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

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.
======================================================================================================================================================================================

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

====================================================================================================================================================
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)

—–

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

–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

—–

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Why no guns in Congress?

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

Sometimes an idea has to become so obviously stupid that even the most intelligence-deprived among us will reject it.

Unfortunately, with regard to guns, we’re not quite there, yet.

I’m not just talking about the U.S. Supreme Court’s translation of this simple statement: [“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state,] the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

(Some words are bracketed, because the U.S. Supreme Court believes the framers of the Constitution had some leftover words, and just tossed them in. Those words are to be ignored.)

Under the rule, “Bad law begets more bad law,” I’m also talking about the lengths to which the states have taken the Supreme Court’s bad law.

Georgia law allows guns in some schools, bars, churches”
By Devon M. Sayers and Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN

Ellijay, Georgia (CNN) — Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal signed a wide-ranging gun bill into law (which) specifies where Georgia residents can carry weapons. Included are provisions that allow residents who have concealed carry permits to take guns into some bars, churches, school zones, government buildings and certain parts of airports.

Wednesday’s signing came at an open-air picnic area along a creek in Ellijay, in northern Georgia. It opened with a prayer, the singing of the national anthem and a recital of the Pledge of Allegiance.

As everyone knows, gun lovers are our most patriotic citizens. The proof: They pray; they sing the national anthem; they recite the Pledge of Allegiance; they wave flags; they carry guns. What could be more patriotic than that?

Deal said the law allows residents to protect their families and expands the list of places where they can legally carry firearms, while allowing certain property owners, namely churches and bars, to make judgments on whether they want worshippers and patrons carrying guns.

The governor said the law “will protect the constitutional rights of Georgians who have gone through a background check to legally obtain a Georgia Weapons Carry License.

Hey, wait a second. Why should churches and bars be exempt from the Constitution?

And if someone has passed a so-called “background check” (snicker, snicker), why should they not be able to carry a gun anywhere they want, including into Georgia’s Congress and courts?

. . . the version Deal signed Wednesday doesn’t allow guns on college campuses . . . except in certain cases.

WHAT??! No guns on college campuses, either? Why should students be deprived of their Constitutional protections?

. . . it allows guns in TSA lines at the country’s busiest airport, forces community school boards into bitter, divisive debates about whether they should allow guns in their children’s classrooms, and broadens the conceal carry eligibility to people who have previously committed crimes with guns.

While the bill says no one is allowed to carry a firearm past an airport’s security screening checkpoint, it allows guns in other areas, including “an airport drive, general parking area, walkway, or shops and areas of the terminal that are outside the screening checkpoint.”

WHAT??! No guns past the TSA lines on onto airplanes? Why not? If someone has gone through a “background check” (snicker, snicker) surely he should be allowed to carry a gun all the way up to the gate and onto the plane — to protect against terrorists and other criminals.

And why are criminals denied their Constitutional rights, so long as they have passed a “background check” (snicker, snicker)?

Deal also touted how HB60 would allow soldiers to obtain a carry license at age 18 if they’ve completed basic training and are either actively serving or have been honorably discharged.

“If they’re old enough to hold a gun in defense of our liberties, then they’re old enough to hold a gun, and they shouldn’t have to wait until they’re 21.”

As everyone knows, discharged soldiers are saner and more mature than other people, and always can be trusted not to shoot anyone.

And please, let’s not discuss PTSD.

Other notable provisions of the law allow hunters to use silencers and suppressors when the owner of the property where they’re hunting is aware they’re using such a device. . .

Yes, the owner of land is the best judge of whether a “hunter” should use a silencer. (By the way, when people use silencers, what exactly are they hunting?)

(The law permits) gun owners who have had their licenses revoked to apply for a new license after three years . . . and forbids police officers who see a resident carrying a gun to ask for their permit unless they’re committing a crime.

“Excuse me, Mr. Armed Man Wearing A Mask And Walking Into A Bank, I know you’re allowed to carry a gun anywhere, and I’m not even allowed to see your gun permit, so please, please don’t shoot anyone.”

Another provision of the new law allows firearms into any government building that is open for business and doesn’t have security personnel restricting access or screening visitors.

WHAT??! Why should guns be prohibited by security personnel, if the visitor has passed a “background check” (snicker, snicker)?

If the Governor of Georgia really believed that guns “allow residents to protect their families,” why should this protection be denied at airport gates, on college campuses and in bars and churches — and especially in state legislatures and courtrooms?

After all, isn’t that where residents need the most protection from criminals?

But wait. Deal addressed that objection.

The Capitol fell under a wider statewide provision that affects many government buildings, and it’s “a uniform carved-out area all across our state.“

So that explains it. The Capitol is a “carved out area.” Huh?

But, are local courts also “carved out areas”? We don’t know.

However, it seems likely, that Governor Deal’s brain, along with the brains of Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and John Roberts also are “carved out areas,” totally devoid of common sense.

But really, why no guns in Congress?

And when will this all become stupid enough for even the stupidest to recognize the stupidity?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

—–

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–One cynical solution to the widening GAP

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

The “red” (right-wing) states’ strong desire for self-mutilation has been a puzzle. Consider this recent article:

In Georgia, Lawmakers Taking Pride in Policies That Hurt the Poor

Georgia has taken the lead in the mad dash to thwart the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and prevent poor people from accessing health care.

Last week, Governor Nathan Deal (R-GA) signed into law two bills that ensure the state won’t be expanding Medicaid any time soon, and that make it decidedly more difficult for people to gain coverage under the ACA.

Like many other states that refuse to participate in Medicaid expansion, Georgia isn’t faring so well by most socioeconomic indicators. The poverty rate, which now hovers around 20 percent, is 50 percent higher than it was in 2000. Nearly two million Georgians do not have health coverage, ranking the state fifth nationally in numbers of uninsured.

More women in Georgia die of pregnancy-related causes than women in all but two other states.

Polls show that 59.6 percent (of Georgians) disagree with the state’s refusal to participate in (Medicaid) expansion.

Add to that the fact that refusal to participate will cost the “red” states many billions of free federal dollars, and one must ask, “What the hell is going on?”

Why would people intentionally self-emasculate? The answer, in a word, is bigotry.

The Southern Strategy

(President) Nixon’s political strategist Kevin Phillips:

“From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that…but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.

“The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are.”

And there it is. The bigots are all too ready to cut their own noses, so long as they can spite black faces. Bigotry, not self-interest, rules the “red” states.

And therein lies a solution. Since these people are so easily manipulated by bigotry, let’s manipulate. For instance:

As we noted in The BIG LIE and the Highway Trust Fund, the politicians tell voters the BIG LIE that there isn’t enough federal money to build highways (“. . . the Obama administration warned 700,000 jobs tied to the fund and its uncertain future are at stake.”)

IF (big “IF”) the Democrats really want those highways built, and to give themselves yet another election talking point, this is what they should do:

Offer billions in federal road-building funds only to those states that create plans showing how a sizable amount of those funds will go to middle- and lower-income residents. And (this is the important part) call the program “Obamaroad.”

The conservatives will lie like Pinocchio, that this will increase the “debt,” and it’s “unsustainable” and will cause “hyper-inflation.”

But there will be a savings. The “red” states won’t participate, and won’t get any money. And their roads will deteriorate (aka “just desserts”).

Or, we could have “Obamaschool,” in which the federal government gives billions to those states that create plans for improved K-16 education of the middle and lower income groups.

How about “Obamahome” to states that create improved housing for lower income residents.

And then there could be “Obamasave”, in which the federal government gives billions to states that eliminate sales taxes and cut income taxes for lower income groups.

Oh, you get the idea. The right wing hates blacks, browns, aliens, gays, women . . . well, virtually everyone but WASP men. The Democrats should use this bigotry as a method for advancing a social agenda.

In brief, the plan is this:
1. Create a program that benefits blacks, browns and financially needy people.
2. Offer billions only to states that agree to create plans to implement the program.
3. Name the program “Obama-something.”

It may take a while, but eventually the “red” state voters will figure out that bigotry doesn’t pay.

Sure, it’s cynical.

So?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

—–

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: