(06-16-2017, 10:50 AM)Byron LeftTown Wrote: We already do just print the money to run the government.  $70 billion is mailed out each month in Social Security checks, but there is no "money" in the account - Social Security is literally a file cabinet full of IOUs in Parkersburg, West Virginia.  

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/wash...fund_x.htm

We could absolutely reduce everyone's taxes to zero, since zero of the income tax collected goes to run the government.  Please read the 1982 Grace Commission Report to confirm this fact. 

The 1913 Income tax was invented to give a sense of value to the worthless 1913 Federal Reserve Notes which replaced legal US Currency.  The Federal Reserve is a private corporation.  Their Notes cannot be redeemed for lawful money = defined in the 1792 Coinage Act as 371.25 grains of fine silver.

The funny thing is that our whole economy is built on rocks that only have value because we say they do. Paper, gold, silver, diamonds, coins, land, stocks, bonds, whatever...it's all a house of cards.

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(06-16-2017, 09:59 AM)The Real Marty Wrote:

(06-16-2017, 09:17 AM)Byron LeftTown Wrote: The numbers are meaningless.  Might as well be 100 trillion - it will never be paid back because the debt does not really exist.  It's a total Ponzi scheme.  The "government" is borrowing from "itself".  It makes "payments" with more borrowed "money".

Everyone "buys a bond" that pays 2% when inflation is 4%.  There are no risk-free investments that keep up with inflation.  A whole generation's savings have been destroyed with 0.01% interest on savings accounts.  Suppose you worked all your life and retired with $400,000.  At current interest rates you would earn $40 per year.

I know I'm going down the rabbit hole here, but I have to ask.

If the debt does not really exist, and we can just print as much money as we want, then why don't we just print the money to pay the government's obligations, and then we can reduce everyone's taxes to zero?   If the numbers are, as you say, meaningless, then why levy taxes at all?

The economy is built on the population's faith in the currency. If you print more money the costs go up because prices are how infinite dollars deal with the scarcity of finite resources. When inflation gets out of control then the currency loses its value and eventually people will lose faith in it and use other methods of exchange. If you want to see it in action, read the book Fiat Money Inflation in France, its not long and describes the French economy between the Revolution and Napoleon and the rise and fall of the Assignat.

And taxes are for two things, to buy votes and to control the population.

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