–The moneyed-class’s myth of private sector superiority

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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We introduced “More examples of the rich stealing from you” this way:

The upper 1% income group wants to increase the gap between them and the 99%, because it is the gap that gives them power. Without the gap, there would be no 1%, and the greater the gap, the greater their power over you.

So, to widen the gap, the 1% pays politicians (via campaign contributions and promises of lucrative jobs later) to lie about the need for austerity. Further, the 1% owns the media, to promulgate the politicians lies.

The 1% has its fingerprints all over nearly every lie about our economy. Example: The 1% loves to claim the private sector always is superior to the government. As a politician owned by the 1%, Ronald Reagan famously blamed the government for all problems (“Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”)

In the book titled, In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein wrote about “privatization,” where the 1% try to change elements of the public sector to private ownership, from which the 1% can take a profit while reducing benefits to the middle class. An example: George W. Bush wanting to privatize Social Security. This would have made Social Security benefits far less secure, while enormously profiting Wall Street billionaires.

Bush’s excuse: This would “save” Social Security. (The 1% always “saves” the middle- and lower-classes by reducing their benefits.)

As Historian Chalmers Johnson said, “The Shock Doctrine rips away the ‘free trade’ and globalization ideologies that disguise a conspiracy to privatize war and disaster and grab public property for the rich few” — as part of “our headlong flight back to feudalism under the guise of social science and ‘freedom.'”

Perhaps I am an especially sensitive Chicagoan because Mayor Richard M. Daley sold Chicago’s hugely profitable Skyway to a private firm (that promptly raised tolls and will keep raising them), and if that weren’t sufficient he also sold Chicago’s parking meters to a private firm (that also promptly raised rates sky high).

Here is another example from http://www.bradblog.com:

U.S. Postal Service Victimized by GOP Privatization Scheme

Contrived deficits part of broader Right wing plan to eliminate government as source of public service...
By ERNEST A. CANNING on 2/8/2013,

The massive operating deficits that have driven the U.S. Post Office to announce an end to delivery of First Class mail on Saturdays are not the product of postal service ineptitude, nor increased public access to emails nor from competition by private delivery services like UPS or FedEx.

The U.S. Postal Service has been victimized by the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA), which embodies a scheme designed to destroy the constitutionally established U.S. Postal Service in order to privatize mail and parcel delivery.

At the peak of the USPS’ profitability and productivity, a then Republican-controlled Congress forced the U.S. Postal Service “to pre-fund 75 years worth of pensions” in the span of ten years, “a requirement not made of any other public or private institution.” If not for the onerous and unprecedented requirements of the PAEA, the U.S. Postal Service, which is not funded by any taxes, would now be experiencing a $1.5 billion surplus.

Many brainwashed individuals have written claiming “The government doesn’t create anything,” and asserting that everything the government does could be done better in the private sector. These claims are ridiculous:

1. The government creates and/or funds many things: Our highways, bridges, dams, parks, healthcare, GPS satellites, education. And then there is the accelerometer (used in the WII), bar coding and through the National Science Foundation the government funds massive amounts of research. NASA alone has been a fountain of inventions.

2. The private sector has a profit motive, which can lead to criminality; the government does not have this burden.

3. The private sector is dollar limited; the government is not.

the ultimate absurdity came during the Sept. 13, 2011 ‘Tea Party’ Presidential Primary Debate when former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) went beyond a call for the elimination of the of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Romney suggested that FEMA’s critical disaster relief function should be privatized.

Hurricane Sandy so exposed the folly of privatized disaster relief that the mendacious Republican Presidential candidate evaded reporters and the issue, even as he shamelessly sought to exploit the disaster via a staged photo op that included fake food donations.

That Romney was an obvious liar is beyond debate. But he is not alone:

A wide swath of the corporate-owned mainstream media has failed to report the fact that the forces of privatization, not the rise of email, explains the U.S. Postal Service’s economic woes.

And of course, not one bought-and-paid-for politician admits he/she has been bribed by the 1% to stomp on the post office, just as none of them admit the favoring austerity for the same reasons.

When I tell MMT believers to reveal that the 1% are bribing politicians to vote against the good of the 99%, they respond that there is no proof of this. I’m not sure what sort of proof they need, but there are plenty of strong clues. Consider this article from the Naked Capitalism blog:

Koch Brothers Driving Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada to Cut Out Venezuelan Oil

Paul Jay of the Real News Network interviews Greg Palast, a BBC investigative reporter and author of Vultures’ Picnic. It starts with a question that’s so obvious that nobody’s asking it: Why are we building a pipeline to ship oil to Texas? Texas has oil!

It’s because the Kochs want it. Why do they want it? Right now they’re getting their oil—the only place they can get lots of heavy crude oil— from Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela. And one thing about Chávez, is that he doesn’t let go of his nation’s oil on the cheap.

On the other hand, the Canadians are selling for about $33 a barrel less. So you’re saving about $35 a barrel if you can get the oil from Canada as opposed to Venezuela.

And that’s why we are talking about endangering the most sensitive water sources in America—to have a pipe with the most polluting oil on the planet, to drag it all the way from Canada down to Texas so that the Koch brothers at Flint Hills can make about $2 billion a year by risking the aquifers across the United States.

In short, the private sector, which is populated by self-anointed “makers” is run by the 1% to the disadvantage of the public, the denigrated “takers.” And all because the American public trusts the private sector (that same private sector that caused the great recession) but does not trust the public sector (whose deficit spending takes us out of the recession.)

So the 1%’s private lumber companies shall manage our forests, and the private oil companies will build ecologically harmful pipelines. At the insistence of private companies, the government will reduce Social Security and Medicare (while claiming to save them), cut aid to the poor, destroy the postal service to benefit FedEx and UPS (via “Postal Accountability and Enhancement”), increase taxes on the middle class (by “broadening the base” and raising FICA), reduce federal supervision of food processing, drug manufacturing, banks and Wall Street investors, while polluting our water and air (for efficiency).

Yes, the private sector always is better for the economy, so long as the economy is named “Koch.”

Watch for these next steps: Additional austerity and a balanced federal budget, as more federal initiatives become private — disasters for the middle- and lower-income classes, but bonanzas for the very rich, because the gap will be widened and more power will flow to the 1%.

It all is made possible because the 1% has brainwashed the 99% into digging their own graves.

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