Gap Psychology dictates that to achieve superiority, one must claim inferiors and then distance oneself from those claimed inferiors. The greater the distance—i.e., the wider the “Gap,” the greater our superiority.
“Rich” and “poor” are comparatives, not absolutes. For one to be rich, someone else must be poor, or at least poorer.
A person with $100,000 is rich if everyone else has only $100, but he/she is “middle” if everyone else has $100,000. And he is poor if everyone else has $1,000,000.
Getting richer is not simply a matter of increasing one’s ownership of money. If a middle-income person has $100,000 and doubles that to $200,000, he still is “middle” if everyone else rises to $200,000.
Getting richer requires widening the Gap below and narrowing the Gap above. It is the Gap that measures wealth, not the wealth itself.
Gap Psychology describes the desire to widen the Gap below and to narrow the Gap above.
Gap Psychology enters into virtually all aspects of human existence, not only money or wealth. A person with an IQ of 130 is smart unless everyone else has an IQ of 170.
A 21-year-old man who can do 50 chin-ups is strong unless everyone else can do 150. A child who can read at age 4 is considered smart unless every other child can read at age 3. If you can run 100 meters in 9.5 seconds, you are blazingly fast unless you are a cheetah, which means you would be laughingly slow.
Self-improvement does not require improving yourself so long as you can widen the Gap below and narrow the Gap above.
You can be strong and do just two chin-ups if you hang a 300 lb. weight from everyone else’s ankles.
If you force everyone else to wear blindfolds, you can learn to read at age 8 and be considered smart. And if you tie everyone else’s legs together, you can be fast, running 100 meters in 20 seconds.
Figuratively, that is how the rich treat the rest of us to widen the Gap. They falsely claim that the federal government “can’t afford” to provide benefits to the middle and lower classes while accepting tax benefits for themselves.
Gap Psychology even enters into the abortion controversy. The rich can easily obtain abortions and other medical procedures. It is the poor who must suffer from a lack of care. That is a Gap the rich wish to widen.
Gap Psychology leads to bigotry, classes, and the caste system. Here is an excellent summary:
The Foundations of Caste: The Origins of our DiscontentsFor more than half of American history, slavery was the dominant social institution in the South.
Wilkerson argues that even after emancipation, legally sanctioned violence, harassment, and displacement of African Americans remained—and still remains—an existential threat.
According to Wilkerson, these behavioral scripts and socially reinforced biases have become deeply encoded in the American psyche at all levels of society, which unconsciously perpetuates the system.
Her research demonstrates that all caste systems have the eight essential characteristics (Pillars) in common.
Pillar Number One: Divine Will and the Laws of Nature
Hindu cosmology holds that the caste system is an aspect of the birth of Brahma, the supreme god, who created and populated the world out of various parts of his body in a way corresponding to the social functions dictated by the traditional order.
The Judeo-Christian tradition has a contrasting story about the creation of the world’s different races descending from the three sons of the Old Testament patriarch Noah.
The two “good” sons who are rewarded for their honor become the fathers of the Eastern and Western races, while the cursed son, Ham, and his own son Canaan are fated to be people of the South, forsaken by God.
For there to be “good,” there must be “bad.”
All caste systems, religions, and cults (similar to religions but smaller and not as mainstream) identify members as “good” and outsiders as “bad” or lesser in some way.
At the time when Spain and Portugal were beginning their global circumnavigations, the native inhabitants of Africa and India were believed by Europeans to be descendants of the biblical outcasts and thus divinely ordained to suffering and subjugation.
Pillar Number Two: HeritabilityIn India, caste is inherited through the father’s line, whereas the United States has historically determined caste through the mother.
In Judaism, to be Jewish, one must have a Jewish mother. The father can be Jewish or gentile.
Presidents Bush, father and son
Because enslaved mothers had no legal right to their own children, Black birth became a production process for slave labor, as Black children were regarded as valuable, durable commodities.
The major distinction between caste and class, Wilkerson writes, is that caste is predetermined, unchanging, and generationally upheld, whereas class implies an attainmentof certain conditions based on merit and effort and is much more inclusive within its respective caste “container.”
Yet we have the expressions “new” and “old” money, with “old money: considered superior by those whose ancestors were wealthy.
In the United States, the exclusion of African Americans regardless of their level of social or professional success—an exclusion based on superficial, inescapable, inherited characteristics—resembles in practice the treatment of India’s “untouchable” populations.
Pillar Number Three: Endogamy and the Control of Marriage and MatingIt is essential for a caste system to separate and manage bloodlines in a way that preserves the impenetrability of the dominant gene pool by subordinate-caste DNA.
This protects the Gap between white and non-white. Most American parents prefer that their children marry within their religion and color.
To achieve this, miscegenation laws are passed that restrict marriage and reproduction along caste lines, a policy known as endogamy—and something Hitler admired about the American model.
The objective of this kind of social engineering is to achieve racial purity among the dominant caste, but it also concentrates resources, value, and empathy among the various levels of the dominant caste that are systematically denied to non-white subordinates.
America’s racial boundaries had been set from its earliest days, and coupled with the nation’s historic exclusion of non-European immigrants, endogamy laws effectively created a process of selective breeding that reinforced caste divisions while reserving for white men the ownership of Black reproduction.
Pillar Number Four: Purity Versus Pollution
The United States has its own unique system of gradations on a scale of racial purity that defines itself in opposition to an obsession with contamination by genetic material from a perceived inferior bloodline.
Not only was there the so-called “one-drop rule” that defined Blackness and which the Nazis found so extreme, but there was also an elaborate status-defining class subsystem within the subordinate caste based on skin tone and proportion of African ancestry.
Systems like the examples Wilkerson uses all share a rabid aversion to the idea of public spaces and utilities, particularly water and swimming pools, being similarly contaminated not by blood but by mere exposure to the skin, breath, sweat, or even shadow of the subordinate caste.
Hitler and Trump have spoken of those who “poison the blood” of the nation. Hitler primarily (though not exclusively) was talking about Jews.
Trump was talking about non-white immigrants.
Pillar Number Five: Occupational Hierarchy: The Jatis and the MudsillWilkerson returns to the architectural metaphor she introduced in chapter 2 to describe the house’s most important structural element, where the framing meets the foundation, known as a mudsill.
In the segregationist political tradition, the enslaved caste of African American servants and laborers constituted an analogous base to the American social order.
The lowly work they performed for lack of choice was seen as the limit of their capabilities and their purpose for existence, a permanent servile class upon which the American economy was built.
This is part of the belief that the poor are lazy, stupid, and cannot be trusted. It provides an excuse for widening the employment Gap.
It also alludes to benefits given to the poor, i.e., “Who is going to pick up the garbage if we give them money?”
One major difference between the subordinate Americans and Indian Dalit is that while the Indian system has many subdivisions, known as jatis, within each group that determined one’s work, the African American subordinate class has been limited in professional options with few chances to break out except as performers or athletes.
Until recently, even these luminaries were expected to reinforce popular racist stereotypes if they were to be accepted by the dominant culture.
Pillar Number Six: Dehumanization and StigmaIn order to justify the extreme and often violent measures taken to maintain the oppressive status quo, dominant-caste authority invariably engages in a process of dehumanizing subordinate groups.
By denying subordinates equal regard for their virtue, dignity, and suffering, the dominant caste can so diminish subordinates’ humanity as to make them appear mere beasts of burden, pestilent scourges, or puppets on a string, insensitive to pain and humiliation.
The subordinate group thus becomes marked with pariah status, and their punishment is seen as just and moral, commensurate with the perceived bestiality and inhumanity that relegates them to ghettoization and marginalization.
This dehumanizing mindset is inculcated in generations of dominant-caste children who are raised believing in their superiority and entitlement, which desensitizes them to the victimization of others, even in brutal extremes.
Pillar Number Seven: Terror as Enforcement, Cruelty as a Means for ControlWilkerson describes the means necessary for the sustained oppression of an outcast group, which requires only that the members of the dominant class do nothing and remain silent, maintaining a complicity in which the order will thrive.
The image of the dreaded slaver’s whip encapsulates the violence and intimidation deemed necessary to hold the subordinates in their “container,” and the public complicity that allows the brutal enforcement of the order is the result of the racist attitudes bred into the dominant caste since childhood.
The savage business of terror seems like a part of normal life when it is tolerated by the majority of people.
Trump says he will deport a million undocumented immigrants. Imagine the terror these men, women, and children will feel waiting for their lives to be ripped apart when his brown shirts come banging on the door.
1. Ipsos Poll (2013):
30% think most illegal immigrants (with some exceptions) should be deported.
23% believe all illegal immigrants should be deported.
Only 5% believe all illegal immigrants should stay legally, and 31% want most illegal immigrants to stay.
2. Pew Research Center (2021):
25% of adults say undocumented immigrants should not be allowed to stay legally, advocating for national law enforcement efforts to deport them.
3. Harris Poll (2024):
Half of all Americans favor mass deportation of people who are illegally in the U.S.
Pillar Number Eight: Inherent Superiority Versus Inherent Inferiority
Wilkerson uses old Hollywood as an example of a cultural force that helped perpetuate popular stereotypes about African Americans’ inferiority and contributed to the same majority mindset that tolerated Jim Crow cruelty and injustice.
In the South, law and custom dictated at all levels of interaction between white and Black citizens that white people enjoy unquestioned superiority, while Black people were expected to treat the dominant caste with false deference and submission.
The consequence for African Americans is that these constant reminders from almost every aspect of American culture reinforce the generational effect of believing oneself inferior, resulting in defeatism and despair.
The eight pillars can be found not only in castes but in religions and cults.
Divine Will and the Laws of Nature
Heritability
Endogamy and the Control of Marriage and Mating
Purity Versus Pollution
Occupational Hierarchy: The Jatis and the Mudsill
Dehumanization and Stigma
Terror as Enforcement
Cruelty as a Means for Control, and Inherent Superiority Versus Inherent Inferiority
Look back at #1 through #8 and visualize religions and cults in America. They all implement some forms of the pollars, and all are related to Gap Psychology.
Gap Psychology is expressed secretly and overtly in various ways: Fear, hatred, disgust, avoidance, fanaticism, and the desire to inflict pain.
We each belong to groups that we view as extensions of ourselves. We find ways to view our groups as superior to others, which helps us feel superior.
These groups range from families to sports teams, cities, states, countries, political parties, tribes, social groups, religions, and cults.
Why is this so important to them? Gap Psychology
If our group “wins,” however that is defined, we win. And, if other groups “lose,” we win.
Personal note: In my younger days, I was a Chicago Bears football fan. I was nervous watching their games because winning meant so much. Finally, in 1985, they won a Super Bowl.
Crowds of screaming Bear fans clogged downtown Chicago. Logically, I had gained nothing, but I felt I had won. Gap Psychology is not based on logic.
When Donald Trump claims, against all evidence, that he won, MAGAs believe.
They disbelieve the 64 lawsuits he lost, the women who claim he attacked them, the criminality of Trump U. and the Trump Foundation, the many convicted criminals he surrounds himself with, and a trial’s 30+ criminal convictions.
To them, the evidence against Trump proves that someone else has committed crimes. (His attempts to overturn the election constitute the proofthe election was stolen.)
That is an outcome of Gap Psychology. When Trump is compared to God, a huge branch of Christianity believes, because when your leader is Godlike, the superiority Gap between you and the non-believers widens.
Gap Psychology is not logical, but it is the single, most important factor ruling our lives. Centuries from now, if we encounter another intelligent species, we will wish to dominate them or fear they will dominate us.
In our previous discussions, we’ve introduced you to Gap Psychology, a concept that fuels the desire to widen the income/wealth/power Gap below and to narrow the Gap above.
This psychological phenomenon not only perpetuates social disparities but also has dire implications for our environment.
The very rich want wide Gaps because, without Gaps, no one would be rich. We all would be the same. The wider the Gaps, the richer the rich, and the poorer the poor, i.e., “inequality.”
The rich are a major cause of global warming.
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in our lives.
The rich bribe our thought leaders to tell us wide Gaps are just and necessary, a result of innate superiority and hard work — that the rich and the poor have earned their places.
The rich bribe the media through ownership and advertising dollars.
They bribe economists through university endowments and jobs in think tanks. They bribe politicians through campaign contributions and promises of jobs in the industry.
The rich try to convince us that federal benefits are unaffordable and unsustainable, but we have the power to demand these benefits and make a significant change in narrowing the Gap and protecting the environment.
It’s part of the Big Lie that taxpayers fund such benefits as Medicare, Social Security, poverty aids, college loan forgiveness, and other benefits to the middle- and lower-income groups. (No mention is made of taxpayers funding tax breaks for the rich.)
But in a Monetarily Sovereign government like ours, taxpayers fund nothing. (Taxpayers do fund monetarily non-sovereign state and local government spending.)
All federal spending is funded by federal government money creation, ad hoc. Federal tax dollars, unlike state/local government tax dollars, are destroyed upon receipt.
The sole purposes of federal taxes are:
To control the economy by taxing what the government wishes to discourage and by giving tax breaks to what the government wishes to reward.
To assure demand for the U.S. dollar by requiring taxes be paid in dollars.
Here are excerpts from a NewScientist Magazine article describing another problem caused by the Gap, aka “inequality”:
Inequality is a major obstacle to sustainability. The super-rich are an environmental horror story that we can’t ignore. By Graham Lawton
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, the average greenhouse gas emissions of someone in the richest 10 per cent of global society are around 20 times the average of someone in the poorest 50 per cent.
Research by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute found the world’s richest 1 per cent collectively emit the same as the poorest two-thirds.
A new book by Ingrid Robeyns puts this in stark personal terms. In Limitarianism: The case against extreme wealth, she calculates that to get to net zero, the average per capita carbon footprint needs to be 2 tonnes a year. The European average is 8 tonnes.
The top 1 per cent emit over 100 tonnes, with billionaires emitting a mind-blowing 8000 tonnes, mostly through the use of private jets and superyachts.
There are very few billionaires, but their consumption is only part of the equation. Huge inequality is bad for everyone – and the planet.
In a recent webinar about the book, Pickett said: “What The Spirit Level showed was that economic inequality, specifically income inequality, was related to a whole range of different problems: health problems, issues to do with human capital development, such as educational attainment and social mobility, and everything to do with relationships.
The crucial point is that inequality seems to affect almost all of society.” In the years since 2009, the evidence for this has only grown stronger.
As for the environment, inequality isn’t just bad for the obvious reasons.
A recent paper in Nature Climate Change makes a compelling case that inequality is a major obstacle to sustainability, because people at the lower end of the income spectrum don’t have the resources – money and time – to make the necessary lifestyle changes.
Not only does inequality limit people’s opportunities to make sustainable choices, it also drives unsustainable consumption at lower income levels.
Humans are hardwired for “social evaluative threat” – anxiety about how we are seen by others.
This threat induces a type of stress called status anxiety. Subconsciously, we are all evaluating where we stand in the economic pecking order and trying to climb to the next rung, or at least not slide down.
One of the easiest ways to alleviate status anxiety is conspicuous consumption.
The cause for “status anxiety” is “Gap Psychology.” You can read more about Gap Psychology here, here, here, and many places elsewhere in this blog.
In any society, the poorest people have the highest levels of status anxiety and the richest the least. But here’s the rub: in more unequal societies, status anxiety is higher across the board.
One study found that in the most equal societies, the poorest have a status anxiety score of 2.2 out of 5, as judged by their degree of agreement with questions such as “others look down on me because of my job situation or income”.
The richest score about 1.8. In the most unequal societies, the scores are 2.7 and 2.1. In other words, the richest people in very unequal societies have roughly the same level of status anxiety as the poorest in more equal ones.
How do people respond to status anxiety? In part by consuming high-status goods.
Multiple research projects have found that people living in highly unequal parts of the US tend to spend more on swanky cars and designer clothes, which have a very large carbon footprint.
“Status competition driving consumerism upward is a huge obstacle to moving towards sustainability,” said Wilkinson in the webinar with Pickett.
Many Western societies are still tolerating, or even encouraging, eye-watering levels of inequality.
But they also underestimate the obscene wealth held by a few people who emit more than just greenhouse gases. It is a tough argument to make, but it has to be made.
Louboutin shoes: Affordable. Saving the world: Unaffordable.
As Wilkinson said: “We cannot solve the environmental crisis without solving the inequality crisis.”
Gap Psychology dictates that the last thing the rich want is to solve the inequality crisis. It’s what makes them rich.
That is why they bribe the media, politicians, and the economists to tell you various forms of the Big Lie in economics, including such lies as:
Social Security and Medicare will run short of money because fewer workers are supporting more older people.
To prevent Social Security and Medicare from running short of money, FICA must be increased and/or benefits must be reduced.
The federal deficit and debt are unaffordable and unsustainable.
Taxpayers pay for federal spending.
Comprehensive, no-deductible Medicare for All, Social Security for All, increased poverty aids, free college for all who want it, and other benefits for the middle- and lower-income groups are unaffordable.
All of the above are untrue. They could not exist without the active counter messaging by your information sources.
They want you to believe the Big Lie that the finances of our Monetarily Sovereign government are the same as your personal finances.
The federal government not only can afford to fund all of the benefits to you, while also funding the efforts to counter global warming.
The rich want you to believe that either global warming doesn’t exist, or if it exists, the costs to end it are too great for the government to fund, or for taxpayers to fund. All lies.
The government has the infinite ability to fund anything, without collecting a penny in taxes. To admit that, your information sources also would have to admit paying for your benefits also are affordable.
But that would narrow the Gap and make the rich less rich.
The sole benefits the rich allow are the tax breaks that only they can access. Those supposedly are “affordable” and “sustainable.”
Meanwhile, life on earth is threatened as the climate becomes less survivable. Eventually, the rich will discover that they need to support more equality for them to remain rich.
But that may be too late to save the world.
There’s still time to contact your Congressperson, tell them you are quite aware that the federal government can create infinite money without taxing or borrowing, and can provide far more benefits than it currently does.
Tell them the Gap is not sustainable, and the rich may have the money, but not the votes. Demand federal benefits for those who are not rich.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary SovereigntyTwitter: @rodgermitchellSearch #monetarysovereigntyFacebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.
The U.S. federal government is Monetarily Sovereign (See: Monetary Sovereignty.) It created the first U.S. dollars from thin air, and it retains the unlimited ability to create more U.S. dollars. The government never unintentionally can run short of U.S. dollars. Even if all federal tax collections ended, the federal government could continue spending forever.
State and local governments are monetarily non-sovereign. They can and often do run short of dollars.
Because the U.S. government cannot run short of dollars, it has no need for tax dollars. In fact, it destroys all tax dollars upon receipt at the Treasury. (See: “Does the Federal Government Really Destroy Your Tax Dollars?“) Taxes are paid with dollars from the M2 money supply, and when they reach the Treasury, they cease to exist in any money supply measure. Thus, the federal government does not spend taxpayers’ dollars.
By contrast, state/local governments do need and spend taxpayers’ dollars.
Contrary to popular wisdom, federal spending does not cause inflation. Inflation always is caused by shortages of critical goods and services, usually oil, food, and labor. (See: “Cause of Inflation.”) Inflations can be cured by additional government spending to cure shortages.
Keep those facts in mind as you read excerpts from the following article:
The Commonwealth Fund Health Care Affordability Survey, fielded for the first time in 2023, asked U.S. adults with health insurance, and those without, about their ability to afford their health care — whether costs prevented them from getting care, whether provider bills left them with medical debt, and how these problems affected their lives.
Many Americans have inadequate coverage that’s led to delayed or forgone care, significant medical debt, and worsening health problems.
While having health insurance is always better than not having it, the survey findings challenge the implicit assumption that health insurance in the United States buys affordable access to care.
Difficulties affording care are experienced by people in employer, marketplace, and individual market plans, as well as people enrolled in Medicaid and Medicare.
Private insurance is burdened by the profit motive, which restricts the number and amount of benefits offered. However the federal government has no profit motive and has the unlimited ability to create dollars. So why is Medicare inadequate?
For the survey, our analysis focuses on 6,121 working-age respondents, those 19 to 64.
Survey Highlights
Large shares of insured working-age adults surveyed said it was very or somewhat difficult to afford their health care: 43 percent of those with employer coverage, 57 percent with marketplace or individual-market plans, 45 percent with Medicaid, and 51 percent with Medicare.
Many insured adults said they or a family member had delayed or skipped needed health care or prescription drugs because they couldn’t afford it in the past 12 months: 29 percent of those with employer coverage, 37 percent covered by marketplace or individual-market plans, 39 percent enrolled in Medicaid, and 42 percent with Medicare.
Cost-driven delays in getting care or missed care made people sicker. Fifty-four percent of people with employer coverage who reported delaying or forgoing care because of costs said a health problem of theirs or a family member got worse because of it, as did 61 percent in marketplace or individual-market plans, 60 percent with Medicaid, and 63 percent with Medicare.
Insurance coverage didn’t prevent people from incurring medical debt.Thirty percent of adults with employer coverage were paying off debt from medical or dental care, as were 33 percent of those in marketplace or individual-market plans, 21 percent with Medicaid, and 33 percent with Medicare.
Medical debt leads many people to delay or avoid getting care or filling prescriptions: more than one-third (34%) of people with medical debt are in employer plans, 39 percent in the marketplace or individual-market plans, 31 percent in Medicaid, and 32 percent in Medicare.
Healthcare insurance, whether private or government-funded, is inadequate. Given the fact that the federal government has infinite dollars, why are so many Americans suffering with too-costly-but-inadequate insurance?
Medicare, for instance, is far less than comprehensive. Why does Medicare have Part A, Part B, Part C, and Part D, each with different options and costs? Why not simply a Medicare that covers everything for everyone at no cost?
Why, if the federal government has infinite money, are these expenses not covered, and why are there deductibles and added costs to complete coverages?
You have been told, falsely, that the federal government is like state/local governments, business, you and me, in being monetarily non-sovereign. You have been told falsely, that the federal government spends taxpayers’ dollars and can run short of dollars.
You have been told, falsely, that to provide benefits, the federal government must levy taxes and spend taxpayers’ money.
It’s all a lie.
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.”
Quote from former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke when he was on 60 Minutes:
Scott Pelley: Is that tax money that the Fed is spending?
Ben Bernanke: “It’s not tax money… We simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account. 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.”
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.”
The U.S. government is not the only Monetarily Sovereign entity. For example:
Press Conference: Mario Draghi, President of the ECB, 9 January 2014
Question: I am wondering: can the ECB ever run out of money?
Mario Draghi: Technically, no. We cannot run out of money.
Given its infinite money supply, why does the federal government not provide free, comprehensive, no-deductible insurance to every man, woman, and child in America? Why must you, as an American, risk bankruptcy, sickness, and death because your insurance is inadequate?
What is the Big Lie? The Big Lie is the claim that federal taxes fund federal spending.To pay its bills, the federal government creates new dollars ad hoc by tapping computer keys. Whenever you read an article claiming the federal government is “spending taxpayers’ dollars; it is a lie.
State and local governments spend taxpayers’ dollars; the federal government does not.
Why are you being lied to, and where are the lies coming from?
The lies are coming from the healthcare insurance industry, the media, the economists, and the politicians.
It’s easy to understand why the insurance industry lies about the federal government’s not funding healthcare insurance: The profit motive. The insurance industry does not want to lose the huge profits in selling healthcare coverage.
But why do the media, economists, and politicians lie?
Because they are bribed.
The media are bribed by advertising dollars and by ownership. The economists are bribed by university contributions and by promises of lucrative jobs in “think tanks.” The politicians are bribed by campaign contributions and by promises of lucrative jobswith industry.
Who is doing the bribing? The very rich?
Why are the rich bribing? Gap psychology says people grow richer and more powerful by widening the Gap between them and those below them in any income/wealth/power measure. That is the primary way the rich make themselves more affluent.
How do the rich widen the Gap below them? They get more for themselves, but importantly, they make sure those below them get less. They use their influence to reduce the federal benefits paid to those less wealthy.
The rich disseminate the lie that Medicare and Social Security are running short of dollars, so benefits must be reduced, and taxes must be increased (See: “Starve the Poor.”)
What should be done?
First, the useless, harmful FICA tax should be eliminated. Like all federal taxes, it funds nothing. Worse, it punishes the low-income worker and widens the Gap between the rich and the rest.
Second, the federal government should pay for free, comprehensive Medicare for All, with no limits and no deductions. One free plan for everyone; no Part A, B, C, D. No Medicaid. No “Donut holes.” No Medicare Advantage plans.
The public must learn that federal spending is beneficial, and it costs nothing.The more the federal government spends on healthcare, the more the overall economy will grow and prosper.
Ignorance is the weapon used by the rich to dominate the rest. That is the reason medical services are unaffordable for so many Americans.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary SovereigntyTwitter: @rodgermitchellSearch #monetarysovereigntyFacebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.
The dictionary definition of “Libertarian” is: An advocate or supporter of a political philosophy that advocates only minimal state intervention in the free market and the private lives of citizens.
The problem is that each self-proclaimed “Libertarian” invents his definition of “minimal.” So, the real, practical meaning is: “Libertarian is someone who decides how much state intervention he wants.” Period.
Thus, everyone is a Libertarian. Or not. If you want to increase Medicare availability but cut Social Security, you can claim to be a Libertarian. If you want to cut them both, you also can claim to be a Libertarian.
Do you want to eliminate all federal spending? You’re an extreme Libertarian. Want to stop all federal agencies? Extreme Libertarian. Want to cut federal spending by 99%, 75%, 25%, or 1%? You can do any of it under the guise of “Libertarianism.”
Thus, for this reason alone, Libertarianism is the all-purpose bullsh*t excuse for doing whatever you want.
But it worsens when we consider why Libertarians want to cut state intervention. There are two fundamental reasons:
Freedom from government control
Romina Boccia
Affordability of government spending
And self-proclaimed Libertarians vacillate between the two, depending on their mood.
1. Freedom: Every law reduces someone’s freedom. For absolute freedom, there would be no laws. Libertarians hate laws when their own freedom is reduced but accept laws that protect any of their freedoms.
A true Libertarian thinks people should be free to carry any weapon anywhere. Does that include machine guns, bazookas, flame throwers, drone bombs, poison gas?
Should people be freeto keep slaves, spread smallpox, steal, kill, and kidnap? Well, no, that’s too much freedom. So, how much freedom should people have? Ask two Libertarians, and you’ll get five opinions.
Thus, Libertarians claim their right to tell youhow much freedom you should have, and whatever they decide is based on their personal desires and their definition of Libertarianism.
2. Affordability: Because Libertarians feign ignorance about Monetary Sovereignty, they claim the thing called “federal debt” is like state/city debt, personal debt, monetarily non-sovereign debt, and business debt.
It isn’t. States, counties, cities, people, businesses, and euro nations can run short of whatever currency they use to pay their bills. The U.S. government cannot.
The finances of the Monetarily Sovereign U.S. government are unique. It alone can afford anything that can be purchased with U.S. dollars. Whether an obligation totals $1 or a hundred trillion dollars or any other number makes no difference to the federal government’s ability to pay for it.
The U.S. federal government pays for everything by creating U.S. dollars ad hoc. It never unintentionally can run short of dollars. Even if the government didn’t collect a penny in taxes, it could continue spending forever.
Alan Greenspan: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency.”
I suggest that Libertarian leaders are well aware of #1 and #2 above, and that there is a different reason for their objections to government spending.
I suggest that the Libertarian party is a proxy for the Republican partyin being tied to America’s richest 1%.
“Rich” is a comparative, relying on the width of the Gaps between the top vs. the middle and bottom. Widening the income/wealth/power Gap between the richest and the rest of us makes the rich richer. Narrowing that Gap makes the rest of us richer.
You are rich if you have $1,000, while everyone else has $10. But you are poor if you have $1,000 while everyone else has $10,000. It is the Gap that determines how rich or poor you are. The wider the Gap below you and the narrower the Gap above you, the richer you are.
The Libertarians, as proxies for the Republicans, work to widen the Gap between the rich and you, making the rich richer. It is reflected in Gap Psychology, the desire to widen the Gap below you and to narrow the Gap above you.
Keep this in mind as we review excerpt from the following Libertarian article:
These programs primarily benefit those who are not rich. Therefore, they are fair game for the Libertarian budget-cutters, who seldom express concern about tax loopholes for the rich but constantly complain about benefits to the rest of us.
With the Senate and now the House reopening for business, Congress is resuming its negotiations over annual spending on discretionary programs. As Washington tinkers around the edges of the behemoth federal budget, members are steering clear of the biggest budget items—the ones sending U.S. debt to unprecedented heights.
Here are the facts:
The U.S. debt is not the dollars the U.S. government owes. It is the total of dollars deposited into T-security accounts. The so-called “debt” is not a debt of the government any more than your deposit into your safe deposit box is a debt of your bank.
When you open your T-security (T-bill, T-note, T-bond) account and deposit it, the dollars belong to you. The government never touches them other than periodically to add interest dollars.
When your T-security matures, those dollars are returned to you, just as the contents of your safe deposit box are returned to you.
Discretionary means that Congress hasn’t put these programs on autopilot, unlike so-called mandatory programs. Instead, Congress must vote to either continue or alter the spending. Otherwise, discretionary program funding expires.
While controlling discretionary spending is important for fiscal responsibility, for reducing government waste, and for negotiating the proper size and scope of federal activities, the current shutdown debate is largely symbolic.
To the Libertarians, “fiscal responsibility” and “government waste” refer to benefits received by the middle- and lower-income groups. Tax benefits that allow billionaires like Donald Trump to pay virtually $0 in taxes seldom concern Libertarians.
America’s biggest fiscal challenge lies in the unchecked growth of federal health care and old-age entitlement programs.
Oh, woe! Sick and elderly Americans, especially poor Americans, are receiving more money. To Libertarians, this is outrageous.
Never mind that the federal government has the infinite ability to create the dollars that fund these programs. The Libertarians’ concern is not affordability. The federal government can afford anything. The real concern is that the poor and middle classes receive dollars, narrowing the Gaps between the rich and the rest.
The rich hate that because it makes them less rich. And what the rich hate, the Libertarians and the Republicans also hate.
Alan Greenspan: “There is nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody.”
Repeated shutdown fights and a slew of temporary continuing resolutions have gotten us no closer to reforming Social Security and Medicare.
In the Libertarian world, “reforming” means “cutting.”
Those paying attention to the debt limit debate that ended in early June may be wondering what all the shutdown fuss is about, given that Congress and the White House agreed to new spending limits just a few months ago.
Those limits, specified in the Fiscal Responsibility Act, were a sham from the beginning. Secretive side deals undermined the stated goals of the bipartisan agreement before the ink was dry.
President Joe Biden has requested $40 billion in additional emergency supplemental spending, with the Senate adding several more billion to its appropriations bills, a glaring attempt to evade even modest fiscal restraints.
The federal government has infinite dollars. What, then, is the purpose of “modest fiscal restraints”? The sole purpose is to impoverish the great mass of people so that the rich can continue to rule.
Alan Greenspan: “The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print the money to do that.”
The debt limit deal did succeed in allowing both Democrats and Republicans to claim political victory while suspending the debt limit for more than 18 months.
The losers are the American people, as excessive federal spending and unchecked entitlement growth drive up inflation and interest rates and undermine stronger economic growth.
Three lies in just eleven words, a remarkable record:
Federal spending does not “drive up inflation.”All inflations are caused by shortages of critical goods and services, most often oil and food. Today’s COVID-induced inflation resulted from a scarcity of oil, food, transportation, metals, lumber, computer chips, labor, and other goods and services.Federal spending to cure these shortages, not interest rate increases, has been moderating inflation.
Federal spending does not “drive up interest rates.” Interest rates are up because the Federal Reserve falsely believes low interest rates lead to inflation, and high rates cure it. This is utter nonsense. Adding high interest to the cost of goods makes those goods more costly. The sole effect of high rates is to stagnate the economy by transferring dollars from borrowers to lenders. A stagnant economy is known as a “recession” or a “depression,” and neither recession nor depression is the opposite of inflation. Apparently, the Fed never heard of “stagflation,” the combination of inflation and a stagnant economy.
Stronger economic growth is defined as increased growth in Gross Domestic Product. (GDP). The formula for GDP is: GDP = Federal Spending + Nonfederal Spending+ Net Exports. Now I ask the Libertarian geniuses, given that formula, what can the federal government do to increase GDP growth? If you know basic algebra, your answer was “increase Federal Spending.” Seemingly, this is beyond the abilities of the Libertarians.
A more responsible way to raise the U.S. debt limit would have paired such an increase with a credible fiscal plan to stabilize the growth in the debt.
Hmm. “Raise the debt limit” by “stabilizing the debt growth.” If that makes sense to you, you are far wiser than me. By setting up a functional impossibility, the Libertarians make sure they always will have something to complain about.
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.”
The longer Washington waits to fix autopilot spending, the more damage they’ll do. The Congressional Budget Office’s latest long-term budget outlook projects that U.S. government spending will consume nearly 30 percent of the economy by 2053—almost 40 percent higher than the historical average.
Look again at the formula for GDP. Federal spending does not “consume” part of the economy but adds to it. By simple, mathematical formula, increased Federal Spending increases GDP.
It also increases Non-federal Spending by adding dollars to the private sector.
Thus, IF one wishes to increase economic growth, the last thing would be to cut Federal Spending. The word “if” is accented because increasing economic growth is not a Libertarian goal.
They want to widen the Gap between the rich and the rest, a goal that often can be met by recessions or even by depressions.
Quote from former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke when he was on 60 Minutes:Scott Pelley: Is that tax money that the Fed is spending?Ben Bernanke: It’s not tax money… We simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account.
Recessions and depressions provide opportunities for the rich to become richer. At those times, the rich can snap up assets at bargain prices while forcing labor to slave at meager salaries.
Congress is expected to rack up more than $100 trillion in additional deficits over those 30 years—more than four times what the U.S. government has borrowed over its entire history. Who will lend the U.S. government such vast sums?
More lies from the Libertarians. The federal government, having the infinite ability to create U.S. dollars, never borrows. Never.
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.”
Thus, no one lends to the federal government. Those dollars spent on T-securities do not go to the federal government. They go into T-security accounts, which are owned by the depositors.
Those accounts provide a safe place to store unused dollars. This stabilizes the dollar. It does not give the federal government spending dollars, of which it already has infinite.
The main drivers of this increase are heightened interest costs and the growth in health care and Social Security spending.
With Medicare and Social Security responsible for 95 percent of long-term unfunded obligations, according to the Treasury Financial Report, there’s simply no way any serious fiscal reform effortcan leave these programs untouched.
Yet another lie. All financial obligations of the U.S. government are “unfunded” until the government funds them by creating new dollars ad hoc.
Federal taxes do not fund federal spending.Unlike state/local tax dollars, which remain in the private sector by being deposited into private banks, federal tax dollars are destroyed. When they reach the U.S. Treasury, they cease to exist in any money supply measure.
(No money supply measure includes federal dollars because the federal government has infinite dollars. Thus, your federal tax dollars cease to exist once received by the Treasury.)
The Libertarians define a “serious reform effort” as anything that takes dollars from the poor and the middle classes.
The most likely outcome from the current standoff is a continuing resolution into December, followed by a spending-laden Christmas tree bill before year’s end. This shutdown debate matters only so much, considering the huge fiscal challenge confronting the United States.
A “Christmas tree bill” is the Libertarian’s intentionally misleading description of anything that provides more money to the poor and middle classes.
By ROMINA BOCCIA , the director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute.
The Cato Institute claims it promotes “individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace,an honest description of an organization that wants the rich to rule.
Nothing in that description is about reducing poverty, feeding the malnourished, educating the masses, narrowing the Gap, or being charitable. Quite the opposite.
“Individual liberty” means the rich do whatever they want, and the rest do whatever the rich want. “Limited government” and “free markets” mean there will be no laws to prevent the rich from cheating and enslaving the rest of us.
And as for “peace,” those angry protests by the poor can be messy. The Libertarians want the downtrodden to accept their lot in life, peacefully.
What a perfect society the Libertarians try to force on us.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary SovereigntyTwitter: @rodgermitchellSearch #monetarysovereigntyFacebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.
opposition to an obsession with contamination by genetic material from a perceived inferior bloodline.
Wilkerson describes the means necessary for the sustained oppression of an outcast group, which requires only that the members of the dominant class do nothing and remain silent, maintaining a complicity in which the order will thrive.
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Why, if the federal government has infinite money, are these expenses not covered, and why are there deductibles and added costs to complete coverages?
You have been told, falsely, that the federal government is like state/local governments, business, you and me, in being monetarily non-sovereign. You have been told falsely, that the federal government spends taxpayers’ dollars and can run short of dollars.
You have been told, falsely, that to provide benefits, the federal government must levy taxes and spend taxpayers’ money.
It’s all a lie.
