The Meaning of America

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 motive.

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What has made America great? We were founded by brave men, moral giants who dared fight for liberty, risking their lives and fortunes, not just for their own liberty, but liberty for all.

There was a time when this is was the meaning of America’s greatness:

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand,
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name,
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command,
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she
With silent lips. ‘Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’”

Today, we are led by moral and intellectual midgets, frightened little cowards, selfishly clinging to what they have amassed for themselves, uncaring about others, who now that they are here, would build a wall of meanness around America, to prevent others from achieving the American Dream.

They are here only because they or their ancestors were given sanctuary by benevolent Americans, and now, this is their mantra of meanness:

“Screw you. I’ve got mine.”

Senate group considers large reduction in family visas as part of immigration deal
By David Nakamura, Thursday, March 14,

Key senators are developing plans that would make it harder for U.S. citizens to get visas for their family members while easing the path for more high-skilled foreign workers, according to aides and advocates familiar with negotiations over an emerging immigration deal.

Translation: We don’t give a damn about families. America is not about families. America is politics — and me.

The plans — which would run counter to policies that have been in place for generations — are part of ongoing talks between a bipartisan group of eight senators, whose bill is expected to serve as the template for a comprehensive immigration deal between Congress and the White House.

Translation: “Bipartisan” is a magic word — a way to provide political cover for bad ideas. Americans love “bipartisan,” so will agree to anything with that title.

The senators agree that a limited number of people should be allowed into the country each year; the question is who those people should be.

“Right now you get green cards to adult children, to grandparents,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said. “What I want to do is reserve green cards based on the economic needs of the country, and we’ll do something for families.

But the goal for me is to replace a chained migration immigration system with an economic-based immigration system.”

Translation: Dollars are more important than families.

Sen. Graham was the son of Millie and Florence James Graham, neither of whom finished high school. Now, he doesn’t want those kind of people coming here.

The current waiting list includes an estimated 1.9 million people from Asian countries, including China, Vietnam, India and Bangladesh. The wait for processing visas from the Philippines — which has the most family applicants other than Mexico — extends more than two decades, the longest of any country.

“Everything has to be balanced here,” said a government policy adviser at Covington & Burling. “We’ve all been inspired by the Statue of Liberty. But if you have 10 to 20 million people, many of whom are not well educated or skilled, coming in all at once, that does potentially create some problems.”

Translation: “Balanced” is another magic word. If something is “balanced” it must be good. The question remains, what is “balanced” about excluding family members.

We know 10 to 20 million people will not come in all at once, but we like to scare you people. Hey, what’s wrong with those aliens having to wait 20 years, just to be united with their families?

We say we care about “family values,” but really, we care only about our own families.

Bottom line, the “Screw you. I’ve got mine.” crowd provides various excuses for their meanness, among which are:

1. The U.S. is too crowded. We have no room for more aliens.

Actually, the U.S. is among the least populated nations, with only 84 people per square mile. Compare that with South Korea: (1,288), Netherlands: (1,259), Japan: (836); Israel: (809), UK: (650), Germany: (609), Italy: (512), Switzerland: (490), China: (365), Poland: (328), France: (289), Hungary: (280) and Spain: (210)

2. These aliens will take our jobs.

Immigrants are more likely to take menial jobs others don’t want or create jobs by opening small businesses. The irony is, the Senators want to allow in “educated and high-skilled foreign workers,” the very people most likely to take your job.

Immigrants are consumers, who create jobs by purchasing goods and services

3. These aliens will use up our services like Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, etc.

The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, can support any amount of social services. And to the degree immigrants need social services, they create jobs for the people who supply social services.

The mean-spirited xenophobes who, having been given citizenship, now want to keep anyone else from having that same good fortune. So they create a false picture of an America overrun by “the wretched refuse of teeming shores.”

The anti-immigration effort is mean-spirited bigotry: anti-gay, anti-black, anti-Mexican, anti-women. Sen. Graham’s parents owned a little café that offered only takeout service to blacks, while whites could eat inside.

Those were his formative years, where he learned his meanness at his parents’ knees.

Today, we witness the meaning of America. Cut Social Security; cut Medicare; cut Medicaid; cut federal employment; cut payments to the millions of people who rely on federal payments; cut immigration.

It’s bad economics. It’s not the world’s moral leader, the America in which we like to believe. It’s small. It’s wicked. It’s selfish. It’s stupid. It’s just, plain mean.

“Screw you. I’ve got mine.”

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

11 thoughts on “The Meaning of America

  1. If we implement your “Nine Steps to Prosperity”. Won’t the inflation rate go through the roof? Oil/gas price so high. Does it not that imply that oil is too scarce for that kind of increased economic activity?

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    1. Inflation is based on these variables:

      Supply and demand for money vs. supply and demand for goods and services — four variables. The supply of money is only one of those variables.

      Changing any of the other variables could prevent/cure inflation.

      Not to say that at some time in the future, sufficient economic stimulus couldn’t cause inflation. It could. However, we are a long way from that point, as witness long-term interest rates. The immediate problem is recession.

      Since millions of people suffer today because of recession, why be afraid that the “medicine,” at some distant point, would cure the recession so well, we’d have inflation?

      First step: Cure the recession. If and when inflation occurs, we have plenty of tools to cure it.

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    1. Chris (below) doesn’t think it’s an emergent property.

      There are no angels on earth. The best of us has sinned. That said, my feeling is that America is meaner today than it has been during my lifetime (78 years).

      The so-called “religious” right wing is the most intolerant group I’ve known, and this intolerance has spread throughout the political spectrum. The so-called “left” is non-existent.

      Consider that thousands of “good” Americans voted for Michele Bachmann.

      The people who created Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the various civil rights acts, much less the Bill of Rights, are sorely missing from today’s politics.

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  2. “We were founded by brave men, moral giants who dared fight for liberty, risking their lives and fortunes, not just for their own liberty, but liberty for all.”
    Really? They were “moral giants”? They wanted “liberty for all” – including the native people already here? Roger, you diminish yourself when you post such crap. A mythfighter should not perpetuate popular nationalistic myths about the bastards who came over here and killed nearly all the native inhabitants.

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    1. Understood.

      America was founded by mean bastards and we have been mean bastards ever since, which is why we don’t give a damn about minorities of any kind, racial, sexual, religious or political.

      Is that better?

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  3. Much better. Or, perhaps, America was founded by European royalty and their mercantilist minions. Whatever. And yes, we don’t give a damn about minorities of any kind – unless we ourselves belong to a minority group. The cult of individualism is the backbone of capitalism. To succeed in America you must leave behind the beliefs of your the minority group and adopt the beliefs of the plutocracy – as Obama has done. BTW, I bought Free Money way back when & totally support you and all the other MMT (or MS) writers. Pardon my cynicism, but I don’t think the corporate media will ever allow the public in general to realize that folks like you have got it right. But I love that you keep trying.

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    1. a while back I made this comment about Malcolm’s crusade on one of his articles:

      Mansoor H. Khan says:

      November 16, 2011 at 3:53 pm

      Rodger,

      You should think of yourself as doing what Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) did to the Church (reformation). The global banking cartel is just as powerful. Prominent orthodox economists are priests on their payroll or at least too scared to speak up.

      This stuff is not that hard to get. Keynesian Economics + MMT + MS are all very clear and consistent. I find it very hard to accept that prominent economists and president’s advisers are that stupid.

      http://aquinums-razor.blogspot.com/2011/11/here-is-how-bankers-game-works.html

      Mansoor H. Khan

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  4. Agreed: The present administrators of American Capitalism are operating in such a manner as to create an enormous gap between the wealthiest 1% and the remainder 99%, thereby governing so as NOT “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,…”
    The real question should be : How, when, did they get the power to create this massive gap of inequality ? And , How do we take back that power and change to that better path?
    The ‘Invisible Hand’ has given all mankind enough goods and services (wealth) to exchange among each other that all, yes, all could have a standard of living that would be equal to a general welfare and a pursuit of happiness. A true society with a true capitalistic system can achieve such a system for its social group (sovereign nation). We need only to administrate
    a true capitalistic system to accomplish “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,…”

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