Debt: The First 5000 Years

Graeber has written an important book on this issue. One chapter is attached below.

Another important article on the sytemic Debt Trap is attached below:

Our world faces a large, profound, and very important problem. Let us call this fundamental problem “Systemic Debt.”

We are each and all in debt, whether or not we have actually borrowed from anyone. This is because our financial system is based on debt and interest on debt.

Our individual interest payments are disguised as taxes and hidden in the inexorable price inflation we each experience.

We get in debt at birth. You are already directly in debt if you are a citizen of a country in debt, and all countries are in debt. The fact of your citizenship makes you liable even if you think you are personally not in debt to anyone. The collateral for each country's interest-bearing debt is the ability of its inhabitants to

work and pay taxes. The taxes are used to cover the nation's interest payments.