Do you believe the single worst lie in the entire spectrum of government/media lies?

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Gifts to the U.S. Government

The Fiscal Service accepts gifts, bequests, proceeds and unconditional donations to the United States, both for general government purposes and for the specific purpose of paying down or reducing the public debt. For more information, see:

How to make a gift to reduce the public debt:

General Gifts to the United States Government

How do I make a contribution to the U.S. government?

Citizens who wish to make a general donation to the U.S. government may send contributions to a specific account called “Gifts to the United States.”

This account was established in 1843 to accept gifts, such as bequests, from individuals wishing to express their patriotism to the United States. Money deposited into this account is for general use by the federal government and can be available for budget needs.
These contributions are considered an unconditional gift to the government. Financial gifts can be made by check or money order payable to the United States Treasury and mailed to the address below.

Gifts to the United States
U.S. Department of the Treasury
Funds Management Branch
P.O. Box 1328
Parkersburg, WV 26106-1328Any tax-related questions regarding these contributions should be directed to the Internal Revenue Service at (800) 829-1040.

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Yes, there’s nothing like throwing your money into a bonfire, so you can “express your patriotism to the United States,” because that is exactly what the above federal government page tells you to do.

Sending your dollars to a government that produces dollars at will, surely is one of the least intelligent things a person can do, but hey, the government encourages it, so it must be right. Right?

No, it simply is unintelligent. Not only does our Monetarily Sovereign federal government have no need for your dollars, but it actually destroys your dollars upon receipt.

(See: Does the U.S. Treasury really destroy your tax dollars? The Monopoly® answer.)

Every single dollar you send to the U.S. Treasury not only disappears from your pocket, but it also disappears from the total supply of money in America.

Those dollars effectively are destroyed. To visualize why, answer these two questions:

1.  If you owned a limitless dollar-creating machine, how many dollars would you have?
2. If, while you owned that machine, I sent you $1,000, how many dollars would you now have? 

The answer to both questions is the same: You would have an infinite number of dollars. My sending you $1,000 would have zero effect on the number of dollars you have. The $1,000 would disappear into infinity.

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Ben Bernanke: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”

Alan Greenspan: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency.”

St. Louis Federal Reserve: “As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills.

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The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, owns that limitless dollar-creating machine. The government “has” infinite dollars, because it creates the dollars with which it pays all its financial obligations.

The dollars you send to the federal government do not add even one penny to the dollars the government has. Those dollars are destroyed.

And that includes your federal tax dollars.

Even if the federal government received zero tax dollars, zero interest dollars, and zero dollars from any other source, it never would run short of its own sovereign currency, the U.S. dollar.

The FICA dollars taken from your paycheck? Destroyed. The income tax dollars you send to the Treasury? Destroyed. Federal estate taxes? Destroyed. Federal excise taxes? Destroyed. All federal tax dollars are destroyed.

(This does not pertain to state and local government taxes. These governments are monetarily non-sovereign. They do not own unlimited money-creation machines. They do use your tax dollars)

I was reminded of all of this when came across the following article in the August 31, 2018, THE WEEK online paper:

How to pay for Medicare-for-all By Ryan Cooper

Medicare-for-all sounds great, but how do we pay for it?

In a normal country, the answer would be simple — just raise taxes. But in the United States, health care is so outlandishly expensive that the simple solution is anything but.

Where Austria or Finland would be assured that a modest tax hike could (and did) cover everyone, America has to grapple with a bloated health-care sector eating up over 17 percent of GDP — nearly 5 points (or about $1 trillion) greater than Switzerland, the second-most expensive country.

This reality forces Medicare-for-all advocates into one of two basic choices, neither of them easy:

1. Swallow the huge costs, shove through a really big tax hike, and hope that people will understand the taxes-for-premiums swap.

2. Try to cut costs, and keep the tax increase modest, but tempt the wrath of the medical lobby.

Some tax increases are certainly inevitable. But the second choice is by far the best, on grounds of both practical policy and politics.

No, no, no, no, and did I mention, NO? The “really big tax hike” would be beyond stupid, as 100% of those tax dollars would be taken from our pockets and then destroyed.

And as for “cutting costs,” that inevitably becomes “cutting services.”

The best, perhaps only, basic choice is to have the federal government pay for everything, simply by creating dollars.

This would avoid the negative effects of tax hikes and of service cuts.

The article continues:

Why is American health care so expensive? Drug prices and administrative costs.

America paid roughly twice the rich country median for drugs in 2015, at $1,443 per person, with $1,023 of that in the form of retail pharmaceuticals.

France paid $697, while the Netherlands paid just $466. Secondly, fully 8 percent of American health-care spending goes to administration — as compared to Germany at 5 percent, Canada at 3 percent, or Sweden at 2 percent.

Thus the first priority for a Medicare-for-all bill must be to cut administration spending to the bone. Given that this is largely down to providers having to navigate the hellishly complex and fragmented status quo system, this should be quite easy.

Smashing down drug prices would be harder politically, but conceptually simple. You simply survey the drug market and set prices given an overall budget of (let’s say) $725 per person.

We have a knee-jerk, negative response to the word, “expensive.” But, in a single-payer, federally funded, Medicare-for-All program, stimulus dollars would flow from the federal government (which has an infinite supply) to the private sector (which needs dollars for growth).

Pharmaceutical companies, and their employees, and their suppliers all would receive dollars from the federal government. All these people would spend the dollars, benefitting thousands of companies and their employees.

Similarly, administration spending would benefit all those who administer federal programs on both the private sector side and on the government employee side.

Federal spending for Medicare-for-All would benefit many millions of people financially, improve the entire nation’s health, and stimulate the economy.

One last thought: Not many people realize this, but Medicare Part B (medical insurance) is funded differently from Medicare Part A (hospital insurance).

Medicare Part B covers medical services and supplies that are medically necessary to treat your health condition.

This can include outpatient care, preventive services, ambulance services, and durable medical equipment. It also covers part-time or intermittent home health and rehabilitative services, such as physical therapy, if they are ordered by a doctor to treat your condition.

Some of the preventive services Medicare Part B covers include a one-time “Welcome to Medicare” preventive visit, flu and hepatitis B shots, cardiovascular screenings, cancer screenings, diabetes screenings, and more.

While Medicare Part A supposedly is funded through the FICA tax,  Part B supposedly is financed through a combination of general revenues and premiums paid by beneficiaries.

In both cases, I say “supposedly,” because all dollars coming to the federal government are destroyed, so all federal spending is funded by new money creation.

The point, however, is:

While a mythical Part A trust fund often is said to be running short of money, Part B never is said to be running short, because even with federal government’s phony financing system, sufficient dollars come from the general fund.

Rather than focusing on tax increases and spending cuts, the government should focus on the one implementation that would save lives: Pay for it all.

A single-payer program would be much simpler and more efficient to implement than the complex, convoluted combination of multiple insurance companies, multiple coverages, multiple deductibles, incomprehensible Part D (drug) coverages, multiple home care, multiple long-term-care rules we now are burdened with.

One source, that covers everything, and sets the price limits for everything, just the way Medicare now does, would take the labor and guesswork out of insurance.

The solution to all federal funding comes with the realization that the federal government:
1. Is Monetarily Sovereign,
2. Has the infinite ability to create its own sovereign currency,
3. Neither needs nor uses tax dollars or any other income, and
4. Never can run short of the dollars needed to pay for anything.

(Now, someone please tell Bernie Sanders and the Democrats)

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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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

2. Federally funded medicare — parts a, b & d, plus long-term care — for everyone

3. Provide a monthly economic bonus to every man, woman and child in America (similar to social security for all)

4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone

5. Salary for attending school

6. Eliminate federal taxes on business

7. Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually. 

8. Tax the very rich (the “.1%) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.

9. Federal ownership of all banks

10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9% 

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

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY