Budget
of the Federal Government at Issue
Money
The Budget
is all about our money. So, before we try and balance the budget, lets look
at the money which the budgetary figures represent. There is no double talk
here. Money has grown to mean nothing. The value of a dollar is a phrase that
never gets mentioned any more because it is impossible to define. Why?
Well we don't
need a lot of high paid economists to tell us the answer, because the truth
is they will talk about all kinds of theoreticals but avoid the answer that
is so simple to see but that no one wants to admit.
In the past,
under the Gold Standard, we knew exactly how much gold our dollars could buy.
Why? Because our dollars were backed by that much Gold. We could then measure
everything else against that and that, in turn, gave our money meaning. The
Gold Standard was ended and our dollars and with it ended any hope of valuing
our money.
Add to that
an endless source of money being created every second by the gazillions of
dollars, and the meaning of money becomes even more of a travesty that it
was the moment before. Who is creating all this money you may ask? Well, we
all are. Every time a person uses a charge card without the intent to pay
the bill when it comes due, he or she has effectively gone into competition
with the United States Mint and has become a money printer. And when we buy
cars or houses on extended terms, we are also creating money that did not
exist before.
The banks
and really all companies that issue credit cards or credit accounts take those
newly minted promised dollars and start investing them in spending them as
if they were real. And, the wildest thing is that other companies and banks
and government agencies accept these dollars, which are backed by the full
faith and credit of folks just like you and me and nothing more than that,
as payment; as if those dollars represented by electronic blips actually had
a value.
Somehow,
the value of money needs to be brought back into normalcy. Every thing that
money is is based on promises that the electronic blips and paper currency
will all be honored when the reality is that there is no value to any of these
dollars. So balancing fictitious dollars is an exercise in futility. It means
nothing because the dollars are meaningless and valueless.
If you think
this is silliness, then figure for a moment how hard it would be to spend
any of these fake dollars in a time of general emergency. All of a sudden,
real things become substitutes for money. Why? Because people really do know
better. But it doesn't come to the fore until it is too late.
Spending
Somewhere
along the way to where we are as a country, things changed.
