Quite a large
number of people would tend to agree that the United States should get rid of
the Federal Reserve System and the income tax.
We agree with that goal . . . if to “get rid of” is broadly interpreted
as getting rid of the incompatible functions that have been added to these
essential if exasperating social tools.
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| Keynesian Wreckonomics and the New Deal |
The fact is that
the problems most people have with these institutions come from the fact that
they are being grossly misused. Nowhere
is this more obvious than with the Federal Reserve System, which hasn’t really
done what it was designed to do since the inception of the New Deal in the
1930s.
You see, central
banks were never intended to finance government, especially by accepting bills
of credit: government bonds backed by nothing more than the government’s
ability to collect taxes in the future.
Central banks were invented to ensure that private sector mercantile and
commercial banks could always get “accommodation,” that is, sufficient credit
and reserves to cover the bank and provide sufficient credit to its
customers. A central bank was thus only
supposed to be a bank for banks.
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| "I'm a little short after slaughtering the Irish. Can you spot me £1.2 million? |
How did central
banks get into financing governments? When
the Bank of England applied for a charter in 1694, King William III noticed
that the “merchant adventurers” had pooled £1.2 million in gold and silver to
provide reserves for all the member banks.
Being hard up for
cash, Billy said he would grant the charter IF the organizers would hand over
all their gold and silver in exchange for “government stock,” i.e., bills of credit. The “government stock” was “as good as gold”
because the government promised to
redeem it for gold and silver just as soon as there was a revenue surplus.
The government
never actually said when it would
redeem the stock, though. It did,
however, eventually take over the Bank of England a few centuries later, making
it even less likely that the stock would ever be redeemed.
Thus, what is
wrong with the Federal Reserve is the same thing that is wrong with every other
central bank in the world of which we have any knowledge: it is in the business
of financing government instead of private sector development.
If that’s the
case, then why do we need taxation of any kind, including (or especially) the
income tax? As Harold Moulton opined,
If the growth of the public debt
is of no moment, one might at first thought be inclined to ask — Why go to all
the trouble and expense of collecting taxes?
Why burden the public with ever-increasing levies? Indeed, if the purpose of fiscal policy is
not to balance the budget but to obtain the largest possible “net
income-creating” expenditures — as measured by the size of the cash deficit — why not promote the desired
end by cancelling all taxes? (Harold G.
Moulton, The New Philosophy of Public
Debt. Washington, DC: The Brookings
Institution, 1943, 71.)
Why? Because as Moulton answered his own question,
That a reorientation of thought
with respect to tax policy would be necessary is suggested in a statement
already quoted: “Once freed from the obsolete concept of the balanced budget,
the larger uses of federal taxes can be creatively explored.” (Ibid., 71-72.)
English
translation: the government needs taxes to be able to force people to act in
ways the government deems desirable.
Take, for example, the tax-fine-whatever imposed on people who fail to
purchase health insurance. Is it a
tax? Is it a fine? Is it a bribe?
Who cares, as
long as people can be forced to do things they ordinarily wouldn’t do?
Of course, we
wouldn’t even to raise these issues if the Federal Reserve was used solely for
the intended purpose of providing liquidity for private sector development, and
the tax system was used solely to raise enough money to run the
government. If the Federal Reserve could
create money in ways that creates new owners of capital, and income was taxed
in ways that encouraged capital ownership to be as widespread as possible, so
much the better.
At the absolute
minimum, however, the Federal Reserve should stop financing government, and the
tax system should do nothing except raise revenue. Yes, we’d need that expanded capital
ownership as soon as possible, but the first task in any reform is to stop
misusing our social tools before we can start to use them properly.
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