Tag: Concord Coalition

–How to make $100 million. No kidding

To all you folks who know Social Security and Medicare are in financial trouble, or that the federal deficit must be reduced or taxes increased, here is an easy way for you to earn $100 million. No kidding. Just go to the easy rules at Letters to the Tribune, and read response #3.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

–Elect me and I will build America

The debt hawks are to economics as the creationists are to biology.

Since this is the season for campaign promises, here are mine. When you elect me, I promise to: (O.K., I’m not running for office, but this is what I would do.)

Reform Congress

I will work to end the Senate filibuster rule. I find the notion of one person being able to thwart the will of Congress and the American people, and to prevent the appointment of federal judges and other federal personnel, to be repugnant. It’s a bad rule.
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Improve Social Security and Medicare

1. I will end FICA. This is the worst tax in America for reasons explained at FICA . Briefly, it’s a regressive tax that discourages hiring and discourages spending, and has no function. The federal government does not use FICA taxes.

2. I will reduce the retirement age back to 65 (early retirement at 62).

3. I will stop taxing Social Security benefits. Only a government mentality could pay people benefits, then tax the benefits. It makes as much sense to tax SS benefits as it would to tax Medicare benefits, i.e. no sense at all.

4. I will pay everyone, man or woman, married or single, who begins to claim benefits at age 65, the same Social Security benefit, regardless of prior earnings. Under the current system, the people who need benefits most are paid the least.

5. I will increase Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals to equal the current levels paid by private insurance companies. The current Medicare payment levels discourage doctors from accepting Medicare, and discourage young people from entering the medical profession.

6. I will include long-term care as part of Medicare. Current long-term care policies as too expensive for lower income people.

7. I will eliminate all “donut holes” and other similar limitations from Medicare Part D (drug coverage). I will cover all drugs, generic or branded, from day 1.
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Rescue the States, Counties and Cities

The primary reason the states, counties and cities are in such bad shape: They are not Monetarily Sovereign. Mathematically, inflation and population growth make long-term survival on taxes alone, impossible for any monetarily non-sovereign government. Such governments must have money coming in from outside, via exports and/or federal assistance. I will pay each state $10,000 per person in the first year, then $5,000 inflation-adjusted each year thereafter.
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Cut Income Taxes

I will cut income taxes from the bottom up. Each year, I will increase the standard deduction by $10,000. At the end of the first decade, the standard deduction would be $100,000, and the vast majority of taxpayers will file their taxes on a postcard. (This will impact charities, all of which except faith-based, should be supported by the government, anyway.)

I will eliminate business taxes. The economy is business. Taxing business = taxing the economy, exactly the opposite of what a growing economy needs.
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Support Education

I will pay all students a salary for the job of attending school. (See: Salary 1 and Salary 2 and Salary 3 ).
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Spend Liberally on Research and Infrastructure

I will offer federal support to a myriad of science research and development projects – medical, physical, military, energy – together with rebuilding our aging roads, bridges and dams. Under my watch, we will go back to the moon and on to Mars.
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Raise Interest Rates

If any debt hawks have read this far, they undoubtedly are foaming at the mouth about the federal debt being “unsustainable” (nonsensical for a monetarily sovereign nation) and inflation. There is no post-gold standard relationship between federal deficits and inflation, (See: Inflation) And federal deficit spending reduces unemployment (See: Unemployment ) there is a distant point, when federal spending could be sufficient to cause inflation. So, I will take peremptory action to increase the value of money, by increasing interest rates.

This will strengthen the dollar, providing us with more imports of better goods and services at lower prices. (See: Stronger dollar )

Higher rates also will be stimulative, as it will force the federal government to pay more interest on its debts, thereby adding money to the economy. See: Interest

On a related subject, I will increase FDIC to $1 million, to protect more Americans’ savings.

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So that’s a good start for my first year in office. What do you think? Do I have your vote?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

No nation can tax itself into prosperity

–Do you know what you want? Deficits vs. exports vs. stronger dollar vs. inflation

The debt hawks are to economics as the creationists are to biology.

Here is a little test for you. Check all you believe will help the U.S. economy:
|__] 1. Reduced federal deficits
|__| 2. Increased exports (positive balance of trade)
|__| 3. Stronger dollar
|__| 4. Low inflation

Actually, it’s not so “little” a test. Many lay people, including most politicians and media people, would check all four. But you, being smarter, realize that #2 and #3 are incompatible. A stronger dollar makes our exports more expensive, while making imports cheaper. So to achieve increased exports or even a positive balance of trade, the dollar must weaken. This comes as a great disappointment to those who equate “stronger” with better. Sorry.

Now we get to the tricky pair: #1, reduced federal deficits vs. #2, increased exports. Who doesn’t want those?

Federal deficit spending increases the number of dollars in the economy, which many people reject because of fears about inflation. Ironically, these same people want increased exports – a positive balance of trade – which also increases the number of dollars in the economy. In short, federal deficit spending and exporting essentially are identical.

In the first case, the federal government buys, and pays with dollars, for goods and services. It is the customer. In the second case, foreigners buy, and pay with dollars, for goods and services. Foreigners are the customers. In both cases, dollars are added to the U.S.economy.

Admittedly, there is are differences. First, unlike exports, federal deficit spending adds to the federal debt, which most people mistakenly believe adds to our tax burden. However, because spending by a monetarily sovereign nation is not constrained by taxes, or any other income, there has been no historical relationship between tax collections and deficits, no will there be. See: Summary, numbers 9 and 9a. Your grandchildren will not, and actually cannot, pay for deficits. So this supposed “difference” amounts to a non-difference.

Second, while federal deficit spending adds to the world’s supply of dollars, our positive balance of trade does not. So, which is better? A growing economy requires a growing supply of money. So, any amount of inflation, plus population growth requires increases in the nominal supply of currency, just for GDP to remain level, let alone grow. Because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, world GDP growth requires ongoing growth in the world’s supply of dollars. So, on balance, federal deficit spending is more beneficial to America and to the world, than is U.S. exporting.

Returning to the four questions, above, I suggest that this would be the ideal mix for America and the world:

1. Increased federal deficits, for world economic growth
2. Reduced exports (negative balance of trade), to supply the world with dollars.
3. Stronger dollar, for more imports, providing us with better goods and services at lower prices
4. Modest inflation, to stimulate present demand for goods and services.

Sadly, the U.S. federal government wants to do the opposite –reduce deficits, increase exports and reduce the value of the dollar — and that is just a sampling of reasons why we fall into a recession, on average, every five years. With a record like that, why do Americans believe what their leaders tell them?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

No nation can tax itself into prosperity

–How the debt-hawks would “save” Social Security and Medicare

The debt-hawks are to economics as the creationists are to biology.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget proposes the following steps to “save” Social Security and Medicare. The CRFB projects the indicated 10-year federal savings (more correctly, “increases in payments by you”). If the numbers are correct (big “IF”), here are the implications:

Medicare:

“Increase Cost-Sharing” Government pays $150 billion less. Americans will pay $150 billion more for our health insurance.

“Enact Medicare Malpractice Liability Reform” Government pays $60 billion less. Americans will be limited as to what we will receive in the event of serious negligence by a doctor or hospital.

“Limit Tax Exclusion on Employer-provided Health Care” Government receives $250 billion more from all employees. This is a $250 billion tax increase for working people.

“Increase Medicare Eligibility Age to 67” $60 “savings” for federal government. We will have to buy private insurance for two additional years – our older years when private insurance is most costly.

“Strengthen the Independent Payment Advisory Board ((PAB).” Government “saves” $30 billion. “Strengthen” is a euphemism. The purpose of PAB is to reduce federal payments for drugs and medical procedures. We Americans will pay $30 billion more.

Social Security:

“Use ‘more accurate’ measure of inflation to calculate cost-of-living adjustments.” Government pays $140 billion less. “More accurate” is a euphemism meaning, “more restrictive.” Result: We’ll receive lower benefits.

“Slow the growth of benefits for middle-and high income earners” Government pays $25 billion less. Remember how the Alternative Minimum Tax was only supposed to affect “rich” people? This proposal eventually would penalize nearly all Americans.

Raise the retirement age to 68, then increase it further, based on life expectancy. Government savings: $? Social Security already pays you nothing if you die before retirement, and not even a living wage if you live after retirement. Now they want to raise the retirement age, so we receive less, and receive it later.

Increase FICA by another 1% for anyone making more that $56,000 per year. Government savings: $? Since you pay 7.65% and your boss pays another 7.65%, that “little 1%” amounts to an 6.5% FICA tax increase.

Thus, does the mistaken belief that Social Security and Medicare will go bankrupt, erode our quality of life. The federal government is a monetarily sovereign nation, which means it cannot go bankrupt. It can produce unlimited money to pay debts of any size. Similarly, Social Security and Medicare never can go bankrupt, nor can the Department of Defense, Congress, the Supreme Court or any other federal agency. No agency of the federal government can go bankrupt.

Debt-hawks wrongly believe FICA pays for Social Security and Medicare. It does not. FICA could be eliminated, and this would not affect by even one penny, the federal government’s ability to support these federal agencies.

Even the most obtuse debt-hawk recognizes the ability of the federal government to create enough money to pay any bill of any size. So what is the concern? It all boils down to fear of inflation. But, since we went off the gold standard, inflation has not been related to federal deficits (See: INFLATION), and inflation easily is prevented and cured by interest rate control. So in brief, debt-hawks prefer the absolute surety of great harm to us today, because they have the unreasoned, unsubstantiated fear that maybe, possibly, perhaps we sort of might have some unknown degree of inflation at some unknown time in the theoretical future.

Organizations like the CRFB do great harm, by supporting unnecessary limitations on Social Security and Medicare. And that’s not all. Their grim calls for austerity, their unreasoned fear of inflation, has limited the government’s ability to cure this recession, costing millions of people their homes, their livelihoods and their happiness. Debt-hawks claim fiscal responsibility, when in fact they are the most irresponsible people imaginable, prescribing bitter snake-oil cures for real economic problems.

My only hope is that when these debt-hawks personally need help from Social Security and Medicare, the limitations they have supported make benefits unavailable to them. And I hope this recession causes them the great grief they have caused the rest of this nation. That would be justice.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

No nation can tax itself into prosperity