The cure for all (OK, many) of your problems.

Recently, I read an article about one of my less favorite subjects, sewage, and it had me thinking about one of my most favorite subjects, federal spending.

Brief background:

  1. The U.S. federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, has the infinite ability to spend U.S. dollars. It is not limited by tax collections, so-called “debt,” or anything but government whim. It could pay a $100 trillion invoice tomorrow simply by pressing a computer key.
  2. Federal spending never causes inflation. Scarcities lead to all price increases. The cure for inflation is to cure scarcities, which the government can accomplish by funding and distributing the scarcities causing inflation.

Here are excerpts from the article that stoked my thinking:

We need rapid political intervention to end sewage pollution crise

THE UK has a very mucky problem. News feeds overflow with videos of raw sewage gushing into rivers during heavy rain.

Thames Tideway Pr Image
The Thames Tideway is a “super sewer” running under central London

In our report (see Sewage crisis: The truth about British rivers and how to clean them up), we explore why the country still dumps untreated waste into waterways and how to fix this.

The solution, it turns out, includes thinking about the water system as a whole: tackling sewage pollution is also about fixing flooding and drought problems. Tougher governance is essential, too.

The UK isn’t alone. Australia and the US have similar issues. 

In the UK, much of the blame has been leveled at privatized water companies. They have run up enormous debts while giving away billions to shareholders. They have also failed on many metrics, including poorly-maintained pipes.

However, the real culprit is the government, which has failed to give water companies stringent enough targets or enforce those that have been set.

It is a pattern we have seen over and over, from banking crashes to nuclear power accidents.

Hmmm.

Question: What do banking crashes, nuclear power accidents, and sewage pollution have in common? Answer: The same thing global warming, health care, retirement care, food and housing scarcities, water shortages, and a myriad of other problems that bedevil us: Money.

We intellectually know how to address, if not solve, many of our most important problems, but in many cases, ignorance limits funding.

Read the “The truth about British rivers and how to clean them up” article, and you’ll see solutions: Stop using combined (water and sewage) systems, send rainwater to storage and treatment plants, construct artificial wetlands, etc.

The problem: Money. The article says, “Hundreds of billions of pounds.”

But, like the U.S. government, the British government doesn’t seem to realize it is Monetarily Sovereign. It already has those “hundreds of billions of pounds” at its fingertips — the fingertips that can tap a computer key and instantly pay any bill without resorting to taxation.

Let’s visualize some of the other problems we can address or even solve:

Problem: Sickness. Address the problem via federal funding of:

  1. Comprehensive, no-deductible Medicare for every man, woman, and child in America, regardless of age, income, or health
  2. All forms of medical research, mainly research unlikely to be addressed by the private sector because of limited profitability potential.
  3. Healthcare facilities like hospitals and long-term care facilities.
  4. Doctors, nurses, and other health workers.
  5. R&D into the causes and cures for all human, animal, and plant illnesses.

Problem: Global warmingAddress the problem via federal funding of:

  1. Non-carbon energy creation — solar, geothermal, wind, water, nuclear (fission and fusion), hydrogen, and fuel cells.
  2. Electric cars, trains, trucks, and planes
  3. Roadways specifically designed to accommodate electric vehicles
  4. Home and business heating and cooling structural improvements, including insulation and reflective materials
  5. R&D methods of climate control.

Problem: Poverty and crime. Address the problems via federal funding of:

  1. Social Security and retirement benefits for every man, woman, and child in America, regardless of age and income/wealth.
  2. Free education, through postgraduate, for everyone who wants it.
  3. Reduce employeres’ costs associated with paying employees. Eliminate the FICA tax and business-funded health care and retirement programs.
  4. Greatly reduce or eliminate the federal taxes paid by all but the wealthiest Americans. Alternative methods: Tax deductions for rent paid and for home-owning costs.
  5. R&D methods of control.

Problems: Inflation, hunger, degradation of the environment. Address the problems via federal funding of:

  1. (Short term) Oil drilling and refining, plus biofuels.
  2. All aspects of farming, including education and efficient land use, R&D of more efficient farming tools and methods
  3. Current construction materials and methods plus R&D of new materials.
  4. Current storage and distribution systems plus R&D of new systems.
  5. Current and new computers, including quantum computers, chips, and algorithms.
  6. R&D  of maintenance of the environment plus support for all the sciences.

The potential for federal spending is limitless, but fortunately, the federal government’s ability to spend is unlimited. Our collective imagination is the only thing that limits our ability to address and cure all our ills.

Think of any problem facing humanity, and you soon will imagine how federal spending could address or even cure that problem.

Monetary Sovereignty shows that we humans were given the tools to create a paradise on Earth. Our brains open the universe to us, and our invention of money provides us with motivation.

Most Americans, even in “red” states, even die-hard MAGAs recognize the above-mentioned problems and want solutions.

But whether via ignorance or intent, the false claims that federal spending is “unaffordable,” “unsustainable,” “socialism,” “inflationary,” or requires tax increases, have held us back.

Federal spending is none of those. Federal spending by our Monetarily Sovereign government is infinitely affordable and sustainable. We never can run short of dollars.

Federal spending is not socialism, which is government ownership and control, not financial support.

And, of course, the federal government neither needs nor uses tax dollars. It created new dollars to pay all bills.

We need only to understand that we have the necessary tools, money and brains, then to use those tools and stop fighting each other.

Sadly, we also have been given hatred, greed, and ignorance, so our Janus personalities have held us down, and I fear, eventually will destroy us.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

5 thoughts on “The cure for all (OK, many) of your problems.

  1. Am I correct in assuming the Federal Government could change T-bills, bonds and notes to some type of government CD or savings account and then the so called government debt would not exist
    and there would be just government spending and not deficit spending?
    The words bill, bond and note seem to imply borrowing.

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    1. The words bill, bond, and note imply debt because all forms of money are a debt of the issuer, in this case, the U.S. government. The government owes the holder of U.S. dollars full faith and credit. This is described at https://mythfighter.com/2010/02/23/understanding-federal-debt/.

      So long as the federal government spends more than it taxes, this technically is “deficit spending.” But, as you indicate, this term is misleading because it implies that taxes fund spending. While that is true of the monetarily non-sovereign state and local governments. federal tax dollars are destroyed upon receipt, so do not fund anything.

      Perhaps, the government could create an interest-paying “safe deposit box” into which unused dollars could be placed, possibly that would mitigate some of the confusion.

      The primary problem is that the populace does not understand the meaning and implications of “Monetary Sovereignty,” and the same words, “debt,” “deficit,” and “borrow,” are used to describe contrasting functions in Monetarily Sovereign vs. monetarily non-sovereign entities.

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      1. Thanks for the informative response and link. The “1971” reference explains to me why
        a lot of people view federal debt the same as personal, state and county debt.

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  2. In the context of Monetary Sovereignty I think having a ‘unitary state’ with a single set of laws is probably superior to being stuck with a federal system of 50 states doing things 50 different ways… 56 different ways if you count DC and the island territories. A unitary state can choose to delegate power(s) to a lower local level and can also choose to pull some of that back to the center if it doesn’t work out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_state#/media/File:Map_of_unitary_and_federal_states.svg

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    1. That’s a suggestion ripe for argument. There are many pros and cons.

      We are subject to many requirements: Federal, state, county, and city laws for starters. I belong to a country club that has its own laws (and police) and my section of the club has more laws.

      Then, we have religious laws, and if we go to school, the school has laws. An employee must abide by the company’s laws, and as a retail consumer, you must follow the rules of the store. The local library has its own rules, as does each airline, railroad, and bus.

      Every group has its needs and requirements that don’t apply to other groups. As a Chicagoan, living on the shore of Lake Michigan, I used all the water I wanted, and in some areas it isn’t even metered. By contrast, the Southwest is starved for “liquid gold,” so the laws are much different.

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