Forum Post: What is the history of money in politics?
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 19, 2011, 10:14 a.m. EST by April
(3196)
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Serious question.
I think that there has always been money in the political system.
Or is this a more recent phenomenon? Seems like it has escalated in more recent times (past 20 yrs or so), is this correct?
If so, why/how?
I realize that Citizens United has the potential for an even bigger impact going forward. But, I'm more interested in the times before that even.
How did we get here?
Today the debate over who should create the national money supply is rarely heard, mainly because few people even realize it is an issue.
Politicians and economists, along with everybody else, simply assume that money is created by the government, and that the "inflation" everybody complains about is caused by an out-of-control government running the dollar printing presses.
Today, Federal Reserve Notes and U.S. dollar loans dominate the economy of the world; but this international currency is not money issued by the American people or their government. It is money created and lent by a private cartel of international bankers, and this cartel has the United States itself hopelessly entangled in a web of debt.
When a bank makes a loan, it simply adds to the borrower's deposit account in the bank by the amount of the loan. The money is not taken from anyone else's deposit; it was not previously paid in to the bank by anyone. It's new money, created by the bank for the use of the borrower.
The government can take back the money-issuing power from the banks.
Take the money issuing powers from the banks!
The history of money is an even deeper issues; from (is it true?): http://www.xat.org/xat/moneyhistory.html
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (1764 - 1781)
By the mid 1700's Britain was at its height of power, but was also heavily in debt.
Since the creation of the Bank of England, they had suffered four costly wars and the total debt now stood at £140,000,000, (which in those days was a lot of money).
In order to make their interest payments to the bank, the British government set about a programme to try to raise revenues from their American colonies, largely through an extensive programme of taxation.
There was a shortage of material for minting coins in the colonies, so they began to print their own paper money, which they called Colonial Script. This provided a very successful means of exchange and also gave the colonies a sense of identity. Colonial Script was money provided to help the exchange of goods. It was debt free paper money not backed by gold or silver.
During a visit to Britain in 1763, The Bank of England asked Benjamin Franklin how he would account for the new found prosperity in the colonies. Franklin replied.
"That is simple. In the colonies we issue our own money. It is called Colonial Script. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers.
In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay to no one." Benjamin Franklin (1)
America had learned that the people's confidence in the currency was all they needed, and they could be free of borrowing debts. That would mean being free of the Bank of England.
In Response the world's most powerful independent bank used its influence on the British parliament to press for the passing of the Currency Act of 1764.
This act made it illegal for the colonies to print their own money, and forced them to pay all future taxes to Britain in silver or gold.
Here is what Franklin said after that.
"In one year, the conditions were so reversed that the era of prosperity ended, and a depression set in, to such an extent that the streets of the Colonies were filled with unemployed." Benjamin Franklin
"The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction. The inability of the colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the international bankers was the PRIME reason for the Revolutionary War." Benjamin Franklin's autobiography
By the time the war began on 19th April 1775 much of the gold and silver had been taken by British taxation. They were left with no other choice but to print money to finance the war.
What is interesting here is that Colonial Script was actually working so well, it became a threat to the established economic system of the time.
The idea of issuing money as Franklin put it "in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry" and not charging any interest, was not causing any problems or inflation. This unfortunately was alien to the Bank of England which only issued money for the sake of making a profit for its shareholder's.
[Some quotes are disputed: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin Also, an even deeper idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit ]
Thats good. But how did it get that money is run amok in our political system?
It's a really good question. How does a basement wall get covered in mildew? One step at a time, while people are busy with other things. Eventually the inhabitants decide to clean it up or move (or put in a dehumidifer).
Politics is ultimately about deciding how to use the resources we have (or setting the ground rules for a marketplace of such decisions). Those who already have resources are in a better position to influence that process because they have more free time, they can hire people to help, and they can pay for media time. They can also pay for better educations, buy better food, get better medical care, take more vacations, and in general just have more energy to put into politics. They can purchase access to more or better information, and can even legally and illegally bribe legislators. The more they do all that, the stronger a force they get to be -- up to a point of revolt (which maybe we are seeing now).
When you plant a bunch of seeds in the ground for sunflowers, sometimes one grows a little faster than the rest and becomes really big, and with its big root system it grabs most of the nutrients and water in the soil and shades out the other sunflowers. So, we've been seeing that over the past few decades, with the wealthy buying more and more influence. But, people are different from sunflowers because they can cooperate, so the many small sunflower (99%) can decide to work together in their own interests. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha
Ultimately, that's why anything to improve social equality (like high progressive income taxes -- equivalent to a dehumidifer for social inequity mildew?) is going to help with the process (until it all happens again in 50 years when people forget the lessons of today, as we forgot the lessons of the 1930s). http://www.businessinsider.com/do-low-tax-rates-on-rich-people-ruin-the-economy-2011-7 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/jobs-will-follow-a-strengthening-of-the-middle-class.html?pagewanted=all
For some more details: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/
"Q: So, who does rule America?
A: The owners and managers of large income-producing properties; i.e., corporations, banks, and agri-businesses. But they have plenty of help from the managers and experts they hire. ...
Q: Then how do they rule?
A: That's a complicated story, but the short answer is through open and direct involvement in policy planning, through participation in political campaigns and elections, and through appointments to key decision-making positions in government."
Or see to understand the falsehood being pushed since the Reagan years (and probably even before) and which is part of getting us to where we are today: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-americas-primal-scream.html?_r=3 "Economists used to believe that we had to hold our noses and put up with high inequality as the price of robust growth. But more recent research suggests the opposite: inequality not only stinks, but also damages economies."
Maybe an even deeper point is what John W. Gardner talks about in "Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society" that each generation must relearn for itself what the words carved on the monuments mean? http://books.google.com/books?id=U5hXpnwUmW4C
Mold stinks! Love your analogy. Wish it could so easy as a dehumidifier!
Thank you so much for the links. I'm gonna run along and read them now!