Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto demands a state monopoly on money and credit. Since all modern economies use central banks to control the money supply, they are built on a Marxist principle. With money being half of every transaction, these economies are at best 50% capitalist and 50% Marxist.

The US Federal Reserve's money printing functions as a global tax through the Cantillon effect. The first recipients of new money (government, large banks) benefit before inflation spreads. This silently dilutes the wealth of all other dollar holders, both domestically and internationally, effectively transferring purchasing power to entities closest to the money printer.

Only the Fed and commercial banks can create new, spendable money out of thin air. In contrast, credit creation, like in shadow banking, simply reallocates existing money from a saver to a spender. This distinction is crucial for understanding economic stimulus and risk.

Arthur Laffer frames the creation of the Fed as the government taking over a previously private monetary system. He notes that from 1776 to 1913, with a private money system, long-term inflation was zero. Since the Fed's creation, the price level has risen 35-fold, demonstrating the instability introduced by government control.

Executive Order 6102 forced citizens to surrender gold so the government could unilaterally reprice it from $20.67 to $35/ounce a year later. This instantly devalued every dollar in existence by 41%, a move necessitated by years of money printing to counterfeit their own currency.

While many point to ending the gold standard in 1971, the true catalyst for modern economic problems was the 1913 creation of the central bank. This act laid the foundation for the systemic debt creation and currency debasement that fuel today's inflation and inequality.

The Federal Reserve's ability to print money is a direct mechanism to take value from every citizen without legislation. It is mathematically equivalent to government-sanctioned counterfeiting, devaluing currency and transferring wealth from the populace to the government, acting as a tax.

Central banks evolved from gold warehouses that discovered they could issue more paper receipts (IOUs) than the gold they held, creating a fraudulent but profitable "fractional reserve." This practice was eventually co-opted by governments to fund their activities, not for economic stability.

Since WWII, governments have consistently chosen to print money to bail out over-leveraged actors rather than raise taxes or allow failure. This long-term policy has systematically devalued currency and concentrated wealth, creating today's deep economic divide.