How much WAS
our money worth?

An estimate by James R. Rawl indicates that there were 650 whaling vessels grossing 193,000 tons and manned by 16,000 officers and men active in the sperm oil industry just before the American Revolutionary War.

To equip the 650 whalers for just one voyage required an aggregate of

100,000 barrels of flour at six dollars a barrel,
32,500 barrels of corn at 70 cents a barrel.
6,500 bushels of beans at one dollar and twenty five cents,
1,300,000 pounds of tobacco at eleven cents a pound,
65,000 bushels of potatoes at thirty five cents a bushel,
650,000 pounds of rice at three cents a bushel,
325,000 pounds of cheese at eight cents a pound,
325,000 pounds of butter at seventeen cents a pound,
3,900 barrels of vinegar, averaging three dollars a barrel,
404,000 pounds of sugar worth around eight cents a pound,
404,000 pounds of coffee at ten cents a pound.

Have prices gone up any in your neighborhood?

People have been squabbling over the nature and cause of inflation since time began. 

What is it?

Inflation isn't something that "just happens" to the economy; it is something our rulers and governments do to the economy. 

Adam Smith, author of the still much studied book The Wealth of Nations, says that historically "the avarice and injustice of princes and sovereign states, abusing the confidence of their subjects, have by degrees diminished the real quantity of metal, which had been originally contained in their coins." 

He then mentions that the English coins (at that time) were only worth 1/3 what they had been, and that the French government had reduced theirs to 1/66 of its original value, all in order that the rulers could pay off their debts with money worth far less than it had been when they got it.

Compared to just fifty years ago, right now all the money you have is worthless.

The History of Gold, as Money  Gold is one of the most dynamic elements of the modern economy and some might find it funny that the oldest form of valuing physical commodities is still thriving today. The first gold coins were produced in 700 BC and since then the precious metal has been used as the primary exchange element. 

If we went back to the year 1775 and let today's politicians be judged according to those standards existent then, 80% of them would be hung on the spot -- and the rest hounded out of the country because they were torries.

However, the only reason we are not 10 times as far ahead is that we've been letting the lawyers heading up our government corrupt the value of our money through inflation. Indeed, if we had not let the government monkey with our money, if the value of each denomination of our currency had remained fixed, we would be far better off because hopefully, we would have resisted such outright robbery of our resources.

There wasn't enough taxes to fiddle with at 10 cents an hour at the turn of the 20th century. Even as late as 1942 sales taxes were still only 1/10th of a cent.  Today the average wage earner is paying 31.2% in taxes on every dollar earned, according to the Wall Street Journal.  From 1800 until 1942 the value of money remained relatively stable.  From 1942 until 2000 your one dollar bill literally became worth ten cents.  How much is it worth today with ANOTHER 691,000 American jobs going overseas this year?

Every time wages go up, taxes increase faster than a speeding 1040 EZ.  As recently as 1950, all the individual income taxes collected by the Feds only came to $17 billion.
With a population of 150 million, that means that every man, woman and child in the U.S. would have been paying an equal share of $113 per person. Just 38 years later the Feds collected about $400 billion in individual income taxes from a population of 250 million. That means that our equal share came to 14.159292 times as much, or $1,600 each. 

I ask you this question: Why then aren't workers earning 14.159292 times as much as they did in 1950?

Remember too, during this same period states sales taxes have gone up an average of 70X -- from 1/10 of a cent on the dollar to 7 cents on the dollar.  Yes, I know many more than one state has 14% going for them, but that is just letting us know what the future will taste like, let's continue.

  Has the price of license plates gone up? 
        Are you now contributing more to that social security fund that's always "going broke" --  until they need to borrow money from it.
          Have property taxes risen slightly?
                  Are you paying more than fifty cents a gallon for gas?

If you ran out of gas on a trip when I was a kid you could leave your spare tire and get enough gas to get home on.  Today you can't even leave your car for enough gas to get home on!

The Minimum Wage Myth
The easiest way to pry more of our money from our pockets was to persuade us we had more money for them to steal, therefore Presidents and Congress keep shouting about raising the minimum wage as if that were going to help us poor people get over what they are doing to us.

Raising the minimum wage is is the same thing the French did when they removed the tax on salt because rebellion was imminent, and then added double taxes on sugar or something else.  Are we going to go home and wait for a Napoleon dictator to take over our county -- like the French did?

When the minimum wage is raised we get a check with bigger numbers on it for the work we do.  Then we pay more taxes because we have more wages.  This lets the government spend more.  What we end up with is we have less than ever, and have to work harder to catch up again.

Some bar room economists will immediately point out that lowering our taxes will take at least a year to show up as savings.  Like most theories that rise up through a smoke-filled bar room, that isn't true.  Most Americans have their taxes removed in advance from every pay check they get.  Lower the tax rate NOW and you will see an immediate impact in your next pay check.

Here's the real trap of raising the minimum wage to artificially compensate for inflation.  
Any time our wages go up
we naturally pay more taxes. 
That's because we have MORE money to tax.
If you get bumped into the next tax bracket
then your taxes REALLY go up, don't they?  

On top of that, every time wages go up now,
politicians insist that the millage at which all
of our taxes are collected must go up as well
because THEY just can't cope with less.  

If that is true, then why do they expect US 
to cope with less?

Stop the Sham!

We don't need higher wages.  If the government REALLY wanted to help us cope financially there is only one thing that really works:

They can REALLY Lower our taxes.

It now takes TWO wage earners per family where one working used to be enough to keep body and soul together.  Even worse, instead of solid money, we are paid off with money subject to constant theft by the inflation caused by these very politicians that promised us the moon.

Not only are we being taxed --- that dollar earned today will only buy 92 cents worth of goodies tomorrow, and 80 cents by year's end. Before the decade is gone, it won't be worth a plugged nickel -- leaving us to scramble for our own old age security.

Well, my thought is: If the lawyers and politicians had left our money alone, all these improvements and increased productivity would have created so much wealth in the United States that the whole world could not hold it!

All the progress we have ever made over the past two centuries can be traced to giving the common man more opportunity to gain wealth. 

Opportunities to create wealth is the only thing man needs for progress to be made.  Millionaire entrepreneurs are not essential.

Nothing generates enthusiasm like seeing genuine hope instead of tricky promises. With more money out there to grab, more people will be hustling to get a bigger share. Even those whose ventures fail will be throwing money back into the system at the grass roots where it is needed. Those whose ventures succeed will be creating more wealth at the ground level by working more efficiently than ever before, which is the very foundation of our national wealth.

Henry Ford perfected the process of deliberately putting more money into the hands of common laborers. Suddenly, the best people anywhere wanted to work for Ford.

This galvanized his entire operation.
By paying more real money, Henry Ford got better help.
By getting better help he reduced prices.
By reducing prices he made more sales.
That meant that more people could be hired and there was more money to spend on improvements.
It also meant that other manufacturers had to pay their good workers more, because if they didn't they would lose their best ones to Henry Ford. 
More importantly, it gave common people money to spend right where it did the economy the most good.  Unfortunately, when the government saw that workers were earning more, politicians began wanting more than their share.

There are three basic ways for the government to get more money from us:
take it away by raising taxes,
borrow it directly from us,
print more paper without backing it up. 

Our government did all three, then did it again, and again, and again.
Each time there was a plausible excuse for the "necessity".
Each time, workers ended up with less left in their pockets.

This isn't anything new.  It has been going on since long before William the Conqueror was a little baby.

If our money had at least been founded on something of solid, substantial value, it would have taken much longer for our pockets to come up plumb empty while Congress is voting themselves yet another pay raise and inexplicably experiencing a dramatic increase in the fortunes of their family and friends at the same time. To stop this travesty of justice, our monetary system must be founded on a commodity whose value never changes; and we must cast our tax structure in concrete so that it never rises.

Gold won't work.
Nor will silver.

When gold was our standard, Fort Knox was flooded with 
the stuff and it wasn't even earning interest.  
(All the gold we do have left there now is in hock.)

Keeping our gold bricks in a dungeon
didn't keep the dragon on a leash.
Our gold was just sitting there useless when it could have been working to make us more wealth.
Where is the sense of that?

In 1964 William Morrow & Company published a book by Frank O'Rourke titled Instant Gold.  It asks the question, what would happen if gold could be produced cheaply, easily, and instantly? The book is still worth reading today.

A guy named Alfred Lawson came up with the Direct Credits idea of backing up our money with property. That was a better idea, but just by changing the price of our property, government would have been able to cheat us out of more and more money. Basing our money on some imaginary GNP is just as unwieldy, and not to mention being subject to political fraud.

When you think about it--
The only commodity on earth
whose value never changes
is time.

Within an earthly frame of reference,
time never changes.

Therefore, if we anchor
the value of our dollars
to units of time
then our economy is locked into reality.

To begin anchoring
our money to time
all we have to do
is make the value of one dollar
equal one hour of time at work.

One of our hours of time would equal one dollar.

That would be great, psychologically.
Unfortunately it would also strain the value of the coins we have to manufacture.  If our wages are one dollar an hour then a penny made of copper would cost far less than a penny to make.  At $10 an hour a penny made of copper would cost us far more than a penny to make.  We must save our pennies to keep Benjamin Franklin happy.

This will accomplish two important goals.
#1, it will insure that the elderly and the poor
can always get work done for them inexpensively.
#2, it will guarantee that prices for wages, goods and services
are always quickly stabilized in spite of swings caused by fluctuating supplies and demands.

General, common wages cannot go up excessively because people can have their money redeemed at one hour per dollar at any time. Our wages cannot fall below $1.00 per hour because the dollar is redeemed with labor. With our wages stabilized along with expenses, vendors will be compelled to maintain lower prices in order to remain competitive.

Consequently the bargains you see will be real bargains.

With this done, our money now has a solid redemption value which we can depend upon throughout our lives. A dollar earned in our youth cannot lose its value before our retirement. And if by our diligence, intelligence, wisdom, leverage, planning or training we have gathered more than those around us, then we shall reap more abundantly than they in our golden years. Inflation shall not rob us because inflation has been stopped dead in its tracks.

Naturally, each generic dollar is only worth one hour of general labor. It cannot therefore be redeemed for an hour of time from any specific person. Nor can it even be redeemed for the labor of a specific skill category. Since the dollar you own is generic, the laborer performing the redemption must be selected by chance.

This is in the redemptive sense only. The redemption of our currency is only desirable when its value is perceived as greater than available through normal spending habits. You can SPEND your money with anyone, or anywhere; it can only be REDEEMED 
from a labor pool selected by chance.

This precaution insures that there can never be an over abundance of currency put into circulation on us. And that in times of expansion the economy can be supplied with enough currency to fulfill the measure of its purpose. It therefore follows that to 
obtain that pool of labor a continuous supply of laborers must be generated.

This is done by a citizen conscription.
Anyone wishing to obtain citizenship shall, besides the requirements already made for naturalized citizens, be required to provide One Hundred Hours of their time to the labor pool. Only by freely providing these hours can anyone become a citizen.

As each call for a redemption comes in, the next person on the list goes out, even if the grease trap needs cleaning or a yard raked. No more than 8 hours a day would be required of anyone at a time. When not on call, people in the pool could work anywhere else. However, their citizenship cannot become operative until all one hundred hours have been submitted.

Only those who value citizenship will put forth the effort to become citizens, thus ensuring a better class of voter. As their desire to become citizens is the power which provides the value of our currency, hard working new citizens will be welcomed.  To make citizenship even more meaningful, only full citizens can own real estate, vote, hold public office, or possess firearms.

Once their price for citizenship has been paid, any citizen may return to the labor pool at the head of the line for as long as necessary to sustain themselves until able to earn a living elsewhere, only now they KEEP every dollar they earn, and the Treasury does not get a cent.

In other words, when the job market shrinks those people who are already citizens will have the privilege of securing what work is available at the lowest rung of the labor ladder, IF they need to. This is the safety net which insures there need be no homeless or financially helpless.

As long as there is money wanting to be redeemed then citizens will have the opportunity to work. When prosperity is growing, jobs will be plentiful and new citizens welcomed to keep enough money in circulation and inflation down -- Supply, and demand.

While anyone can change guilds as the monetary rewards fluctuate, no one can be a member of two or more guilds simultaneously without forfeiting the financial remuneration guaranteed by the guilds. To wit, each guild shall collect enough from its working members to pay all of those at the same rate who are not working.

By dropping the price of wages the guild will put more people to work. When there aren't enough people in the guild wages will go up to entice others into it.  The minimum pay allotted to each rank they establish will be set by supply and demand for that particular talent, on a regional basis.

No employer can pay less than that amount to anyone working in the capacity of that rank, except for a private contractor. And, any of those working for any government branch or office shall not be paid more than the minimum for that rank.

When too much work is available, minimum wages will be raised across the board in order to induce more workers into that field. When the supply of workers exceeds the demand that rank will be compelled to reduce their acceptable minimum wage across the board.