The Root of United States Public and Private Debt Told by the Pen of History
By Bob Blain
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About this ebook
The "pen of history" tells us that the root of both public and private debt in the United States goes back to the founding of the Bank of North America in 1781 in the closing days of the Revolutionary War. Since then, total debt grew at an average annual rate of 7.9 percent from $2.5 million in 1781 to more than $80 trillion in 2015. The cause: money that originates as a debt owed to banks. People at the time understood that money built on debt was a bad idea, but they were unable to stop it from being the foundation that would lead, as one opponent put it, "debt to grow to an extent we dare not think of." It is time now for Congress to begin to replace money based on debt with money based on citizenship. This booklet explains that registered voters have as much responsibility for the economy as they have for electing representatives to government. As such, they have as much right to a share of citizenship-based money as they have a right to citizenship based votes.
Bob Blain
Bob has a Masters degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, both in sociology. He taught sociology for two years at The Ohio State University then taught sociology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville from 1968 to his re-tirement (new tires) in 2001. He has spoken on monetary reform in New Zealand, Australia, Poland, Libya, India, and Togo in Africa as well as at many conferences in the United States and Canada.
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Book preview
The Root of United States Public and Private Debt Told by the Pen of History - Bob Blain
The Root of United States Public and Private Debt Told by the Pen of History
Updated August 2016 of a Fall 2014 version published in the Michigan Sociological Review.
© Bob Blain, Ph.D. 2016
ISBN 9781370313655
Emeritus Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology
Southern Illinois University
Edwardsville, IL 62026
1-618-656-5706
rblain@siue.edu
Smashwords Edition
Table of Contents
The Growth of Debt from 1781 to 2015
Why Money Was Based On Debt
Two Problems With Debt As Money
A Money Supply Based On Citizenship
A Standard Dollars Per Hour of Work
Other Reform Proposals
References
Other Smashwords Books by Bob Blain
About Bob
Bob received his Masters degree in sociology from Harvard in 1964 and Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts in 1967. He advanced from Instructor to Assistant Professor teaching sociology at The Ohio State University, then from Associate Professor to Full Professor teaching sociology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, retiring (new tires) from there in 2001. His research has been published and presented in national and international journals and conferences, including Poland, New Zealand, Australia, India, Libya and Togo in Africa. Here is what he says about what you will read here.
"Our money is not our money. We rent it. We have been renting it since 1781 when the Bank of North America gained control of the money supply in the closing days of the Revolutionary War.
We need to own our money as citizens responsible for both the government and the economy of the United States.
Overview
The pen of history
tells us that the debt burden of the entire economy of the United States, that is, total public and private debt, grew at an average annual rate of just under eight percent (7.9%) from 1781 to 2015. The cause of this exponential growth in debt has been that our money originates as debt. It is now time for Congress to put new money into circulation that is based on citizenship, not debt.
The Growth of Debt from 1781 to 2015
The only data we have on total public and private debt is for the years 1916 to 1976. Reaching the conclusion that this growth was part of a pattern rooted in 1781 was a process that started for your author in 1975. That process had three distinct phases. The first phase was compiling the known data and being alarmed by the consistency of the growth trajectory from 1916 to 1976 that would take debt from $3,800 billion in 1976 to tens of trillions of dollars by 2000. The second phase was tracing the debt growth pattern backwards to the First Congress in 1790 (Blain 1987). The third phase was adding debt data for 1977 to