| Subject: | Re: [socialcredit] Definition of usury. | | Date: | Wednesday, June 25, 2008 20:53:43 (+0200) | | From: | Per Almgren <almgren_per @.....com>
|
| In reply to: | Message 5406 (written by Joe Thomson) |
Joe Thomson skrev:
> (Martin wrote:-) Something that concerns me about Douglas is the fact that
> he appears to wish
> to superimpose his Social Credit remedies on a banking system not
> fundamentally changed from the present. As I see it, the toleration of
> interest (reward without risk), is in fact a means by which those who issue
> credit become more and more wealthy at the expenses of the public, the value
> of whose money is steadily eroded by inflation.
>
> (Joe comments:-) I think what you're saying about Douglas above may well be
> true, Martin.
>
> But is there really "reward without risk" for those who "issue credit" if
> the value of the public's money is steadily eroded by inflation?
>
> For is not the "public's money" the same money by which you say the issuers
> of credit will become "more and more wealthy"?
>
> And if it is, and it's being steadily eroded by inflation over time in
> terms of what it'll buy, there's certainly a "risk" present there, too, I
> would think.
>
The interest paid is actually causing the inflation since there is only
two types of costs includid in the price of goods and services.
One is the payment for labor, the other is payment to those who owns
money, either in the form of interest or in the form of profit.
If not all of the received income is used directly for purchasing goods
or services, or given to other people who uses it directly for
purchasing goods or seriveces or given ... and so on, then the rest of
the money is either witheld (hoarded) or lended or "invested" in some
kind of "papers" that give a return, i.e. shares or bonds.
Since the group who paid the costs for interest and profit doesn't get
the total sum back in form of wages and salaries they will have less
money than before unless they in one way or another borrows more money
from somebody outside this group. As times pass by they will get more
and more indebted and/or experience a rising rate of unemployment. (In
this description a person could belong to both groups if he or she
both get interst and a salry or wage.)
The same problem occurs if people starts to save part of their wages and
salaries. What is then actually happening is that their personal
situation gradually move their "point of gravity" from the working group
to the owning group. For most of them, it won't improve their economical
situation. The cause of this is that the cost part of interest of goods
and services will rise as fast as this move goes on.
In order to be a winner in this type of interest and profit system, your
part of the total invested and lended sum must be grater than yor part
of the total income from wages and salaries. Many years ago, I checked
this from a representative sample (about 13 000 housholds) of the
Swedish population from official statistics. The result was that only
two percent of the total population actually was to be found among the
winners. That means that a lot of people supports the present system
although they actually are among the losers, but they themselves
apparently think that they belong to the winners group. It also shows
that the skills and interst in mathematics among the population is quite
low and such calculations are of course not teached in the schools.
If people and businesses get more and more indebted they simply have to
rise their prices for work or products they sell, or to increase the
volumes which again can't be done without increasing their loanes and so
on until the environment as we see it collapses and with it the present
type of economy.
Per Almgren
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Martin Hattersley" <jmartinh@shaw.ca>
> To: <socialcredit@elistas.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 4:15 PM
> Subject: [socialcredit] Definition of usury.
>
>
>
>> I have been interested by the discussion on what is usury that has been
>> taking place.
>>
>> R.H.Tawney, in his classic "Relligion and the Rise of Capitalism", after
>> discussing and dismissing various types of dealing which involve risk, and
>> so are not usurious, gives a definition as follows:
>>
>> "What remained to the end unlawful was that which appears in modern
>> economics textbooks as 'pure interest' - interest as a fixed payment
>> stipulated in advance for a loan of money or wares without risk to the
>> lender.... The essence or usury was that it was certain, and that whether
>> the borrower gained or lost, the usurer took his poind of flesh."
>> (Transaction Publishers edition, 1998, p.42)
>>
>> Summarizing the present relationship between the Capitalist and the
>> Christian approaches to life, where the former has effectively excluded
>>
> the
>
>> area of commerce from the control of morality, he concludes: (ibid, p.286)
>>
>> "the quality in modern society which is most sharply opposed to the
>>
> teaching
>
>> ascribed to the founder of the Christian faith ... consists in the
>> assumption, accepted by most reformers with hardly less naivete than by
>>
> the
>
>> defenders of the established order, that the attainment of material riches
>> is the supreme object of human endeavour and the final criterion of human
>> success...What is certain is that it is the negation of any system of
>> thought or morals which can, except by a metaphor, be described as
>> Christian. Compromise is as impossible between the church of Christ and
>>
> the
>
>> idolatry of Wealth, which is the practical religion of Capitalist
>>
> societies,
>
>> as it was between the Church and the State idolatry of the Roman Empire."
>>
>> In his "Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt", Nobelist Frederick Soddy sets
>>
> out
>
>> the psychology of this approach in the following words: (page 122)
>>
>> "Psychologically, the economic aim of the individual is, always has been,
>> and probably always will be, to secure a permanent revenue independent of
>> further effort, proof against the passage of time and the chance of
>> circumstance, to support himself in old age and his family after him in
>> perpetuity. He endeavours to do so by accumulating so much property in the
>> heyday of his youth that he and his heirs may live on the interest on it
>>
> in
>
>> perpetuity afterwards. Economic and social history is the conflict of this
>> human aspiration with the laws of physics, which make such a perpetuum
>> mobile impossible, and reduces the problem merely to the method by which
>>
> one
>
>> individual may get another individual or the community into his debt and
>> prevent repayment, so that the individual or community must share the
>> produce of their efforts with their creditor."
>>
>>
>> Something that concerns me about Douglas is the fact that he appears to
>>
> wish
>
>> to superimpose his Social Credit remedies on a banking system not
>> fundamentally changed from the present. As I see it, the toleration of
>> interest (reward without risk), is in fact a means by which those who
>>
> issue
>
>> credit become more and more wealthy at the expenses of the public, the
>>
> value
>
>> of whose money is steadily eroded by inflation. It's certainly happening
>>
> at
>
>> the present time, when the system at least in the United States appears to
>> have been pushed to the limits, and all signs are pointing at the moment
>>
> to
>
>> a very unpleasant period of "Stagflation". Maybe this is why Muslims, who
>>
> do
>
>> not allow this type of banking, are so unpopular in the Capitalist world.
>>
>> Comments, anyone?
>>
>> Martin Hattersley, 5929-189 St.,
>> EDMONTON AB CANADA T6M 2J1
>> Phone (780) 483-5442
>> e-mail <jmartinh@shaw.ca>
>>
>>
>>
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>
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