The Debt/Tax Slave System, and its
Alternative
Henry
H. Lindner, MD
You know
that something is terribly wrong, but you can t put
your finger on what or why. Life shouldn’t have to be so difficult, so
insecure, so insane. The United States, which at least pretended to respect
human rights and freedoms, had deteriorated into a criminal empire and a police
state. Our professions, corporations, and government seem to have abandoned
ethics altogether. Pharmaceutical corporations have taken over medical
practice. Lawyers pit every person against their neighbor. Whatever brings
profit is OK as long as one is careful not to get
caught violating any existing law. There is little cause for optimism. People
do not enjoy their work. The brilliant popular music of the 60s, 70s, and 80s
is dead. The mainstream media, in the hands of a few corporations, provides
only meaningless entertainment, controlled information and a very narrow range
of opinion. It is a media controlled by and serving the interests of a
super-rich banker-corporate ruling class. One can find real news and analysis
only at independent sites on the world-wide web. It is becoming obvious that
the US government has been captured by banks, corporations, and special
interests like the pro-Israel and military-industrial complex lobbies. The U.S.
government serves these entities, not the people. Technology advances and wars
continue while wisdom, love, and joy disappear.
The people
who run this world and control the media and the governments the bankers and
corporate heads need to have us believe that we have a choice and that we
control our destiny, but this is not true. They decide what information we are
fed and what choices we are allowed to make. Our elections provide us only with
a choice between one of two political parties that they control, parties who
represent merely the range of opinion within their own ranks from those who
lean to the right and those who lean to the left. This is in fact a single
party dictatorship, a single party with two faces.
The
right/left divide is a tool of control that pits the slaves against each other,
fighting over details of how their slavery is administered, and by whom, rather
than recognizing that they are slaves. Both parties favor increasing government
control over different aspects of our lives, so as they alternate in and out of
power, we continually lose more of our freedoms in all areas of life, falling
under more and more rules and regulations. Our democracy is a sham. Capitalism never was
freedom, it was and is a system of privileges and controls by the rich and
clever, for the rich and clever. The system of controls, rules, regulations, corporations, and
professions that we live under is about as far from personal freedom and
responsibility as possible.
We are
the most unfree free people that have ever existed. Our children are taken from us at a
tender age and conditioned for 12 years to obedience and unthinking acceptance
of the status quo. They are institutionalized; prevented from developing their
innate ability to learn and to think. Parents, themselves victims of the
system, condition their own children with threats and violence to accept the
same slavery the only life that they have known. How are adults still enslaved?
Just follow the money. We must take on enormous debts to get a home, a car, or
a college education and their costs are inflated by the availability of loans.
Where does the money we borrow come from? It is created from nothing by
commercial banks—the new slavemasters. When we take
out a loan from them, we become their debt slaves. We sell ourselves to them
for money that they create out of thin air. We work to pay back their created
loan, with interest. What did they risk? Only the 8% reserve requirement for
that loan and they get that back if we pay back even a small fraction of the
loan. The rest of the money that we work for, for the rest of our lives, was
money that they created by a simple accounting entry.
This
banking-debt slavery system is just the newest, most ingenious form of slavery. It appears to the slave to be a
privilege; to be able to get money to buy a house or get an education. Yet by
accepting the loan, the person has entered into debt
slavery to the creator of the money. The debt slave labors his/her entire life
to repay the loan plus interest. Only 8% of the loan is risked capital, and all
the interest paid is pure profit for the bank. The principle that was created
with the loan simply disappears when the loan is paid off with interest. This is why banks are so willing to lend to anyone, with any
credit history. They have little to lose. By allowing banks to make vast
amounts of money via this scam, Capitalism has made the bankers the masters of
us all. Over the centuries they have taken over government-after-government by
convincing ignorant politicians to support their system of private central
banking. They have manipulated governments into allows them to create the money
from nothing, a privilege that should belong only to the government itself. In fact much of the history of the United States is the story
of the conflict between bankers and the people. Read the history of central
banks in the US. Andrew Jackson was the last president who tried to stand up to
the bankers. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson gave them control of our country, an act
that he regretted to the end of his life. (He was blackmailed into doing so;
the bankers knew about his illegitimate son.)
Not only
are we debt slaves, but we are tax slaves also. A medieval serf paid 50% of all
earnings to the lord of the manor. Between tax and mortgage slavery, we are
worse off than the serf. This is why families must
struggle so hard to survive. They have no security. Both the mother and father
must work to maintain the household. If either parent becomes unable to work,
they are ruined. Inflated medical costs due to the medical monopoly and
government-regulated insurance industry threaten each one of us with financial
ruin should we become ill. Tax slavery for all citizens was instituted in the
US with the income tax in 1913, the same year that international bankers took
over the financing of the US government and created a stable fractional reserve
banking system by establishing the Federal Reserve banking system.
Why did
the Federal Reserve and Income Tax come into existence at the same time? The
bankers needed a tax on the citizens so that the government would repay its
debts to the bankers. None of this was or is necessary. One of the few
legitimate functions of government is to retain the sole right to create money
from nothing. If governments had retained the right to create money, taxes
would not have been necessary as governments would create the money needed for
their services and spend that money into existence. Governments could do a far
better job of avoiding under- or over-creation of money than central banks do
now. Imagine it, if governments retained the right of seignorage,
they would not have to tax the citizens, but could instead simply create the
money needed to fund its expenses. Instead, governments borrow from banks and
tax us to pay for the loans. With their license to create money, bankers
manipulate the business cycle and buy up corporations, media companies, and
politicians. Fractional-reserve banking is the largest, most damaging criminal
scam in existence yet is fully sanctioned by law.
So what is the solution? More
governmental controls? Socialism? Well, socialism provides some security for
the slaves, but it is an authoritarian response to an authoritarian abuse. It
is another way for those with power to control those without power. Socialism
(favors for the poor) is the wrong response to Capitalism (favors for the
rich). We should instead eliminate all favors all interventions that allow some
persons or groups to control or profit from others. We want and need a fully consensual society:
a sane, healthy society based upon individual freedom AND personal
responsibility. We want to live in a sane world community where each of us
decides what is right for him/herself; where our dealings with other persons
are determined by natural ethics, not artificial and unnecessary rules. We want
to interact by mutual consent, for mutual benefit, as far as ethical
considerations allow.
We must eliminate corporations,
professions, patents and copyrights all privileges
that go beyond individual property and responsibility. We want a world in which
the cost of things is just what it needs to be, no more no less. We want a
world in which the natural considerations of personal cost, risk, and benefit
determine all decisions. We want a world of voluntary cooperation and voluntary
charity. We want a world without boundaries and controls. We want a world in
which children grow up
loving knowledge and learning and are allowed to develop their unique interests
and talents. We want a world where people can trust other people because they
live in a society that, by its natural functioning, rewards honesty and
punishes dishonesty. We want a world in which the government does only what it
should do: assure a clean environment, food and water,
provide roads and other public goods, and prevent violence at its roots and
intervenes when violence occurs. We want a government that does not restrict or
dictate personal choices beyond those requirements.
To get to there from here requires
something much greater than a revolution. Violent upheaval will just replace
one set of masters with another and fail to solve the underlying problems (such
is the history of all revolutions). We need to become collectively enlightened.
We need, as a world population, to understand the nature of the injustices in
both the Capitalist and Socialist control systems. We now have a mechanism for
achieving such a world-wide enlightenment the world-wide web. Only collective
enlightenment will allow us to work together to create the new ideas, the new
constitution for a world-wide cooperative society one which will eliminate the
need for nation-states. With a blueprint in hand we
can determine how best to transition from current system to a free and fair
system in a non-violent way. This will require the cooperation of a large
percentage of the ruling class; who, if they are
smart, will realize that their progeny will be better off living in a sane
world, than being super-rich in an insane world.