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From Parable to Reality
Disclaimer:
The words below are not written by me. They were written, along with the 20-part story I have also posted on this blog, by Louis Even, a French-Canadian, in the 1930s. I have changed his references to Canada to Australia below for better emphasis.
- Danu
Louis Even
The debt-money system introduced by Oliver into the Salvation Island made the little community sink into financial debt in proportion as it developed and enriched the island by its own work.
This is exactly what happens in our civilized countries, is it not?
Australia of today is certainly richer, in real wealth, than it was 50, 100 years ago, or in the pioneers' age. But compare the national debt, the sum of all public debts of Australia today with this sum 50, 100 years, three centuries ago!
Yet the Australians themselves produced this enrichment by their labour and their know-how. Then why should they be collectively indebted for the result of their own activities?
For example, consider the schools, the municipal aqueducts, the bridges, roads and other fabrics of public character. Who build them all? Builders of the country. Who supply them with the needed materials? Manufacturers of the country. And how come they can be employed in public works? Because there are other kinds of workers who produce food, clothes, shoes, who supply all the things and services required for the wants of the constructors and manufacturers.
Thus the whole population of Australia by its work of different kinds, produce all those developments. If we must obtain goods from abroad, we send other goods abroad in counterpart of them.
Now, what do you see? Everywhere the citizens are taxed to pay those schools, those hospitals, those bridges, roads and other public works. The Australians, as a collectivity, are thus compelled to pay what they produce as a collectivity.
You pay much more than the double price
And this is not all. The population is made to pay more than the price of what it produced. Their own production — a real enrichment — has become for the Australians a debt burdened with interest. When years add to years, the sum of the interests can equal or even exceed the amount of the debt imposed by the system.
It happens that the population may have to pay two, three times the cost of what its members produced.
In addition to the public debts, there are industrial debts, also loaded with interests. They compel the manufacturers and contractors to increase their prices beyond the cost of production, in order to reimburse the capital and the interests; otherwise they would become insolvent, bankrupt.
Both public and industrial debts are paid, plus interest, by the Australian population, to the financial system. We pay taxes for the public debts, and a surplus of price for the industrial debts. Prices are swelling while the purse is flattened by taxes.
A tyrannical system
These and many other facts are indicative of a money system, a financial system which controls instead of being a servant; a system to dominate the people — as Oliver dominated the fellows of the Island before they rebelled.
And if the money masters refuse to lend, or if they make their conditions unbearable for the public bodies or for the manufacturers, what happens? It happens that the public bodies give up many projects, no matter how urgent; and the manufacturers give up development or production plans that would answer to real needs of Australians. This is a cause of unemployment. And those who still have something, or who earn a salary, must be taxed to prevent the unemployed from starving completely.
Can you imagine a more tyrannical system, with so baneful effects on every Australian?
A bar to distribution
And this is not all. Not only the money system indebts the producers, or paralyzes the production it refuses to finance, but it is a wretched financial tool for the distribution of the goods.
Notwithstanding the fact that stores, shops and warehouses are full, and that everything is at hand for an even greater production, the distribution of the goods already produced is stinted.
You can obtain only what you can pay. In face of an abundant production, there should be an abundance of purchasing power, of money in the wallets of the people. Such is not the fact. The price of the finished goods is always higher than the amount of money distributed as purchasing power in the course of their production. This is inherent to the accountancy of the present system of finance which has no mechanism to fill the gap.
The capacity to pay is not made to equal the capacity to produce. Finance and reality do not work at the same rate. Reality means an abundance of goods easy to produce. Finance means a lacking money hard to obtain.
To correct what is wicked
Thus the present money system is truly an oppressive one, when it should be a system of service.
This does not mean that we must do away with it, but we must correct it. The application of the financial principles known as Social Credit would make this correction magnificently.
The principles of Social Credit, when applied, would make the money system a servant instead of a master. They were discovered and enunciated by a genius, C. H. Douglas (deceased in 1952). His first writings on this subject were published in 1918.
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