The peak of man hours in the United States occurred in 1920, and since then the Monetary System has endured instability because of the discrepancy between production and man hours. The ever widening gap between production and man hours indicates that the easier it is for us to produce more, the harder it becomes to distribute. The reason for this anomaly is that there is a close relationship between total man hours worked and purchasing power. Most of us receive our income from time on the job, in the form of wages or salaries, and declining man hours usually means declining purchasing power. Isn’t it ironic that as we increase our ability to produce, we suffer a diminishing ability to consume. This is what happens in the Monetary System. The basic problem today is not balancing the budget, but balancing our newfound global resource management capability with global consumption. The rules of the Monetary System prevent us from doing just that. Distribution is carried on by a series of exchanges based on scarcity values that no longer truly exist, and money is used to make these exchanges. Money is a species of debt, and we try to balance production with consumption by creating even more debt. This does not work! The reason is because there is little relationship between the creation of debt and anything in the real physical world. Debt, nor money, is a REAL resource we need to live. It’s a contrived human creation that is no longer valid in today’s advancing world. The man hour curve is a physical phenomenon, whereas the growth of debt is an abstraction. Let’s look at the growth of debt and you’ll see the difference. This chart represents total debt in the United States, all debt public and private. From 1860 to the end of World War I, debt was low and growth was slow. Then after the Armistice in 1918, debt moved up rapidly. This was a period called the “roaring 20’s”. The reason for this increase in debt was because technology had caught up with us. During the war, we installed more technology to replace the workers that were off fighting in the war. Purchasing power dropped, and we could produce more than we could readily sell. Therefore during this decade, the institution known as installment buying, or buying on credit, came into existence. So even if you could not afford something, you were encouraged to buy it anyway and pay for it out of next months, or next years income. This meant an increase in debt, but by 1929, something had happened. We had overextended that credit and the gambling institution known as Wall Street collapsed. With the crash of the stock market, we plunged into the Depression, which took 4 years to reach the bottom in 1933. Now the government stepped in because it had too. And what did it do? It tried to bolster the failing Monetary System by creating more debt! Sound familiar to what’s happening now!? How did they do this? They began the practice of spending more money than they took in in taxes, which is called deficit spending. During the Roosevelt Administration, they tried to bolster the economy by giving purchasing power to unemployed people by means of welfare. And failing businesses were also put on welfare, which is called subsidies. One could say that the Monetary system went into hock in 1933 and the federal govt has been on a deficit spending binge ever since. Now this infusion of govt. funds falsely stimulated business, and debt started upwards again. Now at this point (1941) something else happened. There was another reprieve for the failing system called WWII. That provided a reason to put all the unemployed people back on the job, or into the armed forces. We ran the factories wide open, turned out a tremendous amount of goods, shipped it overseas and blew them up. And although it was necessary to protect the world from the likes of Hitler, the war didn’t solve any of our domestic problems, and as you can see, debt has skyrocketed ever since. In spite of the hardships of the depression and the heartbreaks of the war, the Monetary System didn’t come to a complete stop. We have stumbled and bumbled along in one way or another. And why is that? We have kept the failing system from complete collapse by various and devious ways. We have maintained scarcity artificially. Back during the Depression, when there were so many people without jobs, and their families were hungry, we had tremendous surpluses of food stored around the country. Was it given to the people? No, because it’s not profitable to give away food, even to the starving population. Back in the early 30’s we began the practice of destroying crops or killing off livestock in order to validate to Monetary System. We’re still doing this today, but more covertly. Since 1933, the government has spent billions of dollars paying farmers NOT to grow. And they have also tried to curtail the production of corn and wheat for human consumption, most notably on the recent alternative fuel ethanol project, which is a waste of food and not a good alternative fuel to begin with. In the Monetary system, when food becomes too plentiful, we limit it. This is to sustain price, or value, to keep the system going, and if people happen to be hungry, it seems to be of little importance to the people making the decisions on how the monetary system works. Industry uses different tactics. They operate on a low load factor, meaning they only run one or two shifts, or shut down completely, even though they have the capability to run 24/7/365 to produce necessary products. Then there's the more wasteful practice of turning out shoddy merchandise. These inferior products that break down or wear out in short periods of time are created to ensure high turnover. If a company could make something that lasted 100 years, and we do have the materials and technology to do that, they wouldn’t do it, because how would they sell the next version to make more profit? Just look at all the recalls of late on various products like toys, cribs, food, cars, appliances, and more. Destroying all those faulty products ensures scarcity. There are hundreds of thousands of junky products turned out every week in order to assure a high turnover for a fast profit. This is the way the system works.