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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Numbers, post: 1209042, member: 11668&quot;]The debt is the money, and the money is the debt.&nbsp; If money is being created, somebody&#039;s going into debt.&nbsp; The only way around this, again, is to use something like gold--then you can get &quot;new&quot; money by digging it out of the ground, with no need to create it outright.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s been tried.&nbsp; Much colonial currency operated this way, in the 1700s.&nbsp; If the currency could be used to pay taxes, then people accepted enough of it to cover the taxes they&#039;d have to pay in the near future.&nbsp; Once the amount in circulation got much higher than the next year&#039;s tax bill, the currency rapidly became worthless--it was still good for paying taxes, but it wasn&#039;t good for anything else.&nbsp; Laws mandating its acceptance didn&#039;t have much effect, because more people were willing to ignore these laws than could feasibly be punished for said crime.&nbsp; Repeated experience has thus demonstrated that <i>intrinsic value cannot be created by legislation</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>In order to have value, created money has to be backed by something: perhaps gold or silver, perhaps just a promise of redemption (i.e., a debt).&nbsp; For as long as USNs were in circulation, they were backed by the Treasury&#039;s promise to pay: they were debt.&nbsp; Absent that promise, they&#039;d depreciate as quickly as the colonial notes did.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>As for the first sentence: Right back at you.&nbsp; <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>As for the rest, certainly we can survive, and thrive, without debt.&nbsp; I&#039;d like that very much.&nbsp; But we can&#039;t get to a debt-free world by magic.&nbsp; First, we&#039;ll have to either (a) pay off the existing debt, or (b) repudiate the existing debt.&nbsp; And both will have such heavy consequences as to make the &quot;debt bondage&quot; look good in comparison, at least to a lot of folks.&nbsp; This is sad, this is unfortunate, but it&#039;s a reality we have to face.&nbsp; Myself I&#039;d still rather eliminate the debt, but it&#039;s nothing like the no-brainer choice you make it out to be.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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