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When did the idea of taxing income and wealth become so popular? It used to be that these sort of taxes were the reason that people fled their home countries. Now it’s everywhere and even more egregious than back then. America was founded on the idea of excise taxes and taxes on goods and services. These taxes are universal and hit everyone equally.

The idea of local currency, esp. bartering time for goods isn’t revolutionary, it’s just good sense. Criminals can’t steal your time or your skills. Valuable work can be performed for procurement of goods to complete another job or task, etc.

There used to be a time when paper currency read, “This note is good for all debts public and private and may be redeemed for lawful currency.” Nowadays, a piece of cloth paper is used and accepted as something of value but is really nothing more than cotton.

As more governments fail and monetary systems collapse, we’re going to see very unique ways of paying for goods and services. Bartering is as old as humanity, but I fear thievery will be more common at first. Hell, the Democrats have been stealing from Americans for almost 100 years.

What we should want is for money to be scarce. After all, we want it to maintain value, be useful now and in the future. A money that is infinitely plentiful (or increases in amount over time) is (or becomes) utterly valueless, and does nothing for the common man.

The author had me interested to that point. That is plain and utter B.S. Money is nothing more than a medium of exchange - the exchange of wealth - and therefore must adequately measure the existing quantity of wealth at any given time. Wealth is not static, except in small backwaters where not much of any lasting consequence is created, and therefore the supply of money cannot be static, except in small backwaters where not much of any lasting consequence is created.

I had always thought it was only liberals who thought wealth was static and the ownership of wealth a zero-sum game; apparently I was wrong.

Even BitCoin could win out,...

I was a big fan of Bitcoin until last week, when reading more details about it I found the computer miners get paid small transaction fees forever for the Bitcoin they mined. That's not much better than the Federal Reserve, getting paid by the populace forever for doing nothing of value past the initial act of work.

Back to the drawing board for me. Maybe some of the western states will come up with something. They seem to be aware the dollar is in its death throes.

Nice article.

One Objection:

” During the Great Depression, many communities promoted tokens and other forms of alternate “micro” currencies — currencies that allowed small areas to survive collapsed international markets (the result of protectionism run amok as well as bank deflation and crazed government policy). “

The reason for Tokens was that when the tax was calculated, the accuracy was to tenths of a cent. Since the US currency no longer had 1/2 cent pieces, the retailers started producing their own tokens so that they could give a person the proper change, and since that token could only then be used in purchasing at that store, it was an advertising expense (to create the tokens) and increased business.

We no longer need the tokens, because the politicians decided it would be much simpler if they just rounded UP to the nearest penny.

SO... we are all paying EXTRA tax and most are none the wiser.