"So that it comes about that by far the great part of what the modern world regards as wealth, and what is a perennial source of wealth to individuals, is not wealth but a consequence of lending or having lent wealth, and is in fact a form of national or communal debt. The intense competition for foreign or overseas markets in time of peace, aggravated by the home market drying up through the loss of purchasing power of the unemployed, is not due to any altruistic or missionary spirit of the industrialised nations in wishing to unload of their abundance for the enrichment of the newer and less industrialised nations, but to the necessity of finding new debtors, with good future prospects of being able to pay interest, to whom to lend their wealth.The modern wars that break out between industrialised nations have a precisely parallel explanation. Then the belligerent nations rather than individuals shoulder the debt. The glut of wealth, that in time of peace cannot be profitably exchanged, is now owed for as it is produced by the nations as such Along with the flower of the country's manhood, it is destroyed as rapidly as the most powerful modern engines of destruction allow. The dead do not return, but the wealth destroyed discards its corruptible body to take on an incorruptible. It is national debt, better than wealth to individuals, a permanent source of wealth, defying the passage of time and the ravages of rats and worms."
MONEY versus MAN: A STATEMENT OF THE WORLD PROBLEM
FROM THE STANDPOINT OF THE NEW ECONOMICS
FREDERICK SODDY, London : E. Mathews & Marrot, 1931, pp. 27-28
(Article changed on September 29, 2014 at 10:31)
(Article changed on September 29, 2014 at 16:16)
