Observations placeholder
Wells, H G - On finances and financiers
Identifier
015493
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
extract from The Presidential Address to the Educational Science Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, given on September 2nd, 1937, at Nottingham, as read by Mr, Wells
We know now that what used to be called the inexorable laws of political economy and the laws of monetary science, are really no more than rash generalisations about human behaviour, supported by a maximum of pompous verbiage and a minimum of scientific observation.
Most of our young people come on to adult life, to employment, business and the rest of it, blankly ignorant even of the way in which money has changed slavery and serfdom into wages employment and of how its fluctuations in value make the industrial windmills spin or flag.
They are not even warned of the significance of such words as inflation or deflation, and so the wage-earners are the helpless prey at every turn towards prosperity of the savings-snatching financier.
Any plausible monetary charlatan can secure their ignorant votes.
They know no better. They cannot help themselves. Yet the subject of property and money — together they make one subject because money is only the fluid form of property — is scarcely touched upon in any stage in the education of any class in our community.
They know nothing about it; they are as innocent as young lambs and born like them for shearing.