It takes only two things to keep people in chains: The ignorance of the oppressedand the treachery of their leaders.
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When a person becomes a known and repeated liar, eventually nothing he/she says is credible, even on the rare occasions when he may tell the truth.
Any statement of the past or present is viewed as a work of fiction. Any promise will not be trusted.
So the question for the minority of you who still support Donald Trump is: WHY?
The man almost never stops lying. What he tells you rarely is accurate. What he promises for you will not happen. And what he does invariably hurts your country.
“I am sitting in the Oval Office with a pen in hand, waiting for our senators to give it to me.”
Here is a man who declared he would sign any — ANY — anti-Obamacare bill that came out of Congress, no matter how many people it deprived of health care, no matter the cost, no matter the fallout.
He wasn’t asking what beneficial features or what harmful features the bill had. He was just sitting there, as he said, “pen in hand,” willing to sign anything.
This is the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, wanting to sign any bill just so he could say he accomplished something.
Is this the man you trust to act responsibly as President? When you cast your vote, is this what you expected?
And as for lying, do you know of any President, any politician, any human being, who lies as continually as Donald J. Trump? He lies during his rallies. He lies in his tweets. He lies during interviews. He even lies to the Boy Scouts, for heaven’s sake. There is no time, when he is talking or writing, that he is not lying.
Want evidence? Here are three websites you should visit:
So again, the question for the minority of you who still support Donald Trump is: WHY?
What is it that Trump has done for you, is doing for you, or will do for you that makes you support him? And how do you really know what he has done, is doing or will do?
You might say it doesn’t matter whether or not you support him, because he is President and your support or non-support means nothing. But that wouldn’t be true. Your support or non-support is vital.
The key now is Congress. If you contact your Senators and Congressperson, and if you write to your local media, indicating your dissatisfaction with a lying, ignorant, immoral, “do-nothing-but-play-golf-on-his-properties” President, the Republicans in Congress will turn away from him.
Then, the two parties can begin to work together, as they normally have done in the past, to benefit America, and not just to win.
Congress is not a zero-sum game, where if one party wins that means the other party loses. America has many problems that sincere politicians (yes, they exist) can solve if only the pressure to follow the party line were eased.
Trump is a menace to America. His hate-based ideology is alien to our America spirit. His lies are corrosive. He is a terrible role model and an awful symbol for our nation. No one trusts him — not any other nation, not the majority of Americans, not the people he hires and then fires if they don’t put him ahead of the country.
He claims to be a great negotiator, but who would negotiate with a man whose statements are known to be lies and whose promises are known to be false? Why would anyone?
If you make it clear to Congress that you do not support his lies, his ignorance, and his cruelty, Congress will take him out of the equation, and do its work to benefit you, not to benefit him.
It can be done. It has been done. It must be done.
•All we have are partial solutions; the best we can do is try.
•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 no matter how much it taxes its citizens.
•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.
•Progressives 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.
It takes only two things to keep people in chains: The ignorance of the oppressedand the treachery of their leaders.
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The CRFB makes the Lie simple and big, and tells it often
The word “unsustainable” is a favorite among federal debt fear-mongers. They use it all the time. It is a lie, a Big Lie. It is the biggest lie in all of economics.
Do you know what it supposedly means regarding the federal debt? Specifically, what aspect of the federal debt do they claim can’t be sustained?
While you think about that, read this Email I received from my favorite debt fear-mongers: The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB)
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB)
We Must Increase the Statutory Debt Limit and Take Action to Deal with the Debt
August 2, 2017
For Immediate Release
The United States government is quickly approaching the deadline for raising the debt ceiling. Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, released the following statement:
The United States faces two major debt challenges: one urgent and acute, the other gradual and long-term but still pernicious. Without a prompt increase in the debt limit, policymakers would threaten default on America’s obligations and could even spark a global economic crisis.
Correct. The day the United States stops paying its bills is the day the world’s economy collapses, making the “Great Recession” of 2008 look like a picnic.
So why does Congress threaten us with it? In fact, why is there a debt ceiling at all?
Federal “debt” is not like personal debt. When you “lend” to the federal government, you tell your local bank to transfer your dollars from your checking account and deposit your dollars into your Treasury Security Account at the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB).
That is the way you buy a T-bill, T-note, or T-bond, which together make up the federal “debt.” You simply transfer your dollars from one of your bank accounts to another one of your accounts at another bank, the FRB.
The dollars are still yours. They just have been moved from one of your accounts to another of your accounts.
Thus, the so-called federal “debt” is nothing other than the total of those deposits in Treasury security accounts at the world’s safest bank, the Federal Reserve Bank.
The so-called “debt” is bank deposits, very much like your savings account deposits at your local bank.
At the same time, the national debt is currently higher as a share of the economy than at any time since just after World War II, and it is rising unsustainably.
The debt fear-mongers often mention the fact that the “debt” (T-security deposits) are a high percentage of Gross Domestic Product. But why is this a reason for concern?
Would you be fearful if your savings account deposits were a high percentage of your income?
You might question whether that was the best use of your money, but it would not constitute a danger to you.
The debt fear-mongers seem to be implying that the “debt” (deposits) are paid off by the economy, and that somehow if the debt is a high percentage of the economy, it can’t be paid off.
Paying off the federal debt just means transferring your dollars from one of your bank accounts to another of your bank accounts.
That is total nonsense.
Since the misnamed “debt” is deposits, it is paid off the way all your bank deposits are paid off: The Federal Reserve Bank merely transfers your existing dollars from your T-security accounts, back to your checking account.
It’s like transferring dollars from your savings account to your checking account.
The federal government could pay off the entire “debt” tomorrow if it wished, simply by transferring dollars from one account to another. No new dollars needed.
We need to increase the statutory debt limit as soon as possible. We should have done so already to avoid creating undue and potentially costly uncertainty, and we most certainly should not wait until the last moment to make this necessary increase. No Member of Congress should even consider holding this must-pass legislation hostage.
We don’t need to increase the statutory limit; we need to eliminate the entire “debt ceiling” rule. It is total nonsense, meant to deceive you into believing the federal government is limited in its ability to fund social programs.
At the same time, it is important to recognize that the near-record national debt is on an unsustainable path and changes need to be made.
And there’s that inevitable word “unsustainable.” What does it mean? You never will be told. It’s a word meant only to frighten you.
The United States has been “sustaining” growth in the federal debt for many years. Here is a graph showing the Gross Federal Debt Held by the Public. (It is “held by the public,” because you, the public, own the dollars in those T-security accounts at the FRB.
In 1940 the total of “debt” held by the public was $41 billion.
By 2015 the “debt” had reached $13 trillion and climbing. Over the past 75 years, the Federal Reserve Bank has “sustained” a 31,000% increase in T-security deposits.
Every year since then, the debt fear-mongers have issued hand-wringing claims that the debt is “unsustainable,” or a “ticking time bomb,” or a threat to the world as we know it.
We have endured, or shall we say, “sustained,” more than 75 years of hysterical predictions thatnever come true, about bank deposits at the FRB — and yet, after more than 75 years, the public still has not caught on to the scam.
Would you believe someone who consistently has been proven wrong for more than 75 years?
Given that the debt ceiling is one of the few reminders of this fiscal reality, it would be prudent for policymakers to attach or simultaneously pass measures to help slow the growth of our national debt. In the past, some debt ceiling increases have been productively paired with deficit-reduction policies or processes.
What is the “fiscal reality,” the CRFB writes of? They don’t say. But the real “reality” is that contrary to what you have been told, the federal government does not issue T-securities to fund spending.
In fact, the federal government’s method for creating dollars is to pay creditors. Unlike you, and me, and the states, counties, and cities, the federal government needs no income. It creates dollars, ad hoc, every time it pays a bill.
When the federal government pays a creditor, it sends instructions(not dollars) to the creditor’s bank, instructing the bank to increase the balance in the creditor’s checking account. At the instant the creditor’s bank obeys those instructions, new dollars are created and added to the money supply.
The instructions then are cleared through the Federal Reserve Bank, which is owned by the federal government. Thus, the federal government has the power to approve its own payments, which is why no federal check ever has bounced.
This power is known as “Monetary Sovereignty.“ The federal government is sovereign over its sovereign currency, the dollar. It can do anything it wishes with the dollar. It can create dollars at will, and it can give the dollar any value it chooses. It can create or prevent inflation to whatever level it chooses.
(This is in contrast to state and local governments, which are monetarily non-sovereign regarding the dollar. They use the dollar but it is not their sovereign currency; they cannot create dollars at will, nor can they control inflation.)
Debt fear-mongerers try to confuse you by falsely implying federal finances are like state and local (and personal) finances.
If T-securities simply are deposits in accounts at the FRB, why do they exist?
They provide a means for interest rate control and inflation control. By setting the interest rates on T-securities, the Fed influences all interest rates, and adjusting interest rates is how the Fed controls inflation.
T-security accounts provide a safe investment for conservative investors, including nations, worldwide. The Chinese, for instance, deposit their dollars into T-security accounts, because the Federal Reserve Bank is the world’s safest bank. It’s the safest place to hold dollars.
To facilitate an antiquated law requiring FRB deposits to equal deficit spending. The law became outmoded in August, 1971, when the U.S. went off the gold standard.
The government has the power eliminate T-securities entirely, and to continue deficit spending, forever.
While first and foremost we encourage policymakers to pass the needed increase immediately, we also support their using this opportunity to take long-overdue action to deal with the debt.
When your credit card bill arrives, you pay it. But if it’s too high, you may also need to adjust your borrowing habits going forward.
The CRFB, like all debt fear-mongers, draws a false parallel between federal financing and personal financing. You, as a user of dollars, can run short of dollars to pay your bills.
The federal government, as the sole issuer ofdollars, never can run short of its own sovereign currency.
So why all the propaganda about “ticking time bombs” and “unsustainable debt”? Very simply:
The Gap can be widened either by the rich having more, and/or the rest of us having less.
Most deficit spending is for social programs that help narrow the Gap between the rich and the rest of us.
The rich bribe the three primary sources of economic information: the politicians (via campaign contributions and promises of lucrative employment later), and the media (via advertising money and ownership), and the economists(via university contributions and employment in “think tanks) to convince you the government can’t afford the social programs that narrow the Gap.
For more information contact Patrick Newton, Press Secretary, at newton@crfb.org. http://www.crfb.org
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, 1900 M Street, NW
Suite 850, Washington, DC 20036
No, don’t bother to contact these people. They won’t answer you. They are owned and operated by the rich and by toadies to the rich. They do not want you to know the facts. They want you to believe the Big Lie.
So, instead, contact your Senators and your Representative, and tell them you know the federal debt ceiling is a lie, designed to cut your social benefits. Tell them you will vote for the first one who tells the truth.
And please contact your local media; tell your friends. Get the word out.
This charade has cost you way too much for way too long.
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 A MONTHLY ECONOMIC BONUS TO EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD IN AMERICA (similar to Social Security for All) (The JG (Jobs Guarantee) vs the GI (Guaranteed Income) vs the EB (Economic Bonus)) Or institute a reverse income tax.
This article is the fifth in a series about direct financial assistance to Americans:
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 EVERYONE Five 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 FEDERAL TAXES ON BUSINESS
Businesses are dollar-transferring machines. They transfer dollars from customers to employees, suppliers, shareholders and the federal government (the later having no use for those dollars). Any tax on businesses reduces the amount going to employees, suppliers and shareholders, which diminishes the economy. Ultimately, all business taxes reduce 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 business 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.
It takes only two things to keep people in chains: The ignorance of the oppressedand the treachery of their leaders..
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Imagine a child trying to nail two boards together. He takes off his shoes and bangs the nail with the heels.
What should you do to help?
You simply could take his shoes away, denying him of protection for his feet.
Or, you could give him a hammer or use a hammer yourself so the job would be done more easily and properly.
Or, you could add handles to his shoe’s heels and metal to the soles, so his shoes would be more effective as hammers, but less effective as shoes.
This parable describes Congress’s methods for dealing with America’s need for health care insurance.
Donald Trump’s, and much of the GOP’s, method is #1, simply to take the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) away. Of course, that would deprive poor Americans of health care. They would have to go “without shoes.”
Or, you could have the federal government provide comprehensive, no-deductible, fully funded Medicare to every man, woman, and child in America, which would be the sensible corollary to #2.
Today, however, Congress seems to have decided on approach #3, a complex, convoluted, bipartisan non-solution to the problem.
Here are excerpts from an article that appeared in the 8/2/17 issue of the Chicago Tribune:
Senators may try bipartisan approach A shift on fixing health care law emerges as repeal push fades
By Noam N. Levey and David Lauter Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — Even as President Donald Trump renews his threat to undermine the Affordable Care Act, senior Republican and Democratic senators announced plans Tuesday to begin work on a new bipartisan effort to stabilize the 2010 health care law, also known as Obamacare.
The stated purpose is to “stabilize” (whatever that means) the ACA laws that forever will be hard to justify and always in flux.
The move — by Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the committee’s senior Democrat — signaled a new willingness by Republican senators to begin work on fixing weaknesses with the law rather than trying to roll it back.
In a statement and a series of messages on Twitter in which he set the schedule for the Senate for the rest of August, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., notably didn’t include health care.
McConnell, whose one stated goal of five years ago was to “make Obama a one-term President failed spectacularly, now is smarting over the failure his other stated goal, the elimination of ACA.
As a proven failure, he cannot bring himself to help solve America’s health care problems.
“Any solution that Congress passes for 2018 stabilization package would need to be small, bipartisan and balanced,” Alexander said as he invited the committee’s Democrats to participate in the process.
Translation: “We’ll put small handles and cheap metal soles on the shoes, so they still won’t function as hammers, and won’t be shoes, either, but we’ll be able to tell the voters we did something, and anyway the Democrats are to blame.”
Texas Sen. John Cornyn said, “We are forced to work together to try to solve these problems, and I think frankly bipartisan solutions tend to be more durable.”
Translation: “Bipartisan solutions tend to be more blameable. When things go wrong, or the voters get angry, we can point at the Dems.”
In addition, McConnell rebuffed Trump’s demands that the Senate change its rules so it can pass a health overhaul with a simple majority vote. “It’s pretty obvious that our problem with health care was not the Democrats. We didn’t have 50 Republicans,” McConnell said.
No, it’s pretty obvious the GOP problem with health care is it didn’t create a health care plan. It only created anti-Obama plans.
In the House, where a group of Republicans and Democrats — who have called themselves the Problem Solvers Caucus — have begun meeting to talk about fixes to the current law.
There are no fixes to current law that will solve the problems, any more than fixing a shoe to be a hammer solves problems. Obamacare is a complicated law based on “the Big Lie,“ the lie that federal taxes fund federal spending.
If Congress ever were to acknowledge the simple fact of our nation’s Monetary Sovereignty –– the federal government’s unlimited ability to fund any expense denominated in U.S. dollars — all the problems with Obamacare instantly would disappear.
Most patient advocates, physician groups, hospitals and even many health insurers have been saying for months that targeted fixes to insurance marketplaces make more sense than the kind of far-reaching overhaul of government health programs that Republicans had been pushing.
Patient advocates, physician groups, hospitals and health insurers either do not understand the realities of Monetary Sovereignty or are afraid to tell the truth.
So-called “targeted fixes” merely will add more wheels, levers, and rules to the Rube Goldbergian, Obamacare machine.
The GOP approach was not an “overhaul,” it was a sledgehammer smashing the gears, an effort to render the entire process ineffective.
Rate hikes and the decision by many insurers to exit markets amid the current political uncertainty in Washington have threatened consumers’ access to health plans.
Rate hikes and insurers exiting markets would cease to be problems if the federal government funded the whole process. Rate hikes would be unnecessary and there would be little need for insurance companies as middlemen.
One critical step is funding assistance through Obamacare to low-income consumers to help offset their co-pays and deductibles. This aid — known as cost-sharing reduction, or CSR, payments — was included in the original law.
But the payments have become a political football as Republicans during the Obama administration successfully argued in federal court that the aid can’t be provided without an appropriation by Congress.
Now Trump administration officials are threatening to cut off the payments, a threat the White House renewed after last week’s Senate votes.
Congress could put an end to that uncertainty by voting to appropriate the CSR money, an idea supported by many lawmakers.
Or, Congress could end the entire controversy by voting for federally funded Medicare for every man, woman, and child in America.
Most insurance experts and officials also say the federal government must create a better system to protect insurers from big losses if they are hit with very costly patients.
Question: Which is more important, protecting health insurance companies or protecting the health of the American people? Ask your Congressperson that question.
Many GOP lawmakers continue to be interested in rolling back Obamacare and dramatically cutting funding for health care safety net programs such as Medicaid.
Three Senate Republicans — Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Dean Heller of Nevada — have been talking about a new repeal plan with the White House in recent days.
But polls indicate that Americans now hold congressional Republicans and the Trump administration responsible for the fate of the nation’s health care system.
Lisa Mascaro in Washington, D.C., and Associated Press contributed.
noam.levey@latimes.com
The GOP is divided: Whether to destroy anything attached to Barack Obama or to provide their constituents with health care and gain their votes.
Hurting by fixing or just plain hurting: It’s a real problem for the “Party of the Rich.”
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 A MONTHLY ECONOMIC BONUS TO EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD IN AMERICA (similar to Social Security for All) (The JG (Jobs Guarantee) vs the GI (Guaranteed Income) vs the EB (Economic Bonus)) Or institute a reverse income tax.
This article is the fifth in a series about direct financial assistance to Americans:
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 EVERYONE Five 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 FEDERAL TAXES ON BUSINESS
Businesses are dollar-transferring machines. They transfer dollars from customers to employees, suppliers, shareholders and the federal government (the later having no use for those dollars). Any tax on businesses reduces the amount going to employees, suppliers and shareholders, which diminishes the economy. Ultimately, all business taxes reduce 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 business 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.
It takes only two things to keep people in chains: The ignorance of the oppressedand the treachery of their leaders..
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
The Democrats and the Republicans each have sabotaged American health care, though in different ways.
Before we discuss the sabotage, here is a bit of background:
In one sense, health care for Americans is a fairly simple concept. Doctors, nurses, hospitals, other health care workers, and pharmaceutical companies do the actual work.
No one has suggested that be changed. The entire battle in Congress concerns just one question: Who pays for it?
The real question: “Who pays?”
No one is opting for “socialized medicine.”
Though that is an epithet deceptively used by those who despise all forms of federal spending, socialized medicine would involve government ownership of hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, with doctors and nurses being government employees.
Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA, Obamacare) are not socialized medicine. The closest we have to socialism in America are such functions as our public schools, police, fire departments, public parks, the military, and the Veterans’ Administration, wherein all parts of the program are government owned and directed, and the employees are government workers.
Socialism is not government paying for things. Socialism is government ownership.
All of the current controversy regarding the “repeal and replace” of Obamacare has to do with one, simple little question: Who pays?
There are three methods of paying: Some American people can pay the doctors, hospitals, etc. directly. But for the vast majority of us, the cost of treatment for serious illnesses would be unaffordable.
Even the most basic healthcare — annual checkups — can be beyond many people’s budgets.
So, we created a second system: We and/or our employers pay indirectly. We pay insurance companies, which in turn pay the health care providers.
But there are three problems with that indirect system:
Health care insurance companies are middlemen, providing no health care services
The insurance companies are nothing more than middlemen. They do not provide health care. They simply accept money from the public, remove their profits, and pay what’s left to the health care providers. This system adds extra middleman costs beyond the health care costs.
People who already are sick, cannot buy insurance at an affordable rate.
Poorer people cannot afford insurance at all.
The first two systems — American’s paying directly, or insurance companies paying as middlemen, both ultimately require the people to pay.
The result has been that too many Americans either have been doing without health care, so they sicken and lead lives of misery, or die early. Or they are left financially destitute.
Not only is this inhumane, especially in the wealthiest nation on earth, but allowing people to sicken puts a drag on the economy and so, negatively affects us all.
There is a third system: The federal government pays. This is known as “single-payer,” which is as opposed to the current multiple-payer system.
Fortunately, we live in a Monetarily Sovereign nation, in which the federal governmenthas the unlimited ability to create dollars.
The federal government never can run short of its sovereign dollars.
The federal government is not like state and local governments. It uniquely creates dollars by spending dollars.
The federal government does not spend tax dollars. Taxpayers do not pay for federal spending. The federal government actually creates brand new dollars, ad hoc, every time it pays a bill.
When you are paid by the federal government, it sends instructions (not dollars) to your bank, in the form of a check or a wire. These instructions tell your bank to increase the balance in your checking account.
The federal government doesn’t send dollars. It sends instructions.
The instructions to your banks are: “Pay to the order of [your name]. That tells your bank to increase your checking account balance by the amount indicated on the check.
At the moment your bank does as the federal government instructs, brand new dollars are created and added to the nation’s money supply.
The federal government’s instructions always clear because they are approved by the Federal Reserve Bank, which is owned by the government. Thus, the federal government can create endless dollars because it approves its own checks. That is why no federal check ever has bounced or ever will bounce. The government writes the rules and approves what it does.
No tax dollars are not involved in the instructions. Unlike the monetarily non-sovereign state and local governments, which do use tax dollars, the federal government neither needs nor uses any form of income.
Even if the federal government didn’t collect a single dollar in taxes, it could continue paying its bills, forever.
The federal government has the power to completely eliminate the FICA tax and still fund Social Security and Medicare into perpetuity.
The federal government can cut out the middleman
So, the federal government, having this unlimited ability to pay bills, can eliminate the middle men (the insurance companies) and pay all the doctors, nurses, hospitals, other health care workers, and pharmaceutical companies, and do it without collecting a dime in taxes.
The federal government has the power to fund a comprehensive, no-deductible Medicare plan for every man, woman, and child in America, and even include long-term care — all at no cost to the American public.
It has the power to do this without collecting a penny in taxes, because it creates new dollars every time it pays a bill.
With that as a background, here is the sabotage:
The Democrats’ Sabotage of the health care system:
The Democrats commit their sabotage of the health care system by pretending that the federal government needs and spends tax dollars (aka “The Big Lie.“)
While state and local governments do need and spend tax dollars, the federal government does not. But the average citizen doesn’t understand the difference.
So the Democrats designed a plan (Romneycare, Obamacare, ACA) that feigns the need for taxpayer dollars. It unnecessarily copies private insurance by forcing healthy people to pay in advance for coverage later.
That is known as the “Individual Mandate,” wherein you either must pay for private health care insurance or pay a fine which supposedly would be used to fund Obamacare.
For a Monetarily Sovereign nation’s plan, the individual mandate not only is wholly unnecessary, but it provides a false basis for objecting to Obamacare. The supposed need for the individual mandate sabotages American health care.
The Big Lie makes Obamacare unnecessarily complex
Because of The Big Lie, that federal taxes are needed to pay for federal spending, Obamacare was created as a complex, convoluted Rube Goldbergian mess, almost incomprehensible to all but the most astute policy wonks.
By contrast, a simple program providing comprehensive Medicare to everyone would require much less labor and far less misunderstanding by the public and by health care providers.
The Republicans’ Sabotage of the health care system
In addition to duplicating the Democrats’ Big Lie that taxpayers fund federal spending, the Republicans go much further.
The Trump administration has actively sabotaged Obamacare at many levels. The Secretary of The Department of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, has converted his department from an agency that helps people acquire health care into a powerful, ACA-sabotaging force.
The Department’s function now has transitioned into a Department for Denial of Medical aid to the Poor.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price would not rule out Sunday the possibility of using his regulatory authority to waive the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate that requires all Americans to buy health insurance or pay a tax.
The mandate may result in higher individual costs for Americans who previously went without health insurance, but it also functions as a check on overall costs for people who get their coverage on Obamacare’s individual insurance exchanges by bringing healthy people into the risk pool.
Eliminating the mandate unilaterally is liable to create chaos in the individual exchanges as insurers scramble to offset the departure of healthy enrollees.
By pretending that the federal government cannot afford to pay for health care, the Democrats created the individual mandate. Then the Republicans, continuing to mouth the Big Lie, wish to eliminate the individual mandate, but not replace it with federal funding.
For seven years, the Republicans tried to kill Obamacare and the many millions who depend on it, by voting it out of existence. While that has not worked, they currently try to destroy the program by starving it of funds.
Price has already taken action to effectively discourage enrollment in the Obamacare exchanges. Under his leadership, HHS has used funds earmarked for promoting the Affordable Care Act to blast it on social media and downplay the law’s benefits on the federal agency’s website
Price declined to comment on the possibility that HHS would withhold cost-sharing reduction payments to insurers that subsidize exchange plans for Americans with incomes under 250 percent of the federal poverty level.
Trump implied that he would hold the payments hostage to a successful Obamacare repeal bill. Previous threats not to proceed with the payments sent tremors through the insurance markets.
Ending them would prompt insurers to increase premiums for typical plans by 19 percent, on average, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and create major disorder in the exchanges.
President Trump has stated he would “allow” Obamacare to implode, but he has gone well beyond “allow.” This is outright sabotage, intentional and intense.
The billionaire President actively is trying to destroy the only health care plan for the poor. His followers say people should be “self-sufficient.” Translation: The federal government should pay for nothing.
As individuals, we are expected not only are to pay for our own health care but our own roads, our own Research & Development, our own Military, our own atomic energy, our own clean water, our own forest management.
In “conservative-world,” we all must be self-sufficient; the government should spend nothing — especially nothing to help the poor.
The Democrats have sabotaged health care for the poor, out of a combination of ignorance and cowardice. Those Dems who understand Monetary Sovereignty simply are afraid to explain it to the populous, lest they falsely are accused of being “socialists.”.
In contrast, the Republicans sabotage health care out of animus. As the “Party of the Rich,” the GOP will do everything possible to widen the Gap between the rich and the poor.
Watch for Trump/GOP sabotage of the poor to get worse and worse, until health care for the poor disappears in America.
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 A MONTHLY ECONOMIC BONUS TO EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD IN AMERICA (similar to Social Security for All) (The JG (Jobs Guarantee) vs the GI (Guaranteed Income) vs the EB (Economic Bonus)) Or institute a reverse income tax.
This article is the fifth in a series about direct financial assistance to Americans:
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 EVERYONE Five 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 FEDERAL TAXES ON BUSINESS
Businesses are dollar-transferring machines. They transfer dollars from customers to employees, suppliers, shareholders and the federal government (the later having no use for those dollars). Any tax on businesses reduces the amount going to employees, suppliers and shareholders, which diminishes the economy. Ultimately, all business taxes reduce 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 business 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 - Mitchell 