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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It’s the same the world over. The richest 1% convince the 99% that the poor deserve their poverty, and helping the poor only “spoils” them. The gap between the rich and the rest should be increased, because the rich are the “makers” and the poor are the “takers.”
Disdain for those below fosters greater and greater gaps, which in turn, fosters more disdain, in an unending cycle of greater control by the rich over the rest.
Here is what is happening in Japan, followed by typical American responses.
Welfare payments to be slashed ¥74 billion to root out the comfortably poor
Japan Times, Jan 28, 2013Welfare benefits will be slashed by ¥74 billion over a three-year period starting from fiscal 2013, after a government panel found that some people are making more on the dole than the average low-income person who is not spends on living costs, it was learned Sunday.
Note the misleading language. The people are making more from welfare than the average of low income living costs. (Did you think this said welfare recipients received more than the average low income person? If so, that is what you were meant to think.)
Anyway, what is wrong with welfare exceeding average low income living costs? Isn’t that a good thing?
Finally, “comfortably poor“? Really? Is that like being stupidly happy with their poverty?
Since the standard benefit payment provides the basis for determining other levels of public assistance, such as subsidies for school expenses, reducing it may also affect low-income earners even if they are not on welfare.
The actual amount doled out per household will be slashed by a maximum of 10 percent from the current level, which is based on age, number of family members and area of residence.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called for the swift enactment of the budget because it “will enable us to implement economic measures in a seamless manner and tackle major challenges, such as reconstruction (from the 2011 quake and tsunami) and disaster prevention.”
Like America, Japan is Monetarily Sovereign, so has the unlimited ability to pay for reconstruction and disaster prevention, and has no need to cut welfare payments. That is basic economics, but is not the point of this post.
The point of this post is the American public’s reaction. Here are real examples from the comments section of this article:
“It is refreshing to see one government take a stand. America still is using the welfare system to enslave the poor. Then their continued support s required in order to continue to receiving welfare. They will never improve their lives from what they are today.”
The rich have convinced the 99% that welfare is slavery and poverty is freedom. George Orwell would be proud.
“Japan has a labor SHORTAGE problem. There are people collecting welfare benefits that are able to work. By cutting the welfare benefits you encourage people to re-enter the workforce. Hopefully thses people will start to climb the ladder again and work their way out of poverty. Welfare keeps people poor.”
Translation: Welfare recipients are a bunch of lazy sloths, who would rather live in poverty than work. How do I know? The rich told me so.
“In the US the desire of Obama is to increase the number of comfortably poor. No matter that, like Japan, the US is bankrupt, too.”
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“Why can’t the USA do something like this to get the life long welfare leeches off the public hand out? And don’t say raise minimum wages. Stupid! That would increase the cast of everything. Did you hear me? I said EVERYTHING you want to buy would go UP! Stupid people everywhere.”
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“No matter where in the world you live the message to the poor is the same. Get a job!!! Any job!!!”
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“The U.S. should do the same thing, the $$$ saved could then be pished away by the dems on something else.”
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“Cut off their welfare and, since they have all senses of self reliance and personal responsibility, they will soon become uncomfortably poor and right back on the dole.”
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“Japan has a 220% debt to GDP ratio. This debt to GDP ratio is one of the reasons the country is incapable of competing anymore. It is all the debt your parents rang up when times were good. Well, the payment is due and it is your responsibility.”
When our population believes the rich are inherently superior to the rest, and the poor are lazy bums who deserve their poverty, what hope is there for America, today?
And when our population insists that our Monetarily Sovereign nation is “broke,” and that our children will have to pay the debt, what hope is there for America’s future?
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 
“Why can’t the USA do something like this to get the life long welfare leeches off the public hand out? And don’t say raise minimum wages. Stupid! That would increase the cast of everything. Did you hear me? I said EVERYTHING you want to buy would go UP! Stupid people everywhere.”
Wow – the commenter who wrote that may be the most brainwashed person on the planet.
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government workers are lazy ones it their job ensure no poverty yet do nothing and our taxes pay those lazy entitled poop heads.
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Not sure how you have decided that (all) “government workers are lazy, and that “it is their job to ensure no poverty.”
Most workers, government or private, have jobs that don’t give them the power to do much more than what they are told. Which workers are the ones you think have the responsibility to “ensure no poverty.”
Also, so far as taxes, federal “poop heads” are not paid with tax dollars. The federal government creates new dollars, ad hoc, when it pays workers. Even if the federal government collected $0 taxes, it could continue spending, forever.
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The low to middle income debt hawks are the same clowns that want all teachers to pack heat. There really is no way to reach them and they will always torpedo their own interests before changing any of their positions. I live off a pension from the Railroad Retirement Board. The rail carriers and I paid taxes into it but the funds coming to me are exchanges in accounts between the federal govt. and me. Last year Eddie Munster Ryan was trumpeting “improvements” to Railroad Retirement (slashing benefits). Sounds good to me; let’s get rid of them altogether. I won’t have to make a house payment, pay for internet, go shopping, buy gasoline – the list is endless. My wife and I can become happy bums and live on the rainy streets of Seattle. Everyone will benefit, especially my child and her children as I will help pay down the debt that is hurting the country. First, though, I need to buy a gun while I still have money.
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Rodger, if you want to become even more enraged and pissed off at Japan Times, please read “Krugman’s worn out ideas for Japan won’t fly..” from today’s edition. Simply stunningly moronic pablum from Bloomberg contributor and former 12 year resident of Tokyo, William Pesek, As usual, Pesek has zero clue about sovereign debt or Monetary Sovereignty. The “article” is pure confidence fairy bullshit.
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Thanks Steve,
Nearly every paragraph is nonsense. But what can you expect? The man works for one of the wealthiest people on earth.
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Steve, you say that William Pesek of the Tokyo Times has zero clue about sovereign debt or Monetary Sovereignty.
I disagree. I say that all pro-austerity morons in the media are conscious toadies for the rich.
They call for genocide in order to avoid being doomed to work at McDonald’s or Wal-Mart alongside everyone else.
By the way, that moron Pesek says, “Shinzo Abe’s big idea is fiscal pump-priming and getting the Bank of Japan to do more to stimulate growth.”
Nonsense. The Bank of Japan is currently engaged in the equivalent of quantitative easing, which is not stimulative. Indeed it is anti-stimulative, since it gives banks another reason not to lend. When the central bank buys all the garbage assets of other banks, the other banks have an incentive to speculate, not to lend. They can’t lose.
What does any of this have to do with Paul Krugman? Pesek doesn’t say.
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1.) The article cited by Rodger says the Japanese government will cut welfare by 74 billion yen over three years. That is only $816 million US dollars, but Shinzo Abe is the Japanese Obama, meaning this will be the first of many cuts in Japan’s social services. The article itself notes that the new cuts will have ripple effects that hurt the poor.
Austerity fever comes to Japan.
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2.) Rodger writes, “The rich have convinced the 99% that welfare is slavery and poverty is freedom. George Orwell would be proud.”
Yes, and austerity is prosperity. (But only for the rich.)
I do not blame the rich alone for this Orwellian madness. Reader comments show that most people are stupid, selfish, and self-righteous. That is, most people insist on being slaves. The rich oblige them.
An example is the moron who claims that “America still is using the welfare system to enslave the poor.”
In this idiot’s view, famine = freedom, while Monetary Sovereignty = hyperinflation.
Incidentally, American “welfare” ended 16 years ago. Today there is only Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which is like unemployment benefits. Recipients must have children, and must continually prove that they are searching for jobs (which don’t exist). Each individual has a lifetime limit of five years, after which he may collect no more benefits (children be damned).
Or perhaps the above cretin regards food stamps and SS benefits as “welfare.”
During the 1930s depression, the US government created Aid to Dependent Children to help impoverished families with children, and widowed mothers with children. The above nitwit would regard this support as “slavery.” (The program no longer exists.)
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3.) Regarding the nit-wit who claims that Japan has a labor shortage, he implies that Japanese people should be cut off from government support, since they are lazy.
First of all, Japan has a jobs shortage, not a labor shortage. The Japanese unemployment rate is 4.5 – to – 5.5%, depending on which source you read, and it is rising because Japanese corporations are moving abroad to exploit slave wages. Indeed, because of rising unemployment, the Japan Times article says that welfare recipients in Japan hit a record high of 2.14 million in October 2012.
Still, I point out that this is less than 2% of Japan’s population, whereas 15% of America’s population receives food stamps. So, according to the above moron, average Americans need famine and genocide even more than do average Japanese.
Second, even with rising unemployment and creeping austerity, Japan still has the world’s third largest GDP, despite having only 40% America’s population, and only 9% of China’s population. Does that sound like “lazy”? I lived in Japan for two months, and the Japanese seemed like workaholics. Trains and subways were always packed, and passengers were all asleep from exhaustion. Even passengers standing up were dozing because of stress and long hours.
However, that was before the current depression with its global austerity mania.
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Mark, you are right about Japanese workaholics. During one of my months in Japan (visiting businesses), I saw one of the secretaries without shoes.
She had fallen asleep, standing up, on the subway. The car was so packed, when the crowd exited at the first big station, she was carried out onto the platform — without her shoes.
She walked a 1/2 mile to the office, worked all day, and went home — all without her shoes.
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