Once upon a time, during the period from about 1910 to 2010, in a wonderful land known as the United States of America, there came about a series of emperors, whose job it was to make everyone feel comfortable and prosperous. Unlike other fairy tales, these emperors were elected, after the emperors proclaimed glorious futures for the subjects. The proclamations were called “campaign speeches.” As each emperor and his henchmen came into office and took power, they always did the same things. They always enlarged their offices, spent foolishly, traveled extensively, and wooed the lower classes with handouts.
As each year passed, and each new emperor and his henchmen came into office, they found new ways to spend the citizen’s money. Most of the citizens never complained a bit, because they continually received money from the emperor, and thought it was all a grand system, where they received “SFN,” or “something for nothing.” The handouts from the emperor and his henchmen, kept flowing in all directions, and most of the citizens thought that the new highways, fancy uniformed army, navy, and air force, were just wonderful. After all, they needed to travel and be protected.
The emperor and his henchmen, noticed that their subjects seemed to get old and sick, so they made the subjects happy by providing retirement and medical funds, so the subjects could be well and comfortable in their old age. The subjects like to travel fast, so the emperor provided airports and safety systems at virtually no charge to the airlines, and interstate highways, so all could continue to travel cheaply, and be happy. In order to make almost everyone completely content, the emperor gave orders and instructions to all the kingdom’s cities and towns, ordering them to perform certain tasks. These tasks were ordered to be done, and the exact way of doing these tasks was given by the emperor and his henchmen.
The United States of America began to grow, and most of its subjects were very smart. They read a lot, and kept themselves informed about history, economics, geography, and all the important things. They did arithmetic easily, and saved a lot of the money which was left, after the emperor and his henchmen took their share. The emperor had a wonderful idea, which his henchmen thought was splendid. They would provide free schooling for one and all, in buildings the emperor ordered the kingdoms to provide. Most of the subjects thought that free schools was a fine idea, even though the taxes on their homes went up. After all, wasn’t it worth it to have free schools for everyone?
When the emperor and his henchmen thought that there were too many poor people in the kingdom, they devised a plan to help out the needy. They coined the term “welfare,” which soon became a commonly used term. All the lazy subjects then could live without working. The voluntary charity groups didn’t like this very much, as they had required work for their giving, but the emperor had his way, along with his henchmen. It became obvious pretty soon, that the number of the lazy who didn’t have to work to live nicely, was increasing. Not only that, but the money coming in from the happy subjects, was not paying for all the handouts that the emperor and his henchmen were dispensing. What to do?
“We’ll borrow the money from our subjects, and pay them interest for their loans,” was an idea that was promptly put into effect. Then foreign nations outside The United States of America wanted to borrow too, so they could get interest. The emperor and his henchmen loaned their money to one and all, and agreed to pay interest on the loans. The subjects found that loaning their money to the emperor and his henchmen was a safe thing to do, because they had “full faith and credit,” and not many people had that. The borrowed money kept the spigots open, so that most of the subjects kept on being happy. There were always a few angry people, who thought the whole thing was a sham, but the majority of the subjects kept on re-electing the emperors and their henchmen, so all was going well. The handouts kept coming, and soon what became known as “student loans” came into being. Not only were the basic schools free, but the subjects could go on to colleges and universities with loans of their own money from the emperor and his henchmen.
As the years passed, the emperor and his henchmen always found a way to keep most content. There were a few wars and hundreds of thousands dead, with millions injured, but the survivors got free college tuitions, and the dead were given full military honors, which made their friends and relatives happy. The wars had cost a lot of money, but the emperor and his henchmen had that “full faith and credit” thing, so the subjects kept loaning, as did other nations. Naturally, the emperor’s money always ran short of what was needed to satisfy the demands of his subjects, but about half way through this time frame, the emperor and his henchmen realized that they were running awfully short of the real money, which was silver and gold. They were supposed to back their money with silver and gold and make the coins out of silver, but there wasn’t enough silver and gold to do this. So they decided to print the money with no backing. It looked the same, so the emperor’s money worked the same, even though it was not convertible into gold and silver. Almost everyone was happy and content.
The strange thing though, was that prices kept going up, and the subjects had a more difficult time in staying afloat as each year passed. The emperor had levied taxes on his subjects early in the time period we are speaking of, but the rate was small, so most didn’t object. The taxes went up gradually, and the retirement plan and health care had cost a lot also, so the emperor had increased the taxes a bit more as each year passed, but it was so slow, that few complained. After all, this was The United States of America, and it was the best place in the world to be. As each year passed, the spending increased a lot. The spending was to keep the citizens secure, protect them from their enemies, and happy. Most went along with the increases in taxes, because didn’t we have wonderful roads, free schools, student loans, grand armed forces, old age pensions, health care, and cheap airplane fares? It seemed that fewer and fewer subjects were happy, but most still were.
There had been a few glitches in the emperorship of Jimmy Carter and his henchmen. At the end of the 1970’s, things got a bit out of hand, when foreign nations decided to increase their oil prices by a good number of dollars per barrel. Then another nation took some United States of America citizens hostage and surrounded their embassy in retaliation for the United States of America’s helping out one of their Presidents who was sick. Emperor Jimmy Carter also paid to get rid of the Kingdom’s canal, which connected the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean, and this made a lot of his subjects angry. The interest rates had gone up to very high levels, with the “prime rate” being 13%, and mortgages for home buyers going as high as 21%. The kingdom was in turmoil, and the prices of gold and silver, which no longer backed the emperor’s money, went to very high levels, which was the result of the subjects’ becoming uneasy and distrustful of the emperor and his henchmen.
A few years earlier, under a different emperor, the coins of the kingdom ceased to be made of silver. Instead they began to be made of a cheap metal which looked like silver, but most of the subjects realized that they worked just as well, so there was no discontent to speak of. There were always a few grumps who disliked most of the emperor and his henchman’s tactics, laws, rules, regulations, and requirements. But they were in the minority, so all went along pretty smoothly, except it seemed to go on less smoothly as each year passed, and each emperor and his respective henchmen came into power. More next week, but in the mean time, protect yourself.