rigorousintuition.ca

Not only is the “taxpayer money” frame damaging, it doesn’t reflect how public spending actually works. A household or a business may have to stash or borrow money before it can spend any, but we are users of the currency.

The U.S. government, which is the issuer of the currency, works differently: Congress votes to spend “new money” on something, then the Treasury and the Federal Reserve credit the relevant bank accounts, and...that’s it. The government has spent new money into existence.

Later, Congress may tax “old money” back out of existence, but it isn’t collecting money in order to spend it.

The “goldbugs” have mostly got it backwards: it was not gold that gave money its value but rather, gold had money value because its price was pegged in terms of money by the government authorities. This was done by promising to redeem gold for currency at a fixed exchange rate.

At the close of the essay "Eugenics and social reform" JBS Haldane suggests that "if you desire to check the increase of any population or section of the population, either massacre it or force upon it the greatest practicable amount of liberty, education and wealth. Civilisation stands in real danger from over-production of 'undermen'. But if it perishes from this cause it will be because its governing class cared more for wealth than for justice."

Marianne Williamson wrote:If you forcibly take a child from their parents’ arms, you are kidnapping them. If you take a lot of children and you put them in a detainment center, thus inflicting trauma upon them, that’s called child abuse. This is collective child abuse. … Both of those things are a crime. If your government does it, that doesn’t make it less of a crime. These are state-sponsored crimes.

World poverty is viewed as solution, not a problem. The World Bank thinks of poverty as low-priced labor.

Michael Hudson

Child abuse is the most horrific of crimes, and editors, I would think, had some cognitive dissonance over what I was pitching them. To assuage their cognitive dissonance, they would much rather decide that I was crazy, or a conspiracy theorist, than to actually address the allegations.

''The police drove around throwing hot dogs out the window,'' Ms. Guggenheim said, over a plate of roasted foie gras. ''Anyway, in the case of my husband, it didn't work.''

“Madame Hidalgo, you want to award me a medal for my acts of solidarity in the Mediterranean Sea, because our crews ‘work daily to save migrants in difficult conditions.’ At the same time, your police steal blankets from people forced to sleep on the street, while you repress demonstrations and criminalize those who defend the rights of immigrants and asylum seekers. You want to give me a medal for acts that you oppose within your own borders. I’m sure you will not be surprised to see me refuse your Grand Vermeil medal.” - Pia Klemp, the former captain of the refugee rescue ship Juventa