Aside from those who are blessed with understanding the value of poverty, everyone wants more money. Money is a major interest for most people.
Where does money come from?
Money comes from government-owned printing presses. How do governments know how much to print?
They don’t. Mostly, they print as much as they need.
How much do they need? If a government looks at all the jobs involved in providing goods and services for, say three hundred million people they might realize that there are one hundred and fifty million jobs. They are scattered throughout the economy.
If someone figures out a way to do a job with less labor, then there are fewer jobs, but the same number of goods and services are provided. So, the government can print that much money and give some of it to those newly unemployed by automation. The government keeps the rest for its own overpaid employees.
When there is a lot of automation, as when railroads put hundreds of thousands of canal workers and teamsters out of business, governments can print lots more money. They have to, or the owners of the railroads will keep it and become too rich and powerful. And, the workers, unemployed through no fault of their own, need money to survive. When automation really kicks in, as in America, private charities are not enough to support those made jobless by technology. The government has to print money.
In every area of our economy, fewer workers are doing much, much more. So, the government prints and prints and prints more money. Now, for instance, one fracking well replaces fifty regular wells. Natural gas is less expensive than ever. So, the government has to print more money so that the workers displaced from their old wells can get food stamps and other forms of support.
What’s wrong with “printing press money”? Not much, as long as they keep a balance between the money supply and the number of workers who’ve lost their jobs to technology.
It is important to understand these rudiments of the economy because they upset and bother those who don’t understand them. When we understand, even these simple basics of the money supply, we can be happy. That lets us do the most important work we can: focus on saving our soul.
