–Why do we bully the poor?

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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 ultimately 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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Cynthia Tucker, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for commentary and a visiting professor at the University of Georgia, wrote a blog post from which we’ll quote a few passages:

Last month, the GOP-dominated House passed an agriculture bill that omitted funding for the food stamp program — partly because the Republican caucus disagreed over whether cuts to the program should be merely harsh or extremely severe.

Not so long ago, hardliners sought to cloak this sort of cruelty in the language of the greater good: the need to reduce government spending. But last month’s bill didn’t even attempt that pretense: It included billions in agricultural subsidies for wealthy farming interests, including some Republican members of Congress.

Of course, the “need” to reduce government spending is in itself a lie that is cloaked. There is absolutely no such need.

In fact, reductions in government spending lead to recessions and depressions, while increases in government spending lead to recoveries. The reason is straightforward: Mathematically: Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports.

Basic algebra shows that reduced federal spending growth must result in reduced GDP growth. No economic mechanism exists whereby spending decreases can increase economic growth.

Spending decreases increase the gap between the rich and the rest — which is why those politicians most bribed by the rich are most in favor of reductions in federal deficit spending.

Further, no one pays for federal deficit spending — neither taxpayers, nor taxpayers’ children nor grandchildren. Not now. Not in the future. No one pays anything. That’s the way it works in a Monetarily Sovereign government.

So why does the middle class resent cost-free federal spending for food stamps, unemployment compensation and other forms of welfare?

About 20 percent of [Atlanta Food Bank] beneficiaries report that this is the first time they’ve ever asked for assistance from government or charitable programs. Among them are people who once belonged to the secure middle class; some were formerly donors or volunteers at the food bank.

Bill Bolling, founder and executive director of the Atlanta Community Food Bank, said, “They’re keeping their part of the social contract. They are getting up every day and going to a job, maybe two jobs. If a man gets up and goes to work every day, I don’t care what his job is, he ought to be able to feed his family.”

And a government, having the unlimited ability to create money, ought to help its citizens feed their families. But, of course, that is not want the rich want. Destitution and desperation help build a large servant class for the rich.

Conservative critics speak contemptuously of those struggling to make ends meet, to describe a lazy “47 percent” who want nothing but handouts, to dismiss those who can’t make ends meet as responsible for their own hard luck.

Some of that hostility toward struggling Americans can be explained by a racial antagonism that presumes that most of them are black or brown.

That’s the “food stamp mama” image implanted in the public’s mind, by the rich-owned media — a false image as it turns out.

Programs like food stamps are understood by whites to largely benefit shiftless black people.

[But] the Great Recession laid waste to the finances of many white families, too. They (whites) account for about 35.5 percent of food stamp recipients. Black Americans are disproportionately represented, but account for only about 23 percent. Latinos account for about 10 percent of recipients

The motivation of the rich to bully the middle and lower classes is clear: To widen the income/wealth/power gap. But why is the middle class so ready to join in the bullying?

And that is the key word: “Bullying.” Children do it. When a weak child is bullied by a strong child, many others will join in. Why?

Not being a professional psychologist, I can only guess that the motive is self-protection. A child may feel the need to distance himself from the weak and to align himself with the strong. If he can join in kicking the weak, he himself will not be kicked, and he even may gain approval from the strong.

So we have the spectacle of middle- and even lower-income people sneering at those receiving food stamps, unemployment payments or other poverty-associated benefits, when they themselves soon may need such benefits. It’s illogical, but instinctive, and instinct beats logic every time.

Instinct allows the so-called “religious” right to turn people against themselves. The populace actively wants to believe those right-wing lies that the poor are worthless, good-for-nothings, who would rather wallow in poverty and feed from the government trough, than work to earn an income.

This belief supplies the weak with a justification for bullying the weaker.

I know such people. A couple are even in my own family. I’ve found that no facts, no statistics, no logical proofs will sway them. They simply know in their hearts that the poor must be treated with a firm, ruthless hand to “teach them a lesson” and to keep them from “beating the system.”

Thus as the rich watch laughing, the middle-class does their dirty work, an effort that always turns back against the middle.

The middle class is finding that what goes around, comes around. Will the lesson never be learned?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D plus long term nursing care — for everyone (Click here)
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
5. Salary for attending school (Click here)
6. Eliminate corporate taxes (Click here)
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
8. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99% (Click here)
9. Federal ownership of all banks (Click here)

10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt

As the lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the lines rise.

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY