Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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It takes only two things to keep people in chains: The ignorance of the oppressed and the treachery of their leaders.
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Trump targets “the FDA Food Police,” calls for elimination of food-safety regulations in new tax plan by SOPHIA TESFAYE
Trump plans dramatically scale back government regulations, including food safety and environmental measures, in order to save almost $1 trillion over the next decade.
“The FDA Food Police dictate how the federal government expects farmers to produce fruits and vegetables and even dictates the nutritional content of dog food,” Trump complained
“My plan will embrace the truth that people flourish under a minimum government burden,” Trump said
As we all have been told by Donald Trump and many others, the federal government is too big. It costs taxpayers too much and its rules stifle business.
As is so often the case, what we have been told is wrong. Contrary to popular wisdom, taxes do not pay for the federal government.
You may visualize the federal government accepting your tax dollars, putting them in a bank somewhere, and then spending them. That is the way state and local governments operate. That even is the way you and I operate.
But, the federal government is unique. It does not need income. It does not use taxes. It creates dollars ad hoc, every time it pays an invoice.
When the government pays for something, it sends instructions (not dollars) to its creditor’s bank, telling the bank to increase the balance in the creditor’s checking account. The instructions can be in the form of a check or wire.
The instant the bank obeys those instructions, dollars are created and added to the money supply.
Thus, the federal government costs taxpayers nothing. Sad to say, those tax dollars you send to the federal government are destroyed — they disappear from the money supply — the instant they are received.
The technical term for this is “Monetary Sovereignty,” which means being sovereign over money, in this case, sovereign over the dollar.
You can search and search, and you never will find an article or a chart titled, “This is how much money the federal government has.” Why? Because it creates dollars as needed.
So O.K., let’s assume the government doesn’t cost taxpayers anything, but all those rules must stifle business.
And indeed they do, especially bad business.
The Growing Fight Against Food Fraud
Alice ParkWhen you’re shopping at the grocery store, you probably expect that the olive oil you see came from, well, olives. And that the organic vegetables were never exposed to toxic chemicals, the cod fillet is sliced from a member of the cod species and the spices are the pure ground form of whatever flavoring they represent.
Increasingly, however, there’s a chance you might be wrong.
In recent years, there has been an uptick in reports of so-called food fraud, or attempts by various entities–including storage workers, suppliers and distributors–to alter products and mislead customers and food companies alike for financial gain (though occasionally the companies are complicit).
The fraudsters are trying to make easy money–charging for a whole food or pricey ingredient, then cutting it with cheaper stuff on the sly. But the health consequences can be dire.
Fraudulent cumin, for example, poses a huge risk for people with peanut allergies. And in China, at least six babies died after drinking a milk formula that had been laced with melamine, a chemical used to create plastic, in order to up its protein content.
In the U.S., the Pure Food and Drug Act has prevented the “manufacture, sale or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods” since 1906, and similar laws exist in other countries.
But most global food regulators, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, aren’t equipped to enforce them effectively.
For the most part, they focus on safety standards–ensuring that foods don’t contain bacteria or viruses–and rely on companies to police the integrity of their own ingredients.
The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI)–a trade group comprising officials from more than 300 food manufacturers–will this year start auditing its members’ supply chains, from field to table, to identify vulnerabilities.
Such efforts have been key for titans like Cargill, which instituted a new procedure for sealing tanks of sunflower oil after a routine inspection revealed that some workers had been diluting it with mineral oil to profit from selling the real stuff.
Meanwhile, dozens of other food-industry experts recently teamed up with academics from Michigan State University to launch the Food Fraud Initiative (FFI), a group that studies fraudsters–specifically, how they circumvent safeguards–and then advises food companies on how to ward them off.
See a pattern here? “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration isn’t equipped (i.e. funded) to enforce the integrity of ingredients effectively.” So, we’ll rely on “a trade group comprising officials from more than 300 food manufacturers.”
Because we fear the government, which costs us nothing and has no profit motive for cheating, we will underfund the Food and Drug Administration. Instead, we will trust industry to police itself, an effort that not only can’t be trusted, but will cost consumers the money manufacturers will add to prices.
Rather than having free, impartial judges, we will pay the foxes to guard the hen house.
We already have accomplished some of this short-sighted cost cutting, which is based on the lie that taxes pay for government.
Trump Expected to Seek Deep Cuts in Business Regulations by By MICHAEL CORKERY
The unwinding of Dodd-Frank. The firing up of shuttered coal plants. The rollback of rules that increase overtime pay for low-wage workers.
Hours after Donald Trump won the race for the White House, scores of regulations that have reshaped corporate America in the last eight years suddenly seemed vulnerable.
Mr. Trump is likely to seek vast cuts in regulations across the banking, health care and energy industries.
Although Mr. Trump is a maverick politician, his anti-regulation stance is that of an old-school Republican. It is driven by a belief that the economy will grow faster if businesses are freed from the long arm of the federal government.
No, that isn’t the belief. The belief is that the rich will rake in more bucks if they are not forced to run honest businesses. And clearly, the owner of the notorious Trump University is part of that group.
Every criminal business CEO on this planet yearns for fewer government regulations — just ask the banksters — and now we are about to cut regulations, just as the creators of the Great Recession want.
Eat carefully, my friend. And if your child suffers the agony of food poisoning spasms, because not only was the food tainted, but the medicine was tainted, too, remember: We need to cut the free but onerous (to the rich) burden of supplying wholesome food and useful drugs.
Don’t worry about your family’s health. We need to minimize the burden on the rich.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
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The single most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the have-mores and the have-less.
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.
Implementation of The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:
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 can afford better health care than can 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 ANNUAL ECONOMIC BONUS TO EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD IN AMERICA, AND/OR EVERY STATE, A PER CAPITA ECONOMIC BONUS (Social Security for All) (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 benefitting 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-transferring 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 a 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.
MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 