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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The previous post, “Guns are here to stay,” received a comment by Mark Robertson, who said in effect, “Poverty worsens gun violence.”
I agree, and in fact, poverty may be the primary (though not only) driver of gun violence.
Since deficit reduction is a certain path to recession and increased poverty, it might be interesting to survey the population, to see how many favor deficit reduction. Oh, who am I kidding? No research is necessary.
We already know that virtually all of the population demands to participate in the suicide pact known as “austerity” — which brings me to a tiny article, tucked at the very bottom of page 3A in the January 7th Sun Sentinel:
McConnell says issue of new taxes is “behind us”
With looming deadlines on the nation’s federal borrowing limit and delayed across-the-board budget cuts, Senate Minority Leader Mich McConnell, R-Ky, told ABC on Sunday that discussions about new taxes are off the table in the upcoming fiscal debate, and that reining in government spending must be the focal point.
“The tax issue is behind us . . . Now it’s time to pivot and turn to the real issue, which is our spending addiction,” he said.
Translation: “We Republicans, with the compliance of the Democrats, now are finished with the tax deal, the most egregious part of which was that gigantic FICA increase on the middle and lower income class salaried people.
“And while all taxes reduce GDP, which hurts the lower 99% income group, that FICA increase really slams these people, which is exactly what the upper 1% pays us to do.
“But we’re not through. Now we get into spending, where we really can punish the .99%. We will cut Social Security benefits by raising the qualifying age and changing the way inflation is measured. We also will cut Medicare and Medicaid benefits.
“Then we’ll reduce the military budget. The military employs all those middle- and lower income soldiers. And the military purchases billions of dollars worth of supplies and equipment from private business, which now will have to fire people. Think how we’ll send millions more Americans into unemployment, which further will widen the gap between the 1% and the 99%.
“After that, we’ll cut other agencies that benefit the public (investment and bank regulation, food and drug regulation, environmental protections, infrastructure repairs, research and development, education, etc.), while we close a few tiny tax loopholes, to make the public think we’re being evenhanded (But don’t worry rich folks; we’ll open up more loopholes, just for you.)
“You may ask, ‘How can we get away with repeatedly punishing the 99% — repeatedly widening the gap between the rich and the rest’? — and the answer is, we have brainwashed the 99% into believing this not only is good but necessary.
“Although that 2% FICA increase alone will be sufficient to drop the nation back into a deep recession, exacerbate unemployment, put marginal earners out on the street and dramatically widen the income gap, we aren’t finished stepping on the people’s necks. We want them to know who their masters are, so they never even think about poking their noses up for air.
“GINI shows the gap between the rich and the rest. See how the gap has grown:
“But, look at the slope of the line beginning 2010. Now, the gap really is widening:
“This will be remembered as the most dramatic widening of the income gap in American history — the time when the the 1%, the President and both political parties successfully conspired to rule the underclasses via impoverishment.
“And by the way, who needs gun control? Let the masses have their guns. When they shoot each other, it just keeps them down.
“This will be historic, and the people demand it — for themselves and for their families.
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 
1.) I made no comments on Rodger’s previous posts regarding gun control, because I felt that Rodger was addressing only a symptom, and not the disease. However Rodger nicely summed up my point by writing, “Poverty may be the primary (though not only) driver of gun violence.”
Yes, and when we combine poverty with a culture that glorifies violence, we get massacres at home and abroad. And since the purpose of austerity is to increase poverty, we can expect more gun violence.
Any attempt to eliminate gun violence will make the violence worse, but we can reduce gun violence (statistically) by demanding that most people have decent jobs decent health care, decent access to food, etc etc etc. That is, we must oppose austerity.
Norwegians experimented with austerity in the late 1980s, and quickly learned that is was disastrous. Thus, Norway has a strong social safety net, does not use the euro, and has not drunk the austerity kool-aid. However the kool-aid is so intoxicating that I expect Norway to soon enter what British PM David Cameron praised as the “age of austerity” — a glorious era of poverty for the 99%, with zero government spending on social programs. For the 1% and politicians in any nation (including Norway) austerity is too tempting an elixir to resist.
Besides, the public demands than they drink it.
2.) Rodger thinks that Congressional politicians may reduce the military budget. I disagree. I think federal outlays for weapons makers will continue to increase – but here again the tide favors the 1%. Rather than sustaining military bases across the USA that help local economies, the federal outlay will increasingly go to ultra-high-priced weapons systems that eliminate human operators. Meanwhile top weapons makers will continue to get an ever-larger share of the pie (e.g. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, General Electric, etc). Smaller players will be acquired or bankrupted.
Therefore increased military spending will do little to help the U.S. economy, since the rich suck up all the money. It is better than no federal spending at all, but our real target is austerity mania, or the notion that, “federal spending must be brought under control.”
3.) “Virtually all of the population demands to participate in the suicide pact known as ‘austerity’.”
Suicide pact indeed. Austerity kills more people than anything, including war. Austerity = famine.
Most people want austerity and death, not only because they have been brainwashed, but because most people are selfish. If a person receives SS or unemployment benefits, then he thinks he “deserves” those benefits, and they should increase. Meanwhile he regards benefits that go to others as “out-of-control government spending.” Try explaining the facts of MS to such a moron, and watch him smugly attack you.
The ship has hit an iceberg. The 1% have lifeboats. The 99% percent insist on dying.
The USA is “Jonestown” in Guyana.
Obama is Jim Jones.
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This is, pure and simple, a Plutocratic successful strategy based upon bogus economic theory vs. reality. Maybe these folks don’t know that it’s bogus, but even if that is the case, they sure as hell know what the results of their pursued acitons are going to be.
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Rodger Malcolm Mitchell:
MMT sounds like a system that can be continually balanced…if the hands on the scale support balance.
My question, asked once before concerns those opposed to the change.
I can conjure up a quick list:
*politicians; both parties
*bond sellers
*financiers
*banks
*add in Fox News and anybody who fears ‘BIG GOVT’
*anybody with a stake in the current ‘game’
Of course there are many more winners…if the change happens. But the political power of these potentials is almost non-existent.
Would MMT enthusiasts overwhelm those opposed by shear numbers?
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Wag,
So far, the bad guys have been winning. But the Platinum Coin Solution is a breakthrough, not only because it solves a nonsensical problem (the debt limit), but more importantly, opens the dialog about how federal finances really operate.
That is the thing that scares the people in your “quick list” — the possibility the public might learn that federal finances are different from state and local finances, and federal taxes do not pay for federal spending.
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My Wag, our greatest enemies are not those in your list, but average people. They are the greatest opponents to change.
Average Americans have collectively adopted a suicide pact, just as Rodger says. American society is like the Heaven’s Gate cult, insistent that cyanide and arsenic (i.e. austerity) are vitamin supplements with health benefits.
The slaves fear liberty much more than their masters fear that the slaves might get liberty. For the slaves, freedom is not merely impossible; it is DREADFUL.
And they are obsessed with killing YOU along with themselves.
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Rodger, this is off-topic, but now more than ever, I insist that we must make banks publicly owned, in order to remove the profit motive.
Today ten banks supposedly agreed to pay $8.5 billion to four million homeowners who the banks defrauded out of their homes via illegal foreclosure. That’s an average of only $2125 per victim. I don’t know where the banks will get that money, but I am confident that the banks will create it out of nothing, and happily continue with their crimes. Meanwhile those 4 million people will continue to suffer. Many had never even been late on any mortgage payment.
But wait…
Perhaps they got what they deserved. After all, most of them demand austerity.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57562604/millions-of-foreclosure-abuse-victims-to-get-checks/
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That is not off topi”c.Rodger, this is off-topic, but now more than ever, I insist that we must make banks publicly owned, in order to remove the profit motive. ”
Why not do what Keynes, Minsky, DeSoto, many others (especially Frederick Soddy “The Role of Money”) called for; SEPARATION
of PFPB from governing. Stop allowing the Private For Profit Banks to print “new money via accumulated interest thereby putting the people into debt that can not be fully repaid.
Perhaps a simple coin may make people aware of “What is really wrong with the present system, and step two could be -stop the stupid practice of paying interest to PFPB for the use of our own money. PFPB=Private for profit banks.
Quote RMM, “A T-security account essentially is a bank savings account, so the purchase of U.S. “debt” simply is a transfer of already existing dollars from a checking account to a savings account. To pay off the “debt,” the FRB merely transfers the already existing dollars back. The only new dollars: Accumulated interest.”
In 100 words or less-You have stated :Where we went wrong.
Why not now try to fix it.
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