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[Honeydew]

perhaps a bit too controversial for some people - has anyone watched this?

In particular the Federal Reserve....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dmPchuXIXQ

Basically it is saying that the current debt-based economy is a disaster - but one of the many solutions to this problem is the "Liberty Dollar" in the US, which has a picture of the Statue of Liberty on it and comes in notes of different colours, red, purple, blue and silver.... sound familiar anyone?!

Anyway, I've read a book called "Healthy Money, Healthy Planet" which explains a lot about the economy problems and creation of debt.... very interesting if anyone is studying economics... or even anyone feeling the debt strain!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthy_Money,_Healthy_Planet

[RJK]

I heard about this, but I thought it was about religious ideals and how every religion is wrong. Or something along those lines. I wouldn't mind seeing it now.

The liberty dollar sounds interesting, but I wonder what inflation on such a currency would be like.

[Honeydew]

I'm not too sure about the Liberty Dollar, but with most of these sorts of alternative money systems, there is no inflation. There are several towns that already have LETS schemes, bartering, local/regional currencies, no-interest loan/savings schemes.
In the book I mentioned before there is the idea of stopping wealthy people hoarding their money by charging them a fee if they keep money in the bank! And they don't earn interest on savings (the interest they would earn at a "normal" bank is from other people's debt anyway.) This way people would rather spend it and it is circulated in the economy, instead of a few people holding all the money and the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer...
.....but if there were alternative money systems everywhere, there would have to be a completely different form of home buying process, because you wouldn't want to be saving up for a deposit and have fees taken out of it each month!

[RJK]

I read the Wikipedia page for this (because I trust absolutely everything that comes from that site), an it kind of describes it as a movie about conspiracy theories based on more anecdotal material and is a little on the short side of evidence. Is that kind of true? And is it just about the economy, I think I read somewhere that it doesn't like Christianity either. I'm kind of motivated to see it just for the objective/subjective balance.

I think the US is in debt of about 8 trillion or something to that effect? I don't know who thought it was smart to build an economy to this extent on money. Just imagine what's going to happen when the deadline to pay the money back happens, or what kind of interest (if there is any) that would incur.

I thought income tax was supposed to stop people hording their money. Would that fee work on a percentage level or a minimum money or lump-sum level?

I will say this now...
I'm not an economist...

[Honeydew]

We're certainly seeing evidence of the debt-based money system collapsing now in the US.
I've been reading the Healthy Money Healthy Planet book a bit more but some of it is beyond my understanding, just don't have a head for that economics stuff. It also says people with savings wouldn't get charged for it in a new economic system, but then talks about "demurrage" where money loses value over time???

There's a movie called "Money as Debt" which is on Youtube:
I think it explains it a bit better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFb26u9g8

Will have to watch the whole thing sometime to see if it makes any sense!