Mitchell’s laws:
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes. .
●Liberals think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor.
●Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap.

==============================================================================================================================================================================

There are two worlds. You live in one; they live in another.

And yes, money doesn’t buy happiness, and sometimes money even buys sadness. But to be perfectly honest: I’d rather live in their world.

Plutocrats, By Chrystia Freeland

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” So says the narrator at the start of F Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “The Rich Boy”. He explains that people who are born rich believe “deep in their hearts that they are better than we are.”

The world is now experiencing a boom in personal wealth akin to that of the last years of the 19th century. We are, as Freeland puts it, in the second gilded age.

In almost all walks of life the very top have been getting disproportionate rewards compared with the competent middle-rankers.

Why is this happening, and why are people left behind?

One aspect of the way the very rich are able to twist things to their advantage even in sophisticated democracies is relevant right now: how the American rich are shaping US tax policy.

(In) the US the middle class have barely increased living standards for 30 years.

Why? You not only permit it, but you endorse it — not only endorse it, but you defend it with all your might.

For the uber-wealthy, a new threshold for luxury-priced homes: $100 million and up

Rather than settle for garages of antique cars or a museum’s worth of paintings, billionaires are increasingly willing to pay $100 million for homes that can serve as showcases for their fortunes.

Five homes sold around the world for more than $100 million in 2014, and a record 18 were listed for sale at that level, according to the Christie’s (real estate brokerage) report.

Last year’s purchases include a $146 million French Riviera mansion. Each square foot of the home cost $22,577 — roughly equivalent to a new Honda Accord.

The luxury market contrasts with the still-struggling U.S. real estate market as a whole. Millions of homeowners still owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth — a vestige of the housing crash that triggered the Great Recession in late 2007.

Buyers remain sensitive to changes in mortgage rates and price swings that could make ownership costlier. At the same time, access to credit remains tight for some. Sales have been running below a pace associated with healthy markets.

Here in America, the politicians, Koch-bribed via campaign contributions (Thank you right wing Supreme Court) and promises of lucrative jobs later, tell you Social Security is running short of money.

So, they say, your benefits must be reduced and your taxes increased.

It’s part of the Big Lie that the federal government is running short of money and deficit spending will lead to a Wiemar/Zimbabwe/Argentina hyper-inflation.

And, of course, the capital gains the rich receive, with no effort, are taxed much less than the salary you receive at great effort. Are the 1%’s capital gains more valuable to America than the 99%’s salaries?

No, but how much will you contribute to your political representative’s election effort? And will you give him an excessively compensated job when he leaves office?

The rich will.

And if I suggest you learn Monetary Sovereignty — if I suggest you contact your political representatives and demand that FICA be eliminated, and demand a fully paid, comprehensive Medicare for every man, woman and child in America, and demand they embark on the Ten Steps to Prosperity — if I suggest you make these demands, will you tell me I’m a communist, a socialist and a fool, without even trying to understand Monetary Sovereignty?

Do you really prefer to live in your world, where you struggle to provide for your family and for yourself, while you also struggle to provide for the rich?

Would you really rather struggle just to accept the status quo, than struggle to change the way everything favors the rich, in our so-called “land of equality”?

Do you really accept the idea that money is speech, so the rich are entitled to buy elections and buy lower taxes and buy the right to make people work harder and longer for less and less?

Do you really buy the notion that the poor are lazy and only the rich work hard?

If not, when was the last time you contacted your politicians? When did you last vote?

And if you voted, did you vote for someone who will defend the poor and the middle — or are they in league with the rich?

What are you doing to help your family and yourself?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

===================================================================================
The Ten Steps to Prosperity:

1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D plus long term nursing care — for everyone (Click here)
3. Provide an Economic Bonus to every man, woman and child in America, and/or every state a per capita Economic Bonus. (Click here) Or institute a reverse income tax.
4. Federally funded, free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
5. Salary for attending school (Click here)
6. Eliminate corporate taxes (Click here)
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually. (Refer to this.)
8. Tax the very rich (.1%) more, with higher, progressive tax rates on all forms of income. (Click here)
9. Federal ownership of all banks (Click here and here)
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99% (Click here)

Initiating The Ten Steps sequentially will add dollars to the economy, stimulate the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
——————————————————————————————————————————————

10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt

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.
1. A growing economy requires a growing supply of dollars (GDP=Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
2. All deficit spending grows the supply of dollars
3. The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
4. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

THE RECESSION CLOCK

Vertical gray bars mark recessions.

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the growth lines rise. Increasing federal deficit growth (aka “stimulus”) is necessary for long-term economic growth.

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY

Mitchell’s laws:
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes. .
●Liberals think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor.
●Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap.

==========================================================================================================================================================================================================================

There is a reason why people who probably know better, pretend to be ignorant about economics. It has to do with widening the Gap between the rich and the rest.

Here are excerpts from an article written by highly paid TV personality, and therefore economics expert, John Stossel.

Government Doesn’t Create Jobs
The real key to job creation is leaving people free to explore, innovate and profit.
John Stossel | April 29, 2015

I took a camera to Times Square this week and asked people, “What creates jobs?” Most had no answer.

One said, “stimulus!” What? Government creates jobs? No!

I suppose it’s natural that people think government creates jobs because politicians always say that.

“We’ve now created more than 10 million,” said President Obama. But that just meant that he took office at the start of the recession, and finally job creation resumed.

He didn’t cause that. In fact, his taxes and complex regulation slowed job creation.

Before we go any further, here’s a spoiler alert. TV expert Stossel is a right-wing libertarian, who claims the federal government just gets in the way of the little guys.

He pretends we all are self-sufficient, no one needs help, and if there were no federal government, we would be better off.

(For some mysterious reason, known only to libertarians, state and local politicians are honest, well-meaning and effective. So all federal functions should be given to the financially troubled states.)

In Stossel-world, when the federal government spends a billion or two building roads and bridges, no jobs are created. The roads and bridges must be built by elves, not people.

And when the federal government saved General Motors from bankruptcy, that saved no jobs (except for the people who work for GM).

And when elderly people receive Social Security and Medicare benefits, so they are able to buy food, clothing and shelter, that creates no jobs in the food, clothing and shelter industries.

And when billions are spent on R&D for drugs and rockets to send probes to the moon, Mars and other planets, that created no jobs in the R&D industries.

And when the federal government helps pay for college educations, that creates no jobs for the educated.

And all those billions paid to soldiers and to military armament manufacturers and for all the logistics of the military — in Stossel-world that creates no jobs.

And when the federal government pays for food inspection and drug inspection, and our federal court system — in Stossel-world that creates no jobs.

And in Stossel-world, when the federal government itself employs more that 2.5 million people, those actually are not jobs for people — just more elves.

Mitt Romney, was a little more free-market-oriented, but he sounded like Obama when he talked about jobs. He had “a plan” to add 12 million. Don’t assume his plan was just to get government out of the way of the private sector—Romney said it’s a bad idea to cut government spending during a recession.

FDR’s New Deal was the dawn of belief that jobs flow from government. FDR didn’t seem to care whether jobs people did were productive or sustainable. He just wanted something done about the “armies” of unemployed. If they weren’t given jobs, they might become a real army and revolt.

Jobs come from government getting out of the way and letting employers produce goods.

In libertarian terms, government “get out of then way” has a magical feeling, like making a rescue boat “get out of the way” and allowing people to swim for their lives.

He wants Medicaid to “get out of the way,” and allow the poor to sicken and die. Or let the military to “get out of the way” and let our enemies invade.

And for certain, let the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol get out of the way and let everyone in. (Oops, strike that. Border Patrol is one bit of government the right wing loves.)

Every new layer of regulations sounds nice — protecting the environment, providing more health care, forbidding discrimination against disabled people — but most rules do more harm than good.

See, these things “sound nice,” but in Stossel-world, protecting the environment, providing more health care and forbidding discrimination against disabled people do more harm than good.

Humans have needs and desires. Entrepreneurs see those needs as opportunity.

They hire people not out of generosity or because government told them to—but because it’s profitable to employ people if they produce valuable goods.

In Stossel-world, entrepreneurs can be relied upon to protect the environment, provide more health care and forbid discrimination. Consider British Petroleum, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase as examples of benevolent providers upon whom we should rely to protect the environment and provide health care.

If it’s not profitable, that means those people would be better employed doing something else. The prices customers are willing to pay and the wages workers accept are the best indication of which jobs can be done profitably and therefore ought to be done.

Yes, in Stossel-world, greed and profitability can be relied upon to protect the environment, provide more health care and forbid discrimination.

But politicians don’t trust business owners to make those decisions.

Gee, I wonder why.

Anyway, the nonsense went on and on and on, with the usual libertarian mantra that private business and its profit motive will take care of us, the same way it has taken care of poverty, slavery, bigotry, civil rights and ignorance, through the years.

Which brings us to the ever-strange Barry Ritholtz, Bloomberg View columnist and founder of Ritholtz Wealth Management. This article appeared in the April 29th Chicago Tribune:

“Higher gas tax needed to restore American highways”

Instantly, you know the article is wrong, simply because in the real world of Monetary Sovereignty, federal taxes do not fund federal spending.”

Unlike state and local governments, the federal government creates dollars, ad hoc, simply by paying bills. It neither needs nor uses tax dollars.

In the U.S., we have allowed a transportation grid that was once the envy of the world to become an embarrassing wreck.

Since 1993, the U.S. federal gasoline tax has been 18.4 cents a gallon. This money finances the Highway Trust Fund.

Ah yes, the mythical Highway Trust Fund, which is like the equally mythical Social Security Trust Fund and Medicare Trust Fund. In the words of the U.S. General Accounting Office:

“In contrast to a private trust fund, the federal government does not have a fiduciary responsibility to the trust beneficiaries, and it can raise or lower future trust fund collections and payments or change the purposes for which the collections are used by changing existing laws.“

Translation: The federal government can do whatever it damn well pleases with its fake “trust funds.” It can increase or decrease the balances at will and change how the money is used.

The federal government is not helpless in the face of reduced tax collections, as Mr. Ritholtz would have you believe.

As costs for (road) repairs have increased, revenue to pay for ordinary maintenance and repairs has failed to keep pace.

There, in one short phrase, is the full statement of the Big Lie — the lie that the federal government needs federal taxes to pay its bills.

In Ritholtz-world, our “impoverished” federal government (the sole entity that has the unlimited ability to create dollars), somehow has run short of dollars, and now cannot fix our roads unless it takes dollars from us drivers.

Ritholtz-world sees three “problems”:

–The tax never has been adjusted for inflation.
–During the recession, Americans drove less.
–The U.S. fleet of cars is more efficient than ever

And Ritholtz-world has a solution:

The solution is as obvious as it is rational: Raise the gas tax so we can start making the improvements to our infrastructure today — and index it to inflation.

As in Stossel-world, the ravings of Ritholtz-world go on and on, but those two worlds have one thing in common:

They both punish the poor and middle-classes far more than the rich. They widen the Gap between the rich and the rest.

The reason may be that Stossel is paid by the 1% and Ritholtz’s clients are the 1%.

The 1% hates government because one primary purpose of government is to protect the weak from the strong. The billionaires, being strong, want freedom to do anything that enslaves the populace. They want the Gap to be widened.

Reductions in federal deficit spending widen the Gap between the rich and the rest, because most deficit spending helps the 99% more than it helps the 1%.

That is why the rich-favoring libertarians always favor deficit reduction.

And as for the gas tax, who is hurt more — the lower or middle-income salaried worker, struggling to pay his bills, or the billionaire, for whom the gas tax is not even a rounding error on his personal balance sheet?

Yes, welcome to Stossel-world and Ritholtz world, where the rich do just fine, thank you.

And the 99%?

Well, who really cares about them (us)? Seemingly, not Stossel and Ritholtz.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

===================================================================================
The Ten Steps to Prosperity:

1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D plus long term nursing care — for everyone (Click here)
3. Provide an Economic Bonus to every man, woman and child in America, and/or every state a per capita Economic Bonus. (Click here) Or institute a reverse income tax.
4. Federally funded, free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
5. Salary for attending school (Click here)
6. Eliminate corporate taxes (Click here)
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually. (Refer to this.)
8. Tax the very rich (.1%) more, with higher, progressive tax rates on all forms of income. (Click here)
9. Federal ownership of all banks (Click here and here)
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99% (Click here)

Initiating The Ten Steps sequentially will add dollars to the economy, stimulate the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
——————————————————————————————————————————————

10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt

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.
1. A growing economy requires a growing supply of dollars (GDP=Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
2. All deficit spending grows the supply of dollars
3. The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
4. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

THE RECESSION CLOCK

Vertical gray bars mark recessions.

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the growth lines rise. Increasing federal deficit growth (aka “stimulus”) is necessary for long-term economic growth.

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY

Mitchell’s laws:
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes. .
●Liberals think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor.
●Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap.

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

Visualize this: Someone asks you for a loan. He has several conditions:

1. You are not to know the amount of the loan. He simply will take it from your bank account as he wishes.
2. You are not to know the purpose, nor the terms, of the loan.
3. Neither you nor your lawyer can look at the loan agreement. It simply will be signed on your behalf.
4. Even if later you feel you have been cheated, you cannot complain to anyone, nor sue anyone, and if you do, you will be arrested.
5. Once the document is signed, anyone else can, by law, get from you similar loans with similar terms.

Not a very good deal for you?

Well, it very closely describes the Obama administration’s (aka Barack Obama’s personal) demand that Congress give him “fast track” authority over the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Here is an excellent summary as published by OpEd News

While the Obama administration has (as Senator Elizabeth Warren pointed out) given 500 or so corporate lobbyists inside access to TPP negotiations, it has left the public completely in the dark.

You see, corporate lobbyists are far more important than you are. Their corporations give big money bribes to Congress and the President, and promise lucrative employment after they leave office.

What do you do for the President and Congress (other than sometimes vote, if you feel like it)?

In fact, as Senator Warren went on to write, “It is currently illegal for the press, experts, advocates, or the general public to review the text of this agreement. And while … Members of Congress may ‘walk over … and read the text of the agreement’ — as we have done — [we] are prohibited by law from discussing the specifics of that text in public.”

Get that? Your Congresspeople are prohibited by law from telling you, their constituent, what is in TTP! What unmitigated (and unconstitutional) gall on the part of Obama and his sycophants.

We voters are not to know what is in a treaty — and not just a treaty, but the biggest trade treaty in U.S. history — our government will sign on our behalf.

If the Obama administration gets its way, Congress won’t even get a chance to really debate the TPP before it becomes the law of the land.

That’s because right now, with the full backing of the White House, the House and Senate are considering bills that would give President Obama “fast-track” powers in regards to the TPP and all other trade deals from now until the end of his time in office — and for the first four years of the next president.

How do you spell D-I-C-T-A-T-O-R-S-H-I-P ? From now on, every President would be able to sign any trade deal, without the public or even Congress having any say, whatsoever.

If Congress does give President Obama fast-track power, our elected representatives wouldn’t be allowed to make any amendments whatsoever to trade deals like the TPP.

Instead, the treaty would be sent right to the floor where it would only have to pass a simple up-or-down vote after debate limited to eight minutes per member.

Why is this needed? The administration falsely claims it’s necessary for the bargaining process. Total, 100% bullshit.

If it’s necessary for the bargaining process, then presumably it also is necessary for ALL federal treaties. The camel would have his nose in the tent for everything the President wants to do.

Everything in D.C. involves some sort of bargaining, so presumably everything could be kept secret from the public, and immune to Congressional debate, because “it’s necessary for the bargaining process.”

What little we know about it comes from leaks, and those leaks show that it’s basically a grab bag of all the terrible things Big Business has always wanted but is too scared to ask for in public.

The TPP would give big pharmaceutical companies virtual monopoly patent power, gut environmental and financial rules and, according to Wikileaks, let corporations sue countries in international courts over regulations that those corporations don’t like.

Under the Constitution, treaties have to be approved by two-thirds of the Senate to go into effect. But that wouldn’t need to happen if Congress gives President Obama fast-track powers.

You might as well tell your Senators and Representative: “Come on home, because you will have no purpose. The President simply will do what he wants — in secret — and maybe let you know when it’s done.”

Thank God for Elizabeth Warren:

Senator Warren wants Congress to reject fast track altogether and have a real debate about the TPP.

Call your elected representative today to tell them that you support the Constitution, and therefore oppose fast-track powers for the TPP.

Tell these boobs that is is a deal breaker — that if they vote to give the President the dictatorial powers of “fast track,” you will vote to give them a permanent vacation in the next election.

Or you can just lie back, do nothing, and enjoy the rape.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

===================================================================================
The Ten Steps to Prosperity:

1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D plus long term nursing care — for everyone (Click here)
3. Provide an Economic Bonus to every man, woman and child in America, and/or every state a per capita Economic Bonus. (Click here) Or institute a reverse income tax.
4. Federally funded, free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
5. Salary for attending school (Click here)
6. Eliminate corporate taxes (Click here)
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually. (Refer to this.)
8. Tax the very rich (.1%) more, with higher, progressive tax rates on all forms of income. (Click here)
9. Federal ownership of all banks (Click here and here)
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99% (Click here)

Initiating The Ten Steps sequentially will add dollars to the economy, stimulate the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
——————————————————————————————————————————————

10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt

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.
1. A growing economy requires a growing supply of dollars (GDP=Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
2. All deficit spending grows the supply of dollars
3. The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
4. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

THE RECESSION CLOCK

Vertical gray bars mark recessions.

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the growth lines rise. Increasing federal deficit growth (aka “stimulus”) is necessary for long-term economic growth.

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY