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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.
●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.
●Everything in economics devolves to motivation.
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[Slow slicing (Lingchi)] Death by a thousand cuts: In this form of execution, the condemned person was killed by using a knife to methodically remove portions of the body over an extended period of time. Wikipedia)
The richest 1% wish to cut federal spending. They claim “big government” is bad. Why? No one knows.
However, we do know the vast majority of federal spending benefits the 99%. The 1% wish to widen the gap between them and the 99%. It is the gap that makes the 1% rich and powerful. Without the gap, no one would be rich, and the greater the gap, the greater the power of the rich — and the gap has been growing.
[Wikipedia: A “Gini” coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality, where everyone has an exactly equal income. A coefficient of 100 expresses maximal inequality, where only one person has all the income)]
So, at the behest of the 1%, we cut Social Security; cut Medicare; cut aid to education; cut anti-poverty initiatives; cut the military; cut science; cut research and development; cut bank, food and drug regulation. Each day, little pieces are cut from America’s greatness.
And now, another little piece of America is cut:
Washington Post
Postal Service plans to end Saturday mail delivery by August
Posted by Ed O’Keefe on February 6, 2013The financially struggling U.S. Postal Service announced Wednesday that it plans to stop delivering mail on Saturdays — but will continue delivering packages — starting Aug. 1. The move will save about $2 billion a year for the postal service, The Postal Service said that it suffered a $15.9 billion net loss for fiscal 2012, which ended Sept. 30. That’s three times the loss recorded a year earlier.
Though the Postal Service is a quasi-governmental, self-funding entity, its worker compensation and retirement plans are tied to the federal budget.
Is the Postal Service “financially struggling.” Yes, because Congress has forced it to struggle. The Postal Service is an agency of our Monetarily Sovereign government. Because the federal government never can run short of dollars, no agency of the federal government will run short of dollars, unless Congress deliberately makes that happen.
What will the $2 billion savings accomplish? Not much, against a $15.9 billion annual loss. But it will reduce Postal Service employment and payroll. Impoverishing the 99% is the easiest way to widen the gap, and that is the real goal of the rich.
Will the U.S. suffer great harm from “no-mail-on-Saturdays“? No, this is just one more small slice in the death by a thousand cuts our once-great nation suffers at the hands of the wealthy. Diminishing the people is how the wealthy maintain and grow their power.
A majority of Americans support ending Saturday mail, according to national polls conducted in recent years, and President Obama has proposed halting deliveries as part of his budget-cutting proposals.
Why would a majority of Americans want less mail delivery? There is but one reason. They have been brainwashed by the wealthy into believing the Postal Service needs to be “cut in order to save it”. Does that sound familiar?
It should, because it’s the mantra of the rich: “Social Security needs to be cut in order to save it.” “Medicare needs to be cut in order to save it.” “Aid to the poor needs to be cut in order to save it.”
According to the politicians and the media, all controlled by the rich, benefits to the middle- and lower-classes need to be cut in order to “save” them. That is what the 99% has been told and that is what they believe. If you are part of the 99%, why do you believe what the media and politicians tell you?
The gap grows. as America diminishes. The rich do not diminish. Only the 99% diminish. Bit by bit. Slice by slice by slice. . .
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 
Bit by bit by bit America diminishes
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Hopefully most readers here know that in 2006, Congress (controlled entirely by Republicans at the time) passed the “Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.” This forced the Postal Service to pre-pay health benefits for the next 75 years during a 10-year stretch. In the past five years, those prepayments have totaled about $25 billion. The agency’s “deficit” during that time has run about $27 billion. Obviously this was done by Congress for the benefit of the 1%, to make the USPS to appear to be just another failing government entity and make the USPS ripe for “privatization.” Remove these crazy pre-payments — a requirement that no other government agency endures and no private industry would even consider — and the Postal Service would be in the “black”,even though, in NO WAY does it have to be.
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Note-the figures listed above only account for the years 2007 to 2011. They do not include 2012’s net loss of $15.9 billion. Something really stinks if the USPS tripled its net loss in just one year.
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RMM,
I’m expecting a post by you soon on the latest CBO release. I couldn’t believe my ears today when I flipped on the news: “GDP is projected to slow down and unemployment to worsen, but all anyone is talking about is how the deficit is going to decrease…”
But of course none of them make the leap to “Maybe the deficit should increase!”
MSM… Please. Connect. The. Dots.
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The dots connect to the 1%, who pay Congress to widen the gap. The missing discussion involves motive. For some reason, even those who understand the truths of Monetary Sovereignty feel uncomfortable discussing motive.
But, without motive, the whole process seems unbelievable. The public thinks, “The President, the entire Congress all the media etc. can’t all be wrong, so they must be right.”
Motive is the basis for the Big Lie.
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The 1% and their puppets want to trigger a full-blown austerity death spiral, like Europe’s.
Once the frenzy begins, it is difficult to stop, since average people do not understand what is happening. They are too busy trying to survive.
Austerity worsens the depression. The depression reduces tax revenue, which legitimizes more austerity. Always more.
The result is total poverty for most peasants.
However the peasants do not blame politicians for this.
They blame each other.
That’s why they are peasants.
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When a police detective wants to discover who committed a crime, the detective makes a list of suspects. Then he applies three factors to each suspect. The person that all three factors apply to most is the most likely suspect.
The three factors are…
1. Means
2. Motive
3. Opportunity
The most important of these is motive. Indeed, when a crime has been committed, our natural first reaction is, “Who would want to kill / rob him, and why?”
That is, “Who had a motive?”
If the detective cannot establish a motive, then he finds it difficult to pin the crime on any suspect.
In economics too, the most important factor is motive. Without understanding motives, we cannot understand how the system works. Nor can we give the public a motive to change it.
However, motive is the one factor that almost all economics professors (including MMT people) pretend does not exist. Whenever Rodger mentions the crucial factor of motive on someone else’s MTT blog, the response from readers is always silence.
Why this silence? It seems to me that, logically, there are two possible answers. You make your own choice…
1. Rodger is flat wrong.
2. The MMT people are cowards, or fools, or both.
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As an economics student at UMKC, I’ll respond to this as well as Rodger’s response to my comment above, here…
I understand there is a wish for MMT people to become more vocal about motive in order to gain traction, but the primary role of the academic is to provide the scholarship, i.e. the evidence, that is then the bullets and the armor of the activists.
These roles can overlap, academic and activist. But I think it’s naive to call academics (including MMT people) cowards. The nature of their career, at least of those produing quality material, is to avoid speculation without hard evidence. Speculating without hard evidence is akin to bad scholarship, and sholarship is what academics do.
Though there is some hard evidence for motive. For example, there is a video clip of Greenspan explaing to Paul Ryan, I’m paraphrasing: ‘there’s nothing to prevent the government from creating the money it needs (to meet social security payments)’
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“I think it’s naive to call academics (including MMT people) cowards.”
That sounds a bit like a cop-out.
1.) You say the MMT academics at the UMKC avoid mentioning motive because they want to avoid “speculating.” If that is true, then why do they speculate that 535 congressmen, plus countless Treasury bureaucrats and media shills, are simply “misguided” about economics?
2.) Randy Wray has been teaching MMT for over 15 years. Isn’t it time that he and Stephanie Kelton admit that the purpose of austerity is to strip wealth from the public? Why do they talk about everything except what truly matters? Why do most MMT bloggers do the same? (Granted, a handful of MMT bloggers admit the truth about motive, e.g. Mike Norman. Also, Bill Black and Michael Hudson of the UMKC admit the truth, although they don’t specialize in MMT.)
3.) You say, “The primary role of the academic is to provide the scholarship, i.e. the evidence, which is then the bullets and the armor of the activists.”
From my perspective, authentic scholarship in economics must include the role of greed and irrationality – i.e. human motives.
4.) UMKC academics claim that “taxes drive money.” That is, federal taxes are needed to control inflation, and to maintain the dollar’s fiat legitimacy. Rodger tells them that inflation can be controlled via interest rates, while dollar legitimacy can be maintained via state, county, and municipal taxes. Hence there is no absolute need for federal taxes. The UMKC academics agree with Rodger on this – yet they continue to claim that there is an absolute need for federal taxes. To me, people who knowingly contradict themselves have a character flaw. Is it then so “naïve” to ask if they are cowards? What’s going on here? What are the motives of the UMKC people?
5.) Stephanie Kelton sometimes mentions that people like Paul Ryan and Pete Peterson demand austerity, but she never mentions why they do. Is Kelton so terrified of motive that she cannot even hint at it obliquely? When Kelton, Wray, and Mosler of the UMKC are invited to give lectures, or to appear as panelists on TV shows, they say that too many people think that reducing the deficit is more important than creating jobs. However, they never go the extra step and say, “It’s time we note exactly who is pushing the austerity-instead-of-jobs message, and exactly why they are doing it.” If they don’t like the word “motive,” then they could use a different word such as “agenda,” as in “What is the REAL agenda of the austerity pushers?”
But no, they just repeat the same comments over and over.
6.) Cowardice is not restricted to professors of economics. All academia is ruled by “group-think.” Galileo’s most fervent enemies were not clergymen, but fellow academics. When Ignaz Semmelweis said that germs cause disease, his fellow doctors and academics kidnapped him, locked him in an insane asylum, and made sure he quickly died there. In 2006 the Duke University faculty crucified several members of the Duke Lacrosse for alleged rape. In many American schools, the entire faculty subscribes to religious “creationism.”
Examples of academic “group-think” are endless. There are also examples of people who have stood up to this. The MMT people at UMKC have stood up partially to mainstream economics, but to become true pioneers, they need to be honest and admit the whole truth about austerity.
That is my opinion, anyway.
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You understand Monetary Sovereignty and you’re a good researcher. Stephanie’s Email is keltons@umkc.edu You might wish to drop her a note.
I’d tone down the anger and accusations, but stating the facts couldn’t hurt, especially coming from another voice. She’s a good,sincere person, who is interviewed often, and she might be convinced to say to her interviewers something like:
As I said, perhaps additional voices would help. And she does answer Emails.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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The anger is my reaction to austerity (which I regard as genocide) and to the way that many MMT people play academic parlor games that can only continue as long as the game players keep reality at arm’s length.
If I comment on someone else’s blog, I do not have the same caustic tone, since I am a stranger there. (I rarely comment on other blogs, since my comments are deleted more than half the time, no matter how polite and courteous my tone is.)
Regarding a possible e-mail to Ms. Kelton, I may do that.
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Mark, I empathize.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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Just as Roger says he does below, I empathize with your anger. There are days and moments when the situation in general or specific bits of news just about put me into a near- suicidal- and/or homicidal-rage. So I suppose that SK, for example, could talk a little about why she thinks they are doing it, if that is she has an opinion about that. OTOH, I think there is some value in having her and others maintain a somewhat “cool” and “academic” approach and sticking to actual facts with empirical evidence. SK can become quite passionate about the topic, but she always sticks to facts. There are other voices who can, and do, speak to motive. I have posted before on these pages about the essay “What is Conservatism and What is Wrong With It?” by Philip Agre ( http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/conservatism.html )
These voices should be more widely heard. We need both the rational fact-stating and the more speculative, motive-questioning kind of approach. As awesome as Stephanie Kelton is, one person cannot do everything or fulfill every role. Respectfully, Tim
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Black and Hudson do speak much more forcefully about motive, so point taken about cowardice and how being an academic is not a sufficient explanation for not speaking of motive. Just to be clear: my comment was only my opinion of the situation. I cannot speak for Kelton, Wray, etc. on why they choose not to speak much of motive.
Is the reason you shared Kelton’s email address to suggest I should email her asking why she doesn’t speak about motive?
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Yes, hearing from several people might help, and she seems to be the most public voice we have. Does lots of interviews, so perhaps if enough people ask her about motive, she might incorporate that into her comments.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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If I had to guess, while you may be right that it’s cowardice, I think it’s probably purposeful tactic to not get into motive. Kelton is just starting to get mainstream media attention. Would she lessen those chances by talking about motive? Would she make herself seem “frgine” and not worthy of “adult, serioues conversations” ? Maybe, maybe not. The mainstream media power-structure is owned by the 0.1%. Maybe she weighs in her head that calmly trying to spread the ‘sovereign currency issuer’ idea is the best long-term strategy to try to keep building momentum and getting modern money idea legitimized.
I understand why you call it cowardice. But do you think any idea has much of a chance of entering the collective mind of society without mainstream media attention? If it doesn’t, then tact might not be a bad strategy.
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Tim,
I partly agree with the notion that academics should focus on facts rather than on speculation. However, as academics, they are supposed to question, which is why I suggest they ask the questions I suggested to Mark Robertson.
When put in the form of a question, it implants ideas without speculation.
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By the way, folks, the MMT people promote the idea of the Jobs Guarantee, for which there is no proof.
So the notion that the 1% are paying to sink the 99% has not been proved to six sigmas, is not a good excuse for MMT avoiding the subject.
Could it be that Mark’s “cowardice” idea is correct? Or could it be that MMT didn’t think of it first? Or what?
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RMM,
I completely agree with you on planting seeds by asking questions. That is reasonable speculation that I think Kelton could put forward without sounding fringe and conpiracy theory-ish in MSM spotlight: e.g. “We know that austerity does not work, we know it makes middle and lower income people worse off. Maybe we should be asking the question of those who push austerity: why do you want to make life more difficult on most Americans?”
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Maybe Ms. Kelton’s problem concerns taboos.
Taboos are all about power. They maintain power relationships. Every society has a pecking order that is sustained by taboos. To question the taboos is to subvert the pecking order, and thereby invite society’s wrath. The questioner is ruined by the mob. He ends up silenced (i.e. fired, imprisoned, or dead).
Professors in all nations know they will be terminated if they question their society’s taboos. In the USA, for example, no professor dares violate the taboo against questioning the “war on terror,” or questioning the Jewish “holocaust,” or questioning the official narrative on 9-11. Academia has a long list of taboos (forbidden questions).
Just as every society has taboos, so does every sub-group within each society have taboos.
Each academic field has taboos (i.e. forbidden topics). In economics, forbidden topics include facts, reality, and human motives. Greed and malice may not be mentioned, and therefore do not “exist.”
The taboos that govern a group only remain powerful if everyone in the group pretends that the taboos do not exist. Thus, taboos are unwritten and unspoken rules. Nobody speaks of them, yet everybody knows them and obeys them.
For example, in modern Western societies, it is forbidden to admit in public that the purpose of austerity is to widen the gap between the rich and the rest. Everyone knows this, but few dare speak it in public. Such unspoken codea are how society maintains its pecking order.
Therefore, perhaps Stephanie Kelton fears violating taboos, especially the taboo against admitting that the purpose of austerity is to widen the gap. She is so terrified of the taboo that I suspect she dares not mention the truth even in private with her friends.
I can understand why she does not challenge the taboo directly, but she doesn’t even do it indirectly. She never so much as hints at it. She mentions the “Pete Peterson’s of the world,” but she never says WHY they are fanatics for austerity.
I would like to see more from her. I do not ask for guts and daring; just some creativity.
An example would be her asking the questions that Rodger posed above.
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Do these professors have tenure? If they do, they shouldn’t feel so vulnerable when they ask provocative questions. They need to ask questions.
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