Tag: gap psychology

Many economists want poverty never to be cured. Here’s why.

Many economists want poverty never to be cured.

Here’s why: The most crucial question in economics is: “Can the federal government run short of money?”

Most economists will answer something on the order of, “The government always can print more dollars.”

While technically that is not correct — the government prints dollar bills, which are titles to dollars, not dollars in themselves — the concept is correct.

The U.S. federal government cannot unintentionally run short of dollars. With that fundamental truth in mind, logic dictates that:

  1. The U.S. government does not rely on your tax dollars. It simply could “print” all the dollars it spends, and in fact, that is what it does.
  2. Therefore, the U.S. government has no financial need to levy federal taxes.
  3. There is no financial need for the federal government to run a balanced budget.
  4. Federal deficits and debt are not a burden on the federal government or on federal taxpayers
  5. Since the federal government cannot unintentionally run short of dollars, no federal agency can run short of dollars unless the federal government wants that to happen.
  6. Medicare and Social Security are among the hundreds of federal agencies that cannot run short of dollars unless Congress and the President want that result.
  7. The so-called Medicare and Social Security “trust funds” are not real trust funds; they have no financial purpose. The federal government can and does support all federal agencies by creating dollars ad hoc.
  8. Medicare for All, Social Security for All, College Tuition for All, Housing Support for All, Food for All, etc., are well within the federal government’s ability to fund without levying a penny in taxes.

If you can find an error in the above logic, please let me know.

Why, then, does the government collect taxes?

Why does it threaten bankruptcy for Medicare and Social Security?

Why the concern about the federal deficit and debt?

The fundamental financial purpose of federal taxes is to control the economy by taxing what the government wishes to limit and by giving tax breaks to what the government wishes to encourage and reward.

Sadly, the government taxes — i.e., wishes to limit — your income, your healthcare, your retirement, and your other benefits, while it hopes to encourage and reward — i.e., give tax breaks to — the rich and their accumulation of wealth.

That is why the very rich pay a much lower percentage of their income and wealth as taxes than you do.

Donald Trump’s negligible tax payments are but one example.

While the economists generally admit that the federal government cannot become insolvent, they take their lead from the rich, who provide two fallback excuses for not supporting the middle classes and the poor:

Excuse #1: “If we support the middle and the poor by providing health care insurance, retirement insurance, housing aid, food aid, and college aid, the middle and the poor will refuse to work, destroying the economy.”

The tacit claim is that the not-rich are lazy takers who, lacking human aspirations, are not interested in improving their lives via labor but are content to wallow in their own poverty.

Never mind that the poor and middle classes labor much harder than do the rich, who are the real lazy takers.

Excuse #1 is part of the “the poor deserve their poverty, and we rich deserve our wealth” meme.

It is a subset of the white supremacy doctrine — part of the notion that “it was not luck that got us where we are but rather our natural superiority” — part of the “give the poor a few dollars, and they will those dollars to buy drugs and gamble.”

Excuse #2: “Federal spending can cause inflation, which will destroy the economy.”

All inflations are caused by shortages of critical goods and services, which makes sense intuitively and factually.

We can all agree that when something is in short supply, its price rises so that many prices rise when many things are in short supply.

That’s called “inflation.”

Today’s inflation is caused by COVID-related short supplies of oil, food, computer chips, lumber, housing, and labor.

Does federal spending cause these shortages? The reality is that only a very small percentage of federal spending is for the purchase of these things.

The vast majority of federal spending goes to people. Federal dollars for Medicare and other healthcare, Social Security, poverty aids, and even the military comprise nearly all of the federal government’s spending.

Only a tiny percentage goes for the purchase of goods, and even that percentage is largely labor-related.

So, when economists claim that federal spending causes inflation, they really claim that the American people receive too much money.

And further, when people have more money, they spend it on already scarce items, thus causing inflation.

Carried to its logical end, the economists claim that preventing and curing inflation requires impoverishing the middle classes and the poor.

The economists want you to have less money for driving your car, heating your house, buying your food, affording suitable housing, owning a TV, or going to college.

And they want businesses to devote less money to hiring people.

FICA and business-provided healthcare insurance are employment costs discourage hiring while reducing net wages.

Suppose the government did not require employers and employees to pay FICA and did not encourage companies to provide healthcare insurance (via tax deductions and the lack of Medicare for All). In that case, businesses could hire more people at higher net wages.

The entire anti-inflation argument is based on the poor and middle classes receiving poorer health care, food, housing, education, and net wages.

There can be no argument about the federal government’s unlimited ability to create its own sovereign currency. So, you might think the entire Big Lie about federal deficits being “unsustainable” devolves into inflation.

But that Big Lie is just a cover for a more profound lie, based on Gap Psychology, the human desire to widen the income/wealth/power gap below and to narrow the gap above.

The Gap is what makes one rich. Without the Gap, no one would be rich; we all would be equal. And the wider the Gap, the richer the rich.

A man owning a million dollars would be rich if everyone else owned only a thousand dollars, but he would be poor if everyone else owned ten million dollars.

The richer always wish to be more prosperous. They want the Gap below them to grow wider. So, they bribe our sources of information to convince us that the government should not provide Gap-narrowing benefits.

They bribe the media via ownership and advertising dollars. They bribe the politicians via campaign contributions and promises of future employment.

They bribe university economists via university contributions and employment in think tanks, which is why economists never want poverty to be cured.

They like bribes.

Everyone, from layperson to self-described expert, is fed the same Big Lie: “Federal finances are like personal finances.”

That lie includes misleading statements: The federal government should live within its means and run a balanced budget, deficits and debt are unsustainable, federal taxes fund federal spending, and federal expenditures causes inflations.

The facts are:

  1. The federal government, having the infinite ability to create dollars, has no “means” to live within.
  2. Running a balanced federal budget always leads to recessions and depressions
  3. Federal taxes not only don’t fund federal spending but federal tax dollars are destroyed upon receipt by the Treasury.
  4. All inflations are caused by shortages of critical goods and services, usually oil or food.
  5. Federal spending creates economic growth and even can cure inflations by curing shortages.

Here’s the evidence:

This graph demonstrates that recessions (vertical gray bars) occur not just when federal debt (red) shrinks but even when federal debt doesn’t grow enough.

Here is a list of periods in which the federal debt actually has shrunk:

U.S. depressions tend to come on the heels of federal surpluses.

1804-1812: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 48%. Depression began 1807.

1817-1821: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 29%. Depression began 1819.

1823-1836: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 99%. Depression began 1837.

1852-1857: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 59%. Depression began 1857.

1867-1873: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 27%. Depression began 1873.

1880-1893: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 57%. Depression began 1893.

1920-1930: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 36%. Depression began 1929.

1997-2001: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 15%. Recession began 2001.

A growing economy requires a growing supply of money.

Federal deficits pump money into the private sector, aka “the economy,” and by formula, increase economic growth (GDP=Federal Spending+Non-federal Spending+Net Exports.)

You and everyone else pay federal taxes with dollars taken from the M1 money supply measure  , which includes currency in people’s pockets or the M1 money supply measure  which includes currency that is in people’s pockets or in checking accounts.

There is no money supply measure for the federal government’s dollars because the government has the infinite ability to create dollars.

It has an infinite supply of money.

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency.”

Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”

Quote from 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.

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, all those M1 money supply tax dollars disappear from any money supply measure. They effectively are destroyed.

The federal government creates ad hoc dollars every time it pays for something. And as for the myth that federal deficit spending causes inflation, look at this graph:

If federal deficit spending caused inflation, the peaks and valleys of the red line (changes in federal debt) would correspond to the peaks and valleys of the blue line (inflation). There is no such correspondence.

If you’re looking for something that does correspond to inflation, look at this graph.

Oil prices (silver) correspond with inflation (blue). Inflations are caused by shortages.

Your major sources of information, the media, politicians, and university economists have been bribed to believe and to disseminate the Big Lie that federal finances resemble personal finances.

In fact, the two could not be more different.

  1. The federal government is Monetarily Sovereign; you, the states, counties, cities, and businesses are monetarily non-sovereign.
  2. The federal government can create unlimited numbers of dollars; you, the states et al, cannot create unlimited dollars
  3. The federal government destroys all the dollars it receives; you do not.
  4. The federal government never unintentionally can be insolvent; you can become insolvent if you do not have sufficient dollars to pay your creditors.
  5. The federal government never borrows dollars; you might have occasion to borrow.

The federal government can cure inflations, not by raising interest rates (which exacerbates shortages), but by spending to alleviate shortages.

For instance: To lower the price of oil, the government could financially support oil exploration and processing, and/or invest in renewable energy.

To lower the price of food, the government could financially support farming and food production R&D.

To ease the price of labor, the government could eliminate the FICA tax while providing Medicare for All (relieving businesses of this financial obligation).

To lower the prices of electronics, the government could invest in computer chips and electronic R&D.

In short, reducing inflation actually requires additional government spending, not less.

Any time you read or hear someone equating federal finances with personal finances, you will know they are lying or ignorant about economics.

Similarly, any time you read or hear someone saying federal debt or deficits are “unsustainable,” they, too are lying or ignorant.

If you have played the board game Monopoly, you know the Bank mimics the federal government in that it cannot run out of money. By rule, the Bank is Monetarily Sovereign.

The players comprise the “economy,” and they do not need to worry about the Bank’s deficits or its debt being “unsustainable.”

The Bank always is able to pay $200 for passing “GO.”

If you find Monetary Sovereignty puzzling, just think of Monopoly. That may help you visualize the reality of the U.S. economy.

The purpose of the Big Lie is to widen the Gaps between richer and poorer, and more specifically, between the very rich and the rest of us.

Economist charlatans never want poverty cured because the cures would reveal their ignorance, deception, and/or their receipt of bribes from the rich.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Another reason for real Medicare for All

The U.S. federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, has infinite dollars. It never can run short of dollars. The government can pay for comprehensive, no-deductible health care for every man, woman, and child in America without collecting a penny in taxes. This would not be the Bernie Sanders Medicare for All, which is merely an expansion of our current Medicare. It would  be a comprehensive, no-deductible, no FICA, no Part A, Part B, Part C, Part D, Medicare that truly is for All. It would cover everything and everyone one.The 10 Poorest States in America And it would not be government-provided health care. It would be government-funded healthcare. Everyone still would have their own doctors. Hospitals would remain privately owned. The only differences would be that insurance companies no longer would be the middlemen, and everyone would have free health care. There is no functional reason why America needs privately-owned, for-profit insurance companies that collect medical dollars but provide no medical services. It is a costly scam. The insurance companies, in essence, tell you, “Give me your healthcare dollars. We’ll give some of them to doctors, nurses, and hospitals and keep the rest for ourselves.” What’s the purpose of having middlemen take some of your hard-earned medical dollars? It would be far better for the federal government to tell you, “You don’t have to give us anything. We’ll create the dollars and pay them to the doctors, nurses, and hospitals. It won’t cost you a cent. You and your doctors will make all the medical decisions. We’ll just pay for them.” That is the way medicine should and could operate. An article in today’s Palm Beach Sun Sentinel reminds me of these simple facts. Here are excerpts:

More than half of hospitals in rural Miss. facing closure Leaders at the publicly owned Greenwood Leflore Hospital in Greenwood, Miss., say they will be out of business before the end of the year without a cash infusion. Rogelio V. Solis/AP By Michael Goldberg Associated Press JACKSON, Miss. — Over half of Mississippi’s rural hospitals are at risk of closing immediately or in the near future, according to the state’s leading public health official.

Dr. Daniel Edney, the state health officer, spoke to state senators at a hearing last week about the financial pressure on Mississippi hospitals. Edney said 54% of the state’s rural hospitals — 38 — could close.

Rural hospitals were under economic strain before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the problems have worsened as costs to provide care have increased.

Mississippi’s high number of low-income uninsured people means hospitals are on the hook for more uncompensated care. At the same time, labor costs weigh on hospitals as they struggle to pay competitive wages to retain staff.

Why does America have uninsured (for healthcare) people when the federal government has infinite dollars? It makes no sense at all.

“The costs on an income statement for a hospital have skyrocketed,” said Scott Christensen, chair of the Mississippi Hospital Association Board of Governors. “The liabilities on the balance sheets of hospitals around the state have reached some unsustainable levels given what we face.”

The crux of the problem facing Mississippi’s hospitals is that revenues have not kept pace with rising costs, Christensen said.

The strain is most acute in Mississippi’s Delta region, an agricultural flatland where poverty remains entrenched. Greenwood Leflore Hospital has been cutting costs by reducing services and shrinking its workforce for months.

But the medical facility hasn’t been able to stave off the risk of imminent closure. Hospital leaders say they will be out of business before the end of the year without a cash infusion.

At Greenwood Leflore and other hospitals across the state, maternity care units have been on the chopping block. Mississippi already has the nation’s highest fetal mortality rate, highest infant mortality rate and highest preterm birth rate, and is among the worst states for maternal mortality.

Does anyone care? Do the Republicans who run Mississippi care?

A rising number of healthcare deserts are emerging in the Delta, but financial pressures are bearing down on hospitals in more prosperous areas of the state as well, experts at the hearing said.

But hospitals in poor communities often treat patients who don’t have insurance and can’t afford to pay for care out of pocket. An expansion of Medicaid coverage would reduce costs that result from uncompensated care.

Gov. Tate Reeves and other Republican leaders have killed proposals to expand Medicaid, which primarily covers low-income workers whose jobs don’t provide private health insurance.

Opponents of expansion say they don’t want to encourage reliance on government help for people who don’t need it.

This is the same -old, same-old trope that poor people are lazy takers, and giving them help will make them even lazier. It is a vicious lie promulgated by the richer to keep the more destitute down. It is the classic expression of Gap Psychology, in which the richer want to widen the Gap between them and the poorer.

As a near-term solution, the Mississippi Hospital Association has suggested the state’s Division of Medicaid work with federal officials to raise the Medicaid reimbursement rate cap.

The move would lower the cost of providing care for people who are already covered under the state’s current Medicaid plan.

It’s a Band-Aid, as are Medicaid, Obamacare, and Medicare. They all should be merged to provide comprehensive, no-deductible, 100% coverage, fully government-funded, no taxes healthcare insurance for every American of every age and every income. No exceptions. Finally, it isn’t “socialism.” The rich falsely chant “socialism” every time a benefit for the not-rich is mentioned. But socialism is government control, not government funding. With real Medicare for All, the government only would take over funding from the for-profit insurance companies. All Medical decisions would remain with your doctors and hospitals. It is a disgrace of American politics that we don’t already have it. Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Why the economy is devilishly hard to predict: Chaos

An animation of a double-rod pendulum at an intermediate energy showing chaotic behavior. Starting the pendulum from a slightly different initial condition would result in a vastly different trajectory. The double-rod pendulum is one of the simplest dynamical systems with chaotic solutions.

Animation of a double-rod pendulum showing chaotic behavior. Starting the pendulum from a slightly different initial condition results in a vastly different trajectory.

Here is why the economy is devilishly hard to predict. Think first of the weather. We all agree it’s hard to predict, though it’s based on just a few simple facts:
  1. The sun is essentially a point source of our heat that heats the ground and water and, to a lesser degree, the air.
  2. Hot air rises; cool air falls; the earth’s uneven surface turns, and all that motion creates wind.
  3. Warm water evaporates, forms clouds, and comes down as windblown rain or snow when it cools.
Add in a few other things like cloud covers, volcanos, and the human creation of CO2, and that’s about it. The whole thing, though complex and chaotic, can be described mathematically. You could predict the weather with sufficient data, the proper formulas, and the fastest supercomputers. It’s just numbers. Now consider economics, the science of money. It’s a bifurcated science, part Monetary Sovereignty and part Gap Psychology. The Monetary Sovereignty part is similar to the weather in that it can be described mathematically.
  1. A monetarily sovereign entity creates laws from thin air, and these laws create money from thin air.
  2. Money is scarce to users but never scarce to issuers. Being able to create infinite laws, the monetarily sovereign entity can issue unlimited money. It never can run short, even without collecting taxes.
  3. All money is a form of debt; it’s the issuer’s debt in that the demand for any one form of money is based on the issuer’s full faith and credit. If the issuer has good credit: People want that money. Bad credit: No one wants that money.
  4. Because money is an infinitely available exchange medium, money’s value is generally based on the scarcity of the goods and services for which it is exchanged. Scarcity makes goods more valuable, thus requiring more money in exchange.
Like the weather, Monetary Sovereignty, though complex and chaotic, can be described mathematically. Given sufficient data, one could predict the flow and value of money. Except . . . Except for Gap Psychology, the human desire to widen the income/wealth/power Gap below and to narrow the Gap above. We want to distance ourselves from those below us and come closer to those above us. Gap Psychology is based on human emotions about comparisons. Consider a middle-income, middle-wealth person today. He (she) has much more and much better “stuff” than even a wealthy person of yesteryear. Today’s “middle” people have air-conditioned, heated homes and cars, televisions, cell phones, computers, and indoor flush toilets. They drink purified water, eat purified foods, and receive painless (relatively) dentistry. They have modern medical care paid for by insurance. Vaccination protects them from dozens of diseases, many fatal. They fly or drive hundreds of miles in a few hours on paved roads. They ride escalators and elevators up tall buildings. They are middle-income, middle-wealth, but by the standards of yesteryear, they are fabulously wealthy. Even John D. Rockefeller, possibly the richest person in history, didn’t have what the average Joe in America has now. You would feel poor if you had smelly plumbing, mud streets, no air conditioning, and a horse-drawn buggy to get around. Gap Psychology creates the appeal of lotteries and Las Vegas, expensive cars, natural diamonds rather than fake ones, and celebrities. Gap Psychology is the genuine desire to earn more money, own more wealth, and have more power, in short, to be more prosperous. “Rich” is not absolute. It is a comparative. There are two ways for you to become more prosperous, i.e., to widen the Gap below or narrow the Gap above. You either must acquire more income, wealth, and/or power for yourself, or others must lose income, wealth, and power. And this is where economics becomes hard to predict. It is based on human psychology, which devolves into individual psychology and often into one person’s psychology. Gap Psychology causes people to vote against poverty aid lest it narrows the Gap below. That narrowing would make you feel poorer. Gap Psychology encourages people to vote against their freedoms if that vote would restrict the poor even more, thus widening the Gap. There is no mathematics to predict that an incompetent psychopathic President would receive enough votes to be elected. And there is no mathematics to measure what that incapable psychopath would do to the economy. One such President added duties on Chinese goods (for which you paid and which raised prices). COVID came along, and its denial caused hundreds of thousands of Americans to die and raised prices further. Shortages and inflation were direct results. There is no mathematics to reveal that millions would ignore their eyes, ears, and brains to continue believing the most recent election was stolen. A mob is chaotic. It took losing a war, but the German people finally understood what Hitler had done to them, and belatedly they rejected white supremacy and fascist hatred. The Italians hung Mussolini by his heels. Recently, Italy elected a pro-Russia, anti-gay conservative to be Speaker of their lower house of Parliament. One day earlier, an ultra-conservative lawmaker, who collects fascist memorabilia, became their Senate Speaker; a month earlier, a neo-fascist conservative became Prime Minister. Mussolini must be laughing (upside down) in his grave. Who could have predicted post World War II Italy’s (and America’s) failure to learn where extreme conservatism leads? IN SUMMARY Chaos theory describes the difficulty of predicting some events because of the “butterfly effect.” Some small events can multiply upon themselves until a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil eventually results in a hurricane over Florida — or an extreme conservative being re-elected. Edward Lorenz  described chaos this way: “When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.” American economics is a blend of Monetary Sovereignty and Gap Psychology. The former is a factual and mathematical description of money. It could allow us to predict our economic future if we were logical machines having sufficient data. The latter results from human psychology, individual and herd, which is chaotic. Here, logic disappears, as witness the likes of Donald Trump, Herschel Walker, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Greene, Ted Cruz, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, et all, intentionally being chosen by many voters. Think about it. These politicians, and others of their ilk with economic and political power, actually received votes from sentient human beings. It boggles. For the same reasons why Psychology is not a science, Economics, which relies on psychology, is not a science. They are beauty contests with results in the eyes of the beholders. And as with beauty contests, where no strict criteria are possible, everyone is absolutely, positively, unequivocally sure about the correctness of their opinions. Now, try to predict who the next U.S. President will be and what effects she will have on the economy. Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Why Democrats underachieve

One might think the Democrats would win every election, and not just win but win big. One might think the Dems would gather nearly every vote from the poor and middle-income, the gays, blacks, browns, yellows, reds, Jews, Muslims, immigrants, the elderly, the sick, the educated, and those who care about the environment, women’s right to an abortion, and America’s democracy. After all, the Dems are the party that invented and tries to protect and expand Medicare, Social Security, and ACA (Obamacare). They want to raise the minimum wage, give unions a greater voice, and support equal housing legislation. They also passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. They support free preschool programs for disadvantaged children (Head Start) and volunteer teachers in schools in poor areas (the AmeriCorps VISTA program). They support more accessible voting for the poor. Premium Photo | Puzzled dark skinned woman spreads her arms without understanding what is being done.Additionally, the Democrats passed and support:
    • The Wilderness Act, protecting 9 million acres of forestland;
    • The Voting Rights Act banned practices intended to deny African-Americans the right to vote;
    • The Elementary and Secondary Education Act provides federal funding for public schools;
    • The Older Americans Act created home and community-based services for older Americans;
    • The Immigration and Nationality Act ending immigration quotas based on ethnicity;
    • The Freedom of Information Act making government records more easily available to the people; and
    • The Housing and Urban Development Act for construction of low-income housing.

And they enacted laws strengthening the anti-pollution Air and Water Quality Acts; raised standards ensuring the safety of consumer products; and created the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities.

The GOP either has opposed all of the above or supported some of it reluctantly. They promise to cut Social Security benefits and/or raise FICA taxes. They repeatedly try to deport the “Dreamers,” children who were brought to the US before the age of 16 and don’t have lawful immigration status. They try to eliminate abortion, even under the most extenuating circumstances. They also promise to cut Medicare and Medicaid and have tried, for six years, to eliminate Obamacare. The current Democratic administration added to the list of Democrats’ accomplishments;

1) $1.2 trillion to rebuild America’s infrastructure 2) $1.9 trillion COVID relief deal 3) Halt on federal executions 4) Rejoined the international Paris Climate Accord 5) Mandated converting the federal fleet to zero-emission vehicles. 6) Support for transgender service members 7) Reduced unemployment 8) Strengthened QUAD, the alliance of the U.S., India, Australia, and Japan. 9) Student loan debt relief 10) Strengthened NATO. 11) Sanctioned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine 12) Fought Saudi’s oil prices by releasing180 million barrels of oil from the country’s Strategic Oil Reserves. 13) Pardoned anyone convicted of a federal marijuana charge

The above should help the middle- and lower-income classes and/or aid America’s security. The GOP opposed all of it. On the other side, the GOP’s main accomplishment is a tax cut for the rich and belated support for the creation of the COVID vaccine (while simultaneously denying the need for a vaccine). The GOP is led lockstep by a convicted tax cheat, the head of the scam operation known as “Trump University,” an unceasing liar, a conspiracy theorist, and a sympathizer with white supremacists, Nazis, QAnon, and traitors who tried to overthrow the U.S government. His false and damaging claims about a “stolen” election repeatedly have been rebutted by facts from all sides, though unfortunately parroted by many in the GOP.. He has expressed bigotry against blacks, browns, yellows, reds, Jews, Muslims, gays, Mexicans, and women who are not “beautiful” enough to suit him. He has cheated on three wives, groped many women, paid hush money to hookers, and disseminated anti-vaccine, anti-virus lies that cost hundreds of thousands of Americans their lives. No matter what measure one uses, Donald Trump is a bad human being, a psychopath, and a danger to America. That is reality. Based on the above, one might expect the Democrats to trounce the Republicans in every election. After all, there are far more poor and middle-income people, brown, black, yellow, and red people, far more Jewish, Muslim, and gay people, and far more people who favor abortion than wealthy, white supremacist, right-wing, Christian, male bigots. Yet, the Republicans are projected to do well in the mid-term elections and beyond. Why? There are several reasons having to do with individual issues and with the strange way our founders created the American “minority-vote-wins” voting system. But the one overriding reason is Gap Psychology. Gap Psychology describes your human desire to widen the income/wealth/power Gap below you and to narrow the Gap above you. Because of Gap Psychology, the middle classes despise the poor even more than the rich do. While the rich see the poor as a minimal threat — the Gap is too wide to worry much about — the middle sees the poor as an existential danger. Sometimes, the Gap between the poor and the middle is so narrow as to be almost invisible. For example, some in the middle are outraged about poor children receiving a college scholarship to a school unaffordable for a middle-income family. The issue of “fairness” — fairness in education, hiring, and all types of government aid — hangs heavily over the middle-income mind. While the middle may be mildly concerned about the massive tax breaks the rich receive, they are outraged by the small preferences the poor may receive. A narrowing of the Gap below you is far more frightening than a widening of the Gap above you. Many in the middle live in neighborhoods that abut poor, crime-ridden areas. They see the poor as dangerous criminals living right next door. That Gap is perceived as narrow. The poor, of course, live among the poor and despise them. It’s a form of self-loathing related to denial of the truth. Most poor don’t think of themselves as poor but rather “unlucky.” It is those around them who are deservedly “poor” and so should not receive aid. These people seek a leader who will not lift the poor but rather will punish them and push them down. Lifting the poor would narrow the Gap vs. the “unlucky,” which is the last thing the “unlucky” want. The poor and middle do not hate the rich. They admire the rich and aspire to be rich. If they cannot be rich, they want to be like the rich, and in that way, narrow the psychological Gap between them and the rich. Far from being a negative, Donald Trump’s wealth is an election advantage in that it attracts his MAGA followers. They live his extravagant life through him. They resent those who would bring their hero down. Never mind his many failings, he is their rich guy, their protector. The cliched example is the poor man who wins a lottery and goes broke while trying to emulate the rich. No one tries to emulate the poor. Common sense might dictate that the massive population advantage of the poor and middle-income/wealth/power groups vs. the rich would mean the GOP — the party of the rich — never would win an election. And that would be true if people voted logically and in their own self-interest. But people do not act logically; they act emotionally, with fear and hatred being our strongest emotions. The Republican leadership has nurtured the idea that only the GOP can be trusted to keep “them” (the poor, the blacks, browns, gays, etc.) down, so the various Gaps between the middle and poor will be maintained or widened. The GOP message is: “You don’t need to worry that the blacks will climb up over you. We’ll protect you. “Don’t worry that the gays will absorb your children. We’ll protect you. “Don’t worry that the browns will take your job and rape your women. We’ll build a wall. “Don’t worry that the Jews will take over and rule you. Our white supremacists will fight them for you.” So when Marjorie Taylor Greene says Nancy Pelosi should be killed, otherwise decent middle-class and poor people overlook the obvious evil. They feel comforted that someone will protect them against those they fear. Fear and hatred. You can’t have one without the other. They are our twin, primary survival emotions. It was the duo Hitler and Mussolini used to influence the mob. Think of the Democrats as the strict mother, who tells you not to drink, smoke, or take drugs but instead to eat healthful foods, exercise, and avoid bad company. The GOP is the affable corner gang leader, who tells you to join up, and he’ll get you all the alcohol, tobacco, and drugs you want, and all you need do is help him rob someone. I suspect that most Americans understand intellectually that a coup is wrong, Trump is wrong, the GOP is wrong, and the election was not stolen. I suspect that most Americans know intellectually that the white supremacists and the Nazis, and Marjorie Taylor Greene are wrong. I suspect that most Southerners always knew slavery was wrong. But fear, hatred, and Gap Psychology are powerful drugs. It looks like America needs first to succumb to the temptation of addiction before reason takes over, if it ever does. Meanwhile, the Dems underachieve because the poor and middle-income people succumb to Gap Psychology in their desire to be protected from pain. Ironically, they will feel the pain of right-wing rule. We may not get what we need; we may not get what we deserve; we may not get what we want, but we get what we vote for. Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY