by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster
Worried
about inflation? Stockpiling food? If so, you have lots of
company. Interested in ensuring you and your family are
safe?
While
pondering the question, remember all problems have causes. This article takes
you to the real causes, the ones no one mentioned, no matter how long you were
in school or how many degrees you earned. Here, we show you the enormous
over-riding problem everyone ignored. You know about
foreclosure, repossession, and more ominous terms; there are 47 of these.
You have seen what can happen in your own communities. All of these are
forms of Debt-Bondage, the inability to pay your debts.
Today, 81% of us have erratic incomes, which is a big part of the
problem. If you don’t know how much you will have to spend, how can you
depend on anything?
As Dr.
Milton Friedman said, "If the only thing Certain in business, is
Uncertainty, then we must base our fiscal systems on Uncertainty."
Uncertainty
– Scary thought. Milton knew it was the source of dramatic swings in our
economy; he did not know what to do about it until 1976 when an enthusiastic
young man called him, providing the solution based in part on one paragraph
from Friedman’s book “Capitalism and Freedom”.
If the
young man had not taken 30 years to exhaustively confirm his own idea, we would
not now be facing an economic meltdown of monumental proportions. The
good news is this; a sustainable economy is possible for all of us, and he is
sorry about that. Better late than never. The book will be out soon,
titled, Human Investments (HI)
The
problem exists around the world in such seemingly different places as Carbon
County, UT, USA and Kolhi Villages, Sindh, Pakistan, two communities joined in
scary uncertainty.
Very
different in many ways, these two places have a lot of history in common: each
needs solutions to put things right. Life grows increasingly hard for the
families in Kolhi Villages and life in East Carbon has been economically
challenging since the coal mines closed.
Both
areas have historically been plagued by Debt Bondage.
Our
Towns, the 2-Way InterActivist TV show series, focusing on East Carbon, UT and
Kolhi Villages, Pakistan, each encountered this problems at different times in
their histories. Debt Bondage is an ancient, and current form of
slavery. Kolhi has always had subsistence farmers in their past and
still, today; few now exist in Carbon County. These died off or turned to
different ways to make a living.
Tom
McCourt, a Carbon County native, noted this in his book, “The Split Sky”, his
narrative of life from the time he was 16 and working for the summer on the
Nutter Ranch in Utah’s Nine-Mile Canyon, included the problems faced by
small farmers, driven to work for others to maintain their spreads.
The
incomes of small farmers remain erratic today; big operations evade the impact
of erratic incomes, explaining the corporatization of food production and the
reasons family farms have been disappearing. Only smaller farms or
employees face the harsh reality of not being able to pay their debts; this is
known across time and throughout human cultures as Debt Bondage. As
McCourt noticed, small farmers and ranchers were forced to work on larger
commercial operations to pay their expenses or obtain seed money, tools or
needed food.
For miners, Debt Bondage
was also being limited to a company store and having no other options for
feeding their families. In a similar scenario, early Carbon County miners
working for themselves was displaced as miners were forced to accept an hourly
paycheck, greatly reducing their pay.
Subsistence farming,
with its erratic nature, depending on the weather and other factors, made
people vulnerable to having their labor taken out of their control, a form of
slavery.
The
mining companies realized they could squeeze out more profits by starting
company stores and housing in remote locations, making miners dependent on the
company for credit. This resulted first in objections, and then in union
organizing. People died violent deaths struggling for economic survival
when they sang uncheerfully, “I
owe my soul to the company store.”
For
Carbon County further education for careers in other fields largely alleviated
the problem in its original form. Former miners found other
professions.
The
problem is far older for Kolhi Villages by thousands of years. The
mothers and grandmothers are still making patterns found in the archaeological
digs close by. The lack of any educational resource has largely left them
with no exit until now that education is becoming a possibility.
Slavery
is a gradient with multiple forms, controlling the lives of
people. Debt Bondage is one of the steps of control that imposes a
valuation on life, and the time of individual whose choices are
gravely limited because erratic an incomes leaves them vulnerable to
manipulation. Having an accident, death, the vagaries of weather, the
demand for coal, and more are hazards which can force an individual to cede
control over their time and choices.
Debt
Bondage and Slavery, only two of the forms this strategy takes, depend on
impelling or compelling terms on one party by another in a quasi-contract which
gives the weight of the benefit to the more powerful party requiring a Lump Sum
and or Rigid Installment Payments. One party takes the risk: the other
the benefits, pushing those struggling ever closer to disaster.
Reprise:
Remember what Milton said earlier? "If the only thing Certain in
business, is Uncertainty, then we must base our fiscal systems on
Uncertainty."
Debt
Bondage and Slavery - A Long History
As you
see at the link, the fathers of the students already attending Kolhi School and
those who want to attend, have been working hard to build the school with
materials locally available, most of this free, with only their unpaid labor
added for the shell of the building.
Their
leader in this is a local man who got an education. Leela Ran Kolhi holds
both a bachelor’s degree in Commerce and is finishing his Master’s in
Sociology. Leela’s father, himself a rice farmer, donated the land for
Kolhi School which will be the only school of any kind for 75 miles in any
direction. Children attending now are walking as far as 5 miles to get
there.
Most of
the families with children attending Kolhi School are subsistence farmers. and
societies in transition from early, subsistence farming are extremely
vulnerable to manipulation by those using debt as a tool to own people and
their labor. Many have struggled with debt bondage for generations.
In Carbon County, which
includes East Carbon, schooling for children has been available since at least
1900. Carbon County’s population, growing rapidly over a century ago, was
diverse, many people coming from southern Europe for jobs and
opportunity. The many of the descendants of those original pioneers remain
here. Most of their ancestors were literate in their own languages as soon
learned to speak English as well.
However,
schooling has never been available, or affordable, for the families in Kolhi
Villages. Until now, and they are making this happen
themselves.
Education
makes an enormous difference, providing alternatives – but all of us, no matter
how much education we acquire, are vulnerable to Debt Bondage. Remember
all the tuition loans out there. Those are creating a new, modern form
of Debt Bondage.
Debt
Bondage is recorded first in ancient Mesopotamia, cited in "DEBT: The First 5,000 Years" by David
Graeber. Graeber goes on to cite passages in the Bible which appear
to refer to the practice, citing the words, 'padah' and 'goal' both,
Graeber says, referring to redemption, buying back something being held by
another party. The practice included not only pledging property for a debt
but pledging relatives, wives, children, and others, as part time or
full-time labor property then controlled by the holder of the debt.
Graeber
includes on page 81 of his book a quote from Nehemiah, Chapter 5, 3-7, which
was written during the years of Persian dominance.
"Some also
there were that said, "We have mortgaged our lands,
vineyards, and houses, that we might buy corn,
because of the dearth."
There were also those that said, "We
have borrowed money for the king's
tribute, and that upon our lands and
vineyards.
"Yet now our flesh is as the
flesh of our brethren, our children as their children: and, lo,
we bring into bondage our sons and our
daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters
are brought into bondage already;
neither is it in our power to redeem them; for other men have
our lands and vineyards."
And I was very angry when I heard
their cry and these words.
Then I consulted with myself, and I rebuked
the nobles, and the rulers, and said unto them,
"Ye exact usury, every one of his
brother," And I set a great assembly against them."
David
Graeber's specific area of inquiry was not economics, but anthropology. He
was a socialist, having failed to thoroughly research American history from
colonial times to the early 20th Century. He notices and comments on the
appearance of “elites", always denoted by their wealth and power, ignoring
the use of the economic tool that has caused erratic incomes during his
own lifetime. This trend began in the early 20th Century
when America's economy was put under the control of the Federal
Reserve System in 1913.
"Give
me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws"
— Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild
There is
much bickering over who said what when. But the phrase would more
honestly have been, "let me dictate the terms for payment and nothing
else will matter."
Does
ideology matter? Not much.
Remember
the quote from Dr. Friedman? "If the only thing Certain in business, is Uncertainty,
then we must base our fiscal systems on Uncertainty."
Dr.
Friedman waited patiently for the young man to write his book. Writing
the book is a highly regarded act in economics as originality is for
inventions. Many people in a short period of time invented the light
bulb. But only one patent was issued. Economists operate in
much the same way. An ethical economist, Dr. Friedman did not publish on
the young man's insights as this would have violated his
principles.
Dr. Friedman
had entirely overlooked that it was the tool for charging which
entirely altered America’s economy, converting 85% of people from small
businesspeople to the 85% of us who are employees today.
One tiny
easily overlooked economic tool did this to us.
This is
the Rigid Installment Payment (RIP). Its use today
in America is standard for nearly all larger purchases and for credit
cards.
The
adoption of the Federal Reserve System was a carefully orchestrated action
which achieved the conditions needed to control America's economy and so direct
unearned benefits, taken directly from people facing the hazard of
erratic incomes. The predatory use of Rigid Installment Payments (RIP)
and strip of equity. RIP & Strip is the most accurate description of
RIP. You can make regular payments on a house for 29 years and 11 months
and lose it because of one missed payment. Ensuring that the
well-understood nature of human life was ignored dictated the use of
RIPs.
The rise
of an elite class in America was in place through government soon after
the American Revolution was won. This became obvious with the publication
of Leonard R. Richard's book, "Shays'
Rebellion: The American Revolution's Final Battle",
published in 2003.
A policy
for balancing debts from the Revolution proposed by Alexander Hamilton, was
adopted and transferred wealth from those who earned it and had erratic incomes
to the period's elites. This economically destroy veterans and
working farmers in western Massachusetts and other states. The new
governments even refused to accept the script for taxes, again benefiting
speculators who were buying up the script from desperate veterans at ten cents
on the dollar.
The lies
told by government were uncovered when the local historical societies went
through the records of court actions, providing this data to Leonard L.
Richards, a professor and local resident. Richards correlated these
records with those for military service. Professor Richards had not
expected this; a history professor based in Amherst;
Massachusetts Professor Richards realized the facts had been
intentionally concealed. Veterans who had returned home from the war
to farm found themselves unable to use the script given to them for their
military service, even to pay the high taxes on their farms being exacted by
the government under constitutions not necessarily voted in by more rural,
distant counties.
How
Graeber missed these facts is a question which cannot be answered. Graeber
died suddenly, from necrotic pancreatitis, on September 2, 2020, while on
vacation with his wife and friends in Venice, Italy.
Graeber
notes these factors across thousands of years and with most cultures but does
not study the economics of voluntary exchange and tool providers as lenders of
stockholders.
This also
concealed facts which were widely understood in the 1930s to late in the 20th
Century. These facts had been published through the American
Economic Foundation in a book for adults and
children titled, "How We
Live". It is obvious that
ignoring uncertainty is a critical factor, strongly associated with the
rise of a limited class of 'elites' who oppose the use of an economic tool
that eliminates the problem of erratic incomes, also in use widely across time
and in many cultures.
Today,
Debt Bondage also includes home and car loans along with 45 other forms for
payment. All of these have the same impact; to take the property of people
who are vulnerable to the impact of changed conditions and life events which
produce an erratic income for a time.
The
solution is the charging tool that turned American immigrates into business
owners from the Colonial Period, 1620, until 1913. This economic tool was
used to solve a problem for the Merchant-Adventurers who had acquired lands in
the New World but had no way to profit from this. Those are the colonies
you might have heard about briefly in school. At the bottom of this
article see the Power Point which explains the this.
Casting
about for a solution to their problem, the Merchant-Adventurers realized
many discontented English, French and Dutch wanted to leave where they
were. These canny and desperate landowners began making loans to those
seeking new places to live and start businesses. Loans included transport
to the Colonies, tools for the trade they would take up, and a year's income to
get started.
The
original terms were 7% of what the borrower earned for seven years. There
were no recorded defaults. Every loan we could find was repaid.
The young man discovered
this first in the BYU Library, where he cut the pages in never read books of
Lading that recorded the shipments back to England and the transfers of
payments. The list of respected experts, many of them economists, is HERE.
This is
the source of the American prosperity we once knew. 85% of Americans for
these three centuries were small businesspeople. Erratic incomes were never a
problem.
This is
the solution; popular demand and the resulting transition for finansuring major
purchases will result in a rapid transition. Investors today are also
worried about the impact of the economy by their investments. Since
PAYE is both inflation-proof and deflation-proof, ideal for long-term contracts
fair to both borrowers and lenders.
Visit PAYEhome.org
See Power Point
