The U.S. government is running short of U.S. dollars

This post is dedicated to those who believe the U.S. government can run short of its sovereign currency, the dollar.

The Continental Congress met in New York in 1785, and on 6 July, the dollar was established as the official currency of the new United States of America.

Congress decided on a decimal system, i.e., 100 cents to a dollar. However, disagreements among the members of Congress meant that a mint wasn’t established in America until 1792.

It was another 70 years—1862, in the middle of the Civil War—before the US Treasury was able to print dollar bills—black on the front, green on the back, so colored because of the chemicals used to prevent counterfeiting.

And so the dollar (or greenback) as we know it today came into being.

Keep in mind that all of this was accomplished simply by passing laws, which are created from thin air. So long as the U.S. government has the infinite power to pass laws, it has the endless power to create U.S. dollars.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency. There is nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody. The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print the money to do that.”

Former Federal Reserve Chairman 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. It’s not tax money… We simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account.”

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell: “As a central bank, we have the ability to create money digitally.”

Statement from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank: “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.”

All of the above statements rely on the fact that the U.S. government is Monetarily Sovereign; it is sovereign over the U.S. dollar.

The statements are true for all Monetary Sovereigns. For example, the European Union is sovereign over the euro. So long as the EU can pass laws, it can create euros.

Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank: “We cannot run out of money.”

As you read this post, keep in mind the U.S. government’s infinite ability to create dollars out of thin air.

Charles Schwab Brokerage published an article titled “The Future of Social Security and Medicare?” on August 14, 2024.

The subhead was: “Medicare and Social Security are projected to run out of money by 2036. Mike Townsend discusses possible solutions to the shortfalls and the likelihood of each.”

The clock is ticking on two pillars of retirement planning.

Barring major overhauls, projections indicate that Medicare’s Hospital Insurance trust fund, which covers hospital benefits, will be unable to pay full benefits after 2036, and the Social Security trust fund, which covers retirees and their survivors, will be unable to pay full benefits after 2033.

We’ll pause here to remind you that Medicare’s Hospital Insurance trust fund and the Social Security trust fund are not real trust funds.

They are just bookkeeping line items 100% controlled by Congress and the President.

If Congress and the President decide to add a trillion dollars to each of the so-called “trust funds,” they will vote, and each “trust fund” line item instantly will be a trillion higher.

Strangely, Mike Townsend, the managing director of legislative and regulatory affairs at Schwab, doesn’t seem to understand Monetary Sovereignty and the federal government’s unique and infinite ability to create U.S. dollars.

Seemingly, Townsend equates the federal government with monetarily non-sovereign state and local governments, which do not have this infinite power.

We talked with Mike Townsend about the most likely solutions, whom they’ll affect, and when.

Q: Let’s start with Social Security. What potential fixes are on the table?

Mike: There’s a universe of possibilities, including extending the full retirement age, raising the payroll tax rate, and increasing the amount of income subject to the payroll tax.

But no one in elected office is enthusiastic about promoting any solutions that might prove politically unpopular.

Townsend doesn’t mention the real solution: Eliminate the fake trust funds and simply pay for Social Security and Medicare the same way we pay for Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, all the branches of the military, and almost every other federal agency and federal project: by creating dollars ad hoc.

Q: What might raising the full retirement age look like?

Mike: During the last major Social Security overhaul, in 1983, the age at which you could collect full benefits was gradually increased, from 65 to 67. (You can collect reduced benefits as early as age 62.)

We’re seeing similar proposals now, with one pushing for a full retirement age of 70 for those born after 1977—the rationale being that people are generally living longer and therefore also working longer.

This is at or near the top of the list of proposals, and it’s likely that the full retirement age will go up at some point—though I expect it will include a long and slow phase-in when it does happen.

This solution, called the “work ’til you drop” idea, and other “solutions” Townsend mentions, involve taking dollars from the poor and middle classes, the very people for whom Social Security and Medicare were invented.

The rich receive most of their income from sources not subject to the FICA tax.

It truly is a disgrace the people who are paid to know better pretend the federal government needs to take dollars from those who rely on them most.

Q: Have there also been proposals to change the payroll tax that funds Social Security?

Mike: Currently, the payroll tax that funds retiree benefits is 12.4% of workers’ earnings, split evenly between employer and employee. There are many proposals to increase that amount, such as by a fraction of a percentage point annually over several years to lessen the impact on the average worker.

Townsend fails to tell you that in reality, all of the money comes from salaried employees.

Every business treats the payroll tax as a cost associated with employees’ pay. This cost is one of the considerations when determining how much to pay salaried employees.

That is why so many businesses prefer to classify workers as independent contractors rather than as employees. FICA is in reality, a head tax on businesses, paid for by salaried employees.

Q: How else could the payroll tax structure change to increase revenue?

Mike: For 2024, only the first $168,600 of income is subject to the Social Security payroll tax. One proposal suggests starting to collect the tax again for income over $400,000, while another suggests collecting above $250,000.

On the political left, that’s probably the most popular proposal, because it impacts higher earners; but on the right, it’s among the least popular proposals because conservatives generally oppose tax increases of any kind.

Q: Any other ideas floating around?

Mike: There’s a bipartisan group in the Senate trying to come up with alternatives. For example, Social Security funds are now 100% invested in U.S. Treasury bonds, which are very safe but offer a relatively low rate of return.

One idea is to put some portion of Social Security taxes into a newly created sovereign wealth fund that would invest in stocks and have the potential to earn a higher rate of return.

The above is an example of the federal government pretending it isn’t Monetarily Sovereign and is helpless to increase the balance in the “trust funds” or, better yet, to do away with them and simply pay for the costs.

Q: Let’s turn to Medicare. What can be done to sustain the Hospital Insurance trust fund?

Mike: The Medicare payroll tax of 2.9%, which is split equally between employers and workers, finances this fund. For wages above $200,000, there’s an additional Medicare tax of 0.9%. Raising the tax is one way to help shore up Medicare, so it’s definitely in the mix. But again, in a divided Congress the more conservative members are unlikely to vote for a tax increase.

Q: How does the Net Investment Income Tax factor into the equation?

Mike: Currently that tax is 3.8% on investment income for those making a total of more than $200,000 ($250,000 for married couples filing jointly).

Right now, that money goes into the general coffers rather than Medicare.

However, President Biden has proposed not only an expansion of the tax—to 5% above $400,000 in income ($450,000 for couples filing jointly)—but also to apply the money to the Hospital Insurance trust fund. That proposal is also going nowhere in a divided Congress, but it’s nevertheless on the table.

It’s all ridiculous hocus-pocus. There are no “general coffers.” The federal government creates all its payment funds ad hoc. It sends instructions to each creditor’s bank, instructing the bank to increase the balance in the creditor’s checking account.

What the bank does as instructed, new dollars are created and added to the M2 money supply measure.

Further, a tax increase is entirely useless. The federal government neither needs nor uses tax dollars. When you pay your taxes, you take M2 dollars from your bank account and send them to the U.S. Treasury.

When your dollars reach the Treasury, they cease to be part of any money supply measure because the Treasury has access to infinite dollars.

Thus, all federal tax dollars are destroyed upon receipt, and new dollars are created to pay all bills.

Q: What’s the timing on any of this?

Mike: The closer the government gets to the insolvency deadlines, the less time it has to raise the necessary funds.

Congress can continue to kick the can down the road, but the math is only going to get more difficult. That said, there continues to be a lack of urgency on Capitol Hill, and it may be a few years before momentum for action builds.

The Monetarily Sovereign federal government doesn’t “raise” funds. It creates all the funds it needs and destroys all dollars coming in.

Congress can continue to kick the can down the road, but the math is only going to get more difficult. That said, there continues to be a lack of urgency on Capitol Hill, and it may be a few years before momentum for action builds.

From a beneficiary’s perspective, any proposed solution likely would be phased in over many years—and people approaching or already in retirement would almost certainly be exempt.

After all, many Americans have been planning their retirement with certain assumptions around Social Security in mind, and it would be unfair to upend those assumptions without adequate time to adjust.

Townsend does not seem to understand the fundamental differences between Monetary Sovereignty (i.e., the U.S. government) and monetary non-sovereignty (i.e., you, me, state/local governments, and businesses).

The astounding lack of factual information promulgated by one of America’s largest brokerages truly is sad.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell

Search #monetarysovereignty

Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell; MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell; https://www.academia.edu/

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

What do they do when they’re still beating the same old drum — but the drum is broken? Lie about it.

What do they do when they’re still beating the same old drum — but the drum is broken? Lie about it. At least, that is the formula the MAGAs have settled on. Here is an example:

It’s been two miserable years since the Biden-Harris Inflation Reduction Act. And it’s worse than you think Opinion by notorious election denier, Jodey Arrington, and convicted-for-lying FOX News

Politicians love to spend other people’s money. That obvious truth has never been more clear than on this, the second anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

Sold to the American people as a means of mitigating the rampant inflation unleashed by the Biden-Harris administration’s prior federal spending spree, the administration was – once again – acting as both arsonist and firefighter.

Arrington implies that federal spending causes inflation, a widely promulgated lie. Inflation always is caused by shortages of critical goods and services, not by federal spending.

We were sold under false pretense that spending more money we don’t have on federal programs we don’t need would somehow tame inflation.

Three lies in one sentence may not set a record for Trumpers — the Donald does it all the time — but it may seem repugnant to normal people. The “money we don’t have” lie. The U.S. federal government is Monetarily Sovereign, over the U.S. dollar. It can create an infinite number of dollars at the touch of a computer key, and it can never unintentionally run short of dollars.

Statement from the St. Louis Fed: “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.” You can find it in their publication titled “Why Health Care Matters and the Current Debt Does Not” from October 2011.

Having the infinite ability to create dollars, it never borrows dollars and does not use tax income to pay for things. It creates brand new dollars to pay for everything. State and local governments levy taxes because they need income to pay for things. The federal government needs no income. The purposes of federal taxes are:

To control the economy by taxing what the government wishes to discourage and by giving tax breaks to what it wishes to reward.
To assure demand for the U.S. dollar by requiring taxes to be paid in dollars.

Yes, I know. This is not what you have been told: “The federal government is just like you, your city, your state, and your business.” Wrong! You, your city, your state, and your business are monetarily non-sovereign. You do not have the infinite ability to create dollars; you borrow and use income to pay for things.

Alan Greenspan: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency. There is nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody. The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print the money to do that.”

The confusion is partly semantic. Federal Treasury bills, notes, and bonds are nothing like private sector bills, notes and bonds. The latter are certificates denoting debt, but the former — the Treasury versions, merely are evidences of deposits into accounts, wholly owned by the depositor. The purpose of Treasury bills, notes, and bonds is not to provide spending money but rather to provide a safe place for dollar owners to store unused dollars—safer than banks or other money storage places. This safe storage helps support the dollar’s value. Dollars deposited into T-security accounts remain the property of the depositor and are never used by the federal government for spending. The “programs we don’t need” lie. Here are some of the programs covered:

1. Clean Energy: The IRA allocates substantial funding to promote clean energy technologies, including wind, solar, and nuclear power. It aims to reduce carbon emissions by 40% by 2030. 2. Electric Vehicles: Incentives for electric vehicle (EV) purchases are expanded, including tax credits for both new and used EVs. 3. Prescription Drug Costs: The IRA allows Medicare to negotiate prices for certain high-cost prescription drugs, aiming to lower seniors’ out-of-pocket costs. 4. Affordable Care Act (ACA) Subsidies: The act extends enhanced subsidies for ACA health insurance plans, making coverage more affordable for millions of Americans.

One could argue endlessly about whether we “need” clean energy, electric vehicles, reduced prescription drug prices, or to make health care more affordable. Generally, Republicans hate giving these benefits to those who are not rich because the rich easily can afford them. But one thing is beyond question: The IRA pumps dollars into the economy, and according to the formula (GDP=Federal and Non-federal Spending+Net Exports), those dollars grow the economy. The “somehow tame inflation” lie implies that the title “Inflation Reduction Act” is misleading because inflation reduction is not the act’s sole purpose. That’s true. It is just one of the purposes. Reducing inflation requires reducing the shortages that cause inflation. Today’s inflation was caused by COVID-related scarcities of oil, food, shipping, labor, computer chips, metals, wood, paper, and other goods and services. Curing inflation requires curing the scarcities, which the federal government does by spending to make scarce items available to the economy. Federal support for clean energy helps reduce oil prices, the most potent inflation-inducing factor because oil prices affect the prices of all other products and services.

**Inflation (blue line) parallels oil shortages (red line), demonstrating how shortages cause inflation.**

By contrast, here is the relationship (or “non-relationship) between federal inflation and federal deficit spending:

**Federal debt does not move in concert with inflation.**

Thus, contrary to popular wisdom, federal deficit spending does not cause inflation; it can cure it by acquiring and distributing scarce goods and services. Federal spending to support electric vehicles also reduces oil prices. Medicare negotiates prices for high-cost prescription drugs, which reduces healthcare prices.

How does that work? It doesn’t. According to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the IRA had a statistically insignificant impact on inflation and may have even exacerbated it.

“Statistically insignificant.” “May have.” In the unlikely event that Arrington quoted the vaunted Wharton School correctly, they have no idea whether the IRA or other factors successfully reduced inflation. Apparently, Arrington wishes to quibble about the title of the program, not its positive economic effects. Later in this post, you will read Arrington’s claims that the“statistically insignificant” IRA caused inflation. He uses the same data to prove two opposing points.

Inflation Falls Below 3% for First Time Since 2021

Consumer prices rose 2.9 percent in the year through July, a downtick from the prior month. The report keeps the Federal Reserve firmly on track to cut interest rates next month. (NY Times August 14, 2024)

When the Republican fearmongers no longer can promulgate fake inflation and immigrant fears, they have nothing to offer voters. Their notorious Heritage Project 2025 (that Trump claims he has “no knowledge of”, just as he “never met” the women he attacked) is a playbook for enriching the rich, impoverishing the middle and poor, and establishing a dictatorship. As the COVID-related scarcities disappear, Arrington desperately continues to ignore the reality that inflation is ebbing, and with it, go Trump’s chances in the 2024 election.

Setting aside the question of what impact, if any, its massive spending had on inflation, the IRA contains an array of atrocious provisions.

“If any?” Weren’t you just claiming it caused inflation?

The measure’s tax increases on businesses large and small undermine American competitiveness, dampen economic growth, and reduce U.S. employment – now at its highest rate since October of 2021.

Yes, Mr. Arrington, employment is at a very high rate. And it didn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of the Biden administration’s policies. And as for “dampening economic growth,” have you looked at the data?

**The economic growth is higher than ever in U.S. history. Arrington claims it has been “dampened.”**

The labor market is actually as good as it’s been in decades.

The share of working-age Americans with jobs is the highest it’s been since 2001, fewer people than expected have been filing for unemployment, and the layoff rate is low compared to history.

And that’s before the Fed’s highly anticipated rate cuts, which should boost the economy further. (Lisa Ryan, Insider Today.)

**Employment as a percentage of the population is near historic highs,**

Whose bright idea was it to expand Obamacare subsidies for the wealthy, needlessly providing billions in taxpayer dollars directly to large health insurance companies?

Or to hand out hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful tax breaks to green energy corporations?

It’s not just that these new subsidies will cost three times as much as originally projected. It’s that these green energy giveaways have heaped enormous cost on Americans already struggling to pay their bills.

The above paragraphs promulgate the lie that federal spending is funded by federal taxes. As we’ve said, all federal spending is financed by new-dollar creation. Federal taxpayers fund nothing. The Monetarily Sovereign federal government has no use for taxpayer dollars. Even the most “wasteful” federal spending you can imagine still benefits the economy by adding to GDP. Remember that formula: GDP = Federal Spending + Nonfederal Spending + Net Exports.

To add insult to injury, this completely partisan bill, peddled as inflation-reducing, funneled $80 billion to expand the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), including the hiring of 87,000 new enforcement agents which will result in more audits for middle- and low-income families.

More fear-mongering from the right wing. The $80 billion allocated to the IRS through the Inflation Reduction Act targets high-income earners, large corporations, and complex partnerships. Audit rates for individuals earning less than $400,000 annually won’t increase. The focus is on ensuring that wealthy individuals and entities pay their fair share of taxes while improving customer service and modernizing technology. And that is why the Republicans, the party of the rich, hate the IRA. It will collect from the rich, not “middle- and low-income families.” It will help to narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.

Shortly after Joe Biden assumed the presidency in 2021, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecasted that the federal government would spend $5.3 trillion in Fiscal Year 2024. After more than three years of unbridled spending from the Biden-Harris administration, that figure has ballooned to more than $6.8 trillion—an increase of 29.4 percent—or nearly $216,000 per second.

In other words, federal spending will add more than 6.8 trillion growth dollars to the U.S. economy.

In fact, the deficit has more than doubled, our interest payments on the debt have tripled, and we have a higher level of indebtedness than we did during World War II.

All that spending, which costs taxpayers nothing, has grown the economy. Without that federal spending (i.e., money creation), we would be in a permanent depression.

**When deficit spending growth (blue line) decreases, we have recessions (vertical gray bars), which are cured by increased deficit spending.**

Meanwhile, CBO expects federal revenue will total $538 billion more this year than it forecast three years ago. Had the Biden-Harris White House not led Democrats in Congress to increase spending, the federal budget would be nearing balance.

While “balanced budgets” are good for you and me and even for state and local governments—we are all monetarily non-sovereign—they are an economic disaster for the federal government. A “balanced” federal budget, meaning no new dollars would be created, would cause the nation to fall into the worst depression since the 1930s. Mr. Arrington continues to spew abject ignorance about the Monetary Sovereignty of our federal government.

But the federal government increased spending by three dollars for every dollar of additional revenue, and, as a result, this year’s budget deficit will likely be $1 trillion or 100% larger than anticipated when Biden first took office.

That’s an additional $1 trillion of economic growth.

It gets worse. The Biden-Harris administration’s policies have increased the cumulative, ten-year federal budget deficit by $11.6 trillion.

Make that $11.6 trillion of economic growth.

Legislation enacted during Biden’s presidency added $4.8 trillion to the deficit. Executive actions imposed unilaterally by the president—that is, without congressional approval—added another $2 trillion. And even more maddening, spending-induced interest rate hikes increased projected net interest costs by $4.8 trillion over ten years.

Apparently, it isn’t enough for the Biden-Harris administration that the federal government is currently set to spend a projected $84.9 trillion for the coming decade. No, they believe we just can’t get by with spending anything less than $86.6 trillion!

It’s difficult to know whether Mr. Arrington is truly ignorant about federal finances or intentionally lies. He complains that Biden wants to add 86 trillion growth dollars to the economy. All those “shocking” figures actually benefit the American economy. The more deficit spending by the federal government, the richer we become. And that’s just the financial side. It doesn’t include all the benefits those dollars will buy for us. SUMMARY Federal taxes do not fund federal spending. All federal spending is financed by new money creation, which costs taxpayers nothing. Even if the federal government collected $0 taxes, it could continue spending trillions forever. Federal spending does not cause inflation, which results from shortages of key goods and services. Instead, federal spending prevents and cures inflation by preventing and addressing the shortages. The shills for the Republican party hate federal spending that benefits the middle- and lower-income groups because those benefits narrow the Gap between the rich and the rest. Benefits to you make the rich less rich. So they confuse Monetary Sovereignty with monetary non-sovereignty, i.e. federal spending with non-federal spending, to get you to vote against benefits for you. They never complain about tax breaks for the rich, only about spending that benefits the rest of us. Now, as the economy emerges triumphantly from the COVID-induced inflation/recession, and the Democrats’ spending is the proven catalyst for that recovery, the MAGA Republicans are reduced to spreading fear via lies about federal finances. Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell; https://www.academia.edu/

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

A book reveals the astounding parallels between Hitler and Trump — What every MAGA should read though none will.

Learning from history, recent or distant, is not a MAGA forte.

They believe only what Donald Trump tells them to believe today, even when it differs from what he told them yesterday, which regularly is the case.

Thus, no MAGA will read the following book or even read this post.

The book is summarized here: The Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment Enablers. (The Nazi leader didn’t seize power; he was given it.) By Adam Gopnik

The book outlines how Germany’s political and financial leaders paid dearly for believing they could control a man they knew to be a psychopath.

The parallels with today’s Republican party and Trump’s wealthy backers are astounding. You repeatedly will be reminded, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”–George Santayana,

The Life of Reason, 1905. The MAGA movement allows for no memory of Hitler’s rise to power and his disastrous use of it.

Here are some excerpts from the summary article by Adam Gopnik: ©Provided by ZNetwork

1942 or 2025?

Hitler created a world in which women were transported with their children for days in closed train cars and then had to watch those children die alongside them, naked, gasping for breath in a gas chamber.

Timothy W. Ryback’s choice to make his new book, “Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power” (Knopf), an aggressively specific chronicle of a single year, 1932, seems a wise, even an inspired one.

Ryback details, week by week, day by day, and sometimes hour by hour, how a country with a functional, if flawed, democratic machinery handed absolute power over to someone who could never claim a majority in an actual election and whom the entire conservative political class regarded as a chaotic clown with a violent following.

Ryback shows how major players thought they could find some ulterior advantage in managing him.

Each was sure that, after the passing of a brief storm cloud, so obviously overloaded that it had to expend itself, they would emerge in possession of power.

The corporate bosses thought that, if you looked past the strutting and the performative antisemitism, you had someone who would protect your money.

Hello, today’s wealthy people, Elon Musk, Kenny Troutt, Woody Johnson, Geoffrey Harrison, Saul Fox, Howard Lutnick, John Paulson, Mike Hodges, John Blanchard, Scott Bessent, David Frecka, George Bishop, Steven Witkoff, Tim Dunn, Diane Hendricks, Linda and Vince McMahon.

Trump doesn’t care about protecting your money. He cares only about protecting his money.

Many of you are billionaires who’ve supported Trump because he promises to eliminate regulations that protect customers.

Some of you gave to him in return for his political and/or financial support for their schemes.

If you notice any Jewish-sounding names in the bunch, you are right, which I, as a Jew, find particularly ironic and loathsome.

Trump is an undisguised bigot, and history shows that when a group supports bigotry, eventually, they themselves become targets of bigotry.

When a government supports bigotry, no one is spared, but the victims learn their lesson too late.

Communist ideologues thought that, if you peered deeply enough into the strutting and the performative antisemitism, you could spy the pattern of a popular revolution.

The decent right thought that he was too obviously deranged to remain in power long.

The decent left, tempered by earlier fights against different enemies, thought that, if they forcibly stuck to the rule of law, then the law would somehow by itself entrap a lawless leader.

In a now familiar paradox, the rational forces stuck to magical thinking, while the irrational ones were more logical, parsing the brute equations of power. And so the storm never passed. In a way, it still has not.

National Socialist German Workers’ Party (its German initials were N.S.D.A.P.) had been in existence since right after the Great War, as one of many völkisch, or populist, groups; its label, by including “national” and “socialist,” was intended to appeal to both right-wing nationalists and left-wing socialists, who were thought to share a common enemy: the élite class of Jewish bankers who, they said, manipulated Germany behind the scenes and had been responsible for the German surrender.

Those American Jews who support Hitleresque Trump have conveniently forgotten that right-wingers blamed Jews Germany’s loss in WWI.

The lure of money then and now overcomes morals and sense.

The Nazis, as they were called—a put-down made into a popular label, like “Impressionists”—began as one of many fringe and populist antisemitic groups in Germany, including the Thule Society, which was filled with bizarre pre-QAnon conspiracy adepts.

It is a feature of right-wing politics to be exceptionally believing of conspiracies, and not believing of facts.

Hitler’s plans were deliberately ambiguous, but his purposes were not. Ever since his unsuccessful putsch in Munich, he had, Ryback writes, “been driven by a single ambition: to destroy the political system that he held responsible for the myriad ills plaguing the German people.”

Trump’s efforts to destroy American democracy and to install himself as dictator are clouded by his frequent changes in publicly stated goals.

Example: His repeated flip-flops about ending or not ending ACA (“Obamacare”).

These changes require his followers repeatedly to go into “What he really meant was” mode to homogenize his extremism for the voting public.

Most recently, many of his acolytes explained that “he really doesn’t intend to deport millions of men, women, and children. He just wants to strengthen the border.” (Then why did he instruct his GOP minions to vote against the bipartisan border-strengthening law created by a Republican?)

Ryback skips past the underlying mechanics of the July, 1932, election on the way to his real subject—Hitler’s manipulation of the conservative politicians and tycoons who thought that they were manipulating him—but there’s a notable academic literature on what actually happened when Germans voted that summer.

The political scientists and historians who study it tell us that the election was a “normal” one, in the sense that the behavior of groups and subgroups proceeded in the usual way, responding more to the perception of political interests than to some convulsions of apocalyptic feeling.

The popular picture of the decline of the Weimar Republic—in which hyperinflation produced mass unemployment, which produced an unstoppable wave of fascism—is far from the truth. The hyperinflation had ended in 1923, and the period right afterward, in the mid-twenties, was, in Germany as elsewhere, golden.

Still, the results of the July, 1932, election weren’t obviously catastrophic. Both Hitler and Goebbels were bitterly disappointed by their standing.

As was Trump following the 2020 election– so disappointed he denied the results.

The unemployed actually opposed Hitler and voted en masse for the parties of the left.

What was once called the petite bourgeoisie, then, was key to his support—not people feeling the brunt of economic precarity but people feeling the possibility of it.

Having nothing to fear but fear itself is having something significant to fear.

Trump, like Hitler before him, is a fear-monger.

He sows fear of “marauding immigrant gangs and rapists.”

For more than a century, innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: Immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime.

Trump also promulgates the lies that immigrants don’t pay taxes and that they take jobs from native-born American workers.

Claiming that immigrants are making things worse for U.S.-born workers is often used as an intentional distraction from dynamics that are actually hurting working people—such as weak labor standards and enforcement, anti-worker deregulation, weak labor law that fails to protect workers’ rights to unions and collective bargaining in the face of coordinated and well-funded attacks, and other dynamics that result in too much power in the hands of corporations and employers.

A new study from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that undocumented immigrants actually contributed almost $100 billion in taxes during 2022 while not being able to use many of the programs they thought their tax dollars funded.

More than a third of these immigrants’ taxes are earmarked for programs they cannot access: Social Security ($25.7 billion), Medicare ($6.4 billion), and unemployment insurance ($1.8 billion).

It is Trump and his wealthy backers who favor laws that weaken American workers while benefiting the rich.

The Germans were voting, in the absent-minded way of democratic voters everywhere, for easy reassurances, for stability, with classes siding against their historical enemies.

They weren’t wild-eyed nationalists voting for a millennial authoritarian regime that would rule forever and restore Germany to glory, and, certainly, they weren’t voting for an apocalyptic nightmare that would leave tens of millions of people dead and the cities of Germany destroyed.

This is how we cast our vote.

They were voting for specific programs that they thought would benefit them, and for a year’s insurance against the people they feared.

The rich give their money and votes to Trump because they believe he will make them even richer.

The not-rich vote for Trump because they fear the imaginary dangers Trump claims immigrants and liberals pose.

Ryback, focussing on the self-entrapped German conservatives, generally avoids the question that seems most obvious to a contemporary reader: Given that Hitler had repeatedly vowed to use the democratic process in order to destroy democracy, why did the people committed to democracy let him do it?

That is the key question even today.

Given that Trump attempted to overturn an election he lost in both the electoral college and by 7 million popular votes, why would people committed to democracy now vote for him?

Many historians have jousted with this question, but perhaps the most piercing account remains an early one, written less than a decade after the war by the émigré German scholar Lewis Edinger, who had known the leaders of the Social Democrats well and consulted them directly—the ones who had survived, that is—for his study.

His conclusion was that they simply “trusted that constitutional processes and the return of reason and fair play would assure the survival of the Weimar Republic and its chief supporters.”

book burning — **Trump’s followers burn “woke” books to avoid discussing bigotry**

Most Americans understand Trump’s faults and ambitions.

Still, they cannot believe that he actually could do what he repeatedly says he will do: Destroy the legal system that protects democracy (He calls it “draining the swamp.”) and install himself as dictator.

Most Americans have a deep faith that democracy will always survive here and that we’re not like those foreign countries.

Yet, democracy constantly teeters on the edge, and we have been remarkably fortunate so far despite our individual foolishness. Today, the election is predicted to be a close call even though:

Trump disparages blacks as coming from “shithole countries” and being criminals
He disparages browns as being “rapists and criminals.”
He is supported by right-wing Christian nationalists who believe in the virtual enslavement of women and who oppose women even having voting or abortion rights.
He openly expresses his bigotry toward all religions other than Christian nationalism.
His followers engage in book burning and other anti-free-speech efforts.
He disparages gays.
He disparages women.
He opposes unions and worker’s rights while supporting rich business owners.
He repeatedly has tried to end ACA (Obamacare), even going so far as repeatedly to reach out to the Supreme Court.
He admires dictators like Putin and Kim and has admitted he would be a dictator if elected.
He has committed and been convicted by juries of many crimes, including tax fraud and other forms of fraud (for instance, Trump U., cheating his foreign workers, etc.)
He made repeated attempts to overthrow the U.S. government and continues to claim the election was tainted despite his loss of 60+ lawsuits proving otherwise.
His endless lying has become crazier and crazier, indicating his mental deterioration.

By any rational measure, Trump would not receive a single vote other than from the greedy rich and the Christian nationalists, none of whom seem to worry about democracy.

But these are not rational times, and sadly, history is filled with horrifying examples of what happens to a population that departs from rationality.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty

Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell;

MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell;

https://www.academia.edu/

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Is this really the America you want?

Is this the America you love? Is this the America you want? Trump is telling you exactly what he plans to do. Believe him.

Palm Beach Sun Sentinel

Gestapo in the Streets. Trump’s America

ELECTION 2024 Trump leans into mass deportations Ex-president asserts plan would target up to 20 million people

By Stephen Groves Associated Press WASHINGTON — “Mass Deportation Now!” declared the signs at the Republican National Convention, giving a full embrace to Donald Trump’s pledge to expel millions of migrants in the largest deportation program in American history.

Some Republicans aren’t quite ready for that.

Lauren B. Peña, a Republican activist from Texas, said that hearing Trump’s calls for mass deportations, as well as terms like “illegals” and “invasion” thrown around at the convention, made her feel uncomfortable.

Like some Republicans in Congress who have advanced balanced approaches to immigration, she hopes Trump is just blustering.

Families into boxcars. Trump’s America

“He’s not meaning to go and deport every family that crosses the border, he means deport the criminals and the sex offenders,” Peña, 33, said.

But Trump and his advisers have other plans.

He is putting immigration at the heart of his campaign to retake the White House and pushing the Republican Party toward a bellicose strategy that hearkens back to the 1950s when former President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched a deportation policy known by a racial slur — “Operation Wetback.”

Trump, when pressed for specifics on his plan in an interview with Time Magazine this year, suggested he would use the National Guard, and possibly even the military, to target 15 million to 20 million people — though the government estimated in 2022 there were 11 million migrants living in the U.S. without permanent legal permission.

His plans have raised the stakes of this year’s election beyond fortifying the southern border, a longtime conservative priority, to the question of whether America should make a fundamental change in its approach to immigration.

After the southern border saw a historic number of crossings during the Biden administration, Democrats have also moved rightward on the issue, often leading with promises of border security before talking about relief for the immigrants who are already in the country.

Latino voters could be pivotal in many swing states.

Trump won 35% of Hispanic voters in 2020, according to AP VoteCast, and support for stronger border enforcement measures has grown among Hispanic voters.

But an AP analysis of two consecutive polls conducted in June by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that about half of Hispanic Americans have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Trump.

Dragged from Homes. Trump’s America

GOP lawmakers have largely embraced Trump’s plans.

“It’s needed,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said at a July interview at the conservative Hudson Institute.

Some, however, have shown tacit skepticism by suggesting more modest goals.

Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, pointed to over 1 million people who have already received a final order of removal from an immigration judge and said, “There’s a difference between those that are in the process right now and those that are finished with the process.”

Mass deportation to concentration camps. Trump’s America

Are we as ignorant as the Germans and Italians were when Hitler and Mussolini told them what would happen? Even Hitler didn’t round up 15-20 million people. During the war, Nazi military forces rounded up 11 million victims. Trump says he will outdo that. Is this the America you want? Hitler had Heinrich Himmler. Trump has Stephen Miller. Himmler/Miller, odd how similar the names are.

Trump entered office in 2016 with similar promises of mass deportation but “only” succeeded in deporting about 1.5 million people.

This time, though, there’s a plan.

Trump has worked with Stephen Miller, a former top aide who is expected to take a senior role in the White House if Trump wins.

Miller describes a Trump administration that will work with “utter determination” to accomplish two goals: “Seal the border. Deport all the illegals.”

To accomplish that, Trump would revive travel bans from countries deemed undesirable, such as majority-Muslim countries.

The banal faces of evil

He would launch a sweeping operation by deputizing the National Guard to round up immigrants, hold them in massive camps and put them on deportation flights before they could make legal appeals.

Beyond that, Trump has also pledged to end birthright citizenship— a 125-year-old right in the United States.

Trump even would deport many children who were born in America.

And several of his top advisers have laid out a sweeping policy vision through the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 that would choke off other forms of legal migration.

“Hold them in camps.” Trump’s America.

The Trump administration, under those plans, could also grind to a halt temporary programs for over 1 million migrants, including recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Ukrainians and Afghans who fled recent conflicts as well as others who receive temporary protection due to unrest in their home country.

The policies would have far-reaching disruptions in major industries like housing and agriculture.

“If the 75,000-plus immigrants who perform the hardest of work in Wisconsin’s dairy and agriculture were gone tomorrow, the state economy would tank,” said Jorge Franco, the CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, Democrats feel Trump’s threats are motivating Latino voters.

“The mass deportation put a lot of people on high alert,” said María Teresa Kumar, the CEO of Voto Latino, a leading voter registration organization that is backing Democrat Kamala Harris.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell; MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell; https://www.academia.edu/

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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