JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum America's Watershed Election.

Joe,

I love it. You're right, money is work. It's work you do today for a hamburger tomorrow. The problem is, the guy who would give you the hamburger today for your work, might not need your work as much tomorrow.

We used to get gold for our work. In good times, someone wanted to wear that gold. In bad times they'd trade that gold for hamburgers, which they'd eat. Can't wear hamburgers, at least not for very long. Pretty soon the men with the guns (government) wanted a cut in the action (notice how we say that...a cut in the action....action....work). So the men with the guns printed up pieces of paper and traded them for gold. They kept the gold in safe places "called safes" and piled the gold up...they "banked" it. Those pieces of paper were supposed to certify that they kept gold banked up in safes, so they called them "certificates."

Then the men with the guns did a very stupid thing. Only they thought it was smart. They stopped certifying that those pieces of paper represented the gold they had in their banks. They certified that they were worth a word. A dollar was no longer a dollar's worth of gold. It became a dollar's worth of a dollar, whatever the heck that is. Read a dollar. It says it's good for all debts public or private. So, privately, I'll decide how many pieces of paper I need for my hamburgers. Publicly, the men with the guns decide how many pieces of paper they'll take from you each year. That's what the paper is worth. It's worth the work we do, minus the work we're made to do by the men with guns.

So, there is no zero sum for work. The more we work, the more work certificates we can pile up. But, there is a zero sum for the work we must do for the men with guns. Right now it's almost half the work we do. When it is all the work we do, and the men wit guns decide how many hamburgers we can have...that's socialism. When we have a say in agreeing how much work we give to the men with the guns, that's democracy. When we don't have to work for the men with guns, that's liberty. When we have to work for the men with guns, and other people get most of our hamburgers, that's Hillary.