How not to be a stupid puppet for the rich

We all are ignorant about many things.

In fact, we all are ignorant about the vast majority of facts and ideas that exist or ever have existed. So ignorance is no crime, and not even an insult.

Ignorance is normal. But it needn’t be stupidity.

It is in the very nature of stupidity, that it often acts against it’s own self interest, and passionately functions as a puppet for the rich.

Stupidity often foments hatred, not realizing that at any given moment hatred can turn back on itself, and be the subject of hatred.

There may be no more ardent puppet than the rabid supporter of the rich gun manufacturers. These wealthy businesses tell the stupid, that mass ownership of guns makes the puppets safer.

And being stupid, the puppets believe.

They do not understand that the same law allowing them a gun also allows every fool, nut, and psycho they pass in the street also to carry a gun.

Sure, things can be fine when a “good guy” has a gun, but it takes only one bad guy roaming around with a gun, to ruin the whole neighborhood.

The ridiculous-on-the-face-of-it notion that guns make us all safer, promulgated by the rich gun manufacturers, has led to increased gun sales and possession, which has begat increased gun killings, leading to more gun sales and possession and more gun killings, in an endless helix down to hell.

And as the gun puppets do the bidding of the armament rich, they are blind to the harm they do themselves, their spouses, their children, their friends and neighbors.

The gun puppet descent into madness, as described in the following article, is all too familiar.

Chicago Tribune, May 9, 2016
Commentary: These are the threats you get when you lead a gun-safety group
By Shannon Watts

The day after the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., I started a Facebook page aimed at uniting American mothers in a fight against gun violence.

I was wholly unprepared for the blowback headed my way.

Within hours of speaking out about our nation’s lax gun laws, I received my first threats of sexual violence and death. Over the next several months, my phone throbbed with angry texts and phone calls, often in the middle of the night.

I started getting letters mailed to my home, complete with cut-outs from magazines to spell out threats to my life.

My email was hacked; my Facebook photos were downloaded and distributed publicly; my phone number and home address were shared online; my children’s social media accounts were hacked and the names of their schools shared online.

The underlying message: Stop talking about guns, or we’ll harm you or someone you love.

And as Moms Demand Action began to grow and win in statehouses and boardrooms, the threats and outrage from gun extremists grew more intense.

There are two sides to every story, but tellingly, you seldom (never?) will hear of such drooling craziness coming from those who oppose the widespread sale and ownership of guns.

While Mrs. Watts and her group searched for real solutions and quoted facts and statistics, she was subject to a vicious campaign of threats and intimidation.

When logic meets stupidity, which is more likely to respond with violence?

Puppets do not reason. Puppets act mindlessly, as their strings are pulled.

At first, this bullying shocked and scared me. It was overwhelming to wake up every day to more venom. But as I spoke to our volunteers in chapters across the country, I found out that I wasn’t alone in my experience.

The intimidation via emails, texts, calls and online was happening locally, too. But the harassment wasn’t just coming from behind a computer screen — extremists, almost always men, were showing up at our events with loaded long guns to try to silence our voices.

Whether our volunteers were rallying in public, holding an event in their homes or simply having lunch at a restaurant, extremists were showing up — or threatening to show up — with guns. In fact, just weeks ago, a meeting of Moms Demand Action volunteers in a Kentucky public library was crashed by men who openly carried guns, waltzed in and sat in the front row.

Think of who these men are. Visualize them in your mind. Are they are most intelligent among us. Are their ranks dominated by doctors, lawyers, college professors?

Or, aren’t they more often the fools, the toothless crazies, the low end of the intelligence scale, the puppets who obediently and blindly follow the dictates of the rich gun manufacturers?

That is why all attempts at reasonable discussion with gun puppets, fail. There is an old saying, “If you argue with a fool, that makes two of you.”

Even the notion of applying some reasonable controls over who can own a gun, what sort of gun, where the gun can be taken and how it can be used — all this is angrily and violently dismissed by the puppets of the rich gun industry leaders.

The industry doesn’t want such discussion, lest it impinge on gun sales, and if the industry doesn’t want it, the puppets act against it, regardless of their own best interests.

The shootings continue, fifty(!) last Mother’s Day weekend in Chicago, alone. Who are shooting and who are being shot? Mostly the low-income, uneducated puppets, while the rich and powerful gun manufacturers laugh all the way to the bank.

If the murders were occurring where the gun manufacturers live, you can be sure the laws and the narrative would change, but so long as the murders are happening to the puppets, all is well.

Self harm. That is the nature of ignorance. Rabid, angry and unreasoning self harm. That is the nature of stupidity.

Since we all are ignorant, and not one of us can know all the facts behind each question, here is an easy way to prevent being stupid:

If you are not part of the upper 1% income group, ask yourself this question: “Is this something the rich want?”

If your answer is “Yes,” you more than likely should oppose it.

The rich seldom have your best interests in mind.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
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Ten Steps to Prosperity:
1. ELIMINATE FICA (Ten Reasons to Eliminate FICA )
Although the article lists 10 reasons to eliminate FICA, there are two fundamental reasons:
*FICA is the most regressive tax in American history, widening the Gap by punishing the low and middle-income groups, while leaving the rich untouched, and
*The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, neither needs nor uses FICA to support Social Security and Medicare.
2. FEDERALLY FUNDED MEDICARE — PARTS A, B & D, PLUS LONG TERM CARE — FOR EVERYONE (H.R. 676, Medicare for All )
This article addresses the questions:
*Does the economy benefit when the rich afford better health care than the rest of Americans?
*Aside from improved health care, what are the other economic effects of “Medicare for everyone?”
*How much would it cost taxpayers?
*Who opposes it?”
3. PROVIDE AN ECONOMIC BONUS TO EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD IN AMERICA, AND/OR EVERY STATE, A PER CAPITA ECONOMIC BONUS (The JG (Jobs Guarantee) vs the GI (Guaranteed Income) vs the EB) Or institute a reverse income tax.
This article is the fifth in a series about direct financial assistance to Americans:

Why Modern Monetary Theory’s Employer of Last Resort is a bad idea. Sunday, Jan 1 2012
MMT’s Job Guarantee (JG) — “Another crazy, rightwing, Austrian nutjob?” Thursday, Jan 12 2012
Why Modern Monetary Theory’s Jobs Guarantee is like the EU’s euro: A beloved solution to the wrong problem. Tuesday, May 29 2012
“You can’t fire me. I’m on JG” Saturday, Jun 2 2012

Economic growth should include the “bottom” 99.9%, not just the .1%, the only question being, how best to accomplish that. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) favors giving everyone a job. Monetary Sovereignty (MS) favors giving everyone money. The five articles describe the pros and cons of each approach.
4. FREE EDUCATION (INCLUDING POST-GRAD) FOR EVERYONEFive reasons why we should eliminate school loans
Monetarily non-sovereign State and local governments, despite their limited finances, support grades K-12. That level of education may have been sufficient for a largely agrarian economy, but not for our currently more technical economy that demands greater numbers of highly educated workers.
Because state and local funding is so limited, grades K-12 receive short shrift, especially those schools whose populations come from the lowest economic groups. And college is too costly for most families.
An educated populace benefits a nation, and benefiting the nation is the purpose of the federal government, which has the unlimited ability to pay for K-16 and beyond.
5. SALARY FOR ATTENDING SCHOOL
Even were schooling to be completely free, many young people cannot attend, because they and their families cannot afford to support non-workers. In a foundering boat, everyone needs to bail, and no one can take time off for study.
If a young person’s “job” is to learn and be productive, he/she should be paid to do that job, especially since that job is one of America’s most important.
6. ELIMINATE CORPORATE TAXES
Corporations themselves exist only as legalities. They don’t pay taxes or pay for anything else. They are dollar-tranferring machines. They transfer dollars from customers to employees, suppliers, shareholders and the government (the later having no use for those dollars).
Any tax on corporations reduces the amount going to employees, suppliers and shareholders, which diminishes the economy. Ultimately, all corporate taxes come around and reappear as deductions from your personal income.
7. INCREASE THE STANDARD INCOME TAX DEDUCTION, ANNUALLY. (Refer to this.)
Federal taxes punish taxpayers and harm the economy. The federal government has no need for those punishing and harmful tax dollars. There are several ways to reduce taxes, and we should evaluate and choose the most progressive approaches.
Cutting FICA and corporate taxes would be an good early step, as both dramatically affect the 99%. Annual increases in the standard income tax deduction, and a reverse income tax also would provide benefits from the bottom up. Both would narrow the Gap.
8. TAX THE VERY RICH (THE “.1%) MORE, WITH HIGHER PROGRESSIVE TAX RATES ON ALL FORMS OF INCOME. (TROPHIC CASCADE)
There was a time when I argued against increasing anyone’s federal taxes. After all, the federal government has no need for tax dollars, and all taxes reduce Gross Domestic Product, thereby negatively affecting the entire economy, including the 99.9%.
But I have come to realize that narrowing the Gap requires trimming the top. It simply would not be possible to provide the 99.9% with enough benefits to narrow the Gap in any meaningful way. Bill Gates reportedly owns $70 billion. To get to that level, he must have been earning $10 billion a year. Pick any acceptable Gap (1000 to 1?), and the lowest paid American would have to receive $10 million a year. Unreasonable.
9. FEDERAL OWNERSHIP OF ALL BANKS (Click The end of private banking and How should America decide “who-gets-money”?)
Banks have created all the dollars that exist. Even dollars created at the direction of the federal government, actually come into being when banks increase the numbers in checking accounts. This gives the banks enormous financial power, and as we all know, power corrupts — especially when multiplied by a profit motive.
Although the federal government also is powerful and corrupted, it does not suffer from a profit motive, the world’s most corrupting influence.
10. INCREASE FEDERAL SPENDING ON THE MYRIAD INITIATIVES THAT BENEFIT AMERICA’S 99.9% (Federal agencies)Browse the agencies. See how many agencies benefit the lower- and middle-income/wealth/ power groups, by adding dollars to the economy and/or by actions more beneficial to the 99.9% than to the .1%.
Save this reference as your primer to current economics. Sadly, much of the material is not being taught in American schools, which is all the more reason for you to use it.

The Ten Steps will grow the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and you.
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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

THE RECESSION CLOCK

Recessions begin an average of 2 years after the blue line first dips below zero. A common phenomenon is for the line briefly to dip below zero, then rise above zero, before falling dramatically below zero. There was a brief dip below zero in 2015, followed by another dip – the familiar pre-recession pattern.
Recessions are cured by a rising red line.

Vertical gray bars mark recessions.

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the growth lines rise. Increasing federal deficit growth (aka “stimulus”) is necessary for long-term economic growth.

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Mitchell’s laws:
•Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
•Any monetarily NON-sovereign government — be it city, county, state or nation — that runs an ongoing trade deficit, eventually will run out of money.
•The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes..
•No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth.
•Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia.
•A growing economy requires a growing supply of money (GDP = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
•Deficit spending grows the supply of money
•The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
•The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

•Liberals think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.

•The single most important problem in economics is the Gap between rich and the rest..
•Austerity is the government’s method for widening the Gap between rich and poor.
•Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
•Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap between the rich and the rest..

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY