This is the life-cycle of a dollar. Every dollar in existence is a borrowed dollar. Citizens can go to a bank, hat in hand, looking for a loan. Well, where does the bank get the money for that loan? If you walk out of the bank with a thousand dollars in your pocket, where did that money come from? Ostensibly, a bank gets its money from people who “deposit” their money with the bank. They problem is, if you look at the ledgers, the amount of money in everyone’s account remains the same when a bank gives a loan. The money given to the debtor was not taken from anybody, the bank still has the same amount of money on the books. Whenever money is borrowed from a bank, the amount of money in circulation increases. Money was created from nothing.
Now, it’s an article of faith in economic practice that inflation devalues currency. Even in commodities, the more of something exists in the market, the less valuable each item is. Therefore, borrowing money increases the supply of money and decreases the purchasing power of every dollar in existence. From a perspective of a debtor, the very act of borrowing money decreases your ability to pay that money back. Every dollar you gain buys a little bit less, you have to spend more to survive and your ability to budget for paying back your loan is damaged. Obviously an individuals loan impacts the economy to an infinitesimal degree. If borrowing was done by a small minority of people, then the rest of the economy could flex a little bit to cover it. The problem is that everyone is borrowing money. We borrow money to buy a car, to get a college degree, to buy a house. Right now, according to the NASDAQ, the average household is in the hole for 140k. That’s including those wise enough to own no debt at all. This is actually more than three times the median net worth of US citizens. Even if we assume the average “household” is composed of two citizens, there is more debt in private hands than there is “value” (property or commodities) to cover it. To put it simply, most families in in America could sell their every possession and leave themselves destitute and living under a bridge and still not be out of debt.
If you are in debt, then you own nothing. You don’t own your car. You don’t own your house. You are renting them, and the instant you miss a mortgage or car payment they will be taken away from you. The bank owns your car. They own your house. As long as you desire to keep those things, you will forever be entrapped by the conditions they set in order to keep them. That means willingly placing yourself in debt to get a degree, so you can get a job that barely pays enough to keep you in debt. That means never allowing yourself to voice an opinion or thought which would jeopardize your employment.
The funny thing is it was never about the money. It was about control. You know how to trap a monkey? You knock a hole in a gourd just barely big enough to get a hand through, but not big enough for a closed fist, then fill the container with food. The monkey will reach in and grasp that food, and sit there gripping it tightly as you walk up and club it over the head with a stick. It never occurs to that greedy little monkey to let go of that food, the fear of loss is greater than the fear of death. You were tricked into “buying in” you reached your greedy little monkey fist into that gourd and grabbed hold of “your” education, “your” job, “Your” car and house, etc. But it’s not really yours if you can’t get your damn hand outa the gourd, now is it?
