Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward

and the more skilled workers who are allowed to live in the suburbs, there are 'Peoples' Van Pools' (PVPs) that shuttle them to and from assigned boarding areas.

Last week, Maurice Strong, who is now the Director of IHRAA, toured the fifteen regional subdivisions that have been carved out of the North-American continent—including the former United States and Canada—and expressed gratification that America, at last, has ceased to be an aggressor against the world.

Another twenty years have slipped by, and we now find

ourselves in The New World Order. No one around us is sure exactly when it began. In fact, there was no official starting date, no announcement in the media, no ceremony with blaring of trum-pets. Sometime during the past ten or fifteen years, it became obvious that it just was, and everyone accepted it as the natural evolution of political trends and necessities. Now, a whole generation is in place that has no memory of another way of life. Many of the older folks have all but forgotten the details of their previous existence. And, of course, many of them have been eliminated.

Schools and textbooks speak of the bygone era as one of unbridled competition, selfishness, and injustice. Previously commonplace possessions such as automobiles and private homes and three pairs of shoes are hardly mentioned, and when they are, they are derided as wasteful artifacts of a decadent society that, fortunately, has ceased to exist.

NO TAXES OR INFLATION OR DEPRESSIONS

The public is no longer concerned over high taxes. For the most part, there are none. Everyone works for the government—directly or indirectly—and is paid by electronic transfer to a government-regulated bank which controls all spending accounts. Even those large corporations which have been allowed to maintain the 550

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appearance of private ownership are merely junior partners of government. They are totally regulated and, at the same time, totally protected from failure. The amount each citizen receives for his labor is determined by his technical usefulness and his political rank. His taxes are pleasantly low or non-existent. The cost of government now is derived almost totally from expansion of the money supply—and from the economic value of the work battalions.

Each regional government of the world determines its spending needs and then offers to sell bonds in the open market to raise the money. The IMF/World Bank, acting as the UN's central bank, is the primary buyer. The Bank determines how much money to

allow each regional government and then 'purchases' that amount of bonds. It accomplishes that by making an electronic transfer of

'credits' to one of its correspondent banks within the region receiving the money. Once that has happened, the local government can draw upon those credits to pay its bills. Not a single tax dollar is needed for any of that. The IMF /World bank simply creates the money and the regional governments spend it.

In days gone by, this increase in the money supply would have caused prices and wages to go up almost immediately. Not

anymore. Prices and wages are controlled. What does happen, however, is that the government is caught in its own trap. It needs to keep the workers happy by giving them wage increases, but it also needs to keep its factories functioning by allowing price increases as well. The wage-price spiral, therefore, is not eliminated. It is merely delayed a few months. And, instead of happening in response to the interplay of supply and demand in a free market, it is directed by bureaucratic formula. The end result is the same either way. The people of the world are still paying the cost of their international and local governments through the hidden taxation called inflation.

In the chaotic past, the industrialized nations of the world went through phases of disruptive inflation often exceeding 1000% per year. That served a purpose in helping to destroy public faith in their existing national governments. It softened them up and made them more willing to accept drastic changes in their life styles and their political institutions. It paved the way to The New World Order. But now we have arrived, and extreme inflation rates—at least in the absence of war—would cause public dissatisfaction and

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be counterproductive. Inflation, therefore, has now been institutionalized at a fairly constant 5% per year. That has been determined to be the optimum level for generating the most revenue without causing public alarm. Five per cent, everyone agrees, is

'moderate.' They can live with that. But we tend to forget that it is 5% per year , forever.

A 5% devaluation applies, not only to the money earned this year, but to all that is left over from previous years. At the end of the first year, the original dollar is worth 95 cents. At the end of the second year, it is reduced again by 5% leaving its worth at 90 cents, and so on. After 20 years, the government will have confiscated 64% of every dollar we saved at the beginning of our carreers. After working 45 years, the hidden tax on those dollars will be 90%. The government will take virtually all of them over our lifetime. Earned interest will partially offset this effect but it will not alter the underlying reality of government confiscation.

EFFECT OF 'MODEST' 5% INFLATION

For the past forty years, all the published charts illustrating the decline of the dollar from such-and-such a date to the 'present'

show the following type of curve.

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These, of course, are averages. A few people in the middle class of the bureaucracy will have managed to place