Mitchell’s laws:
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor, which leads to civil disorder.
●Cutting the deficit is the government’s method for taking dollars from the middle class and giving them to the rich.
●Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The penalty for ignorance is slavery.
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Scientific American magazine publishes articles that bridge the distance between deep science and popular science. It seldom publishes articles about economics, apparently feeling economics is not a real science (as opposed to, for instance, sociology and psychology [Yikes!] about which it has published many articles.
That should give you some idea of SA’s priorities and biases.
The January, 2013 issue included an article by Jacob Tanenbaum, titled: Creation, Evolution and Indisputable Facts. The article correctly excoriates creationism and other religious pretenders to science:
As a science teacher, I am always curious about people’s attitudes toward what I teach. Since more than 40 percent of U.S. adults believe literally what is written the Book of Genesis — that Earth and the universe were created in six days about 6,000 years ago — and since I was in the neighborhood recently, I decided to visit the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky, run by the Answers in Genesis Ministry.
That shocks him? Creationists are mere amateurs in the dopey beliefs competition. He should visit economics, where surely 99% of U.S. adults believe the federal deficit should be reduced.
In the main lobby, a large display depicts life just after creation. (I)t features a small boy playing while two dinosaurs graze nearby. According to the exhibits, the stars are younger than Earth (they were created on Day 4), and Noah saved all the animal species that we see today from the flood. Earth had its one and only ice age, lasting a few hundred years.)
The hilarious nonsense continued — we’ve seen and heard it all before — but one bit of phrasing struck me:
Creationists begin with answers and work to prove that those answers are right. This is antithetical to the scientific process.
Exactly. We all know it, which is why I continue to be amazed at Scientific American for what its own editors say. In the very same issue as the condemnation of the unscientific method, there appears an article written by the editors themselves.
It includes this frightening thought:
The president and Congress must reach at least three additional objectives for the U.S. to rehabilitate its alarmingly dysfunctional health care system:
1) figure out a way to lower medical costs, which threaten to bankrupt the country, if they continue spiraling upward
2) improve the health outcomes of its patients; and
3) make health care affordable for businesses and individuals
Of the three, #2 is reasonable though essentially a tautology, #3 is misdirective and #1 simply is wrong, wrong, wrong — and unscientific.
#3 seems to assume that businesses and individuals must or should “afford,” i.e. pay for, health care. No alternative like Medicare for Everyone even is suggested. But, perhaps they meant to include that in affordability, so I may be too harsh.
#1 is outrageous, however. It is flat out impossible for medical costs to bankrupt America. First, nothing can bankrupt a nation having the unlimited ability to pay its bills. We are Monetarily Sovereign.
And second, the vast majority of federal health care spending goes to doctors, nurses, hospitals, medical equipment suppliers and pharmaceutical companies in America, thus stimulating, not bankrupting, the country’s economy.
The point is that SA’s editors do exactly what their other article decries: They begin with a belief (impending bankruptcy of America caused by too much federal spending), and work backwards to demonstrate this answer is correct, applicable and logical — with nary a datum to back it up.
I hope to be alive on the day when Scientific American at long last, will publish an article by someone who understands Monetary Sovereignty.
Really SA editors, you will not go to hell for that.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
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Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D — for everyone
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Long-term nursing care for everyone
5. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
6. Salary for attending school (Click here)
7. Eliminate corporate taxes
8. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
9. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99%
No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia. Two key equations in economics:
Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports
#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
From Scientific American editors: (1) figure out a way to lower medical costs, which threaten to bankrupt the country, if they continue spiraling upward”
While this is false in the sense that we can infinitely fund any amount of money for medical costs we have to be careful here to not downplay the danger of health care consuming an ever increasing share of the economy. If health care consumes more and more of the resources of the economy it will crowd out production of other necessary goods and services needed elsewhere.
In general, IMO we must be somewhat careful not to conflate money with #2 (improve the health outcomes of its patients) – value. The solution does not lie in turning over 17% (and rising) of the economy to be run for profit.
It is a misnomer that the private sector can control cost and improve outcomes as one has no choice forego health services when they are needed. For profit insurance companies have the “purchaser” by the short hairs not matter how many of them are competing for their business.
When it comes to health services we are not refrigerators in the sense that we can do without a refrigerator (at some hardship), but when one needs insulin and can’t afford it – foregoing that “purchase” is premature death. Tragically, many Americans are forced to foregoing more efficient treatments too long and dying needlessly early..
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Exactly which resources does health care “consume” and what production is being “crowded out”?
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At full employment/production the biggest thing causing a crowding out effect would be workers, there are others but for brevity I will focus there.
At full employment/production if the share of the economy consumed by health care increases workers would be diverted from other needed productive activities. Although Monetary Sovereignty does change mainstream economics definition of opportunity costs they still exist at full employment/ production capacity and are still operative.
For example, at full employment/production assume we are producing the “right” mix of goods and services that is optimal so there is no inflation. Now, if health care consumes a larger share of the economy more workers would be needed by health care and production of other goods and services would fall. If there is not a corresponding increase in health outcomes and/or an increase in productivity in other parts of the economy we have created an inflationary environment. So at full employment/production the mainstream economics concept of diminishing returns also still exists.
Merely being able to pay for anything is not enough. Without a corresponding increase in the provision of tangible things of value we are wide open to the charge often made by the status quo opposed to Monetary Sovereignty.
Provision of health care in this country is tragic, extremely costly, and inefficient. We can and must change this by providing some form of Medicare for all. In any case, we are a long way from full employment/production and under the current regime set up by the .1% focused on creating paper wealth full employment/production will not happen.
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I can hardly wait until unemployment falls so far as to make the “crowding out” you describe possible. I hope it happens in my lifetime, though I doubt it, as computer-fueled efficiency keeps adding to unemployment.
Prediction: Our next problem will not be too few workers, nor even too few educated workers, but too few hours available for workers.
The solution will be to reduce each worker’s hours and let machine simply do the work, while the government funds more of our needs.
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I am very inclined to agree. However, demographics might be working a bit in our favor as over the next 70 years or so the ratio of “dependent” people (those 0 to 19, and over 65) to workers will be cut in half from 500,000 to 1 to 250.000 to 1.
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Any thoughts about what the productivity of workers will be in 70 (!) years?
How much inflation/deflation, how many recessions/depressions, life span, the real definition of “dependent”?
In 70 years, I suspect the ratio will be 1:1:1, i.e. 1 “dependent” person to 1 human worker to 1 machine caretaker — or not.
My concern: America for the next 50 years.
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Got no clue what productivity or the technology will be in 70 years, I used that time frame because that’s the one austerians are so fond of using as a scare tactic. I used the word “dependent” a more accurate wording would have been half as many workers supporting the young and old the requirement of a just and moral society. We are on the same page. Our changing demographics and productivity trends favor us and not something to fear. I think we are on the same page.
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Rodger, talk about hitting the nail on the head. Using creationism, a total absurdity, derived from old wives tales published by the ancient Jews, as a metaphor for our current “economic populism” is so appropos. The parallels are as scary as they are true.
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As a PS to my comment, if ignorance is bliss, we live in a country of incredibly blissful people, who seem to be determined to protect that bliss at all costs, even if it kills them, in the end.
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