Modern Monetary Madness
$212 TRILLION in unfunded promises to the non-elites. Under Modern Monetary THEOLOGY (or print money without consequences), we are seeing trillion dollars budget deficits with no end in sight.
I know not why any one but a schoolboy in his declamation should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another.”
Samuel Johnson
“A mighty bubble of wealth is blown before our eyes, as empty, as transient, as contradictory to the laws of solid material, as confuted by every circumstance of actual condition, as any other bubble which man or child ever blew before.”
Edward Chancellor, Devil Take the Hindmost
"The wealthy, not only by private fraud but also by common laws, do every day pluck and snatch away from the people some part of their daily living. They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely without fear of losing that which they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labor of the people for as little money and effort as possible."
Thomas More, Utopia
"Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started."
Mary Midgley, The Myths We Live By
This policy is not entirely insane to break the global economy and reduce to poverty what laughingly is called a standard of living. Covid and MMT and Militarism the Monoparty are our 4 horsemen riding roughshod overall. The coup continues to destroy the nation from within with unlimited immigration and destruction of basic industry. The Theology is rooted in emotions. If wrong, then the Samson option is exercised by Mr. Market and with shrug of the shoulders and click of the heels retirement and never saying I got it wrong, badly wrong, and for this I owe retribution. There is a fourth function of money: as a means of social control."- William Michael Cunningham Economist & Author. As the Consciousness of Sheep article points out, when a government prints its own currency at will, by issuing bonds, it has to be backed up by projected tax income. When prosperity in a country is declining, this tax projection will inevitably be wrong, leading to bond market collapses and in an import-dependent economy like the UK, huge inflation.
El Gato Malo shows us money printing impoverishes the many via the Cantillon Effect. This simple idea shows 1) those who print new money benefit from it most. 2) Those who get this new money from them fastest benefit nearly as much. 3) Those who get it last are the ones most harmed.
“the reason is obvious: when you spend newly created money, you get to buy at the prices from yesterday. you are the new demand and the new spending. you are what starts to cause inflation. but you don’t face it like others will. you’re the one driving up the prices for the next guy. he pays for your profligacy. And this not only causes all manner up upward pointing wealth redistribution based on proximity to the money spigot, it destroys the fundamental aspects of price and markets that make them free and useful allocators of scarce resources.”
The destruction of Western Cultures is not an unintended consequence of Neoliberalism, it is deliberate part of the plan of Neoliberalism. Cultures bind peoples together, give them purpose, give them a sense of belonging and create a cohesiveness in the citizenry. Neoliberalism does not want that. Neoliberalism wants desperate, rootless people who can be arbitraged against other desperate, rootless people for the profit of the so-called elite.The destruction of culture is not an artifact of Neoliberalism – it is part of the very design of Neoliberalism.
One can expect that those Muslim cultures now destroying traditional Western Cultures will themselves be attacked just as soon as the traditional western cultures are destroyed. Elevating greed above all other values will necessarily make this come to pass unless people stand up against it.
Ideologies are never proximal causes, only tools to an aim. That aim was correctly identified: the destruction of morale values and in particular the nuclear family. But this was no accident of the liberal ideology which, as any other ideology, by its nature cannot act and has no volition. Nor was it the senseless and maniacal action of some evil entity reaching its orgasm on a morale destructive spree. The reality is much more mundane and pragmatically simple if one understands the nature of our monetary system.
By destroying the family, the elite transfers the allegiance of the individual from the former to the government. The later in return grants him the benefits of its numerous social programs that proclaim to mimic the security the family previously provided (more or less equitably or justly). The practical result is that now the portion of income that the individual could save is now justifiably taxable. And the longer he contributes to these social schemes the stronger his destiny is bound to that of the system. Once a critical mass of the population has been driven away from the family to the government, the ability to issue currency greatly increases since no one would dare disturb the system which has now become synonymous to his retirement plans. In contrast when the allegiance is to the family, the need to excessively tax is harder to justify. The practical result is that more money is saved privately. High savings empower the public against the government. And the excessive issuance of currency will be met by an increase in private gold savings which would destroy the system in short order. Obviously there is much more as to how the system is sustained, but what was just described is definitely an important factor in explaining the longevity of the system in the face of such monetary excesses.
As for the the other aberrations sprouting from the liberal garden, such as LGBTQ on steroids, BLM, etc… they all actively contribute to the destruction of the traditional family or any other social group susceptible to serve as a rallying point of resistance, and thus also contribute to the morale and material isolation of the individual. By their ubiquitousness permeating virtually every aspect of our lives they also serve to discourage dissent even within elite ranks, since every body potentially is an offender. A little bit like COVID tests can generate as many cases as politically expedient.
Ljubiša Malenica for the Saker Blog. Similarly it is not liberal values that have allowed the masses of immigrants into Europe. Again the simple explanations require no convoluted reasoning involving superstitious ideological powers. one is the need for cheap labor in the face of fierce Asian industrial competition. The other is the constant availability of a convenient scapegoat to the Elite’s excesses. The fact is that at least since the year 2000 western elites understood they were loosing control on the monetary beast they have created. They must have since I, a simple layman, could so clearly see it. Remember the Y2K Bug? It was the first unmistakable sign. The absurdity of the scare was in par with today’s COVID scare. It showed how desperate the need for printing money to sustain the system had become. Since then ever more preposterous claims were made to justify ever more increases in the monetary base. From Saddam, Afghanistan and the subprimes, to Ghadafi, Syria and COVID… tens of billions turned into hundreds of billions, then turned into trillions…
What I’m trying to convey is that currency isn’t issued to launch absurd policies and commit senseless destruction, but quite the exact opposite: absurd policies and senseless destruction are committed to justify ever increasing currency issuance without which the system collapses. Such are the intrinsic evils of Fiat systems.
https://confoundedinterest.net/2023/12/11/highway-to-hell-trillion-dollar-budget-deficits-for-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see-while-the-fed-payments-to-treasury-for-losses-hits-125-billion-unfunded-promises-to-the-masses-now-212-trillion-and-gr/
In old Sparta, Lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta decided on Utopia. Plutarch writes-
….resolved to make a division of their movables too, that there might be no odious distinction or inequality left amongst them; but finding that it would be very dangerous to go about it openly, he took another course, and defeated their avarice by the following stratagem: he commanded that all gold and silver coin should be called in, and that only a sort of money made of iron should be current, a great weight and quantity of which was very little worth; so that to lay up twenty or thirty pounds there was required a pretty large closet, and, to remove it, nothing less than a yoke of oxen. With the diffusion of this money, at once a number of vices were banished from Lacedaemon; for who would rob another of such a coin? Who would unjustly detain or take by force, or accept as a bribe, a thing which it was not easy to hide, nor a credit to have, nor indeed of any use to cut in pieces? For when it was just red hot, they quenched it in vinegar, and by that means spoilt it, and made it almost incapable of being worked.
In the next place, he declared an outlawry of all needless and superfluous arts; but here he might almost have spared his proclamation; for they of themselves would have gone after the gold and silver, the money which remained being not so proper payment for curious work; for, being of iron, it was scarcely portable, neither, if they should take the means to export it, would it pass amongst the other Greeks, who ridiculed it. So there was now no more means of purchasing foreign goods and small wares; merchants sent no shiploads into Laconian ports; no rhetoric-master, no itinerate fortune-teller, no harlot-monger, or gold or silversmith, engraver, or jeweller, set foot in a country which had no money; so that luxury, deprived little by little of that which fed and fomented it, wasted to nothing and died away of itself. For the rich had no advantage here over the poor, as their wealth and abundance had no road to come abroad by but were shut up at home doing nothing. And in this way they became excellent artists in common, necessary things; bedsteads, chairs, and tables, and such like staple utensils in a family, were admirably well made there; their cup, particularly, was very much in fashion, and eagerly bought up by soldiers, as Critias reports; for its colour was such as to prevent water, drunk upon necessity and disagreeable to look at, from being noticed; and the shape of it was such that the mud stuck to the sides, so that only the purer part came to the drinker's mouth. For this also, they had to thank their lawgiver, who, by relieving the artisans of the trouble of making useless things, set them to show their skill in giving, beauty to those of daily and indispensable use.
Ko-fi.com/thejournaloflingeringsanity
The Journal of Lingering Sanity is a reader-supported publication. We are beholden to truth not party. “The time has come," the Journal said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings."