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As a conspiracy theory I mean - is there a credible newspaper account of anyone who isn't a complete moron actually believing this? Is there any evidence cited, any stuff the conspiracy theorists supposedly believe "proves" this? The whole thing appears some sort of preposterous joke.csloat 07:06, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
NESARA is a legitimate legislative proposal drafted by Dr. Harvey F. Barnard found at http://nesara.org/bill/index.htm
You can discuss the bill with the author himself at http://www.thewordfiles.com/nesara/index.php
(correction: Dr. Harvey F. Barnard passed away May 19, 2005). M.G. Stark, president of the NESARA Institute in Greenwell Springs, Louisiana continues in his role in getting legistlators to support, submit, and endorse the bill.
Contrary to internet hoaxers who have run with the NESARA name, and who are scamming the public, the bill has not been introduced, nor given a Thomas Locator registry number. You can check out the current status of the passage of NESARA at http://nesara.org/main/status_of_the_bill.htm
inigmatus Administrator NESARA Discussion Board http://www.thewordfiles.com/nesara
Inigmatus, Your revision expanded the scope of the article appropriately, but you basically just copied NESARA marketing material with a heavy pro-NESARA POV. I did some editing to remove phrases like "returning ownership of the national currency to the people", and removed some controversial and unsubstantiated claims about the immediate beneficial effects NESARA would have, but I think a lot more rephrasing and paraphrasing is needed. --sednar (talk · contribs).
Most legislative proposals found on wiki have a pro-pov as is the nature of the proposal: to convince members of congress to pass it for the "common good" - however that is ultimately defined by the proposal.
There are hard-core facts and some basic mathematics that support the claims such as "doubling the standard of living for all Americans within a single generation" - based on a just a very modest 2% increase in economic productivity by implementing some of the proposed changes (and no one disagrees the current system can not be improved) this percentage amounts to 100% or double the current economic productivity within 20 years.
There are many arguments for NESARA found on nesara.org, but I don't think wiki is meant to be a front for it. I've looked at other legislative proposals and at best, I find a summary, and them some selective parts of the summary backed up.
I could open another section describing how these changes could work, but I am not certain as to the extent of that section as NESARA covers a great deal of territory. I will attempt to do something in the comming days - perhaps truncating and editing responses to select questions I posted to Dr. Barnard last month. In the meantime, if you feel so inclined, feel free to add argumentative material for and against NESARA in keeping with the wikipedia theme.
My main purpose was to simply point out that NESARA is not just about the hoax, but that there was (and is still) in fact a real legitimate proposal worthy of public consideration, and has the support of several thousand private citizens who have read the material.
Most legislative proposals found on wiki have a pro-pov as is the nature of the proposal: to convince members of congress to pass it for the "common good" - however that is ultimately defined by the proposal.
There are hard-core facts and some basic mathematics that support the claims such as "doubling the standard of living for all Americans within a single generation" - based on a just a very modest 2% increase in economic productivity by implementing some of the proposed changes (and no one disagrees the current system can not be improved) this percentage amounts to 100% or double the current economic productivity within 20 years.
There are many arguments for NESARA found on nesara.org, but I don't think wiki is meant to be a front for it. I've looked at other legislative proposals and at best, I find a summary, and them some selective parts of the summary backed up.
I could open another section describing how these changes could work, but I am not certain as to the extent of that section as NESARA covers a great deal of territory. I will attempt to do something in the comming days - perhaps truncating and editing responses to select questions I posted to Dr. Barnard last month. In the meantime, if you feel so inclined, feel free to add argumentative material for and against NESARA in keeping with the wikipedia theme.
My main purpose was to simply point out that NESARA is not just about the hoax, but that there was (and is still) in fact a real legitimate proposal worthy of public consideration, and has the support of several thousand private citizens who have read the material.
Most legislative proposals found on wiki have a pro-pov as is the nature of the proposal: to convince members of congress to pass it for the "common good" - however that is ultimately defined by the proposal.
There are legislative proposals and there are legislative proposals. For proposals that haven't made it into law, only the notable ones are encyclopedic. An unenacted proposal can be notable for lots of reasons - such as having been repeatedly re-introduced even after failing to pass, like the recurring Flag Burning Amendment in the US Congress, or such as having well-reasoned and widespread arguments on both sides, like the various flat tax proposals that are brought up as alternatives to the present US income tax system. But this tin-foil hat proposal isn't notable, it's just another bit of scattered lunacy like thousands of other crackpot ideas that have popped up over time and flamed out. It may well deserve a section in an article devoted to crackpot economic theories, but it doesn't deserve to be an article of this length consisting of nothing but a rehash of the advocates' website. -EDM 30 June 2005 17:01 (UTC)
"This tin-foil hat proposal isn't notable, it's just another bit of scattered lunacy like thousands of other crackpot ideas that have popped up over time and flamed out. It may well deserve a section in an article devoted to crackpot economic theories, but it doesn't deserve to be an article of this length consisting of nothing but a rehash of the advocates' website. -EDM 30 June 2005 17:01 (UTC)"
Scattered lunacy? Perhaps the hoax versions of NESARA are. This article was originally created as an article on the internet hoax. I've seeded the article with additional information about the legitimacy of the original proposal.
If you wish to delete this article because you believe its a crackpot idea without merit, then perhaps you should start a gang of wiki trolls to delete every other article out there that you deem "crackpot" and not just stop with this one.
The bullets in the article taken from the Executive Summary sections of the bill itself. The later explanations and arguments for NESARA, as well as information about the hoax versions is text I drafted from scratch on the Wikipedia edit page using facts and other information from the NESARA Institute, emails from Dr. Harvey Barnard before he died last month, and various other sources notated in the external links section.
Some other noteworthy "credentials" for keeping this article:
Besides, the NESARA draft bill does have a logical and explainable merit - as a supporter of it, I have yet to hear any good objection to it, though I definatly have kept my mind open to any objections. This may temporarily skew the NPOV of this article, but only until arguments against it can be formulated. Perhaps rather than denouncing this as a crackpot idea without merit, you can instead actually read about it and form more constructive opinions about it. After all, there is an entire section for reasons against NESARA that has yet to be drafted.
Finally, a lot of other wiki links were created as a result of this article, most notably the monetary and tax reform pages and categories. This information is all in the public domain, and at best I felt that if there be any article regarding the nesara hoax, that the article would also contain information regarding the real legitimate draft that has rational, logical, and mathematical support.
"Now I really believe" huh? Can you please explain to me why?
Ignatius it helps the flow of conversation if you sign your posts. Anyway I am putting this on the VfD page. I read over WP:DP and I believe this article falls in the category "Completely idiosyncratic non-topic"; it is not notable for inclusion in wikipedia. At best this merits an entry on a page about hoaxes. Or perhaps on a page about crazy bills that have been in front of Congress at various times. It certainly doesn't merit this significant an entry. Anyway I'm putting it up for the vote and you can make your case to a wider community; perhaps others will agree with you, in which case the article won't be deleted.--csloat 30 June 2005 22:07 (UTC)
To counter NPOV claims, the section on arguments against NESARA should be expanded. I disagree this article needs to be deleted.
I think the closer in similiarity to Flat tax as can be acheived should be the goal of cleaning up this article and expanding it.
I disagree with the VfD submission. There is nothing idiosyncratous about this article. The general topic of monetary and tax reform (as NESARA fits under), as well as the various legislative application of various economic theories is well known, and should be in any public-domain repository of accepted human knowledge.
I'm sorry you don't accept it.
I think the conspiracy theory version merits an entry, as does anything with more then 50,000 google hits. The argument that it should be deleted because "these people are just cranks" does not hold water. Would you also delete the entry on Jim Jones, and Heaven's Gate on the same argument? On the legislative proposal, I think there's definitely a lot more information there that is warranted. I think the arguments for should be greatly shortened, and arguments against should be fleshed out a little, but not much more then a paragraph or two, as it's a legislative proposal which, it is almost certain, will never be introduced before congress. In addition the legislative proposal stuff does not mesh well at all with the conspiracy theory, and a person who is interested in reading about one of those would most likely not be at all interested in reading about the other. So, I broke out all the conspiracy theory stuff into a separate article, NESARA Conspiracy Theory. If you think the conspiracy theory article merits deletion, add the tag. --sednar (talk · contribs).
Somebody did actually take the time to seperate the article into two. Looking at it now, I think it helped. - Inigmatus
One might point out that 24.18.143.118 and 67.168.88.65 are both on the same AT&T network node (68.86.96.101). In some of the contributions, it appears that 24.18.143.118 is talking with Inigmatus, both of which refer to the same person. See [1] for an example. Groeck 4 July 2005 18:02 (UTC)
I have revised the NESARA article into a form that I would be prepared to vote to keep. The proposed revised text follows. -EDM 6 July 2005 05:58 (UTC)
The National Economic Stabilization And Recovery Act or NESARA is a proposal for legislation to address monetary reform and fiscal policy economic reform in the United States of America. It was authored by Harvey F. Barnard. As a proposal it competes as an alternative to other monetary and fiscal policy reform proposals such as the Monetary Reform Act, FairTax, Flat Tax, and the Value Added Tax. NESARA has not been introduced into Congress.
NESARA proposes a structural reorganization of United States monetary policy, including replacement of the existing currency system and encouraging private coinage and private printing of certificates redeemable for specie; abolition of the Federal Reserve System and the reassignment of its functions and those of the Federal Open Market Committee and Federal Reserve Banks to newly-established government agencies; and fundamental changes to the reserve and lending practices of the commercial banking system. In the area of fiscal policy, NESARA proposes to reorganize the existing United States tax system by eliminating the income tax and instituting a national retail sales or excise tax.
==External links and references==
* National Economic Stabilization and Recovery Act [3]
* NESARA Institute [4]
* NESARA Discussion Board [5]
Occasionally this page is trolled by hoaxers of followers of the conspiracy theory linked appropriately at the top of the article page. They change the name, add links, so be careful. After all, its wiki, but assuming good faith, people should be aware that it's Stabilization and Recovery, NOT Security and Reformation. A quick peek at nesara.org will prove this.
I added a couple more sentences for clarity, and I edited a better summary of the proposal in the various sections so as not to confuse people or write about things that are not NESARA's main points, as well as fixed spelling and grammar mistakes.
inigmatus 21:07, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
brenneman(t)(c) 22:50, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
The Internet is rife with fact and fiction - some conspiratorial and some not. The lunatic fringe exists on both sides of the fence, and may be found in extremes; yet, often there is a paradoxical grain of truth in black OR white thinking. Therefore, when accepting uncommon theory, gut instinct, intuition and concrete evidence provides guidance. I am not a proponant of the current non-elect leftist extreme; however, NESARA gives me pause. I recently came across a NESARA letter regarding "US Concentration Camps & Railroad Cars", located at http://www.nesara.us/nesarameeting/11.zip, and requesting funds, in exchange for which "NESARA WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE WHILE YOU CONTINUE TO SUPPORT [NESARA]". The word "WHILE" caught my attention, as did the general claim. I must question: (a) exactly "how" NESARA would go about saving my life should martial law be declared and the militia arrive on my doorstep, (b) why the "spirits" channeled in the Dove reports (which could be someone's dead Aunt Tilly or long gone Uncle Jeb for all I know) require debt notes to differentiate which "side" I'm on, and (c) the intimation that NESARA would NOT "save" me if I stopped donating to the "cause". While NESARA is not targeting any particular religious/ethnic group, it is a common (though inaccurate) belief that the Jewish community holds vast amounts of wealth. What better way to obtain funds than revive the fear wrought by the World War II Nazi Germany death camp scenario? In my humble opinion: Caveat ēmptor. Let the buyer beware... --Senihele 17:07, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I think you are referring not to this NESARA but to this NESARA. inigmatus 18:41, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm putting the NPOV tag back on. The article is blatantly supportive of a proposal that violates economic consensus, without addressing the fairly simple counterarguments, according to standard economics, that make it worthless.
It is most definitely not a legislative proposal "that recognizes the root of America's money problems as being the system itself"; it's a proposal to replace the US dollar by a currency that somehow eliminates inflation altogether while giving out interest-free secured loans to everyone who wants them. The magical mystery mechanism by which those two contradictory goals are simultaneously achieved is not described.
In effect, I believe the proposal here would amount to a classical hyperinflation scenario; the government would unashamedly print money to hand out zero-interest loans. I do not see how inflation would be avoided.
In short, the whole proposal's bunk. I understand that many people have difficulty grasping the concepts of compound interest and inflation, so maybe this article could be made into a NPOV explanation of how those work economically, and why such a proposal, offering a simultaneous solution to both "problems", would lead to economic catastrophe (according to everyone but a few avid followers of the latest quick fix to the world's problems).
Finally, this is definitely a conspiracy theory. Belief that such an act would help is definitely a minority opinion that ignores both historical precedent and fairly common observation about human behaviour.
If this isn't notable enough to have been debunked publicly, in a citable source, it should probably be removed.
RandomP 04:27, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
secured loans is all that is non-existent under NESARA.
In the future, can you please not respond to me from within my own post? It gets very hard to see what was my point, and what your response is. I will extend you the same courtesy. Thanks.
You find the site quite a challenge, and most of it written in legalese. I do not know what you mean, except you are referring to the actual bill itself. Perhaps you were only looking at the bill, and not at the explanations of the bill provided here. Click on "explanation and details" for each part of the bill.
You said, "any economist would tell you that, very slight gains in efficiency aside, pretty much anything you do to the banking system or the currency shouldn't cause any wonderful improvements, at least with people acting rationally." You mean to tell me that there isn't a single economist that believes the system could be improved upon? Any improvement would have benefits over that which was unimproved. I assume you mean, "wonderful improvements" being the claims of the NESARA Institute. In which case they have done an excellent job (to me at least) in explaning how those benefits are realized. Hopefully I can share what I know with you.
You said, "Abolishing the fractional-reserve banking system probably wouldn't do anything but replacing legal and regulated fractional-reserve banking with a black market for the same thing, for example. The article doesn't really seem to address how a large-scale loan sharking operation (offering, for example, actual credit, just the way credit card companies do today) would be vastly more profitable under the NESARA system - or what I understand it would be."
I'm not sure I quite understand what you mean. Do you mean to say that loan sharks will be more profitable under NESARA than they are now? That doesn't make sense because loan sharks don't even follow the current rules, so I am not sure what you are getting at here by saying they would be MORE profitable or not. Loan sharks are just loan sharks. They are outside whatever system they are attempting to circumvent.
You said, "Who gives out secured loans? Private banks, or the treasury?"
The same institutions that exist today.
You said, "If it's private banks, then surely they must still be looking to maximising their year-over-year profits - and that means, of course, using compound interest, no matter whether it's renamed a "monetisation fee" or not." First, the monetization fee is not interest. Second Nesara has a provision to prevent excessive monetization fees: Section 8 of Part I imposes a progressive excise tax on the monetization-fee or interest income of all financial institutions or persons who make commercial loans of currency for profit. The higher the monetization fee, the higher the tax, and the less competitive the loan is.
You said, "Whether a loan is "secured" or not surely is irrelevant to that - after all, whatever's being used to secure a loan can lose its value, and an unsecured loan does give you a claim against the borrower's future income (and existing property, in most places)." Again, I'm not sure what you're getting at. Are you saying that secured property loses its value over time, and thus lenders are using that excuse to maximize their profits? I would agree with you.
You asked, "So is a "monetization fee" interest or not?"
It is not interest. It's arrived at by this equation (look at the equation that begins with C = L). That link explains the monetization fee in full. If after reading it you still have questions, let me know.
You said, "It seems to me that short-term loans are always more profitable under the NESARA system than long-term loans at the same "interest rate" (the term doesn't really make sense unless compound interest is taken into account) - if the "interest rate" is 12% p.a., it surely makes more sense for me to give out a 6-month loan of $100,000, receive $106,000 at the end of those 6 months, then give out a new loan of $106,000 for another six months, yielding $112,360 at the end of the year, rather than giving out a one-year loan for $100,000 and receiving only $112,000?"
Under NESARA, the idea is that banks can loan out more money up to 2 to 3 times faster, servicing more customers (and offsetting a good part of the loss of switching from a compound interest system to the NESARA monetization fee only system.) Keep in mind, there will always be a market for customers desiring longer-term loans. Also the new NESARA equation ensures that higher monetization fees accompany longer terms. In short, the monetization fees wind up being more than simple interest, less than compound interest, and any loan payment amount ultimately reduces the loan to zero, no matter how little the payment is over time. Of course, Banks have the right to declare default, as in in the current system, however there is less incentive for them to do so when there is a real chance the bank could recover the loan through some extended payment arrangement - an arrangement impossible with today's compound interest equations.
You said of NESARA, "So it eliminates inflation, even though the value of the currency would still fluctuate a bit".
No it does not eliminate inflation. The new system just encourages minor adjustments to inflation through current tools, as well as a new tool, the Treasury Reserve Account; with a mandate to maintain the value of the currency within a flat index. I already posted a link to this.
You said, "So the "Treasury Reserve Account" limits the amount of money put into circulation to limit inflation - that's exactly what many central banks do today."
They do so only in the ability of using an unpredictable sledgehammer called interest rates. No one know for sure just how much is compounded throughout the whole monetary system anytime the Fed raises rates. The Treasury Reserve Account is an account where specific dollar amounts are impounded, or spent into the economy. It is a surgical precision instrument for fine-tuning the economy - something the Fed currently does not have - nor is there a mandated restraint on Congress to operate within its means. The best the Fed can offer at this point is a sustained positive growth in inflation, and Congressional spending is...well, everyone knows how the nature of that beast.
You said, "If the Fed wants to reduce inflation, it increases interest rates. That reduces the money supply, all other things being equal. In the worst case, it could just stop putting money into circulation entirely, wait for its loans to come in, and withdraw the money from circulation, in addition to selling assets, which could also retire money. As long as the rules of fractional-reserve banking are adhered to, there is no way for hyperinflation to happen that the Fed couldn't stop." You are right. Except its only in the extreme cases of instability that the Fed is best suited for. What the Fed is not currently suited for is fine-tuning the economy, or even changing long term patterns of inflation or ballooning of the deficit.
You said, "If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is." Precisely, usually. But not always. The facts, the explanations, even simple calculators are out there for anyone to read, study, and apply what Dr. Barnard discovered and developed. You describe a zero-sum situation, where someone's gotta suffer for all the good that NSARA claims can happen. If the economy was a closed system, then you might have a point. But the economy is NOT a closed system. Its an open system, one where everyone can and does benefit. Read this.
Okay, hope this quoting style works for you:
You said:
Sorry, I accidentally cut-and-pasted where I meant to copy-and-paste. Can you verify your original post has been restored? Hope this makes it clearer, though.
You said:
Loan sharks always follow the rules of compound interest. If you prevent banks from doing the same thing, the loan sharks will be (relatively) more profitable.
You said:
Yes, the Fed does have exactly that. It's called an open market operation. The Fed can fine-tune liquidity by, say, buying treasury notes, or gold, or selling the same things.
So you take back what you said earlier about the Fed being unable to deal with hyperinflation? (FWIW, I take back what I said about NESARA providing zero-interest loans, though I still don't see how NESARA loans work).
Okay, let's focus on the compound-interest bit.
That just means that there is more money in the system. See money supply.
Of course. If compound interest is (partially abolished), I'll always go for a longer-term loan, all other things being equal!
You said:
Okay, bear with me on this. Say, arbitrarily, that a fixed-rate 10 year loan for $100,000 has a yearly payment of $10,100, a really low interest rate even under NESARA. Agreed? Now, you're saying if I have a house worth $100,000, and can get a loan for it, that loan will pay itself off even if I pay just a dollar a year.
So, obviously, I do the following: I get a loan for my house, paying back a dollar a year. With the $100,000, I give another person a loan for $100,000, and they pay me $10,100 a year - the market rate. Of that, I only have to pay back a dollar a year, so I'm left, after ten years, with $100,990 in cash. Repeating the whole thing over and over, my house will guarantee me a lifelong income (in fact, an exponentially growing one, if I reinvest), even though I'm still living in it. What's your objection to that?
that's what I meant by making loan sharks much more profitable. Right now, giving out loans illegally is only marginally more profitable than legal loans, at a significantly higher risk.
I've got enough profit to make the loan cheaper than the market rate, and who wouldn't accept that?
Look, it's simple: compound interest isn't some evil construction that steals money from people. It's just how loans work. A loan for 2 years shouldn't be any different from one one-year loan followed by another one-year loan for whatever remains. Once you've accepted that, you're forced to end up with something very much like compound interest (it'll fluctuate a bit, depending on your yield curve, but that's about it).
If you consider the short-term limit (which you can if you think of a loan to be really two back-to-back loans with shorter periods), it's clear that you'll give out loans to whoever pays you most for it, any given day. So you'll get the loan back after a day (probably replaced by another loan), and you'll get some interest, and then you'll go and reinvest it. Exponential growth. Or compound interest.
As a personal suggestion, at least give the possibility that NESARA is snake oil some thought. I've given NESARA a chance, I've skimmed most of the site, I think I just explained why abolishing compound interest, for one, doesn't work. Similar arguments hold for fractional-reserve banking and inflation, and then you'd suddenly find there wasn't that much left of NESARA other than preventing congress from making debt (if that's even in there).
RandomP 13:32, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Random,
Loan sharks will operate regardless of which system is in place. They will still turn the same profit. If anything, loan sharks might find it harder to find clients beacuse under NESARA bankrupticies and bad credit become harder to obtain simply because the repayment options are more beneficial to both lender and borrower. Of course if you're saying the only legitimate objection to NESARA is that loan sharks would somehow be more profitable, I think the benefits then far outweigh that objection.
You are correct in that eventually any payment over time will reduce a debt to zero under NESARA, however your house example doesn't even work because I doubt the terms of any house loan would allow for a dollar payment per month for 100,000 + monetization fee years. If anything, the lender would likely foreclose on such an operation. It would be the same rules as exist today. If you can't get away with such a scheme today, then you won't be able to get away with such a scheme under NESARA. All things being equal, there is no change in those who don't follow the law.
Compound interest is inherently unstable. Its exponential growth alone is what makes it unstable, and ursurious. The doctrine of compound interest is one of control, not service. Loans do not have to be compounded to make the lender a profit. That is the point of the NESARA proposal. Dr. Barnard says that a monetary system is a public utility, just like language. No one owns it. No one can own it. It can be regulated by governments so that everyone follows the rules in its handling, but the best regulations are those that impose as little arbitrary interferance in its use as a public utility. Compound interest increases the debt-service burdens for all borrowers (public, and private) and if replaced with a monetization fee system that NESARA proposes, could reasonably double the standard of living for all Americans within two decades, and pay off the national debt within three.
Currently about $1 trillion of the national debt is interest - mere book keeping entries between the central banks, that under NESARA would be wiped off the books.
You see, we've imposed this problem on ourselves. We can engineer a way out of it. I suggest that if you are really wanting to understand in full, start with this page and then follow the yellow brick road at the bottom of every page. Once you are done, I'd love to hear what you think about this new theory of money: that currency is debt not wealth.
NESARA was drafted based on a new theory of money that led to new definitions.
1. All currencies, regardless of form or substance, represent debt, not wealth. Currency represents an unfinished exchange of wealth.
2. Because all currency represents debt, new currency can be created using a concept called virtual wealth. Virtual wealth is defined as:
Potential wealth to be created through future production and assumed to currently exist for accounting purposes; wealth that could be created provided all requirements for its production existed.
3. The physical individual units of currency belong to somebody, but monetary systems belong to nobody in particular; thereby making monetary systems—like languages—a true public utility. Flaws in the current model means few of the benefits of ownership of monetary systems accrue to the true owners—the working public, a situation remedied by new equations eliminating inherent instability and inequity; thereby allowing workers to keep more of the wealth they produce.
In modern usage the words money and currency are used interchangeably. The classical definition of money and currency is anything customarily used as a medium of exchange and a measure of value; an accounting unit for price comparison of goods and services; a store of value such as savings; a standard of deferred payment; metal, such as gold or silver, coined or stamped, and issued as a medium of exchange; any written or stamped promise or certificate, as a bank note, current as a means of payment.
Those definitions are elements from a previously defined system. At best those “definitions” do not define currency but only describe the effects of currency. A new system requires new definitions:
Money: A psychological creation; a concept; the mental image of that which is used as a medium of exchange.
Currency: That which circulates as a medium of exchange; anything that is in immediate, continuous and widespread use as money.
In my judgement, these are more fitting definitions, and NESARA is tailored to provide a solution to todays monetary and fiscal policy problems, based from those definitions.
As a result, better definitions become obvious for other concepts:
Wealth is ownership of labor, and of anything upon which labor has been expended, whether material or immaterial, which can directly satisfy human wants, needs or tastes. Wealth is goods and services (property) owned.
Debt: Debt originates in a transfer of ownership of wealth in which the owner does not immediately receive full compensation in wealth. Debt is always a negative quantity. All currencies are physical embodiments of debt. Currency represents wealth not received.
The fundamental difference between an IOU and currency is that an IOU is a token symbol of debt with respect to individuals; currency is a token symbol of debt with respect to an entire society.
If you want to read more, click here and keep following the yellow brick road. It's very easy.
inigmatus 15:31, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
RandomP is currently engaged in Mediation regarding changes to inflation.
Carbonate 06:37, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
The people who claim this is a hoax are only afriad because to admit this is true one must change the roots of their beliefs and go against the grain of society. Unfortanately they do not understand that they have been purposely mislead down the wrong path. They have been placed in a fog of missinformation for their whole lives making it nearly impossible to accept or learn any outside truth.
Unfortanately your college education ($$) means nothing, so dont pull the whole "intellectual" card on me or anyone else who chooses to believe in things you choose not to accept.
Sorry, inigmatus, the NPOV situation is still unacceptable.
Statements like
are simply unacceptable, and the whole article is devoid of any mainstream economic views on this (essentially: No, it's not going to work. It's a mixture of reverting to a gold standard, forcing banks to give out unprofitable loans, and abolishing most government programs.
This still confuses me. Even if medical services are exempt from taxes, that doesn't mean that everyone can afford them. The expensive government welfare programs would still be necessary to cover medical care for those who couldn't afford it otherwise ...
I also don't see how there are "no rebates" when just about everything is exempt.
This article needs serious work. I'm not really hot on doing it myself, since the proposal is very hard to summarise - it's entirely hypothetical, and many aspects of it are just silly. But I'm totally unwilling to see the NPOV tag go away ...
RandomP 20:43, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Who said anything about NESARA promoting mainsteam concepts? Mainstream simply means that its the majority opinion. If NESARA and Dr. Barnard's concepts were the majority opinion, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Most people don't even know enough about money and the monetary system to even critically think about its flaws, let alone hear about it enough for it to become the mainstream opinion.
Simply saying "It's a mixture of reverting to a gold standard, forcing banks to give out unprofitable loans, and abolishing most government programs" is pure rhetoric. Reverting to a gold standard isn't what NESARA is about; lending is still be profitable under NESARA, and almost half of the electorate believes our nation could do better with fewer government programs, not more.
Regarding the existence of welfare programs after a successful conversion of the monetary system to a NESARA model, I believe the statement I drafted said that under NESARA, most welfware programs could "diminish"; I did not say that they would no longer be needed altogether right away. The exemption of the basic necessities of life from being taxed is argued as being common sense, like not taxing the air we breathe. Current sales tax proposals don't take this into account and so attempt to reconcile the obvious hardship such a tax would put on the poor, by comming up with even larger government welfare programs to compensate, increasing costs for the government, and defeating their purpose to create less government interference right from the drawing board.
I'll restate what is already written in the article: The resulting economic growth of just the monetary reform provisions of the NESARA draft bill alone, would be expected to help drastically reduce the public need for government welfare programs such as Medicare and Social Security - the last of any existing income taxes under NESARA that could be eliminated once the need for these welfare programs diminish.
I and others that see NESARA as a viable alternative, are not naive enough to believe NESARA is a utopian answer, and that welfare programs would never be needed. I think you need to start thinking through your objections seriously. Of course, please keep them comming. The more I can help answer your objections, the closer we are to putting an end to this NPOV dispute.
You said:
How is this not NPOV? Are you telling me that people actually believe our current fiscal policy, monetary policy, and monetary system are efficient? Do you really want to rewrite the statement to say: inefficiences he believed he discovered... ? Come on Random, do we really need a discussion on this? I think you're starting to grasp at straws here.
But don't give up. If you and others really think this article is not NPOV, then please help me make this article more NPOV by actually giving examples of HOW it can be NPOV. If not, then I will remove the tag. Thanks!
inigmatus 23:53, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
There is no way I'm agreeing with the NPOV tag going away with the article in the state it's in.
Even if every single statement in the article complied with the NPOV, the absence of criticism alone would be sufficient to justify it.
If NESARA isn't notable enough to have attracted criticism, and exists only as nesara.org and this article, it's not notable enough for wikipedia. Sorry, but one publication with no review whatsoever just isn't good enough.
The tag stays. If you want it removed, fix the POV. I'll help, if possible.
For a start, we need reputable sources talking about NESARA - nesara.org is not good enough.
RandomP 00:59, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I tried to make this a little less POV and added some opponent points. Do we have any pictures, graphs, or charts we could add to this article? Morphh 03:18, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Uhm, do you have sources for the claims you added. Things like
Quite a few "opponents" of NESARA might actually like income taxes.
Right now, I'm still waiting for reputable sources. To be honest, I'm considering another AFD listing.
RandomP 12:23, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
RandomP, if you want sources, NESARA has published a book, the Quatloos site indicates that Barnard's NESARA is legit, as well as do other hoax sites give a distinction between this NESARA and the NESARA hoax. If you want other reputable sources, I have quotes from World Net Daily and their 2 page interview with Dr. Barnard just months before his death - which is how I personally found out about NESARA. What sources do you really need? A front page cameo on Forbes magazine? If the sources I mentioned fit your taste, then I will gladly add them, but you still haven't suggested any NPOV changes. Please suggest NPOV changes or I will remove the NPOV tag. inigmatus 15:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I will revert if you remove the NPOV tag. It is clearly justified.
The article still includes claims like the "revenue-neutral" 14% sales tax. It clearly wouldn't be. The numbers are available.
Clearly a book written to advocate NESARA isn't going to contain an objective discussion of it. It's thus unsuitable as only source for the article.
Even when all NPOV claims currently in the article are fixed, the article needs to adhere to the NPOV in choosing what to include, as well.
At the very least, those are the quotes in the World Net Daily article, though I'm not sure how usable that is.
RandomP 17:13, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
RandomP,
First, I believe the statement says that NESARA also proposes a revenue-neutral scrapping of the income tax in favor of a 14% national sales tax.... This article is not stating it's a fact that it IS a revenue-neutral scrapping of the income tax, but that it is proposed. You're really scraping at the bottom of the barrel here on this one.
Second, a book by NESARA is still a published book. Objective discussions are throughout the text. Furthermore, objections and other issues that are raised are presented in full detail on NESARA's website, and detailed answers are given to hundreds of questions about it. As of yet, there hasn't been a question you've raised that NESARA hasn't addressed to your satisfaction.
Third, so even you admit that the NPOV article claims can be fixed, but even then you would still cry NPOV foul. Tell me now, which section should be removed so you are satified that it is NPOV? I am willing to bet that you think the whole article shouldn't exist, and all you have to show for it is unfounded assertions that are quickly answered anytime you make them. I'm assuming good faith here, but your clarion calls to reject this article without sufficient reason is starting to make my assumptions about your good faith, to lean in a different direction. inigmatus 18:57, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I shall not reply to comments that attack me.
RandomP 19:22, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Then at least reply to the comments that don't. inigmatus 22:24, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
FYI, I'm not attacking you, just making observations. Also I don't think you meant to say in the history log that the "fed is in control of congress." Also, Paul's statement does not belong in the intro as the fact of the statement is false. The statement was said, but the statement is false. I believe it best fits in a section on Criticism of NESARA than in the intro. Other than the Ron Paul statement, thanks for cleaning up the article. I really think we should have a Criticisms section. inigmatus 22:35, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
The importance of paying down any principle first rather than compound or simple interest, let alone a monetization fee, is obvious to anyone who's had a house loan for 17+ years. If you want the mathematics to how the claim that was posted by "NESARA proponents" is substantiated, please see http://nesara.org/wiifm/converting_to_7f.htm. If you want real hard data on how NESARA proponents can make their claims, see http://nesara.org/wiifm/index.htm. inigmatus 23:54, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
We've made a lot of good NPOV changes to the article. I think the banner could probably be removed. Morphh 02:44, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
What I think should be in there:
If this were changed to essentially be about the NESARA institute, a summary of their website, then it would comply with the NPOV, but not be appropriate for Wikipedia.
And again, there are no secondary sources on NESARA, so there really is no criticism.
The one thing I would really like to see is a description of the money flow under NESARA, compared with the rather simple model today. I still don't really see how the Treasury Reserve Account comes in, and it seems to me like at various point the NESARA proposal just says "all the money goes here until inflation goes down", effectively starving the government of any income indefinitely.
I'm also putting this back on AFD, as no secondary sources appear to exist.
However, at this point I'm not going to put back the NPOV tag if you remove it.
RandomP 03:32, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
RandomP is currently engaged in Mediation regarding changes to inflation.
Carbonate 06:37, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
Okay, my reading of the three-revert rule is this: when an article is really busy, like this article was today, it can be acceptable to revert another editor three times in 24 hours - not three times on the same issue, but three times in total.
Inigmatus consistently reverts those edits of mine that - while adhering, as far as I can tell, to the NPOV - made the NESARA proposal look back. That the occasional bona fide edit gets lost in the process doesn't seem to be on his or her mind.
I cannot revert Inigmatus another time today without violating the 3RR, as I understand it. Again, as I understand it, it was Inigmatus who just reverted me for a fourth time, clearly breaking it.
As it is, the article includes the nonsensical statement that "in contrast [to a VAT], a retail sales tax explicitly identifies the entire tax amount on the consumer's receipt" (the statement is simply incorrect - the numbers on the consumer's receipt will not differ between the VAT and sales tax systems, and in particular a retailer isn't required to disclose to the customer how much of the VAT they're going to keep).
I cannot remove this statement, as it would constitute a "revert".
Gee, it sure would be easier just to leave the NPOV tag on and restore that whenever necessary.
RandomP 00:35, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
RandomP, maybe by some manipulation of the variables of both systems, but inherently the embeddedd costs of goods and services of a VAT system reflect in the price of the final product. VAT increases the cost in a value-added chain. The flat sales tax system that NESARA proposes, in comparison would not. inigmatus 00:45, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm not talking about the "embedded coss of goods and services of a VAT system". You appear to claim that VAT isn't economically equivalent to a sales tax, and I'm not even meriting that with further comment.
The sentence said, quite clearly, that the "numbers on the consumer's receipt" would be different. They're not. If the pre-tax price of a product is $1, and the tax rate (VAT or sales tax) is 14%, the receipt will say $1.14. Just in case the consumer can't do the math, it will add "VAT (14%): $0.14", or "sales tax (14%): $0.14", but that's not really necessary. The sentence I quoted is incorrect. It's as simple as that.
RandomP 01:20, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
RandomP is currently engaged in Mediation regarding changes to inflation.
Carbonate 06:37, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
The "Other indirect effects" section is a copy of that section in FairTax. I see no reason for that duplication; a section on the general effects of replacing the US Federal income tax with a sales tax would be appreciated, but this is not the right article for it.
I'm not sure whether there was consensus on removing it; reading back, the counterargument appears to be "but it's vaguely relevant, and it makes the article longer". Not very convincing, and nothing a link to FairTax couldn't do.
Given the absence of secondary sources about this, the article cannot be very long. There just isn't that much to write about.
So, is the deletion of that section okay? Maybe create a new article along the lines of Replacing the US income tax with a sales tax? Not a great title, but then FairTax is a specific proposal ...
I believe in economists' terms, what's proposed is economically equivalent to a flat consumption tax, as opposed to the flat (income) taxes now common in Eastern Europe. And then there are the exceptions, but exempt consumption doesn't destroy the flat tax model.
RandomP 16:36, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
If I pay $500/month for 20 years, and after that will have paid off my house, what does it matter whether I first pay the principal (and if I fail to pay the "monetization fee", I will have defaulted on my loan, and the bank will foreclose on my house), or first pay off the monetization fee (and if I fail to pay the principal, I will have defaulted on my loan, and the bank will foreclose on my house)?
I still don't get it. It seems to me like an entirely arbitrary point, because I'm still in debt, I still do not own the house outright, and I can't just stop paying. So what's the benefit?
RandomP 16:41, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
It reduces the amount of time to pay off a loan. It reduces the total payoff overall. It makes declaring loans in default less of an incentive for banks. Under NESARA Section 7f, ANY payment, even 1 penny per day will eventually reduce a loan to zero. Under the current system, compound interest forces one to pay interest on interest, even while making normal payments (thus extending the length of time to repay a loan and the amount of the overall payment), and the issue is "compounded" all the more when payments are missed, and foreclosures become an appealing reality for the lenders. Anyone who has had a mortgage can appreciate the value of having their payments first go toward paying down the principals. By paying principals first, the terms of payment can be reduced compared to today's mortgages, the final payoff is reduced compared to today's mortgages, and banks are forced to wait at the end of the mortgage to collect their monitization fees and realize their profit. inigmatus 17:19, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
No, it does not reduce the time required to pay off a loan. 12 years at $500/month are 12 years at $500/month, regardless of what bit you pay off first.
Note that a loan is, a priori, a contract: you're talking about the specific case when people have to renegotiate the contract because they're insolvent - and the bank cannot foreclose on the loan then? Why ever not?
RandomP 17:22, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I was talking in comparison between NESARA and today's loans. Comparison to paying monitization fee first versus later is the simple answer: banks are forced to wait to realize their profit, and thus have an incentive to not foreclose. Also by collecting principal first, bankers free their reserves much faster. This early increase in reserves,coupled with much safer secured loans, will encourage bankers to commit more reserves to make more loans. inigmatus 17:27, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I should have said I was comparing
From the POV of a person who takes out a loan, there's no difference, is there?
Is there any from the point of view of the bank?
RandomP 17:35, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Good questions.
Here's something that might help from the NESARA site. Its a pdf made into html: From: http://66.102.7.104/custom?q=cache:uLB1IS12OFcJ:nesara.org/files/imagine.pdf+%22principal+first%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&ie=UTF-8
Provides New Banking Rules That Are Equitable To All
Using today’s accounting methods for bank-issued mortgages, the typical cost factor for a 30-year note at 7.5 % is approximately 2.5. That means borrowers pay approximately 2.5 times the principal they borrowed.
Under NESARA, at the same monthly payment rate, that cost factor changes to approximately 1.5, meaning borrowers pay back approximately one half (½) times the principal they borrowed. In other words, after NESARA becomes law, banks make only about one-third (1/3) of the profit on one 30-year note as they would have made before NESARA changed the rules. Makes great news for borrowers but, at first glance, this observation seems to argue that banks have no incentive to support NESARA.
However, observe that under NESARA, at the same monthly payment rate with principal being repaid before the monetization fee, the time required to repay the loan is much shorter. In other words, bankers can provide more loans under NESARA’s Section 7F provisions than they can now under current methods. Banks earn less profit per loan but can recover that difference in a higher volume of loans for the same period. The real benefit to all parties is that those profits are obtained through more transactions with each transaction facing much less risk.
Under NESARA, fractional reserve banks see principal on secured loans repaid before they start collecting their monetization fee. This change in bank lending practice will do several things for the banks:
1. Borrowers build equity much faster so they remain highly motivated to repay the loan in full.
2. Because loan repayment times are shorter and the overall debt burden reduced, banks need not always foreclose poorly performing loans but will be more willing to work with borrowers during difficult times.
3. If a bank must foreclose on a bad secured loan, the borrower’s higher equity makes the process less painful for both parties.
4. By collecting principal first, bankers free their reserves much faster. This early increase in reserves, coupled with much safer secured loans, will encourage bankers to commit more reserves to make more loans.
5. Under NESARA, banks become fiduciary public service institutions, highly unlikely to ever fail in the absence of fraud or other criminal activity, therefore FDIC insurance is no longer needed. This reduces bank operating costs and, simultaneously, releases several billion dollars which could be applied to worthy public works projects or refunded to taxpayers.
6. Because borrowers build equity faster on their current loans, they can provide banks with much better collateral when applying for future loans. Under current rules banks make their profits early in the life of a loan and recover their reserves later. Currency inflation works to their advantage. Their profits are worth more to them today than they will be next year and the book value of their loan collateral will be worth more to them next year than it is today. Now consider what happens when NESARA reverses that process. Banks collect a monthly service fee for bookkeeping early in the life of a loan but their profits come years later. Inflation now works against them. They will be very unhappy receiving their profits in depreciated dollars and will undoubtedly lobby Congress and the new Treasury Reserve Board to maintain the purchasing power of the currency.
Of course, the happy coincidence is that eliminating inflation is the moral thing to do and, after NESARA becomes law, that coincidence will also be in the best interest of the nation’s financial institutions.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't "And" be in lowercase (as "and")? 68.39.174.238 03:20, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
No. And is one of the "A's" in NESARA. inigmatus 04:46, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
I made a few minor (I hope) changes to this article. I know absolutely nothing about the subject itself, so I hope my edits didn't incorrectly change any meaning. Yours, Famspear 22:57, 20 September 2006 (UTC)