Easy Chair No. 149, July the 9th, 1987 — Money and Debt: Paper Wealth, Real Slavery

In *Easy Chair 149* (July 9, 1987), R.J. Rushdoony and Otto Scott warn that money and debt are not merely “economic” topics but **religious and moral realities**—because a culture’s view of money reveals where its faith rests. Scott argues the modern world has entered an unprecedented situation: *“money”* as true wealth has largely disappeared, replaced by **paper claims backed by nothing—worse than nothing, backed by debt**. Rushdoony presses the point: modern states *monetize debt*, so currency increasingly represents obligations rather than accumulated production, inviting inflation, instability, and eventual collapse. They highlight how bond-market fragility threatens pension funds, how real estate values are illusions dependent on willing buyers, and how inflation quietly steals purchasing power (war bonds, savings, wages) while seducing people with a false “rising tide” prosperity. Over and over they return to the biblical diagnosis: **debt enslaves** (Prov. 22:7), long-term debt violates God’s pattern (Deut. 15’s debt limits and release), and a system built on perpetual interest and expanding credit cannot endure without breaking families and nations. Both men argue that abandoning gold and silver as honest money accelerates the growth of the state, because paper money centralizes control: if the government can create and debase currency, it can regulate, ration, surveil, and ultimately **strip citizens of independence**—even “homeownership” becomes conditional when property taxes function like rent. Rushdoony adds that economic cycles and the biblical sabbatical/Jubilee structure restrain runaway debt and inflation by design, forcing thrift, periodic reset, and stability—whereas modern society, trusting the state instead of God, keeps choosing short-term gain and “larceny in the heart” over covenant faithfulness. Their conclusion is stark: **a people with no real money will not remain a free people**, and unless debt is faced as sin and bondage—not a lifestyle—despotism is the natural destination. #EasyChair #Rushdoony #OttoScott #MoneyAndDebt #Inflation #SoundMoney #DebtSlavery #BiblicalEconomics #Deuteronomy15 #Jubilee #Freedom #ChristianReconstruction