Money

photo by C. L'Hirondelle 2003

New Article: Defining Money and Productive

Guaranteed income is about money. Any discussions of guaranteed income must include the topic of money. Yet, even though we all use money, we know almost nothing about money.

As the quote above shows, money is not real. You cannot eat money. People made up money because it is easier to buy things with money than carrying around things to barter.

Since we made up money, we can make up the rules about how society uses money. Governments make money and give power to private banks to create money. Money is a legal construct. That is why it is "legal" tender.

Right now almost everyone in the world uses money to get the things they need to live. Maybe in the future, there will be a moneyless economy. But today we need money to live. A guaranteed livable income for every person in every country in the world means that we could transition to an economy not based on forced production and forced consumption -- things that waste natural resources, pollute, harm health and harm human relations and our relations with other living things.

Until we can come up with something better, a guaranteed income would give us a foundation to create change where everyone could participate -- not just those who have the luxury of not having to scamble everyday to survive.

The following resources about money will give you a place to start
if you want to learn more about money.

What you will find if you start researching money, is that there is no scientific basis for the money system. There are no rules that banks have to have a certain amount of reserves. The money supply is not based on the GDP, nor is it based on production (since all kinds of harmful things are counted as "Productive"). a The money system is all just made up since people simply trust the experts. The current economy is a death-cycle economy. The only way to transition to a life-cycle economy is with a universal guaranteed livable income implemented in every country in the world.

Some monetary reformists want to rationalize the money system by having money supply linked to productive capacity, however, who will decide on the definition of "productive"? Do people think it was "productive" of their own mothers to birth them and keep them alive when they were infants and children? Very oddly, most monetary reform people do not yet advocate guaranteed income. Even though they dispute the status quo idea of money, they do not dispute the status quo definition of productivity (which count as unproductive all the unpaid care work done on the planet, and count as productive any activity that makes the economy grow -- regardless of whether that activity is harmful or wasteful of resources, the environment or people's lives.

Quotes

Quote: “Living capital [natural capital, human capital, social capital], which has the special capacity to regenerate itself, is the source of all real wealth. To destroy it for money—a number with no intrinsic value—is an act of collective insanity.” David C. Korten, The Difference Between Money & Wealth.

Quote: (from an engineer about the mathematical impossibility of interest)
"All money created this way is a loan. The money needed to pay interest on the aggregate principal does not exist. Therefore, it is mathematically impossible ever to pay off the aggregate loan principal plus the aggregate interest without depleting the money supply, as in a game of musical chairs. This mathematical impossibility is like asking someone to pour a quart of milk into a pitcher and then pour out a quart and a pint. It is obvious more borrowing is not the answer. More borrowing adds to aggregate debt and simply compounds the problem." Engineer Theodore R. Thoren from his "Space Age Technology can correct the money system."

Quote: "If all the money in the world were destroyed, as long as we have sufficient arable land, the factories, the necessary resources, and technical personnel, we could build anything and even supply an abundance." --Jacque Fresco
http://www.thevenusproject.com/vp_jac/interview.htm

Articles

Article: Monetary Reform and Basic Income by Richard Cook: "In my opinion, it would be much more effective for the Federal Reserve simply to give away money" http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/1232/81/
Richard Cook is a retired federal analyst with twenty-one years in the U.S. Treasury Department. http://www.richardccook.com/

Article: Fail-Safe Humanity - a non-tax source for guaranteed income
by Sharon Lee Robinson
http://www.livableincome.org/lrobertson1.htm

Books

Book: Interest and Inflation Free Money by Margrit Kennedy

Book: "…with the deregulation of banking worldwide, nobody can say for certain how great the money supply is at any given time." William Krehm, A Power Unto Itself: The Bank of Canada – the threat to our nation's economy.

Book: The lost science of money by Steven Zarlenga
http://www.monetary.org/lostscienceofmoney.html
This lengthy comprehensive book includes the history what acutally happened in the famous story of inflation in Germany in the 1930's and the wheelbarrows full of money.

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