Are We There Yet, Mommy?

We’re stuck in a rat race on a teetering bridge. Our section attempts to address a failing of human spirit and an unwillingness to think beyond our current system as the “best of all possible worlds.” Our Bridge of Debt represents a socio-economic system as a manifestation of this failure of spirit, now leading the world toward collapse and ruin.

While the triumph of this system leaves many of us without livelihoods, without healthcare, without houses, and without a healthy environment, the complimentary culture of consumerism leads many away from a spiritual life as well. In our section we have used the automobile and the rat race to represent the separateness, desperation and frenzy-to-get-ahead most of us feel as captives of this economy.

A giant craven puppet dangles the carrot to a better life but delivers only wretchedness. Great banners heralding poverty, homelessness and death follow at the heels of our Bridge of Debt. Dropping out of the rat race can be bad for your health in the short run, but if we stay on the current course, will our beloved internal combustion engine drive us to our collapse? Drive on.

— Lead Artists Lindsay McCaw, Julian McFaul and Duane Tougas

Do Unto Others . . . ?

Our society prioritizes allowing corporations and investment banks run profitable scams over producing useful goods and services for people. This priority pushes us closer to social, economic and environmental collapse and is leaving a wake of debt that you and I will have to pay. This debt will be used to leverage more damage to the environment, our democratic institutions, and public safety nets that are already inadequate. Fold in the billions spent on war, and we wonder why our levees fail and our bridges collapse. Alarmingly, this system — some call it neo-liberalism or “free market fundamentalism” — is exported and defended as a form of democracy. For sixty years, international development organizations have used massive lending scams to force a free market approach on developing countries that leaves them in debt, in environmental catastrophe, and with their assets sold off to corporate interests.

- JULIAN MCFAUL

Your Interest Is Killing Us.

When most people take out a mortgage on a house they assume they are borrowing money from someone else. This is not true. The money to buy a house does not exist in its own right; it is created for the purpose of a loan. The point is, money comes into the economy when people undertake debt. As debt grows, money grows, and as money grows, interest debt grows even faster.

The magic of money is that its creation can far exceed the value of actual commodities produced like corn, wheat, manufactured goods, and oil. The Federal Reserve and the financial institutions it works to protect prefer this kind of economy. They feed on the money that is created and the interest that people have to pay on that “money” - “money” that is not borrowed from anyone who has worked for it, but which has been created out of thin air. This is the system that is killing us, and this is the system that is being systematically exported around the world.

- paraphrased by JULIAN MCFAUL from Show Me the Money, in the Spring 2008 issue of Yes! magazine.