[Marxism] Any Takers- An alternative to credit card capitalism?

[Douglas MacDonald <dmacdonald94591@xxxxxxxxx>]

All-

I offer the musings below as an opening to a logical deduction of capitalism.  
This article appears on a "Readers Write" page of a popular local county 
on-line news journal  
http://www.benicianews.com/articles/index.cfm?artOID=295828&webpage=0&cp=53  It 
seems this posting offers an opening for an anlysis of the underpinnings of 
debt financing, capitalism and socialism.  Any takers?

-Douglas MacDonlad

**************************************

MAKING MONEY  (www.benicianews.com)

Do credit cards add to the spiral of inflation? How is it that we can 
effectively print money up when we need it, before we have even earned it, and 
not expect it to have an effect on the economy? Now I am not here to bemoan the 
evils of a system that encourages people to spend outside of their means - I 
have already done that elsewhere - but rather to ask a serious question.

     We all know by now that the worst thing that can be done to an economy in 
crisis is to add to the available cash "to encourage people to spend." Witness 
Germany at the end of WWI, bankrupt and with an economy shattered by the 
reparations she was forced to pay as indemnity for the war. Germany's response 
was to try to kickstart the economy by infusing large quantities of cash, which 
it did by printing up new banknotes. The cliche of the wheelbarrow full of 
Deutchmarks is like all cliches, only ludicrous for being so often repeated.

     Witness any economy that has tried to shore up it's failing superstructure 
with this quick fix. Unless the money actually has intrinsic value, ie, gold, 
etc., it must be backed up in terms of relative value. Someone must have worked 
for it, earned it and introduced it to the economy.

     It seems to me that credit cards seem to skip over this essential step. 
You are allowed- encouraged - to spend money that you have not yet earned, that 
in effect does not exist? How is this any different than running off a few 
bills on your laser printer? Especially if, as is the case with many people, 
you do not actually pay off the debt, but maintain a balance and make minimum 
monthly payments?

There has to be an answer.


                
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