> In any event, the current notion of austerity is nonsense and is tied to > a tired and outdated concept that money is real or has some intrinsic > real value which it doesn't. Austerity = Stupidity and I think every so > often we as a society have to go through stretches of it before we > remember that basic truth.
I agree. This concept called "velocity", I seem to recall that it was described as the "multiplier effect", this from the macroeconomic course I took back in college. <soap box> Eventually we'll need to vote out those in power who continue to follow a quaint ideology that believes in maintaining the value of "currency" as a fixed resource is the only way to run an economy. I think this is a patently absurd concept to maintain in today's increasingly automated high-tech world. In fact we don't maintain fixed amounts of money in today modern economy anyway. "Money supply" is constantly being manipulated. Any belief that we always have a fixed sum of money flowing through the economy is an incredibly inaccurate one. We currently have in the United States several vocal super conservative political groups vying for absolute power. They are trying to put the kibosh on all sorts of government spending programs. Many have bought into a carefully manufactured fear that basically states: We as a society can no longer afford to pay for all sorts of valuable government services. They fear that to continue to fund these programs will eventually result in rampant inflation which of course will devalue the accumulate wealth everyone's pocket book both rich and poor, but ESPECIALLY the accumulated wealth in the rich man's pocket book. It is exactly on this front where the struggle for the control of "money supply" needs to be better understood and better managed. Many conservatives fear that if the government simply went ahead and printed up more money instead of issuing additional government bonds that will "pay" for such services, such "fiscal irresponsibility" will eventually result in massive amounts of inflation that would ravage the economy. However, what few Grok is the fact that experiencing the "ravages" of inflation is exactly equivalent to experiencing the ravages of taxation. The point being: you can either be taxed in hopefully a reasonably equitable many - or we can all experience the ravages of inflation which is essentially being levied a flat-tax against everyone both rich and por. Either way, we all end up paying for necessary valuable government services. OTOH, if we refuse to pay for these programs, which is the mantra of many super conservative organizations, we will essentially throw off massive numbers of people back into the unemployment line making them unproductive and an added burden to society. More of society begins to lose access to necessary services whether those services are for adequate health care, or to maintaining the health of our nation's infrastructure, such as roads and bridges. Unfortunately, it seems to me that we currently have a number of conservative groups who are not willing to look any farther than the notion of protecting the accumulated value of their own bank accounts. They have bought into the illusion that maintaining a constant fixed value for money is the most important "resource" to manage in their lives. They have bought into the illusion that managing the "resource" of money (as perceive in the form of a fixed limited resource) is far more important than trying to help better manage any other "resource". A real irony in all of this is the fact that the manufacture of goods and services is ultimately what's responsible for giving VALUE to what has been accumulated in all of private bank accounts both rich and poor. </soap box> Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
