Four years ago (July, 1950), under the above heading, I wrote these paragraphs:
“Time Magazine, June 19, describes the Abundance in this mechanized America, a land of milk and honey beyond Moses' wildest dreams. But, says Time, perverse economics and expedient politics have transformed America's blessing of plenty into a 'plague of plenty'.
"Food prices are too high to the consumer, yet. America is spending or lending more than $11 million a day to keep them that way. There is more food than people can eat, yet as least 15 million Americans (plus 600 to 700 million in other lands) cannot get enough of the right kind. One arm of the massive Department of Agriculture is feverishly shuffling schemes for limiting farm production, while another arm is busily showing farmers how to grow and produce more.
"The U.S. government is buying up this overabundance, and, in elevators, underground caves, giant refrigerators, vacated warehouses and empty hangars, now has stored up:
"Government subsidies paid to farmers — out of taxes, of course — have kept consumer prices scandalously high. The consumer has been paying TWICE: once in high prices over the counter, and again in taxes to finance the farm-supported program to keep the prices up.
"Many of the mounting surpluses could be removed — if we would consume more. But even now millions of Americans are too short of purchasing power to buy the things they need. Secretary of Agriculture Brannan seems to sense the direction of the trouble, for he favours guaranteeing-a support-price to the farmer, and then letting the market find its own level. If prices fall below the support-price, the farmer would be subsidized the difference; but the consumer would get the benefit of the lower prices and would only be paying ONCE — in taxes.
"It becomes more obvious each passing day that the only barrier standing between the people in America and unparalleled abundance for every family is a 'financial' one. The problem is one of Distribution, not Production. And any use of subsidies to find a solution requires their application at the Consumption rather, than the Production end.
"Let our governments use national credit to pay a subsidy to LOWER prices to the consumer. This is the opposite of inflation; this will expand our home market by increasing consumption, and raise our standard of living to the mutual benefit of both producer and consumer. Stimulate Consumption and Production will take care of itself.”
In that same month of 1950, I added, editorially:
"The Kremlin leaders, with more than a little justification, have steadfastly maintained that 'Capitalism' will crack up and collapse under its own weight — that large-scale unemployment and poverty, business and trade stagnation, was the inevitable fruit of 'Peace' in capitalistic countries.
“Ten years of 'Peace' during the thirties brought us nothing but want and depression, while production was deliberately restricted, burned and destroyed.
"Ten years of war and its aftermath brought us 'Prosperity'. Lend-lease, UNRRA and Marshall Plans, through which America donated billions of dollars worth of production to Europe and Asia, have 'created' a market for the last few years. But this is coming to an end, and already mounting surpluses on every hand today confront America.
“Canadian farmers are disturbed over the loss of much of our British market for wheat...
“'Industrial Capitalism', under a system of private enterprise with its energy and initiative, has done a miraculous job of Production. But the Financial Credit Monopoly has not only failed to Distribute, in normal peacetime, the Abundance of Production, but has saddled the people with steadily mounting public debt, increasing interest charges and oppressive taxation.
"Is an antiquated credit policy to continue to shackle 'Capitalism'? Is prosperity to be a byproduct of War rather than of Peace? Until these issues are faced up to and solved, we shall stumble from one crisis to another."
* * *
Within a few days of the penning of the foregoing lines the Korean 'war broke out and once again solved Canada's and America's 'surplus' problems. For the next three years thousands of Canadian youth, and millions of American, were taken out of Production and called into the armed forces for purposes of destruction. And we sent from Canada and the United States mountains of goods to Korea to be blown up in war, and more mountains to rebuild the country.
The demands of war and destruction turned in the orders to the factories, munition plants and shipyards, and again the wheels of production hummed. War and destruction once again, as in 1939, 'came to our aid' and brought ‘prosperity'.
Of course, our workers when they bought bread had to pay — through taxes and high prices (due to hidden or indirect taxes) — not only for the bread, but also for the guns. Consumers paid not only for the goods they consumed, but also for the goods which were being produced and destroyed. But because most Canadians were engaged in 'full employment' and were gaining at least a minimum living (only a fraction of Canada's potential), they were propagandized by politicians and commentators about Canada's 'prosperity'. A sort of illusory 'prosperity' in which one earned a dollar today only to have the state seize half in taxation tomorrow — and even the half dollar left with us at the price of the blood and slaughter of our youth and the destruction of some other country.
Sound economics! Sound finance!!
But for those who look behind the tumult for the design, behind the propaganda for the policy, the following scheme or pattern is clear:
Engineer - Satan, the Devil himself.
The Plot — Through credit control obstruct Distribution and the free flow of production; frustrate the people in their legitimate demands and desires, crush them with taxation and insecurity, and when they reach the end of their endurance and crave relief, come forward with: either War, which means a new flow of credit and ‘prosperity', but accompanied by batches of bureaucratic controls and loss of individual freedom; or large government projects which make you dependent upon the State and compel you to work at things in which you have no interest in order to get a few dollar tickets to claim the bread already produced. Both these courses increase taxation and saddle generations yet unborn with oppressive debts and usury.
Results — The results of the above policies are: increasing bureaucracy and regimentation, dislocation of family life and uprooting and shifting of men, transformation of individuals into a herd to be ordered around, taxed and regimented by the State officials.
The Policy behind all of these schemes seems to be that: Man has got to be controlled and disciplined, either by rules and regulations imposed by the State, or by financial restrictions. He must not be free.
“Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free."
Finance, as we have it today, is a lie. It is a lie because it fails to accurately reflect the facts of physical abundance; it fails to consistently distribute and put at man's disposal the full fruits of production; it fails to make financially possible what Providence and Technology have made physically possible.
Governments today are placating error, sacrificing principles. The electors must inform themselves, must inform their friends and neighbours — ye shall know the Truth — and then must work in association to demand and insist that the government pursue financial policies designed to reduce taxation and state controls, to equate purchasing power with prices, and thus assure to our people full access, financially, to the full fruits of Production. Social Crediters will accept nothing less.
RON GOSTICK