Screw The National Debt

[Hatha Sunahara]

If the plantation owner is bankrupt, do the slaves have to bear the burden of what he owes?




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK6SS4ETHWQ



Hatha

[midnight rambler]

It's all purely theater, and the theater only works if one has a belief that the fraudulent 14th Amendment is valid.

What we are witnessing going down is going to make the 1929-1941 era look tame and actually desirable.

[Hatha Sunahara]

Here's another take on how responsible we citizens are for the national debt:


Hatha



http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ndebt.php
WHO'S RESPONSIBLE FOR THE NATIONAL DEBT?

Michael Rivero

Let us imagine for a moment that you go to a restaurant, and you place an order for a hamburger. The proprietor of the restaurant tells you the cost is $10 for the hamburger, and you pay $10 for the hamburger. You get your food. No problems. Well worth the money you paid for it. No complaints. Then when you are done eating, the owner of the restaurant shows up at your table, apologizes profusely, explains that he underestimated the real cost of providing you with the hamburger he agreed to serve you and hands you a bill for an additional sum he had to borrow in order to provide the meal plus interest since the start of your meal. Do you pay it? Of course not. You, the customer, entered into a verbal contract with the proprietor of the restaurant to provide you with your meal at the price agreed to by all parties prior to the transaction.
If the proprietor of the restaurant has miscalculated the cost of meeting his agreed-to obligation to the customer, is the customer obligated to cover the shortfall? No. The proprietor of the restaurant is responsible for the error, and if he cannot meet his agreed-to obligations for the agreed-upon price, he should declare bankruptcy, go out of business, and make way for a new restaurant with better fiscal sense.
Simple common sense.
Let us imagine for a moment that you live in a nation, and you request some benefits. The government tells you the cost is $1000 for the benefits, and you pay $1000 in taxes for the benefits. You get your benefits. No problems. Well worth the money you paid for them. No complaints.
Then when you have your benefits, the government shows up at your door, apologizes profusely, explains that it underestimated the real cost of providing you with the benefits it agreed to provide and hands you a bill for an additional sum it had to borrow in order to provide the services, plus interest since the start of your use of the benefits. Do you pay it? Of course not. You, the citizen, entered into a verbal contract with the government to provide you with your benefits at the taxes agreed to by all parties prior to the transaction.
If the government has miscalculated the cost of meeting the agreed-to obligation to the citizen, is the citizen obligated to cover the shortfall? No. The government is responsible for the error, and if it cannot meet it's agreed-to obligations for the agreed-upon price, it should declare bankruptcy, go out of business, and make way for a new government with better fiscal sense.
Simple common sense.
The claim is constantly made that "we" (meaning the citizens) have already spent the almost 30 trillion dollars that the Federal Government owes and that therefore "we" (meaning the citizens) must repay it.* This is nonsense. No taxpayer alive now ever voted or otherwise agreed to allow the government to borrow money on their behalf and agreed to underwrite the resultant ruinous interest obligation. No citizen spent that money. The government spent it, to keep promises it had no business making in the first place.
The Federal Reserve Act (Otherwise known as the currency act) was voted into law December 23, 1913. The people who voted in that law are all dead.
No taxpayer alive today had anything to say about repaying any money the government borrowed to keep it's promises. We did not have any choice in the matter. We did not choose to accept this obligation. It has been forced on us. It was manufactured for us by a government that spends the peoples' money not on the people,. but on wars of conquest, gifts to Israel, and endless bailouts for Wall Street and European bankers.
Certainly the young people who are becoming voters and taxpayers this year have had no say at all about the almost 30 trillion dollar debt that our government hands to them and says, "This thou shalt pay". To so encumber our children without their permission is at best indentured servitude; at the worst outright slavery. It is time for the slaves to rebel.
We The People didn't borrow that 30 trillion dollars. We The People, those of us alive today, paying taxes today, have never had the opportunity to decide whether or not we are obligated to cover the bad debts of a government that gets elected by selling $10 dollar hamburgers, only to tell us after election day that they really cost $15 and we are now obligated for that additional $5.
Every man, woman, retired senior citizen and even the tiniest newborn baby are being told that they owe a hundred thousand dollars extra for services that were bought and paid for by an agreed-to tax rate.
Are those tiny newborn babies really obligated for $100,000 because of a law passed 84 years before they were born?
Are those tiny newborn babies really obligated for $100,000 because our government makes promises it cannot keep?
Or is it time for the Federal Government to declare bankruptcy and make way for something better?

[Joe King]

No taxpayer alive today had anything to say about repaying any money the government borrowed to keep it's promises. We did not have any choice in the matter. We did not choose to accept this obligation. It has been forced on us. It was manufactured for us by a government that spends the peoples' money not on the people,.

Did they have something to say about it when they applied to be part of the Civil State that created all of this? Yep.

Did they question at all when their elders {mom and dad etc} told them "you gotta do this here thing because that's the way it is"? Nope.

Or did they just go along to get along because things weren't so bad? At the time, anyways. Yep.

I don't know hardly anyone who went and did their own research into how "the system" really works and then go on to make their own legal determination of what actually applies to themselves, and then act accordingly.

No, instead they took the word of others that they looked at as being an authority on the subject {even though in most cases they weren't} and then concerned themselves with other things.

That's how you get what we gots.
ie by a bunch of people, in past generations as well as current, thinking they can be ignorant as well as free.

[Hatha Sunahara]

I agree. Ignorant people can't be free for long. Meanwhile, we live in a place where the slaves are 'free'. Or at least most of them think they are. It's the kind of 'freedom' that ignorant people enjoy.


Hatha

[Sparky]

I'll disagree a bit here, because I don't think it's a very good analogy at all.

I think a better analogy is to say that the people are parents who give their credit card to their child (the government) and expect it to be used wisely. If the child abuses the privilege, are the parents still responsible for the accumulated debt? Yes. The parents can either suck it up and pay for it over a long period of time, or they default and have the credit card revoked. To say that we are not responsible for the debt is equally irresponsible.

So, yes, we can refuse to pay back the debt, but we have to be willing to live with the consequences. A real default means a 20-30% unemployment, and 10-20% interest rates simultaneously. (Note: I don't think failing to raise the ceiling would result in a real default on August 2.) If that is a preferred solution to handing the debt to our grandchildren, then so be it. It would really just be transferring the pain of the extended credit to the current generations, which includes somebody's children and grandchildren right now.

That's why we are reaching such a critical point; if the debt isn't handed off to future generations, it is absorbed right now, not in the form of nominal debt but in the form of unemployment and borrowing costs, which immediately leads to lowered standard of living.

It may well be the appropriate solution, but please see it for what it is. We have authorized our leaders to do this for the last century. To skirt the blame and pass it on to the "government" is a cop out. I despise the government as much as the next GSUSer, but I also see that the people are paying the penalty for their ignorance and negligence.

[Joe King]

I agree. Ignorant people can't be free at all. Meanwhile, we live in a place where the slaves are 'free'. Or at least most of them think they are. It's the kind of 'freedom' that ignorant people enjoy. Hatha


The problem is that people have not only been ignorant, but willfully ignorant of their actual Rights for generations.
...and then have a big party in the Summer celebrating a type of freedom that they themselves have never experienced. lol

BTW, I hope you don't mind, I fixed your quote.

[Horn]

I'll disagree a bit here, because I don't think it's a very good analogy at all.

http://en.ecommercewiki.info/_media/fundamentals/steakholder.gif?cache=

[Joe King]

I'll disagree a bit here, because I don't think it's a very good analogy at all.

I think a better analogy is to say that the people are parents who give their credit card to their child (the government) and expect it to be used wisely.

In our current monetary system, I'd say they've moreso given us their credit card. After all, we spend their credit when we purchase our bread milk and everything else.


BTW, a 10-20% interest rate would wipe the gov out.

[palani]

Just a personal habit but I believe staying in honor is very important when dealing with money. Novation is a concept used by constitutors to pass along their debts to others and this principle is very much recognized by government. Therefore work a novation on them. That was the function of my $21 silver dollar bond, to substitute this obligation in exchange for other debts real or imagined.

[Sparky]

http://en.ecommercewiki.info/_media/fundamentals/steakholder.gif?cache=

I don't get it. Clue me in.

[Horn]

I don't get it. Clue me in.

You feel there is some "payoff" in keeping this current system, or hold a stake in it.

Its the basis of your opinion.

Now that I've told you your feelings, go feel them. :-*

[Hatha Sunahara]

The problem is that people have not only been ignorant, but willfully ignorant of their actual Rights for generations.
...and then have a big party in the Summer celebrating a type of freedom that they themselves have never experienced. lol

BTW, I hope you don't mind, I fixed your quote.

Thank you for fixing my quote--it's closer to the way I want it the way you fixed it. I'm glad you brought up the idea of 'willed ignorance'. This is where somebody dismisses all arguments, fact, and proof that they are wrong. When people do this, they think they are 'passive'--i. e. just defending their 'opinion'. But willed ignorance is active evil. It is actively supporting evil by deliberately being ignorant. It is a lack of moral fiber in my view. One step up from doing nothing while evil triumphs. People who practice willed ignorance deserve to be slaves.


Hatha

[Sparky]

You feel there is some "payoff" in keeping this current system, or hold a stake in it.

Its the basis of your opinion.

Now that I've told you your feelings, go feel them. :-*

Where in my post do I say that? My last paragraph begins with "It may well be the appropriate solution..." My point is that the public is ultimately responsible for the debt, whether it gets paid now (by defaulting and suffering the unemployment and interest rate consequences), or whether these consequences get delayed and passed on to someone else. To say that the "government is responsible, so they should have to deal with it" doesn't make any sense, because the people pay the consequences regardless of what the government chooses to do.

[Joe King]

...or whether these consequences get delayed and passed on to someone else.
The problem, relative to the current system is that we have reached the point where it cannot be pushed foward enough to hand it off to the as-yet unborn generations, as has been done in the past.
ie the debts incurred are falling upon the same generation that ran them up. Generations past were always able to "extend and pretend" farther into the future due to the fact that our future production potential was seen as far exceeding the promises to pay of the past.

Or to put it another way, our consumption has outgrown our future productive ability, and that fact is being openly recognized far and wide.

[Hatha Sunahara]

Where in my post do I say that? My last paragraph begins with "It may well be the appropriate solution..." My point is that the public is ultimately responsible for the debt, whether it gets paid now (by defaulting and suffering the unemployment and interest rate consequences), or whether these consequences get delayed and passed on to someone else. To say that the "government is responsible, so they should have to deal with it" doesn't make any sense, because the people pay the consequences regardless of what the government chooses to do.

So you think the slaves should repay the plantation owner's debt after he runs the business into the ground? Didn't the people who loaned him money take any risk? If the slaves are responsible for a negative outcome, the investors take no risks. This is how you 'Privatize the profits, and socialize the costs.' Provided you can find slaves who are willing to work. Do you also lament the fact that the 'Rich get richer, while the poor get poorer'? I think there has always been slavery because there have always been slaves. And a few people are willing to 'put them to work'. Oh, excuse me. Today we have a more politically correct name for slaves. We call them 'sheep'.


Hatha

[midnight rambler]

Today we have a more politically correct name for slaves. We call them 'sheep'.

No, they're actually called 'human resources', since by definition a resource is property.

[Sparky]

So you think the slaves should repay the plantation owner's debt after he runs the business into the ground? Didn't the people who loaned him money take any risk? If the slaves are responsible for a negative outcome, the investors take no risks. This is how you 'Privatize the profits, and socialize the costs.' Provided you can find slaves who are willing to work. Do you also lament the fact that the 'Rich get richer, while the poor get poorer'? I think there has always been slavery because there have always been slaves. And a few people are willing to 'put them to work'. Oh, excuse me. Today we have a more politically correct name for slaves. We call them 'sheep'.


Hatha

Gawd, what part of this don't you get? Let me try again: The slaves pay in either scenario! The author says we should not pay the debt because it doesn't belong to the people (slaves). Fine. So then what happens? High unemployment and high interest rates! Who suffers from that? The government? No! The slaves!

Jeezus, I even say in my post that this might actually be the best solution. Stop tazin' me bro'!

[hoarder]

The slaves pay in either scenario! Yup.
The banking tribe has a 5 year plan, a 50 year plan and a 500 year plan. They know how they will handle any variety of scenarios long before we even think of them. They position key personnel well ahead of time to herd both sides towards their "solutions" to the problems they caused.
Since everything is slanted in their favor, I have learned not to look forward to ANY changes. They always benefit by the changes they plan.
I don't look forward to any "collapse".

[Horn]

To say that the "government is responsible, so they should have to deal with it" doesn't make any sense, because the people pay the consequences regardless of what the government chooses to do.

The Government is responsible, so it will be shed for a new one, with interest in the people.

[osoab]

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

[osoab]

Vid is from 2008. Just to put it into perspective.

[Santa]

I wish Stefan would dispense with the wide angle lens in his videos. The distortion makes him uglier than he already is.

Other than that I pretty much agree with him. It isn't our debt. No way no how. The government is a big club to bludgeon us with.