March 29 2018
Is there any wonder why the founders gave us the Second Amendment? When the US speaks about total debt, they do so in terms of “debt held by the public,” and “foreign owned debt.” Before Woodrow Wilson, the United States used tariffs to pay our debt and operate the country, but we borrowed money to subsidize e.g. Revolutionary War ($75 million), Civil War ($2.76 billion), World War I ($7 billion), etc. The US was going thru an industrialization revolution (1760-1840); we were manufacturing and exporting things and countries were paying us to import our goods into their countries. Our industrial growth that began in the 1800 continued up through the Civil War (1861-1865), followed by the Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914). The District of Columbia then passes the Organic Act of 1871 to establish a new territorial government for DC and they change the name of our Constitution. The Gilded Age begins around 1865 ending around World War I (beginning 1914), which was an era of economic growth never before seen in the history of the world due to free markets and sound money; but then A year after Woodrow Wilson is in office, (1913-1921) he passes the Internal Revenue Act and Federal Reserve Act, where the US citizens are now made responsible for paying the costs associated with operating the United States government in the form of income taxes (under a central banking system, the Federal Reserve (private bankers)), instead of using tariff money, i.e. paying tax or duty on a particular class of imports or exports, and citizens were made human collateral, pledged as security for repayment of loans war finance, and as collateral goes, to be forfeited in the event of a default? (https://www.debt.org/blog/united-states-federal-debt-timeline/). Between the time Wilson was president, there are 70 years of ongoing, and rapid technological changes e.g. electricity inventions, etc. and we begin to move into becoming a service-oriented economy. By 1950, the manufacturing industry begins to downward spiral and a “new economy” begins to emerge, what is the growing finance sector at the expense of the rest of the economy, i.e. where finance diverts income from labor to capital (wealth in the form of money or other assets), and pursues financial returns over technology and product development pursuits, because they were looking for the quick returns of financial instruments and not have to pay for expensive bricks and mortar to build factories. “Financialization is only about making money from money; it has nothing to do with creating jobs or shared prosperity and, as a result, it has had a devastating effect on manufacturing…Today finance controls 40% of the nation’s profits with 5% of the jobs.” (http://www.industryweek.com/competitiveness/financialization-economy-hurts-manufacturing) The average worker outside the finance industry is not doing very well by now, as financialization leads to slow growth, high unemployment, and deep inequality. Prey to credit cards with high-interest-rate fees and penalties, payday loans and subprime mortgages, taxpayers are forced to bail out shareholders of big finance. Citizens face yet another financialization issue in the near future, with government now considering the use of private funding of public assets to pay for public infrastructure, which will require taxpayers to pay tolls to use once public roads. Interest payments on bonds, loans, fees, and financial product costs into private Wall Street hands is costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, but the higher the consumer debt and interest rates on credit cards and loans, the more foreign investments the country receives; not good for you, but good for the federal government, so they say, but high national debt means little economic growth. Economic growth is the increase in the amount of goods and services produced per head of the population over a period of time. In 2016, the GDP per capita was 57,466.79 USD (2016), and today, the debt per taxpayer is $173,550; and $64,296 per citizen. As of September 2014, foreigners owned $6.06 trillion of U.S. debt, or approximately 47% of the debt held by the public of $12.8 trillion and 34% of the total debt of $17.8 trillion. The largest holders were China, Japan, Belgium, the Caribbean banking centers, and oil exporters (wiki). Throughout history, debt and war have been constant partners. Protesting the Second Amendment is like capitulating before the enemy, i.e. ceasing to resist an opponent or an unwelcome demand, i.e. a surrender to debt under the central banking system (Federal Reserve), which has made citizens peons, i.e. workers under a system of peonage, debt slavery, or debt servitude, where government compels the taxpayer to pay off debt with work. When you are in debt, you have to labor to pay it off, so debt is a claim on your future labor. You have to create value to pay off debt or your future suffers foreclosure. Creating value to pay it off is difficult. Capital makes things that don’t last, because to sustain the market there must be a turnover of consumption. Life is better without debt, and even more so with passive income. Debt has an emotional effect on people, e.g. fear and panic, anger, stress, depression, i.e. mental illness. Debt does not make for a free state; or does it? Is there any wonder the founders gave us the Second Amendment, which reads “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a FREE State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”?