–The Nation aids the .1%’s effort to enslave the nation, by Katrina vanden Heuvel

Mitchell’s laws:
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor, which leads to civil disorder.
●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.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The penalty for ignorance is slavery.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive.
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Katrina vanden Heuvel is the current editor and publisher of The Nation, a magazine founded in 1865. It’s founding prospectus reads::

“The Nation will not be the organ of any party, sect, or body. It will, on the contrary, make an earnest effort to bring to the discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred.”

Here are excerpts from Ms. VandenHeuvel’s article demonstrating her “war upon . . . misrepresentation.”

It’s time to tax financial transactions
By Katrina vanden Heuvel, Published: March 5

On Friday at midnight, the sequester kicked in, triggering $85 billion in deep, dumb budget cuts that sent “nonessential personnel”— such as air traffic controllers — packing.

Not to worry, though: Wall Street’s day was pretty much like any other. Billions of dollars in profits were made off of trillions of dollars in financial transactions. And the vast majority of those transactions were conducted tax-free.

We don’t need a team of policymakers to tell us this isn’t good policy, or that it needs changing.

Comment: The budget cuts were “dumb” if you care about America, but they were smart if you want to widen the gap between the wealthiest .1% and the rest of us – which is what Congress has been bribed to want. (The bribing consists of massive political contributions, courtesy of the Supreme Court, plus promises of lucrative employment, later.)

Those budget cuts directly impacted the 99.9% while leaving the .1% relatively unscathed, thus accomplishing the gap-widening that is the real goal of the .1%.

Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), along with Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-Ore.), unveiled a bill that would place a light tax on all financial transactions — three pennies on every $100 traded.

Translation: The cure for “dumb” budget cuts, which suck dollars from the economy is taxes, which suck dollars from the economy.

The good news is that it’s a tax so small it could be mistaken for a rounding error. It’s so small, Wall Street could easily afford it and the average E-Trade investor would barely notice it.

But there’s even better news. This insignificant tax raises a significant amount of revenue — $352 billion over the next 10 years, or enough to refund about one-third of what the sequester will slash from the federal budget. It’s also enough to put many air traffic controllers back to work, Head Start teachers back in preschools, and crucial government programs back in business.

And here is where the economic ignorance kicked in. Ms. vanden Heuvel, the editor and publisher of The Nation, actually believes federal taxes pay for federal spending.

She is clueless about the difference between a Monetarily Sovereign government (which neither needs nor uses tax revenue), and a monetarily non-sovereign government (which does need, and does use, tax revenue).

Apparently, she believes monetarily non-sovereign Illinois, Chicago, Greece, you and I are financially identical to the Monetarily Sovereign U.S. government, which has the unlimited ability to pay its bills, and never needs to ask anyone for dollars.

And this is a woman who writes an economics column!! Is it any wonder the public is confused?

And after years of Wall Street excess, and at a moment when new revenues are badly needed, the time has surely come for a financial transaction tax .

When it comes to cutting the deficit, 6 in 10 Americans prefer taxing the financial industry to cutting social spending.

Imagine that! Most — 6 in 10 — Americans would rather tax Wall Street than see their Social Security benefits cut? (But who the heck are those other four Americans??)

Note there is no discussion about whether the deficit should be cut – no discussion about whether to bleed the anemic patient. That merely is assumed. The only discussion is how best to bleed the anemic patient.

After all, the tax isn’t just a good revenue raiser. It’s smart regulatory reform.

The high-frequency traders that now dominate our markets would be hardest-hit by the tax. A top economist recently concluded that their lightning speed, algorithm-driven trading drains profits from traditional investors. And analysts fear that such mass trading strategies could lead to disaster if markets behave unexpectedly.

Translation: One unnamed “top economist” concluded, without proof, that high frequency trading drains profits by . . . well, we don’t know how, so we simply will accept the word of this unnamed “top economist.”

Also, since this tax would be “insignificant” (her description), it wouldn’t eliminate high-speed trading, so what is she trying to say?

Europe, at least, seems to agree. Eleven nations, led by the conservative German government, are on track to start collecting the tax by January 2014. Expected revenues: $50 billion per year.

Er, ah, Ms. Katrina Vanden Heuvel, are you talking about monetarily non-sovereign Europe, which not only does need and use tax dollars, but which has the worlds worst record with regard to economics, and is suffering for it? Is that the Europe you’re referencing for economic wisdom?

Sequestration is a septic wound, self-inflicted by lawmakers who can’t agree on anything. Here, at last, we have a smart idea with widespread support — Americans and Europeans, populists and economists, progressives and conservatives.

After Friday’s dumb budget cuts, a little smart policymaking would be nice for a change.

Yes, sequestration is a bad idea (though not a “dumb” one, when the real motive is to widen the income gap.) It’s a bad idea because it sucks dollars from the economy, just as taxes do.

Even the editor and publisher of The Nation magazine is clueless about economics. It’s discouraging that she doesn’t understand the difference between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty – a difference that provides the basis for all modern economics.

It’s even more discouraging that apparently she never has tried to learn.

And most discouraging is that she indoctrinates the American public with her ignorance.

That is how The Nation aids the .1%’s effort to enslave the nation.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D — for everyone
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Long-term nursing care for everyone
5. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
6. Salary for attending school (Click here)
7. Eliminate corporate taxes
8. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
9. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99%

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

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–MMT: Save America. Focus on the gap.

Before I retired, I spend most of my working life resurrecting small, troubled companies. During that time, I interviewed dozens of such companies, and usually found their major problem to be lack of focus.

In desperation, these companies repeatedly had added products or services to their offerings, always hoping the next product or service — a wider line — would provide the needed profits. They didn’t recognize, however, that each time they added something, they lost something: They lost focus.

With each added product or service, they also added competitors, while spreading their own financial efforts. So rather than becoming stronger, they became weaker. Soon, they had so many competitors, and spread their efforts so thinly, it became impossible for them to survive.

My solution was to identify the one narrow niche each could dominate — the niche that had few, strong competitors and where they could focus all their marketing efforts.

Often there was resistance from management, because they hated to give up on many of their beloved products and services, but in the end, they relented, and their focus is what built their companies.

A failed marketer to attorneys was built into the largest used law book source in the world. A sick software company was built into the largest business simulation seller in the world. That is what focus can accomplish.

Which brings me to MMT. What is their focus?

They defend against false claims about the deficit and about the debt. They defend against false claims about employment; unemployment and full employment. They defend their suggestions about guaranteed employment.

They defend against false claims about inflation, recession and depression. They battle false claims about tax rates, tax loopholes and tax types — FICA, flat taxes, sales taxes. They defend aid to the poor, aid to the states, aid to education. They defend Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. They talk about the banks and the Fed and Quantitative Easing.

Randy promotes his jobs guarantee. Bill wants the banks supervised. Stephanie lets everyone know inflation is not an imminent problem. Warren lectures on sector analysis.

So what exactly is MMT’s message?

While MMT’s messages are spread ever more thinly, they in turn, face far better-funded competitors — billionaires who have the financial power to outshout MMT at every turn.

Some well-funded competitors talk about the deficit: Heritage Foundation, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the American Enterprise Institute. Some well funded competitors talk about taxes: The Tea Party. Pete Peterson and the Koch brothers drown MMT’s messages with dollar volume.

MMT tries to fight wars on multiple fronts. But, that is what cost Germany WWII, and had the U.S. been able to focus on Japan, we probably would have won in a year — certainly less than four, long years. The Occupy groups fail because of diverse messaging.

And here is little MMT, like the Alamo, out-manned and out-gunned and attacked on all sides. And to make things even more difficult, the enemy owns the media and the politicians, and MMT’s stories are counter-intuitive.

At long last, MMT must learn it needs to focus its efforts, and that focus should be The Wealth Gap: How big it is, who is causing it and why.

The focus not only should include the facts, but the outrage — not just logic, but the emotion. Consider this amazing video: Viral Video Shows the Extent of U.S. Wealth Inequality

It should start every MMT interview. MMT should express anger not only that this has happened, but why it has happened. MMT should say:

— What is happening. (Inequality rising for many years.)
— Who is responsible? (The upper .1% income group.)
— What is their motive? (The gap is what makes them rich and the bigger the gap, the richer they are.)
— How are they doing it? (By bribing politicians via campaign contributions and promises of lucrative employment later, and by ownership of the media.)

Bottom line, MMT, you need to focus. Many of you teach at UMKC, so getting together is easier. Decide on a plan of attack. Familiarize yourselves with the basic “gap” arguments, then use them every time you write an article or are interviewed.

The gap is the one narrow niche you can dominate. You can make the gap the most important problem in all of economics — far more important than debts and deficits.

Like an advertising or marketing campaign, you should use the same phrases, to imprint these words in the people’s minds. Just as “debt” and “deficit” have been wrongly imprinted, so should “the gap.”

Consistently pound away at the same message: “Cut the gap.”

FOCUS. That is the way the little guy beats the big guy. That is the way MMT can beat Pete Peterson and the Kochs, and save America.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Economics in three pictures: Makers, Takers and Deficit Cutting

Perhaps you have been confused by politicians discussing “makers,” “takers,” and “deficit cutting.” Here is what these terms really mean:

THE MAKERS

THE TAKERS

DEFICIT CUTTING

Remember the correct definitions the next time you hear a politician mention these terms.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Electronic Empathy and The Invisible Damage of Austerity

Last year, this blog published four posts, all with the same title: “You never will know what you have lost.” They describe the invisible effects of deficit cutting, aka “austerity.”

Our wealthy, ruling class continues to promulgate the flat-out lie that the federal government can run short of dollars, and that deficits and the debt must be cut, because they can’t be allowed to grow “forever.”

The exact opposite is true: The federal government never can run short of dollars, and to grow the economy, the deficit must grow — forever.

If you find those facts difficult to swallow, it’s because you don’t understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty. Fortunately for you, this blog contains 950+ posts that describe those differences in simple, complex, technical and non-technical, mathematical and non-mathematical terms.

So there is no reason for you not to understand, if you wish to understand what is happening to you.

One difficulty in exposing the destructive myths of austerity is our inability to detail the hidden harm of deficit cutting. Yes, we can show how deficit cutting causes unemployment and recessions and depressions, how deficit cutting impoverishes the middle class and the elderly and the sick, and further impoverishes the already poor.

And we can show how the whole deficit-cutting enterprise is a scheme funded by the wealthy, to widen the gap between them and us, to increase their already vast power over us.

But we can’t show all the negative effects, because some of them are beyond our ability to predict. Consider research:

Sequester Threatens University Research Funding And Federal Student Aid
The Huffington Post | By Tyler Kingkade 02/27/2013

The impending federal budget cuts known as the sequester, which will go into effect on Friday without action by Congress, are poised to have a significantly negative effect on both public and private universities nationwide. Some forms of federal student aid and funding for a variety of research programs are likely to find themselves on the chopping block.

Several critical revenue streams for universities are at risk: The National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and the National Endowment for the Humanities are all subject to cuts that fall within both the 7.6 percent cut to mandatory spending and the 8.2 percent cut to discretionary spending.

Many forms of research will be cut, but what does this mean in practical terms? What will it cost you? How will your life, and the lives of your loved ones, be any worse, because thousands of research projects will be delayed or ended? What does research accomplish, anyway?

No one knows, and since no one knows, I can’t tell you much about the cost of deficit cutting other than to say, “It will cost you plenty, and your life will be much worse than it could have been, and your children will suffer greatly.”

I was reminded of this when I read an article in FT.com:

Telepathic rats solve problems together
By Clive Cookson

Rats have collaborated telepathically across continents in the first use of neurotechnology to transmit thoughts directly between animals’ brains.

Scientists trained rats in Durham, North Carolina and Natal, Brazil to work together to solve problems in return for a drink of water. In the first experiment they had to press the correct lever corresponding to a particular indicator light; in the second they had to distinguish between wide and narrow openings.

Electrodes picked up the brain activity of the first rat, the “encoder”, and fed it over the internet into the brain of its partner, the “decoder”, which had the same levers in its cage but received no visual cues about which one to press. The best decoder rats correctly mimicked their corresponding encoder partners 70 per cent of the time.

Did you see that “electronic empathy” coming? I didn’t. I didn’t expect to see the transmission of thoughts via the Internet – certainly not in my lifetime.

But so what? A rat reads another rat’s thoughts. How does that affect you? No one knows.

Miguel Nicolelis, a pioneer of research into brain-computer interfaces at Duke University in North Carolina, said the experiments could lead to the creation of a biological computer – or “brain-net” – linking multiple brains.

“We cannot even predict what kinds of emergent properties would appear when animals begin interacting as part of a brain-net,” he said. “In theory, you could imagine that a combination of brains could provide solutions that individual brains cannot achieve by themselves. One animal might even incorporate another’s sense of self.”

The words, “brain-computer interfaces” tell me that one day – perhaps one day soon, unless the deficit-cutters have their way – your children may be able to run distant factories at the same time they are eating breakfast at home, simply by thinking. (Visualize the reductions in transportation costs, pollution and global warming. And that’s only the beginning.)

But Nicolelis is talking about interconnected groups – a human brain net – solving problems we cannot even begin to imagine, today.

Or what about interconnecting a human mind with the mind of an animal, and sending that animal to Mars, so that the human can stay safely at home, but simultaneously explore Mars through the eyes of a living creature. By comparison, the Mars Rover is a child’s toy.

Where does research lead us? We don’t know. That’s why it’s “research.” We only can say this: Our world was created by research – a myriad of beneficial surprises that lifted us from bare animal survival to the ruling creatures of this planet. Research is what differentiates humans from all other living creatures.

It will be research that feeds us, houses us and helps us keep from destroying ourselves. Losing research is a disaster of immeasurable proportions.

Research reduction is yet another negative effect of austerity – a penalty for you and your children, courtesy of our wealthy rulers.

Two questions: Who tells you all kinds of research should be cut? What is their motive?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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