“WE, Social Crediters, say that the monetary system does not reflect facts. The opposition says it does. Well, I put it to your common sense, how was it that a world which was apparently almost feverishly prosperous in 1929 — or alleged to be so, judged by orthodox standards — and certainly capable of producing tremendous quantities of goods and services and distributing a considerable portion of them, could be so impoverished by 1930, and so changed fundamentally that conditions were reversed and the world was wretchedly poor? Is it reasonable to suppose that between a single date in October, 1929, and a few months later, the world would change from a rich one to a poor one? Of course, it is not.”
Clifford Hugh Douglas, the Scottish engineer and mathematician who came up with the ingenious economic system known as Social Credit (not to be confused with the Chinese system by the same name), made these comments in a speech in London in March, 1936, less than four years before World War II began. Further adding to his point, we might ask how it was possible for a wrecked economy that had ruined countless lives to subsidize a war at the cost of billions? Where was the money when the ordinary person needed it just a few years before?
Douglas found the answer to this question, which plagues us just as much or more today, and devoted his life to promoting a simple and elegant solution that would assure a basic living to all in a world in which industrialism has produced a wondrous bounty of goods and services — a system that would not resort to socialist collectivism or a dictatorship of the state.
