Very excellent and appropriate post Nick. I liked your description of the components of a loaf of bread, and you are even influencing my thinking a tiny bit. :smile: Now what you or someone has to do is think of how to get away from inflation. It hasn't gotten us anywhere in my lifetime- (how many months have been wasted on picket lines because of it?) We are no better off than we were in 1950, actually worse off- the vast majority were self sufficient then.
There is a solution if government were willing to entertain it. The problems start with our debt-based currency and Fractional Reserve Banking so those are what needs to go.
A quick explaination of FRB goes like this. You deposit $100 into a bank. They can then loan out against you deposit with only a fraction actually held in reserve, about 12%, so they can loan $88 to someone else. That person deposits the $88 in a different account and the bank can then make a loan against it, with the same reserve %, or $77.44. The $77.44 is deposited and the process continues. The money is never actually created until someone signs a contract to pay a loan which gets entered into their ledger on the credit side to balance the debit of them giving you the money loaned. **
You actually create the money you borrow from thin air by your signature** which attaches more debt to the money in circulation.
Anything that people are willing to accept as currency can be used as currency, in the 1600's in Britain it was carved polished pieces of wood called Tally Sticks. The way to make any form of currency widely acceptable is by making it allowable for the payment of taxes. Instead of issuing interest bearing bonds when the government needs money they just issue the money directly and interest free, this was done in America before the civil war which was Greenback Curency. As the new currency starts to circulate the old money is used to pay the principle on the old bonds removing it from circulation and the new currency is used to pay the interest. We can actually print enough new currency to pay of the debt entirely but that would put too much currency in circulation which causes devaluation.
As the new money gets deposited into banks we incrementally change from the fractional reserve banking system to a full reserve banking system. They can no longer loan more than is on deposit. They may still charge interest o the loans to make profit but cannot expand those loans and profits as they could in fractional reserve. As old currency is removed form the system and new money replaces it dollar for dollar we can use more new to pay off the debt. The debt gets paid off over the course of 2-3 years and we no longer have interest attached to the currency itself.
Once we have this accomlished the government replaces defective bills 1 to1 and expands the currency supply to match the pouplation growth, about 3%/yr. Inflation would basically cease to exist in Canada and we would have no national debt left so could reduce taxes accordingly to pay for the programs we chose to have without a $33.3 billion dollar interest payment on the debt every year.
Now if you think this is crazy and won't work check out Gurnsey, a little independant island between England and France. They have done this already removing the pound sterling and replacing it with their own debt free currency and have almost no taxation and absolutely no national debt. It does work!!
Hope you kind of get the idea. This is one of the major reforms I keep pushing our government for to allow for us all to have a better life. Of course the banks will go ballistic because they don't have free license to create endless profit from money that you create for them from your signature on a loan document, they will fight against this like never before, but if all Canada cries out for this and demands it from our government the banks will either get over it or leave and we can start our own Canadian banks without them.
Thank you for that.
It is a free country, try telling that to union JLM and his guvment pension.:roll:
Betcha he wouldn't have suffered the way your sister has in the way of cost, but thanks to good old bottomless pocket tax payer he has gold plated benefits for sleeping in a truck by the side of the road for 35 years.
If you and your family paid hardly any tax you would have had the funds to pay for your own insurance and make sure your sister rested comfortably till the end...and maybe, just maybe extended her life with superior American style heath care.
Take care, I hope her last days are comfortable and peacefull.
You know, in spite of your insensitivity to other human beings, I am actully quite fiscally conservative. I just don't let it override my moral obligation to people who need help. There are many, many costs and expenditures that can be removed from government but it has to be balanced with the overall well-being of the population. Would you really feel safer with a few thousand homeless and hungry roaming your neighborhood? I would rather see my taxes go to educating and training than welfare and policing those that will do what is necessary to survive. Addictions are treatable diseases not crimes and so much could be saved just by realizing this fix the root causes and then it is better permanantly. I guess its the 'hand-up instead of hand-out' philosophy for me. Some services like police, fire, education and healthcare should remain as public,
fully funded, services because they create a better overall society at a cheaper cost than indivdually but lots of govt functions could be removed to charities or a program of voluntary tax contributions for non-essential services. There has to a balance and that should be the common goal for the common good.
