–Well, that ought to help France’s economy recover.

Mitchell’s laws:
●The more budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the 1% will rule.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Austerity = poverty and leads to civil disorder.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
==========================================================================================================================================

France’s economy is in the toilet, but the French have a great plan to revive it.

France slaps 7 billion euros in taxes on rich and big firms
By Daniel Flynn | Reuters

PARIS (Reuters) – France’s new Socialist government announced tax rises worth 7.2 billion euros on Wednesday, including heavy one-off levies on wealthy households and big corporations, to plug a revenue shortfall this year caused by flagging economic growth.

In the first major raft of economic measures since Francois Hollande was elected president in May promising to avoid the painful austerity seen elsewhere in Europe, the government singled out large companies and the rich.

Translation: It works this way. We take 7.2 billion euros out of the economy to grow it. We would like to take 15 billion euros out of the economy, but that would grow it too much.

Hollande says the rich must pay their share as France battles to cut its public deficit from 5.2 percent of GDP last year to an EU limit of 3 percent in 2013 despite a stagnant economy and rising debt.

One of the highest state spending levels in the world has raised France’s debt by 800 billion euros in the last 10 years to 1.8 trillion – equivalent to 90 percent of GDP, the level at which economists say debt starts to hinder economic growth.

Translation: Government debt hinders economic growth by . . . well, we don’t know how. We just picked that 90% figure out of the air. We do know that:

GDP = Government Spending + Private Investment and Consumption + Net exports

So if we cut anything on the right hand side of the equation, GDP will fall, unless something else on the right hand side rises.

But increasing taxes reduces Private Investment and Consumption, so what’s left to grow GDP? We have no idea. What do you expect? We’re mainstream economists. We have no time for algebra.

Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac said that, while the initial focus this year was on tax rises for the wealthy, the government would progressively rein in its expenditure from 2013 onwards.

Translation: We’ll cut Government Spending, Private Investment and Private Consumption. That’s how we’ll increase GDP. Fortunately, our citizens don’t understand algebra any better than we do. Hey, you Americans have nothing to laugh about. Your politicians want to do the same.

Having promised to freeze central government spending without cutting staffing levels, Hollande will now face the difficult task of convincing France’s powerful public sector unions to accept a cap on pay rises and promotions.

“I think the unions accept this idea of rigor,” Civil Service Minister Marylise Lebranchu told RTL radio, insisting that the measures would not amount to draconian austerity.”

Translation: Just because we plan to starve France of money, don’t you dare call it “austerity.” We now call it “rigor.”

Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on Tuesday slashed this year’s official GDP growth forecast to 0.3 percent from a previous estimate of 0.7 percent, and to 1.2 percent in 2013 from 1.75 percent previously.

Translation: Please don’t ask how I got those numbers, as I have no idea. They asked me for numbers, so I gave them numbers.

The Medef employers union has already said that measures such as a new 3 percent tax to be paid by companies on dividends distributed to shareholders would strangle already weak profit margins. The Socialists say this levy is aimed at encouraging firms to use their cash flow for capital investment.

Translation: Here’s how you build an economy: First you fine companies for paying dividends, then you increase taxes on profits. Anyway, people who receive dividends don’t buy goods and services to grow the economy, do they?

“We are sorry to see an increase in corporate taxes at a time when they need to be lowered, as the only way to make our economy more competitive,” said Medef chief Laurence Parisot.

“It is completely false to say that the tax increases will just hit the rich,” said Gilles Carrez, president of the National Assembly’s finance commission. “The bulk of the new taxes will hit the middle class and today we have the proof.”

Translation: As everyone knows, increasing taxes makes business grow and actually helps the middle class find jobs and be given raises. The European Union told us so.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Prediction: The EU will do everything possible to avoid doing the right thing: (They should give, not lend, euros to the euro nations.) When even Germany joins the PIIGS in suffering from austerity (aka “rigor”), the EU at long last, may find its path.

Or better yet, the French should re-adopt the franc.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

==========================================================================================================================================
No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia. Two key equations in economics:
Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption + Net exports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Republicans: Beating Obama is more important than health care for the poor.

If I told you I’ll give you $10 every year, for three years, and after that, I’ll keep giving you $10 every year, but you’ll have to use $1 to help poor people, what would be your answer?

The Republican answer is: To hell with the poor people; to hell with our state economies. All we care about is beating Obama.

Washington Post
More state leaders considering opting out of Medicaid expansion
By N.C. Aizenman and Sandhya Somashekhar, Published: July 3

A growing number of Republican state leaders are revolting against the major Medicaid expansion called for under President Obama’s health-care overhaul, threatening to undermine one of the law’s most fundamental goals: insuring millions of poor Americans.

The Republican governors of four states — Florida, Iowa, Louisiana and South Carolina — have declared that they want to opt out of the expansion. Leaders of half a dozen other states — including Texas, home to one of the largest concentrations of uninsured people — are considering following suit.

The governors argue that expanding their Medicaid programs, which are jointly funded with state and federal money, would crush state budgets. And they are turning the issue into a roiling election-year battle over the federal government’s role.

Translation: “‘Jointly funded’ means the federal government pays 100% for the first three years, pumping billions into the states’ economies. After that, the government pays 90%. For every dollar the federal government adds to each state’s economy, the state will spend one dime to help its own poor men, women and children.”

“The president . . . needs to understand what makes this country great in part is that we’re not dependent on government programs,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends” program. “It seems to me like the president measures success by how many people are on food-stamp rolls and government-run health care. That’s not the American Dream.”

Translation: “I’m the same Republican Bobby Jindal who complained loudly, to all media, about insufficient government assistance following hurricane Katrina. I also am the Bobby Jindal who gave the media a phony story about my personal heroism following Katrina. My poor people don’t need health care, because doing without health care ‘makes this country great.’ And I’m the same Bobby, who begged the government to spend billions erecting huge barriers around New Orleans, to protect us from future hurricanes.”

Such a message has the potential to further fuel the Tea Party movement, which galvanized three years ago over the health-care legislation and could put enormous pressure on GOP leaders. Already, large tea party organizations such as Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are urging their members to lobby states to reject the federal Medicaid money, with a particular focus on the 27 that challenged the law in court.

The ramifications could be far-reaching, because the law’s top ambition is to extend coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans. More than half of those people are slated to receive insurance through the Medicaid expansion.

Translation: “We of the Tea Party, would rather have our fellow Americans go without health care than to do anything that might help Obama.”

Republicans (say) that the state share of the tab could still prove crippling. And the argument offers a chance to hammer home a major GOP talking point: that the government cannot keep growing without fraying at the seams, said Rich Galen, a Republican strategist who served as press secretary for then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.).

“The issue is: If you keep expanding unemployment insurance and expanding Medicaid and expanding food stamps, then sooner or later the money runs out and you become Greece or Spain or Italy,” Galen said. “They’re not saying, ‘I want people dying in the streets.’ They’re saying they want to fix the economic infrastructure.”

Translation: “We know that the U.S., unlike Greece, Spain or Italy, is Monetarily Sovereign, so never can run out of dollars, but the voters are stupid, so we’ll just keep feeding them the Big Lie. They never will figure it out. We’re against unemployment insurance, Medicaid and food stamps, because those things help the poor.”

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is one of several who said they are waiting for the November presidential election in hopes that a victory by Mitt Romney could empower the GOP to repeal the overhaul.

Translation: “We reject Obamacare, because we want to elect Romney, the Republican who invented Obamacare. As Republican Senator Mitch McConnell said, ‘The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term President.’ That’s our one goal in life.”

Of course, all this would have been unnecessary, if the federal government merely would provide Medicare to every many, woman and child in America. But the Tea/Republican Party wouldn’t want that, either.

The question is: Are American voters really as stupid, selfish and hard-hearted as the right wing says they are?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–How God fights NASA

As happens all too frequently, I was pondering the phenomenon that otherwise intelligent people can’t seem to understand the consummate simplicity of Monetary Sovereignty.

The basis of MS is straightforward: A Monetarily Sovereign nation has the unlimited ability to create its sovereign currency. That’s it. Could anything be simpler, more direct, easier to understand?

If you had the unlimited ability to create dollars, would you ask me for dollars? The U.S. government has that ability. So why does it ask you for dollars? Why does the U.S. ask China for dollars? Why do people worry the U.S. could run short of dollars? There are no facts to support these beliefs.

Yet, when I try to explain this to those who don’t understand Monetary Sovereignty, I am met not just with disbelief, but with active hostility, as though I had insulted someone’s baby.

The May 1, 2012 issue of Scientific American Magazine contained two, seemingly unrelated articles, that bear on this question. The first bemoans the fact that budget cuts have hamstrung NASA. Here are some excerpts:

NASA’s Planetary Science Program Endangered by Budget Cuts
Planetary science is NASA’s most successful and inspirational program. It should not be gutted — July 12, 2012

Last year, after a lengthy, circuitous journey through the solar system, a NASA probe known as MESSENGER entered into orbit around Mercury. No spacecraft had visited the innermost planet in more than three decades, and none has paid an extended visit.

With MESSENGER’s arrival, NASA and its international counterparts now have spacecraft stationed at Mercury, Venus, Mars and Saturn—not to mention Earth and the moon. Two more NASA craft are en route to Jupiter and Pluto; yet another ought to reach the dwarf planet Ceres in 2015. Humankind’s presence has never stretched so far.

It could stretch farther still, with robots spying down on bizarre moons that might harbor alien life or on the little-understood outermost planets. An even more novel campaign would ferry Martian rocks back to Earth for analysis. NASA had been on track to begin such an ambitious project, but alas, political maneuvering recently forced the space agency to scrap its plans.

The president’s proposed budget for 2013 includes drastic cutbacks to planetary science of more than 20 percent that could derail many future missions. Sending robotic missions out into the solar system requires years of preparation. Interplanetary probes depend on cutting-edge technologies that are developed and tested over time.

Shaking up the planetary science division now, for a relatively meager savings of $300 million, would force NASA away from these sensible, well-defined goals.

The most severe cuts were to Mars exploration, long a U.S. specialty. NASA was to begin the process of returning samples from the Red Planet during a joint 2018 mission with the European Space Agency (ESA). That campaign, perhaps the most important flagship project this decade, appears to be dead.

The budgetary ax also threatens to push other top targets for exploration further into the distance. Foremost among them is Jupiter’s moon Europa, which scientists suspect holds an internal ocean that could harbor life.

This year NASA’s planetary science program cost about $1.5 billion—less than what NASA spent designing a congressionally mandated rocket, the Space Launch System, which appears more likely to satisfy aerospace contractors than to aid the cause of space exploration.

A mere fraction of a cent from every tax dollar seems a small price to pay for the extension of humanity’s robotic reach to distant worlds—one of our greatest accomplishments as a nation, not to mention as a technological species. If planetary science must suffer, the reduction should be phased in gradually so that scientists can try to soften the disruption to long-term plans.

Translation: Science is suffering from federal budget cuts. Although we are a science magazine, we blindly accept the popular faith that taxes pay for federal spending, and budgets must be cut, so we have no counter argument to present to Congress and the President.

And then there is this article:

How Critical Thinkers Lose Their Faith in God
Religious belief drops when analytical thinking rises. Faith and intuition are intimately related.
By Daisy Grewal

Why are some people more religious than others? New research suggests that whether we believe may have to do with how much we rely on intuition versus analytical thinking.

In 2011 Amitai Shenhav, David Rand and Joshua Greene of Harvard University published a paper showing that people who have a tendency to rely on their intuition are more likely to believe in God. They also showed that encouraging people to think intuitively increased people’s belief in God.

Gervais and Norenzayan’s research is based on the idea that we possess two different ways of thinking that are distinct yet related. System 1 thinking relies on shortcuts and other rules-of-thumb while System 2 relies on analytic thinking and tends to be slower and require more effort.

In . . . two studies, they created a task that subtly primed analytic thinking. Participants received sets of five randomly arranged words (e.g. “high winds the flies plane”) and were asked to drop one word and rearrange the others in order to create a more meaningful sentence (e.g. “the plane flies high”).

Some of their participants were given scrambled sentences containing words associated with analytic thinking (e.g. “analyze,” “reason”) and other participants were given sentences that featured neutral words (e.g. “hammer,” “shoes”). After unscrambling the sentences, participants filled out a survey about their religious beliefs. In both studies, this subtle reminder of analytic thinking caused participants to express less belief in God and religion.

The researchers found no relationship between participants’ prior religious beliefs and their performance in the study. Analytic thinking reduced religious belief regardless of how religious people were to begin with.

Prior research had shown that difficult-to-read font promotes analytic thinking by forcing participants to slow down and think more carefully about the meaning of what they are reading. The researchers found that participants who filled out a survey that was printed in unclear font expressed less belief as compared to those who filled out the same survey in the clear font.

These studies may help explain why the vast majority of Americans tend to believe in God. Since System 2 thinking requires a lot of effort, the majority of us tend to rely on our System 1 thinking processes when possible. Evidence suggests that the majority of us are more prone to believing than being skeptical.

Translation: Intuition, backed by repeated reinforcement from the press, admired leaders and one’s peers, is far more seductive than the agony of rational analysis.

Ironically, a dearth of supporting facts may actually solidify belief, in that facts lead to analysis. Consider the strongest belief system among humans: Religion. Dare to disagree about religion by presenting facts, and you will be met with hostility — the same kind of hostility one meets when trying to present the facts of Monetary Sovereignty.

Religion relies on essentially zero facts. That’s why it’s called “faith.” The belief that federal deficits must be reduced also relies on zero facts. But it’s called “mainstream economics.” Both are defended vehemently.

Congress and the President promulgate the faith that federal deficit spending should be decreased. They support their positions with slogans, not facts.

Fewer facts = stronger belief.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–The Medicare for All — every man, woman and child in America

See if you can find the United States, the greatest nation on earth, in the list below:

List by the United Nations (2005–2010)
Life expectancy at birth (years)
Top 100 nations

1 Japan 82.6, 2 Hong Kong 82.2, 3 Switzerland 82.1, 4 Israel 82.0, 5 Iceland 81.8, 6 Australia 81.2, 7 Singapore 81.0, 8 Spain 80.9,8 Sweden 80.9, 10 Macau 80.7, 10 France 80.7, 10 Canada 80.7, 13 Italy 80.5, 13 United Kingdom 80.5, 15 New Zealand 80.2, 15 Norway 80.2, 17 Austria 79.8, 17 Netherlands 79.8, 19 Martinique 79.5, 19 Greece 79.5, 21 Belgium 79.4, 21 Malta 79.4, 21 Germany 79.4, 21 U.S. Virgin Islands 79.4, 2 5 Finland 79.3, 26 Guadeloupe 79.2, 27 Channel Islands 79.0, 27 Cyprus 79.0, 29 Ireland 78.9, 30 Costa Rica 78.8. 31 Puerto Rico 78.7, 31 Luxembourg 78.7, 31 United Arab Emirates 78.7, 34 South Korea 78.6, 34 Chile 78.6, 36 Denmark 78.3, 36 Cuba 78.3, 38 United States 78.2, 39 Portugal 78.1, 40 Slovenia 77.9, 41 Kuwait 77.6, 42 Barbados 77.3, 43 Brunei 77.1, 44 Czech Republic 76.5, 45 Réunion 76.4, 45 Albania 76.4, 45 Uruguay 76.4, 48 Mexico 76.2, 49 Belize 76.1, 49 New Caledonia 76.1, 51 French Guiana 75.9, 52 Croatia 75.7, 53 Oman 75.6, 53 Bahrain 75.6, 53 Qatar 75.6, 53 Poland 75.6, 57 Panama 75.5, 58 Guam 75.5, 59 Argentina 75.3, 60 Netherlands Antilles 75.1, 61 Ecuador 75.0, 62 Bosnia and Herzegovina 74.9, 63 Slovakia 74.7, 64 Montenegro 74.5, 65 Vietnam 74.2, 65 Malaysia 74.2, 65 Aruba 74.2, 65 Macedonia 74.2, 69 Syria 74.1, 69 French Polynesia 74.1, 71 Serbia 74.0, 71 Libya 74.0, 73 Tunisia 73.9, 74 Venezuela 73.7, 74 Saint Lucia 73.7, 76 Bahamas 73.5, 77 Palestinian territories 73.4, 78 Hungary 73.3, 78 Tonga 73.3, 80 Bulgaria 73.0, 80 Lithuania 73.0, 80 People’s Republic of China 73.0, 83 Nicaragua 72.9, 83 Colombia 72.9, 85 Mauritius 72.8, 85 Saudi Arabia 72.8, 87 Latvia 72.7, 88 Jamaica 72.6, 89 Jordan 72.5, 89 Romania 72.5, 91 Sri Lanka 72.4, 91 Brazil 72.4, 93 Algeria 72.3, 94 Dominican Republic 72.2, 95 Lebanon 72.0, 95 Armenia 72.0, 97 El Salvador 71.9, 98 Turkey 71.8, 98 Paraguay 71.8, 100 Philippines 71.7

O.K., I made it easy for you. But, there we are, way down the list and trailing most of the “First World” nations.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says this is what kills us:

Number of deaths for leading causes of death
Heart disease: 599,413
Cancer: 567,628
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 137,353
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,842
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 118,021
Alzheimer’s disease: 79,003
Diabetes: 68,705
Influenza and Pneumonia: 53,692
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 48,935
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 36,909

If you go to WorldLifeExpectancy you find many causes of death that are not common killers in America: Diarrhoeal diseases, HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria, Low Birth Weight, etc. We avoid all those “Third World” diseases. (Although with global warming, we might see malaria come to America.)

One reason for our truly terrible life expectancy may be our awful eating habits. (Thank you Mcdonalds, Taco Bell, Coca Cola et al). According to Huff Post these are the 10 fattest nations in the developed world (with #1 being the fattest):

1. United States
2. Mexico
3. New Zealand
4. Chile
5. Australia
6. Canada
7. United Kingdom
8. Ireland
9. Luxembourg
10. Finland

A second reason for our disgraceful life expectancy probably is lack of exercise, which is related to obesity.

And then there is the 3rd reason:

The green colored nations are “Nations with some type of universal health care system.”

While most of the First World nations have some form of universal health care, the most powerful nation on earth doesn’t, What a disgrace. And it is reflected in our miserable health statistics.

Obamacare is a tiny, convoluted, baby step in the right direction. But, the great United States of America should provide Medicare for all — for every man, woman and child in America.

There are only three reasons not to provide Medicare for all, and all are bogus:

“1. Universal health care doesn’t work. Look at [insert country name here].” Nonsense. Medicare works. Ask people who have Medicare, and they will tell you its a wonderful system. It’s not perfect, which is why many people buy Medicare supplemental insurance, but its damn good. We old folk have it much better than you youngsters.

“2. The U.S. can’t afford Medicare for all.” More nonsense. The U.S. is Monetarily Sovereign. It has the unlimited ability to create the dollars to pay for Medicare for all.

“3. Paying for Medicare for all would cause inflation.” Even more nonsense. No one knows this. It’s pure speculation based on zero data. But what do we know for sure:

A.–Since the U.S. became Monetarily Sovereign, in 1971, there has been zero relationship between federal deficits and inflation — this despite massive deficit spending during the Reagan and Obama years.

B.–The Fed successfully has prevented and cured inflation simply by raising interest rates (to make dollars more valuable), and especially with rates near zero, there is plenty of room for increases.

C.–There is no relationship between high rates and slow economic growth.

D.–Unnecessary illnesses cost our economy billions of dollars. This includes the cost of “free” treatments and hospital emergency rooms, lost work time and the costs involved in home care.

E.– Businesses must pay billions for health insurance, adding to the cost of employment, which causes both unemployment and inflation.

F.–Preventative health care, offered by Medicare, prevents more serious, more costly sicknesses, thus saving billions of dollars for patients, for the economy and for the government

Bottom line: The great United States of America must provide Medicare for All — every man, woman and child in America. It’s what a great nation should do, what a great nation must do. Don’t let the small-thinking, mean-thinking, shortsighted politicians talk you out of it with bogus reasoning.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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