5. TIME INVESTMENT STOPS INFLATIONARY SUFFERING

When one thinks about investments, one usually thinks about converting excess currency (money) into savings, stocks, or
bonds. Of course, you must first exchange some of your time for the currency. At any point in your life you are directly or indirectly investing your time for your future. This investment is either productive or counterproductive.

To work is to trade your time for currency ... usually. When using currency to purchase goods and services, you are really trading some of your time for the products. Currency is merely a symbol of what your time is "currently" worth. Currency is the common intermediate product by which people exchange their time at producing goods or services.

How you use your time today determines what kind of life you will have tomorrow. With few exceptions, if you do not convert any of your waking lifehours* into work hours, you will be without the products to trade for needed goods and services. Merely working, however, is not enough to guarantee the possession and retention of buying power.

There are ways that you can lose the purchasing value of your currency. Suppose you misuse it through speculation or gambling. Or, suppose you do not protect the production time content of the currency. Or, suppose you direct your time into solving only your personal problems (shelter, food, clothing, and desires).

It is ultimately self-defeating if you do not direct some of your time toward helping others solve their problems. Otherwise, the cost of unsolved public problems (inflation) will gnaw away at your ability to solve your private problems. If the cost of goods and services suffers inflationary price rises, there are two ways to cope. The most common way, as gauged by historical precedent, can be called the defensive, speculative, or self-destructive course. A better, but less traveled path, is an inflation-stopping offense in which one invests time.

An example of the defensive reaction to inflationary suffering is trying to outwork inflation. Consider how much additional time you will have to work each succeeding year that your income lags behind the inflation rate. If the inflation rate exceeds your wage increase by 1%, you will have to work 20 more hours a year in order to maintain your standard of living. (There are 2000 workhours in the normal workyear (40 hrs/week x 50 weeks), 1% of which is 20 hours.)

Twenty hours may not seem like much, but those extra hours accumulate quickly! If you suffer a 1% inflationary loss the following year, you will have to work 40 hours, or about one week more than you do today ... good-bye vacation. Sound familiar?

More drastic, and increasingly more common, is a 10% inflation rate. You, your spouse, or your family will have to work an extra 200 hours next year to maintain your standard of living. And the following year, you will have to work an extra 422 hours more than this year--ten weeks!

A "work more" defense against inflation is a losing proposition, even without considering the plant closings and unemployment that inflation catalyzes. But what if you stopped inflation?

Trying to outwork inflation fails, in part, because it is a form of speculation. Anyone who tries to outwork inflation is speculating that it can be done. However, history is full of examples of how inflation can and has outworked the over-worker.

People who try to hoard or monopolize the available opportunities to work, e.g., over-time, are another example of why trying to outwork inflation is a losing battle. Hogging work-time increases inflationary suffering elsewhere while merely delaying an inflationary impact upon one's life. The diverted inflationary pressure boomerangs back into one's life through rising unemployment, taxes, crime, and insurance costs. As an anti-inflationary action, overtime is a waste of one's time. It generates off-the-job inflationary losses that more than cancel out any overtime gains.

A more speculative form of utilizing one's work, as a means to beat inflation, is striking for higher wages. One speculates or gambles on how much his services are worth to his company. Many have lost this bet through plant-closing and "paybacks." Even the rank-and-file are becoming increasingly aware that pay raises through strikes merely bring more SYMBOLS of production. Strikes do no increase product ownership or buying power for each hour of production time. That is, pay raises do not increase their standard of living as reflected by ownership and consumption of goods or services. Inflationary gains from striking are matched or exceeded by other workers who strike at a later date.

The inflationary impact of those who speculatively strike in order to "beat" inflation is below the impact of the habitual speculators who never have to strike. The chronic inflation chasers who speculate everyday are individually the biggest recipients of inflationary gains and the private cause of inflationary suffering. These are the people that should be struck against.

There will be no relief for the people who suffer inflationary losses until they realize against whom and when to strike. Presently, inflation sufferers strike against each other and not against the habitual inflation chasers. Among the latter are politicians who vote their own standard of living. Eliminating the inflation chasers will eliminate most of the inflationary losses. In addition, the time of striking should not be during normal work hours but after hours so that a steady income can be maintained.

Another defensive, and historically unproductive, course against inflationary suffering is to join the chronic speculators, the private sources who initiate and expand inflationary returns. Trying to out-speculate inflation involves utilizing the negative information of many necronomists. They actually advocate using inflation to beat inflation. Necronomists say "Beat Inflation, Speculate in Real Estate, Stocks, Gold; Go into Hock" and other non-productive enterprises. Clearly, this road does not lead to long-term solutions.

The speculative, inflationary returns of the reputed capitalists would not exist without political speculation. Campaign contributions are speculation on the easily monopolizable ears of politicians. Professional, over-paid speculators are able to buy laws that legalize their illogical, inflationary returns (e.g., tax shelters, or tax straddles). But they also waste their time because history dictates the consequences for those who pursue income in a non-productive way.

Erroneously, hard-working individuals try to beat inflation by imitating the speculation of decapitalists on Wall Street. Similarly, more productive individuals attempt to monopolize the ears of the politicians for special favors. The inflation sufferers waste their time going to the politicians, trying to get more net buying power without producing more. The politicians have only so much time and only two ears. The politicians' ears are already listening to the entrenched recipients of inflation gains.

These traditional, defensive and speculative forms of fighting inflation are a losing proposition. If you turn to speculation, there will be no end to the amount of time that you will waste. To cut your losses (measured in time), take the time to understand and stop inflation. The only successful defense against inflation is an offense of productive time investment.

Your method of fighting inflation is your choice. If you choose the historical course of trying to work more or demand more, think of all the hours that you will have to spend the rest of your life. You will either work more hours or strike more hours in your attempts to avoid inflationary suffering. Even more importantly, the record of inflation shows that, with time, fewer and fewer people can "successfully" utilize this course. As time goes by, unemployment overtakes more and more people.

Inflation causes rising unemployment which leads to a lowered demand for one's services. The auto industry is America's foremost example of foolish anti-inflationary actions. Working overtime and striking for more wages are ultimately self-defeating. The auto-workers struck themselves out of employment. They tried to use inflation to beat inflation, to gain more income without increased production.

If every American annually invested 200 hours of his time in understanding and eliminating inflation, he would never ever waste another hour because of inflation. The American economic landscape is strewn with individuals and industries that thought they could beat inflation by working more or striking more. Look around you, behind you, and before you ... are you the next net loser in the race against unstopped inflation?

Do you want to invest your time for a better future? The most economic and productive use of your time is promoting a personal and public understanding of inflation. Part and parcel of this understanding is an immediate awareness of the simple means for eliminating inflation. If you try to beat inflation by working more hours or demanding higher wages, inflation will beat you. On the other hand, if you use your present leisure time

not for cheap distractions from the pains of inflation,
but for understanding and eliminating inflation,

you will eventually never have to give another minute or thought to anti-inflationary efforts; inflation will be a pain of the past.

In terms of your future, an hour spent educating yourself and your neighbors on anti-inflationary knowledge will have more benefits than an hour of overtime or an hour on the picket line. Time is what it is all about. Time is the basic commodity of life, the only commodity common to all levels and entities of existence. When properly and fully understood, many time-wasting problems can be eliminated, e.g., inflation, unemployment, and taxation. Don't waste your time on or off the job. Wisely invest the only real currency you have to spend ... time!

The battle for saving America can only be won by Americans learning what is wrong with America and leading themselves out of those errors. No one person can save America. The NUSA effort is an attempt to provide this relevant education and the means by which people can organize themselves to enact meaningful changes.

The problems will be cut from people's lives when they recognize and seize the sword of the democracy. Only democracy, people ruling themselves, organizes and empowers people to regulate and eradicate their problems. An informal National Universal Service Act begun by a few can lead to a formal New United States of America.

Warning: Anyone found stealing lifehours will be forever banned from participation in and rewards of Better Democracy and Capitalism.
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