The process of earning more money than you need to survive, and allowing it to accumulate, until you can create something with it, is fundamental to Capitalism. With a sound monetary system, everyone would over time own their own means of production. They would invest in small businesses–shops, production facilities, restaurants–which they would control. The end aim of Capitalism is very simply for everyone to be a Capitalist, and for there to be no “workers” as such at all. Where things can’t get done by individuals, they could aggregate as a collective and own things in common, as in some corporations, which are owned by the employees. Socialists will claim this for themselves, but quite obviously such arrangements are both common sense and common, already. I know any number of companies that are owned by a group of people. Generally, they will have employees, but all that needs to happen to convert an employee into a Capitalist is the opportunity to buy in.
As I have argued often, Socialism is not a system for improving the shared experience of humanity at large. Socialists–true Socialists, not people with “tribal” orders characterized by uniformity of moral belief and culture, such as the Scandinavians, that operate as high trust cultures–are quite willing to accept, for others, a uniform poverty, in exchange for eradicating both the relatively rich and the relatively poor.
Their views, external appearances to the contrary, are shaped neither by genuine compassion and empathy, nor by the sincere desire to create anything like freedom. On the contrary, their views are shaped by their own internal necessity, which typically is the formation of a moral code–a meaning system, in my terms–in a condition of atheism, and moral pessimism if not outright nihilism. The “Nihilists” were in fact the literal ideological forebears of Lenin. I will be writing on that shortly.
The task Socialists set themselves, then, is primarily the acquisition of power over their fellow human beings. That is the primary goal. It is not wealth creation. It is not freedom creation. It is not even eradicating injustice, since their policies create far, far greater injustices than the worst abuses of Capitalism in its worst periods. One will not find people digging up their dead and eating them in any period of modern history, until one gets to Mao’s unnecessary famine.
Self evidently, one will find nowhere in Capitalism the systematic use of torture, murder, and deportation as political tools. There have been deaths, yes, and patent cruelties, but they disappeared 100 years ago or more. One has to look to modern nations like China to find their equal. And China, today, is far more cruel than we were even in the so-called Robber Baron era.
To the topic. Logically, if savings is the process of the democratization and generalization of the means of production and personal freedom, then it is the antithesis of the project of centralizing control of the means of production and generating autocratic control.
In my view, Social Security is an attack on savings. Prior to the Great Depression, people saved money. It was quite common, since savings was your safety line, your protection against the unknown. Now, if you can depend, instead, on the government, then you no longer need savings.
When it was first introduced, in my understanding, the program was intended primarily to furnish unemployment benefits. Many millions had no way of feeding, clothing, or housing themselves. In no small measure because of Communist agitators blaming Capitalism for their plight, revolution was in the air. One could, I suppose, call Huey Long the Obama of his day, with the difference that Huey was more honest, and a much, much more capable leader.
Now if you want to fully eradicate savings you need a two-pronged attack. You first need to convince people that whatever bad thing happens to them, Uncle Sam will be there to the rescue. This includes illness, unemployment, and old age.
Then you need to make credit easy, which is equivalent to pursuing inflationary policies. The first allows people to own, now, what they want (albeit at a price). The second disincents savings, since money held in a condition of inflation counts as a negative investment. It loses value.
Keynes was adamant we had to get off the gold standard. Why? Simple: it is much harder to inflate a currency backed by gold. I don’t think the hyperinflation of the 70’s would have been possible if Nixon had not taken us off the gold standard. I read some time ago that the Fed intentionally pursued a policy of increasing M1–which is basically money in circulation–throughout the 70’s. This was on their website.
In 1980, they got the permission of Congress to perform “open market operations” with respect to any security whatsoever. As I understand it, this was to help them “tame” the inflation they surely created.
Would one of necessity have to be conspiratorially minded to see this as at least possibly a policy that was pursued with clear eyes, and great deceit? I can see no way to explain the inflation of the 70’s without an increase in the money supply, and no way to explain an increase in the money supply without active Fed control.
I have said a number of times, that the Fed is an organization that only solves problems that it creates. No Fed: no problems.
I got off track there. Some people want to link the people who run the large banks with Fabian Socialism, or some other scheme to rule the world. It’s impossible to say, of course, what plans might have been hatched, but it is quite clear that greed is a constant in human history, and that where motive and opportunities exist in the same place, quite often immoral behaviors result.