Adding to Steve’s quest to define “money”. A couple short films.
Via Digby comes a couple short films talking about what is money. They are part of an effort by a group/site called We The Economy that has 20 short films aimed:
to drive awareness and establish a better understanding of the U.S. economy. Told through animation, comedy, musical, non-fiction, and scripted films, WE THE ECONOMY seeks to demystify a complicated topic while empowering the public to take control of their own economic futures.
I have to say I am a bit biased toward these two films as they promote the idea that I have presented here in various ways: trust. It all comes down to trust. All our wealth, power, security, prosperity and future. Trust is the money. And we have been doing our damnedest to destroy it in the quest for ever greater growth (financial or otherwise) via some concept referred to as freedom or more relatedly “free market”.
They are kind of humorous in parts too.
That Film about Money, part 1
The second part of That Film about Money
I’m going to go watch the rest of the films now.
Magnificent.
Now can we have one that puts to rest the shibboleth that claims that things like Social Security, Medicare, and other aspects of the government are creating monstrous “unfunded” liabilities?
In a recent post here on AB about the Postal Service a commenter claimed the Postal Service was a boondoggle because of all the “loans” it has supposedly taken from the Federal government. Apart from the fact that these so called loans were minuscule in comparison to the postal revenues transferred back to the government the whole argument rests on a fiction about unfunded liabilities.
In the last seven years we have sacrificed 300,000 good middle class jobs while threatening to cut another 150,000 and degrade thousands more all on the basis of the myth of what money and debt really are.
How much demand would those jobs have created?
Our infrastructure is crumbling, we lag the rest of the world in both cost and penetration of broadband, and millions suffer stagnant wages because we embrace a model of money creation that abhors government spending while creating Monopoly money (pun intended) for the banks to enrich themselves.
Goshdarnit I wish there was a transcript. I’m too impatient for streaming nonfiction — you can’t skim!