Read Crashed: The Death Of The Dollar for Free Online Page B

shut them down.”
    “ Well, that doesn't sound too bad,” quipped Taylor. “People get to have their homes, food, work. What's wrong -”
    Mike cut her off somewhat angrily, “There's a lot wrong with -”
    “Okay, I think we need to get dressed and head home,” Jessica interjected. The tone in her voice making clear that she wanted the conversation dropped.
     
    After dinner, Taylor asked Mike if they could talk for a little bit. She wanted to understand what was happening, and why. “Hey, sorry I made you mad earlier. I just don't understand all this stuff. How did all this happen?” She sat down beside him as he started to explain.
    “ I wasn't mad at you. Just mad at the situation. I know I avoid society, but I still care about my country. There was really only two options once we reached this point. Complete tyranny, or total anarchy. Both suck. Americans like the simplicity of order and structure, so tyranny just came naturally.”
    “ Yeah, but why did it all change? I mean, obviously most people would never have wanted this. But it's all out of their control,” she asked.
    “ Well, basically we became a nation of spoiled brats. Everyone felt like they deserved certain things just because they were Americans, so they voted for people who would promise to give them what they wanted. 'Give me liberty, or give me death,' turned into 'Give me a check, I'll give you my vote.'”
    “ Like what? What did people think they deserved?”
    “ It started with wages, retirement and food back in the 1930's. The Great Depression was bad, and poverty was horrid. At first, the cost of guaranteeing these things caused the Great Depression to drag out longer, but when the government started spending what was needed to fight World War II, people were able to really get to work producing things. For a long time, and even still today, people are taught that it was the laws promising things that made the economy strong again. But it was the war, the needs of the war, that saved the economy then.”
     
    Mike continued, “After the war, people had jobs, factories were producing goods that people wanted and needed. And everyone felt they deserved more. Minimum wages increased, making it more expensive to hire workers. Medical care for certain groups of people was the next big thing the government guaranteed. They had to pay for it of course, which meant more taxes, again making everything companies were producing cost more. And all the while, the government was steadily borrowing more and more money. And they had to borrow, because if they taxed everyone enough to cover the costs of the guarantees, people would have voted differently.
     
    “To help cover the borrowing, the Federal Reserve had to create more money. You've seen at the farmer's market how, if there's too much of something, and not enough people wanting it, it gets cheaper. Not worth as much. Well, the same applies to money.
     
    “So the government would look at everything starting to get more expensive, and decide to raise the minimum wage. That would raise the prices of everything, including things the government needed. To pay the extra costs, the government had to borrow and print more, again increasing the costs of everything until they had to raise the minimum wages again. This isn't easy to explain in simple terms. Is it making sense?”
     
    “I think so,” Taylor responded. “Basically the government created a cycle where things had to keep getting more and more expensive.”
     
    “Yep,” said Mike. “It kept going to the point that we shifted from a production economy, to a consumer and service economy. We'd been somewhat of a consumer economy for a long time, but produced most of the goods here. That started to change because the cost for making things here got more expensive than people were willing to pay for them. Other countries, especially China, started producing things way cheaper. So for the last few decades, a lot of our economy