Reply #25: false premise [View All]

[Two Americas]

Let me use the rural county I am in as an example. We grow enough food to feed everyone in the county. We have every service needed. we could easily feed the local doctor, and the local construction people could keep the doctor housed. We have well drillers, carpenters, nurses and police. The county could be self-sufficient, and everyone would have more than enough of everything they need. Fuel is the one exception, though we could go back to mules, especially if the pressure to produce and ship to market was no longer there. As it is, we buy fuel through a co-op.

Let's say we have scraps of paper to keep track of the transactions - we could call them dollars. No matter how many "dollars" there are, there is enough of everything for everyone in the county. Now let's say a middle man handles those "dollars" for us. Within a short period of time, we discover that no one has enough - enough food, enough housing, enough medicine, whatever. The farmer cannot afford health care, and the health care worker cannot afford food. What happened? The same wealth is being produced. The same resources are there. Everyone is working as hard or harder. Where did the value go?