“One of the worst scientific scandals of all time.”

Recently, I read an article titled, “Is this ‘one of the worst scientific scandals of all time’?”

It referred to Hans Eysenck, “one of the greatest psychologists in history, his fame built on his work concerning intelligence and personality testing, known as psychometrics.”

The article continues with the following excerpts:

He long maintained the hereditability of IQ and personality traits and was a supporter of the work of people like Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, the somewhat infamous authors of The Bell Curve, a book that amongst other things makes correlations between race and IQ in the US.

Eysenck also published work validating aspects of astrology to do with the correlation between personality and astrological signs and was seemingly rather partial to parapsychology and the world of psychics.

Eysenck published a large number of papers that explored the idea that personality was a serious risk factor in various forms of heart disease and cancer. Famously, some of the research concluded that personality factors were six times more likely to increase the risk of lung cancer than smoking was.

Making the situation worse are the links, including financial, between Eysenck, his junior collaborator Ronald Grossath-Maticek, and the tobacco industry.

“To his eternal shame, Hans Eysenck attempted to discredit the well-established causal links between tobacco smoking and cancer while in receipt of large sums from the tobacco industry.”

“These widely-cited studies have had direct and indirect influences on some people’s smoking and lifestyle choices. For an unknown number of individual men and women, this programme of research has been a contributory factor in premature illness and death.”

A scientific scandal that contributes to premature illness and death — sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it?

I’ll give you one even worse. This worse scientific scandal has led to poverty, suffering by hundreds of millions of people, and yes, even including “premature illness and death.”

The scandal is the pseudo-scientific lie being promulgated by many politicians, the media, and so-called economists, who falsely claim that our Monetarily Sovereign government “can’t afford” to pay for such benefits as Medicare for all, Social Security for all, education for all, and various programs that would cure impoverishment.

(Because, economics is deeply entangled with psychology, perhaps it should be no surprise that it is scandalous, often preferring prestige to facts.)

As recently as August 14, 1971, the U.S. dollar was pegged to gold, meaning that in effect, the federal government’s ability to create dollars was limited by its inventory of gold. (This was a self-imposed limit. Because the U.S. government invented the U.S. dollar, it always has had the power to create more dollars whenever it wished.)

In August 1971, President Nixon arbitrarily removed the convertibility of dollars-to-gold, and at that instant, and ever since, the U.S. government has not hamstrung itself with gold-supply limits on its ability to create dollars.

We really mean unlimited. The federal government is not limited by gold supplies. It is not limited by tax collections. It is not limited by debts or by borrowing, or by any other economic factor (other than the ridiculous “debt ceiling” which is an unconstitutional limit on paying for what already has been purchased. 14th Amendment: The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law . . . shall not be questioned.)

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
If our Monetarily Sovereign, federal government wished, it could create a trillion dollars tomorrow, and another trillion the next day — all at the press of a computer key.

Image result for bernanke and greenspan — *It’s our little secret. Don’t tell the people we don’t use their tax dollars.*

Ben Bernanke: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”

Alan Greenspan: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency.”

St. Louis Federal Reserve: “As the manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never be unable to pay its bills. The government is not dependent on credit markets (borrowing) to remain operational.

If the federal government wished, it could make sure that you and your parents and your children never would have to worry about health care costs, never have to worry about the costs of a college education, never have to worry about housing costs, food costs, clothing costs. That is, “if the federal government wished.”

So why doesn’t the federal government wish?

INFLATION
Before we explain that, let’s address the factor that always seems to surface among lay people — the huge, though phony, bogeyman that is hoisted in front of you: Inflation.

The U.S. government is Monetarily Sovereign. That means it is sovereign over the U.S. dollar, and like any sovereign, it has the power to do anything it wishes with its own sovereign currency.

It invented the first dollars, and arbitrarily gave these early dollars values vs. silver and gold. It just as easily could have given them values vs. potatoes and pigs, or any other goods you can think of.

Since inflation is the declining value of money vs. goods and services, having the unlimited ability to set money values vs, goods and services gives the government the unlimited ability to fight inflation.

Short of Medicare-style price controls, which often come with their own downsides, the government has several other inflation-fighting tools in its kit.

For instance, it arbitrarily can set the foreign exchange rate, i.e. the number of dollars it will trade for other nations’ money. This is known as “revaluing” (up) or “devaluing” (down), depending on whether the government is fighting deflation or inflation. The U.S. government has done both.

The government simply could adjust interest rates, a step it has taken repeatedly. Raising interest rates makes more people wish to own dollar-denominated securities, and thus makes dollars more valuable — an inflation-fighting step.

In summary, our Monetarily Sovereign government not only has absolute control over its dollar creation, but also controls its dollar’s valuation.

Unlike state and local governments, the U.S. government never unintentionally can run short of dollars or be helpless to inflation. It does not need to tax — in fact, federal taxes are destroyed upon receipt — and it does not need to borrow.

(It actually doesn’t borrow. It accepts deposits into Treasury Security accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank. It pays off these deposits by returning the dollars deposited.)

The federal government creates all the dollars it needs simply by paying creditors.

But wait. Why then does the federal government collect taxes?

WHY DOES THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT COLLECT TAXES?
There are three reasons, and the third should anger you.

To help control the economy by taxing the things it wishes to restrict (i.e., cigarettes, liquor, imports), and by giving tax breaks to things it wishes to encourage (i.e. certain kinds of income). If there were no taxes, there could be no tax breaks.
To assure the demand for dollars by insisting that all taxes be paid in dollars.
To fool you into believing that federal benefits to you must be rationed because they are “unaffordable.”

For instance, the government collects FICA taxes supposedly to “pay for” Social Security and Medicare. In reality, the purpose of collecting FICA is to limit unnecessarily the amount of Social Security and Medicare you receive.

If the federal government can afford anything, why does it wish to limit the benefits you receive?

GAP PSYCHOLOGY
If you owned a million dollars, would you be rich? Yes, if everyone else owned only a hundred dollars. But no, if everyone else owned ten million dollars. The word “rich” is a comparative, not an absolute.

“Rich” describes the gap between those who have more income, wealth, or power than others, and the wider that gap, the richer they are.

If you are rich, there are two ways you can become richer — i.e., two ways you can widen that gap: Get more for yourself or make other people have less.

When average people receive less for Social Security and Medicare, that widens the gap between them and the above-average (“richer”) people, which makes the rich even richer.

That is the reason for Gap Psychology, the human desire to distance oneself from (widen the gap) those “below ” and to approach (narrow the gap) those above.

Gap Psychology has a profound effect on much of your life: The type of car you drive, your house and neighborhood, your associations, the schools you attend, your clothing, your method of travel and travel destinations.

Gap Psychology is so important that the very rich are willing to spend huge sums just to distance themselves from you.

And one way they spend these huge sums is to bribe politicians, the media, and the university economists, to spread the false narrative that federal taxes are necessary to fund federal spending.

The politicians are bribed with campaign cash and promises of lucrative employment later. The media are bribed with advertising revenue and ownership. The university economists are bribed with university contributions and promises of think-tank work.

As a result of all this bribery and misinformation, you are deprived of the many benefits the federal government easily could provide. Your Social Security begins at later and later ages, when it could begin a birth.

Your Medicare pays at most 80%, and discounts what doctors are paid, so many doctors won’t accept it. Many plans don’t cover prescriptions, and even then, discount payments.

Rather than providing free college, the government requires students to go deeply into debt, making college unaffordable for millions.

All of this is made possible by the same Gap Psychology, in which even middle-income people who would benefit, are made to resent low-income people receiving government help.

This is one of the worst, most damaging scientific scandals of all time, second only to the historical science denial of religions.

One day, the world will look back on this economics scandal in the same way as we view the scandals involving the Church vs. Copernicus and Galileo — terribly harmful, though supported in ignorance by most of the populace.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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The most important problems in economics involve:

Monetary Sovereignty describes money creation and destruction.
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”

Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.

Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:

Ten Steps To Prosperity:

1. Eliminate FICA

2. Federally funded Medicare — parts a, b & d, plus long-term care — for everyone

3. Provide a monthly economic bonus to every man, woman and child in America (similar to social security for all)

4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone

5. Salary for attending school

6. Eliminate federal taxes on business

7. Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually.

8. Tax the very rich (the “.1%”) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.

9. Federal ownership of all banks

10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9%

The Ten Steps will grow the economy and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Why the truth is a victim of the well-meaning.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! NO!

Ryan Cooper, a well-meaning, national correspondent at TheWeek.com, whose work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post, wrote:

“. . . taxes are always a net cost by definition — something that is taken from the American citizenry and spent on government boondoggles or welfare for poor people.”

And, “. . . while Medicare-for-all would require some additional taxes on the middle class, those increases would be more than compensated for by zeroing out premiums, co-pays, and deductibles.”

And, “As economist Gabriel Zucman explains: ‘Note how Warren and Sanders actually cut taxes for the bottom 95%. That’s because they abolish mandatory private health insurance premiums, which are in effect a huge poll tax.'”

NO, Mr. Cooper, and NO, Mr. Zucman. NO. While state taxes fund state spending, and county taxes fund county spending, and city taxes fund city spending,

FEDERAL TAXES DO NOT FUND FEDERAL SPENDING.

The federal government may claim that FICA funds Social Security and Medicare. The federal government may claim that income taxes fund the military and the myriad other federal spending. But, it simply is not true.

There is zero relationship between federal spending and federal taxing. Federal taxes (unlike state and local taxes) are not “spent on” anything. They are destroyed upon receipt.

And, Medicare-for-all would not require some additional taxes. Medicare for all will be funded entirely by deficit spending, regardless of what tax schemes are implemented.

And, Warren and Sanders do not cut taxes for the bottom 95%, because they abolish mandatory private health insurance premiums. No, they will raise taxes unnecessarily, and also will cut premiums.

The tax increase and the premium decrease mathematically may or may not offset, but in either event, they have nothing to do with one another.

The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, creates brand new dollars every time it pays a creditor. It works like this:

When anyone — you, me, any business and any government agency — pays a creditor, it sends instructions to the creditor’s bank instructing the bank to increase the balance in the creditor’s checking account.

At that instant, brand new dollars are created. To pay for those new dollars, the checking accounts of the payors are debited.

But here is the huge difference: The checking accounts of the aforementioned you, me, any business and any government agency all are part of the money supply (mostly M1). So those checks contribute a net $0 to the money supply.

The only checking account that is not part of the money supply is the federal government’s account. So its checks add to the money supply.

Why are government checking accounts not part of the money supply? Because the federal government has the unlimited ability to add to its checking accounts any time it wishes. So whatever amounts are shown in the government’s checking accounts have no meaning.

The federal government dips into an infinite pond. There is no dollar answer to the question: “How much money does the federal government have?”

The answer is, “Infinite.”

Sadly, Mr. Cooper’s article continues:

“Bernie Sanders forthrightly admits that Medicare-for-all would require some additional taxation on the average citizen.”

gain, no. Sanders is not being “forthright.” He is being cowardly. He knows full well that additional taxes are not necessary. He had Professor Stephanie Kelton as his economic advisor, and she told him.

But, in typical politician fashion, he either didn’t understand it or more likely, was too afraid voters wouldn’t believe it.

Where does that leave us? Pretty much where we always have been, because Mr. Cooper’s article demonstrates the misinformation distributed by the public’s three main sources of knowledge: The politicians, the media, and the academics.

The politicians misinform you because they are bribed by the rich via campaign contributions and promises of future lucrative employment. The media misinform you because they are bribed via ownership and advertising dollars.

And most of the academics misinform you because they are bribed via university grants and think tank employment.

You understand this, but what of the rest of the public?

Driven by Gap Psychology (the desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any status measure), the rich want to keep the middle class from realizing that the Ten Steps to Prosperity (below) are easily provided, and without increasing taxes even one cent.

The rich wish to become ever richer, and that requires widening the Gap between them and those “below” them.

And that leads to the fourth main source of misinformation, the public itself. Having been brainwashed by the politicians, the media, and the academics, the public takes over spreading misinformation about federal financing until it becomes perceived as “common knowledge.”

It is “common knowledge” that one should live within one’s means, and that debt should be avoided, and that budgets should be balanced — except that “common knowledge” does not apply to Monetarily Sovereign governments.

Misinformation often may come from the well-meaning, but it remains misinformation, and even more harmful than misinformation from the ill-meaning.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Alan Greenspan: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency.”

Ben Bernanke: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”

St. Louis Federal Reserve: “As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e.,unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational.

The most important problems in economics involve:

Monetary Sovereignty describes money creation and destruction.
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”

Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:

Ten Steps To Prosperity:

1. Eliminate FICA

2. Federally funded Medicare — parts a, b & d, plus long-term care — for everyone

3. Provide a monthly economic bonus to every man, woman and child in America (similar to social security for all)

4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone

5. Salary for attending school

6. Eliminate federal taxes on business

7. Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually.

8. Tax the very rich (the “.1%”) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.

9. Federal ownership of all banks

10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9%

The Ten Steps will grow the economy and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Economics: Faux complexity of the simple, or faux simplicity of the complex?

One definition of “science” is: A systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

Economics is a “social science. One wonders whether it can be called a science at all, for it really is an accounting-based branch of psychology, which itself holds to the title, “science,” by its fingertips.

As for “testable explanations” and “testable predictions,” not so good. The psychology role in economics testing is at its best when “predicting” history, but fails repeatedly when trying to predict the future.

Economics approximates religion, which predicts that your following (or not following) certain arbitrary, often illogical and meaningless, rules will be rewarded in some vague way by an omniscient entity.

Accounting
While accounting can have complex and changing rules, it is based on simplicity: The direct relationships among income, saving, and outgo.

Any change in one factor is balanced by a mathematically equal change in the other factors, thus the word “balance” sheet.

Based on its arbitrary rules, accounting strictly is logical and eminently predictable. Adding to the left side of a balance sheet always requires adding to the right side, yesterday and tomorrow.

Though based on arithmetic, and in one sense on algebra (the relationship to the “=” sign), accounting is not a science. Though it organizes knowledge, it doesn’t create testable explanations and predictions about the universe. It simply is a score-keeping method for money-related valuations.

Psychology
This brings us to the other leg of economic’s extremely shaky, two-legged stool, psychology.

In its attempts to rise above religion (the pompous quest to know God’s mind) psychology does run tests and many of these tests provide results that pass for explanations that even are the basis for predictions.

But the economic results seldom are conclusive, while the explanations are subjective, and the predictions often are laughably random — just like with religion.

In real science, testing attempts to change one variable while holding all other variables stable. In psychology, and so in economics, holding all other variables stable generally proves to be impossible. So results vary wildly.

But that impossibility does not deter people known as “chartists.” From Investopedia:

A chartist is an individual who uses charts or graphs of a security’s historical prices or levels to forecast its future trends.

Chartists generally believe that price movements in a security are not random but can be predicted through a study of past trends and other technical analysis.

Generally, chartists will use a combination of indicators, personal sentiment, and trading psychology to make investment decisions.

Serious chartists can seek to obtain the Chartered Market Technician designation which is sponsored and written by the Market Technicians Association.

Even if charting could predict future prices, it still could not predict future prices.

Future stock prices are based on demand. So if charting could predict future prices, everyone would wish to buy or sell according to what the chart indicates.

In that way, charting would affect demand, which in turn would affect charts in an endless helix of price changes, all having little to do with a security’s underlying value.

Thus, charts destroy their own predictions, the “better” the chart, the more the destruction.

Though securities charting doesn’t work as claimed, it does have one value: It establishes a pseudo-scientific, mathematical veneer to its one area of economics.

That is why economics is obsessed with graphs. We economists wish to use mathematics, so to demonstrate our “real science” chops.

That also is why economists love complexification. Read any economics textbook, I dare you. You will discover a convoluted amalgam of graphs, charts, and equations and balance sheets, and difficult wording, all designed to give scientific credence to a non-credible forecasting ability.

How about “Externality,” “Autraky,” “Opportunity set,” “Convexity,” “Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium,” and one of my favorites that often is in the news, “quantitative easing.”)

I too am guilty of graphs and charts, though I use them mostly to disprove economic nonsense. For instance.

Blue line: Gross federal debt. Red line: Gross federal debt/GDP. Green line: GDP

The above graph disputes the “debt-clock” worriers, who falsely claim the federal debt is like personal debt and so is “unsustainable” because of the following myths:

A. The federal debt is too big (blue line) to sustain, [though it has grown massively and still is “sustained.”]
B. The federal debt is too high a percentage of GDP (red line), [though it repeatedly has passed predicted limits with no ill economic effects.]
C. The huge federal debt will slow economic growth (green line), [which has shown scant signs of slowing for 80 years.]

The faux simplicity is the false claim that federal debt is like personal debt. The public understands personal debt, so it is led to believe it understands federal debt.

The effect of complexity is to confuse either the author or the readers, and in that it has done remarkably well. The vast majority of the literate world is confused.

Once we wipe away the faux complexity, we are left with the following simplicity:

I. The U.S. federal government, unlike state, local, and euro governments is Monetarily Sovereign, which means it is sovereign over the U.S. dollar. It never unintentionally can run short of dollars. Even if all federal tax collections fell to $0, the federal government could pay any size debt denominated in dollars. Further, it has absolute control over the relative value of the dollar.

Monetary Sovereignty is fundamentally simple. Anyone who has played the board game, Monopoly, knows the Monopoly Bank is Monetarily Sovereign. By rule, it never can run short of Monopoly dollars and can create all it needs.

II. Recessions are caused by a lack of money, and they are cured by money creation, particularly by federal deficit spending.

III. Inflations are not caused by government currency printing but rather by shortages, usually shortages of food or energy. Counter-intuitively (for many), increased government spending, to reduce food or energy shortages, reduces inflation.

IV. The human side of economics is ruled by Gap Psychycholgy, the desire to distance oneself from those “below” on any social scale and to approach those “above.”

If you understand the above four simplicities, you understand the Ten Steps to Prosperity (below).

You understand why the federal government can eliminate FICA, increase Social Security and Medicare, fund advanced education for all who want it, and reduce poverty, while preventing and curing recessions, depressions, and inflations.

And you also understand why the government doesn’t do these things that would benefit the middle and lower-income/wealth/power groups.

In short, you will know more economics than your favorite politician, news source, or friend.

And you won’t even have to learn to calculate “cross elasticity of demand.”

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

The most important problems in economics involve:

Monetary Sovereignty describes money creation and destruction.
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”

Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:

Ten Steps To Prosperity:

1. Eliminate FICA

2. Federally funded Medicare — parts a, b & d, plus long-term care — for everyone

3. Provide a monthly economic bonus to every man, woman and child in America (similar to social security for all)

4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone

5. Salary for attending school

6. Eliminate federal taxes on business

7. Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually.

8. Tax the very rich (the “.1%”) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.

9. Federal ownership of all banks

10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9%

The Ten Steps will grow the economy and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

The inevitability of endless war. What is wrong with that?

No one wants endless war.

War brings so much death and destruction, and the terrible loss of the world’s youth to the ambitions of the world’s leaders. We all want wars never to begin, and once begun, to end quickly.

But since WWII, the U.S. seldom has unequivocally won a war. Even after wars seemingly are won, skirmishes continue, sometimes flaring up, then cooling, but seldom ending with that familiar formal signing procedure.

With the cooperation of numerous allies, we defeated the Axis of Germany, Italy, and Japan. With that victory — and much money — we made them our allies.

Since then, we have engaged in numerous conflicts, been soundly defeated in one (Vietnam) and still are waging many others.

I was reminded of this by an article that appeared recently in THEWEEK magazine. Some excerpts are illustrative:

The strategic incoherence of Trump’s Syria critics
Damon Linker

Trump’s apparent decision to permit Turkey to conduct military operations against (until now) American-backed Kurdish forces near the Turkish border in Syria has nothing to do with geopolitical strategy or any process of foreign policymaking beyond his personal and business relationship with Turkey’s quasi-authoritarian president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The most common response to Trump’s announced change of course in Syria has been a cry of lament for the fate of Kurds, who may well find themselves the target of Turkish attacks.

How can we abandon allies who fought by our side against the Islamic State and allow them to be crushed by a dictator like Erdogan?

(But) the Kurds aren’t our allies. Allies are defined by mutuality: We promise to defend a given state if attacked, that state promises to defend us if we are attacked.

The Kurds, a stateless ethnic group found in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, has zero capacity to come to America’s defense.

If the U.S. has an ally in the region, it is … Turkey, a member of NATO, an explicit defense alliance. Do those denouncing Erdogan favor ejecting Turkey from NATO, thereby revoking the country’s status as an American ally?

Mutuality is not part of the definition of “allies,” and certainly not equal mutuality. The Kurds have aided us by fighting ISIS. In that alone, they are our allies.

One alternative to ejecting Turkey from NATO, or abandoning the Kurds, is simply to do what we have been doing: Station enough US soldiers there in Syria to prevent a Turkish attack.

Strangely, the author does not mention that alternative, because the implicit belief is that somehow we must preclude endless American involvement. The belief that we never must be involved in an endless war.

It is a misguided belief. We have endless responsibilities, and some of them require endless war.

When critics of Trump’s policy shift want to sound harder-nosed, they move beyond Turkey and the Kurds and talk instead about how irresponsible it would be to give up the fight against ISIS: If we don’t stay in Syria, terrorists will grow powerful again, threatening the U.S. homeland like they did on 9/11!

The first thing to be asked in response to those making such claims is whether they think it’s possible for the U.S. to win any war anywhere in the world.

The above is based on the false belief that wars must be won, as they often were in the old days, followed by bringing our boys home.

Wars do not need to be won or lost. They can forever be holding actions, or if not “forever,” then for no end in sight.

Consider the police. Is their goal to end all crime, at which time they can “come home”? Or more realistically, will we forever have to wage a “war against crime,” and always be required to station cops around the country?

Can we realistically set a goal for our firefighters to no longer battle blazes? Can we set a goal for our doctors to no longer battle illness? Just cure everyone and get out?

More realistically, should the police, firefighters and doctors plan to engage forever, in endless wars?

If the battle against ISIS is measured against the goals enunciated at the start — the elimination of ISIS’s territorial caliphate — it has been a smashing success. We won. The caliphate is gone.

Yet now the goalposts have been shifted. Sometimes it sounds like the goal is to make sure ISIS or a successor Islamist organization doesn’t arise.

At other times it appears to mean something even more amorphous, like the complete elimination of any person who might aspire to revive the caliphate at some time in the future.

But is that a sensible foreign policy goal? Keeping an American military footprint in the desert of Syria and Iraq in order to exert control over what happens there for fear that it may possibly cause eventual harm to the United States, a continent and an ocean away?

Yes, that is a sensible foreign policy, which the U.S. is well able to afford financially, so long as minimal lives are lost.

There is no realistic alternative to an endless, religious war. Even if leaders of all participating groups came together and signed a peace treaty, there always will remain some faction who is dissatisfied with the outcome.

And that faction will simmer in resentment, soon to begin another conflict.

America, even with our massive armies, never will completely defeat ISIS, so long as there is at least one, hate-filled fighter who, seeking revenge, gathers together yet another guerilla army.

Even assuming this makes sense, for how long should it continue? Five more years? Ten? Twenty? More? And what metrics should we use to evaluate whether it’s really benefiting the country, or is working, or has worked?

Like the cop, firefighter, doctor analogies, it can continue indefinitely, so long as the threat remains viable.

The war against alcohol (aka, “Prohibition”) never was won and never could be won. At best we can fight a holding action by licensing, taxing, and age restrictions.

Similarly, the “war on drugs” was doomed to failure, because the goals and expectations were unrealistic. We never could defeat drug use.

No one wants to say because no one has an answer that makes sense.

It’s enough, they think, to speak gravely and vaguely about dire threats and keep us doing the same thing — always expanding American commitments abroad, never pulling them back, and never even prioritizing among them. Anywhere.

Surely we can and should prioritize them, just as a village may prioritize the location of its cops: Which corners are more important; which speed limits should be set?

The U.S. is committed, all at once, to defending Europe, including serving as a check on Russia’s ambitions in Eastern Europe, and to defending Israel.

It also wants to micromanage regional rivalries across the Middle East in perpetuity. And keep a lid on terrorist activity across North Africa. And win an 18-year-old game of Whack-a-Mole against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

And contain North Korea. And stand toe to toe with a rising China. And determine the outcome of a political transition in Venezuela.

The author complains about our multitude of obligations, but with great power comes great responsibility. The alternative would be a world in which brutal dictators rule everywhere, a world that declines into a dark-ages mentality.

Clearly, America should have better planning than what a government led by Donald Trump can provide. But even poor planning takes us some distance from total dereliction.

Depending on cost and affordability, it is an ongoing job, with no real end date.

That’s a lot for any country to handle intelligently or wisely — because having such control-freak ambitions in the world isn’t intelligent or wise in the first place.

That doesn’t mean that Donald Trump’s acting out in defiance of Washington’s foreign policy consensus makes sense.

But it does mean that those who oppose the president need to do more than run screaming back into the arms of that consensus without reflection on its many unacknowledged problems and confusions.

The biggest problem is the strange belief that the US should pull its soldiers out of harm’s way, and instead surround ourselves with a huge wall, and pretend we now are safe.

Some wars never end. The police fight crime; the firefighters attack fires; the doctors fight illness; the teachers fight ignorance; the U.S. continually must fight to remain safe and free.

Given America’s wealth and military power, we must try to be the world’s policeman. It is our ongoing “forever” job.

Do not decry endless war. Embrace it as a “long view” that endless war is a better, more realistic than the alternative. It is the price we must pay for security.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

The most important problems in economics involve:

Monetary Sovereignty describes money creation and destruction.
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”

Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:

Ten Steps To Prosperity:

1. Eliminate FICA

2. Federally funded Medicare — parts a, b & d, plus long-term care — for everyone

3. Provide a monthly economic bonus to every man, woman and child in America (similar to social security for all)

4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone

5. Salary for attending school

6. Eliminate federal taxes on business

7. Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually.

8. Tax the very rich (the “.1%”) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.

9. Federal ownership of all banks

10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9%

The Ten Steps will grow the economy and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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