Why do they want to make you angry at the wrong thing?

I’ll tell you who “they” are and what the “wrong thing” is. But allow me to lead off with some excerpts from the anti-government site, Reason.com.

Fundamentally, Reason.com believes all governments are too large, no matter how large or small they may be.

Of course, making a government smaller does not make it more efficient, more benevolent, or wiser. 

Government is an easy target, because as you repeatedly have been told, government is terrible, except for one little thing: In a world without government, we would be starving, non-human, savage, undisciplined animals. 

Recently, Reason.com published an article titled, GOVERNMENT WASTE, Happy Tax Day! Here Are 6 Infuriating Ways the Government Spends Your Money
Surprised? Yeah, neither are we. By, JOE SETYON | 4.15.2019

The article refers to the federal government (important point). Excerpts:

Happy April 15, everyone! The federal government collects about $3.5 trillion in tax revenue each year, according to the White House Office of Budget and Management. Here, in no particular order, are six of the more infuriating ways that money has gone to waste.

1. $300,000 on 391 coffee mugs
2. $400,000 to promote asset forfeiture…in Paraguay.
3. $13.6 million to hire two border agents
4. More than $325,000 for Mike Pence’s national anthem stunt
5. $333,000 to study bars on the U.S.-Mexico border
6. Nearly $3 million to study dance clubs

If you’re curious, you can click the above link to read the details about each expenditure, but the point is that the federal government spent millions, billions and even trillions on lots of stuff that seems really dumb, and the writer wants you to be angry that these “useless” expenditures are taking dollars from your taxpayer pockets.

And it’s all a lie.

Those payments for coffee mugs, Paraguay, border agents, Pence, bars, and dance clubs didn’t cost you one cent. In fact, those payments put dollars into your pockets.

All federal “wasted” spending puts dollars into your pockets.

Now, if the article had been talking about state government or local government waste, it would have been correct. State and local taxpayers do pay for state and local government spending.

That is because state and local governments are monetarily non-sovereign. (So are you and I).

Those state/local governments do not have the unlimited ability to create their own sovereign currency; they have no sovereign currency; they use the U.S. dollar.

They can, and often do, run short of dollars, and they need tax dollars in order to survive.

By contrast, the federal government is Monetarily Sovereign. It has the unlimited ability to create its own sovereign currency, the U.S. dollar.

The federal government never unintentionally can run short of dollars. Even if all tax collections — income taxes, FICA taxes, luxury taxes, etc. — totaled $0, the federal government could continue spending, forever.

Every time the federal government pays a creditor, it creates new dollars, ad hoc.,

So what about all that “wasted” federal spending? Those are dollars that the federal government created from thin air, and added to the economy.

The “dance club” millions, the coffee mug thousand, the millions for two border agents — all those dollars were created from thin air and were added to the U.S. economy (except for a few that may have gone to overseas suppliers).

The vast majority of those dollars went to U.S. businesses, who used those dollars to pay for employees, who in turn used the dollars to purchase things like food, housing, clothing, cars, education, etc.

In short, the federal government’s “wasted” dollars actually are stimulus dollars, that grow the economy, and eventually wind up in your pockets, my pockets, your kids’ pockets, and even Donald Trump’s pockets.

Again, this is not true of state and local government waste. They do not create dollars from thin air. They use existing tax dollars for their spending. So when they waste money, the dollars come from their taxpayers’ pockets.

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: “Central banks can issue currency, a non-interest-bearing claim on the government, effectively without limit. 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. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational.

So, if the government neither needs nor uses tax dollars, why does it collect taxes? I’m glad you asked. There are three reasons: One mostly good, one bad, and one horrible.

The mostly good reason is: To control the economy by levying taxes on things they wish to reduce, and by giving tax breaks to things they wish to encourage. So-called “sin” taxes are examples of the former, and home real estate tax deductions are examples of the latter.

The bad reason is to reward rich political donors by giving them special tax breaks not available to the middle and lower classes.

The horrible reason is to groom you, the public, to believe that federal spending for social benefits (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, other poverty aids, college tuition aids, etc.) must be limited or taxes must be increased.

Since the people do not want increased taxes, they easily are convinced that social benefits must be reduced. 

Thus, we have the fake claim that the Social Security Trust Fund is running short of dollars. (Like the federal government itself, no federal agency can run short of U.S. dollars, unless Congress and the President want it to run short). The “Trust Fund” is an accounting fiction, designed to give an imprimatur to a false assertion.

And we have the fake claim that “Medicare for All is unaffordable. And we have all the other fake claims about federal spending being unaffordable, and federal deficits costing taxpayers money. All untrue.

The bottom line is, the rich are rich because they have more money and property than you do. The key word is, “more” because “rich” is a comparative word.

That is, if you have a million dollars, and everyone else has a million dollars, you are not rich. You are just the same as everyone else. But, if you have one hundred dollars and everyone else has just one dollar, you are very rich, indeed.

In short, to be richer, you either must obtain more money for yourself, or you must arrange for the other people to have less money.

Either way widens the Gap between you and those below you, and it is the Gap that makes you rich.

That is why the rich bribe:

• The politicians via campaign contributions and promises of lucrative employment later
• The media via advertising dollars and ownership
• The economics professors via university contributions and jobs with think tanks

The primary purpose of these bribes is to induce legislation to widen the Gap and to make you accept the necessity of widening.

In Summary:

The rich control American politics. Their fundamental goal in life is personal enrichment, which requires widening the Gap between the rich and the rest.

This involves not only bribing the politicians to make Gap-widening legal changes, but also bribing the media and economists to convince you, the public, that Gap-widening is necessary and beneficial.

These information sources promulgate the “Big Lie” that federal finances are similar to your finances, and federal taxes are necessary to fund federal spending.

The rich fear that if you knew federal taxes are not necessary to fund spending, you would demand more benefits, thereby narrowing the Gap, and effectively making the rich less rich.

The rich want you to be angry at “unnecessary” federal spending, so you readily will agree to cut your social benefits.

Finally, the rich want you to believe that federal deficit and debt lead to hyperinflations, similar to those in Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany, though inflations actually are caused by shortages, usually shortages of food and/or energy, not by money creation.

(Despite a 50,000% increase in federal money creation over the past 80 years, average inflation has been moderate, within the Fed’s target range.

Unfortunately, the constant drip, drip, drip of anti-deficit, anti-debt propaganda continues to brainwash the public, and the Gap widens.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereigntyFacebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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The most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the richer and the poorer.

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