by Louis Even

Economics

When one speaks of economics, one speaks of man's activities to place the goods of the earth at the service of his needs.

It is not enough to find things, to produce them; it is also necessary to bring them to the right destination. Otherwise economics does not reach its end. One must not satisfy himself with just bringing wheat from the ground; it is necessary for bread to enter the hungry stomach. It is necessary for shoes to come on naked feet, garments on the backs of those who are cold, furniture into homes, wood into the stove.

An economic system is good when it does that. It is bad when it does not do that or when it does it only for a few privileged ones.

Each man has a right to a minimum of goods on earth, at least to the necessities of life. A system which does not guarantee these necessities of life to all members of society is a defective system. The Church has long ago affirmed this.

Wealth abounds

Food, clothing, houses, furniture, fuel, medicines, education — this is the wealth; this is what supports or embellishes life.

It is easy today to produce these useful things. Everywhere they are advertized for sale. One looks more for buyers than for workers.

The present problem is not to make wheat to come out of the ground, but to put the flour into the homes. It is not to manufacture shoes, but to put them on the feet.

And why is this difficult?

The foodstuffs await the starved. The starved await the foodstuffs. How come the two do not join together?

Coal awaits the furnace. The furnace awaits the coal. How come the two do not join together, being the miner is unemployed and the small kids shiver in the houses?

How come the sick and the remedies do not join together?  And thus for everything, in spite of intensive advertizings, in spite of salesmen.

The wealth is there, but permission to take possession of it is not there. The wealth is the useful things. But the permission to choose the things which one needs is the money. The wealth is in front of the public. But the money is not in the public's hands. Therefore, the public has not the permission to take the things which are made for it.

Money

Money is but the permission to obtain the things which are waiting. If there are no things waiting, money serves for nothing, because there is nothing to buy. But if the things are there, and it is the money that is lacking, one cannot buy the things. One then deprives himself in front of the abundance that is rotting.

What is more difficult to do: to produce foodstuffs, clothing, furniture, houses, or to give the permissions to buy them. Nevertheless, it is the foodstuffs, clothing, furniture, houses which are there, and the permissions which are lacking.

These permissions are conventional signs: round metal coins, rectangular pieces of printed paper, or simple accounts in bank books. All of these permissions are perfectly valid. The essential thing is to have them.

Who creates wealth? The workers.  Who creates  the permissions? The bankers.

The workers, helped by machines, create a great deal of wealth in the world. But the bankers, helped by a diabolical system, make the permissions excessively rare.

The permissions are rare because the bankers, in creating them, only let them go for a certain period of time, and then compel to have these permissions returned to them. They even demand to have more permissions returned back to them than they had put out. Therefore, these permissions can well become rare. There would remain less than nothing if there would not be public debts, mortgages on farms and houses, the numerous bankruptcies, all of which represent permissions kept beyond their term.

The money manufacturers, the bankers, rule the quantity of permissions. They therefore rule the standard of living.

One does not eat in accordance with the food of the country. One does not dress himself in accordance with the country's clothing. One does not lodge himself in accordance with the wood nor the other construction materials of the country. One does all of this and other things in accordance with the quantity of money that the system permits us to have.

The Popes have denounced that, but it continues just the same.

When and how do banks create money? When and how do they destroy money, thus removing the permissions to live? All of this has been explained in various "Michael" articles, and we come back to them from time to time. The brochure “What Do We Mean By Real Social Credit” basically explains it. All people should know it, so as to understand the remedy.

The Government and money

The Government does not create money. It taxes and borrows to have money. But it does not create any. When the individuals are at the end of their capacities for taxes and loans, the Government borrows from the banks.

The banks have received from the Government itself the permission to create money in its place. And when the Government wants to have money from them, it pays them and gets into debt. What a beautiful return for the privilege which it has amiably granted to them!

It is the Government that should create the money in accordance with the total quantity of useful things for sale in the country. Instead of that, it submits to the will of bankers, and all the people, like the Government itself, suffer from a lack of money.

This degeneration of the Government makes of it the servant of private interests. And all the people have become the slaves of these private interests.

The people who give themselves the trouble to study the question are stunned by such a disorder, and more and more they demand that the Government itself creates the money in accordance with the needs and the country's possibilities.

This does not mean to say that the Government must create money in accordance with the whims of men who are in power, nor that it must use this money as it pleases.

It is the producers themselves who make the goods, and the consumers themselves who use them. The Government acts vis-a-vis with the volume of money, like an accountant vis-a-vis with the total production and consumption of the country.

The accountant is not the owner of the money which he accounts for. He keeps the books. He does not create the facts; he just notes them down.

Social Credit

It is for this reason, and for other principles expounded in many ways in numerous articles in past issues of “Michael”, that Social Credit demands a dividend for each citizen, and a total of money in relation with the total saleable production.

Study Social Credit. You will understand it if you believe:

1. That each man is entitled to the necessities of life;

2. That money must serve man, and not man serve money;

3. That money must go in accordance with production, and not production in accordance with money;

4. That systems are made for man, and not man for systems;

5. That money must not limit the freedom and the blossoming out of the human individual.

Today's economic system is based on money. Also it begins by the wrong end: Finance rules production; production rules consumption; man must adapt himself to what one offers him and to what one allows him to obtain.

The economic system improved by Social Credit will begin with the other end, with man. Man, as a consumer, will give his orders to production; production will obey the consumers' orders. With regard to finance, it will be ordered to service, to express the consumers' desires, and be allowed to give them what they want, all that they want, in the limits of the possible.

Is there a place for moral ethics in all of this? Yes, where man is found acting freely as a man. It is in placing his orders that the consumer must act as a man, to guide himself with his reason. It is there that education, morals, and religion must intervene. Today, it is finance which intervenes. Finance has usurped the place of reason to lead man's orders.

Social Credit puts things back in their proper place. This is why one finds much more sound philosophy in the head of a Social Crediter from the countryside than in a banker's nut from Wall Street or Bay Street.

Louis Even

This article was  published in the August-September, 2003 issue of “Michael”.

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