| Subject: | [socialcredit] Dictatorship by Taxation | | Date: | Sunday, February 27, 2005 16:11:06 (-0800) | | From: | William B. Ryan <w_b_ryan @.....com>
|
| In reply to: | Message 594 (written by Jim) |
Announcement: A friend has sent a photocopy of
Douglas's second book, «Credit-Power and Democracy».
Because of unresolved questions regarding its
copyright, I shall not name him.
I will be glad to forward it through email to anyone
who requests.
It it is in PDF format in three files totalling
approximately nine megabytes.
-
The «Dictatorship by Taxation» that Jim refers to is
appended below and archived at
http://www.geocities.com/socredus/dictatorship_by_taxation.txt
---------------------
--------------------
«Dictatorship by Taxation»
C. H. Douglas
The Ulster Hall, Belfast, 24th November 1936.
I am speaking to you tonight on one of the mechanisms
- an increasingly important mechanism - through the
agency of which the members of the financial
oligarchy under which we suffer impose their will
upon us.
It is important to understand this mechanism, at any
rate in its broader aspects, but I should like to
impress upon you at the outset that even an exact and
extensive understanding of it can be regarded as
having any practical use only if it acts as an
incentive to recruiting you for organised action. It
is the action that counts.
As someone said in regard to the international
situation, "It is no use having the logic if you have
not got the guns," and that is profoundly true in
regard to the matter on which I am speaking to you
tonight. It is no use realising that taxation is
legalised robbery, is unnecessary, wasteful and
tyrannical. If you stop at that, not only will you
have to pay the taxes that you now have to pay, but,
as Sir Josiah Stamp, one of the Directors of the Bank
of England, suggested a short time ago, with that
engaging candour which we are beginning to expect
from the Bank of England, "While a few years ago no
one would have believed it possible that a scale of
taxation such as that at present existing could be
imposed upon the British public without revolution, I
have every hope that with skilful education and
propaganda this scale can be very considerably
raised."
THE OLD TITHE WAS NECESSARY
It is impossible to get a sound and clear
understanding of taxation by any consideration of
money figures or statistics, as at present compiled,
since there is no relation between facts and money.
It is essential to begin by a consideration of real,
i.e. physical, economics as distinct from money
economics.
For instance, the old and original tithe was a
genuine and justifiable tax. It consisted of one
tenth of the agricultural production of the taxed
land, and this agricultural production so collected
was handed over to the Church for the physical
maintenance of the clergy and their dependants, it
being assumed that the clergy were too busy with
other matters to raise their own crops.
It may be recalled that the word 'clergy' is derived
from clerk' and that it is to clerks that we owe (and
pay) our taxes.
Now it is obvious that the physical meaning of this
to those who paid the tithe was that they did a small
amount of extra work or, alternatively, had a little
less to eat themselves. There was nothing in such an
arrangement which could, or did, result in a loss to
the community on the one hand, or, on the other, make
it impossible for the agriculturalist to live.
But now consider the fact of a money tax upon
agricultural land, which is the form the tithe has
now taken. It is imposed quite irrespective of the
value of anything which is produced upon that land,
and its effect is simply that of an overhead charge
upon anything which is produced.
If a farmer owns the land he farms and has to pay
tithe upon it, the tithe appears as a cost of
production and increases the price that he must
charge in order to live off his farm. If he cannot
raise the price, which is generally the case, he
makes a money loss, and ultimately ceases to farm,
because he does not grow money, he grows produce, and
money is demanded from him.
This is exactly what has happened in England, where
three million acres of farming land have gone out of
cultivation since the [First World] War. But the evil
does not stop there. Since the farmer does not make a
reasonable living, he does not keep his land in good
order and he has no money to spend upon the products
of other industries.
It is beyond all question, and it is, of course,
obviously common sense, that all taxation which does
not go into the pockets of the poor lowers the
standard of living, and the margin of security is
lowered by any taxation which discourages enterprise.
There could be only one fundamental justification for
taxation - that, with the whole of the community in
maximum employment, not enough was being produced to
maintain the total population by reason of the
excessive consumption of a small proportion of the
population.
In fact the whole theory of taxation as a justifiable
expedient rests upon two propositions: first that the
poor are poor because the rich are rich, and
therefore that the poor would become richer by making
the rich poorer; and secondly, that it is a
justifiable procedure to have a system of
accumulating riches, and to recognise that this
system is legitimate, while at the same time
confiscating an arbitrary portion of the accumulated
riches.
The latter proposition is very much the same thing as
saying that the object of a game of cricket is to
make runs, but if you make more than a small number
they will be taken off you.
Please allow me to emphasize the point that I am in
complete agreement with those who contend that some
individuals are unduly rich, just as I am absolutely
confident that taxation is not the remedy.
CONFUSION BETWEEN MONEY AND REAL WEALTH
Now the first of these fallacies - that the poor are
poor because the not-so-poor are not-so-poor, and
that the poor are made richer by making the richer
poorer, arises out of the confusion between money and
real wealth.
It is assumed, in the first place, that the equality
between real wealth and money is absolute, and that,
therefore, if an individual has a large amount of
money in comparison with his neighbour the whole
community will be raised in its standard of living if
the richer man is taxed, even though the poor man
does not get the money - which, in fact, he rarely
does.
The absurdity of this argument, as apart from the
other aspects of it, is evident if it is applied,
say, to the question of the ability of a proportion
of the population to buy Rolls-Royce cars. If one
imagines all the purchasers of Rolls-Royce cars to be
taxed so that they no longer can buy Rolls-Royce
cars, it does not, of course, mean that the poorer
portion of the population buys Rolls-Royce cars; it
merely means that Rolls-Royce cars are not produced.
This would be a perfectly satisfactory state of
affairs if the production system was lacking in some
production which the freeing of men from making
Rolls-Royce cars would enable them to produce.
We see exactly this state of affairs in wartime, when
luxury production ceases, but in peacetime we know
perfectly well that we have what is called an
unemployment problem, that it to say, a surplus
production problem, and that, under the existing
financial system, the inability of anybody to buy
Rolls-Royce cars would merely result in an increase
in unemployment, and that the present financial
system regards full employment as being the best
method of keeping us in slavery to financiers.
All the preceding arguments lead up to, and are, in
fact, dependent upon the proposition that the
production of real wealth - that is to say, all
things which money can buy - is entirely separate
from the production of money with which to buy them,
and that in taxing anyone but a banker we are merely
increasing the value of the bankers' monopoly of
money-making.
It is, fortunately, not nowadays necessary to develop
this argument at any great length, since the facts
are not in dispute in any reasonable circles. The
Encyclopedia Britannica in its article on money,
volume 15, states, "Banks lend by creating credit.
They create the means of payment out of nothing"; or,
as the Chairman of the Midland Bank put it, "The
amount of money in circulation varies only with the
action of the banks."
Since our civilisation is a money civilisation, and
we none of us can carry on our daily pursuits without
the possession of money, it is obvious, in the first
place, that this situation places us ultimately at
the disposal of the banks, and that increased
taxation by lessening the amount of money at our
disposal increases this hold that the banks have upon
us.
The first point, therefore, on which to be clear,
even without enquiring as to the destination of the
money, is that the heavy taxation under which we
suffer works directly to the advantage of the
financial houses which control the banking system.
But if you will look at the back of your tax demands,
you will find that the total amount received from
income tax, surtax, and death duties, is
approximately equal to the amount required to pay the
interest on the National Debt, and that other forms
of taxation supply the money for social services, to
the extent that it is supplied.
CREATORS OF NATIONAL DEBT
Now the National Debt in 1913 was £706,000,000 and in
1935 was £7,945,000,000 or ten times as much, and it
is steadily rising. Probably 80% of this debt was
created by the process to which the Encyclopedia
Britannica refers, that is to say, by the banks
creating money out of nothing and lending it to the
country through the agency of War Bonds and other
national securities. Or to put the matter another
way, just as the banks create money out of nothing,
so they bought the War Debt for nothing, and our
income tax, surtax, and death duties are what we pay
them for having created and appropriated the National
Debt for their own use.
It does not require much assistance to see that just
so long as the population will stand it - and Sir
Josiah Stamp assures us that, with care, the
population will stand much more of it - we shall go
on paying an increasing amount of taxes, the major
portion of which will go to increase the power of
banking institutions and their grip upon the
population.
If the stock and bonds which the banks, including the
Bank of England, have appropriated in the last fifty
years had been placed to the credit of the community,
not only should we be free of taxation but we should
be drawing a substantial dividend.
A common objection to this statement is that under
these conditions banks would pay fantastic dividends;
but this is a misconception. Banks do, in fact, pay
high dividends upon a comparatively small capital,
but the stupendous profits which are made by the
manipulation of the money system on the general
principles that I have just been indicating to you,
do not go to anybody; they disappear by book-keeping
processes, and by the formation of stupendous
invisible reserves; and, since they increase the
disparity between purchasing power and real wealth,
they perform a continuous deflation system.
For instance, if you see that the securities held by
a bank amount to £100,000,000 sterling, you might
suppose that that was the market value of the
securities. It is extremely probable, in the case of
a British stock bank, that every £100,000,000 of
securities shown on the balance sheet represents at
least £1,000,000,000 of market prices in normal
times, and by this process of writing down, which is
much more complex than the simple instance just
cited, it is possible to conceal profits of several
hundreds percent per annum, and there is little doubt
that it is done.
The so-called stability of the British banking system
is simply a measure of its grip on the national
resources.
TAXATION A TYRANNICAL FRAUD
Stripped of its complications, the fact emerges that
we live under a system not at all dissimilar to that
of a commercial company with unlimited liability in
which new debentures are constantly being issued and
allotted free of charge to the financial system and
its controllers, who take no risks and do no creative
work.
The general population is fundamentally in the
position of wage earners, and the taxation upon them
goes to pay the interest on these mortgage
debentures.
The income tax authorities are in the position of
accountants and debt collectors, acting in the
interest of the debenture holders. We are, every one
of us, in debt to these debenture holders, even
though some of us may hold debentures, and the policy
is to load us individually and collectively with debt
so that we shall be the slaves of our debtors in
perpetuity.
It is impossible to obtain money to pay off the debt,
owing to the fact that our debtors are at the same
time in sole control of the power of creating the
money which is required to pay off the debt.
Taxation is not primarily an economic device, it is a
tyrannical device. Once the meaning of this situation
is grasped, it is not difficult to see the general
principles by which not merely could taxation be
eliminated, but in place of it every individual could
be placed in a condition of economic freedom and
security.
As I put the matter before the monetary commission in
New Zealand, the essential power which the banks have
acquired is the power of the monetization and the
demonetization of real wealth. That is to say, the
power of creating acceptable and accepted orders or
demands on the producing system and of destroying
them on recall; and the essence of their fraud upon
civilisation is not in the magnificent technique of
the system which they employ, or even in the charges
which they make for the use of this money which they
create, even though these charges, i.e. their
interest rates, may be considered in many cases
exorbitant.
The essence of the fraud is the claim that the money
that they create is their own money, and the fraud
differs in no respect in quality but only in its far
greater magnitude, from the fraud of counterfeiting.
At the instigation of the banking system, barbarously
severe penalties are imposed upon the counterfeiter
of a ten-shilling note, but a peerage is conferred
upon the counterfeiter by banking methods of sums
running into hundreds of millions.
May I make this point clear beyond all doubt?
It is the claim to the ownership of money which is
the core of the matter. Any person or any
organization who can create practically at will sums
of money equivalent to the price values of all the
goods produced by the community is the virtual owner
of those goods, and, therefore, the claim of the
banking system to the ownership of the money which it
creates is a claim to the ownership of the country.
FUTILITY OF BANK NATIONALIZATION
If you are willing to admit that this ownership is
justified there is nothing to be said; but if you are
not - and I do not suppose in Northern Ireland (where
there seems to remain a spark of that independent
character which is apparently disappearing in
England) that you are - do not be misled by any such
phrase as 'The nationalization of banking.' The State
and the banking system are very nearly one and the
same thing at the present time and are wholly one in
policy.
While the Bank of England is a private bank owned by
international financiers, the Treasury plays straight
into its hands, and the nationalization of, for
instance, the Bank of England, would mean the
transfer of the Treasury into the Bank of England
rather than the transfer of the Bank of England into
the Treasury.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia is a Government
Bank, but its policy is identical with the policy of
the Bank of England; and the same comment is
applicable to the Bank of New Zealand, which has just
been nationalized with the able assistance of its
governor (who was sent out from the Bank of England
to do the job), and the Bank of Canada.
No nationalization of banking will put one penny into
the hands of the individuals comprising the countries
over whom it rules, so long as this question of the
ownership of money is left unaltered. But if it once
be admitted that the community, not the Government,
is the owner of the money, and the individual, as
part of the community, is entitled to his share of
it, the situation is obviously very different.
NEW ZEALAND SCHEME
To fix this idea in your head I will read to you the
suggestions that I made to the New Zealand Government
at the Monetary Commission in 1934. They have been
allowed very carefully to drop into oblivion, which I
think is a tactical mistake on the part of the New
Zealanders, and which I am sure will be repaired
before many years are past.
(i) From the enactment of these proposals no Bank in
New Zealand shall distribute a dividend either in or
outside New Zealand in respect of operations carried
on within the Dominion of more than six percent (6%)
per annum on the subscribed capital.
(ii) No Bank shall increase its capital in such a
manner as to affect the gross amount of dividend
distributed in respect to business carried out in New
Zealand except with the consent and through the
agency of a legal enactment of the Dominion
Legislature. Within three months from the enactment
of these proposals every Bank operating in New
Zealand shall make an exact return of its assets,
specifying in particular all stock, shares, and
debentures purchased by the Bank, the prices paid,
and the prices at which such stock, shares and
debentures are held on the books of the Bank for the
purpose of the annual balance sheet. The same
procedure shall be adopted in regard to all real
estate, buildings, and all other immovable property,
together with furniture, fittings, and appliances in
the Bank's ownerships. Such statement shall include a
sworn valuation of the current market value of all
such assets at the date of the return, such valuation
to be made by an independent surveyor or valuer.
(iii) Where it is found that the figure at which such
assets are held on the books of the Bank for balance
sheet purposes is lower than the market value as
obtained by the sworn valuation, an amount equal to
such difference shall be transferred to an account to
be known as the "Suspense Account No. 1". Where the
Bank in question operates in other countries than New
Zealand, a complete return shall be rendered and a
proportionate allowance for external business shall
be made.
(iv) All profits earned by the Bank from any source
over and above the amount necessary to pay a dividend
of 6 percent shall be transferred to an account to be
known as "Suspense Account No. 2".
(v) Six months from the enactment of these proposals
an amount equal to 50 percent of the amount standing
to the credit of Suspense Account No. 1 shall be
applied to a reduction of the overdrafts debited to
the customers of the Bank, such appropriations being
made pro rata on the basis of the average overdraft
of the Bank's customers for a period of three years
preceding the date of the enactment of these
proposals, and such appropriation of half the balance
of this Account shall be made annually thereafter.
(vi) One month after the publication of the annual
balance sheet of any Bank, an amount equal to seventy
five percent (75%) of the amount standing to the
credit of Suspense Account No. 2 shall be applied to
the reduction or reimbursement of interest paid on
overdrafts by the Bank's customers, such reduction or
reimbursement being made upon the same pro rata basis
as that laid down in paragraph (v).
(vii) A similar procedure to that laid down in the
preceding paragraphs shall be applied to the accounts
and assets of all Insurance Companies operating in
the Dominion, with the exception that the funds
required for (Insurance) Suspense Account No. 1 shall
be provided by rediscounting the disclosed reserve
with the New Zealand Reserve Bank, and that the
disposition of the funds so provided shall be as in
the following paragraph. Fifty percent (50%) of the
amount to the credit of (Insurance) Suspense Account
No. 1 shall be applied annually to pay for the
preference shares or debenture stock applied for by
any natural-born New Zealand subject over twenty one
years of age, to the extent that applications for
shares to be paid for by this fund can be met. Such
shares shall be allotted pro rata to the applicants
without charge, and shall be registered as non-
transferable and as not good security for loans. On
the death of a holder, or his permanent residence
outside the Dominion, such shares shall be cancelled.
(viii) (Insurance) Suspense Account No. 2 shall be
retained as a Dividend Equalization Fund to ensure
that the dividend on all preference and debenture
stocks allotted under the preceding clause shall
receive a dividend at the agreed rates. Should this
fund increase at a rate exceeding five percent (5%)
per annum, such excess shall be allotted to a pro
rata increase in the dividend on such shares as have
been subscribed for under clause (vii).
(ix) These proposals are intended for consideration
in the light of the correspondence which precedes and
accompanies them.
* * *
PUNISHMENT BY TAXATION
If the present system of taxation consisted, as it
does, of an organized system of robbery but without
any other objectionable aspects, it would, in all
conscience, be unjustified. But in the past few
years, and particularly since the [First World] War,
another feature of it has come into prominence,
although there is very little doubt that it has
always been contemplated.
I refer to the use of the taxation system as a method
of inflicting punishment without trial and at the
discretion of anonymous individuals. As an example of
what I mean I might say that, since my own efforts to
explain the nature of the taxation have come into
some prominence, I have been consistently pestered by
various assessments for income tax which require a
great deal of time, expense, and trouble to dispose
of.
Even if and when disposed of, they constitute a
serious additional tax, since it is inevitable that
skilled legal assistance be employed in connection
with them and much data collected, and, of course,
the cost of this is not reimbursed.
It should be incredible, if it did not happen to be
true, that a system which allows a claim to be made
on you, leaving the trouble and expense of proving
that it is not justified upon the shoulders of the
person assessed and that no redress for
unsubstantiated claims is possible, would be
tolerated; but that is exactly the position of the
taxation system.
It is, of course, exactly the reverse of ordinary
business procedure, where a claimant for services
rendered can always be put in a position of proving
his claim. The system employed traverses the
fundamental principle of British justice, in that it
forces you to give evidence against yourself.
During the [First World] War I had some contact with
the more hidden side of politics, and I was informed
that income tax was a favorite device for penalizing
anyone unpopular with the authorities. The same sum
in taxation could be raised far more cheaply and with
infinitely less friction, by simple taxes, such as
sales taxes, or other straightforward devices , even
if it be granted, which of course is not the case,
that the taxation was necessary.
The recent commission upon the simplification of
income tax stated that many of its provisions were
"frankly unintelligible to them and that only the
skilled administration by the Inland Revenue
officials had made them workable." This is exactly
what they are intended to be, thus leaving the power
over the individual for taxation purposes in the
hands of the bureaucracy.
Lord Hewart of Bury, the Lord Chief Justice, has done
invaluable service in drawing attention to this
particularly objectionable form of tyranny. But there
will be no alleviation from it so long as political
power is allowed to rest in the hands of the
oligarchy which rules us at present.
I have devoted a good deal of my time and yours
tonight in making and, I hope, making beyond any
possibility of discussion, the point that, so far
from being taxed for our membership of a potentially
prosperous undertaking, we ought to be receiving
dividends; and the reason that we are not receiving
dividends is that so much of these dividends as they
require are annexed by international finance, while
the remainder are concealed in invisible reserves, so
that by the lack of them we may be made servants of
the banker, and that, by means of economic
deprivation and taxation he may punish any rebellion
against his rule.
But I would repeat a phrase which I quoted at the
beginning of my address, "It is no use having the
logic if you have not got the guns."
Let me emphasize what I mean in this connection,
because I have been accused of advocating rebellion
against the State. Nothing of the kind. What I am
telling you is that either you are the State and you
can change what you do not like, or else the State is
your enemy: and that all the powers of the State
derive from you and have been usurped from you to the
extent that they have been separated from you.
I am confident, with a confidence that nothing will
shake, first of all, that a genuine democracy of
policy is the fundamental basis of association, and
that no association which disagrees with this idea
can continue. Therefore, the first requisite is to
get into your consciousness as a living, driving,
motive force that this is your country and that the
conditions in it are your responsibility, and that
Government officials are your servants and not your
masters, and that the sooner that they are told it in
unmistakable terms the better it will be for you and
the better it will be for them.
At the present time we live in a false and completely
ineffective so-called democracy, really an oligarchy
of the worst possible kind. Not only is an open and
genuine dictatorship preferable to an oligarchy
masquerading as a democracy, but it is a sure and
certain outcome of it.
I do not believe that the people of these islands
will tolerate an open dictatorship, but, unless you
take action, an open dictatorship will be tried.
Once having got it into your minds that yours is the
real power if you wish to exercise it, the mechanism
existing at the present time, with very slight
modifications, is easily sufficient to make your
power effective if you will bear certain fundamental
considerations in mind.
Don't imagine that a question of democracy has
anything to do with leadership. Democracy and
leadership are a contradiction in terms. There is
more room for leadership in the world than ever there
was, but your leaders should be your servants not
your masters.
Don't waste your time looking round for someone who
is going to do the job for you, you won't find him.
If you won't do it yourselves, it is not going to be
done.
Take your present Members of Parliament just as you
find them and disabuse them of the idea that they are
heaven-sent geniuses, whom you have elected to run
the country for you. They don't run the country
anyway, but you let them think they do. Your Members
of Parliament are elected to represent the common
will, not the uncommon intelligence. The proper place
for intelligence is in the ranks of the technicians
who should be the servants of the common will.
With the common will goes the common power, that is
to say, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the
police, and the other sanctions of the Crown. It
isn't necessary and it is obviously utterly
impracticable for you to organize an army, navy and
air force to fight the State. The State has them
already, and the State is your State.
Make it perfectly clear that you are going to have it
used for your purposes and not for the purposes of
the oligarchy.
In this connection, perhaps I may emphasize the
absurdity of talking about systems, as if systems
could be run without men. Deep down below questions
of finance the fundamental issue which is at stake in
civilization at the present time is that of personal
responsibility. You cannot fight a system, you can
only fight the people who put a system into
operation. You cannot fight robbery, you can only
fight robbers. You cannot fight malaria, you can only
destroy mosquitoes.
One of the most pestilential features of our present
civilization is the idea that if someone is paid by
an organization to do an injustice, the
responsibility for the injustice lies upon the
organization and not upon him.
Make no mistake about it, there is no justification
for such a theory in the working of the universe. If
you put your finger in the fire at the orders of the
company which employs you, it is you who will be
burnt, not the company. When a Government department
inflicts some limitations of your liberty upon you,
it is not the Government department which is doing
it, it is some individual, and he does not inflict it
upon an abstraction called 'The Public', he inflicts
it upon John Smith and Mrs. Brown.
You will never get effective action in connection
with matters of the description that we are
discussing tonight if you allow those who put the
system into operation to disclaim responsibility for
their particular share in it while benefiting by
their aid to the so-called system. If tax collectors
had to add out of their own pockets ten percent of
the money they collect, we should all have much
smaller assessments.
The restoration of the conception of the
responsibility of the individual for his acts,
whether or not those acts are done under the orders
of someone else is, in my opinion, essential to a
better and more stable world, and I would
particularly commend to your attention the habit of
identifying actions with men rather than with
systems. You will, in fact, be assisting those men to
recognize their responsibility, which it is obvious
is far from being the case at the present time.
It would be an impertinence for me to comment on
local politics, and I have no intention whatever of
so doing. But I would emphasize the immense advantage
possessed by small and comparatively mobile
communities in obtaining control over their own
policy, and urge you to resist any suggestion which
would diminish that advantage. It is the settled
policy of international finance to diminish local
sovereignty, and it should be your policy to increase
it.
In conclusion, perhaps you will allow me to express
my opinion that in this matter it is now a fight to
the finish.
Within the next few years you will either become
subjects of a servile State, exceeding in powers
anything known in history, quite possibly well-fed
and even secure - just as many slaves were well-fed
and secure in the days of chattel slavery and
resented their freedom - or you will, but only by
means of the greatest struggle in history, have
achieved all these things, together with freedom -
freedom of speech, freedom of action, immense
leisure, immense opportunity.
No one is going to get these things for you. You must
choose whether you want them, and if you decide that
you do, you must take action without a moment's
delay.
THE ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN
We have in Belfast, and, in fact, all over the world,
a mechanism known as the Electoral Campaign which,
with the proper spirit behind it, can make the
Government your servants. We have provided you with
the mechanism, you must supply the spirit.
The principles involved in it have been tried in many
places and have never failed. The soldiers' bonus in
the United States was forced through Congress against
the bitter opposition of all the financial interests
by exactly the methods we are asking you to employ.
When Mr. Roosevelt was accused of yielding to
pressure from financial interests, he replied with,
in my opinion, complete justice, "It is my business
to yield to pressure."
You, the individuals whose interests are always at
stake in matters of policy, who are killed, wounded,
maimed, poisoned in every war, who are starved and
broken in every industrial depression, who work long
hours under, in some cases, unpleasant conditions for
objects from which you do not benefit - you are the
people who never apply any effective and continuous
pressure to the Government.
I sometimes think that the better intended amongst
the ruling oligarchy propound their calculated
insults from time to time in order to sting you into
awareness of the situation.
Let us send them a message from Northern Ireland to
assure them that they have succeeded.
-
--- Jim <jschroeder@shaw.ca> wrote:
> In the "Dictatorship by Taxation", Douglas states:
>
> "A common objection to this statement is that under
> these conditions banks would pay fantastic
> dividends; but this is a misconception. Banks do, in
> fact, pay high dividends upon a comparatively small
> capital, but the stupendous profits which are made
> by the manipulation of the money system on the
> general principles that I have just been indicating
> to you, do not go to anybody; they disappear by
> book-keeping processes, and by the formation of
> stupendous invisible reserves; and, since they
> increase the disparity between purchasing power and
> real wealth, they perform a continuous deflation
> system.
>
> For instance, if you see that the securities held by
> a bank amount to £100,000,000 sterling, you might
> suppose that that was the market value of the
> securities. It is extremely probable, in the case of
> a British stock bank, that every £100,000,000 of
> securities shown on the balance sheet represents at
> least £1,000,000,000 of market prices in normal
> times, and by this process of writing down, which is
> much more complex than the simple instance just
> cited, it is possible to conceal profits of several
> hundreds percent per annum, and there is little
> doubt that it is done."
>
>
> I am wondering if someone could explain the exact
> mechanics of the process which Douglas describes
> above.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Jim
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
|
Dictatorship by Ta
Reply to this message