_**What in the hell happened to us?**_

As I was standing in line with a cart full of groceries, I thought about the family outside and my drive into town.  All along the 15 mile drive, there are homes sitting empty as well as arable land, sitting fallow doing nothing.

http://cms.homefinder.com.s3.amazonaws.com/images/buying-a-foreclosure-hero.jpg
*Despite our taxes being used to settle bad debt on homes just like this already.  
The banks refuse to give these things back to taxpayers and there is no law that could ever force them to...*

These properties are in shambles, they are sitting unused and rapidly becoming an eye sore.  
http://shakadoo.com/files/2013/01/Foreclosed-house.jpg
*If I were a Sheriff, I don't think there is any way in hell I would evict a *squatter* from a *bank owned* repo as long as the family inside were taking care of it.*  

*So why the hell is anyone homeless right now!!!???*

Meanwhile because of this process, our children will be burdened with debt for over a hundred years!

_**Are you kidding me???**_  

Which brings up the title of this discussion, *What in the hell happened to us?*

*In other words... 
How did we get to this point?*

The government appears to think that only the very poor and the very wealthy should ever be served by the same government that only the middle class ever really pay much into.  I can't understand this line of reasoning, but I do know that the government needs to get it's boot off my neck while it's *enriching the lives of others*...

*Only a few generations ago, self sufficiency was not merely an ideal that we talked about, it was the rule...*

To participate in society you were expected to own your home and the land it sat upon, outright.  You raised livestock, or crops or you built things with your own two hands, then you brought those things to town, to market and sell.

http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000ncfLmcECd64/s/860/860/0621C019.jpg
*While in town, you traded with your neighbors and friends and you socialized.*  

Make no mistake, these were *not halcyon days*.  They were nasty, brutish and short.  You were expected to know how to plan your years out, so even if crops failed, cattle died and everything else went to hell, you still had your home and your family didn't starve.  Only in the most extreme cases did people get a hand out from the community.  Because they didn't need them.  It really was a different world then. 

Yes it was rough, and frankly it probably sucked, a lot.  But this right of self determination and the duties inherent in it were considered unassailable.

Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the inalienable rights of men to be secure in their persons, their homes and their effects was understood to be *self evident*.

*No government existed upon your property or your person, except yourself!*

This was possible when a man's wage for a day's hard labor was a dollar and the price of land was about a dollar an acre so long as you tamed it.  That was money.  A thing of real value, for your labors.

My God, how times have changed!  This is what I mean when I say that you and I have never actually touched real money.  Even you gold and silver bugs have never really known what money is, because there hasn't been any for so long.

Now you no longer own your home or even the land it sits upon.
Every square inch is lawfully property of the state and if you don't pay for the privilege of staying there, they will take it from you at the point of a gun.

*Here is the real problem as I see it...*

At present, our entire way of life is predicated upon a concept of earning and spending slips of debt that we have decided to call "money".  The fact is, it's not really money and hasn't been *money* for over a hundred years.

*No one alive has ever laid hands on money.*

However, even when we had *real* money...  
Earning it was never the end goal, with very few exceptions it has always been a means to an end.  You worked hard to acquire land, property and tools, so you could build and enjoy real freedom.

Something about our society is actually off.  Perhaps it always has been and I'm just suddenly waking up to this fact.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that a person's entire worth is tied up, not in what they contribute, but in how much money they get from others.

Consider [Vincent van Gogh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh)...
http://www.whudat.de/images/top20_most_expansive_paintings_06.jpg
*I look at any van Gogh painting and I see the life he lived and the struggles he endured.*  

Like many artists, his paintings during his lifetime were traded for a room to stay in for a night or two and on occasion a little wine and food.

Now a van Gogh painting can't be bought for less than several million dollars.  The one above was the most expensive painting ever sold until very recently.

This single painting is worth more than the sum total lifetime earnings of most of us combined and certainly more than the artist's lifetime earnings by several orders of magnitude.  The current owner plans to have it cremated along with himself when he dies.  *He says he loves it that much!*  Oh how nice of him!

Most creators are never appreciated during their lifetime.  For most of us it is as [Hobbes](http://yalebooksblog.co.uk/2013/04/05/thomas-hobbes-solitary-poor-nasty-brutish-and-short/) said...
>Life is nasty, brutish and short

Even so, it is inarguable that the economic structures we have had in place since the advent of the industrial revolution have produced exponential increases in the quality of life for everyone.

Yet the real *innovation* of the industrial era was the invention of debt backed currency and fractional reserve banking.  We allowed our government to steal successively more and more from each generation and to pay it back by stealing from the next generation. 

This has served us pretty well so far, but only because we don't really know any different.  It is a legacy that we have learned to pass down to our children and we just accept this as the natural order of things.
 
But ask anyone from Zimbabwe what a trillion dollars will buy you, when government has complete freedom to print debt backed currency without any accountability.  

http://image.slidesharecdn.com/hyperinflationinzimbabwe-130503000818-phpapp01/95/hyperinflation-in-zimbabwe-4-638.jpg

Today in the developed world, even our poorest, lead a life that was well beyond the reach of the wealthiest just 100 years ago.  Yet this has only ever been made possible, by attacking and subjugating our economic heart.  

**Our middle class!**

To be continued...

*I invite everyone's comments. But humor me by reading the whole way through before jumping to any conclusions. There are several of these coming in the next 24hrs.
If you're just coming into this here, please read the first one of the series...
https://steemit.com/life/@williambanks/towards-a-better-tomorrow-part-1-there-but-for-grace*