Forward Vision

The $2 Bill

Briggs Armstrong, a student at Auburn University, came up with a great way to raise awareness about the harm done by the Federal Reserve: pay only in $2 bills.

Here’s why I prefer $2 bills:

* It makes people think about the currency they use. The Federal Reserve System, the United States’ central bank, has devalued our currency by about 97% since it was formed. Before that, your money actually gained value the longer you held it. In other words, the cost of everyday goods got cheaper over time, not more expensive. Imagine if a hot dog that was 10¢ in 1913 cost only 1¢ now, instead of $1.50? That purchasing power was stolen from you by inflation, a secret tax the federal government uses to steal from people who save. This is the main reason why we are having an economic crisis.

* Thomas Jefferson’s image on a Federal Reserve Note is ironic. Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers, fought hard throughout his career to avoid having a central bank. He wrote: “We are undone, my dear sir, if legislation is still permitted which makes our money, much or little, real or imaginary, as the moneyed interests shall choose to make it.” The ‘money’ that we all use everyday is now imaginary, as Jefferson predicted. It used to be that the paper notes we carried were receipts for actual gold held in a bank, redeemable at any time in gold coins/bars (money). Now, the ‘dollars’ can’t be redeemed in anything, and are only still circulated because of habit and because the federal government forces people to accept them. They are just worthless currency — some with Jefferson’s face on the front.

* The Declaration of Independence on a Federal Reserve Note is doubly ironic. In 1776, thirteen fledgling colonies declared independence from the biggest empire the world had ever seen. After barely winning a hard-fought war for their freedom, a group of politicians immediately erected a similar system to the one from which they had just escaped. The Federal Government is actually an Imperial Government. Its designers, chief among them Alexander Hamilton, actually meant for it to swallow the free and sovereign States into one big commercial empire. But the States retained some of their independence. Then, the War Between The States (incorrectly called the Civil War) stripped any remaining independence away from the States and forever associated their cause with racism. When the Federal Reserve and federal income tax were instituted in 1913, the ’states’ became little more than provinces of the fully imperial government in D.C. So, the independence we declared is now dead — memorialized on the back of a rarely circulated imperial note.

I prefer the $2 bill because many of you who have read this only did because I paid you with one. And now that I have your attention, get educated. It’s your duty as a human being to learn how the government is fleecing you. Start here:

Campaign for Liberty

Lew Rockwell

Reason Magazine