Pat Shannan's MUSINGS
TRANSFERING THE WEALTH TO THE BUREUCRATS
Government spends nothing and federal taxes fund nothing. In the American society, this is an absolute constant and a constant absolute which should be trumpeted to the people every day for no other reason but to counteract the continual flow of economic lies with which Americans are inundated. Twenty years ago, Tupper Saussy wrote about something he coined "The Ideasphere - a place that exists only in the mind but where helpless people fall victim to those who are in the business of guiding and governing others.
In 1983, I wrote to President Reagan: "Sir, just how do you spend a deficit? When you spend up all your deficits, won't you be broke? Meanwhile, would you please be kind enough to send me a box or a truckload full of deficits so my friends and I might spend some too?" No reply.
New presidents, congresscritters, and senators steal your votes every election term by promising, among other lies, "to cut spending and balance the budget." Of course, no one ever does it. Conservative hero Ronald Reagan was the biggest fraud of all in this department. By Ideasphere measurements he "outspent" all 39 presidents preceding him totaled together.
But by retreating to the opening sentence above, we mustn't forget the absolute. If the whole system is imaginary, then what is "spent" has to be imaginary, too, doesn't it? But let's put the imaginary figure of five trillion "dollars" into meaningful terms by using paper "dollars."
To start, we'll say you average near the minimum compensation of $25,000 a year over your 40-year work life. Over that time span your total cash flow comes to $1,000,000.
Now reach into your wallet and pull out that $100 bill and place it on the table. Now figuratively place nine more on top of it. This gives you $1,000. Now add 999 more such stacks on top of the first stack. You have a million, your life's earnings. Your stack is about 43 inches high.
By adding 999 piles like the one you have, you have your first billion and your stack is about 3,600 feet high. This is about the length of three typical par-four golf fairways.
Now comes the real clincher. Add on 999 more stacks to the pile and you now have your first trillion "dollar" stack. It reaches 680 miles into the sky. Five trillion then goes out of sight at 3,400 miles high, while your lifetime's earnings amounted to only 43 inches.
All this is true only if you believe that paper is money. But what does government really spend? If you can answer that correctly, we will send you one hundreds pounds of it.
Meanwhile, let us try another measurement. Picture a mile in concrete terms. There are 5,280 feet in a mile. Now visualize a highway extending from Miami to Seattle to Boston and south again to Miami. Envision each mile subdivided into 26 building lots each with a 200 foot frontage. Using both sides of the highway, we have 52 lots per mile. On each lot let's build a $100,000 home at a cost of $5,200.000 per mile. By the time we get to Atlanta from Miami, 700 miles, we have already spent $3,640,000,000. Going on to Seattle - 3,000 miles - with a $100,000 house on each lot on both sides of the highway, our added cost is $15,600,000,000. Another 3,000 miles back to Boston does the same, of course - an additional $15,000,000,000. Complete the circle with the remaining 2,000 miles back to Miami and we have another 104,000 houses at an additional cost of $10,400,000,000. The total cost for this double row of houses totals up to a hefty $45 billion of imaginary money, and we haven't even computed the cost of the highway.
Think for a moment about the work and materials needed for this housing development. Think of the equipment, the men needed, the lumber, the cement, the nails, the plumbing, heating and cooling, the electrical wiring and appliances used in building these houses. This is the real cost in federal "spending," what is sucked out of the private sector and blown into the bureaucracy.
What we forego in personal spending is what is our real cost of government. When we allow them to deduct imaginary numbers from our bank accounts under the guise of "taxes," we have not funded anything. We have only restricted our own consumption to the tune of the above notes - pun intended.
$1 million equals ten $100,000 houses
$1billlion equals ten thousand $100,000 houses
$1trillion equals ten million $100,000 houses
The great "conservative" Ronald Reagan sucked up over ten million homes before his second term expired, all because the American people believe in a myth called "paper money."
Inflation is nothing more than the monetary manifestation of a grab for power, power to run your life and/or dispose of it. Inflation, Biblically speaking, is corruptible riches in the process of corruption. By one kind of riches or another we relate to each other. As your riches are corrupted; you become controlled.
Whenever the fruits of your labor are controlled by others, you are, to that degree of control, a slave to those others. Into which slave bracket have you volunteered yourself ? 30%? 40%? 55%?
There is but one cause of inflation, and that cause is artificial money. Artificial money gets its value from what it represents in the minds of others. Lawful money (wealth) gets its value from what it is - from its rarity, utility, uniformity, and durability.
With the use of lawful money and the payment of taxes in substance, the people control the government. But with the imaginary payment via Ideaspheric money, the people remain slaves to that government, and a sizable portion of the real wealth is gradually and silently transferred to the non-producers in the bureaucracy.
Wisdom gives strength to the wise man more than ten rulers that are in a city. Ecclesiastes 7:19
The perfect crime is the confidence game where the con men can take our wealth every day of the year and convince the majority of victims that the more they lose, the wealthier they become. Then the victims - made to believe they are required - should make an annual confession as to how much they were robbed and those who don't confess as to how much was stolen from them should be ridiculed, fined, and/or jailed by the victims that did confess.