–How are the doctor shortage, the VA hospital scandal, the GAP and the BIG LIE connected?

Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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 ultimately 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, and the motive is the gap.
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We (rightfully) are up in arms about shoddy treatment of our veterans by the VA. Is this in any way related to a doctor shortage, and if so why? Consider these articles:

AAMC: Association of American Medical Colleges
GME Funding: How to Fix the Doctor Shortage

According to AAMC estimates, the United States faces a shortage of more than 91,500 physicians by 2020 —a number that is expected to grow to more than 130,600 by 2025.

America’s medical schools are increasing their enrollments. However, in order to complete their training and begin seeing patients, new physicians must complete a residency training program, which are in shorter supply.

The number of federally funded residency training positions was capped by Congress in 1997 by the Balanced Budget Act.

Congress promulgates the BIG LIE, that federal finances are like personal finances, so spending must be limited.

This is said to be “prudent,” because of the fiction that our Monetarily Sovereign federal government’s deficit is “unsustainable,” and the federal government can run short of dollars — especially dollars that would benefit the lower 99.9% income/power group.

The BIG LIE about federal spending unsustainability limits the training of doctors, and as always, the purpose is to widen the GAP between the very rich and the rest.

[As an aside: The BIG LIE relates to the myth that federal spending creates a so-called “big government,” and this “big government” is a burden on the populace — a clever reversal of the facts].

New York Times
Doctor Shortage Is Cited in Delays at V.A. Hospitals
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ABBY GOODNOUGH

Dr. Phyllis Hollenbeck, a primary care physician, took a job at the Veterans Affairs medical center in Jackson, Miss., in 2008 expecting fulfilling work and a lighter patient load than she had had in private practice.

What she found was quite different: 13-hour workdays fueled by large patient loads that kept growing as colleagues quit and were not replaced.

A subsequent investigation by the Department of Veterans Affairs concluded last fall that indeed the Jackson hospital did not have enough primary care doctors.

Lawmakers in Congress called for the resignation of Eric Shinseki, the Veterans Affairs secretary.

At the heart of the falsified data in Phoenix, and possibly many other veterans hospitals, is an acute shortage of doctors, particularly primary care.

Most experts agree that soaring demand for veterans’ care has outpaced the availability of doctors in many locations, and that high turnover is a major problem.

Why would the federal government, with the unlimited ability to hire personnel, ever be short of staff?

Primary care doctors and internists at veterans centers generally earn from about $98,000 to $195,000, compared with private-sector primary care physicians whose total median compensation was $221,000 in 2012, according to the Medical Group Management Association, a trade group.

And there it is again: Congress scrimping on federal spending that would benefit the populace, while placing the blame for resultant problems on a political appointee scapegoat. In fact, the problems stem from Congress being bribed (via campaign contributions and promises of lucrative employment later) by the upper .1% income power group.

Dr. Atul Grover, chief public policy officer at the Association of American Medical Colleges, said the department’s doctor shortage came down to a simple fact: “It’s just harder to attract physicians to care for more challenging patients while paying them less.”

Pay less; get fewer. What could be clearer? Yet Congress refuses to acknowledge it.

In that vein, those of us receiving Medicare notice a peculiar circumstance: Medicare pays much less than the doctors invoice. Medicare also pays less than private insurers pay. And the Medicare deductible forces Medicare beneficiaries to buy supplemental insurance or pay more for health care.

Because Congress unnecessarily cuts payments to doctors, we have a doctor shortage. And because Medicare has a deductible, people must pay for supplementary insurance or pay the difference — and all of these payment shortfalls impact the 99.9% far more than the upper .1%, thus widening the GAP.

Bottom line: As a result of the BIG LIE:

1. Too few people wish to be doctors
2. Too little training is available, even for those who do wish to be doctors
3. Doctors are overworked, impacting their ability to serve their patients, and their desire to remain doctors.
4. Increasing numbers of doctors (particularly the more skilled doctors) now have “beautique practices,” wherein they receive an additional fixed fee ($1,000 – $25,000 annually), in exchange for greater availability.

The rich never have trouble finding a doctor or paying for any medical service. The rich have no difficulty paying beautique doctors for easier access.

Yes, there is a doctor shortage. Yes, there is a VA hospital scandal. And yes, the GAP between the rich and the rest is growing.

And yes, the fault is with a bribed Congress and the BIG LIE about “unsustainable” federal spending and “big government.”

Or should the blame really be laid at the feet of the gullible victims who, rejecting all evidence to the contrary, accept the BIG LIE?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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

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

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

THE RECESSION CLOCK

Vertical gray bars mark recessions.

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the lines rise. Federal deficit growth is absolutely, positively necessary for economic growth. Period.

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–What!!?? You mean raising taxes and cutting spending hurts the economy??

Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

The following comes as a huge surprise to those famous economists from Harvard, University of Chicago, Stanford et al, who have won all those Nobel-related prizes in economics, and to the media and politicians who are paid to indoctrinate you.

GDP Shows Surprise Drop for US in Fourth Quarter
Wednesday, 30 Jan 2013, The Associated Press

The U.S. economy posted a stunning drop of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, defying expectations for slow growth and possibly providing incentive for more Federal Reserve stimulus.

Economists expected the first reading on gross domestic product to show growth of 1 percent.

The economy shrank from October through December for the first time since the recession ended, hurt by the biggest cut in defense spending in 40 years, fewer exports and sluggish growth in company stockpiles.

The famous economists never knew that cutting federal spending and reducing exports would actually reduce the money supply.

And the famous economists also never knew that a growing economy requires a growing money supply.

This new information comes as a great surprise, not only to the famous economists, but also to the famous economists, politicians and the media writers. No one knew.

The surprise contraction could raise fears about the economy’s ability to handle tax increases that took effect in January and looming spending cuts.

Isn’t it amazing how bleeding a patient is not a good cure for anemia?

The economy may stay weak at the start of the year because Americans are coming to grips with an increase in Social Security taxes that has left them with less take-home pay.

We don’t like “big government.” So we not only keep cutting Social Security, but we take more dollars from the private sector and give them to the federal government (which has no need for them.)

Please don’t ask anyone to explain this. Just trust the famous economists, politicians and the media writers.

And what? — You say increasing the Social Security tax is bad for the economy and completely unnecessary?

Who’da thunk?

Subpar growth has held back hiring.

So federal spending stimulates economic growth and jobs availability? Has anyone told the famous economists, politicians and the media writers?

The (Social Security) tax increase will lower take home pay this year by about 2 percent. That means a household earning $50,000 a year will have about $1,000 less to spend. A household with two high-paid workers will have up to $4,500 less.

Not to worry. The tax increase will have absolutely no effect on the upper .1% income/power group.

This is good, because they are the ones who bribe the politicians (via campaign contributions and promises of lucrative employment), control the media (via ownership), bribe the university economists (via donations and grants), and pay the salaries of economists who work for “think tanks.”

So here is the bottom line, for those of you who have not been hypnotized by the cut-federal-spending, raise-federal-taxes, screw-the-middle-class-and-the-poor lies you have been fed by the bought-and-paid-for economists, politicians and the media writers:

1. GDP = Federal Spending + Non-federal spending + Net Exports. When we reduce any of those three terms to the right of the = sign, we reduce GDP.

2. When we cut GDP, we cut employment and widen the GAP between the very rich and the rest.

3. Increases in federal spending (aka “big government”) primarily benefit the middle- and lower income groups. Cuts in federal spending widen the GAPs between the rich and the rest.

In a few months, Americans obediently will trudge to the polls, and mentally benumbed by economic lies, will vote for the politicians who promise loudest to cut “big government,” broaden the federal tax base and balance the federal budget — each guaranteed to reduce GDP and employment.

All together now: “Pass that cup of hemlock, please.”

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Some great American ad/marketing campaigns. The world of make-believe.

Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

My own background is marketing. I was a partner in an advertising agency that earlier had created one of the greatest ad/marketing programs in history, the “Double Your Pleasure,” Doublemint twins. It began in the late 1930’s, and even today, people remember the “Double your pleasure” slogan.

The song, which repeated the word “double” 18 times, plus the use of twins plus the name, “Doublemint,” all left the impression of there being far more (double) to this gum than really existed.

There have been many great marketing campaigns, and here are but a select few.

Lucky Strike cigarettes told smokers, “Not a Cough in a Carload,” and “20,679 Physicians say, ‘Luckies are less irritating.'”

Later, the Marlboro man cowboy series began. It featured a John Wayne type smoking a cigarette, and millions of smokers bought Marlboro cigarettes, so subconsciously, they too could be cool, tough cowboys.

The Volkswagon “Lemon,” and other tongue-in-cheek ads combined to make Volkswagon, which was a beetle-ugly, under-powered, way-too-small car, seem like the coolest vehicle ever.

Avis’s “We’re only #2, so we try harder” campaign made renters think that being second best was a benefit.

The DeBeers “A Diamond is Forever” gives the impression that in some unknown way, giving a diamond will make love last forever.

There have been many great political campaigns, but the Obama marketers were exceptional for turning a “do-nothing, did-nothing” politician into a liberal icon. And he never even was a liberal. At most, he’s a middle-of-the-road Republican, who wants to cut Medicare and Social Security and balance the budget.

His signature “achievement” is Obamacare, a Republican program he neither created nor even campaigned for. (He left that to the Democratic party.)

Bernie Madoff created the greatest Ponzi scheme in history, and he did it by promising the impossible and playing hard-to-get. It became an honor to be “accepted” by Bernie. People invested a great deal of time, money and personal honor, sucking up to Bernie so he would allow them to give him money.

What do these, and many (not all) other great marketing campaigns have in common? They all appeal to the sucker in us.

To varying degrees, we all are chumps. The great campaigns make us believe in the impossible.

We knew that Doublemint gum doesn’t really double our pleasure, our fun or anything else. We knew cigarettes make us cough (They were called “coffin nails” for heaven’s sake).

And as for smoking Marlboros making us into cowboys — c’mon! But we felt better chewing Doublemint, and we thought we felt tougher and stronger smoking those little death sticks.

We knew Volkswagon was an uncomfortable, unsafe little car, but it was ever so cool! And does being in second place make for a better car rental company? Get real. We’re smarter than that.

We know a diamond won’t make the romance last forever. We knew Obama never had done anything of worth during his entire career. But we overpaid for the least attractive of all precious stones, and we voted for “hope” in the absence of anything real.

And anyone with the kind of money Madoff’s investors had, surely had done enough investing to know that what he promised was impossible. But they invested. Beyond all common sense, all of the above people believed in nonsense. Suckers.

And this brings me to the greatest marketing campaign of current times: The Gun industry’s NRA program.

How The Gun Industry Funnels Tens Of Millions Of Dollars To The NRA
Walter Hickey

In its early days, the National Rifle Association was a grassroots social club that prided itself on independence from corporate influence.

Today, the bulk of the group’s money now comes in the form of contributions, grants, royalty income, and advertising, much of it originating from gun industry sources.

Since 2005, the gun industry and its corporate allies have given between $20 million and $52.6 million to it through the NRA Ring of Freedom sponsor program.

Donors include firearm companies like Midway USA, Springfield Armory Inc, Pierce Bullet Seal Target Systems, and Beretta USA Corporation. Other supporters from the gun industry include Cabala’s, Sturm Rugar & Co, and Smith & Wesson.

Additionally, some companies donate portions of sales directly to the NRA. Crimson Trace, which makes laser sights, donates 10 percent of each sale to the NRA. Taurus buys an NRA membership for everyone who buys one of their guns.

Sturm Rugar gives $1 to the NRA for each gun sold, which amounts to millions. The NRA’s revenues are intrinsically linked to the success of the gun business.

For what exactly are the gun manufacturers paying? PROTECTION:

The chief trade association for gun manufacturers is the National Shooting Sports Federation, but the NRA takes front and center after each and every shooting.

“Today’s NRA is a virtual subsidiary of the gun industry,” said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center. “While the NRA portrays itself as protecting the ‘freedom’ of individual gun owners, it’s actually working to protect the freedom of the gun industry.

It’s possible that without the NRA, people would be protesting outside of Glock, SIG Sauer and Freedom Group — the makers of the guns used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre — and dragging the CEOs in front of cameras and Congress.

That is certainly what happened to tobacco executives when their products continued killing people.

If history is any indication, the NRA will be front and center of the new gun control debate, while gun manufacturers remain safely out of the spotlight.

By paying the likes of Wayne LaPierre to mouth the obvious falsehood, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people,” the NRA has accomplished the seemingly impossible.

Their paid-for marketing has conned us Americans into believing:

1. We are in grave and imminent danger from “the government” (Which government? Any government) and from “them” (criminals, minorities, immigrants, other people with guns).

2. Guns make us safer. Owning guns (more, higher power, bigger magazines) will protect us from the government and “them.”

3. The second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees our right to own, possess and openly carry guns everywhere (except in Congress, where guns are dangerous), whether or not we belong to a “well-regulated militia.”

4. We need to vote for politicians who will allow us (and our friends, our neighbors, our enemies and ironically, the “them” whom we fear) to have as many guns as we want.

The IRA’s ad/marketing campaign has overcome the simple and obvious facts that guns are made specifically to kill, and the more people who own guns the less safe we are.

We live in a world of make believe, where fools still smoke cigarettes, still invest in Ponzi schemes and still believe guns make them safer.

Welcome to the fools’ paradise.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Why the upper .1% loves student loans and guns

Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

As readers of this blog know, the single biggest economic problem facing America and the world, is the increasing GAP between the rich and the rest.

Wolf Richter: This Chart Is The Fate of Housing In America As Student Loans Bankrupt A Whole Generation

Over 70% of the (college graduate) students have student loans. They will start their career, if any, with an average student loan balance of $33,000.

Even when adjusted for inflation, it’s about twice as much as 20 years ago. Back then, only 43% of students graduated with student loans.

After decades of red-hot tuition and fee increases, working your way through college in four years, has become a pipedream.

Briefly, this states two problems:
1. The increased cost of college
2. Federal lending rather than giving money, for education.

Though local governments are monetarily non-sovereign, and unlike the federal government, are limited in their ability to pay their bills, still they pay for K-12 education. They understand the need for education.

But K-12 no longer is sufficient in this increasingly sophisticated world. To compete today, America needs college-educated citizens.

In the July, 2010 post titled, “One step toward long-term economic growth: Government offer free college education,” we said:

In SOLUTION FOR THE GAP, I suggested that the long-term solution for unemployment was not for the government to be the “employer of last resort,” as Modern Monetary Theory (aka neo-chartalism) suggests, but rather for the government to be the “educator of first resort.”

That is, the government should pay not only for elementary, middle and high school, but also for college and advanced degrees. Further, I suggest that the government pay a wage for college attendance, to encourage the impoverished who might otherwise have to decide between work and education.

Low skilled jobs are disappearing from the economy. Those without an advanced education will be at an increasing disadvantage. Merely putting people to work in such jobs can indeed address a short-term money problem, but it can exacerbate future economic problems.

Someone earning a living wage as a Walmart greeter, may be less motivated or have less opportunity to attend college, and so forever be relegated to low-paying jobs or increasingly, no job at all.

While many people do not wish to attend, or do not have the aptitude for, college, the government should do everything possible to facilitate college attendance, as a way to prepare for the future economic growth of America.

From the standpoint of America, this makes perfect sense, but from the standpoint of the upper .1% income/power group it is an anathema. The current system, which combines unaffordable and growing college costs, with unpayable and growing student loans, is the perfect vehicle for creating a large and growing servant class for the .1%

It is a guaranteed GAP widener, which is why the “Ten Steps To Prosperity (below), includes these Steps:

4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
5. Salary for attending school (Click here)

Continuing with the Wolf Richter article:

Next year, the Class of 2015 (will be the most indebted ever). Among the reasons for this fiasco: the way colleges are paid liberates them from both free-market and governmental constraints. They can charge whatever they want and get away with it because students can just go ahead and borrow it.

And through the student loan programs, the government is simply aiding and abetting colleges in extracting ever more money from the future lives of their students.

There is not one economic reason — not one — why our Monetarily Sovereign federal government — a government with the unlimited ability to create its own sovereign currency — lends money to its citizens, rather than simply giving them money.

And to make a terrible situation even worse, these loans are far more difficult to discharge in bankruptcy than are other personal loans.

In effect, students are locked into a permanent “debtors prison” of the government’s making.

The entire program of high tuition plus student loans is a disaster based on the BIG LIE, the lie that the federal government’s finances are like personal finances, and that federal spending is unaffordable, unsustainable and will cause Weimar-style hyperinflation.

The problem we face is the absolute fact that the upper .1% income power group, and the politicians — perhaps the least patriotic people on earth — endorse the BIG LIE and create a widening GAP, both of which rely on an economically-ignorant public.

In America, the GAP destroys more middle- and lower-class people than guns, which is why the .1% loves both.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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