Do We Have A Choice Other Than Regression From Depression?

I should be reading a book right now, but I'm not. Instead I'm going to try to present sense of the nonsense in my head.

I was talking to my grandfather last night on the phone for quite a while. We often get into economics in our talking. He believes, as many do, that the United States is on the border of a depression. He's frustrated with the people in Washington who keep doing things that are blatantly bad to do, but they pretend like they're right (such as printing lots of dollar bills to depreciate the value of our money).

I started to think about that thought in relation to The Great Depression. My concern was this... During the great depression we were a production society, largely. We made lots of stuff and were much more self-sufficient than we are now. At this point we have outsourced all of our production, and we consider our country a country of managers. The corporations are here, but the work and product are elsewhere, being made my third world preteens. When the economy collapsed in the 1930's we could at least produce what we needed. We still had lots of private farms, we made lots of steel, clothes were still made here a lot, etc. Times weren't great, but we got by because people knew how to produce and survive. But what about now?

How does a consumer society survive in a depression? How much harder is it going to be for us to get food from nations with a much stronger currency. At least when goods are produced within the same country the currency should maintain a relative value... outside that country it just isn't so. If our dollar drops to $3 = 1 Euro how will we trade effectively? How will we afford things to survive? Do you get what I'm saying? Depression = poor people and few jobs, little money, having just enough to survive... how do you add the relative doubling/tripling/etc of the cost of everything we import when we import almost everything? Let me admit right now, I'm not economist, but this seems common sense with the little I know.

A depression will be hard and there will much bad from it, but I ultimately think it will do more good than bad for our future. It will reset American ideologies to being less greedy and more set on the "good ol' ways." I think and hope at least that would happen.

I've been thinking about the barter economy lately. It seems to me that implementing a barter economy into our current one would be more beneficial to individuals, and more conducive to individual small businesses. Even beyond that I see it as allowing for a lower cost of final product if you trade services/products for others. This is so abstract I apologize. I'm really having trouble grasping this in my head.

My grandfather told me about how things used to be much more barter-oriented. So and so needed help, so I went and worked on their house for about 20 hours, and in a month during harvest I'll need help on my farm, so they'll help me for about 20 hours. Or I'm an electrician and he's a plumber. I do his electrical work if he does my plumbing. It really ends up working better for me that way, at least it appears that way. Instead of having to pay the for the expensive electrical work, I just spend a little of my time. Looking at this I guess it is more normalizing of wages, where no one is worth more (or much more) than another. It seems to naturally do that to some extent, although it does not negate supply and demand.

Income tax becomes a problem when you are on a barter system. So do services like broadcast television that it becomes hard to barter with. I simple enough solution would be taxes on imports or just living in an area, paying a city tax. There certainly is a question of "is there currency if there is all barter." Good question. There would have to be some kind of IOU for workers of widespread service industries, e.g. Broadcast TV workers. In that sense there would need to be a currency of sense. Where we acknowledge that these people are giving us a service, even if it seems intangible or even if we don't use it, and in response we give these people a portion of what we have as compensation. I think I just defined what money is, but hopefully I reshaped it a little.

Don't get me wrong... we won't be a cashless society ever (or at least not for a very very long time). But I do think we should start implementing barter more. We're moving that way anyway. The government will need to restructure as this gains steam. They will no doubt pull the IRS with it's Federal Income Tax, and instead it will increase a tax on raw products or imports.

As we simplify we require less money. As the government pulls back frill that we've grown accustomed to it will need less of our money. Taxes will become less demanding. People will gain more freedom. Bartering will grow, especially with the help of our technology. We will become a relational people again, instead of a people that associate with institutions and businesses bureaucratically. We will bring caring, grace, leeway, situation, and more into our transactions. Our conscience and goodwill will trump our greed for getting more and more. It seems life used to be much more like this, not even that long ago. This is a fantasy I know. I believe it is a fantasy to be further developed and continued in hope.

Like I have stated, I am no economist, but I know if we simplify we can have more freedom. I know that big business and big government have taken away life we forget is even a possibility. They are largely the secret oppressors of us, our country, and to some extent, large parts of our world. Things used to work differently in the past, why should we not be able to recreate them, but with a new flare and hopefully better than they were?

Please leave some comments if you're a smart person. I feel like I make sense, but I'm fully aware that I'm largely ignorant about this topic.