September 20, 2020
Greetings Mayors for a Guaranteed Income,
We in the Alliance For Just Money (AFJM) share your goal of shrinking the wealth gap and wholeheartedly support your assertion, “We need meaningful, systemic change to our economy.” A bold monetary reform is the way to achieve that systemic change and to finance your bold call for guaranteed income.
AFJM’s Just Money solution states, “The government will no longer borrow money when it spends more than it takes in as taxes and fees. Government borrowing currently costs a lot of money, namely the interest paid on the federal, state, county, and municipal debt.”
We applaud your plans to assist the vulnerable public in facing financial and climate disruptions. It has become clear that private money creation and allocation under the Federal Reserve Banking System (FRBS) is only meant to assist the powerful elite.
A responsible guaranteed income plan will require stable US Dollars, not the unreliable bank credit we currently depend on. Donated funds are a nice gesture for pilot programs, but a guaranteed income, over time, can only be supplied by the Federal Government, and only if federal spending is freed from debt obligations. This is not a matter of juggling appropriations.
You will want to know about legislation already written to empower the Federal Government to issue US Dollars, free of debt like the 19th century Greenbacks were. The NEED Act 3 point reform, Just Money, will allow for the responsible funding of your program and more. We encourage Mayors for a Guaranteed Income (MGI) to review its benefits and adopt the NEED Act as your long term funding strategy.
The roots of Just Money go back to the foundations of democracy in ancient Greece. The provisions for it have been contested and refined through the centuries. Its appeal becomes clearer each time the private money system crashes. The three points for US reform were brought together in the 1939 Program for Monetary Reform. In 2012 the Program’s claims were validated by the latest economic modeling tools.
We can no more borrow ourselves out of debt than we can drink ourselves sober. We hope MGI will recognize debt-free US Dollars as the viable way to fund guaranteed income and achieve systemic change. Join us in promoting the 3 point, Just Money solution. Further, to raise awareness, we invite you to endorse our campaign for a National Monetary Commission (NMC) that will publicly study how wealth concentration is baked into the current money system.
This year’s deepening disruption could yield a new Congress, brave and bright enough to pass the NEED Act. When we do elect such a Congress and get it passed, it will allow all that concentrated wealth to re-circulate by implementing these three changes together:
- Stop banks from creating our money as credit and lending it to us.
- Restore Congress’ power to create stable US Dollars and spend them into circulation, on anything deemed publicly worthy (see Title V Sec 501(a) of the NEED Act) – with no payback obligations ever.
- Bring the private FRBS under control of the publicly accountable US Treasury, setting us back on the path to true self-governance.
You are right, “cities are the laboratories of democracy, and mayors are closest to the communities they serve.”AFJM has a growing network of members in municipalities throughout the US. We view MGI’s guaranteed income experiments as visionary, and suggest that government-issued US Dollars are the way to fund that vision.
Yours sincerely,
~~The Board of Directors of the Alliance For Just Money, Inc.
Lucille Eckrich, president, Bloomington, IL; John Glazer, Athens, OH; Virginia Hammon, Portland, OR; John Howell, secretary, Athens, OH; Paul Lebow, vice president, Annapolis, MD; Sue Peters, New York, NY; Mary Sanderson, De Forest, WI; Howard Switzer, Linden, TN; Steven Walsh, treasurer, Evanston, IL.
Anything physically possible,
ecologically wise,
& socially desirable
is financially feasible.
