http://thenewstalkers.com/emily-sharp Mon, 09 Nov 2026 14:54:45 -0500 http://thenewstalkers.com/emily-sharp/blog/1839/the-real-reason-why-america-is-broke http://thenewstalkers.com/emily-sharp/blog/1839
Every night and day on the 24 hour news channels, the “talking heads” argue vigorously over who is at fault for the economic crisis. The Democratic heads blame the Republican heads for their refusal to increase taxes. They say we have a “revenue problem.” The Republican heads blame the Democratic heads for their refusal to reduce the deficit. They say we have a “spending problem.” Whose right? Sadly, neither one.
What we hear out of Washington and in the media is little more than a diversion that keeps Americans from discovering the real reason for our financial woes. The real reason? The lack of an honest currency.
The year was 1913. The Federal Reserve was created to be America’s central bank, to control the inflationary / deflationary cycle and to promote economic growth. Instead it has created longer and more severe economic cycles and has promoted economic decline. It has done these things by a continual destruction of the dollar’s value to the point where the once vaunted standard currency the world had ever known is now next to worthless.
To begin with, the Federal Reserve is not federal! It is not an agency of the federal government. It is, in fact, a group of private banks given an exclusive contract by the government of the United States to create, circulate and defend our currency. In other words, the Federal Reserve is a third party private contractor. The Constitution gives this obligation to the House of Representatives but in 1913, and every year since, they have “punted the ball” and allowed a third party to be responsible for these most serious of matters. Since it’s inception, the Federal Reserve has gradually taken us from an asset based economic system to a debt based one. Any currency must be backed up by something. At one time it was backed up by gold and silver. You may have seen a “green back” called a “silver certificate.” The idea? Each paper dollar had to be backed by a dollars worth of silver held by the government. Today, however, we have a different description on our paper money; “Federal Reserve Note.” What is a “note?” A note is a debt, not an asset.
What backs up our Federal Reserve currency today? Pretty much nothing other than what is called “the good faith and credit of the United States.” In truth, since the inception of the Monetary Decontrol Act of 1980, the government can call literally anything it wants an “asset” and use that “asset” to back the currency. In a bizarre twist of fate, the currency of the United States is backed up by it’s debt! The fact that third parties, such as the Chinese, buy up our debt is a defacto way of saying our currency is good because third parties continue to buy up our debt. In other words, whenever someone, for example, buys U. S. debt, that gives a green light to the Fed to “print” more “money.” The Federal Reserve “creates” money, therefore, by a few computer strokes thus adding “value” to it’s books. Books that have never been audited by the actual government of “we the people.” The more “dollars” circulated by nothing more than the Fed’s grand imagination has a serious side effect; each dollar is made less valuable whenever new and worthless dollars are injected into the economy. So many worthless dollars have been injected into our economy since 1913, the dollar is literally “next to worthless.”
The dollar of 1913 was, at it’s inception, was worth $1.00. In contrast, one would have to come up with nearly $23.00 to by a $1.00’s worth of 1913 goods and services. The dollar has lost right at 98% of it’s 1913 value. To put it another way, $100,000.00 in 1913 would be only worth a little less than $5,000.00 in 2011 dollars. On the other hand, $100,000.00 in gold in 1913 would be worth a staggering $4,000,000.00 today in 2011 dollars! The real reason America is broke is that we have a worthless currency.
To bring this matter home, in the last 11 years, the dollar’s value has slipped nearly 40%! What cost a $1.00 in 2000, now costs nearly $1.40. Here’s the real rub, A family making $70,000.00 in 2000 must make nearly $93,000.00 today to just keep the same standard of living they enjoyed just 11 years ago! I don’t know about you but my families income and those of everyone I know has not gone up by $23,000.00 since 2000, it’s gone the opposite direction. While the dollar has dropped like a rock in water, real income has been static. The median family dual income in 2000 was $64,694.00. Just last year, in 2010, that number was just $67,348.00.
The real reason America is broke? A worthless currency that continuously drives up the cost of nearly everything while, at the same time, continuously drives down incomes. Americans are working twice as hard for 1/2 as much. There are only two ways to fix our economy; eliminate the Federal Reserve and replace it with an honest currency or to re-charter the Fed mandating a return to an asset based model, again, producing an honest currency. On the one hand, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are to blame because our problem is a dishonest currency. On the other hand, BOTH Democrats and Republicans are to blame for they both continue to support the dishonest Federal Reserve System, a system that is neither “Federal” or has any “reserve.”
]]> Mon, 21 Jan 2019 04:38:40 -0500 http://thenewstalkers.com/emily-sharp/blog/1832/number-of-americans-taking-antidepressants-surges-has-raised-dramatically http://thenewstalkers.com/emily-sharp/blog/1832
The National Center for Health Statistics, an arm of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has published an announcement on its web site highlighting the fact that the number of Americans 12 years of age or older taking antidepressants has skyrocketed in recent years.
Based on the information given, the number of Americans 12 and older taking antidepressants now comprises fully 11% of the total population of the United States, which amounts to some 34 million people.
And that’s not all, antidepressants, the most commonly prescribed medication in the country for people aged 18 to 44, are given more often to women than men, and far more often to white people than any other race. Also, 60% of those taking antidepressants have done so for at least two years, and 14% for ten years or longer.
Unfortunately, despite the high numbers, the Institute estimates that only about a third of those people who suffer from clinical depression take antidepressants, due to financial constraints, or because of other mental or physical ailments that prevent them from receiving treatment.
The Institute also noted that from 1988 to 2008 the number of people taking antidepressants had jumped nearly 400%, which they say has more to do with advances in medicine (fewer side effects) than increasing numbers of depression sufferers. Also it was noted that a lot of people take antidepressants that don’t actually have depression for such ailments as symptoms of menopause.
Antidepressants are psychiatric medications generally prescribed by psychiatrists, though sometimes they can be described by other doctors as well. They are usually prescribed to offer patients who suffer mood disorders relief. Mood disorders range from depression to dysthymia to social anxiety disorder and can be prescribed for either temporary or chronic conditions. Though as the report highlights, quite often when antidepressants are prescribed for transient conditions such as postpartum depression, patients continue taking them, which brings up one statistic noticeably absent from the report and that is the number of people taking antidepressants who don’t technically need them.
The report also highlights the growing trend among the population as a whole to turn to medications to solve problems that were once considered something people should deal with in other ways. The growing trend to treat children with ADHD drugs for example has come under increased scrutiny due to the concerns of many that such medications are being prescribed to help parents deal with children, rather than as a prescription for an actual disorder.
]]> Mon, 14 Jan 2019 03:52:35 -0500 http://thenewstalkers.com/emily-sharp/blog/1830/video-games-a-plague-on-america http://thenewstalkers.com/emily-sharp/blog/1830
Ever since the creation of video games, they have been robbing young kids of their time and ambition and they are harmful to the lives of teenagers and young adults around the globe. Although, these complex digital wonders are a great thing in moderation, when played in excess, they damage the social, educational, and professional lives of many teenagers all around the world. Video games are stealing away the minds of the youth of America and causing them to waste their focus on beating these games instead of their important school work. The teenage years are an important time for brain development and these harmful video games are interfering in this delicate organ’s time to grow.
Finally, video games, such as “Grand Theft Auto”, are sending negative messages to everyone who plays them and young children are extremely susceptible to these values. Many children spend hours a day sitting in front of the television playing video games, and they fail to realize the dire consequences they will experience later in life.
At this young age, the most important thing that kids should be worried about is their schoolwork and preparing for their future. However, many children are wasting away their childhood by sitting on the couch in their house playing video games. Many teenagers who spend most of their time playing video games end up doing worse in school and that affects them for the rest of their lives. In my own experiences, I have many friends who love playing video games and stay up late at night playing them instead of doing homework. They are so focused on beating the next level or beating the game that they fail to realize that what is really important is their schoolwork.
I personally do not play many video games and that has allowed me to get straight A’s throughout my whole high school career. As Patrick Welsh describes what happened the day after “Halo 2″ was released, he states bluntly, “some guys skipped school that day to stay home and try to beat the game.” This is a serious issue because the last thing that teens should be doing is skipping school, especially if they are doing it merely to sit at home and play video games. The teenage years are a time when kids develop habits that they carry with them throughout their lives and playing video games too much only leads to bad habits and bad grades.
The human brain is the most complex organ in the entire body. It is also the most fragile and delicate. Without a well-developed brain, it is difficult for teens to do well in school and college. It also makes it challenging for them to concentrate and remember facts and information. These issues will greatly affect their adult lives as it is necessary to have a good brain if you want to be successful in today’s society. Many of my friends spend most of their waking lives playing “Call of Duty” and I can see how it is affecting their grades and attitude about school. There are some friends of mine who, in middle school, used to get stellar grades. However, once they moved on to high school and discovered X-box 360, their grades took a major hit.
A Japanese study was done and they found that video games encourage young brains to “grow on a ‘use it of lose it’ principle” which is certainly not the foundation for a successful career. This study also found that many children develop sleeping disorders due to playing video games three to four hours every night. These findings make it clear to the whole world that video games are harmfully stunting brain development and yet our society still plays them excessively. Our society needs a wake up call and soon before video games destroy a world that we have so carefully built up.
Have you ever seen one of those games where the whole point of the game is to kill people and steal luxurious cars? There are millions of games on the market in which all the player does is shoot other players or break the law. These games are sending extremely negative values and it is ludicrous that teenagers are allowed to play them. Games such as Call of Duty and Halo have no other purpose than to destroy your enemies. I have played these games while hanging out at my friends’ houses. While playing, you have something called “hit points”. Your character in the game has a certain number of these hit points and you lose a few every time you get shot. Well, children who grow up playing these games, learn that they will always have hit points. However, that’s just a game.
In real life, there are no hit points. If you get shot in real life, you will die. There are no second chances, and many kids don’t realize that. Patrick Welsh finds many of the messages communicated to teenagers through video games repulsive. He finds the “rampant violence, misogyny, and sexual and racial stereotyping of some games beyond offensive.” The values that a young adult develops during their teenage years are the ones that carry them through life. Would you really like the values of America’s future to be ones of violence and theft?
The future leaders of our nation, and our world, are currently playing hours of video games per day and it is getting worse and worse as we let the years slip by. So I say we need a revolution into an era without as many electronic distractions. Our youth need to start unplugging their gaming systems and get out into the world. Instead of relying on digitally created adventures, they need to be out in the world creating their own adventures. For a brighter future, our society needs to change its ways and stop our young adults from not caring about school, having underdeveloped brains, and absorbing negative values all due to these video games. Our future should be built upon school books, not gaming consoles. Our future should be based on straight A’s, not learning disorders. Finally our future should be based on good morals, not negative values. We need to change the direction of our culture and become an unplugged society before its too late.
]]> Thu, 10 Jan 2019 04:19:36 -0500 http://thenewstalkers.com/emily-sharp/blog/1823/life-economics-and-the-machine http://thenewstalkers.com/emily-sharp/blog/1823
One hundred years ago our cities were very different than they are now. Many people traveled around town in horse drawn carriages. Then to travel large distances from one city to another they would take the train. Everyone was excited about the harnessing of electricity and all the new found applications for it. The industrial revolution was well on its way.
Machines were being invented at a rapid pace, and changing how we work. The electric motor and the diesel engine, could do the work of many men. People who used to be manual laborers were now running machines that dramatically increased the amount of work one person could do per day.
As a result there was this idea that eventually mechanized technology would be perfected and be capable of doing all the work that mankind used to do. Then finally mankind could focus on the more important things in life. The common idea was that the machine was going to shift us from a labor intensive society to a leisure society.
Now that the modern age has been here for some time now, we can see that, though the machine has significantly reduced the work load, our society is not any closer to being leisurely. Machines are expensive to design and build, so we have to work harder longer hours to be able to afford to purchase and maintain our machines. Machines produce a lot of pollution, and we now know that this pollution is effecting our climate. Climate change is costing us billions of dollars every year. Machines have given us the ability to change the face of the earth and the changes are not always an improvement.
Can we find a balance that will work for our planet? Can there be an environmentally conscious high tech industrial evolution? Or has the window of opportunity passed us by. Will the earth’s atmosphere deteriorate till the planet is no longer hospitable? Should we turn back to a simpler way of life to reverse the effects of climate change, or proceed further down the path of technology, in the hopes that in our future machines can increase our quality of life, and preserve our environment too?
Technological advancement is like gambling with our planets economic future. Maybe we will win or maybe we will lose. There is no way of foreseeing the long term effects of massive technological changes and preventing them.
If there were other life sustaining planets like the earth, in our solar system. Then if the weather becomes really awful on earth, we could just move to another planet. But as of yet we have not found a single planet like our own in this universe. It is amazing that we have changed our planet, possibly causing irreversible damage to it, without having a second planet to live on. This leads me to wonder, is mankind really an intelligent species? Or are we still just learning what intelligence is?
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