–How you can make a few million (I’d do it, but I’m too old to start something new.)

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.
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The other night, on the 60 Minutes TV show, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos revealed he was developing drones that would deliver 5-lb packages to your house in under a half hour.

Order that book or weight/size equivalent and a half hour later, it’s in your hands. A bit slower than a Kindle, but especially impressive for non-book items.

Obviously lots of problems to be worked out: Package dimensions, the cost of the carrier, reliability of the drones, FAA clearances, trees, weather — the list goes on and on. But yesterday’s impossible is today’s necessary and tomorrow’s passe, as yesterday’s Cathode ray TVs and today’s smart phones have demonstrated.

So, I’m guessing Bezos will do it. And when he does, here’s where you can make a bundle: Drone garages.

Cars are parked in garages to protect them from weather and thievery. Before there were cars, garages did not exist. Now garages are everywhere. And they’re not little things. A tiny garage is 500 square feet, and 10 feet tall.

So (you guessed it) we will need drone garages, to protect our packages from the weather, mishaps and thieves. (You don’t want that drone dropping your package into a snow bank or on top of your car parked in the driveway, do you?)

Some of the features of a drone garage might be:

1. Your drone garage should be large enough to accommodate a drone with a package.
It’s probably bigger than what the above pictures indicate. Maybe as big as a car garage, as drone delivery expands.

Initially though, I suspect your drone garage will be mounted on a pole, ala bird houses. Later, it probably will be an integral part of your house.

2. You’ll want a radio-controlled door the drone can open before it enters, and closes when it leaves.
When drone delivery catches on, Amazon won’t be the only one to do it. So who owns the garage door opener? I suspect you’ll set up a code with each retailer — something like online ordering — and the drone will be given a one-time access to your drone garage.

3. Also, the door may have multiple openings large enough (and high enough?) to fit the drone, but not fit any strangers walking by (You don’t want strangers wandering into your drone garage.) The drone could signal your garage what size opening to provide.

4. Your drone garage probably would need a homing beacon. Google Maps/Navigation might get the drone in front of your house, but a beacon would be needed to find the door.

5. And then there are apartments. Drone garages could be mounted in windows, and fortunately, you invested in that beacon (#4), so the drone would have no trouble finding your garage.

6. Your drone garage should be heated, air conditioned and refrigerated, in case the drone delivers something cold- or heat-sensitive. And what about delivery of food? That’s where a refrigerator comes in.

7. Your garage should signal your smart phone that a delivery has been made, and if it’s a “smart garage,” it will bring the package right into your house

So there it is: Your million dollar business. Drone garages. No one should be without one.

(When you get the patents, please make sure I receive my share.)

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

====================================================================================================================================================
Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D plus long term nursing care — for everyone (Click here)
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
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 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

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the lines rise.

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–What do “Divide & Rule,” “Fairness” and “Food Stamps” have in common.

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

What do “Divide & Rule,” “Fairness” and “Food Stamps” have in common?

Divide & Rule

The most common variation is to win by having your opponents fight each other.

Traiano Boccalini cites “divide et impera” as a common principle in politics. The use of this technique is meant to empower the sovereign to control subjects, populations, or factions of different interests, who collectively might be able to oppose his rule.

Machiavelli identifies a similar application to military strategy, that a Captain should divide the forces of the enemy, either by making him suspicious of his men in whom he trusted, or by giving him cause that he has to separate his forces, and, because of this, become weaker.

Divide and Rule is the strategy the rich use to maintain control over us.

Fairness

UCLA psychologist(s) explore(d) fairness and self-interest in the laboratory. In (one) test, Person A has $23, which they can divide in any way they want with Person B. All Person B can do is accept or reject it; there is no negotiation. If Person B rejects the offer, neither of them gets any money.

Whatever Person A offers to Person B is an unearned windfall, even if it’s a miserly $5 out of $23, so a strict utilitarian would take the money and run. But that’s not exactly what happens in the laboratory.

If Person B felt the offer was unfair, he might reject it, even though that meant he would get nothing. Rejecting money is completely illogical and self-harmful. But this is exactly what people do, when faced with what they believe to be unfairness.

And this human failing is what the rich use against us.

Food Stamps

Brotman: SNAP Challenge is no snap
Barbara Brotman, Chicago Tribune, December 2, 2013

I was embarking on “the SNAP Challenge”. I was going to spend the week eating only what I could afford on the average benefit an individual gets on food stamps, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The national average for an individual is $31.50 a week — $1.50 a meal. Illinois recipients got an average of $34 a week before an increase in food stamps benefits to help people during the recession expired. The average probably now will be closer to $31.25.

And Congress is poised to shrink the program further. The House has proposed $40 billion in cuts; the Senate, $4.5 billion.

So what would the challenge be like?

Unpleasant, said Kate Maehr, executive director of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, who has taken it several times.

“I just feel crappy,” she said. “Part of it is physical; I’m having more carbohydrates than I typically do, and I feel sluggish. But some of it is mental. Thinking about food so often when you are physically feeling hungry is a terrible predicament to be in.”

Stephanie Sklar, director of domestic affairs for the Jewish Community Relations Council said $31.50 is just not enough. “It’s impossible to do it in a healthy way.”

I began my education at Aldi’s, where I figured my allowance would stretch furthest. Milk, cereal, chicken thighs, cheese, sliced turkey, one grapefruit, lettuce, grapes — I was up to $18.91, and the lettuce was my only vegetable. I put back the grapefruit.

I got generic tuna, generic chocolate cookies and the store’s cheapest sandwich bread. My only other vegetable, a bag of three peppers, cost as much as the chicken.

Read the entire article and consider what a starvation diet does to people. Think of what it does to children — to their minds and bodies.

Now, getting back to the title of this post: What do “Divide & Rule,” “Fairness” and “Food Stamps” have in common?

The upper .1% income group wants the gap between the rich and the rest to widen. Without the gap, no one would be rich, and the wider the gap, the richer are the rich.

The easiest way to widen the gap is to impoverish the middle classes and the poor. In essence, a “99%er” wanting to increase his income is an enemy of the .1%.

So to widen the gap, and defeat the 99%, the rich use a Divide & Rule (aka “Divide & Conquer”) strategy. They convince us, the 99%, that it is unfair for some people to receive free help from the government while others don’t.

If we personally don’t receive food stamps, or unemployment compensation, or Medicaid or any other federal benefit, we are told to resent those who do.

The 1% (i.e. the media, politicians and university economists — all owned by the 1%) give us “good reasons” for this resentment.

The strategy is to convince us that not only are the poor receiving unfair benefits, but they are unworthy of any benefit. We are told these people are “lazy takers,” who would rather subsist on charity than work.

We are brainwashed to accept the rich as the “makers,” who create the jobs, and so deserve all the benefits they receive in the form of tax breaks and exorbitant salaries. It’s a lie.

(Companies of all sizes create jobs, but very few of the rich themselves ever created a single job. CEOs, Directors, Shareholders, Bankers, Wall Street Traders — those are the upper .1% — and almost none of them ever created a job. They are the real takers.)

We are made to accept that the Waltons deserve to luxuriate in their billions, while Walmart workers barely deserve their starvation minimum wage, which should be reduced further. It’s a lie.

(The Waltons do everything possible to extract dollars from the working poor and from America. They buy from overseas, taking jobs from American companies; they underpay their workers; they put smaller American businesses — the real job creators — into bankruptcy).

We are told the government “can’t afford” such benefits, and these programs are “socialist” and “unsustainable” and “inflationary.” We are told our children and grandchildren will pay for these benefits. It’s a lie.

(The government never can run short of dollars. Our children and grandchildren do not pay for federal spending in this Monetarily Sovereign nation. And socialism is not government spending; it is government ownership. And there is no historical relationship between federal deficit spending and inflation.)

With these lies, the very rich retain power over us. They divide us to rule us. They give us reasons to hate others in our 99%.

The rich use false “fairness” to make us reject what actually would be good for us (more unemployment compensation, more support for the poor, better Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits), by convincing us these not only are unaffordable, but undeserved.

And we fall for it. Every time we sneer at “food stamp mothers” — every time we criticize the unemployed and those receiving unemployment compensation and those on Medicaid — every time we do the dirty work of the rich, we fall for it and we hurt our own futures.

How much longer will we remain their dupes? How much longer will we cannibalize our own children and grandchildren?

How much longer?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

—–

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the lines rise.

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Do you feel safer, now?

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

Washington Times
Bang for the buck: Gun deals galore on Black Friday

In 2012, the FBI took in 154,873 background check calls on Black Friday — a record-setting level.

The actual number of guns sold was likely higher. The FBI only tracks background checks. Weapons buyers can purchase more than one weapon at a time.

In the first ten months of this year, the FBI performed 17,238,102 background checks, which gun dealers say is actually a slower market..

Seventeen million background checks.

A 2010 estimate from the NRA states:

“Privately owned firearms in the U.S.: Approaching 300 million, including nearly 100 million handguns. The number of firearms rises over 4 million annually.“

All kinds of guns — including semi-automatic, assault-style weapons — sold mostly to strangers, some criminal, some careless, some mentally challenged, some with anger management problems, some who hate you for cutting them off on the road.

Do you feel safer, now?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

—–

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the lines rise.

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–How Poland Became Europe’s Most Dynamic Economy

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

Mr. Stephan Faris wrote an article for BloombergBusinesweek titled, “How Poland Became Europe’s Most Dynamic Economy”

First he provided a bit of background for an economic mystery:

With much of Europe still struggling to recover from the impact of the 2008 financial crisis, Poland stands out as an unlikely island of economic success.

In 2009, when the gross domestic product of the European Union contracted by 4.5 percent, Poland was the only country in the union to see its economy grow, by 1.6 percent.

The EU economy as a whole remains smaller than it was at the beginning of 2009 and isn’t expected to recover its losses until the end of next year. In that same period, Poland is projected to enjoy a cumulative growth of more than 16 percent.

Then he provided the reasons for this mystery:

(Poland) has a large internal economy, a business-friendly political class. Its leaders pushed through a set of painful but ultimately effective reforms. The country benefited from an infusion of foreign assistance at the precise moment other EU members were getting clobbered by the financial crisis.

Price controls were lifted, government wages were capped, trade was liberalized, and the Polish currency, the zloty, was made convertible. The policies left millions out of work but freed Poland to begin to recover from decades of mismanagement. The economy got a further boost with the country’s entry into the EU in 2004.

The foundation of Poland’s relative success is not its “business-friendly political class,” the lifting of price controls, the capping of wages or the liberalizing of trade.

The clue to Poland’s success lies that one word: “Zloty.”

Poland kept its own currency, rather than adopting the euro. Poland kept the single most valuable asset any nation can have: It’s Monetary Sovereignty.

“While other countries followed policies of austerity, government spending in Poland actually went up,” says Gavin Rae, a professor at Kozminski University in Warsaw and author of Poland’s Return to Capitalism.”

Bingo! Those “other countries” had to adopt austerity. As monetarily non-sovereign users of the euro, they were unable to create money to pay debt. Poland, being Monetarily Sovereign, had the power to create all the money it needed, at any time.

Poland’s combination of increased spending and tax cuts was half again as large in per capita terms as the U.S.’s $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

All across Poland, large cities and small towns underwent much-needed makeovers. In addition to new stadiums, everything from rail stations to city squares to airports were upgraded.

Even as subsidies from the EU fueled its growth, Poland has benefited from remaining outside the common currency. Measured in euros, the value of Polish exports dropped 15.5 percent from 2008 to 2009—but in zloty terms it grew 4.4 percent.

When a nation is Monetarily Sovereign, it not only can control its money supply, but also its money value (i.e. inflation). Poland can do what euro users cannot do.

Poland also must address some long-deferred fiscal challenges. The government is pushing up against the constitutional debt limit and is desperate for funds. “They’ve done a lot of creative accounting to keep the deficit down,” says Andrew Kureth, editor-in-chief of the Warsaw Business Journal.

Uh oh! Just as in the U.S., Polish politicians are determined to pull defeat from the jaws of victory. In Poland, as here, the debt hawks fight against the money creation that has grown their economy and is necessary to continue growing their economy.

While Poland was smart enough to keep its sovereign currency, it voluntarily is surrendering some of its Monetary Sovereignty via its own legislation — just as in the U.S.

Growth next year is projected to be 2.5 percent, driven in part by a recovery in parts of the EU, especially Germany, the destination of more than 25 percent of Polish exports.

The EU budget for 2014-2020 was the first in the union’s history that saw cuts in total spending, but the money allocated to Poland rose nonetheless.

Because of a mix of factors—including its size and proximity to Germany, Poland is eligible for €105.8 billion, making it once again the biggest beneficiary among member states.

Let’s think about this. The euro nations suffer because of cuts in government spending, aka “austerity.” Poland grows because it receives money from exports, from the EU and from government spending.

Hmmm . . . What can that mean? Could it mean a growing economy requires a growing supply of money? Could it mean reductions in the money supply are recessive?

Could it mean deficit cutting is absolutely the most stupid thing a Monetarily Sovereign nation ever does?

Yes, it means all of those things.

It’s not clear whether Poland understands the reasons for its relative success. Its limit on government debt casts doubt on its understanding of Monetary Sovereignty. But keeping the zloty gives reason for optimism.

At least Poland has retained the power to increase its money supply dramatically, something Greece, France, Italy et al cannot do.

Contrast that with the U.S. Congress, the Tea Party and all those Americans who claim the finances of our Monetarily Sovereign federal government are the same as the finances of the monetarily non-sovereign states, counties, cities, businesses and people.

American leaders continue struggling to impoverish America by cutting federal deficit spending. Sadly, Polish leaders soon may do the same.

This all boils down to the simplest of all economic equations:

Austerity = Poverty

On wonders how long it will take, and how many examples will be required, before the voting public begins to understand it.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

—–

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the lines rise.

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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