Longer Step: Ideas for Justice and Sustainability

 As small banks are failing due to lousy management, I've been thinking a lot about why we need banks. We actually don't. America is addicted to debt. We have to have a good credit score, in order to get a job, get an apartment lease, get a mobile phone, get cable TV service, etc. If you avoid debt in your life (as many of our immigrants do), you are significantly punished in the US. Having a good credit score has become proof that you are a reliable person in non-financial ways. Without debt in America, you are a lesser person. Think about that. 1. Isn't it interesting that a good credit score, which proves you are a trustworthy person, can only be obtained if we buy lots of stuff on credit? Meaning, if we buy lots of stuff. Hmm--I wonder if big businesses had anything to do with this system of compulsory borrowing?  2. In most other countries, people have far less debt, or often, no debt at all. It's seen as a sign of poverty, of hopelessness. 3. And "cheap debt...

 A. Macro level : What happened? We have inflation because our government has printed too much new money, compared to the size of the economy and its growth rate.* Recent giveaways (to virtually all taxpayers) have put more money in the hands of consumers, and when they have more money to spend on a limited supply of goods and services, the prices will go up (that is demand-side inflation). And if those goods and services are scarce (because of recent supply chain issues**, then prices go up more (this is supply-side inflation). We're seeing the worst inflation rate since the 1980s.  *The US government has spent itself into a black hole from which there may be no escape: We punish any politician who even timidly suggests a balanced federal budget, and therefore we continue spending more on federal programs than incoming tax revenue can pay for. So we borrow the difference, creating a burgeoning mountain of unpayable debt that will destroy the lives of our future generations. F...