Quoteland
Dunno if this quote actually came from John Adams, and don't much care. It's right on, even if some Joe Forwarder made it up and emailed it to 67,894 of his closest friends:
"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt."--John Adams, 1826
The thing is, there used to be ramifications for not paying your debts. Now you can just fill out some paperwork and it all goes away. There isn't even a social stigma attached any more.
I got financially involved with a couple (Scott and Solana) that outright defrauded investors, pocketed a $million plus, and then simply declared bankruptcy. They still live on secondary oceanfront in San Diego, drive a Hummer and an Escalade, and their creditors just received 1.4 cents on the dollar. Their petition included including $250K in credit card debt.
Eric at August 24, 2011 8:06 AM
Looking through online sources for quotes, I do not see this phrase attributed to John Adams, in fact it only seems to appear on blogs and then only beginning in December 2009 and peaking last summer. The timing is somewhat suspicious as well. John Adams died on July 4, 1826 (the same day as Thomas Jefferson and fifty years to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence), so this quote would have come from the very end of his life.
The correlation of debt and enslavement would have been particularly out of character for Adams. In 1790, during Washington's first term, the federal government assumed responsibility for all of the debt issued to finance the revolution. This included direct expenses of the revolutionaries plus debts incurred by the states and promissory notes (essentially IOUs) given to soldiers, merchants and farmers during the war for future payment. All of this debt was paid at full value by the 1830s.
By 1826, Adams would have known all of this and likely would have seen the issuance of debt as a key factor in the United States winning its independence rather than being conquered and enslaved.
Factual interjection at August 24, 2011 9:04 AM
Deer Factual interjection:
What do you think will happen when the Treasury holds a T-bill auction and nobody comes? or when the cost of servicing the debt equals the income of the Federal Government, and all other spending is via a loan?
That's when granny doesn't get her social security check, nor her grandson stationed in Iraq get's his pay from the Army. Because no one with a lick of sense will lend us money.
Bad things, man. Bad things.
I R A Darth Aggie at August 24, 2011 9:14 AM
Yes!
Cut military spending. To the bone.
And no more pennsion for any federal employees, including military employees.
PS Actually, the USA can print more money to pay off our debts, at least for now. Inflating now is a good idea. Someday foreigners will only make loans to us in their own currency. Then it will get tough.
BOTU at August 24, 2011 9:32 AM
> Because no one with a lick of sense
> will lend us money.
Aggie sees what's going on here.
I don't understand lefties who make weirdly dismissive jokes about the Tea Party. They never actually cite what fault they find in TP reckoning... And that makes the lefties sound like people who want to skip school to live in Disneyland. We are out of fuckin' money. Anyone who says "They money's there, the money's there!" is essentially threatening to confiscate your household wealth... That's all that's left.
> Cut military spending. To the bone.
When you say it, it sounds idiotic.
See how that works? Too many 4th-graders' interjections of daring sarcasm and infantile sexuality, and suddenly the grownups can't take you seriously for the big themes. Rightlywrongly/betterworse, the military will always be regarded as a pinnacle of adult masculine behavior. And that's pretty obviously not what you're life's about, "BOTU". So we're left to wonder what goofy psychological posturing is at work here....
And now, behold, offtopic aficionados, behold: The future of hotel-room ablutions!
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at August 24, 2011 11:12 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2011/08/24/quoteland.html#comment-2439320">comment from Crid [CridComment at gmail]don't understand lefties who make weirdly dismissive jokes about the Tea Party. They never actually cite what fault they find in TP reckoning
This is a really great point. Next time somebody derogatively mentions the Tea Party, I'm going to ask them what their problem is with it.
Amy Alkon at August 24, 2011 11:19 AM
The Founding Fathers had a lot to say about debt . . .
http://www.oaknorton.com/foundingfatherquotes.cfm
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs."
- Thomas Jefferson
"To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, “the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, & the fruits acquired by it.'”
-Thomas Jefferson
I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.
- Thomas Jefferson
"I hope a tax will be preferred [to a loan which threatens to saddle us with a perpetual debt], because it will awaken the attention of the people and make reformation and economy the principle of the next election. The frequent recurrence of this chastening operation can alone restrain the propensity of governments to enlarge expense beyond income."
-Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1820.
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
-Thomas Jefferson.
"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
-Thomas Jefferson
If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare... they may appoint teachers in every state... The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.
- James Madison
For those who think "Green" and like an international U.N. carbon tax (or gun laws from the U.N.) . . .
"Our properties within our own territories [should not] be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own."
-Thomas Jefferson
Jay J. Hector at August 24, 2011 1:25 PM
John Adams was mostly considered as a pompous windbag ( based on the recent books on which the HBO series was ... based ). SFAIK, he an Jefferson both hounded Hamilton mercilessly, for completely different reasons.
Well...Hamilton won. Eventually.
Debt meant a completely different thing then. Some *LARGE* fraction of all AAA debt in the world was US Treasuries ( when it was AAA ). I've
lost the exact figure.
Personal debt is odious and to be avoided; business debt is a necessary evil. Government debt is nothing like either of them.
Should the US stop being the Bank of the World? Perhaps. That's really what we're talking about; entrepreneurs and working people in China may not send their sons or daughters here, but they send the money. For it is safe here.
Maybe that has the musty smell of WWII and is a thing we should no longer bother with. I don't know. My ancestors were loudly isolationist. And they appear to have been wrong.
Money is here *to serve us*. We are not here to serve money.
Les Cargill at August 24, 2011 10:27 PM
You are so right -- Government debt is on the backs of every single man, woman, and child that make up the citizenry of the country.
So when the government pulls out that credit card and charges $311,184,034 that is $1 of our hard earned money that we now have to pay back. The government is spending an average of $3,960,000,000 per day. That is over $12 per person per day.
Now if you look at the net tax payers (those that actually pay more in income than what they receive) is at about 53% -- that $12 becomes effectively $24 per tax payer. And that is just the current daily deficit.
The existing debt per person is $47,096.90. (That number is climbing about every five minutes.) The median income is about $33,000. That means that every single person has to work one and a half years to pay off their portion of the debt the government has run up on your behalf. But of course considering that about half the population are taking more than they are receiving that means I will have to spend 3 years of my life paying for the government's largesse.
Every working taxpayer is trapped in the same tarpit.
So yes, government debt is nothing like either of them.
Jim P. at August 25, 2011 6:56 AM
How do I change firefox from remembering my facebook info?
Vito Capulong at September 8, 2011 2:03 PM
Hi Peter,
Danielle Villar at December 4, 2011 6:58 PM
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