The Emperor’s Clothes
Cost Twenty Dollars

By Lloyd Darland

Chapter 1: What’s Going On?

Today, just like yesterday, and possibly tomorrow, a thief sneaks into your home, into your wallet, and takes $5.
No, this isn’t the income tax; that’s bad enough…this is in addition to that.  And it’s not just “your” home… it’s happening in every home in the country, every day of the year.
This is the average amount taken every day with a little-understood, quiet method you need to know about.   The total amount of the theft currently equals upwards of $94 trillion!
I hope you’ll keep reading to see how it’s done and why, what it means to you and your family and what you can do about it.
The thief is your very own Federal government! They have incubated a special cancer — the same kind that killed Imperial Rome — and have spread it throughout the land.
The Founders of our Country thought they had written the Constitution to shield us from this disease, but this defense has and continues to be perpetrated. The Emperor’s Clothes Cost Twenty Dollars is a call to arms to repair our defenses, lest the thief steals our entire country right before our very eyes.
The process is inadequately called “inflation.” It’s really an illness. Whether or not the thievery contin­ues until the destruction is complete depends on what actions are taken.
You can help stop it.

Our national money system is sick with this cancer that is gobbling up our dollars and everything measured by them. This cancer has been growing for more than 30 years.
It affects and threatens everyone, particularly those who have retired, those who expect to retire, or those who are saving for the future. This cancer is inflation, and it’s time to do something about it. You might have falsely thought the disease was accidental, but you must know it was planned.
Please keep reading this entire text with an open mind so that you can see through the fog that has been orchestrated to confuse you.
I address this to all concerned citizens who are interested in our Country’s survival, and their own.
My interest in economics began early. When I was a teenager I earned about $1,500, which would buy a big Buick. My father urged me not to spend the cash on a car but to invest it.
I bought war bonds; and in 10 years, my $1,500 had grown to $2,000. But the $2,000 would no longer buy an average Ford. I felt cheated. The value of my war bonds appeared bigger, but their value was actually smaller.
Something had been taken from me. I decided to see if I could find out who took it and how it was done and decide if anything could be done about it.
I found out that I had been intentionally cheated, that it had been done with dishonest money and the one in charge of the money was the government.
Naturally I was angry!

I believe that “we the people,” under our Constitution, have a right to an honest money system. We do not have it now and have not had it for a very long time.
But I have discovered a way honest money can be brought back quickly starting in its simplicity by strictly abiding by the Constitution.  Clearly a novel concept to our elected officials!
The suc­cess of this action and the key to correcting the dishonesty in our nation’s money structure will greatly benefit every­one who works for a living, everyone who is self-employed and small business owners.
It will benefit those who are trying to save a “buck,” the retired and those poor souls living on a fixed income.
An honest money system would dramatically reduce taxes and at the same time increase the effectiveness of government.
Most politicians will not be happy with sound money… especially those that get elected off of continuing the phony money fraud.  They might say, “Are we not our brother’s keeper?” And each must decide for himself. But in any case, it is not my brother’s position to make the decision that I must keep him.
Before we continue it’s important to have some understanding of economics.
Consider that we’re all playing in a big game similar to Monop­oly®.  All the players turn in pennies to get $100 bills in play money.
In this game you may trade your time to someone else who wants it, and for this you get some more pay in play money. You use your play money to trade with someone else who has something that you would like to have.
If you would prefer, you may make something that others would like to have and trade it to them for some of their play money. The overriding rules of our game will be the Constitution.
Under it, you decide who is going to be the head administrator of the rules, and he’s called President. You decide who’s going to work out what the rules should be, and that group is called the Legislature.
You have some people to keep the fights between players under control, and that group is called the Police. In case there are dis­agreements between players that the police can’t resolve, you have another group, and they are called the Courts.
You put someone in charge of making sure that no outside bullies break up your game; they are called “defense.”
In order to pay for the structure, you set up a system so that there’s a “cut” taken each time you do something for someone else, and that’s called an “income tax.”
You set up rules that the makers of things have to comply with, and the expenses of these rules have to be included in their price, so those taxes are “hidden.”
Anytime the players want, they can turn in their play money and get a penny back for each $100 bill. Thus, the stage is set.
Let’s make you President
One of the first things you, as President, notice is that the people who don’t have anything to sell or don’t do anything don’t have any money. That doesn’t seem fair because, after all, everyone wants to play.
Since everyone has a say in who is to be in the various positions, including yours, you want everyone to be as happy as possible. You ask the people who have some cash and who are earning more to give you some extra so that you can give some to the people who don’t have any.
Sure enough they do. But pretty soon the people you have given money to have spent it and are again without any. So you ask for an increase in the income tax so you can give even more to the others.
But then a couple of things happen.
First, there was someone who was working, but he didn’t have very much and he saw that you were giving people who didn’t work as much money as he was making. He quickly fig­ured out that if he wasn’t working, then he would be better off. He quit working, and sure enough he was better off.
Further, the people who were making more than that noticed that what they had left wouldn’t buy as much as before, so they complained about the high taxes.
So everyone voted for a system that takes more from the people who could best afford it: the rich ones. You called this a “progressive tax.”
Now, a greater number of people are happy.
The only ones who were less happy were the rich; and not only could they afford it, but when all the votes were counted, the rich lost anyway.
Things were going along about like you would expect for a while. But then the rich people got together and came to you and said they felt the taxes were too high. You paid attention, because it looked like if you didn’t, you might not get re-elected.
Then you noticed you had some extra cash on hand just in case someone else wanted to enter the game.
You thought no one would notice if you gave some of that to the people who needed it. And anyway, since the game started, people had been checking in and out — all the players never checked out all at once — so you always had plenty of pennies.
But somebody did notice and called your attention to the fact that the basic rules prohibited your spending anything you hadn’t gotten from the players. (Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 7 of the Constitution).
What you, as President, were doing was “inflating” the currency in the game.
Since you couldn’t continue to inflate directly, you had the Legis­lature create a new group, called the Federal Reserve Board (FRB), to be in charge of the cash. You told the FRB it really had to be honest with the cash system because it was so important.
But then you set it up so that no one could check and see how it was doing. A few complained, but not too many people had read the rules. So it seemed to work pretty well.
Once in a while, someone who you didn’t even know was in the game came to the FRB with $100 and asked for a penny. You found out that some of the players were having outsiders do some things for them.
They were giving play money to the outsiders but told them that the FRB would give them a real penny if they had enough of the cash. And sure enough, it was true. And the FRB really didn’t care too much because they had lots of pennies that had been turned in. And so goes the game.
This helps give a quite accurate definition of inflation. It is the increase of cash in the game for which no pennies have been turned in and for which no goods and services are coming to market.
Inflation is a problem caused by cheating.