, large scale servitude, and small pockets of freedom and excess for the wealthy. 

Imagine the national outrage at such a response! 

If such a military invasion occurred we would release our powerful military forces that were created for this very purpose. We would marshal every resource in our nation, build and buy whatever we needed for the war effort, and employ every able bodied citizen in the fight until we had thoroughly defeated and repelled the invasion. 

Would we worry about deficits and national "debt"?  Of course not. What matters isn't the money but our land, our people, our liberty, and our way of life. Money can and will be created at will to pay for whatever is needed to ensure our national survival and prosperity. We have, in fact, done just this with every war.

So why do we not respond in kind to our economic plight? Why don't we release our powerful monetary system that was created for this very purpose to dispel the forces of unemployment, failing infrastructure, accessible education, and all the other threats to individual liberty?

What works in war also works in peace

In fact, we can and we should use the federal budget in this very same way. It can rise and fall as needed to marshal the real resources of our nation to be utilized in such a way that provides employment for all workers, incomes for the elderly, medical care for the sick, education for the eager minds, transportation for the future energy paradigm, and so much more.

This is actually how the system is designed to work. The term Functional Finance has been used to describe the proper use of the government's operations of spending, taxing, buying, selling, and borrowing. Each operation should be used ONLY with regard to the EFFECT it has on the real economy and the wishes of the public, and not with any regard to any irrelevant ratios of one factor to the other (such as borrowing and taxing in ratio to spending).  

• Tax because we want to take spending power away or shift resources from socially undesirable production/consumption. 
• Buy because we wish the government to build or own something (like roads or oil reserves).
• Spend because we want portions of our population to have more income. 
• Borrow because we want to provide interest payments to savers and trading partners.

None of these operations need to be measured or adjusted in relation to any other. Each can be evaluated separately for its effect on the economy and on real needs and wants. This is exactly how modern monetary systems work. We just need to get out the instruction manual and start using it properly, as we always do during war time. 

And unlike the military and its industrial complex, we can actually do so without enormous centralized bureaucracy! We can use money to protect individual liberties, provide equality of opportunity, and enhance families, local communities, and states -- all without centralizing control in Washington DC.

As we remember and respect all that our military does for us, let us learn the lessons it teaches, and release ourselves from senseless financial limitations that crush our people and take their liberty. We have the most powerful monetary system ever created that can permanently end unemployment and fund any project we need to ensure our free and prosperous future, so long as we have willing people and the real resources available to deploy.

A new narrative

I'm curious how many realize that we have recreated the same economic environment as the Great Depression. 

It's astonishing really. 

It feels different this time only because of the income-supporting welfare systems the West has that were absent in the 30s. 

They are a poor substitute for employment.

As Twain said, history doesn't repeat, it rhymes - which only makes it less obvious to see when we're in it. We've done it again, but we can't seem to see what we've done or to find the clear and simple path out of this human tragedy. 

Sovereign nations have the ability and responsibility to prevent depression, and to ensure people have adequate employment and income to live. 

But we don't seem to want our government to do this. Those of us with sufficient work and income are content to let others suffer rather than direct national resources toward our neighbors. The prevailing narrative says we have to leave things alone - that trying to help will only make it worse. And we've all seen that before. 

We who are in the ranks of the "doing okay" control the vote and the purse strings. And we keep voting to maintain the very system that created another depression, sentencing more friends and neighbors to a life of welfare, underemployment, uncertainty, and unemployability for some. Ironically, we make our own situation more precarious by leaving our economy teetering on the edge of recession, closing down more and more of our public services, and starving off investment in public infrastructure.

We can change this - and quickly!

We need a new narrative - one that respects our ability to have good leadership for our nation, not just the worst we've come to expect. We reap what we sow. 

We need a new narrative that understands that capitalism always and only functions in the framework of public institutions, and we can make these institutions work for good. 

We need a new narrative that places the dignity of all citizens as the foundation of the economy, ensuring they can work and provide for their families and grow their skills and knowledge. 

We need a new narrative that recognizes that a nation's wealth is not financial; that money can always be created on demand to create the real prosperity we desire and need. 

The most stable and prosperous economy is one where the nation's currency is anchored by maintaining full employment - not by gold or central banks - and that uses money to invest in people, infrastructure, knowledge, and the rejuvenation and cultivation of our natural resources within which we all live.

We need a new narrative that forgives, that hopes, that serves, that inspires, that believes that we can be great again.