Betty's Classroom Report on Social Credit

Betty's Classroom Report on Social Credit

Today I am going to tell you about Social Credit.

Everybody knows that people go to work so they can get money to buy things. The things people buy are paid for with money people earn by making the things people buy. And that would be all there is to say about it if it weren't for a big problem that keeps happening.

Sometimes the good things people make on their jobs simply don't sell even though everybody knows people want those things and need those things. When this happens and selling stops the people who make things have to stop making them. Companies don't get any money when they don't sell what has been made and so they don't have enough money to pay all the people who work at the company. This causes troubles for nearly everyone.

How come there is not enough money for people to buy the things we know how to so easily make for each other?

The troubles start because some of the money that goes around and around from families to companies and back to families again gets taken away so there is not enough money being spent so everyone can keep their job and keep on spending. The big problem is the money that is taken away so it can't keep going around businesses and families doing good for people.

The reason the money goes away is that it is only loaned to people, not given to them. Families and companies have to borrow the money so they will have money to buy and sell. The people who loan the money to companies and familes give it, but then they expect it back or else they will take away the house or the companies for themselves. Sometimes the people who lend the money really want to get those companies for themselves and get the houses and start making people pay rent who live there.

If people didn't have to borrow money to get it, then there would always be enough money to buy things that people make when they go to work. There would be no problem if everybody just got together and voted to print money and send some to every family so they could spend it. Doing that is called Social Credit. With Social Credit the money does not have to be paid back.

Does everybody understand what I've said so far?

Social Credit is easy to understand and it is easy to do, but the reason why we don't get our money this way and avoid all the troubles is that very rich bad bankers can steal a lot of money from everybody when money is borrowed instead of being given to people from Social Credit.

Now there is one more thing you need to know about.

When bad bankers take away more money than they put in they stealing the things that that money could have bought for families if people used Social Credit to put in new money instead of borrowing.

The bad men don't just lend money and then get it back and then lend it again right away to someone else. If that was the way money worked then maybe money wouldn't be gone away as much and there would be enough going around for everybody to keep making things and buying things. But the bad men do something much different. What they do is called usury.

When a man wants to start a company and give people jobs to make things he goes to the usury man at a bank and borrows money from him. The usury man writes on a piece of paper that the man starting the company is to get some new money from the bank. The company is started and people get jobs and people have money to buy the things that are made. But then the money has to be paid back. For every dollar that the man starting the company borrowed, a year later he has to give back to the usury man a dollar plus a dime a nickle and some pennies; and sometimes he has to pay back with each dollar a whole quarter.

That extra money that has to be paid back for each dollar that the man owning the company borrowed is called interest. It is called interest because the extra dime and nickle and penny paid back with the dollar is what makes the usury man interested in lending to the man with the company in the first place.

So all the time people are borrowing new money that comes in but paying back the same amount of money plus more. Money is always being lost by families and companies to the bankers.

And this is what causes troubles. Because all the time the bankers have all that interest they get and families and companies are short that much for buying what is produced and keeping companies busy with everybody working. People lose their jobs. Companies go out of business. And the bankers don't want to lend money to companies because the companies don't have enough customers.

But bankers are in the business of lending money, and if people can't borrow money because the banker knows the people will never be able to earn enough to pay back each dollar with an extra dime, nickle and penny because the banker has taken out all of the money that was going around -- the banker will look elsewhere for people to lend money to. He will lend money to other countries. Or he will pay bad people to get countries angry with each other so they will start a war so that people will have to borrow money to buy guns and airplanes and ships and bombs to win the war. Then the banker can lend all of the money he took away as interest and the companies can hire people again to make the guns and bombs. The bankers will even cause other kinds of disasters if they can so they can lend their money to rebuild after the disaster. These are the kinds of troubles that happen when people get their money from borrowing it from banks rather than just agreeing that money will be printed up for free and given to each man, woman and child to spend without having to pay it back at all.

After thinking about usury and Social Credit I really hope that people will find a way to have Social Credit without usury. If people have Social Credit then companies would make enough money that they could keep everyone hired and make new things and different kinds of things and better things and everyone would have the money to buy the ones they like.

Are there any questions?

Q: How come people don't fix the problem by having Social Credit and not having money that's all borrowed and shit.

A: That's exactly what I wondered. So I looked up the word "economics" in the school encyclopedia and read what it says about what causes companies to go out of business and people to lose jobs. It didn't anything about the real reason of people having to pay interest without extra money being added so they could pay it. Instead there were two famous men who were paid by the bankers to give people different reasons why people lost their jobs and and couldn't buy things.

One man named John and another named Paul said that when companies couldn't sell that the government should spend money so companies give new jobs to people who lost their jobs. But this answer was wrong because the government had to borrow money before it could spend it, and the leak of interest later on would more than undo the spending that the government does now. And besides, the government spending what they want is not the same as the people having the money to spend it on what they want.

Another man with another wrong answer was named Milton. Milton said that the banks that make money should look at prices and if prices go up they should lend less money and if prices go down they should lend more money. Well, of course that sounds good, but of course it doesn't fix the problem of interest draining away the money people have to spend on the goods they make. Even when prices don't change, the bankers are slowly ending up taking out more dollars than they have put in. Milton didn't understand that it makes a difference if there are ten dog food companies making puppy biscuits with everybody working and selling the puppy biscuits for fifty cents a box and having only two dog food companies in business and people without jobs with the price of puppy biscuits still fifty cents for a box. Another thing that Milton said was that while the people were incapable of deciding how much money their should be, that the bankers could be trusted to just lend enough money so that prices wouldn't change. Milton didn't seem to know that bankers would want price to go down and the amount of money to go down most of the time -- because everyone owes them money and if prices go down then the money they are going to get from people paying interest will buy more for the bankers and the people will have to work harder and longer to get each dollar, dime, nickle and penny. They also like to have the amount of money going around to become less and less because then more people will have to come to the bankers to borrow more and pay back a dollar and a quarter for each dollar borrowed instead of just a dollar, a dime and a nickle.

John and Paul and Milton would not tell people that using money that is borrowed rather than money that is just made and given to people is what causes everybody's troubles. It doesn't matter if puppy biscuits are one cent a box or if they are a million dollars a box as long as people receive enough money to buy everything they can make and want to own.

To conclude this report I simply wish to say that I think Social Credit is the best way for companies and families to get the money they use and that usury is a very bad way that only does good for a few very bad people.

Teacher: Thank you, Betty. That was very nicely done. However, before you take your seat, I have a question that I would like you to try answering. Some people say that if our money were gold instead of paper or checking account money created by bank loans that prices would not go up and everything would be fine. In light of what you have learned about Social Credit, do you think that could be true?

Betty: I don't see how it could be true, Miss Shirley. To get gold one has to pay the cost of getting it out of the ground. And when people hide it away it doesn't get spent. With Social Credit the money just comes to every house without people having to do anything. With gold you would have to either get it out of the ground or borrow or buy it from the rich people who own it all, and they would want interest. To pay their debts people would not only have a harder time because money had gone away in paying interest, but because gold is so hard to get hold of to put in people's hands in the first place. The gold money would never be enough and so the bad bankers would prosper at the expense of everybody else even more with gold than without it.

Teacher: Very good. You may take you seat. Now class, it is time to put away your reading notebooks and bring out your geography textbooks.

Richard Eastman

note: Economists mentioned were John (Keynes), Paul (Samuelson), and Milton (Friedman)