The federalist papers should be required reading for every kid in school. The worst decision our enlightened educators ever made was getting rid of civics in schools. If you ask just about anyone under the age of 35 they have no idea about our govt. How it works or even the branches of it. It is a joke that isn’t funny. Great piece Doc.
While I agree civics should still be a required course in HS (and college), the problem is that it can be taught in a very unbalanced manner. As an example, I was taking some Econ classes back in the aught years (yes, 2000s, not 1900s) and the micro prof came from a decidedly leftist (he was a borderline commie from Greece) perspective - don’t believe there was a big gummint policy he disagreed with.
To be clear, not running the fella down, just commenting on his world view: I still managed to high ace the class despite my repeatedly challenging him in class. Greatly enjoyed that class and macro: being 2x as old as the median age confers some academic cachet 🤣. Now that I’m a bit more than thrice the median age, there’s some more classes I’m interested in auditing.
That's so interesting the horrible fiscal shape that Greece has been in since the mid-80s. Goldman eventually admitted to cooking the books for Greece's EU entry, and that, as actually constituted, Greece NEVER QUALIFIED to enter the EU! Your prof NEVER LEARNED THE LESSON! WOW.
This IS the role of the parent. Someone has to do it, but I would prefer to put such matters in the hands of parents. Parents should probably have more say in what goes on in schools. Their neglect of this responsibility has led to some bad places.
In my view, when Congress voted to view corporations as citizens and gave them the same rights as an individual the damage was complete! Corporations should be subservient to the citizens of the US. The great harm that has been done and is being done and will accelerate needs to be stopped. The future of this republic should be guided by the needs of the citizens and not the corporations goals which are detrimental to that end. The scales are unbalanced in the halls of justice.
That also reinforced the idea that states could not outlaw out of state money from in state elections. Proposed to my state leg sa bill banning g. soros from buying the next senator from Texas. She agreed with the sentiment but said that particular decision by SCOTUS would make it impossible.
If you are in the military or a corporation, they have mission statement. The goals are set by the leadership. If you are a member of the group you must embrace those goals and contribute to the methods of reaching those goals. If not, you are expelled. When they violate human rights they need to have a mechanism to dismantle the corporation or military organization that doesn't follow the rules. I guess that is when fascism is in play when humans rights are being denied. Gaza certainly is in that situation.
The problem of corporate power in government has never been adequately addressed.
Most businesses, though "incorporated" have only a moderate interest in government. But the big ones are out there competing with governments. And infiltrating them; and taking them over. As corporations have gotten larger, the problem has gotten larger.
My initial take would be to give the big corporations a place in government. Outlaw lobbying and campaign contributions completely. But give them some seats in the Senate or something. In the current context, we need these big companies. They should have a structured way to participate in government. But NO hanky-panky.
Corporations, by the very structure under law, are answerable to their shareholders. How would they be answerable to citizens, unless those same shareholders are citizens? Doesn't make sense.
You misunderstand. Corporations may be responsible to their shareholders, but they influence politicians with their donations. That affects the politicians’ voting behavior, which affects us!!
Agree! Did not know I implied otherwise. The problem is they lock in economic gain and often stifle competition to prevent bringing down cost of goods and services. That is the issue.
Dr. Malone, this is a hell of a piece of work, tracing the exact amendments and case law that gutted the checks the founders built. Most people just wave their hands at "big government" and never name the mechanism. You named it.
Here's what I keep chewing on after reading both essays. You've laid out how the ceiling got raised, how Washington took the levers away from the states one amendment at a time. But none of that happens without the floor moving first. The Seventeenth Amendment doesn't pass in 1913 if the citizens of 1913 are formed the way the citizens of 1776 were. Somewhere along the way the people who were supposed to defend those checks stopped being able to, or stopped caring to.
That's the piece I've spent the last couple years trying to measure. I call it the ceiling of government competence is set by the floor of citizen capacity. You're diagnosing the ceiling. I've been building a twelve-axis diagnostic for the floor, tracing how the founding generation was formed for self-government and how that formation has drifted since. Different layer, same collapse.
If it's useful, I've got a trilogy working through this at ourcivicspress.com. Appreciate the essay either way. Happy 4th.
The power of "Let the rich pay their fair share" rotted the floor.
Yesterday I heard a woman giving a speech saying the FIRST purpose of government was to help "spread the wealth" and equalize things. She was in her 50's, sincere and educated. The idea that Protect us from enemies might be a priority was so outside her radar it was sad. She really had no concept of what a war on our soil would be, or that it was possible.
Fran, that right there is the floor rotting in real time. She wasn't lying to you, she wasn't scheming. She just got formed that way. Nobody ever taught her that government's FIRST job is to protect what's already yours, your life, before it does one single other thing. Spreading wealth around, that's not first, that isn't even close to first.
And here's the scary part. She can't even see protection as an option. It's not that she disagrees with it. It never got loaded into her head as a thing to consider in the first place. That's not really on her. That's on everything that formed her, schools, culture, whoever was doing the teaching for fifty years.
A woman like that isn't some weirdo outlier either. She's a whole generation's floor. And policy gets built on that floor whether we like it or not.
This is a wonderful essay for ALL to read. Thank you for putting it out there. Far too many people are oblivious of our history.
On a separate note, I have baby mini donkeys coming soon. I think you need a few to protect your foul! They are fierce protectors. Charlottesville area….stones throw away!
Oh my goodness - baby mini donkeys. I adore donkeys. Years ago, my husband & I went to the island of Bonaire, where they have a donkey sanctuary. It was the first place I wanted to go. They are sooo sweet.
So, in 250 years we’ve done a couple things: 1) we’ve flipped the power (I’m)balance in the United States from being State focused to DC focused; this was accomplished by a) impoverishing the states by subsuming the states taxation power thru the 16th A; and b) negating the states political power by removing the states role in the Senate thru the 17th A.
Nice analysis of the 16th, added muchly - including some more to think upon. These two summaries, from a lay person’s pen would be well served by being included in every ConLaw student’s syllabus - as a contrarian view to the majority of what they’ll ingest.
That's a clean summary, you nailed the two-part mechanism in three sentences. Impoverish the states through the 16th, cut their political power through the 17th, same year, one two punch.
Book II traces that exact power shift, just from a different angle. Fourteen historical eras, tracking how the citizens themselves got formed alongside the government structure changing around them. Your read explains how DC took the levers. Mine's been asking why the states and the citizens let it happen without much of a fight. Different half of the same collapse.
If it's useful, I lay the whole arc out at ourcivicspress.com. Appreciate the analysis either way.
The why/how is easy, people are easy to manipulate. The whole purpose of the Lincoln-Douglas debates was to sway the populous about Who they should elect to the state legislature and this issue of legislatures electing senators. If the 17th didn’t exist then there would be a clear Republican majority in the senate (more Republican state legislatures). This happens because more legislative districts are Republican than democrats. But people are easy to manipulate by promising them "STUFF," FREE stuff, appealing to baser lowest common desires. Those issues would have been debated in the state legislatures, debating the merits thereof, how it would benefit the state as a whole, not just the individuals.
Sometimes these debates never ended and a senator was not elected on time. Combine this with impugning The Senate by calling it a millionaires club, pointing out corruption, well it would be easy to sway public opinion.
Something to consider: had the 16th & 17th never passed would we have had a Great Depression rather than the recession it should have been AND the welfare state we now have?
SR Miller, you just named the whole thing. "People are easy to manipulate" isn't a side note, that's the ballgame. A citizen who can weigh evidence against a promise of free stuff doesn't fall for "millionaires club" name calling. One who can't, does. That's not a policy failure, that's a formation failure, and it was already sitting there before 1913.
Your Great Depression question, I'd flip it. The reason those amendments passed easy is the same reason the welfare state grew easy after. Same floor, same citizens. Fix the floor and maybe neither happens the way it did.
To be clear, the "millionaires club" was real, the corruption was real. Whether an Amendment was the best way to remedy is is now quite clear--it was not. I've chewed on this question for decades: What else could have been done?
Joy, that's the real question. Corruption was real, remedy was wrong. Honest answer, there wasn't a good remedy available at the citizen level in 1913 because nobody had built one. Still don't think we have. That's what I've spent the last couple years trying to fix.
Tobesure, was not saying those issues didn’t exist - tho I hope it was rare and not prevalent. What I was saying, whether true or not, those issues were gonna be used to defame the existing senate selection process much like we see happening today against political and private individuals. I find it interesting that this tendency to smearing others, impugning character exists overwhelmingly on one particular side.
Side note: in addition to the 17th A I believe Sullivan should be overturned as well
I think term limits at all levels of governance the correct solution to one individual gaining too much power. Also, non-unionized staff selected by merit. Perhaps even a thoughtful term limit here as well
You can't get term limits without the very people who oppose them voting for them, sad to say. They, of course, are the legislators themselves, you know, the professional "citizen representatives".
There is also that other financial abomination that was hatched in 1913, namely the Federal Reserve System. While the Constitution prohibits the issuance of Bills of Credit by the states and prohibits states from making anything but gold or silver coin a legal tender for discharging debts, it failed to impose similar prohibitions upon the federal government.
While there had been earlier attempts by Congress at empowering either a central bank or the Treasury at issuing a paper currency, the Fed is unique in that Congress delegated its discretion over the issuance of Bills of Credit (which are obligations of the US Treasury) to a fascist-style public-private partnership (in the current Fed structure, the Board of Governors are political appointees, while the Presidents of the twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks are elected by directors representing private member banks and the Board of Governors).
Things got even worse in 1933 when Federal Reserve Notes were given legal tender status, which previously had been granted only to United States Notes in a highly dubious Supreme Court interpretation of Congress's power to "coin money and regulate the value thereof" in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Things have been really horrible since 1971, when the Treasury cut the last link between dollars and gold. If you go to the Treasury today and ask it to redeem your Federal Reserve Note for lawful money (which it has been legally obligated to do since FRNs were first issued in 1914), they'll just hand you another FRN of equivalent face value. Being forced to accept repayment of a debt instrument with another debt instrument of the same kind is a sick joke, not an honest foundation for a sound monetary system.
The power of the Fed to create legal tender fiat dollars out of thin air (and of private commercial banks to create dollar substitutes out of thin air, which are backstopped by the central bank whenever the financial system suffers from an adverse phase of the boom/bust cycle) serves to monetize longer-term debt obligations issued by the U.S. Treasury and by privileged private sector debtors. This manufacturing of financial assets for the benefit of the government and of well-connected crony corporations (and the commercial banks who cater to their credit needs) is not economically equivalent to creating physical capital goods that make labor and natural resources more productive (in sharp contrast to genuine capitalistic savings, which do aid real capital asset formation instead of just bidding up the prices of such assets).
Rather, it functions as a mighty engine of inflationary exploitation that erodes the purchasing power of honestly-earned incomes of workers, capitalists, and land-owners alike for those on the Fed's gravy train. In that respect, Fed-engineered inflation is just like another income tax.
Murray Rothbard has a lot to say about all this too; a couple of his books on the subject written for general audiences are:
The Civics class I took in the 9th grade gave me such a great introduction to the inner workings of the American government! I was privileged to have an incredible, knowledgeable teacher who engaged the class and made sure we understood what he was teaching! This class colored my learning throughout my educational years and was responsible for my “Common Sense” political views throughout my life. I so wish students of today could share the same experience, with the same excellent teacher who taught me. I fear that a teacher of such caliber would be hard to find in today’s progressive teaching climate. How sad.
Add to all this the ability of the fed to print money. Build a dam costs umpteen $billion ...print umpteen $billion and all good...except the dollars in our pockets collectively reduced in value by umpteen $billion.
Interesting good article. Me, FM MD for 34 years. I am interested in everything. Took an undergrad course on Roman history in the 1980s at the Univeristy of Texas, Austin. Excellent professor. Good update on what I had learned before.
What the heck happened in 1913 and before, because you know this wasn't an overnight thing. We (the people) have been paying ever since. "To live outside the law, you must be honest" Dylan. I learned how to work around the system at the end of my career. I gave up my license so I couldn't be harassed and only took cash as a donation that I never saw or held. A bowl for donations and willing clients that I simply saw as friends needing a haircut.
The Woodrow Wilson crowd prevailed. In addition to pushing socialism, they breathed new life into racism (which was fading) and encouraged Jim Crow laws be enforced.
Not unlike Obama reinvigorated racism and encouraged socialism.
Your offering here makes irrefutable sense. On the other hand, given the spector of today's managers, I'm unable to feel very hopeful.
Observing education over the course of my lifetime, I conclude it has been directed overall toward producing a citizenry of submission and compliance. Never a fan of numbers, the Bush era rework of teaching and numbers in particular seemed incomprehensible.
Add my experiences with Illinois and Maryland while watching New York, California and Washington. My faith in the citizenry, the States and mobility is sorely challenged.
For one, I do hope knowedgable statesmen will find their way into influential positions within the many governments. That more informed among the public and within the government will support needed reforms. Trump and his cabinet are setting a state for action. Now opens opportunity. May good come of it!
The federalist papers should be required reading for every kid in school. The worst decision our enlightened educators ever made was getting rid of civics in schools. If you ask just about anyone under the age of 35 they have no idea about our govt. How it works or even the branches of it. It is a joke that isn’t funny. Great piece Doc.
While I agree civics should still be a required course in HS (and college), the problem is that it can be taught in a very unbalanced manner. As an example, I was taking some Econ classes back in the aught years (yes, 2000s, not 1900s) and the micro prof came from a decidedly leftist (he was a borderline commie from Greece) perspective - don’t believe there was a big gummint policy he disagreed with.
To be clear, not running the fella down, just commenting on his world view: I still managed to high ace the class despite my repeatedly challenging him in class. Greatly enjoyed that class and macro: being 2x as old as the median age confers some academic cachet 🤣. Now that I’m a bit more than thrice the median age, there’s some more classes I’m interested in auditing.
That's so interesting the horrible fiscal shape that Greece has been in since the mid-80s. Goldman eventually admitted to cooking the books for Greece's EU entry, and that, as actually constituted, Greece NEVER QUALIFIED to enter the EU! Your prof NEVER LEARNED THE LESSON! WOW.
Thus is the mindset of the ideologue.
And the Anti-Federalist Papers. Both are crucial reading.
Done by design.
And not teaching cursive. If you can't read the document, those who can will tell you what it says, and maybe fudge a bit here and there.
Civics from Grade 1 to 12th should be mandatory. Then we would not have all these bizarre events happening!
Mandate something to teach the value of liberty?
This IS the role of the parent. Someone has to do it, but I would prefer to put such matters in the hands of parents. Parents should probably have more say in what goes on in schools. Their neglect of this responsibility has led to some bad places.
Wise, wise words. It's the bane of many good teachers that the parents today seem to take education for granted, & don't want to be involved.
In my view, when Congress voted to view corporations as citizens and gave them the same rights as an individual the damage was complete! Corporations should be subservient to the citizens of the US. The great harm that has been done and is being done and will accelerate needs to be stopped. The future of this republic should be guided by the needs of the citizens and not the corporations goals which are detrimental to that end. The scales are unbalanced in the halls of justice.
That also reinforced the idea that states could not outlaw out of state money from in state elections. Proposed to my state leg sa bill banning g. soros from buying the next senator from Texas. She agreed with the sentiment but said that particular decision by SCOTUS would make it impossible.
I agree! Corporations should not be allowed to donate to campaigns or lobby Congress. The politician is then beholden to them.
IMO, corporations are fascism personified (at least, according to Mussolini).
If you are in the military or a corporation, they have mission statement. The goals are set by the leadership. If you are a member of the group you must embrace those goals and contribute to the methods of reaching those goals. If not, you are expelled. When they violate human rights they need to have a mechanism to dismantle the corporation or military organization that doesn't follow the rules. I guess that is when fascism is in play when humans rights are being denied. Gaza certainly is in that situation.
Gaza & it's people have been destroyed by Hamas. They are cruel masters.
The problem of corporate power in government has never been adequately addressed.
Most businesses, though "incorporated" have only a moderate interest in government. But the big ones are out there competing with governments. And infiltrating them; and taking them over. As corporations have gotten larger, the problem has gotten larger.
My initial take would be to give the big corporations a place in government. Outlaw lobbying and campaign contributions completely. But give them some seats in the Senate or something. In the current context, we need these big companies. They should have a structured way to participate in government. But NO hanky-panky.
They don’t have a visible stake at the table but decide who can be at the table. The root of the problem.
Corporations, by the very structure under law, are answerable to their shareholders. How would they be answerable to citizens, unless those same shareholders are citizens? Doesn't make sense.
You misunderstand. Corporations may be responsible to their shareholders, but they influence politicians with their donations. That affects the politicians’ voting behavior, which affects us!!
Agree! Did not know I implied otherwise. The problem is they lock in economic gain and often stifle competition to prevent bringing down cost of goods and services. That is the issue.
Dr. Malone, this is a hell of a piece of work, tracing the exact amendments and case law that gutted the checks the founders built. Most people just wave their hands at "big government" and never name the mechanism. You named it.
Here's what I keep chewing on after reading both essays. You've laid out how the ceiling got raised, how Washington took the levers away from the states one amendment at a time. But none of that happens without the floor moving first. The Seventeenth Amendment doesn't pass in 1913 if the citizens of 1913 are formed the way the citizens of 1776 were. Somewhere along the way the people who were supposed to defend those checks stopped being able to, or stopped caring to.
That's the piece I've spent the last couple years trying to measure. I call it the ceiling of government competence is set by the floor of citizen capacity. You're diagnosing the ceiling. I've been building a twelve-axis diagnostic for the floor, tracing how the founding generation was formed for self-government and how that formation has drifted since. Different layer, same collapse.
If it's useful, I've got a trilogy working through this at ourcivicspress.com. Appreciate the essay either way. Happy 4th.
Steadfast,
J.D. Oliver
The power of "Let the rich pay their fair share" rotted the floor.
Yesterday I heard a woman giving a speech saying the FIRST purpose of government was to help "spread the wealth" and equalize things. She was in her 50's, sincere and educated. The idea that Protect us from enemies might be a priority was so outside her radar it was sad. She really had no concept of what a war on our soil would be, or that it was possible.
Fran, that right there is the floor rotting in real time. She wasn't lying to you, she wasn't scheming. She just got formed that way. Nobody ever taught her that government's FIRST job is to protect what's already yours, your life, before it does one single other thing. Spreading wealth around, that's not first, that isn't even close to first.
And here's the scary part. She can't even see protection as an option. It's not that she disagrees with it. It never got loaded into her head as a thing to consider in the first place. That's not really on her. That's on everything that formed her, schools, culture, whoever was doing the teaching for fifty years.
A woman like that isn't some weirdo outlier either. She's a whole generation's floor. And policy gets built on that floor whether we like it or not.
You accurately described her.
This is a wonderful essay for ALL to read. Thank you for putting it out there. Far too many people are oblivious of our history.
On a separate note, I have baby mini donkeys coming soon. I think you need a few to protect your foul! They are fierce protectors. Charlottesville area….stones throw away!
JGM - I am all in! you are just going to have to convince Robert that more animals are a necessity...
Oh my goodness - baby mini donkeys. I adore donkeys. Years ago, my husband & I went to the island of Bonaire, where they have a donkey sanctuary. It was the first place I wanted to go. They are sooo sweet.
I saw a video of mini donkeys not long ago. Living in the house! Not much bigger than a good size dog. More is merrier. Dr Malone!!!
So, in 250 years we’ve done a couple things: 1) we’ve flipped the power (I’m)balance in the United States from being State focused to DC focused; this was accomplished by a) impoverishing the states by subsuming the states taxation power thru the 16th A; and b) negating the states political power by removing the states role in the Senate thru the 17th A.
Nice analysis of the 16th, added muchly - including some more to think upon. These two summaries, from a lay person’s pen would be well served by being included in every ConLaw student’s syllabus - as a contrarian view to the majority of what they’ll ingest.
Shoot, noticed I left out a phrase: we’ve flipped the script from STATE focused in the "Articles of Confederation…"
There was a more nuanced BALANCE of powers in the succeeding Constitution which has shifted to the central gummint as pointed out in the two essays.
That's a clean summary, you nailed the two-part mechanism in three sentences. Impoverish the states through the 16th, cut their political power through the 17th, same year, one two punch.
Book II traces that exact power shift, just from a different angle. Fourteen historical eras, tracking how the citizens themselves got formed alongside the government structure changing around them. Your read explains how DC took the levers. Mine's been asking why the states and the citizens let it happen without much of a fight. Different half of the same collapse.
If it's useful, I lay the whole arc out at ourcivicspress.com. Appreciate the analysis either way.
Jeepers, should be outside, but:
The why/how is easy, people are easy to manipulate. The whole purpose of the Lincoln-Douglas debates was to sway the populous about Who they should elect to the state legislature and this issue of legislatures electing senators. If the 17th didn’t exist then there would be a clear Republican majority in the senate (more Republican state legislatures). This happens because more legislative districts are Republican than democrats. But people are easy to manipulate by promising them "STUFF," FREE stuff, appealing to baser lowest common desires. Those issues would have been debated in the state legislatures, debating the merits thereof, how it would benefit the state as a whole, not just the individuals.
Sometimes these debates never ended and a senator was not elected on time. Combine this with impugning The Senate by calling it a millionaires club, pointing out corruption, well it would be easy to sway public opinion.
Something to consider: had the 16th & 17th never passed would we have had a Great Depression rather than the recession it should have been AND the welfare state we now have?
SR Miller, you just named the whole thing. "People are easy to manipulate" isn't a side note, that's the ballgame. A citizen who can weigh evidence against a promise of free stuff doesn't fall for "millionaires club" name calling. One who can't, does. That's not a policy failure, that's a formation failure, and it was already sitting there before 1913.
Your Great Depression question, I'd flip it. The reason those amendments passed easy is the same reason the welfare state grew easy after. Same floor, same citizens. Fix the floor and maybe neither happens the way it did.
To be clear, the "millionaires club" was real, the corruption was real. Whether an Amendment was the best way to remedy is is now quite clear--it was not. I've chewed on this question for decades: What else could have been done?
Joy, that's the real question. Corruption was real, remedy was wrong. Honest answer, there wasn't a good remedy available at the citizen level in 1913 because nobody had built one. Still don't think we have. That's what I've spent the last couple years trying to fix.
Tobesure, was not saying those issues didn’t exist - tho I hope it was rare and not prevalent. What I was saying, whether true or not, those issues were gonna be used to defame the existing senate selection process much like we see happening today against political and private individuals. I find it interesting that this tendency to smearing others, impugning character exists overwhelmingly on one particular side.
Side note: in addition to the 17th A I believe Sullivan should be overturned as well
It was so widespread that the 17th amendment had broad support from the citizenry.
The fact that everything you wrote is not common knowledge is one more example of the "advantage" of dumbing down education.
Very true - & we have, in large part, John Dewey to thank for that dumbing-down of our education.
I think term limits at all levels of governance the correct solution to one individual gaining too much power. Also, non-unionized staff selected by merit. Perhaps even a thoughtful term limit here as well
You can't get term limits without the very people who oppose them voting for them, sad to say. They, of course, are the legislators themselves, you know, the professional "citizen representatives".
There is also that other financial abomination that was hatched in 1913, namely the Federal Reserve System. While the Constitution prohibits the issuance of Bills of Credit by the states and prohibits states from making anything but gold or silver coin a legal tender for discharging debts, it failed to impose similar prohibitions upon the federal government.
While there had been earlier attempts by Congress at empowering either a central bank or the Treasury at issuing a paper currency, the Fed is unique in that Congress delegated its discretion over the issuance of Bills of Credit (which are obligations of the US Treasury) to a fascist-style public-private partnership (in the current Fed structure, the Board of Governors are political appointees, while the Presidents of the twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks are elected by directors representing private member banks and the Board of Governors).
Things got even worse in 1933 when Federal Reserve Notes were given legal tender status, which previously had been granted only to United States Notes in a highly dubious Supreme Court interpretation of Congress's power to "coin money and regulate the value thereof" in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Things have been really horrible since 1971, when the Treasury cut the last link between dollars and gold. If you go to the Treasury today and ask it to redeem your Federal Reserve Note for lawful money (which it has been legally obligated to do since FRNs were first issued in 1914), they'll just hand you another FRN of equivalent face value. Being forced to accept repayment of a debt instrument with another debt instrument of the same kind is a sick joke, not an honest foundation for a sound monetary system.
The power of the Fed to create legal tender fiat dollars out of thin air (and of private commercial banks to create dollar substitutes out of thin air, which are backstopped by the central bank whenever the financial system suffers from an adverse phase of the boom/bust cycle) serves to monetize longer-term debt obligations issued by the U.S. Treasury and by privileged private sector debtors. This manufacturing of financial assets for the benefit of the government and of well-connected crony corporations (and the commercial banks who cater to their credit needs) is not economically equivalent to creating physical capital goods that make labor and natural resources more productive (in sharp contrast to genuine capitalistic savings, which do aid real capital asset formation instead of just bidding up the prices of such assets).
Rather, it functions as a mighty engine of inflationary exploitation that erodes the purchasing power of honestly-earned incomes of workers, capitalists, and land-owners alike for those on the Fed's gravy train. In that respect, Fed-engineered inflation is just like another income tax.
Murray Rothbard has a lot to say about all this too; a couple of his books on the subject written for general audiences are:
https://mises.org/library/book/what-has-government-done-our-money
https://mises.org/library/book/mystery-banking
What you write about with so much erudition, Drs. Robert and Jill, is SO IMPORTANT. Thank you.
The Civics class I took in the 9th grade gave me such a great introduction to the inner workings of the American government! I was privileged to have an incredible, knowledgeable teacher who engaged the class and made sure we understood what he was teaching! This class colored my learning throughout my educational years and was responsible for my “Common Sense” political views throughout my life. I so wish students of today could share the same experience, with the same excellent teacher who taught me. I fear that a teacher of such caliber would be hard to find in today’s progressive teaching climate. How sad.
What a wonderful testimony!
Add to all this the ability of the fed to print money. Build a dam costs umpteen $billion ...print umpteen $billion and all good...except the dollars in our pockets collectively reduced in value by umpteen $billion.
About 98% since the inception of the Fed.
This essay does not delve into the debt power that followed the taxing power, but that may be a separate topic.
Excellent article.
We're paying for the unintended consequences and short sightedness of actions taken by previous generations of Americans.
Are you sure they're unintended?
Interesting good article. Me, FM MD for 34 years. I am interested in everything. Took an undergrad course on Roman history in the 1980s at the Univeristy of Texas, Austin. Excellent professor. Good update on what I had learned before.
What the heck happened in 1913 and before, because you know this wasn't an overnight thing. We (the people) have been paying ever since. "To live outside the law, you must be honest" Dylan. I learned how to work around the system at the end of my career. I gave up my license so I couldn't be harassed and only took cash as a donation that I never saw or held. A bowl for donations and willing clients that I simply saw as friends needing a haircut.
The Woodrow Wilson crowd prevailed. In addition to pushing socialism, they breathed new life into racism (which was fading) and encouraged Jim Crow laws be enforced.
Not unlike Obama reinvigorated racism and encouraged socialism.
Wilson was a thoroughly odious creature.
Love the word "odious" odour/odor
Your offering here makes irrefutable sense. On the other hand, given the spector of today's managers, I'm unable to feel very hopeful.
Observing education over the course of my lifetime, I conclude it has been directed overall toward producing a citizenry of submission and compliance. Never a fan of numbers, the Bush era rework of teaching and numbers in particular seemed incomprehensible.
Add my experiences with Illinois and Maryland while watching New York, California and Washington. My faith in the citizenry, the States and mobility is sorely challenged.
For one, I do hope knowedgable statesmen will find their way into influential positions within the many governments. That more informed among the public and within the government will support needed reforms. Trump and his cabinet are setting a state for action. Now opens opportunity. May good come of it!
Add to your watch list Colorado, Jean. We need help! I, with you, am low on hope.