Wrong target on federal debt limit

Re: "The 500-pound debt gorilla nobody sees"

Dear Mr. Farah,

Your proposal to limit the federal debt targets the wrong problem. I support limited government. So, in theory, I really like the idea of a limited budget.

However, our monetary system is the problem. Our monetary system demands ever-expanding budgets. It demands ever-expanding debt. Why? We live in a debt-based fiat monetary system, not a commodity-based system (where money is a physical thing like gold). This creates an absurd situation where money is created only when someone (a person, business or government) takes out a loan. Unfortunately, individuals, businesses and local governments are already up to their eyeballs in debt. They can't take on any more debt. Thus, we risk a deflationary collapse where cash is "short" and there is simply no money for people to spend. This leaves the federal government as being the only entity that can take on more debt (bonds) to create the money necessary to service all existing debt plus interest.

Conservatives can't really create a constitutional form of government until they realize that the monetary system is the problem. But it gets worse. Many conservatives feel that a return to commodity money (gold or silver) will solve all our problems. But God knows better. He warned us of a little problem called interest, or as it used to be called, usury.

TRENDING: Republicans move to replace GOP canvasser who voted to certify Biden win

When you pay back a loan (any loan) in our system, it must be paid back with interest. So when you buy a house for $100,000, you find that over 30 years of interest payments, you finally pay $300,000. Where does the extra $200,000 come from? Money itself does not "grow," as Aristotle informed us. Please stop and really think about this. The extra dollars must be created. Even in the days of gold, new money needed to be created to service debt, either by mining more, stealing someone else's in war or debasing the current supply to make it appear to be more than it is. Thus, it is interest payments that demand the expansion of a money supply in the first place! Interest payments are what demand continual economic growth and continual monetary inflation. But because money in our system does not come into existence until someone takes on a debt, more people, businesses and governments must be enslaved into debt, and, most importantly, that huge federal debtor we call "Washington." Conversely, in our system, actually paying off debt destroys money, and is thus deflationary.

Unfortunately, our system has reached its mathematical limits, and it is a Jubilee year. Coincidence? I think not. The solutions will not come from Mr. Farah with his noble desire to freeze the debt limit. Rather, the solution will be God's: a Sabbath rest for debts. Bond holders will need to accept that bonds are not a risk-free investment. There will be huge defaults. Debts will need to be forgiven.

Just as constitutional conservatives realize that God's wisdom applies to abortion and marriage, they must understand that it applies to every arena of life, including the usury basis of our modern monetary system. Without changing the fundamental system, while we may be able to pay down public debt in the short term, it will only rise again because the mathematics of the system demands it.

Roxane Premont