VI
In the Wake of Inflation

It should be quite simple to visualize conditions in a country if counterfeiting of the people's money were permitted. The result would be similar to what we have here in the United States, and for the same reason. On occasion, The Wall Street Journal has referred to our money as "counterfeit." It could well have omitted the quotation marks. Inflation—purely and simply—is the counterfeiting of our medium of exchange, a process that emaciates the nation's earned wages, and permits its real wealth to be concentrated (unearned) in the hands of a privileged minority.

A consensus of twenty-one leading bank economists estimated a gross national product rate of $40.1 billion for the first half of 1970, $38.7 billion due to inflation (U.S. News & World Report, October 13, 1969). How do the "experts" manage to interpret a rise in prices as an increase in the GNP? One need not be an economist to observe how neatly inflation "balances" the national budget; how indispensable to our inflation-oriented economy is the element of grand larceny; how this larceny is galloping toward a saturation point that must seal both our economic and political doom.

Let's face it, our booming prosperity is a house of cards predicated on inflation. The tidal wave of "money" is approaching the limit of its deceptive powers—the fatal stage where the economy is damned if we inflate further, and damned if we don't.

And what is the Federal Reserve's remedy? The same that it has always been: penalize the victims; reap the spoils of bankruptcy. [p. 34] "Economists" admit that inflation is robbery, yet the necessity for as much as 3% is stoutly defended. Today, the inflation rate is more than 10%, the prime interest rate is 12%, while union wages decline in value despite some seemingly preposterous wage hikes. The plight of lower-income brackets discredits our entire moral, economic, and political systems.

What possible purpose, pray, is served by expanding a nation's money supply beyond its value if not to rob and destroy that nation? Inflation is precluded by constitutional money and competent statesmen. Let's be about it!

Aside from injecting a deluge of counterfeit money into our economy, inflation has debased ethics in business, industry, labor, and the professions; robbed the masses to enrich a few; set citizen against fellow citizen and nation against nation in deadly competition for unattainable goals. How private money creators-inflators have deceived and prostituted Western Civilization has to be the supreme act of magic for all time. The only possible culmination to prolonged abuses of this kind is a decadent, crime-ridden, sick society where inflation and crime accelerate in step.

Ironically, ninety-five people out of a hundred don't know what inflation is, that it is the cause of the price-wage spiral—not the result. They are divided into two political groups engaged in perpetual debate—most of it would insult the lowest type of mentality. In the meantime, both are robbed blind by a common enemy they neither recognize nor suspect. They cannot comprehend that government handouts (of privately created "money" loaned to the government) are nothing less than a tax-imposed by inflation—upon the very people whom politicians would feign to help, and that they become progressively poorer as the number and size of federal grants increase.

The proceeds of any guaranteed annual wage—if ever enacted—would be discounted and worthless before it could even become effective: its intended benefits would be accumulated by the beneficiaries of inflation, and squandered on preposterous luxuries and in plush resorts and gambling casinos the world around. It is essential that the people's substance be diverted to [p. 35] such occupations and other nonentities such as space exploration, supersonic air travel, and war. All are vital to sustain a barbaric money system—critical poisoning of our entire moral and physical environment—notwithstanding. In the meantime— over the length and breadth of our "free" country—children are hungry and schools are closing.

Any serious effort to help the poor is ridiculous until we stop robbing them, and stop robbing the great middle class. This done, the remaining poor who "will always be with us," will be well cared for, and—short of major disaster—without any government subsidy.

Russia's dream of World Communism is being realized faster than she had ever dared to hope. Vandalism, crime, and contempt for all law and order in our country are an open invitation—if not an impending necessity—for a police state. Surely the men in the Kremlin are elated by their ability to sell their ideology on the world market without firing a shot, or sacrificing a Russian life. They are the world arsenal of Communism—smugly secure from the ravages of hot war and inflation.

Is socialized life and industry that superior to free enterprise? Hardly! Is Russian "slavery" preferable to American "freedom"? It would seem so, if we may judge from the readiness of the underprivileged majority to accept it, and our faltering global effort to contain it, to "free" the impoverished nations which would espouse it. We had best awaken to the fact that many citizens of our own country would be better off in Siberia.

Our fruitless endeavor on behalf of freedom presents a paradox that cries out for common sense. Something has to be amiss with our brand of freedom. There is indeed] It is not the freedom provided by the Constitution of the United States; rather, it is freedom to plunder—with no brakes, a freedom reserved for international bankers, for our own so-called Federal Reserve Banks and their fellow travelers in the stock market, in politics, and in various other areas privileged to profit from inflation.

An honest medium of exchange is a first requisite for a free [p. 36] people. How, then, is it possible—under our sophisticated educational system—that people remain ignorant of the simple rudiments of money, of its creation and control? Our Constitution specifies that "The Congress shall have power to coin money, regulate the value thereof," and to "emit bills of credit" of its own—not borrowed from private interests at usury. That power never had a fair chance in the entire life of our Republic. Its last bastion of defense passed with the death of its able defender, Benjamin Franklin. President Lincoln tried to restore it to finance the Civil War. His attempt was only partially successful; he paid with his life—as indicated by available evidence not found in our history books.

Regardless of how my opinion is construed, I firmly believe that Russia's belligerent attitude is prompted more by a well-grounded fear of Free World money than by any innate bestiality or yen to conquer. Peace and sanity are possible between men, and between nations. The prime factor is honest money—a medium of exchange that is fair to people and to nations alike. Make no mistake, free enterprise has no peer among the various economic structures throughout the world, but only when ethically conducted, i.e., financed with honest money. Lacking these basic requirements, it could yet prove the worst of all—you can't conduct honest business with counterfeit money.

Under free enterprise with honest money, prices would fall as more goods and services become available through advancing technology and competition; whereas, with privately created, inflatable money (counterfeit), prices rise with automation. Affluence and need both multiply at the same time. Our "prosperity" depends on waste and wholesale destruction of real wealth. The prize is not to viable competition, but to sheer banditry— resulting in abundance for a few, privation and debt for the many, and total pollution for all. Hence our present and critical dilemma: either choose honest money, or accept iron-fisted dictatorship. The choice is still open (?), but time is fast running out.

In his provocative book, Reaction (written for the Billy Graham Crusade), John Wesley gave a striking example of inflation, without mentioning it by name. Referring to the cost of killing a soldier, he wrote: "By the First World War it had risen to $15,000; and today in Viet Nam it costs the Americans just over a million dollars for every Viet Cong they kill."

The same author, quoting Senator Mark Hatfield, wrote: "There is currently the equivalent of 15 tons of T.N.T. for each of the three and one-half billion human beings on earth." What a miscarriage of justice when two-thirds of them are hungry!

The United States Savings and Loan League states that if inflation runs at 6% compounded annually for the next 30 years, a person earning $10,000 in 1957 will need $57,000 for the same standard of living. Today's $30 bag of groceries would cost nearly $115. A TV set now selling for $500 would bring nearly $2,000. An auto with a current price tag of $3,000 would go for over $17,000. A home now selling for $25,000 would jump to more than $147,000.

Growing mountains of debt compiled by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce from 1945 to 1965, and projected to 1970 by the U.S. News & World Report (July 6, 1970) revealed the enormity of our debts, and their phenomenal growth over the past twenty-five years:

Simple arithmetic, applied to the figures in the preceding paragraph will quickly disclose that a year-to-year inflation rate of 3%-4% (acceptable to the "economists") is of small consolation. The only solution is no inflation at all, aside from what is commensurate with increased gross national product, such additional currency to be provided as prescribed by the Constitution of the United States, and fully backed by the wealth of the nation, not created out of thin air by private interests.

The sage conclusion of T. W. Bridges bears repeating: "It is therefore immaterial which party is voted in or out, for we cannot have a good government and a bad money system. Until our debt-financing, debt-compounding system is eliminated, we will have master and slave, robber and robbed, booms, depressions, bankruptcies, panics, and wars. These conditions are vital in order to keep in operation a barbaric money system." [p. 39]

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