About a hundred and fifty years ago, a budding young entrepreneur in Philadelphia was looking for a gimmick to sell his product. He racked his nubile young brain, and finally had a brilliant idea. He decided to place the garbage from the manufacture of his product into the product itself, and tell everyone it made the product “authentic,” thereby boosting sales. Now, I know you think I must have been taking drugs or something to come up with this, but it an actual historic fact, and it worked brilliantly. Still does!
Almost like the bright idea of printing paper money, which is supposed to represent actual value, even though it has none. Paper money has been printed by the hundreds of trillions of pieces throughout the history of paper and printing presses, and has fooled just about everyone. Fooling everyone worked for Henry Breyer.
Breyer? You mean, as in Breyer’s Ice Cream? Yup. Now think about it good people. Most people take dollars for granted, and never even give them a second thought. “I have a CD of $100,000, and I am safe for my old age,” might be an explanatory sentence of maybe 25 million Americans. Or, “I have an annuity, which keeps me till I die,” might be the same sentence of millions more. These same people, probably won’t buy vanilla ice cream, until they are sure it has “real vanilla beans” in it. Both are frauds.
Henry Breyer must have had a problem of disposing of his garbage in early Philadelphia, as there were no trash trucks then, or trucks of any kind for that matter. ’What to do with all these vanilla beans? I have it! I’ll grind them up and put them in vanilla ice cream, eliminate the disposal problem, and advertise it as an authentic thing.’ Sort of like the solemn seal of the US Treasury Dept on the paper money, supposedly giving it value and authenticity. Same deal!
When you make coffee, you place the coffee in the top, press the start button which adds hot water, and presto, you have several cups of coffee correct? And when one makes a cup of tea, one places the tea bag in the cup, adds hot water, and you have a cup of tea correct? And then after the coffee and tea are drunk, what does one do with the coffee grounds and used tea bags? One consigns them to the garbage can correct? Vanilla beans are the same as coffee beans or tea leaves. They must be boiled to extract the flavor, and then thrown away. Used vanilla beans, are about as valuable as coffee grounds or used tea bags. As valuable as paper with ink on it, giving promises which are empty, and of no value.
Henry Breyer ground up the used, valueless, vanilla beans, and placed them in his vanilla ice cream. He then began an advertising program, instilling in the minds of the gullible, that no vanilla ice cream was any good, unless one could see the garbage, used, ground up, vanilla beans in it. To this day, the myth continues, and not just from Breyers, but most other ice cream brands have “real vanilla beans” in the vanilla. Most people actually believe this myth, in spite of the obvious fraud, and actual absurdity of it. If the consumer would actually stop and THINK, he would shun vanilla ice cream with ground up garbage in it., and look for butterfat content, over-run, or solids content, which is the true mark of a good ice cream. (I had a chain of ten ice cream shops in Philly and was the largest seller of bulk ice cream in Philly in 1970, so I know the field. My ten stores sold over 100,000 gallons of ice cream in 1970)
Do ground up garbage vanilla beans in ice cream harm anything? No. Does it add to the flavor? No. It’s just a clever gimmick, which allows the manufacturer to save money on waste disposal, and increase sales. Does worthless paper scrip harm anyone? Damned right it does! How? It gives a false impression of value. It makes one believe that the paper scrip is worth having, other than for everyday purchases and transactions. It makes the populace believe that in order to protect one’s future, one must save this scrip for future use and future purchases. It gives the utterly false impression, that the scrip is of some value, and is backed by something tangible. It has fooled just about everyone, and still does. Hundreds of millions of people, actually believe that their future is secure with gobs of unbacked scrip, which is produced by the billions each week. When one plays Monopoly, one has worthless scrip, with which one advances, pays fines, passes “Go,” buys little houses and colorful properties. But when the game is put away, one may have learned basic economics, which is good, but one can hardly take Monopoly money, and buy a half gallon of vanilla ice cream with real, ground up beans in it. One should realize that Monopoly money, is about as valuable as are real ground up vanilla beans in ice cream but most don’t. The comparison with dollars is unavoidable.
They save in the dollar scrip, and invest in dollar scrip denominated items. They trust purveyors of such items, just like they feel good about vanilla beans in ice cream. They don’t believe that a scrip as pretty as is the dollar, with all the seals and authentic appearance as they have, could possibly be a fraud and sham. I mean they have ex-President’s pictures engraved on them, have serial numbers, and are made of special paper. Aren’t they good to save, for future use? The answer I suspect, lies in looking at back prices.
In 1970, in my stores, I was selling a single dip ice cream cone for 35 cents, and a double for 65 cents. Size 24 scoop, over-filled. My ice cream was 12% fat, high solids, and a rather low over-run, which made it an excellent product. Today, a similar ice cream cone of similar size, can go for eight times that in dollar scrip. 34 years ago that was. Does this mean that we have had 800% inflation in 34 years? I don’t think that fact can be argued, if you go to the library or newspaper morgue in any city, and find a 34 year-old newspaper. Just look at the ads, and see if I am correct. I am. If one had placed $1,000 worth of US dollar scrip in a savings account at a steady 3% interest, one could have barely $3,000, if 3% interest was compounded for 34 years. No savings account has done that well in the last 34 years anyway.
34 years ago, Gold was $35 and silver about $1.25.
We, all too often think that just because something is impressive looking, that it is good. Just like knock-off Rolex watches for $10, or ground up vanilla beans in ice cream making it good. We often believe, that if a product is highly recommended, it is good. We then have football stars, movie stars, and other famous luminaries appearing in commercials, spouting off the beauties of cars, reducing formulas, or cottage cheese. Or we have Greenspan appearing before Congress, telling everyone how lovely it all is, and that we have nothing to fear, as the presses go into overdrive to pay for Iraq and the welfare system. What appears to be true, often isn’t. On the internet, there is scads of trash appearing every day, and one must use judgment and common sense to sift out what is accurate, and what is a figment of someone’s imagination.
“Of all contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money.” — Daniel Webster
Where does one place one’s surplus assets? In scrip dollars, or dollar denominated items such as CD’s? Or does one get out of scrip, and into a tangible, which may be denominated in tons, gallons, acres, square feet, or ounces? One has to buy the tangibles with the scrip, but once bought, one can sit back and watch the scrip go down the tubes. Naturally, gold and silver are a lot easier to convert into scrip when one needs it.
Protect yourself.