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 richest 1% feel it isn’t enough that President Obama raised FICA again, so that a salaried worker making $50,000 a year will pay an additional $1,000 in taxes. No, there needs to be more pain for the middle- and lower-income 99%. The gap must be wider.
And the richest 1% feel it isn’t enough that the qualifying age for Social Security has been raised two years, and discussions are underway to raise it further. The gap must be wider.
And the 1% feel it isn’t enough that every politician is making plans to cut federal spending, and virtually all of these cuts will negatively impact the 99% far more than the 1%. No, it isn’t enough, it never is enough and it never will be enough. The gap must be wider; there must be ever more pain for the non-rich.
And here it comes:
Governors Push Bigger Reliance on Sales Taxes
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON, New York Times
Published: January 24, 2013WASHINGTON — Republican governors are moving aggressively to cut personal and corporate income taxes, including proposals that would increase reliance on state sales taxes, setting up ambitious experiments in tax reform that could shape what is possible on a national level.
In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal is pushing to repeal the state’s personal and corporate income taxes and make up the lost revenue through higher sales taxes. Gov. Dave Heineman of Nebraska is calling for much the same thing in his state. Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas wants to keep in place what was supposed to be a temporary increase in the state sales tax to help pay for his plan to lower and eventually end his state’s income tax.
They are focusing attention on the idea, long championed by conservatives but accepted up to a point by economists of all stripes, that the economy would be better served by focusing taxation on consumption rather than on income.
Translation: The 1% would be better served by a reduction in their taxes and an increase in taxes more heavily impacting the 99%.
Taxing consumption has the potential to lift economic growth by encouraging more savings and investment.
Translation: Taxing consumption has the potential to reduce consumption, which will reduce economic growth, by encouraging less spending. Reductions in economic growth negatively affect the 99% far more than the 1%.
But the shift could also increase inequality by reducing taxes predominantly for the wealthy, who spend a smaller share of their income than middle- and lower-income people.
Exactly. That is the whole point.
Beyond citing economic growth, the governors and their supporters say their plans would help make their states more competitive in attracting employers and high-skilled workers, simplify their tax systems and curb pressure for more government spending.
Translation: Beyond reducing economic growth, their plans would please their wealthy supporters, punish lower skilled workers and curb pressure for the federal spending that would benefit the 99%. But it would be simple, just as death is a simple solution for disease. (Tax “simplification” is the sales slogan for more onerous taxation.)
For Mr. Jindal and other Republican governors who are considering a presidential run in 2016, there are obvious political benefits to having a robust income tax-cutting record to present to conservative primary voters.
Translation: He’ll be able to say, “Support me. I have a great record for widening the gap, and crushing the 99%.”
But Democrats say the approach would lead to cutbacks in education, health care and other vital services while shifting relatively more of the tax burden to those who can least afford it.
“These aren’t pro-growth policies — they’re shell games that reward the wealthiest Americans at the expense of everyone else,” said Danny Kanner, a spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association.
Again, that is the whole conservative point.
While all politicians, Democrats as well as Republicans, rely on financial support for the wealthy (even more so with the right-wing Supreme Court “Citizens United” decision), the Republicans lately have evolved to become the true “Party of the Rich.” There is no limit, and will be no limit, to their efforts to reward the 1% at the expense of the 99%.
The ongoing goal of royalty always has been to put ever more distance between themselves and the peasants. Enough never is enough.
As recently as Reagan, I tended to vote Republican. But of late, the party has become way too crazy. Today, if you earn less than a half million dollars a year, or have less than perhaps $20 million – $30 million in net assets, you are a fool to vote Republican (unless your hatred for blacks, browns and poor women is stronger than your concerns about your own finances).
Sadly, there are an awful lot of fools in America. And they and their money are being parted.
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 
“” But the shift could (would) also increase inequality by reducing taxes predominantly for the wealthy, who spend a smaller share of their income than middle- and lower-income people.””…who must spend 99% of their income. Get it? Tax all of the income of the lower groups which taxing a small part of the highest group, surely that would help widen the gap.
Why not ask, ‘Can we set a little 1% savings tax on all money NOT spent ?’
Money spent is already taxed since it is someone income.
The 99% needs to learn that the “invisible hand” has provided enough prosperity in this world for all mankind, we just need to get a proper percentage (read close the gaps). Perhaps ideally to where 50% of the people receive 50% of the wealth.
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Rodger says the gap between the 1% and 99% is never wide enough to satisfy the 1% and their minions.
Yes, and the wider the gap becomes, the louder the 1% claim there is no gap at all.
Everything is twisted into its opposite.
Examples…
The more they victimize the 99%, the more they claim to be victims of the 99%. (“The evil peasants want to redistribute wealth.”)
The more theft and genocide the 1% get away with, the more the 1% claim to be “over-regulated.” (They attack in order to “protect themselves” from their victims.)
The more dependency the 1% have on government bailouts (plus rent payments and interest payments from the 99%) the more they claim that the 99% have a “culture of dependency.”
The more they cut Social Security, the more they claim to be “enhancing” Social Security.
The more they expand the financial economy at the expense of the real economy, the more they claim to support the real economy.
The more they destroy the 99% via austerity, the more they call for increased austerity. (When leeches worsen an anemic patient, the solution is to apply more leeches.)
…and so on.
The way to enliven the economy is to kill it. The more we kill it, the more we save it.
What’s depressing is that most people BELIEVE this garbage!
Hence, for both the 1% and 99%, enough is ever enough. The more government social programs are cut, the more average Americans regard other Americans as “welfare queens.”
And so they push each other into the slaughterhouse.
It’s all part of austerity mania, and “starving the beast” (i.e. starving the 99%).
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You’ve reiterated and reiterated, you’ve condemned the majority of the 99% as nothing more than ignorant rabble, now how about proposing some solutions.
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See “Nine Steps to Prosperity” below my signature on every post.
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Sixteen states now allow corporations to withhold state income taxes from employees and keep the money as an incentive to locate to or remain in a state. That means that, in effect, employees pay personal income tax to their company rather than their state government. The 16 states are: Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia (witness the new NCR facility producing “SelfServ” ATM machines no less, that just opened here in Columbus with 900 employees), Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, and Utah. Additionally, the State of Georgia just this month increased the state sales tax by 1%.
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Steve,
The states, being monetarily non-sovereign are, along with their residents, one big box of dollars. Taxing their residents does not increase the dollars in the state.
To survive long term, a state must have more dollars coming in from outside its borders than flow out. For most states, this requires having a positive balance of money flow with the federal government.
Taxing residents merely impoverishes the residents.
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Instead of taxing end consumption, we should tax consumption of land, natural resources, and special privileges at the source. The rate should equal the full market rent for the resources and privileges.
The wealth accumulated in this manner should be used directly to support the community and the excess immediately and equally distributed to every resident, regardless of age, income, gender, nationality, etc…
But until the 1% have to choose between death or submitting to this, I doubt it will happen.
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Zarepheth,
Taxing is not necessary to “support the community” . . . etc.
Personally, I don’t believe the gap should be reduced by bringing down the 1%. I prefer to bring up the 99%.
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As far as money is concerned, that may be true – but real wealth is not the same as money.
If the community believes that communal infrastructure, likes roads, bridges, schools, and so forth are important enough that the community as a whole should build and maintain them; then the community will have to pay for the goods and services necessarily for the construction and maintenance. That means the community has to have some sort of resources to make those payments – resources that are valued by those doing the work or providing the materials.
With current levels of debt and reductions in the money supply available to the majority of people, government could eliminate all taxes, print money, and spur the economy. But at some point, the government’s printing press will have to stop or the government will have to resume taxing. If not, then we will have an inflation of the money supply, leading to reduced value for individual units of money.
Though many people think that property rights should allow private parties to hold land and natural resources at no cost, I completely disagree. My holding of land, prohibits my neighbors from using it. Yet I did not create that land, nor are my neighbors able to create land. The Earth, the land, the water, and all natural resources are the common inheritance of all mankind. Allowing private parties to deny access to these resources without fully compensating the rest of the community is nothing more than turning those private parties into Masters while turning everyone else into Slaves.
Besides land and natural resources, the above principle also applies to anything that comes from or has value because of the community as a whole rather than from individual labor. So privileges such fractional reserve banking, legal monopolies, business licenses and such can also be used be private parties to tax the community. Until these private taxes on the community are removed, there will always be massive inequalities in wealth between those who have these privileges and those who don’t.
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You said, “But at some point, the government’s printing press will have to stop or the government will have to resume taxing. If not, then we will have an inflation of the money supply, leading to reduced value for individual units of money.”
This will be true when we are at full employment of resources, i.e. people, oil, land, or other necessary elements. I hope you live long enough to see that (Which means I’m wishing you a very, very long life.)
Meanwhile, since the U.S. became Monetarily Sovereign, there has been no relationship between federal deficit spending and inflation. Why?
(I wonder why all of a sudden this blog is hearing from the “government-money-printing-causes-inflation” people. What next? Mentions of the Weimar Republic and Zimbabwe?)
Regarding land ownership, do you feel people should have to build houses and buildings, and plant crops on land everyone owns and has a right to use? No fences?
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Regarding land ownership, I understand why we allow private parties to reserve some land for themselves. Homeowners would not invest in their homes if they did not have a guarantee of enjoying their investment. Likewise for farmers planting crops, mining companies extracting minerals, business building shops and offices.
But each private claim on land diminishes what is available to everyone else. To balance both private needs and communal needs, I believe the community as whole should own the land and natural resources, and lease it at full market rent to private parties. This can be done either directly or through property taxes. The money or other resources accumulated from the rent should be used to pay for community projects like roads, schools, medical care and after community needs are paid for, the remaining should be divided equally and given to each member of the community – like a dividend for their share of the communal resources.
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Regarding my comment on inflation, I agree that until we closely approach full productive capacity, the increasing money supply should not affect general price levels.
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Zarepheth,
When you say “the community as a whole,” what you really are talking about is a government, local or national. You seem to be suggesting that governments own all land, and lease it to users.
Actually, some of that happens out west, but the notion of the Bureau of Land Management owning all land, with bureaucrats doling it out, is a bit frightening to me.
Anyway, by leasing the land, you effectively diminish “what is available to everyone else.” If I rent some land, you can’t have it.
Also, you want “the money or other resources accumulated from the rent (to) be used to pay for community projects . . .” How is that different from property taxes, which are what local communities now use?
And, of course, the federal government needs no taxes to pay for its projects.
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Unfortunately, “community as a whole” usually means dealing with a bureaucratic government. A lot of people are frightened by that prospect. But most of that fear comes from government corruption, the vast majority of that corruption is financed by the 1%.
You are partially correct in your comparison of rent and property taxes. In one sense, the community’s ownership and control of land and natural resources is evidenced by property taxes and eminent domain. On the other hand, the majority of real estate taxes are not taxes on the land but the improvements to the land.
For my home, I own two parcels of land. According to local zoning ordinances and neighborhood housing association rules, both could have similar sized houses on them. However, I’ve built a house and live on one parcel and use the other as an extension of my yard. If the community taxed me on my land usage, I’d pay the same amount of taxes on both properties – and each property’s tax would be the same as my neighbors in this development. Instead my “unimproved” parcel has almost no tax (which is far less than the value I deny the rest of the community) while paying quite a bit of tax on my house (which is probably close to, or possibly more than, the value I deny the rest of the community). My neighbors taxes vary from my own due to the value of their homes, not the value of the land.
If you’ve not done so already, you should read Henry George’s “Progress and Poverty”: http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm. He does a much better job than me at explaining how private ownership of land is the root cause of poverty.
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If not for the details of your particular “local zoning ordinances” rent would be identical with property taxes.
You may think you don’t like personal control over land, but all you really are complaining about is the specifics of your zoning ordinances.
Outside of a small, tribal economy, someone has to own land, the government or individuals. Do you prefer government ownership or personal ownership?
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