–A short note to college students certain about Palestine/Israel

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

Mitchell’s laws:
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes. .
●Liberals think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor.
●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.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap.
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I remember being in college, when the world was simple. There, safely tucked into the cloister and ivy, everything was obvious. Later, the real world was less obvious, and today things have become complex.

For you, today’s college students, the world still is simple: Make grades, party and be certain about what you believe. For you, it is obvious that the Palestinians, whoever they may be (See: here), are poor, beleaguered underdogs, being oppressed by the evil and mighty Israelis.

So you follow along, chanting the words you were given, to protest march in the streets, and to call for boycotts of Israel, and otherwise to demonstrate your deep and perfect knowledge of the Mideast.

Sometimes, on very rare occasions, you may find you still have a little bit to learn (Those occasions will increase in frequency as you grow older.) And perhaps, just perhaps, this may be one of those times:

A “very good question” in Mideast conflict
By Jeff Robbins

At a panel on the Mideast conflict two years ago, then-Representative Barney Frank asked the late Leonard Fein, a left-leaning critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, why it was that if the Palestinians truly desired a two-state solution, they had continued to reject Israeli offers of a Palestinian state in return for peace.

“That,” replied Fein, “is a very good question.”

Why, indeed, is it that the Palestinians rejected Israel’s offer for an independent Palestinian state comprised of virtually all of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and a capital in East Jerusalem in 2000, in 2001, and then again in 2008? After all, acceptance of any of those peace deals would have resulted not just in an end to the settlement construction that the Palestinians assert is the obstacle to peace, but the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis from the West Bank.

President Bill Clinton described Yasser Arafat’s rejection of the Palestinian state offered by the Israelis at the end of his second term as tragic.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice describes the even more favorable offer made by Israel in 2008, and the high hopes that the United States had that, at long last, the Palestinians would accept the state that had been offered them in return for peace.

“In the end, the Palestinians walked away from the negotiations. . . . Had [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] expressed a willingness to accept the extraordinary terms he’d been offered, it might have been a turning point in the history of the intractable conflict.”

So yes, the Palestinians (or more correctly, the Gazans) indeed are poor and they are beleaguered and they are oppressed, the question being: Who exactly is the oppressor?

Of course, you know none of this, for all your young eyes can see is Israelis killing civilians — you know, those civilians behind whom the Hamas fighters were hiding as they fired their rockets, and whose homes Hamas usurped to dig their attack tunnels.

The fact is, as the article so eloquently continues:

The Palestinian street opposes any end of conflict with Israel that fails to bring about its (Israel’s) disappearance.

Fewer than 30 percent of Palestinians support a two-state solution — a West Bank/Gaza state living in lasting peace with Israel. Almost two-thirds (said) “resistance should continue until all of historic Palestine is liberated” (i.e. Israel is obliterated).

And this past September, 80 percent of Palestinians polled said that Hamas should continue to fire rockets at Israel, with Hamas, receiving an 88 percent approval rating, compared with only 36 percent approving the considerably more moderate Palestinian Authority government led by Abbas.

Abbas told the Washington Post that he was in no hurry to make peace with the Israelis, and that he refused even to negotiate with them. Rather, Abbas preferred to wait, hoping that international pressure on Israel would force it to capitulate without any corresponding obligation on the Palestinians’ part to agree to live in peace. “Until then,” Abbas told the Post, “in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life.”

The Palestinians’ argument that UN intervention is necessary because they cannot otherwise obtain a state represents a dearly-held narrative that has been adopted wholesale in certain quarters. Sadly, however, it is a narrative that is tough to square with what has actually occurred.

Why would “fewer than 30 percent of Palestinians support a two-state solution — a West Bank/Gaza state living in lasting peace with Israel”? They have been taught to hate, taught from an early age, in their schools, taught by their political leaders.

So, dear students, the world is a bit more complex than your leaders and the Islamists have told you. Neither Hamas nor the PLO wants peace with Israel. Their motives are much darker.

They will settle for nothing less than the total destruction of Israel, and their not “understanding” why Israel resists negotiating its own eradication, is but a pretense for the gullible.

ISIS Closing in on Israel from the North and the South
The Fiscal Times By Riyadh Mohammed, Dec 23, 2014

(ISIS) says it has recruited three Syrian rebel groups operating in the south of the country in an area bordering the Israeli occupied Golan Heights — that have switched their loyalties to ISIS.

This switch means that Israel, the U.S.’s closest ally in the Middle East, could be threatened from the southwest by the Egyptian ISIS group of Ansar Bait al-Maqdis in Sinai and by ISIS in southern Syria.

ISIS has been criticized by many Arabs and Muslims for not taking its fight to Israel and instead fighting fellow Arabs and Muslims. An attack aimed at Israel may boost ISIS’s popularity in the Arab world and refresh its recruitment and funding efforts.

Israel is stuck in the midst of the world’s longest war — the 1,300 year war between Islam and Christianity — with the current Mideast conflict being but a sentence in a paragraph in a religious war tome.

And that sentence reads, “Non-muslims are infidels who must be killed. There is no room for compromise.”

France Orders Troop Reinforcements After Attacks
By AURELIEN BREEDEN and ALAN COWELL DEC. 23, 2014

After a string of attacks across France that have heightened concerns about Islamic militancy, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Tuesday that hundreds of additional military personnel would be ordered onto the streets.

“There is a terrorist threat in France,” Mr. Valls told a news conference in Paris. “It is undoubtedly the main challenge of our time.”

Security concerns in France and elsewhere have been heightened by the radicalization of thousands of Europeans who have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State, which seeks the establishment of an Islamic caliphate.

So march on, young collegiates, chant the protest slogans taught to you, boycott and express your outrage. But be careful of what you desire.

If the “infidels” of Israel are destroyed, the “infidels” of Europe will be next, then to be followed in death, by the “infidels” of America.

This centuries-long war knows no boundaries, and the peace you want may not be the peace you receive.

It may be an eternal peace.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

PS: An update from 3/7/15

Hamas Focuses on Rebuilding Tunnels as Gazans Suffer
Hamas’ focus on reconstructing its tunnels, while ignoring the lack of housing in Gaza points to the military wing’s dominance in the organization.

The rampant tunnel reconstruction is not only indicative of the military wing’s conduct, but also of the warped priorities of a movement that started out as a welfare organization.

The military wing has risen against its founders. Operation Protective Edge inflicted immense damage on Gaza, resulting in more than 2,200 fatalities, thousands of wounded and unprecedented devastation to houses and infrastructure.

A quarter of the population is homeless. Still today, thousands of families whose homes were destroyed live in public buildings.

Once again, Hamas is investing the scant resources it can get its hands on in preparing for the next war.

Perhaps it would appeal to America’s university children, and their naive Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, to refer to “peace tunnels.”

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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. (Refer to this.)
8. Tax the very rich (.1%) more, with higher, progressive tax rates on all forms of income. (Click here)
9. Federal ownership of all banks (Click here and here)
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99% (Click here)

The Ten Steps will add dollars to the economy, stimulate the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
——————————————————————————————————————————————

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.
1. A growing economy requires a growing supply of dollars (GDP=Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
2. All deficit spending grows the supply of dollars
3. The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
4. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

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 growth lines rise. Increasing federal deficit growth (aka “stimulus”) is necessary for long-term economic growth.

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY

–The end of your own free will. How technology can limit your world.

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

You have your own free will, and technology will give you more choice than ever.

The Internet takes you all over the world, even all over the universe. You see and speak to people in foreign lands. You learn new things, and this knowledge allows you to make decisions you never could have made.

And you will make those decisions via your own free will.

Oh, really?

Consider a supermarket, one of the ultimate expressions of free will. The typical supermarket offers somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 items, from which you may choose perhaps a dozen on any one visit.

Yes, you are influenced by advertising, packaging, pricing and display, but within those general conditions, which apply to everyone entering the store, you make your own, individual decisions.

The store doesn’t know you from any other customer, doesn’t speak individually to you, and doesn’t change uniquely to influence you.

Now imagine the future. You walk up to the door, which uses face, weight and body type recognition to identify you preliminarily (just as you do when you priliminarily recognize a friend from 100 yards away.)

As you pass through the door, the door senses the millions of unique molecules that flake off your body every second, measures your height and stride length to verify your identity, and says, “Good morning, Mr. Jones.”

As you enter the store, the shelves you pass automatically and continuously re-arrange to place your favorite items at your eye level. Additionally, some high-profit items you like are placed in prominent locations.

Riding down the first aisle in your automated shopping cart, you hear a voice reminding you of the items you should want. It even may give a short sales pitch.

The shelves might advance preferred items toward you, as though beckoning you to pick them up, or even place the items at the checkout counter, waiting for you.

Your shopping cart might brake slightly, in front of higher profit items, you “really should buy.”

All this is done exclusively for you; the next shopper is greeted by different shelves, with different items, and different audio reminders, specific to them.

All of the above is within current technological abilities, relying on existing data about you and your life. It’s all out there.

Not only would the items be arranged for you, but the prices you pay would be different for you and each other customer.

What? Different prices for each customer? Isn’t that a step too far? Perhaps not:

SCIENCENEWS Magazine
E-commerce sites personalize search results to maximize profits
Websites alter results depending on whether consumers use smartphones or particular web browsers
BY RACHEL EHRENBERG OCTOBER 23, 2014

Researchers have uncovered multiple instances of travel and retail websites steering customers toward more expensive prices depending on factors such as whether customers are on a mobile phone, use a particular browser or have purchased particular items in the past.

Nine of 16 travel and retail websites, including Home Depot, Sears, Orbitz, Priceline and Expedia, personalize search results. Seven of these sites show customers only a subset of prices, researchers report.

“It’s a concrete example of why you should care about companies tracking your behavior online,” says computer scientist Christo Wilson of Northeastern University in Boston, who led the study. “It affects your pocketbook.”

There’s a difference between deciding most people will pay $1 for a Snickers bar versus setting a price because of being able to figure out that a consumer is really hungry because they’re breast-feeding, or high or just ran 10 miles.

Researchers found that users who searched Home Depot from their desktops received products with an average price of $120, while those who searched from their smartphones were steered toward products with an average price of $230.

Browsing Travelocity with the browser Safari on an iPhone, for instance, led to slightly different hotels, and in a much different order, than did browsing with Chrome on an Android. For iPhone users, prices were $15 cheaper on about 5 percent of hotels.

Your smart phone and your car GPS “know” where you are, and whether you are walking or driving. Other “out there” data tells where you live, your income, your job, the kind of car you drive, your age, your health, what you read, what you buy, what you wear, your family composition, the coupons you use, and on and on.

Now visualize a world in which, for economy of scale, all vendors share these data. When you walk into any supermarket, the store “knows” you never have bought PepsiCola; you only buy Sprite, so the store doesn’t even show you Pepsi Cola — nor does any other supermarket.

Nor does the advertising on your TV include Pepsi Cola commercials (because why waste money advertising to a non-user?) Nor do the electronic billboards include Pepsi ads (the ads are directed to your eyes).

For you, Pepsi Cola barely exists, if at all. And the same would be true for thousands of other products. They all barely exist in your world.

Imagine you wish to buy a Chevy. You go online or you drive to a dealership. The online site and the dealership both know all about you, so they adjust the price, model, color and extras accordingly.

Your price may be higher or lower than my price. You may not see a red convertible, with heated seats and power mirrors — not in the store, not online, not in advertising.

Free will requires the ability to choose. But if choice is limited and directed, how much free will do you have?

In that world of the future, you may believe you have free will, but you might be a prisoner of the technology that is supposed to free you. Like a prisoner, your free will is limited by your jailer.

Thus can technology limit — not expand — your world and your free will.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY

–20 reasons why I vote Republican

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

I’m a Republican. I vote right. I believe:

1. People should be able to spend as much as they wish, to control elections and to influence politicians.

2. Climate change is a fake. People are not causing the earth to warm. And anyway, a warmer earth would be a good thing.

3. This is a Christian country. Christianity should be taught in public schools, and Christian symbols should be allowed in all government buildings. Christian invocations should begin all government proceedings to guarantee patriotism.

4. All abortion should be illegal, whether or not the mother was raped or is too physically sick to deliver or too mentally sick to care for a child.

5. Gay people are an abomination and should not be allowed to marry.

6. Everyone should carry a handgun or military style rifle, to protect us from criminals and ISIS.

7. Torturing prisoners works and is not immoral, although waterboarding, standing for days on broken feet, sleep deprivation and being confined naked in cold darkness until you die are not torture. (See this.) Bush and Cheney were right (See this.)

8. We have normal relations with China and Russia, but we should not have normal relations with Cuba. This policy has worked for 50+ years, so should be continued.

9. Businesses are people and should have the same religious rights as people. If your employer doesn’t like your religious beliefs, it should be able to prevent you from exercising them.

10. The poor are naturally lazy. Aid to the needy fosters laziness. Unemployment compensation should be reduced, because it encourages unemployment. Food stamps and other poverty aids, encourage indolence. People should be self-sufficient and not expect help from the government.

11. Undocumented immigrants, including children, are criminals who should be deported back to misery or death. They take our jobs. We can’t afford having more hard-working consumers in America.

12. Though evidence says otherwise, I believe we suffer from rampant voter fraud. Poor people should be required to purchase picture IDs to prove they haven’t voted twice. Also, short voting hours and long lines at polling places provide a good test of patriotism.

13. The government is too big, so Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid should be cut, as should spending on science, R&D, infrastructure, food & drug inspections; auto safety inspections, and anything else that costs money, even if it may benefit Americans.

14. Gerrymandering doesn’t exist, and anyway, it’s good, except when the other guys do it. One benefit: Gerrymandering gives us consistency in the House of Representatives. Incumbents don’t lose.

15. I believe what FOX News says, especially Hannity, O’Reilly and Beck. I absolutely trust Limbaugh.

16. Obamacare should be eliminated. Everyone should pay for their own health care, and not expect the government to do it for them.

17. Black people, who look like criminals, should be dealt with harshly.

18. People should be jailed for using marijuana, even medical marijuana, because prohibition works.

19. The right-wing of the Supreme Court has been right about: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (more political spending by rich people), Bush v. Gore (eliminate states’ voting rights), Shelby County v. Holder (diminish the Voting Rights Act).

20. Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy speak for me.

Yes, I vote right, and here are two more reasons: I hate Obama, and the Republican party does a lot for me.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY

–Why morality is an economics issue

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

We even have been chastised for wandering outside our sphere of expertise, i.e. economics.

But, economics has an overriding social component, and what we consider to be immoral, often is justified on economic grounds. (i.e. torture “works.”)

The difficulty economists have in making prediction, stems from that social component. Cause and effect become blurred when changing and unmeasurable human beliefs, attitudes and emotions have such great importance.

The stock market forecasters known as chartists, who are right half the time and wrong the other half, ignore the human aspect. Their predictions rely on historical numbers repeating in some predictable pattern.

It’s silly, but chartists are paid for that nonsense, so who could blame them?

Are there any economists who successfully have weighed the human variables into equations?

A leader of Modern Monetary Theory, Professor Randy Wray, has a “Center for Full Employment and Price Stability.” It suggests a Jobs Guarantee (JG) plan, which in my opinion, considers humans to be mere cogs in the economic machine. Work; get money; spend. Then work more.

But, just jobs are not what people want. Look in the newspapers and online, and you will see thousands — perhaps millions — of jobs. There is no shortage of jobs. Never has been. Just not the right jobs.

JG assumes, if you are unemployed, you will take a job, no matter the circumstances (any location, any conditions, any pay), and if you don’t select among the jobs offered via a government functionary, you must be a slacker.

Professor Wray already has said the JG guaranteed jobs will pay less than minimum wage, so as not to compete with private industry!! Yikes!

Who needs the “government-as-slave-employer, or government-as-employment-agency”?

People go months, even years, looking for a job and not finding one — because people are not cogs. They have the above-mentioned beliefs, attitudes and emotions.

Professor Wray should change the name to a “Center for Economic Growth and Income Equality” and forget about the JG. But, he won’t, because he is committed to JG, and is a human with his own beliefs, attitudes and emotions.

For him, JG is a sacred foundation for his economic beliefs. We all have sacred foundations, and that’s his.

All of the above is a prelude to a discussion of the following article that appeared in the November 29, 2014 edition of NewScientist Magazine:

Most violence arises from morality, not the lack of it

WHY would anyone hurt you? Why would you hurt or kill someone else?

Contrary to popular perception, people are rarely violent simply because they lose control and fail to think about right and wrong. They rarely commit violence because they lack empathy and fail to see their victims as fully human.

And almost no one is violent because they draw sadistic pleasure from the suffering of others.

Across cultures and history, there is generally one motive for hurting or killing: people are violent because it feels like the right thing to do. They feel morally obliged to do it.

In the comment section of the previous post, you can see an example of this:

How Terrorists Justify Killing 132 Children

The Pakistan Taliban, Tehreek-e-Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was in revenge for a ferocious army offensive – named Zarb-e-Azb – that has been underway in tribal areas since June.

“We selected the army’s school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females,” said Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani. “We want them to feel the pain.”

You kill our children, so we kill yours, more or less.

Violence is not a breakdown of morality – it is motivated by moral emotions and judgments.

If your parents spanked you when you were a child, it was probably because they thought it was good for you. They may have hated to do it, but they did it because they felt they had to, to bring you up correctly. Their parents may have spanked or whipped them in order to raise them as God-fearing, virtuous adults.

Some violent acts are punitive – the execution of a murderer for example, or the bombing of those who bomb us. That’s justice as the perpetrator perceives it.

The foundation of Western legal systems is that people are found guilty and punished for intentionally doing what they know to be wrong. But what happens when people know that what they did was right, according to their internal moral compass?

You may feel (as I do) that past President Bush and his Vice President Cheney are as guilty of crimes against humanity as were the death-camp guards from WWII, but I suspect they all felt the torture and murder of prisoners was the “right thing to do.” As may have the CIA.

Cheney repeatedly says so, though it’s difficult to say whether he really means it.

When non-violent African American protesters were hosed and beaten during the civil rights movement, it did not evoke guilt in the majority of white American southerners, but it did elicit the sympathy of the northern states and the international community, and as a result the American South was shamed and pressured into tolerating integration.

But what happens when an entire religion supports the torture and murder of “heretics,” as has happened many times in history? Who is to cast shame?

What happens when an entire political party, the new majority party of the U.S. Congress, countenances the torture of prisoners? From where will come the pressure to change?

We have a long way to go, but we have the power to stop violence by making it immoral.

Yes, a long way to go. How many Americans believe that making someone angry, or committing a burglary, are reasonable justifications for killing someone?

‘Stand your ground’ laws: Two cases may suggest limits to their protections
By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer MAY 1, 2014

Two recent cases in Montana and Minnesota where homeowners appeared to set traps before fatally shooting teenage intruders suggest that US society may be drawing some limits on the controversial “stand your ground” defense at the heart of major recent court cases, including the shooting of Trayvon Martin.

A jury convicted Byron Smith of Minnesota on Tuesday for premeditating the 2012 murders of two teenage cousins who broke into his home.

And Markus Kaarma of Montana is now facing homicide charges after he allegedly fired a shotgun four times through his garage door on Sunday, when a German exchange student tripped an alarm. The student, named Diren Dede, was killed.

No U.S. court would command the death penalty for burglary, but do you believe the teenage cousins and Diren Dede “had it coming“? Do you believe the death penalty is the appropriate response, if you simply feel threatened?

Is the protection of property more important than human life?

Nations think so. That is the basis for most wars — the protection of property — and wars kill people.

Wars also are the single most important historical cause in the cause-and-effect paradigm of economics.

Yes, morality is an issue for economists, and unless morality is part of the “science,” it’s not a science at all.

While we each have a different take on “morality,” I suggest that giving the populace more reason and more opportunity for hurting people, is immoral.

By that definition, “Stand Your Ground” is immoral. Guns are immoral. Mass deportations are immoral. Bullying minorities is immoral. The death penalty is immoral. Torture is immoral. Slavery is immoral. Causing starvation is immoral. The growing Gap between the rich and the rest is immoral.

And if you look back in history, you will find that immorality is self-destructive, both for individuals and for nations. It’s the “what-goes-around,-comes around” syndrome.

You can’t study economics without studying morality, and you can’t pontificate realistically on economics without exploring morality.

Everything in economics devolves to morality, which devolves to motive, the starting point for economics.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY

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