The Populist movement was a Left-wing radical movement of the late 19th century. Ellen Brown is an advocate of Populism. She would like to see its restoration by means of its favorite panacea, fiat money.
The Populists came in the name of the common man. It demanded a huge expansion of Federal power. It argued that the free market's system of wealth distribution is unjust. What is needed, they said, is wealth redistribution by the Federal government: more taxes, more regulation, and more fiat money. This is what Ellen Brown calls for today.
I pointed out all this in my original critique. Here, she responds.
22. Populism defended the interests of the common man.Nothing in your comment refutes my point. You conclude, "The Populists wanted their share of government loot. They wanted big government for their interests." Quite right! Government of the people, by the people, for the people. That is the very definition of "populism" -- "for the people"!
The reason why I quoted their national political platform was to show that they wanted an income tax, in an era when Americans recognized that an income tax was a threat to their liberty.
Populism was not "for the people." It was a movement of inefficient farmers who could not compete with efficient farmers. It was a movement of industrial workers who could not compete with other workers and who then used union violence to exclude those workers from the local market. It was a movement of debtors who wanted to pay off their debts with fiat money: cheating on a massive scale.
Ellen Brown promotes fiat money as a way to avoid the income tax. She never shows how this is possible, as I showed in my critique, but that is her promise. Hers is not a call to reduce government spending. It is a call for something for nothing: a large and growing Federal government paid for, pain-free, by pieces of paper.
She is a Left-wing utopian.
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