As “everyone” knows and claims, federal deficit spending causes inflation . . . except when it doesn’t.
As you can see from the graph below, it doesn’t.
Each place where the red and blue lines diverge indicates a lack of correlation between federal deficit spending and inflation.
BLUE line = Federal deficit spending. RED line = inflation. Vertical gray bars = recessions.
Lack of correlation between federal deficit spending seems to be more the rule than the exception. All inflations and hyperinflations have been caused by scarcity, usually shortages of food and/or energy.
That said, it is possible, though rare, for federal deficit spending to cause a shortage during major wars, especially a shortage of fuel. War machinery uses a great deal of oil, and inflation is highly related to oil prices.
But contrary to popular belief, federal spending to stimulate economic growth, or to reduce poverty, or to provide benefits to the underclasses, does not cause inflations.
It also does not “overheat” the economy (whatever that means), or any other similarly vague terms used by economists to make you think they know what they are talking about.
In fact, federal deficit spending not only cures recessions (as the graph shows), but it also can cure inflations, if the spending is used to purchase from abroad, then distribute to the public, the items that are in short supply.
For example, the most common cause of inflation these days is an oil shortage, which can be cured domestically by the federal government buying oil on the open market and distributing it to the private sector.
That is the purpose of the Strategic Petrolium Reserve:
According to the United States Energy Information Administration, approximately 4.1 billion barrels of oil are held in strategic reserves, of which 1.4 billion is government-controlled.
The remainder is held by private industry. In 2004 the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve had the largest strategic reserve, with much of the remainder held by the other 27 members of the International Energy Agency.
Global oil consumption is in the region of 0.1 billion barrels per day. The 4.1 billion barrels reserve is equivalent to 41 days of production. The reserve is intended to be used to cover short-term supply disruptions.
Covering a 50% shortfall would deplete the reserves in 82 days.
It is those “short-term supply disruptions,” not federal deficit spending, that cause inflation.
How did the federal government obtain 1.4 billion barrels of inflation-preventing oil in its strategic reserve? Answer: Federal deficit spending.
I remind you of this because we now have, just balancing on a knife’s edge, a Democratic administration, which historically has tried to provide benefits for the lower- and middle-income groups.
The resistance to Medicare for All, Social Security for All, College for All, Basic Nutrition for All, along with improved infrastructure, usually comes from the party of the rich, the GOP.
Their excuses for not providing benefits to the “not-rich” can be summarized by three lies:
The federal government can’t afford it without tax increases. (But our Monetarily Sovereign government has the unlimited ability to create dollars, i.e “print money.” So taxes are not necessary. See here.).
The lazy poor will use benefits as an excuse not to work (except that is a proven myth, promulgated by the rich, and has no basis in fact. See here.).
Deficit spending will cause inflation. (See the above graph).
O.K., politicians, what’s your next excuse for not implementing the Ten Steps to Prosperity? (below).
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”
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 Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:
The Big Lie in economics is: Federal taxes fund federal spending. The Big Lie sometimes is stated, “Our children and grandchildren will have to pay for today’s federal deficits and debt.”
The Big Lie is told, and believed, for one simple reason: Most people do not understand the differences between federal government (Monetarily Sovereign) finances and all other (monetarily non-sovereign) finances.
You, your business, your state, county, and city all are monetarily non-sovereign.
When you want to spend, you need a source of money, which for local governments mostly is taxes and borrowing.
By contrast, the federal government is Monetarily Sovereign.
When it wants to spend, it neither needs nor uses any source of money.
It creates new money by paying creditors, exactly the opposite of what you personally are accustomed to.
Although the federal government collects tax dollars, it no longer needs to.
The purpose of that change was to remove limits on the federal government’s ability to create money. Since that date, the federal government has not used tax dollars to pay for anything.
Contrary to popular wisdom, federal taxpayers are not “on the hook” for federal deficits (which in fact are private sector surpluses) or for federal debt (which is nothing more than deposits in accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank).
You or your grandchildren do not owe the federal deficit or debt, and you never will pay for them. Period.
The sole purpose of tax dollars has been to regulate the economy, by taxing what the government wants to limit and by giving tax breaks to what the government wants to encourage. The federal government could eliminate all federal tax collections, and still continue spending, forever.
That said, please read the following excerpts from an article that appeared in the March 18, 2021 edition of the Chicago Tribune:
We don’t need Biden’s infrastructure binge Steve Chapman, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board
Donald Trump did many bad things as president, but he deserves a smidgen of credit for what he didn’t do: go on an infrastructure spending binge.
He vowed that under him, our roads, bridges and waterways would be “the envy of the world.” He said that in 2016 and was still saying it in 2020. But his main achievement was to make “infrastructure week” a source of hilarity.
Now President Joe Biden is hoping to do what Trump didn’t do, and he has support from such divergent groups as the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
During his campaign, he made gaudy promises to “transform” our transportation networks, “revolutionize” railroads and urban transit, and upgrade water systems, broadband, bike lanes, home weatherization and just about anything else you could think of. Biden could make the Pledge of Allegiance an infrastructure issue.
His price tag for all this? Two trillion dollars. His plan to pay for it? Unspecified.
The two trillion dollars would be created by the federal government, then distributed as growth dollars to the private sector.
Biden would pay for it exactly the same way the federal government pays for everything: It creates dollars, ad hoc.
Specifically, to pay any bill:
The federal government creates instructions from thin air, then sends those instructions (in the form of a check or wire transfer) to the creditor’s bank, instructing the bank to increase the creditor’s checking account balance by a specified amount (“Pay to the order of _______“)
When the bank clicks a computer key to increase the numbers in the creditor’s checking account, this instantly creates brand new dollars that are added to the nation’s money supply, in a segment known as “M1.”
The bank then balances its books by clearing the instructions through the Federal Reserve, which always approves federal instructions.
By formula, increases to the nation’s money supply increase economic growth (Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports). Federal government spending increases the nation’s money supply. State and local government spending does not.
No tax dollars are involved at any point in this transaction. The whole process is paid for by newly created dollars.
The White House has indicated a preference for tax increases on the wealthy and corporations. When asked recently how she and her fellow Republicans would react to that idea, Sen. Susan Collins reportedly “burst out laughing.”
Sadly, Biden and his minions disseminate the Big Lie that federal taxes fund federal spending.
Why? The real purpose of the Big Lie is to convince you, the public, that the federal government’s ability to provide benefits to you is limited. This is to keep you from asking for free Medicare for All, free College for All, support for local governments to cut local taxes — indeed for any benefit to the not-rich.
The very rich, who run America, are motivated by “Gap Psychology,“ the desire to get richer by distancing oneself from those who have less wealth. The rich pay politicians (via political contributions and promises of jobs afterward), university economists (via lucrative jobs and contributions to universities), and the media (via ownership and advertising dollars) to disseminate the Big Lie.
We are told that our highways and bridges are falling apart from lack of investment and that upgrading them will not only create jobs but boost our economic productivity.
But the Reason Foundation, which issues a detailed report each year on the nation’s highways, found that the percentage of urban interstates rated in poor condition was lower in 2018 than a decade earlier.
Likewise with rural interstates. For other major rural highways, just 1.23% were in bad shape in 2018.
The foundation’s most recent report found that “the general quality and safety of the nation’s highways has incrementally improved as spending on state-owned roads increased by 9%, up to $151.8 billion” compared with the previous year.
The Reason Foundation is a libertarian organization that opposes virtually all government spending. Their research results tend to be slanted in that direction.
Nevertheless, even the possibility that our roads and highways may be in less bad condition, does not indicate the federal government should not improve them. Americans live longer today than they did years ago. So should the government not have paid for the CORONA virus vaccine?
And what about those jobs infrastructure work creates?
Bridges? Notes Brown University economist Matthew A. Turner in The Milken Institute Review, “There were more bridges in good condition and fewer crumbling bridges in 2017 than in 1992.” Mass transit? The average age of public transit buses has declined during that period.
As always with the Big Lie, one simple point is missed. When the states fix roads and bridges, state taxpayers must take dollars from their pockets to pay for these repairs.
When the federal government pays, it puts new dollars into the private sector.
Then we come to the faux moral excuse for the Big Lie:
Even if the United States needs more investment in particular areas, that doesn’t mean the federal government should pick up the tab. The great majority of infrastructure assets are owned by state and local governments, and it’s their constituents who would gain the most from resurfacing roads or bolstering bridges.
If they are going to reap the economic benefits of such investments, shouldn’t they be willing to pay for them?
Yes, shame on you for wanting the federal government, which has infinite money, to pay, when you, who have limited money should want to pay, that is, if you are a good person. Right?
The purpose of that kind of reasoning is to pit one part of the public against the other with a “Why should I pay for his roads?” kind of reasoning.
In fact, they seem to be unwilling. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports, “State and local infrastructure spending as a share of gross domestic product is at its lowest point since the early 1980s.”
Apparently, the author believes state and local taxes are too low. After all, the only place the state governments can find the money for infrastructure repair is via taxes, so when states are “unwilling,” it merely means their taxes are too low.
But the fact that these governments don’t want to use their own money doesn’t mean they won’t be happy to use cash that falls out of the sky.
That’s the political beauty of federal infrastructure packages: The benefits are obvious to people getting new projects, but the costs are invisible.
The author doesn’t realize it, but his “falls out of the sky” intended pejorative, actually comes close to the truth. The federal government, creates dollars from nothing, as it always has — just as it created the very first dollars, when America began.
Where does the author think the first dollars came from? In the late 1770s, there existed zero dollars. Ten years later, there were millions. Where did they come from if not from “out of the sky,” i.e. created from thin air by laws (which also are created from thin air) passed by the federal government?
The timing of this push is also awkward, because the COVID-19 catastrophe creates so much uncertainty about how we will live, work and travel going forward.
“I’m not sure that at this time we want to be pouring concrete or buying equipment until we see how much of this shakes out for a year or two,” University of Chicago economist Allen Sanderson told me.
“Shakes out”? Does Sanderson believe roads will not need to be fixed? Does he believe public transportation will become obsolete? And how long is this “shake-out” period? Will we know something more next year, so don’t fix roads for a year?
Or will we have to wait a decade to learn what our long-term needs will be?
Of course, the University of Chicago economists are notorious for not understanding the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, so Sanderson’s remarks, though totally wrong, are not unexpected.
Under Trump, “infrastructure week” went nowhere, time after time. But it could be that one thing worse than an infrastructure push that fails is an infrastructure push that succeeds?
No, Mr. Chapman, the one thing worse than an infrastructure push that fails is a columnist who, knowing nothing about Monetary Sovereignty, always tells his readers, “Now is not the time to spend.”
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”
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 Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:
You may know this, although the vast majority of Americans — including the media writers, politicians and economists — don’t: Money does not exist in any material form.
Money is nothing more than an electronic notation in an electronic balance sheet. You cannot see, touch, taste, smell, or hear money.
That dollar bill in your wallet is a title to a dollar, telling the world that you own a dollar. Just as a car title is not a car, and a house title is not a house, a dollar bill is not a dollar.
Because the U.S. dollar has no physical existence, the U.S. government has the unlimited ability to create infinite dollars at the touch of a computer key.
Within the past twelve months, the government has demonstrated this infinite ability by creating, from thin air, something like SIX TRILLION stimulus dollars, without collecting a single extra dollar in taxes.
The fact that dollars are mere balance sheet numbers makes the following article seem somewhat less shocking than it otherwise would.
On March 11, Beeple, a computer science graduate whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, auctioned a piece of crypto art at Christie’s for US$69 million.
The winning bidder is now named in a digital record that confers ownership. This record, called a nonfungible token, or NFT, is stored in a shared global database.
This database is decentralized using blockchain, so that no single individual or company controls the database.
But “ownership” of crypto art confers no actual rights, other than being able to say that you own the work. You don’t own the copyright, you don’t get a physical print, and anyone can look at the image on the web.
There is merely a record in a public database saying that you own the work – really, it says you own the work at a specific URL.
So why would anyone buy crypto art – let alone spend millions on what’s essentially a link to a JPEG file?
It’s a difficult question, only for those who believe money is a physical thing.
But because money has no physical existence, might just as well ask, “Why would anyone give someone a beautiful, physical automobile, containing 10,000 physical parts, in exchange for numbers in a balance sheet?
Before we try to answer both questions, let’s look a bit further at the article:
Some people buy art for their homes, hoping to incorporate it into their living spaces for pleasure and inspiration.
But art also plays many important social roles. The art in your home communicates your interests and tastes. Artworks can spark conversation, whether they’re in museums or homes.
People form communities around their passion for the arts, whether it’s through museums and galleries, or magazines and websites. Buying work supports the artists and the arts.
“Seeing” the Mona Lisa
Let me tell you three short stories about money, value, and art.
Story #1. Have you been to the Louvre and seen the famous Mona Lisa?
It’s a surprisingly small portrait, and your view is limited by the fact that a rail protects it from a close approach.
Further, most of the time, it is surrounded by a dense crowd of viewers, each of whom is able to spend only a few seconds to look at what arguably is the most famous painting in the world.
In the unlikely event this painting ever were sold, the cost would be in the trillions of euros.
Yet, you could purchase a very good lithographed copy for a few dollars, and you could hang it in your home, and enjoy it for hours on end.
Center diamond: 3 carats. Each side diamond: 2 carats
So why would anyone spend millions, billions, or trillions of dollars to own something they could have for next to nothing?
Story #2. Years ago, I bought for my wife (now deceased) a ring, from a cousin (also now deceased) who was a wholesale diamond merchant. He sold to retailers, who sold to the public, so his own buying price was quite low.
The ring had a magnificent center diamond weighing 3 carats, with a diamond on both sides, each weighing 2 carats.
As I recall, the “family” price to me was about $7,000. I since have sold that ring for many times that amount.
But, I could have purchased an essentially identical piece of jewelry, made from cubic zirconia, for about $750, give or take.
Without a jeweler’s loop, no one (but my wife) would have been the wiser.
So why would a fool (me) spend so much on essentially nothing?
Perhaps the most visible form of art collecting today, and the one that drives so much public discussion about art, is the art purchased for millions of dollars – the pieces by Picasso and Damien Hirst traded by the ultrawealthy.
Why were those pieces of are exchanged for so much money?
Finally, I think many people buy art strictly as an investment, hoping that it will appreciate in value.
If you look at the reasons people buy art, only one of them – buying art for your home – has to do with the physical work.
Every other reason for buying art that I listed could apply to crypto art.
You can build your own virtual gallery online and share it with other people online. You can convey your tastes and interests through your virtual gallery and support artists by buying their work.
You can participate in a community: Some crypto artists, who have felt excluded by the mainstream art world, say they have found more support in the crypto community and can now earn a living making art.
While Beeple’s big sale made headlines, most crypto art sales are much more affordable, in the tens or hundreds of dollars. This supports a much larger community than just a select few artists. And some resale values have gone up.
Aside from the visual pleasure of physical objects, nearly all the value art offers is, in some way, a social construct. This does not mean that art is interchangeable, or that the historical significance and technical skill of a Rembrandt is imaginary.
It means that the value we place on these attributes is a choice.
Story #3. It’s not really a story, but a common observation: Millionaires and billionaires love to see their names on things: Hospitals, schools, libraries, sports’ centers, etc. So they give away millions or billions of dollars, just to see what they could have seen for a few dollars or nothing: Their names.
What do they get for their money? Nothing physical.
They could have contributed without insisting that their name be engraved somewhere. They received the same benefit as did the person who bought the crypto art, and the same benefit I received for buying three transparent stones my wife could wear.
And that is the not-so-secret of the balance sheet notation we call “money.” Those arbitrary, non-physical, made-from-thin air dollars have enough value to be traded for . . . traded for what? A couple of transparent stones? A picture?
They all are valuable because we social animals choose to deem them valuable.
You might respond that scarcity is what makes them valuable. But plenty of things are scarce and not valuable. I paint, but my paintings are not valuable, though they are just as scarce as the Mona Lisa.
You might say beauty or artistic talent makes them valuable. But before artists become famous, their paintings are just as beautiful and require just as much talent, but are valued much less.
When someone pays $90 million for a metal balloon animal made by Jeff Koons, it’s hard to believe that the work has that much “intrinsic” value.
Even if the materials and craftsmanship are quite good, surely some of those millions are simply buying the right to say “I bought a Koons. And I spent a lot of money on it.” If you just want an artfully made metal balloon animal, there are cheaper ways to get one.
Conversely, the conceptual art tradition has long separated the object itself from the value of the work. Maurizio Cattelan sold a banana taped to a wall for six figures, twice; the value of the work was not in the banana or in the duct tape, nor in the way that the two were attached, but in the story and drama around the work.
Again, the buyers weren’t really buying a banana, they were buying the right to say they “owned” this artwork.
Depending on your point of view, crypto art could be the ultimate manifestation of conceptual art’s separation of the work of art from any physical object. It is pure conceptual abstraction, applied to ownership.
On the other hand, crypto art could be seen as reducing art to the purest form of buying and selling for conspicuous consumption.
In Victor Pelevin’s satirical novel “Homo Zapiens,” the main character visits an art exhibition where only the names and sale prices of the works are shown. When he says he doesn’t understand – where are the paintings themselves? – it becomes clear that this isn’t the point. Buying and selling is more important than the art.
This story was satire. But crypto art takes this one step further. If the point of ownership is to be able to say you own the work, why bother with anything but a receipt?
The reason art, or anything else — cars, houses, jewelry, etc. — has value is not just its intrinsic value. For most of us, there are cheaper forms of transportation, cheaper forms of shelter, and cheaper stones than what we paid. A scratched and dented car has the same transportation value as does a shiny, untainted car.
We are social animals. These things have value because other people think they have value, and they are willing to exchange other things they think have value to get them.
And that is why money has value.
Money has value because the world thinks it has value. Remember, money has no physical existence. It is just a bookkeeping notation. And that same notation might appear in several places.
It might appear on your bank’s computer, on your computer, or on dozens of other computers. No matter how many computers it appears in, it still is the same money. It still has the same value.
It still seems hard to get used to the idea of spending money for nothing tangible.
Would anyone pay money for NFTs that say they “own” the Brooklyn Bridge or the whole of the Earth or the concept of love? People can create all the NFTs they want about anything, over and over again. I could make my own NFT claiming that I own the Mona Lisa, and record it to the blockchain, and no one could stop me.
But I think this misses the point.
In crypto art, there is an implicit contract that what you’re buying is unique. The artist makes only one of these tokens, and the one right you get when you buy crypto art is to say that you own that work.
Actually, the more important right is to say that you can afford to own the work.
As an investment, crypto-art just seems inconceivable to me that the higher prices reflect true value, in the sense of these works having higher resale value in the long term. As in the traditional art world, there are a lot more works being sold than could ever possibly be considered significant in a generation’s time.
And, in the crypto world, we’re seeing highly volatile prices, a sudden frenzy of interest, and huge sums being paid for things that seem, on the surface, not to have the slightest bit of value at all, such as the $2.5 million bid to “own” Jack Dorsey’s first tweetor even the $1,000 bid on a photo of a cease-and-desist letter about NFTs.
Much of this energy seems to be driven by price speculation. It’s also worth noting that the winner of the Beeple auction seems to be heavily invested in the success of crypto art. The cryptocurrencies that drive crypto art are often considered highly speculative.
Yes, there could be a tulip-bulb bubble at work here. And, where there is no intrinsic value, the possibility of a bubble increases.
But what backs the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. No, not the “amber waves of grain,” or the “purple mountain majesties,” or the “enameled plain.” No creditor can acquire those.
The value of the Mona Lisa, the diamond ring, a mansion, a Rolls Royce car, the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, and the value of the U.S. dollar itself, all are backed by the same thing: Society’s belief that they have value.
Do you believe the dollar, that whispy, non-physical number in a bookkeeping record has value? If so, you are part of the billions of people who also think it has value.
Your dog doesn’t value a dollar. A fish doesn’t value a dollar. Tribes in the Amazon jungle don’t value the dollar.
But billions of people do, simply because other billions of people do.That is how value is determined.
When people claim that the federal government or some agency of the federal government (Social Security, Medicare et al) is in danger of running short of dollars, the ignorance is manifest. How can a government run short of something it creates by waving a magic wand (in the form of a computer key)?
Soon, President Biden will tell us he has to raise taxes in order to “pay for” the trillions being spent for COVID relief. It is utter nonsense. It is terrible, horrible, damaging Big Lie.
It is a lie that punishes America every day, by preventing us from having Medicare for All, Good Education for All, Good Housing for All, Good Food for All, Good Clothing for All, Good Transportation for All, and every other easily affordable (by the federal government) benefit.
The U.S. government not only has the unlimited ability to create dollars from thin air, but it can give those dollars any value it chooses (i.e. prevent or cure inflation.) The government neither borrows nor levies taxes to obtain dollars. It just waves that magic wand.
What is a dollar worth? Whatever its creator and society says it’s worth.
Hey, 69 million of them are worth the ability to claim you own a link to a JPEG file.
And it cost the federal government absolutely nothing to create those 69 million dollars.
In that same vein, if you send me a thousand dollars, I will send you (electronically, of course) a receipt saying you sent me $1,000. You can print it and hang it proudly in your home.
Giving you that receipt will cost me as much as providing free Medicare for All would cost the U.S. government.
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”
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 Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:
Should the United States be zero-sum or mutually beneficial?
Most games are zero-sum. Baseball, football, basketball, gin rummy, etc. If you win, I lose, so I must do everything possible not only to win, but also to make sure you lose.
Is that the type of United States of which you would be proud and in which you wish to live?
Or would you prefer a mutually beneficial United States?
Would you prefer a nation in which my winning supports your winning?
Most families are mutually beneficial. The traditional TV family of father works, mother cooks, children help out and learn to become good people, is an example of mutual benefit.
Two companies competing for the same business are zero sum.
But what about a company and its employees? The best ones are mutually beneficial. When the companies prosper, the employees prosper.
The worst companies are zero-sum, with the employees trying to get the most and the companies trying to give the least.
I remember being a Chicago Bulls basketball fan during the era of perhaps the greatest player of all time, Michael Jordan. Externally, they were zero-sum. When they won, the other team lost.
But internally, the team and Jordan were smart enough to realize that great as he was, Jordon couldn’t do it alone. So he took a lower salary than he otherwise could command, so there would be enough money to pay Scottie Pippin, Dennis Rodman, et al.
Together they won six championships.
The team owners set a salary ceiling, so that the richest owner wouldn’t acquire all the best players. But as greedy as the owners were, they realized that they had to leave enough to motivate enough great players, so fans would be attracted.
As a result, the owners became rich, and so did the players.
The very concept of the UnitedStates came with the realization that to acquire the benefits of mutual protection, each state had to give up some of its sovereignty to a central government. The Constitution itself is a result of compromise, and our glorious, democratic world comes from mutual benefit.
The short-sighted are selfish, and they refuse to compromise. The far-sighted understand the power of compromise, and realize that over the long run, giving a little to get a little becomes what these days is known as a “win-win.”
Today, that compromise, win-win, mutually beneficial idea has been lost, especially by the Republican party.
This is a party, led by a psychopathic, short-sighted philosophy. It has become embedded with the notion that anything the Democrats wish to do must be fought, lest the Democrats receive credit, regardless of the benefits to the United States as a whole.
This is a party whose politicians 100% voted against the $1.9 million dollar stimulus package despite the fact that it contains many things Republican constituents want and need.
The problem: It was a package put forth by Democrats, and heaven forbid that “enemy” party receive voter goodwill, despite the fact that the majority of Republican voters support the bill.
This is a party that puts loyalty to Donald Trump above loyalty to America, to its middle-class, or to its poor.
The idea that a politician should represent his/her constituents is largely gone. The idea that a politician should follow his/her conscience and do the right thing is totally gone.
One must admire the morality of the Democrats who seriously consider the impeachment of a governor from their own party, because he may have been too flirtatious with young women, and because he lied about COVID in nursing homes.
Can you imagine the Republicans wanting to impeach a politician who has admitted to grabbing women “by their p*ssies, and whose ongoing lies helped kill 500,000+ Americans?
Today, there are only two questions in American politics:
Will it help our side win?
Will it help the other side lose?
Lying is fine. Exaggeration, misleading, and defrauding are expected. If one group of voters leans toward the other side, try to cheat them out of their vote.
And of course, the “I-didn’t-lose;-I-was-cheated divisiveness is an admired “win-at-all-costs” ploy.
As for “What’s-best-for-America,” even the electorate believes that’s a loser’s game. The voters have become accustomed to the narrow-minded, massively unpatriotic notion of “Me first; to-hell-with-everyone-else.”
Patriotism has devolved to waving a flag, chanting “USA, USA” and vilifying half of Americans.
And as for that 100% who voted against the stimulus packages, and still denounce it because some of the money goes to something they don’t like, really? Really 100%?
Are you so willing to sink the opposition and see the entire country sink into poverty, that you cannot find it within your hearts and minds to allot some dollars to the “blue” states you despise?
Do you really hate the blacks and Mexicans so much that you feel they should be disenfranchised during the next election, just to make sure they have no voice in the future?
Do you really enjoy the ranting misstatements of an anti-unity, alienating little twerp like Tucker Carlson, who would slam Mother Theresa and your mother, if he thought they were Democrats?
If so, then I thank God you were not among the ones who created the United States and our Constitution, else we would be a balkanized little bunch of fiefdoms, powerless and laughed at by the world.
Today, the self-proclaimed “patriots” of some states, wish to leave the union so they can wave the Confederate flag above their own miserable tribes, perhaps to re-install slavery and erect statues to traitors.
It was not always thus. There have been times, even within the past few decades, when politicians of opposing political parties, negotiated “what-is-best-for-America.”
Well, that was a bloody waste of time. The Republicans wanted the infinitely rich federal government to spend less so the poor and middle-classes could receive less.
Even after the Dems compromised (fruitlessly, as it turns out) by cutting back on payments, still 100% of Republicans could find nothing to compromise about.
And horrors, the monetarily non-sovereign, on-the-edge-of-insolvency “blue” states will receive money to help support their poor urban areas that already send more dollars to the federal government than they receive.
I have news for you politicians and voters: The “winner-take-all, I-win, you-lose” attitude has not “made America great again.” Instead, it greatly has weakened the United States and turned us into the Divided States of America.
Once we were respected and admired. Today, we are scorned.
To paraphrase the Margueritaville song:
You Republicans claim The Dems are to blame, But you know, It’s your own damn fault.
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”
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 Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 