This is a book about our money system, why we need to change it, and a better alternative. It has been an intriguing challenge to understand money and then figure out a way to make it easy for others to understand. The information in this book is arranged from general to specific, with each chapter building on the information presented in previous chapters. Some people like to learn specific to general. If that is you, begin anywhere you like.
Here is what this book covers:
Chapter 1 offers a quick introduction and acknowledgment that we are a nation in financial distress with a dysfunctional democracy.
Chapter 2 begins with some concepts that, while not specifically about money, provide a foundation of important ideas. You may find you can skim through this section because the ideas are familiar.
Chapter 3 explains what the many different kinds of money systems have in common. It defines the questions we must ask of any money system in order to understand it and differentiate it from other systems.
Chapter 4 explains each of the major kinds of money systems.
Chapter 5 explains how our specific money system in the United States works.
Chapter 6 is about the consequences of our current choice of system.
Chapter 7 presents some common ideas about making improvements – classified as backwards, bandages and bridges.
Chapter 8 explains a simple change that would transform our system and our lives. And it presents an invitation to participate in writing a new law.
Chapter 9 explains how making this simple change could reduce prices, debt, and taxes. It would give us a safer and more stable economy and shift us from constantly spending on crisis management to spending on building genuine prosperity for all of us.
This change would improve the quality of our national decisions; it would shift us toward fulfilling the promise of our Constitution – a nation with a government of, by and for the people – a more perfect Union that establishes justice, insures domestic tranquility, provides for the common defense, promotes the general welfare and secures the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.1