Tag: monetary non-sovereignty

–Hillary Clinton’s Drug Plan for recession

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.
•Any monetarily NON-sovereign government — be it city, county, state or nation — that runs an ongoing trade deficit, eventually will run out of money.
•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.
•The single most important problem in economics is the Gap between rich and poor.
•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.
•Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap between the rich and the rest..

===================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================

Bernie Sanders has advocated a form of Medicare for All. It would be a single payer (i.e. federal government) program, that would protect everyone, and with far fewer loopholes than current Medicare has. You should review the brief description here.

Hillary Clinton’s thinking hasn’t gone as far as Bernie’s, but she has come out with a prescription drug “plan” — well, not so much a plan as an amalgam of talking points.

Here are some comments about a summary published by Bloomberg Politics.

Hillary Clinton Drug Plan Would Cap Consumer Costs, Mandate R&D Spending

A day after a tweet about high drug costs from Hillary Clinton sent pharmaceutical and biotechnology stocks plummeting, the Democratic presidential candidate said that if elected, she’d implement programs to force the industry to concede tens of billions of dollars a year in tax breaks, lower prices and increase research spending.

There is nothing like attacking the evil pharmaceutical industry to get the hoi polloi stomping and cheering.

But really, is impoverishing the guys who create our life-saving medicines the best way to create more affordable, life-saving medicines?

“It is time to deal with skyrocketing out-of-pocket costs and runaway prescription drug prices,” Clinton said. Nobody in America “should have to choose between buying the medicine they need and paying their rent.”

Absolutely true. But which is more likely to increase medical research and development: Cutting pharmaceutical industry profits or federal stimulus spending to increase industry profits?

One proposal would limit how much patients could have to spend out of pocket for drugs to $250 a month, or $3,000 a year. It’s an idea that builds on policy in the Affordable Care Act limiting total out-of-pocket medical spending to $6,600 a year for an individual, and $13,200 for a family.

The idea could squeeze health insurers, as well, which provide drug coverage for patients and typically cover a portion of the costs.

Why even charge people $3,000 a year? Under Medicare for All, the federal government would pay for everything.

Another item would make drugmakers spend a minimum amount on research and development, just as Obamacare forces insurers to spend a minimum percentage of their revenue on medical care.

Clinton would also bar pharmaceutical companies from deducting drug ad spending as a business expense, for tax purposes, which she said in a statement announcing the policies would save the government “billions of dollars over the next decade.”

Visualize the complexity of rules necessary to force drugmakers to “spend a minimum amount on research and development.

–A minimum amount of what? Of profits? How are profits defined? Of sales? Of foreign sales?
–What exactly is “research and development”? Which of the myriad corporate expenses, is considered research and development? Whose salary is included?

Yes, just what we need: More complexity (leading to loopholes) in our ridiculous tax code, and Hillary Clinton micromanaging the pharmaceutical industry.

And then there’s the economics ignorance reveal: “Save the government billions of dollars,” while costing a segment of the economy billions of dollars.

Apparently Mrs. Clinton believes our “poor” federal government can run short of dollars, while the pharmaceutical part of our economy has too many dollars, and that federal taxes stimulate the economy.

Clinton criticized Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, which bought a drug in August and soon after raised its price 50-fold. “Price gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous,” Clinton said.

Alex Arfaei, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, said Monday he doubts Clinton’s proposal will lead to meaningful price controls. “Pharmaceutical companies are easy targets in presidential politics, and extreme examples provide great talking points.”

If Turing is making an exceptionally high profit on a drug, what is the worst — the very worst — that could happen under Medicare for All?

Either the federal government will pay the price, which will add stimulus dollars to the economy. Or the government will set the price it is willing to pay, and Turing will accede, or be out of the program (similar to current price setting of hospital and doctor bills).

The Democratic front-runner’s ideas do have the power to rattle markets, though, as Monday showed. In the hours after she criticized Turing and said she’d soon issue the proposals, the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index lost more than $40 billion in market value as investors sold drug stocks. It was one of the worst days for the index in about a month.

The private sector lost $40 billion, because candidate Clinton merely proposed a bad plan. Now imagine the damage with President Clintion wielding the power to implement a bad plan.

Other proposals in Clinton’s package have been put forth by Democrats before, and gone nowhere. One of the biggest would give low-income people enrolled in Medicare, the U.S. health program for the elderly and disabled, drug coverage under Medicaid, which covers the poor.

Known as “dual eligibles,” these poor, elderly people don’t have access to Medicaid’s highly discounted drug prices. Switching them to Medicaid drug coverage would save taxpayers $103 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The “dual eligibles” idea is a step toward Medicare for all. Why have two programs — Medicare and Medicaid — when one program would do the job better and more efficiently.

Of course, none of this would “save taxpayers” anything, since federal taxes do not pay for federal spending.

Clinton would also have Medicare negotiate prices, using the government’s purchasing power to get additional discounts. Such a proposal could save billions of dollars, though in the past has struggled to gain traction in Congress because of heavy opposition from Republicans and drug companies.

Whose dollars would be saved? Certainly not the public’s. On the contrary, the economy would lose those billions of dollars. And the federal government itself doesn’t need to “save dollars.” It has the unlimited ability to create dollars, at will.

The “saving” of federal dollars is known as “austerity,” which always depresses an economy.

Other proposals target expensive biologic and specialty drugs. One would lower the sales exclusivity for biotechnology drugs to seven years from 12.

Another would have the government study the effectiveness of drugs, in an attempt to pressure pharmaceutical manufacturers to charge prices based on the value the treatments provide.

In short, virtually all of Mrs. Clinton’s proposals punish private industry, i.e. the economy, and reduce the ability and incentive to create new drugs, while doing nothing to help consumers.

In Clinton-world, the federal government will pull more money out of the economy, via increased taxes and/or decreased spending: A sure prescription for recessions and depressions.

Back to the drawing board, Hillary.

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 Click here
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
Monetary Sovereignty

Recessions come after the blue line drops below zero.

Monetary Sovereignty

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

–To Congress: A plague o’ both your houses. Just do your job.

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.
•Any monetarily NON-sovereign government — be it city, county, state or nation — that runs an ongoing trade deficit, eventually will run out of money.
•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.
•The single most important problem in economics is the Gap between rich and poor.
•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.
•Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap between the rich and the rest..

===================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================

Though a former Republican voter, I now am of the opinion that the Republicans do not offer a single candidate who has the honesty, knowledge, courage or intelligence to be President of the United States.

Not one.

This is the party for which Donald Trump is the perfect symbol, and for which a significant number of candidates:

– –believe money is speech and that the rich should be able to buy elections. (Aside: If money simply is speech, then bribery simply is conversation.)
– –believe climate change science is a myth.
– –believe County Clerk Katie Lang is right to refuse marriage licenses to gays, because her religion is more important than anyone else’s.
– –believe vaccination causes autism, despite what doctors say.
– –believe deporting 11 million people and building a longer, higher wall is an efficient way to protect America.
– –believe Evolution science is a myth, while the bible is scientifically correct.
– –believe austerity works.
– –lie about their job experience.
– –lie about abortion and about Planned Parenthood’s role.
– –believe the words, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state,” have absolutely no meaning.
– –believe the poor, the elderly and the unemployed are lazy, and helping them only encourages their laziness.
– –believe children born here to undocumented immigrants should have their citizenship taken away.
– –believe Barack Obama is a foreigner and a Muslim.
– –despise all who are not straight, white, Christian and male.

Which brings us to the Democrats, who sometimes equal Republicans in foolishness and perfidy.

You already have heard way too much about Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi and Emails, two politically overblown “scandals” that remind one of evaluating a restaurant based on the quality of its flatware. (Not that I support Hillary. I don’t. I favor Bernie Sanders.)

So let’s skip the political nonsense, and go to the real nonsense:

Senior Democrat Has A New Plan To Trim Unemployment
Rep. John Conyers wants to force the Federal Reserve to focus more on job growth.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), a senior House progressive, introduced a bill that same day that would make a future rate increase dependent on much lower unemployment than the U.S. is likely to achieve anytime soon.

Conyers’ proposed Full Employment Federal Reserve Act would obligate the Fed to define full employment as a maximum unemployment rate of 4 percent and “a labor market in which median wages are rising with worker productivity, job seekers can find work, and involuntary part-time work is at a minimum.”

Short of meeting those criteria, the Fed would be unable to raise its influential interest rates.

The Fed has a dual mandate to enact monetary policy that promotes both full employment and stable prices. The two-pronged mission, established by Congress in 1977, does not specify how the central bank should define those goals.

Critics of the Fed, mostly liberal, have said top Fed officials have used this discretion in recent decades to prioritize concerns about excessive inflation over maximizing employment.

The choice is essentially zero sum: When the Fed increases interest rates to limit inflation, it does so by deliberately reducing economic demand, which reduces potential job growth.

Enough! Enough! I can’t handle any more BS.

First, the “dual mandate” is utter idiocy. The Fed does not control employment. Congress controls employment via its taxing and spending policies.

Increase business taxes and hiring goes down. Increase personal taxes and buying goes down, which impacts business, forcing employment down.

Decrease federal spending and businesses sell less to the government, so hiring goes down. Increase federal spending and more money flows into the economy, which stimulates hiring.

The “dual mandate” is Congress’s way of avoiding its own responsibility for anything negative, while taking credit when times are good.

Second, when the Fed increases interest rates two main things happen:
–The dollar strengthens, which reduces the cost of imports (i.e. anti-inflation)
–The federal government pays more interest on T-securities, which adds stimulus dollars to the economy.

The Fed does not “deliberately reduce economic demand” in order to cut interest rates. It controls rates by fiat and by its open market operations.

Further, despite myths to the contrary, raising interest rates does not negatively impact Gross Domestic Product (See: The low interest rate/GDP growth fallacy )

So we have the spectacle of economically ignorant Democrats (John Conyers, Frederica S. Wilson, Marcy Kaptur, Keith Ellison, Sheila Jackson Lee, Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Jr., and Donald Payne, Jr.), trying to tie the hands of the Fed in the execution of its primary economic task: Controlling inflation.

Visualize the hospital cleaning crew telling the surgeon what he is and is not allowed to do, and you have a reasonable analogy.

It would be far better for the cleaning crew to do a better job cleaning and let the surgeon operate to the best of his ability.

In short, it would be far better for Congress to do a better job growing our economy and reducing unemployment, and let the Fed control inflation to the best of its ability.

To Congress: A plague o’ both your houses. Just do your job.

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 Click here
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
Monetary Sovereignty

Recessions come after the blue line drops below zero.

Monetary Sovereignty

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

–Medicare for All: Where do we go from here?

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.
•Any monetarily NON-sovereign government — be it city, county, state or nation — that runs an ongoing trade deficit, eventually will run out of money.
•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.
•The single most important problem in economics is the Gap between rich and poor.
•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.
•Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap between the rich and the rest..

===================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================

Medicare is a wonderful — a liberal — program that never would have been passed by a conservative President and Congress.

Medicare has helped to prevent millions of seniors from falling into the wretched poverty medical bills can cause.

But Medicare has its weaknesses:

1. It covers only the aged.

2. It pays only a percentage of bills. The uncovered percentage can be financially debilitating, thus requiring private Medicare Supplement expenses.

3. It doesn’t cover pharmaceuticals (i.e. Part D) which also can be financially debilitating, dental, some eye and other examinations and treatments.

4. It doesn’t cover long-term care, psychiatric, substance abuse and many other medical and related treatments and equipment.

5. In the name of Medicare (and Social Security), the poor and middle classes pay a high and unnecessary FICA tax, which is taken from salaries.

So why not a Medicare that:
A. Covers every man, woman and child in America?
B. Covers all hospital, all doctor and all pharmaceutical bills?
C. Covers every form of medical diagnosis and treatment?
D. Covers long-term care>
E. Pays 100% of the bill?

In the June, 2013 post, How one of the best bills in history — H.R. 676, Medicare for All — is spoiled, we discussed a bill before Congress that would accomplish all of the above:

It is H.R. 676, Medicare for All:
“To provide for comprehensive health insurance coverage for all United States residents, improved health care delivery, and for other purposes.”

Some features of the bill:

All individuals residing in the United States (including any territory of the United States) are covered under the Medicare For All Program entitling them to a universal, best quality standard of care

The health care benefits under this Act cover all medically necessary services, including at least the following:
(1) Primary care and prevention.
(2) Approved dietary and nutritional therapies.
(3) Inpatient care.
(4) Outpatient care.
(5) Emergency care.
(6) Prescription drugs.
(7) Durable medical equipment.
(8) Long-term care.
(9) Palliative care.
(10) Mental health services.
(11) The full scope of dental services, services, including periodontics, oral surgery, and endodontics, but not including cosmetic dentistry.
(12) Substance abuse treatment services.
(13) Chiropractic services, not including electrical stimulation.
(14) Basic vision care and vision correction (other than laser vision correction for cosmetic purposes).
(15) Hearing services, including coverage of hearing aids.
(16) Podiatric care.

No deductibles, copayments, coinsurance, or other cost-sharing shall be imposed with respect to covered benefits.

The Program shall pay physicians, dentists, doctors of osteopathy, pharmacists, psychologists, chiropractors, doctors of optometry, nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, physicians’ assistants, and other advanced practice clinicians.

What would you say is the main reason the federal government doesn’t offer such a program?

Yes, there are a couple minor reasons — excuses really:
—Government bureaucrats, not doctors, would make life-or-death decisions about coverages. (The same way Medicare and private insurances are handled now and always have been handled.)

—Private health insurance companies would be put out of business and their employees would lose their jobs. (Right. They would go the way of blacksmiths, small farmers, typewriter, folding map, photo film, public pay phone and buggy whip manufacturers. It’s called “progress and obsolescence.”)

The major (not the real) reason given is that such coverage would cost too much. Under the current system, the private sector (you and me) is forced to spend money we may not have, to pay for our medical care.

Instead, with Medicare for All, our Monetarily Sovereign federal government, which never can run short of dollars would pay for it.

Hmmm . . . . Let’s see. Is it preferable for people to be impoverished by medical bills, rather than having the federal government, which never can be impoverished, pay those bills?

You might believe Congress and the President think so, because they cobbled together the Affordable Care Act, otherwise knowns as “Obamacare,” a Rube Goldbergian, complex, convoluted mess, that to a small degree pretends at what Free Medicare for All could accomplish easily, simply and efficiently.

Obamacare unnecessarily makes the populace pay for medical care.

The real reason we don’t have Free Medicare for All: The rich don’t want it.

Free Medicare for all not only would cut into the lucrative insurance businesses, but more importantly, it would narrow the Gap between the rich and the rest.

As you’ve read many times on this blog, the Gap is the only thing that makes the rich and powerful rich and powerful. If there were no Gap, no one would be rich, and the wider the Gap, the richer the rich are.

So narrowing the Gap is the last thing the rich want.

So where do we go from here? Liberal Monetary Sovereignty.

Liberalism, by its very nature, narrows the Gap by giving money to the lower income/wealth/power groups. The problem with liberals, as represented by the Democrats, is that they have bought into the “tax-and-spend” philosophy (while the conservatives believe in the “don’t-tax-and-don’t-spend” idea).

Both ideas suffer from the same myth, that the federal government needs to collect tax dollars in order to spend. Monetary Sovereignty demonstrates the falsity of that myth.

Even if federal tax collections fell to $0, the federal government could continue spending, forever. (There are other reasons for federal tax collections, but paying bills isn’t one of them. All these years, you have been conned about this, by the rich-owned politicians, media and economists.)

So again, where do we go from here?

We need a liberal government that acknowledges Monetary Sovereignty (MS).

Forget the Republicans. They are the party of hatreds, despising blacks, browns, gays, women, foreigners and foreign nations, the poor and the middle classes, while loving only guns, fetuses and above all, the rich.

Forget Hillary Clinton. She has no fundamental beliefs other than being elected, perhaps so she can get rid of Bill and make the same millions he’s made, on her own.

Which brings us to Bernie Sanders, who claims to be a socialist, but isn’t. He’s a liberal, who doesn’t understand Monetary Sovereignty — or at least, that’s the way it seems.

But I was amazed and heartened that he hired Stephanie Kelton to be his economics advisor.

Stephanie Kelton understands Monetary Sovereignty. She heads the economics department at UMKC (the University of Missouri, Kansas City). It’s the one school in America (the world?) that teaches MMT (Modern Monetary Theory), the sister to MS.

While individual professors around the world also teach MMT, here is an entire economics department devoted to the subject. Take that, University of Chicago, Harvard, Stanford et al. You teach myths while UMKC teaches truths.

So the very fact that Bernie Sanders would hire the chair of UMKC’s economics department says this: He soon will, or already does, understand Monetary Sovereignty.

Will Sanders have the courage to tell us Americans we should benefit from Free Medicare for All? And if so, will we Americans have the intelligence to believe him?

If the first answer is “Yes,” Bernie has my vote. He should have yours, too.

Hey, which would you prefer: To conservatively deport 11 million people and carry a semi-automatic weapon, or liberally for you and your loved ones to have free medical care for life?

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 Click here
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
Monetary Sovereignty

Recessions come after the blue line drops below zero.

Monetary Sovereignty

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

–If it’s free, you don’t want it. Right? Ask Ed Krayewski

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.
•Any monetarily NON-sovereign government — be it city, county, state or nation — that runs an ongoing trade deficit, eventually will run out of money.
•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.
•The single most important problem in economics is the Gap between rich and poor.
•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.
•Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap between the rich and the rest..

===================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================

Among the less knowledgeable, a sign of brilliance is the parroting of such phrases as, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

It represents the clever notion that if something is offered to you free, there must be a catch, and that you will pay for it sooner or later. (Never mind that mommy gave you food, clothing and warmth, and asked nothing in exchange).

The same shrewd people who use that phrase often are the first ones to demand that the federal government stop providing free social benefits to the poor — food, housing, education, medical care, etc.

But if there really were no such thing as a free lunch, what’s the problem? The poor will made to pay for their “freebies” sooner or later.

“But ah,” they say. “The poor won’t pay; I will pay with my taxes.” And therein lies the abject ignorance of how federal taxes and federal spending actually work.

Unlike the state, county and city governments, which are monetarily non-sovereign and can run short of dollars, the federal government is Monetarily Sovereign, and never can run short of its own sovereign currency, the dollar. No taxpayers’ money needed.

Many people who claim to understand economics, repeatedly prove they don’t know the difference between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty. So they talk about spending federal taxpayers’ money, when in fact, your federal taxes are not spent, not needed and cease to exist once they hit the U.S. Treasury.

The latest to demonstrate his ignorance is Ed Krayewski, an associate editor at Reason.com. Before joining Reason, he was an associate producer at Fox Business, a media producer for Fox News and Fox Business, and an assistant producer at NBC News.

Bernie Sanders, the 18 Trillion Dollar Man
Wants taxpayers to “feel the Bern.”
Ed Krayewski|Sep. 15, 2015 2:16 pm

Sen. Bernie Sanders is actually up by 10 points over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire and tied with her in Iowa. (In the RealClearPolitics average of polls.)

What is driving support for Sanders’ campaign? The promise of lots of free shit certainly helps.

The Wall Street Journal has analyzed Sanders’ campaign proposals and estimated that his plans for new federal programs would cost $18 trillion over the next ten years.

The bulk of that $15 trillion would be spent on expanding Medicare to include all Americans in an attempt to impose a “single payer” (the government) healthcare system in the United States.

Ed Krayewski dismisses free healthcare, food, housing and education as “shit.” And anyone who gives “shit” and takes “shit” must be full of “shit,” right Ed?

And giving free Medicare to all Americans isn’t really giving. To Ed, it’s “imposing” this free “shit” on America. How very awful to have such imposition.

Ed’s article then repeats “$15 trillion” again, and yet again, to make sure we really, really heard him the first time and are suitably shocked.

Of course, Ed fails to mention a basic detail: That $15 trillion will not cost federal taxpayers one cent. On the contrary, it will put $15 trillion into taxpayers’ pockets and stimulate the economy. (That is the difference between federal government finances vs. state and local government finances — a difference Ed seems not to have learned.

Rather than you and me and the rest of America spending $15 trillion on health care, the federal government would pump $15 trillion worth of stimulus into the economy.

(There, Ed. I’ve now repeated “$15 trillion” five more times, and knowledgeable readers are saying, “Hey, let’s start passing out that ‘shit,’ today.”)

Sanders’s policy director, Warren Gunnells, called the $15 trillion number for a single-payer system alone a fair estimate.

President Obama and supporters of Obamacare insisted Americans were dying in the streets as if it were Victorian England, because there wasn’t enough government intervention in healthcare or whatever.

Sneered like a big-shot who has a well-paying job and who receives free healthcare insurance (i.e. “shit”) from his employer.

No, Ed, this isn’t as dreadful as Victorian England. Must it get to that point before you take notice of the real medical hardships facing the “99%” — the poor, the middle-classes and the elderly? Or whatever.

When Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, Obama spent most of the political capital he earned from his landslide victory pushing Obamacare, not immigration reform or police reform or rolling back the war on terror.

In Krayewski-world, health care is “shit.” What’s really important to Ed is deporting Mexicans and his unspecified “reform” of the police.

Sanders’ spending programs are aimed at offering free things—healthcare and public college, primarily—for everyone.

Sanders has dropped the pretense held by some liberals and progressives that government spending should focus on the needier elements in society. Even as he rails against “income inequality,” Sanders is promising to pay for the healthcare and education of all Americans, even its richest.

Here, Ed does a sneaky pseudo-left turn. After railing against free “shit,” he now complains that the “shit” should go to the “needier elements” — you know, those people whom Ed says are not “dying in the streets as if it were Victorian England.”

The fundamental reasons to provide a simple, straightforward Medicare for everyone, rather than just for the poor are:

1. There would be no need for a bureaucracy to try to separate “needy” from “not needy.” What is needy? Low income? How low? Is “needy” the same in Manhattan as it is in Peoria? The same for a one-person family as for a ten-person family?

And exactly what is income? Salary? Does Social Security count? Does free rent count? College scholarships? Other poverty aids?

How would interest, stock dividends, property sales and all the other little gimmicks in our tax code be counted?

And what about wealth? Does a retired guy having minimal income, but a no-mortgage house in the suburbs, count as “needy”?

2. Unless you are in the hundred million dollar wealth class (and there are comparatively few of those), medical expenses can eat you up.

But the federal government can afford anything.

Ed forgot to mention wealth inequality (the even more important inequality than income inequality). But if he really cares about inequality he can opt for the “Ten Steps to Prosperity (listed at the bottom of this page), and not create yet another million-word tax law.

And while he (Sanders) promises higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for all that free stuff, even setting aside the fact that there are serious diminishing returns on higher tax rates, his tax plans “only” cost taxpayers $6.5 trillion over ten years, far short of what’s needed if Sanders wants to deliver on his promise.

The so-called diminishing returns means the rich have ways to avoid some of those taxes. So?

And then we return to the really, really ignorant part: “His tax plans “only” cost taxpayers $6.5 trillion. . . “

Ed, maybe if I shout, you’ll get it: FEDERAL TAXPAYERS DON’T PAY FOR FEDERAL SPENDING.

The federal government’s finances are different from state and local government finances. While state and local taxes DO pay for state and local spending, federal taxes DO NOT pay for federal spending. Can you understand that? Did shouting help?

Sanders’ proposals show a total lack of priorities, and are divorced from progressives’ self-identification as compassionate people who care for the poor.

Sanders isn’t campaigning to help poor people. He may use that rhetoric, warning of income inequality or how economic conditions hurt the working poor.

But his solutions have nothing to do with helping poor people, and everything to do with getting free stuff to everyone.

As we’re seeing in the polls, that’s a far more popular position.

Hmmm . . . so Medicare for everyone and financial support for education doesn’t help poor people?? Yikes!

Or Ed, do you mean poor people are not part of “everyone”?

And whom do you believe the polls are interviewing: Rich people? No, the polls are interviewing the 99%, the people who would be helped by Medicare for everyone.

It’s difficult to know what nonsense Ed really is spouting. That Medicare for All wouldn’t help the 99%?

That free “shit” from the federal government costs taxpayers money rather than adding dollars to the economy, creating jobs and putting money into taxpayers’ pockets?

That expelling immigrants, Trump-style, is more important than funding health care and education for all Americans?

Or is it that Sanders’s plans don’t help the 99% enough, compared with the right-wing’s generous plans for . . . uh . . . punishing poor people?

Ed, until you publicly recognize the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, you don’t know “shit” about economics.

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. 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
Monetary Sovereignty

Recessions come after the blue line drops below zero.

Monetary Sovereignty

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