Tag: monetary sovereignty

What happens when Gap Psychology dominates Decency?

Image result for discoverIt takes only two things to keep people in chains:

.

The ignorance of the oppressed
and the treachery of their leaders.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Question: If your wealth totals $100, does that make you rich or poor?

Answer: If everyone else has $1, you are rich. If everyone else has $1,000, you are poor. and if everyone else has $95, you are well-off, but not rich.

Thus it is the Gap, between you and the rest — not your absolute wealth — that determines whether you are rich or poor. If there were no Gap, no one would be rich and no one would be poor, no matter how much money they had.

“Gap Psychology“ is the name for the human desire to distance oneself from those below in any social ranking, and to near those above.

We see Gap Psychology everywhere. It is the reason for the purchase of a Rolls Royce that does little if anything more than a Hyundai. It causes the demand for a perfect diamond vs. moissanite. A Rolex vs. a Timex.

Designer clothing, expensive restaurants, mansions — all the symbols of wealth — the primary purpose of which are to separate the owners from the poor and draw them closer to the rich.

Even sports team fandom, where one must win and the other lose, is an expression of Gap Psychology, where the fan takes personal pride in the accomplishments of a team of strangers.

The Gap below you can be widened in two ways: You rise on the social scale and/or those below you fall. That is why so many middle-class people are unsympathetic to the plights of the poor, and view the poor as “lazy takers.” Pushing the poor down, widens the  Gap below.

Similarly, the Gap above you can be narrowed in two ways: Again, you rise on the social scale and/or those above you fall. That is why the middle classes both despise and envy the rich, and take secret (or not-so-secret) pleasure in seeing the rich fall. Pulling the rich down narrows the Gap above.

The Gap not only is widened by wealth, but by stigmatizing. As a justification for Gap Psychology, those in a different group often are stigmatized as being ignorant, immoral, lazy, or bereft of redeeming qualities.

Gap Psychology is 100% selfish. It is a survival method. To members of a social species, there come individual Darwinian advantages from being associated with the fittest members.

But for a group as a whole, Gap Psychology is divisive. But there are “group-within-the-group advantages, because Gap Psychology can increase cohesiveness within the smaller group. That, for instance, is the power of religions, which in part gain strength by separation from “outsiders.”

Decency is the opposite of Gap Psychology. The decent person wishes to lift those below or outside the group,  and does not find gratification in the downfall of the rich and powerful, or those outside the group.

Often, Gap Psychology and Decency are blended. For example, in Chicago, we have Image result for Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospitalthe Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital.

Mr. & Mrs. Lurie donated many millions of dollars to improve what formerly was called “Children’s Memorial Hospital,” (Decency), but in return demanded that their names be featured (Gap Psychology).

All American Presidents exhibit strong symptoms of Gap Psychology, and all during my lifetime (since WWII) have had some measure of Decency — Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson were decent men. Nixon perhaps less so, but Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama were fundamentally Decent.

And then came Trump.

I suggest that Donald Trump, with his pathological urge for aggrandizement and credit, his compulsive lying, and his evading of all blame for everything, exhibits 100% Gap Psychology, and does not burden himself with Decency.

He cares nothing for the poor and everything for his own image. He is, I submit, the ultimate product of today’s anti-poor, pro-rich, anti-deficit, pro-military Republican party, as first created in 1994 by Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey.

With the focus (unwisely and unnecessarily) on cutting federal budgets, and the (invented) need to feed the military, the Republicans then claimed that social programs were the items that had sufficient budgets to cut meaningfully.

This led to the “Personal Responsibility Act (which was replaced by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Among its directives were:

  • Cut welfare and related programs that aid unmarried women and pregnant teens
  • Punish Families with Dependent Children for having more children while receiving welfare
  • End AFDC payments after five years
  • Create a “two-years-and-out” provision with work requirements for such families
  • Provide food vouchers to unwed mothers under 18 instead of cash
  • Suspend the drivers’ and/or professional licenses of those who fail to pay child support.

In short, not only were benefits for the poor to be cut, but the poor were to be punished for being poor. (Gap Psychology)

The Tea Party, which began in 2009, not coincidentally at the beginning of the Obama administration, pushed the GOP even further to the right, with strident, anti-deficit demands.

And now, having arrived in 2017, we find the Republicans attempting to enact a half-dozen anti-poor, pro-rich laws to destroy Obamacare (ACA), and to widen the Gap with their many variations on tax “reform.”

Trump’s repeated appointments of people to who have demonstrated antipathy to the missions of the agencies they lead, and his nominations to judgeships of people wholly unqualified to be judges, will have long-lasting, deleterious effects on America, particularly on the poor and middle classes.

In short, today’s Republican Party has tipped so far into Gap Psychology, it has lost even the semblance of decency.

Like most of our past Presidents, Americans are fundamentally Decent. We root for the underdog. We are charitable. We despise unfairness. Trump is the opposite, as is today’s GOP. Thus, I believe, the GOP is out of step with America.

While Gap Psychology continues to exert a strong emotional pull on American voters, I suspect that our basic Decency will come to the fore, and that is very bad news for the GOP.

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

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the have-mores and the have-less.

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 The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:

Ten Steps To Prosperity:
1. ELIMINATE FICA (Ten Reasons to Eliminate FICA )
Although the article lists 10 reasons to eliminate FICA, there are two fundamental reasons:
*FICA is the most regressive tax in American history, widening the Gap by punishing the low and middle-income groups, while leaving the rich untouched, and
*The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, neither needs nor uses FICA to support Social Security and Medicare.
2. FEDERALLY FUNDED MEDICARE — PARTS A, B & D, PLUS LONG TERM CARE — FOR EVERYONE (H.R. 676, Medicare for All )
This article addresses the questions:
*Does the economy benefit when the rich can afford better health care than can the rest of Americans?
*Aside from improved health care, what are the other economic effects of “Medicare for everyone?”
*How much would it cost taxpayers?
*Who opposes it?”
3. PROVIDE A MONTHLY ECONOMIC BONUS TO EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD IN AMERICA (similar to Social Security for All) (The JG (Jobs Guarantee) vs the GI (Guaranteed Income) vs the EB (Economic Bonus)) Or institute a reverse income tax.
This article is the fifth in a series about direct financial assistance to Americans:

Why Modern Monetary Theory’s Employer of Last Resort is a bad idea. Sunday, Jan 1 2012
MMT’s Job Guarantee (JG) — “Another crazy, rightwing, Austrian nutjob?” Thursday, Jan 12 2012
Why Modern Monetary Theory’s Jobs Guarantee is like the EU’s euro: A beloved solution to the wrong problem. Tuesday, May 29 2012
“You can’t fire me. I’m on JG” Saturday, Jun 2 2012

Economic growth should include the “bottom” 99.9%, not just the .1%, the only question being, how best to accomplish that. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) favors giving everyone a job. Monetary Sovereignty (MS) favors giving everyone money. The five articles describe the pros and cons of each approach.
4. FREE EDUCATION (INCLUDING POST-GRAD) FOR EVERYONE Five reasons why we should eliminate school loans
Monetarily non-sovereign State and local governments, despite their limited finances, support grades K-12. That level of education may have been sufficient for a largely agrarian economy, but not for our currently more technical economy that demands greater numbers of highly educated workers.
Because state and local funding is so limited, grades K-12 receive short shrift, especially those schools whose populations come from the lowest economic groups. And college is too costly for most families.
An educated populace benefits a nation, and benefitting the nation is the purpose of the federal government, which has the unlimited ability to pay for K-16 and beyond.
5. SALARY FOR ATTENDING SCHOOL
Even were schooling to be completely free, many young people cannot attend, because they and their families cannot afford to support non-workers. In a foundering boat, everyone needs to bail, and no one can take time off for study.
If a young person’s “job” is to learn and be productive, he/she should be paid to do that job, especially since that job is one of America’s most important.
6. ELIMINATE FEDERAL TAXES ON BUSINESS
Businesses are dollar-transferring machines. They transfer dollars from customers to employees, suppliers, shareholders and the federal government (the later having no use for those dollars). Any tax on businesses reduces the amount going to employees, suppliers and shareholders, which diminishes the economy. Ultimately, all business taxes reduce your personal income.
7. INCREASE THE STANDARD INCOME TAX DEDUCTION, ANNUALLY. (Refer to this.) Federal taxes punish taxpayers and harm the economy. The federal government has no need for those punishing and harmful tax dollars. There are several ways to reduce taxes, and we should evaluate and choose the most progressive approaches.
Cutting FICA and business taxes would be a good early step, as both dramatically affect the 99%. Annual increases in the standard income tax deduction, and a reverse income tax also would provide benefits from the bottom up. Both would narrow the Gap.
8. TAX THE VERY RICH (THE “.1%) MORE, WITH HIGHER PROGRESSIVE TAX RATES ON ALL FORMS OF INCOME. (TROPHIC CASCADE)
There was a time when I argued against increasing anyone’s federal taxes. After all, the federal government has no need for tax dollars, and all taxes reduce Gross Domestic Product, thereby negatively affecting the entire economy, including the 99.9%.
But I have come to realize that narrowing the Gap requires trimming the top. It simply would not be possible to provide the 99.9% with enough benefits to narrow the Gap in any meaningful way. Bill Gates reportedly owns $70 billion. To get to that level, he must have been earning $10 billion a year. Pick any acceptable Gap (1000 to 1?), and the lowest paid American would have to receive $10 million a year. Unreasonable.
9. FEDERAL OWNERSHIP OF ALL BANKS (Click The end of private banking and How should America decide “who-gets-money”?)
Banks have created all the dollars that exist. Even dollars created at the direction of the federal government, actually come into being when banks increase the numbers in checking accounts. This gives the banks enormous financial power, and as we all know, power corrupts — especially when multiplied by a profit motive.
Although the federal government also is powerful and corrupted, it does not suffer from a profit motive, the world’s most corrupting influence.
10. INCREASE FEDERAL SPENDING ON THE MYRIAD INITIATIVES THAT BENEFIT AMERICA’S 99.9% (Federal agencies)Browse the agencies. See how many agencies benefit the lower- and middle-income/wealth/ power groups, by adding dollars to the economy and/or by actions more beneficial to the 99.9% than to the .1%.
Save this reference as your primer to current economics. Sadly, much of the material is not being taught in American schools, which is all the more reason for you to use it.

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

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

The real cost of Trump’s anti-migrant America

.

It takes only two things to keep people in chains:

The ignorance of the oppressed
and the treachery of their leaders.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Donald Trump wants you to fear all but white, Christian, straight men, who were born in the U.S.

He himself fears women who object to his groping. He fears Muslim men, women, and children. He fears blacks, browns, and yellows. He fears people who were born overseas. He wants you to fear and hate immigrants.

In his fears, Trump follows the classic dictator’s path by creating a “we-vs.-them” scenario in which the only people who can be trusted are “people-like-us.”

For example:

Official: NYC suspect says he heeded ISIS call
After bomb attack, president calls for immigration reforms
By Nina Agrawal, Brian Bennett and Noah Bierman Los Angeles Times

NEW YORK — The suspect in a bomb attack in New York City’s transit system Monday told investigators he had been inspired by Islamic State’s recent call for attacks in Western cities around the Christmas holidays, a federal law enforcement official said.

The suspect, identified as 27-year-old Bangladesh native Akayed Ullah, was injured by the explosion and in custody.

President Donald Trump cited the suspect as an argument for his crackdown on legal as well as illegal immigration.

“Today’s attempted mass murder attack in New York City — the second terror attack in New York in the last two months — once again highlights the urgent need for Congress to enact legislative reforms to protect the American people,” Trump said.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders asserted that the attack could have been prevented if the U.S. had canceled the ability of American citizens to sponsor relatives for visas, which the president calls “chain migration.”

Ullah, a lawful permanent resident, was admitted to the U.S. in 2011 on a family immigrant visa.

The specific class of visa he had, an F43, is for nieces and nephews of U.S. citizens 21 and older. Trump called that policy “incompatible with national security.”

Image result for immigrantsIf an American citizen will not be allowed to sponsor an adult niece or nephew, we surely will have created “fortress America,” a nation in which we all hide behind a wall of fear, barring anyone from entering.

Is this the America that has made you proud?

Trump also cited the attack in pressing for other policies, including his ban on travel to the United States by people from eight countries. Those nations do not include Bangladesh, according to an administration official.

Ullah appears to have planned the attack on his own, and was “self-radicalized” after being admitted to the U.S. from Bangladesh in 2011, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal assessments.

The bomber was “self-radicalized.” No amount of vetting would have revealed him as a terrorist. Only a complete lockdown of America could have kept him out.

Is this what we Americans want — a walled-in nation no one can enter?

Campaign to Drive Out Migrants Slams Beijing’s Best and Brightest
By Chris Buckley, Sui-Lee Wee and Adam Wu, Dec. 11, 2017,BEIJING — With coding skills, a foreign degree, fluent English and an apartment barely big enough for his espresso maker and two cats, Si Ruomu thought he was the kind of go-getting young tech worker that Beijing needs to thrive in the 21st century.

That was before the police arrived at his apartment building and ordered him and hundreds of others to vacate within 48 hours. Like most of his fellow tenants, Mr. Si had come from elsewhere in China to find work in the capital, which often treats migrants virtually as second-class citizens.

As Beijing has launched its most aggressive drive in decades to rid itself of unwanted migrants, the brunt of the crackdown has fallen on laborers from the countryside. But it has also hurt a different kind of migrant: educated and ambitious white-collar workers drawn to the city’s new economy of tech, finance, and hospitality industries.

China is a nation preventing migration within its own borders, though the result is the same: Lack of cultural mixing.

Beijing is a cultural, technological and commercial capital as well as a political one, and the tenements on its outskirts are home to tens of thousands of hopeful young college graduates who have moved here seeking better jobs and better lives.

These job seekers are treated as migrants in their own capital, because China’s biggest cities are fortresses of official privilege, especially Beijing.

The government gives inhabitants who hold permanent residence papers, called hukou, more generous access to housing, schools, and healthcare. But migrants must pay more for many services, and many live on the edges of Beijing, where rents are lower.

That has ignited debate about how Beijing can function without the blue-collar migrants who serve as its cooks, cleaners, and vendors, but there are also worries the campaign might harm the city’s fast-growing tech sector, which employs armies of migrants who work for relatively low pay.

Migrants help an economy, not only by working in menial tasks, but also by working in high tech. Trump would destroy all that for the U.S.

The effects of the crackdown are already evident in Beijing’s booming e-commerce sector, which relies on legions of couriers — nearly all of them migrants — to deliver packages and meals on electric bikes.

Last month, five delivery companies warned of delivery delays following the expulsions.

Gan Wei, secretary-general of the China Electronic Commerce Logistics Industry Alliance, said the companies represented by her group would have to raise delivery prices in Beijing by about 20 percent.

“Why is takeout food so cheap in Beijing? Because of all the cheap labor from the countryside,” said Jia Dayong, 43, a stringy courier from the northwestern province of Shaanxi.

“If they keep clearing out like this, Beijing will suffer a drought of employees next year,” said Wang Le, 29, a hotel manager from the eastern province of Jiangsu.

“Even if the industry I’m in is very high-level, as far as the government is concerned, I’m also a peasant worker, a migrant worker,” said Zhang Xingwang, 24, who studied automation in college and came to Beijing from Hebei Province seeking work as a software programmer.

Some experts have warned that by choking off the flow of migrants, Beijing risks losing entrepreneurial energy.

Yin Deting, a demographer who advises the Beijing city government, warned that heavy-handed clearances of migrants would accelerate the aging of the city’s workforce.

“If we place our hopes for reducing the population just in demolishing illegal buildings and low-grade markets, the actual outcomes may well be contrary to what is hoped for,” Mr. Yin wrote earlier this year.

A dictator assumes power first by instilling fear in the populace, then by proclaiming that he alone can save the nation. Every “outsider” is to be considered “a dangerous alien.“Image result for dictatorship

The dictator’s most ardent followers are those who feel xenophobically threatened, and who desperately want a strong leader to protect them from competition and imagined threats by aliens, and from the disgrace of personal failure.

The dictator’s acolytes seldom understand, or even wish to understand, the high cost of this “protection.” Immigrants invariably bring great effort and new ideas to a nation that otherwise would stagnate from lack of change.

History shows that dictatorships initially may arrive on a wave of charisma, but ultimately, dictatorships always ruin the lives of the people who supported them.

World War II Germans, who expelled or murdered some of their best and brightest, suffered from that loss of Jewish labor and brainpower. Beijing already suffers from that kind of loss.

America does too.

Some Americans may believe that Trump will protect them, but he will protect only himself and those closest to him.  Meanwhile, as all dictators always do, he slowly will destroy your America by:

  • taking away your legal protections under the guise of “less government,”
  • placing his family and friends in high positions,
  • creating and then punishing scapegoats,
  • attacking the media for revealing the truth
  • building a legal and/or physical wall around the country
  • enriching himself at the expense of the government
  • threatening critics
  • placing himself above the law

Immigration is, and always has been, the lifeblood of America, a nation built on energy, creativity, and progress — and these all are words for “change.” Without change, a nation stands still.

America was built on immigration. That is what has made us great.  Without immigrants, we still would be a large nation, but no longer a great, nation.

That is what Donald Trump and today’s GOP would take from us. Our greatness that immigrants have given us.

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

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the have-mores and the have-less.

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 The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:

Ten Steps To Prosperity:
1. ELIMINATE FICA (Ten Reasons to Eliminate FICA )
Although the article lists 10 reasons to eliminate FICA, there are two fundamental reasons:
*FICA is the most regressive tax in American history, widening the Gap by punishing the low and middle-income groups, while leaving the rich untouched, and
*The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, neither needs nor uses FICA to support Social Security and Medicare.
2. FEDERALLY FUNDED MEDICARE — PARTS A, B & D, PLUS LONG TERM CARE — FOR EVERYONE (H.R. 676, Medicare for All )
This article addresses the questions:
*Does the economy benefit when the rich can afford better health care than can the rest of Americans?
*Aside from improved health care, what are the other economic effects of “Medicare for everyone?”
*How much would it cost taxpayers?
*Who opposes it?”
3. PROVIDE A MONTHLY ECONOMIC BONUS TO EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD IN AMERICA (similar to Social Security for All) (The JG (Jobs Guarantee) vs the GI (Guaranteed Income) vs the EB (Economic Bonus)) Or institute a reverse income tax.
This article is the fifth in a series about direct financial assistance to Americans:

Why Modern Monetary Theory’s Employer of Last Resort is a bad idea. Sunday, Jan 1 2012
MMT’s Job Guarantee (JG) — “Another crazy, rightwing, Austrian nutjob?” Thursday, Jan 12 2012
Why Modern Monetary Theory’s Jobs Guarantee is like the EU’s euro: A beloved solution to the wrong problem. Tuesday, May 29 2012
“You can’t fire me. I’m on JG” Saturday, Jun 2 2012

Economic growth should include the “bottom” 99.9%, not just the .1%, the only question being, how best to accomplish that. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) favors giving everyone a job. Monetary Sovereignty (MS) favors giving everyone money. The five articles describe the pros and cons of each approach.
4. FREE EDUCATION (INCLUDING POST-GRAD) FOR EVERYONE Five reasons why we should eliminate school loans
Monetarily non-sovereign State and local governments, despite their limited finances, support grades K-12. That level of education may have been sufficient for a largely agrarian economy, but not for our currently more technical economy that demands greater numbers of highly educated workers.
Because state and local funding is so limited, grades K-12 receive short shrift, especially those schools whose populations come from the lowest economic groups. And college is too costly for most families.
An educated populace benefits a nation, and benefitting the nation is the purpose of the federal government, which has the unlimited ability to pay for K-16 and beyond.
5. SALARY FOR ATTENDING SCHOOL
Even were schooling to be completely free, many young people cannot attend, because they and their families cannot afford to support non-workers. In a foundering boat, everyone needs to bail, and no one can take time off for study.
If a young person’s “job” is to learn and be productive, he/she should be paid to do that job, especially since that job is one of America’s most important.
6. ELIMINATE FEDERAL TAXES ON BUSINESS
Businesses are dollar-transferring machines. They transfer dollars from customers to employees, suppliers, shareholders and the federal government (the later having no use for those dollars). Any tax on businesses reduces the amount going to employees, suppliers and shareholders, which diminishes the economy. Ultimately, all business taxes reduce your personal income.
7. INCREASE THE STANDARD INCOME TAX DEDUCTION, ANNUALLY. (Refer to this.) Federal taxes punish taxpayers and harm the economy. The federal government has no need for those punishing and harmful tax dollars. There are several ways to reduce taxes, and we should evaluate and choose the most progressive approaches.
Cutting FICA and business taxes would be a good early step, as both dramatically affect the 99%. Annual increases in the standard income tax deduction, and a reverse income tax also would provide benefits from the bottom up. Both would narrow the Gap.
8. TAX THE VERY RICH (THE “.1%) MORE, WITH HIGHER PROGRESSIVE TAX RATES ON ALL FORMS OF INCOME. (TROPHIC CASCADE)
There was a time when I argued against increasing anyone’s federal taxes. After all, the federal government has no need for tax dollars, and all taxes reduce Gross Domestic Product, thereby negatively affecting the entire economy, including the 99.9%.
But I have come to realize that narrowing the Gap requires trimming the top. It simply would not be possible to provide the 99.9% with enough benefits to narrow the Gap in any meaningful way. Bill Gates reportedly owns $70 billion. To get to that level, he must have been earning $10 billion a year. Pick any acceptable Gap (1000 to 1?), and the lowest paid American would have to receive $10 million a year. Unreasonable.
9. FEDERAL OWNERSHIP OF ALL BANKS (Click The end of private banking and How should America decide “who-gets-money”?)
Banks have created all the dollars that exist. Even dollars created at the direction of the federal government, actually come into being when banks increase the numbers in checking accounts. This gives the banks enormous financial power, and as we all know, power corrupts — especially when multiplied by a profit motive.
Although the federal government also is powerful and corrupted, it does not suffer from a profit motive, the world’s most corrupting influence.
10. INCREASE FEDERAL SPENDING ON THE MYRIAD INITIATIVES THAT BENEFIT AMERICA’S 99.9% (Federal agencies)Browse the agencies. See how many agencies benefit the lower- and middle-income/wealth/ power groups, by adding dollars to the economy and/or by actions more beneficial to the 99.9% than to the .1%.
Save this reference as your primer to current economics. Sadly, much of the material is not being taught in American schools, which is all the more reason for you to use it.

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

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

 

“Lügenpresse”: Hitler’s “fake news.” We’re making the same mistake, again.

.

It takes only two things to keep people in chains:

The ignorance of the oppressed
and the treachery of their leaders.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Back on (ironically) July 4th, 2015, we compared Donald Trump with Adolph Hitler (Hitler in America. Why a bigot can win the Presidency).

We made the same comparison on December 7th (also ironically) 2015 in the post: Hitler redux.

And again on Sep 30, 2016 (Astounding similarities: Hitler in America. It’s happening now.)Image result for trump

We may not have been the first to call attention to the massive similarities between Trump and Hitler. Over the months, we were not the only ones. And surely we won’t be the last.

Trump is following the Hitlerian playbook and unfortunately, many of us Americans are following the German people’s playbook.

Hitler preyed on discontent. He told the German people they were being treated unfairly, and he alone could save them. They believed what they desperately wanted to believe. Some still do.

From a September 2016 article in Newsweek:

 

Trump is capitalizing on a longing for charismatic leadership, to which even highly developed Western democracies seem very susceptible when democratic structures fail to deliver all the desired outcomes.

There is a very real sense amongst a large part of the population that they have not been on the “winning side” for a long time.

Trump promised: “We’re gonna win so much you may even get tired of winning and you’ll say please, please Mr. President, It’s too much winning! We can’t take it anymore!”

The gap between rich and poor is getting wider, and in the process, the classical attributes of political leadership—education, expertise, eloquent speeches—have come to be seen not as problem-solving strategies, but as the identity markers of a social elite who are looking after their own interests only.

Even where new policies on healthcare, education, or job creation achieve their goals, they are not popular, because they are tinged with that smell of elitism that makes many ordinary people not feel valued by the political classes.

Trump has not been the first demagogue to capitalize on such sentiments.

Thus, when Senator Bernie Sanders proposed Medicare for All, he was ridiculed. It was “too good to be true.” The populace opted for Trump’s empty lies rather than accept Sanders’s substantive proposals.

If Trump is known for anything, it is his repeated use of the words, “Fake news.” Hitler used the term, “Lügenpresse” (lying press).

All dictators hate a free press. In “Trumpworld,” free speech is only for the Nazis, the white supremacists, and the KKK, and of course, for Donald Trump — not for newspaper reporters.

Trump wants news media to fawn over him as Breitbart and FOX do, and like the many, right-wing conspiracy blogs that still excuse Trump’s faults by focusing on Hillary’s Emails, Barack’s birth certificate, and Bill’s affairs. (They never mention Trump’s wife-cheating, his groping, his Trump University con, his compulsive lying, his incompetence, his notorious laziness, etc.)

If Trump had his way, he would bankrupt the mainstream media with lawsuits, or with military action, Putin style, Putin being one of Trump’s heroes.

A cowardly draft dodger, Trump longs for war. Perhaps North Korea will provide him with one. He seems to hope so.

How did we get here? How did the United States arrive at the same place as Nazi Germany?

Perhaps we should ask, why did the Republican party trade its soul for a political victory, knowing full well that Trump was evil for democracy, evil for America, and evil for the middle- and lower-income people?

The lust for power replaced the GOP’ moral center. It led to health care plans that would have cost millions of Americans their lives and tax plans that widen the Gap between the rich and the rest.

I understand and sympathize with Trump’s voters. They were desperate, unappreciated and so, they were consumed with hatred. Trump made many promises everyone knew he wouldn’t keep, but for desperate people, the heart needs to feel hope, even when the mind knows it is all a lie.

And of course, they need someone to blame, and Trump gave them that, too. Just as Hitler offered up for hatred, the Jews, and the Gypsies, Trump offers up the Mexicans, the undocumented, the Muslims, the immigrants, and the poor.

All are to be despised, as a balm to American self-pity.

Predictably, the man who promised to “drain the swamp” filled his government with swamp creatures — billionaires who care nothing for the people, as they try to undo the laws that protect the people — supposedly to provide jobs, but in reality to provide profits for rich investors.

And now, the GOP urgently tries to pass a tax bill that will benefit those swamp creatures most.

Today, 1/3 of America still hopes and prays that Trump’s lies were real, and that Trump’s GOP (Yes, it’s his now), really intends to help them, though that’s an obvious lie.

They gave away two of their most valuable possessions, their votes and their souls, and in return what did they get? The vague hope that poor pregnant women and undocumented immigrants will be punished. That is their sad reward.

In the end, these Trump backers, having closed their eyes to the obvious, will find themselves more desperate, less appreciated, and more consumed with hatred.

Their real reward: Their pockets will be emptier, and their mouths will be filled with ashes.

Here we are, like the people of Nazi Germany, like the people of other nations who traded freedom for a dictatorship, making that same mistake, again.

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

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The most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the have-mores and the have-less.

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 The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:

Ten Steps To Prosperity:
1. ELIMINATE FICA (Ten Reasons to Eliminate FICA )
Although the article lists 10 reasons to eliminate FICA, there are two fundamental reasons:
*FICA is the most regressive tax in American history, widening the Gap by punishing the low and middle-income groups, while leaving the rich untouched, and
*The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, neither needs nor uses FICA to support Social Security and Medicare.
2. FEDERALLY FUNDED MEDICARE — PARTS A, B & D, PLUS LONG TERM CARE — FOR EVERYONE (H.R. 676, Medicare for All )
This article addresses the questions:
*Does the economy benefit when the rich can afford better health care than can the rest of Americans?
*Aside from improved health care, what are the other economic effects of “Medicare for everyone?”
*How much would it cost taxpayers?
*Who opposes it?”
3. PROVIDE A MONTHLY ECONOMIC BONUS TO EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD IN AMERICA (similar to Social Security for All) (The JG (Jobs Guarantee) vs the GI (Guaranteed Income) vs the EB (Economic Bonus)) Or institute a reverse income tax.
This article is the fifth in a series about direct financial assistance to Americans:

Why Modern Monetary Theory’s Employer of Last Resort is a bad idea. Sunday, Jan 1 2012
MMT’s Job Guarantee (JG) — “Another crazy, rightwing, Austrian nutjob?” Thursday, Jan 12 2012
Why Modern Monetary Theory’s Jobs Guarantee is like the EU’s euro: A beloved solution to the wrong problem. Tuesday, May 29 2012
“You can’t fire me. I’m on JG” Saturday, Jun 2 2012

Economic growth should include the “bottom” 99.9%, not just the .1%, the only question being, how best to accomplish that. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) favors giving everyone a job. Monetary Sovereignty (MS) favors giving everyone money. The five articles describe the pros and cons of each approach.
4. FREE EDUCATION (INCLUDING POST-GRAD) FOR EVERYONE Five reasons why we should eliminate school loans
Monetarily non-sovereign State and local governments, despite their limited finances, support grades K-12. That level of education may have been sufficient for a largely agrarian economy, but not for our currently more technical economy that demands greater numbers of highly educated workers.
Because state and local funding is so limited, grades K-12 receive short shrift, especially those schools whose populations come from the lowest economic groups. And college is too costly for most families.
An educated populace benefits a nation, and benefitting the nation is the purpose of the federal government, which has the unlimited ability to pay for K-16 and beyond.
5. SALARY FOR ATTENDING SCHOOL
Even were schooling to be completely free, many young people cannot attend, because they and their families cannot afford to support non-workers. In a foundering boat, everyone needs to bail, and no one can take time off for study.
If a young person’s “job” is to learn and be productive, he/she should be paid to do that job, especially since that job is one of America’s most important.
6. ELIMINATE FEDERAL TAXES ON BUSINESS
Businesses are dollar-transferring machines. They transfer dollars from customers to employees, suppliers, shareholders and the federal government (the later having no use for those dollars). Any tax on businesses reduces the amount going to employees, suppliers and shareholders, which diminishes the economy. Ultimately, all business taxes reduce your personal income.
7. INCREASE THE STANDARD INCOME TAX DEDUCTION, ANNUALLY. (Refer to this.) Federal taxes punish taxpayers and harm the economy. The federal government has no need for those punishing and harmful tax dollars. There are several ways to reduce taxes, and we should evaluate and choose the most progressive approaches.
Cutting FICA and business taxes would be a good early step, as both dramatically affect the 99%. Annual increases in the standard income tax deduction, and a reverse income tax also would provide benefits from the bottom up. Both would narrow the Gap.
8. TAX THE VERY RICH (THE “.1%) MORE, WITH HIGHER PROGRESSIVE TAX RATES ON ALL FORMS OF INCOME. (TROPHIC CASCADE)
There was a time when I argued against increasing anyone’s federal taxes. After all, the federal government has no need for tax dollars, and all taxes reduce Gross Domestic Product, thereby negatively affecting the entire economy, including the 99.9%.
But I have come to realize that narrowing the Gap requires trimming the top. It simply would not be possible to provide the 99.9% with enough benefits to narrow the Gap in any meaningful way. Bill Gates reportedly owns $70 billion. To get to that level, he must have been earning $10 billion a year. Pick any acceptable Gap (1000 to 1?), and the lowest paid American would have to receive $10 million a year. Unreasonable.
9. FEDERAL OWNERSHIP OF ALL BANKS (Click The end of private banking and How should America decide “who-gets-money”?)
Banks have created all the dollars that exist. Even dollars created at the direction of the federal government, actually come into being when banks increase the numbers in checking accounts. This gives the banks enormous financial power, and as we all know, power corrupts — especially when multiplied by a profit motive.
Although the federal government also is powerful and corrupted, it does not suffer from a profit motive, the world’s most corrupting influence.
10. INCREASE FEDERAL SPENDING ON THE MYRIAD INITIATIVES THAT BENEFIT AMERICA’S 99.9% (Federal agencies)Browse the agencies. See how many agencies benefit the lower- and middle-income/wealth/ power groups, by adding dollars to the economy and/or by actions more beneficial to the 99.9% than to the .1%.
Save this reference as your primer to current economics. Sadly, much of the material is not being taught in American schools, which is all the more reason for you to use it.

The Ten Steps will grow the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and you.
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THE RECESSION CLOCK

Monetary Sovereignty
Federal Deficit — 1955 – Present. Vertical Bars are recessions
Monetary Sovereignty
Federal Deficit — 2004 – Present

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

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Economics and a tin foil hat

Image result for make america ignorant again

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It takes only two things to keep people in chains:

The ignorance of the oppressed
and the treachery of their leaders.

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Imagine you have been feeling unusually tired, so you visit your doctor, who performs various tests.  Here is the resultant conversation:

Doctor: Based on the results of your tests, you have severe anemia. You don’t have enough healthy red blood cells.
You: What do you recommend?
Doctor: Leeches.
You: But don’t leeches remove blood. How will that help?
Doctor: If you have too many red blood cells, eventually that will cause strokes, heart attacks, embolisms, even death. Excessive red blood cells is not sustainable.
You: But I thought I had too few red blood cells, not too many. Shouldn’t I be taking iron or vitamin B-12 or something?
Doctor. Oh, no. Excessive iron eventually will cause heart attack or heart failure, diabetes mellitus, osteoporosis, hypothyroidism, and a bunch of other symptoms. And too much vitamin B-12 eventually will cause a rare form of acne. Yes, excessive iron and B-12 are not sustainable.
You: When would the adverse effects of adding iron and vitamin B-12 to my diet occur.
Doctor: It’s impossible to say.
You: So what should I do?
Doctor: Leeches.

In summary, your doctor said you have too few red blood cells, then said the usual cures — iron and B-12 — cannot be sustained and will cause many diseases, and instead suggested removing your blood cells via leeches.

Can you draw any parallels with the following excerpt, which essentially expresses the beliefs of today’s economics:

Sustained Budget Deficits: Longer-Run U.S. Economic Performance and the Risk of Financial and Fiscal Disarray
Allen Sinai, Peter R. Orszag, and Robert E. Rubin, Brookings Institute

The U.S. federal budget is on an unsustainable path. In the absence of significant policy changes, federal government deficits are expected to total around $5 trillion over the next decade.

Such deficits will cause U.S. government debt, relative to GDP, to rise significantly. Thereafter, as the baby boomers increasingly reach retirement age and claim Social Security and Medicare benefits, government deficits and debt are likely to grow even more sharply.

The scale of the nation’s projected budgetary imbalances is now so large that the risk of severe adverse consequences must be taken very seriously, although it is impossible to predict when such consequences may occur.

Let’s pause to examine exactly what a federal deficit is. A federal deficit is the difference between federal tax collections and federal spending.

Thus, a federal deficit is the net number of dollars the federal government adds to the economy, aka the “private sector.”

Dollars are the lifeblood of our economy. Our economic growth is measured in dollars. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is our usual economic measure; it is a dollar measure.

Because GDP is a dollar measure, GDP rarely can grow while the dollar supply is falling

The graph below shows the essentially parallel paths of GDP growth vs. perhaps the most comprehensive measure of the dollar supply growth, Domestic Non-Financial Debt:

Because deficits and GDP growth go hand-in-hand, why do conventional economists argue against deficits? What are the “severe adverse consequences” to which the authors refer?

Again from the Brookings article, here is what the “science” of economics tells you:

Conventional analyses of sustained budget deficits demonstrate the negative effects of deficits on long-term economic growth.

This is what economists say, though the facts speak otherwise, as you easily can see from the above graph.

What school of thought deliberately ignores easily obtainable facts in favor of intuitive belief? No, not science. Religion.

Economics is a religion, dressed in the clothing of a science.

Under the conventional view, ongoing budget deficits decrease national saving, which reduces domestic investment and increases borrowing from abroad.

The authors make the amazing claim that adding dollars to the private sector reduces domestic investment.  How giving dollars to consumers and to businesses can reduce investment, never is explained, simply because it makes no sense, whatsoever.

. . . and increases borrowing from abroad.

Obviously, adding dollars to the private sector will not cause you or your business to borrow, so we assume the authors mean the federal government will have to borrow.

But the federal government is Monetarily Sovereign. It has the unlimited ability to create brand new dollars, ad hoc, every time it pays a creditor. It never can run short of dollars, unintentionally.

Not only does the federal government (unlike state and local governments, which are monetarily non-sovereign) not need to borrow, but indeed it does not borrow.

Those T-securities (T-bonds, T-notes, T-bills) which supposedly are evidence of borrowing, actually are evidence of accepting deposits in T-security accounts — similar to bank savings accounts.

The government issues T-securities, not to obtain those dollars it can create forever, but rather to help control interest rates, to provide safe dollar investments, and to provide a basis for the dollar being the world’s reserve currency.

The article then follows with pseudo-scientific gobbledegook, which I will try to explain:

Interest rates play a key role in how the economy adjusts. The reduction in national saving raises domestic interest rates, which dampens investment and attracts capital from abroad.

The Fed, not national saving, arbitrarily controls interest rates via the Fed funds rate. Actually, it is interest rates that increase saving rather than the other way around. Capital coming in from abroad is economically stimulative — a good thing.

The external borrowing that helps to finance the budget deficit is reflected in a larger current account deficit, creating a linkage between the budget deficit and the current account deficit.

The reduction in domestic investment (which lowers productivity growth) and the increase in the current account deficit (which requires that more of the returns from the domestic capital stock accrue to foreigners) both reduce future national income, with the loss in income steadily growing over time. 

But, wait. The authors express a concern about the “loss of future national income, ” meaning the economy will lose dollars.

But losing dollars is exactly what happens to the economy when the federal government runs a surplus. It is a federal deficit that adds dollars to the economy.

In short, conventional economists decry deficits that add dollars to the economy, while simultaneously decrying deficits they claim will subtract dollars from the economy.

This is science?

The authors of the article then go off on a magical mystery tour of what deficits will cause:

Substantial ongoing deficits may severely and adversely affect expectations and confidence, which in turn can generate a self-reinforcing negative cycle among the underlying fiscal deficit, financial markets, and the real economy:

  • As traders, investors, and creditors become increasingly concerned that the government would resort to high inflation to reduce the real value of government debt.

The common, nonsense idea is that inflation makes debt easier to pay with cheaper dollars. But so-called federal “debt” consists of T-security deposits, which the government pays off by simply transferring the dollars that exist in T-security accounts back to the checking accounts of T-security holders.

Whether, at the time of redemption, a dollar is “worth” $10 or $0.01 is completely irrelevant. Existing dollars, whatever their worth, are transferred. Period.

  • The fiscal and current account imbalances may also cause a loss of confidence among participants in foreign exchange markets and in international credit markets, as participants in those markets become alarmed not only by the ongoing budget deficits but also by related large current account deficits.

First, to clarify the gobbledegook, there may be a loss of confidence in a certain currency, but there never is a loss of confidence in “foreign exchange markets.”

Foreign exchange rates are determined by inflation, which in turn, is determined by interest rates and by product scarcity. When a nation raises its interest rates, it increases the demand for its currency. It is said to have “strengthened its currency.”

The U.S. has the financial ability to strengthen or weaken its currency at will, or simply to determine exchange rates at will.

  • The increase of interest rates, depreciation of the exchange rate, and decline in confidence can reduce stock prices and household wealth, raise the costs of financing to business, and reduce private-sector domestic spending.

Apparently, there are different levels of gobbledegook, because this last paragraph has reached a higher level yet.

“The increase of interest rates” and the “depreciation of the exchange rate” are exact opposites. The effect of increasing interest rates is to increase exchange rates. It’s like saying that increases of demand reduce prices. Total nonsense.

An increase in rates can reduce stock prices, but this does not “reduce household wealth.” Average household wealth is more associated with the total money supply (which is increased by federal deficits), and by the Gap between the rich and the rest (which is narrowed by deficit spending, especially on social programs.)

Incredibly, subsequent paragraphs exceed prevous gobbledegook standards. Here are a few of the “Henny Penny, the sky is falling” excerpts:

  • The disruptions to financial markets may impede the intermediation between lenders and borrowers
  • . . . potentially substantial increases in interest rates
  • . . . become relatively illiquid
  • . . . adversely affects the balance sheets of banks and other financial intermediaries;
  • . . . reduce business and consumer confidence
  • . . . discourage investment and real economic activity
  • . . . worsen the fiscal imbalance
  • . . . harmful impacts on the economy
  • . . . substantially magnify the costs
  • . . . asymmetries in the political difficulty of revenue increases and spending reductions

Oh, the list of problems goes on and on, and yet even a modest bit of scientific research shows these problems absolutely do not happen. How can we be so sure?

History.

Back in 1940, when the Henny Penny’s claimed the federal debt was a “ticking time bomb,“ the debt was $40 Billion. And every year thereafter, authors of “learned,” scientific, economics publications have used the “ticking time bomb” example or something similar, to “prove” the federal debt and deficit are “unsustainable.

Today, the federal debt has grown to $14 TRILLION, and we still are sustaining. The ticking time bomb still is ticking, and economists, having learned nothing, still write the same ridiculous articles.

Science changes because of discoveries. Read almost any science book from 100 years ago, and you will find it substantially out of date. And 100 years from now, today’s science books will be obsolete.

What does not change? Religion. The Torah, the Christian Bible, the Koran, all remain quite similar to what they were 100 years ago or 1000 years ago, with only the most minor of linguistic adjustments.

While science is based on evidence, religion is based on belief.

And that is why economics, as currently practiced, is a religion, or at best, a failed science, akin to astrology, phrenology, creationism, homeopathy and a tin foil hat.

Sadly, today, tomorrow, and in the future, you will continue to read the same anti-science about the federal debt. The religious are a stubborn people.

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

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•All we have are partial solutions; the best we can do is try.

•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 no matter how much it taxes its citizens.

•The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes..

•No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth.

•Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia.

•A growing economy requires a growing supply of money (GDP = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)

•Deficit spending grows the supply of money

•The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

•Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.

•Progressives 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 the rich and the rest.

•Austerity is the government’s method for widening the Gap between the rich and the rest.

•Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap between the rich and the rest..

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY