As an advocate of the Equal Money System, what is your personal economic background?

I have a BA in Political Science from Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec.  I have grown up in a middle class family in Canada, and while growing up I watched both my parents mature and develop as entrepreneurs. My father worked within the insurance industry at first, until it made him physically ill to deny sick and disabled people the money they required for treatment, due to whatever reason he was paid his salary to defend. He turned down the golden path of being ‘groomed’ to climb the ladder of success in the insurance world, and decided to honour himself and his principles and quit to start his own printing company with a partner. During my childhood, I felt the economic impact of his decision to not follow money, but instead lead a life he could live with. However, despite this, he was able to eventually afford a house, a country house and two cars, along with the contribution of my mother’s salary earned from her art, which is stained glass. Therefore, overall, my experience has been one that was provided for.
 
However, despite the fact that my parents ‘did everything right’ according to the American dream of working hard and following the rules within the system-my mother’s main competitor became China, and my father could not compete with Walmart. Now, at the age of retirement, they have literally had to start over.
So what have I learned from my upbringing? That you can do everything ‘right’ according to what we learn we are ‘supposed’ to do and how we are supposed’ to live within this system, but at any point you can have the carpet pulled out from under your feet, only to find yourself living pay-check to pay-check, with no end/relief in sight. This can happen as it did in my family, or it can be a divorce, illness, a lay-off or some other unforeseeable event. This is truly a life without security, without freedom, and plagued by differing degrees of fear. The absolute number one priority is getting a job, keeping the job,  and to continue moving just to keep that pay check coming in. Everything else becomes secondary once that is even slightly compromised.  Within this economic system, if you do not start off with a buffer, this type of compromise is quite possible, and increasingly likely.

I also come from an extended family of educators, entrepreneurs and government employees, artists and computer science professionals. Some made it, others struggled more. Some became ill and the only thing that saved them was Canada’s crumbling social safety net.  The only thing keeping that safety net in place is the people, the actual population of the country.
What I learned from my political science degree is that politics are truly compromised by the opposing forces of taking care of the people, and making Canada an economically desirable location for businesses and corporations The high taxes that pay for the medicare system, for example,  are not attractive to companies looking for a home base, thus compromising Canada’s economy. Yet the high taxes help pay for the social systems that catch those like my uncle, who developed cancer, or my sister who’s self-employed husband required surgery at the time of the birth of their third child- both my sister and her husband either have or are working towards their Master’s degrees in their respective fields- everything is fine till something happens. An the entire system is based on this economic tug-of-war, which in many countries is won by the profit-based sector, thus providing no safety net at all.

My teachers included politicians that worked actively within the system, and the same message was delivered over and over, in so many ways: Politics do not function as the rules stipulate in my textbooks, and most of what is familiar as politics is nothing more than theater. They literally have to play camera tricks at assembly meetings in the Capital to make it look like there are more participants in the publicly aired debates than there actually are. Politicians that don’t tow the party line end up as back-benchers or representatives of small insignificant electoral constituencies, they are denied from having a voice. If they do have a voice, it is only allowed if they are in the minority and of no real threat to actually change anything. With the “first-past-the-post” electoral system in Canada, the representation of the people is skewed through such ways as tactical voting from fear of having one’s vote ‘wasted’, and resulting in a ‘winner’ that represents sometimes less than half of the population.  The ‘party line’ is dictated by lobbyists that have unchallengeable resources, and the rules and regulations of the system are written by them in such language that those that are not fortunate enough to have received a decent education would take great pains to comprehend, and thus do not participate to represent themselves or take a stand. And this is generally the majority, the growing lower class that is too busy trying to get by to be able to also make the investment to learn about how the system that dictates their lives was actually created and how it functions.

My teacher told me, politicians are not evil. They are ‘good’ people trying to make a difference and represent the people that voted for them. However, law by law, the system has been created to cater to those with the most resources, to the point where to go against it would be like economic suicide, as I experienced to a degree while growing up. But there are instruments within the system that are there to give it legitimacy, which could be used to actually empower and represent the people- all of us-That is why it is necessary to work with the system, from within the system, as the Equal Money System proposes. There are many many people that this system is taking too much from. Yet it is our value as human beings, and the value of the environment and all the elements that work together to sustain life, that are being taken and turned into ‘profit.’, 'Profit' which is of no actual physical value, save that if your life circumstances and chance placed you in a position to obtain it, will give you access to life’s actual resources, over and above others. It is precisely those that we continue to take from, that is allowing us to continue to grow rich, the equation is directly related and there is actually no such thing as working hard to ‘earn’ a living. Life is not earned. We all deserve a living, and a life, for the mere fact of having been born. What we are actually doing is not ‘earning’, but empowering ourselves to take more than our fair share, thus directly taking from others. And for those that are poor, are on well-fare or are for whatever reason subjugated to the label of being a ‘burden on society’- it is impossible to place such a judgment without considering the entire context of their lives, and the forces imposed upon them, the resources they had access to, and who were they competing with.
 
For all the reasons I’ve listed here, including my life experience and my education, both within University and the self-education I have worked towards, I stand for an Equal Money System.  I have supported myself through employment my entire adult life,  and I now work at a ‘good’ job with stability and the opportunity to ‘climb the ladder’ to a comfortable life. Through the research I’ve done by pushing myself to understand the economic system and how it functions, and how we’re all actually directly or indirectly impacting the entire world through our participation within it- I could not possibly justify putting my head down and working hard to ‘earn’ my living .I will work hard, and I will push myself to be successful, but my efforts will always contain the starting point of contributing to the development and implementation of a system that will provide my nieces and nephews and all members of future generations, as well as the natural environment required to support them , with a life that they can actually live. One with security and without the fear of what might be around the next bend, without wondering how they will afford to educate themselves and their children, or how they will survive in their old age or if they become sick. This type of a system will produce a changed human, but we must first change ourselves In order to be able to even comprehend and grasp what Life could be if we actually stopped competing to survive. What if we started to instead honour ourselves as life already, and care for one another as members of one group, the group called Life?

No More Ivy League Schools In An Equal Money System - Equal Money FAQ

Ivy League schools only make sense in the current context of a profit-based system. They are really not all about a superior education. They are actually all about money. Only the rich can afford them while the poor are left in inadequate schools which leave them ill-prepared for life in the system. Those who attend Ivy League schools are taught with exclusive efficacy, how to make money. They are taught how to work within and support the system and therefore the system rewards them. But as they work within and support the system, they are at the same time supporting the slavery of the poor, and all the consequences of poverty.

            Graduates of Ivy League schools are given a huge head-start in life in the system. The poor, and even the middle-class, don’t have a chance at competing with them. Yet with all the superior intellect that is supposedly produced by an Ivy League education, nobody has thought up an effective solution to end hunger, or to prevent war and create peace. Neither has anyone been taught how to extend a hand out to help lift their fellow humans up out of poverty. Instead we depend on the poor to remain poor. We depend on the inadequate education of the masses, because if everybody had an Ivy League education, the system would collapse as people would not stand for the system of inequality that exists today.

            In an Equal Money System, the only kind of education system that will make sense is one that provides all human beings with a superior education. Ivy League schools will not exist because they necessarily imply the existence of sub-par education. In an EMS, the education of a person will be to the benefit of everybody, because that person will understand how to exist in this world in an effective and responsible way that considers the rest of life beyond their own experience.

            In an EMS, education will be practical. It will teach people how to live in a way that improves the condition of the earth and the plants, animals and people upon it, so that we leave it in better condition than when we came. Currently, the destruction and devastation that takes place daily is actually justified by current economics. Pollution and waste make sense in capitalism, because it’s cheaper and thus better for the bottom line. But we are leaving a living hell to our grandchildren, who will not be able to trust the water they drink, or eat the fish from the sea, or live in a world where they have security and peace of mind.

            So the answer is No; Ivy League schools will not exist in an Equal Money System, because they support a system of inequality that enslaves the masses and causes millions of innocent people to starve and suffer. Besides, no Ivy League school has ever produced a solution. No amount of expensive education has stopped, slowed or reversed the negative effects of our current system. Everything has gotten worse, and is continuing to get worse all over the world. And it can all be traced back to the economic system. The problem is that it is the very same system that produced Ivy League schools in the first place. Ivy League schools are a product of this system, they are a benefit to this system, and this system benefits them. That is why we propose a change in the economic system- to one that makes sense in reality. The current system is insane, and it acts more like a cancer that will end up killing everyone if it is not stopped. The only benefits it provides are short term profit for the rich, but it looks as though that term is up. Now it’s time for Equal Money- with common sense education producing practical solutions that will last.

       

How Will Children Learn, Without the Teacher-Student Dichotomy?

               

In an Equal Money System, the education system will be an entirely different concept than it is in a profit-based system where money is valued over life. Education will no longer teach us how to “serve the system, work for the elite, lie and cheat” (BP). It will instead be an equality-based education which will teach us to take self-responsibility, consider the whole and value all Life. When the end-goal of an education is to make money to survive in the world, as it currently is, then the rules you are taught are the rules of a system of inequality, competition and survival of the fittest- the effects of which, those who are lucky enough to get an education, will usually never have to experience or consider.

In an Equal Money System, the correction of this kind of separation, negligence and apathy will be part of the curriculum as the end-goal of an equality-based education will be to produce considerate and decent human beings who care about their fellow man and the plant and animal kingdoms. This consideration, decency and care will take place within the understanding that doing and being such not only benefits oneself and the entire planet, but also future generations to come. This type of consideration, respect and understanding cannot be imparted upon individuals as knowledge and information being passed along from one being to another as within the current teacher-student dichotomy. You cannot simply be told to be empathetic, you can’t memorize respect for all life and you cannot regurgitate equality and oneness as stagnant concepts. These are concepts which require living application and understanding through self-will, self-application and self-direction over time.

In an equal education system, teacher and student will be equals, teaching and learning from each other as a living real-time education. The teacher will stand as the living example, from a starting point of equality and oneness and within self-expression, to assist and support the student within their own self-expression, to become a self-responsible being that cares. The teacher will live as an example of one that does unto others only what he would want done unto him, and who loves his neighbor as himself because he understands what it is to be a whole being within the bigger whole which he is one with and equal to.

Within all topics covered throughout one’s education, the responsibility to learn will come from self. The student will be taught self-responsibility through his own living application, and will therefore become an example to him/herself of the self-expansion and self-expression which can only come from taking complete self-responsibility, self-mastery and self-direction.

Students will not be ‘forced’ to learn within a rewards-punishment principle, nor will they be taught to compete with their peers as within our current system of the ‘survival of the fittest’. Students will learn self-support, and through self-support will understand what it means to assist and support others as self. Students will see the benefits and common sense in the advancement of the group, as a group of self-willed equals, wherein evolution is an act of direction within the principle of doing what’s best for all. The accumulative effect of this action will lead to a world of peace and security and a future of certainty and advancement, and this is the environment students will create, walk into and develop within during and throughout their education.

The teacher will not be held as superior and the judge of the student’s progress, nor will he or she be the one to determine whether or not the student has actually learned. The student will prove to him/herself whether or not he or she has become a living statement of the material through his or her actions words and deeds, consistently over time, at the same time proving him/herself to be a self-honest and trustworthy individual that cares. The student will, from the beginning of his and her education, learn how to explore self-expression within oneness and equality, so that his peers may do the same, and so that as he grows he understands how to consider himself within the context of the whole.