A Radical Response
While the Republicans, Trump, Musk & Co. execute their radical reduction in government spending by slashing the federal workforce, cancelling medical and scientific research, gutting mission-critical weather forecasting by NOAA, terminating the leases of government buildings, shutting down National Park visitor centers and museums—all with the stated goal of “SAVING TAXPAYER’S DOLLARS”—while this spectacle proceeds, it’s beyond time for Democrats to step up and offer a radical response of their own to the voter angst that drummed them out of the White House.
They could, for example, stand up and point out to the American people that America’s money system doesn’t work the way Trump, Musk & Co. want us to believe—that “saving taxpayer’s dollars” by cutting government spending is a meaningless concept in a world of Modern Fiat Money. Rather than slashing the spending of fiat money, a more rational, beneficial, and long over-due undertaking would be to ask how the spending of fiat money can better achieve our collective well-being.
To ask that question, however, you must first understand how the fiat money system actually works—and, in that department, the Democrats in Congress are as thoroughly confused as the Republicans. But here’s the real problem: The Republicans, for their part, are more than happy to be confused—relishing every political opportunity to pursue their mission of disabling government initiatives with the GOTCHA question: “How are you going to pay for it?” The Democrats, in contrast, are bewildered by the fact that misunderstanding fiat money prevents them from delivering to the American people what the Democratic platform has always promised: a better life and prospect for working-class people.
Case in point: In his 2013 State of the Union address, Barack Obama proposed a universal daycare and preschool education system that would have dramatically bettered the lives and prospects of millions of Americans. The projected “cost” was 10 billion dollars each year. Republicans asked their GOTCHA question. Democrats floundered around with budgeting gimmicks and raising taxes on cigarettes—and then gave up. Obama caved to the Republican mantra of happily held misbeliefs and admitted the U.S. federal government was living beyond its means. Not only did millions of American families lose the opportunity to work jobs while their preschool children were safely acquiring early learning skills—thousands more families lost the opportunity to earn a living-wage providing the preschool teaching and care services the universal program had proposed.
What we are watching now is the ultimate fall-out of the GOTCHA question in action. If you can’t say how you’re going to pay for government initiatives—you can’t have them. It therefore makes sense to begin dismantling the infrastructure of government initiative itself.
The Democrats need to get over their bewilderment, stand up, and respond very clearly:
“We CAN pay for government initiatives to improve our collective well-being. We’re going to pay for them with the operations of the Modern Fiat Money system we’ve been using now for over half a century. We don’t have to raise taxes. We don’t have to borrow dollars that must be repaid with future taxes. If we need to spend money to acquire or accomplish something for our common welfare—and the real resources are available to be put to work—we can create the fiat dollars necessary to marshal those resources. And we don’t have to “pay back” those dollars to anybody—because we’ve paid them to ourselves. That’s the difference between “fiat money” and “debt money.”
Actually, the only thing “radical” about this Democratic response would be that it’s true. Watch the VIDEO-DIAGRAMS to begin learning why:
