Pete starts by asking: if we can’t control govenment spending when we have to borrow the money (as we do now) the how can we keep it in check if we give the government the printing press? Everyone knows you can’t trust government!
Joe argues that the benefits of a government issue money system, like that advocated here, are its permanence and its simplicity,
in addition to the fact that it uses money creation to finance government projects, lowering the need for taxes. The simplicity of the system allows any ordinary Joe to see cause and effect in the money system. For example, if the government overused its money creation power, the results would be inflationary, and voters/taxpayers could respond by electing monetary conservatives.
The conversation ends with Pete discussing the irony that we call our economic system a capitalist one, but the way it works right now, debt service payments force us to liquidate capital from all quarters. Joe reminds us that one of the stated goals of the Chicago Plan for Monetary Reform was to preserve capitalism.
