“Dark-age thinking” lacks imagination. It is anti-science, anti-art, and anti-exploration. It assures a lack of human progress because it can’t imagine what human progress looks like.
A hundred years ago, it would not have imagined the Internet, smart watches, smart phones, jet planes, GPS, supercomputers, 3-D printing, robotic surgery, antibiotics, genome editing, CRISPR, transistors, solar panels, and DNA structure.
A hundred years ago, Albert Einstein, using “useless” pure mathematics changed science. No one could have predicted what he discovered.
Today, our species faces many dangers to our survival: lack of food, lack of fresh water, air pollution, global warming, ocean rise, nuclear radiation, and new diseases.
Only science, preparedness, and our vision and will can protect us, or like so many species before us, we will disappear from the earth.
When schoolchildren ask, “Why do I have to learn math, art, history, or philosophy?” they exhibit the ignorance of youth. When adults ask, “Why do we spend money on pure science?” they exhibit dark-age thinking.
It is the fatal belief that learning must have an immediate, practical purpose, or it’s useless.
Here is just one example of dark-age thinking by our government:
Congressional approval of the 2024 federal budget earlier this year left NASA with roughly half a billion dollars less than the agency had in 2023 — and Mars science has taken the biggest hit.
Using its drill, NASA’s Perseverance rover (lower left) collected material from a rock nicknamed Rochette in September 2021 as part of a plan to bring back samples to Earth. The agency’s recent budget woes have placed the sample return project in turmoil.
Engineers are scrambling to figure out how a long-planned mission to bring samples back from the Red Planet might still be accomplished.
The dark-age thinker objects, “Who needs samples from Mars? Why waste the money?”
Probes intended for other planets and moons are delayed, and the venerable Chandra X-ray Observatory, which launched in 1999 and has transformed our view of energetic phenomena in the universe, is potentially on the chopping block.
Between 2014 and 2023, funding had increased more than 3 percent on average compared with the previous year.
Three percent is less than inflation, so the realNASA budget has been falling. Now, not just the real, but the numerical budget will fall more rapidly.
NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission had intended to bring rock and soil samples to Earth. The mission is on hold as NASA tries to determine if it can be done at all.
The rocks and soil could answer fundamental questions about the formation of the inner solar system and the history of water on Mars, and perhaps reveal signs of past life on the planet.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, largely responsible for designing and building the components of sample return, lost hundreds of millions of dollars functionally overnight.
Uncertainty over the budget had already prompted the center to dismiss 530 employees.
Scientific exploration and progress beget employment and economic growth. The dark-age thinker can’t see that.
A dedicated orbiter to explore the ice giant Uranus has seen its timeline pushed back. Because ice giants are among the most common types of exoplanets being discovered around other stars, researchers are keen to understand those in our own solar system.
DaVinci and Veritas, two missions to explore Venus, are also being delayed, and there’s now more uncertainty about which, if any, other probes on the drawing board — those intending to bring back samples from a comet or fly through the plumes of Saturn’s moon Enceladus — will go forward.
All this will mean less near-term researchon the formation and dynamics of planets and their moons.
“We forget how little we’ve explored the solar system we live in,” Dreier says.
Scientists are crying out to explore it, he adds, and that’s all being pushed back.
Powerful shock waves traveling through the guts of a dead star named Tycho’s Remnant glow brightly in high-energy wavelengths, allowing NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory to take this beautiful picture.
The budget for this year and expectations for next year have prompted NASA to conduct a review of its existing flagship telescopes, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope, to see if either can be wound down.
NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory remains healthy but constrained funding at the agency could see it shut down.
Both were launched as part of the first generation of Great Observatories in the 1990s and early 2000s, and they’ve already seen their companions, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope, shut off.
The dark-age thinkers ask, “What good is all this Mars, Venus, and Uranus exploration? What has Hubble really done for us? Why spend the money?”
There are three answers. First, the money is free. The U.S. federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, has the infinite ability to create money without collecting a penny in taxes.
The U.S. government never can run short of dollars.
Second, the dollars grow the economy. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports. The more money the government and NASA spend, the more the economy grows.
Even totally “wasted” dollars, grow the economy, and cost taxpayers nothing.
The third, most important answer is that scientific research brings many benefits we can’t even imagine. It’s why they call it “research” and not just “development.”
Research breeds discovery which breeds more discovery. No one can foresee what useful things will evolve from research. Everything in our current world evolved from earlier discoveries, beginning with the creation of the wheel, flint tools, and the use of fire.
Stop reading now and skim thispartial list of NASA’s practical benefits to America and humankind.
Then, consider the International Space Station alone, only a third of NASA’s budget:
NASA’s current water recycling system on ISS is the Water Recovery System, part of the Environmental Control and Life Support System.20 Breakthroughs from 20 YearsFundamental disease research:Alzheimer’s Disease. Parkinson’s Disease. Cancer. Asthma. Heart Disease. If any of these conditions has affected your life, so has space station research.New water purification systems:Unfortunately, many people around the world lack access to clean water. At-risk areas can gain access to advanced filtration and purification systems through technology that was developed for the space station, enabling the astronauts living aboard to recycle 93% of their water.Drug development using protein crystals: Protein crystal growth experiments conducted aboard the space station have provided insights into numerous disease treatments, from cancer to gum disease to Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.Methods to combat muscle atrophy and bone loss: Space studies have contributed greatly to our knowledge of bone and muscle loss in astronauts – and how to mitigate those effects. The knowledge gained also applies to people on Earth dealing with diseases such as osteoporosis.Exploring the fifth state of matter: 25 years ago, scientists first produced a fifth state of matter, called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), on Earth. In 2018, NASA’s Cold Atom Lab became the first facility to produce that state of matter in space. This achievement may provide insight into fundamental laws of quantum mechanics.Tissue chips are built from human cells. Also called organs-on-chips, they mimic the structure and function of our heart, kidneys, lungs and other organ systems.Understanding how our bodies change in microgravity: When humans head to Mars, we need to know what challenges we face. Long-term stays aboard the space station have uncovered unexpected ways that the human body changes in microgravity.Testing tissue chips in space: Tissue chips are roughly thumb-drive-sized devices that contain human cells in a 3D matrix, representing functions of an organ. Chips have been sent to station, seeking to better understand the impact of microgravity on human health and to translate that understanding to improved health on Earth.Stimulating the low-Earth orbit economy: From satellite deployment to in-space research, a vibrant commercial space economy has developed, with a value that now exceeds $345 billion. The space station has been a key part of supporting that growth.CubeSatscan be used to test instruments, conduct science experiments, enable commercial applications and support educational projects.Growing food in microgravity: The ability to grow supplemental food can help humans explore farther from Earth. Many techniques for growing plants have been explored aboard the space station to prepare for these missions. On August 10, 2015, astronauts sampled their first space-grown salad, and astronauts now are growing radishes in space.Deployment of CubeSats from station: CubeSats are one of the smallest types of satellites and provide a cheaper way to perform science and technology demonstrations in space. More than 250 CubeSats have now been deployed from the space station, jumpstarting research and satellite companies.Monitoring our planet from a unique perspective: The capacity to host varying complements of instruments, both internal and external, has evolved the station into a robust platform for researchers studying Earth’s water, air, land masses, vegetation, and more while providing them additional views beyond those of NASA’s typical Earth remote-sensing satellites.Collecting data on more than 100 billion cosmic particles: The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer – 02 has provided researchers around the globe with data that can help determine what the universe is made of and how it began.Discovery of steadily burning cool flames: When scientists burned fuel droplets in the Flame Extinguishing Experiment (FLEX) study, something unexpected occurred. A heptane fuel droplet appeared to extinguish, but actually continued to burn without a visible flame at temperatures two-and-a-half times cooler than a typical candle.A better understanding of pulsars and black holes: Two tools installed on the outside of the space station, NICER and MAXI, have worked in tandem to advance our knowledge of pulsars and black holes.Student access to an orbiting laboratory: Companies and professors are not the only ones using the space station for microgravity research. Station has given elementary- to college-aged students access to science in space and the opportunity to study microgravity’s effects.Capability to identify unknown microbes in space: Having the ability to identify microbes in real time in space without the need to send them back to Earth for identification would be revolutionary for the world of microbiology and space exploration. The Genes in Space-3 team turned that possibility into reality in 2017.Opening up the field of colloid research: Toothpaste, 3D printing, pharmaceuticals, and detecting shifting sands on Mars may not seem related to each other at all, yet each stands to benefit from improvements made thanks to research on colloids aboard the space station.The evolution of fluid physics research: Fluids cover our planet, but sending them to space can help us better understand how they flow. The study of fluids in space has progressed from fundamental research into the testing of technology applications ranging from advanced medical devices to heat transfer systems.3D printing in microgravity:The first item was 3D printed on the space station in 2014. Since then, we have explored 3D printing using recycled materials and even printing human tissue.Responding to natural disasters: With crew handheld camera imagery as a core component, the station has become an active participant in orbital data collection to support disaster response activities both within the U.S. and abroad.
Dark-age thinking cannot anticipate the seemingly “useless” discoveries that later have great value to humankind.
Dark-age thinking is why our public schools are underfunded, our teachers are underpaid, and millions of our children are poorly educated. All that brainpower is wasted.
It’s why we have hunger, homelessness, and poverty while our government has the infinite ability to fund food production and distribution, home-building and anti-poverty measures.
It’s why millions don’t have clean drinking water while governments have the infinite ability to fund water purification research, development, and installation.
It’s why people can’t afford healthcare, the aged live untended, and many diseases don’t have treatments.
In so many ways, we have little progressed from cave-dwelling savages, worshipping gods while belittling science.
There are those who give their limited funds to religion but oppose the government giving its unlimitedfunds to research.
It makes no sense. It’s blind. And that is the very definition of dark-age thinking.
It’s blind.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary SovereigntyTwitter: @rodgermitchellSearch #monetarysovereigntyFacebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.
Seems like a simple question — “When will the U.S. government run out of U.S. dollars?”
Sadly, the media writers, economists, and politicians don’t seem to know. Some claim “soon.” Some claim “eventually.” A few say “never.”
Scott Horsley
For instance, Scott Horsley:
Scott Horsley is NPR’s Chief Economics Correspondent. He reports on ups and downs in the national economy as well as fault lines between booming and busting communities.Horsley spent a decade on the White House beat, covering both the Trump and Obama administrations. Before that, he was a San Diego-based business reporter for NPR, covering fast food, gasoline prices, and the California electricity crunch of 2000. He also reported from the Pentagon during the early phases of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.Horsley earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and an MBA from San Diego State University.
Mr. Horsley seems to believe the government will run out of money in 2033 or maybe in 2036. I say that because of the article he wrote:
Congress has less than a decade to fix Social Security before the popular program runs short of cash, threatening a sharp cut in benefits for nearly 60 million retirees and family members, according to a government report released Monday.
Social Security (SS) is an agency of the U.S. government. The only two ways SS can run out of dollars are:
If Congress and the President want it to run out, or
If the U.S. government runs out.
Can the government run out of its sovereign currency, which it created from scratch in the 18th century?
For millions of years, there was no U.S., no U.S. laws, and no U.S. dollars. Then suddenly, in the late 1780s, a group of men created a government from thin air.
This government passed laws, also from thin air. Some of the laws created the U.S. dollar, again from thin air.
That government created as many laws as it wished, and those laws created as many dollars as the law-writers wished.
It all was arbitrary.
So, returning to the question, “When will the U.S. government run out of U.S. dollars?”
The report from Social Security trustees predicts the retirement program’s trust fund will be exhausted in November of 2033.
Despit what you repeatedly have been told, it isn’t a trust fund. It’s just a line item in a balance sheet. (See: “The phony trust fund controversy.“) The government can change those numbers to whatever it chooses at any time it chooses.
Congress votes; the President approves; someone presses a computer key; and a one billion dollar “trust fund” instantly becomes a fifty billion dollar “trust fund.”
At that point, benefits would automatically be cut by 21%, unless lawmakers adopt changes before then.
Among the laws the government created were the laws creating Social Security.
As an agency of the government, Social Security is funded the same way as every other agency: Congress votes, and the President approves.
Congress and the President have unlimited freedom to decide how much any agency will receive:
Mandatory spending – funding for Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits, and other spending required by law. This typically uses over half of all funding. (Congress and the President make the law)
Discretionary spending – federal agency funding. Congress sets funding levels for these each year. This usually accounts for around a third of all funding. (Congress and the President set the levels)
Interest on the debt – this usually uses less than 10 percent of all funding. Congress and the President decide how much interest to pay and tax).
In short, every penny of federal spending ultimately is decided by Congress and the President. It all returns to the fundamental question, “When will the U.S. government run out of U.S. dollars?”
By now, I’m sure you know the answer: The U.S. government cannot unintentionally run short of U.S. dollars.People don’t realize that FICA doesn’t fund Social Security and Medicare and that those trust funds are fictions.
Even if the government had to pay someone a billion, a trillion, or a billion trillion dollars today, it could do so simply by passing a law and pressing a computer key.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan:“A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency. There is nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody. The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print the money to do that.”
Former Federal Reserve Chairman 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. It’s not tax money… We simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account.”
Statement from the St. Louis Fed:“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 answer to the question, “When will the U.S. government run out of U.S. dollars?” is a resounding, NEVER, unless Congress and the President make that arbitrary decision.
You and I are limited in our money supply. Your state, county, and city governments are limited. All businesses are limited. Banks are limited. Even euro nations are limited. All are monetarily non-sovereign.
They were not the original creators of the U.S. dollar.
By contrast, the U.S. government is Monetarily Sovereign. It was the creator of the dollar. It cannot unintentionally run short — not now, not in 2033, not in 2036, not ever.
So why do writers like Scott Horsley think SS and Medicare, agencies of the federal government, will run short?
There’s some good news in the new forecast. Thanks to higher-than-expected worker productivity and a decline in expected disabilities, Social Security isn’t burning through cash as fast as trustees predicted a year ago.
Still, the long-term demographic challenges haven’t gone away.
A growing number of baby boomers are collecting benefits, while there are fewer people in the workforce paying taxes for each retiree.
Given today’s low birthrates, that mismatch is not expected to change for decades, although a surge in immigration helps.
Remember what Ben Bernanke said, “It’s not tax money… We simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account.”
The federal government does not use your tax dollars to fund its spending. You (and Mr. Horsley) may be shocked to learn that every dollar you send to the U.S. Treasury is destroyed upon receipt.
When you pay taxes, the dollars come out of your bank account, where they were part of the “M2 money supply measure.”
When the dollars reach the Treasury, they instantly disappear from M2 and are not found in any money supply measure.
They join the Treasury’s infinite money supply. Adding dollars to infinite dollars still yields infinite dollars.
These dollars, which are not part of any money supply, no longer can be found. They have been destroyed.
Why does the federal government collect taxes if not to fund spending?
To control the economy by taxing what it wishes to discourage and by giving tax breaks to what it wishes to reward.
To assure demand for the U.S. dollar by requiring taxes to be paid in dollars.
To make you believe dollars are limited by taxes, so you will not request benefits. (This doesn’t discourage the rich from requesting and getting tax benefits unavailable to you.)
Proposed FixesCongress could fix the problem by raising taxes that support Social Security, reducing retirement benefits, or some combination of the two. But a politically palatable solution has been elusive.
Mr. Horsley can think of only two fixes: Raise taxes or cut benefits. Both fixes predictably would impact the middle and lower income groups, thereby widening theincome/wealth/power Gapbetween the rich and the rest.
This is exactly what the rich want because the wider the Gap, the richer they are. Increasing your taxes and lowering your benefits makes the rich richer.
And that is precisely what the rich bribe the media, the economists, and the politicians to do.
It’s not that Mr. Horsley himself has been bribed. He may simply be following the “party line” created by others who have been bribed — just going with the flow, and not thinking about the reality that the federal government can’t unintentionally run short of dollars.
“When you see the two major candidates running for president tripping over themselves to promise what they won’t do to fix the problem, you have to worry because those kinds of reforms really start at the top,” says Maya Macguineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Ah, yes, the famous Maya Macguineas, who repeatedly implies that the federal government is running out of dollars — now there is a “reliable” source.
The Biden administration has pledged not to touch Social Security benefits.
“Seniors spent a lifetime working to earn the benefits they receive,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who leads the trustees, said in a statement.
“We are committed to steps that would protect and strengthen these programs that Americans rely on for a secure retirement.”
Yes, yes, blah, blah, blah. “Committed to steps,” “Protect and strengthen.” And more blah, blah, blah. But what exactly are those steps?
Congressional Democrats have proposed higher taxes on the wealthy to support Social Security.
Congressional Republicans have balked at that, instead calling for reducing the benefit formula and raising the retirement age for younger workers.
The classic Democrat/Republican false choices. The Dems want to soak the rich. The GOP wants to soak the rest of us.
“Those who want to cut Social Security couch it in affordability,” says Nancy Altman, who heads the advocacy group Social Security Works.
“But of course, there’s no question we can afford it. It’s really a question of values. And as polarized as we are, we’re not polarized over this.”
Altman is confident that lawmakers will find a solution before automatic cuts take effect.
“If they didn’t act, not only would they all be voted out of office,” she says. “They couldn’t even remain in Washington. They’d be chased down the street.”
Why aren’t they already being chased? Because the public has been fed so many lies by so many “reliable sources,” the people don’t realize they are being lied to.
On first reading of this post, most people will think, “That can’t be true.” But it’s true.
The federal government could fund a comprehensive, no-deductible Medicare for every man, woman, and child in America and a generous Social Security program for everyone, all without collecting a single penny in taxes.
Yes, there’s no question we can afford it. So? So? AFFORD IT!
But the clock is ticking, and delay has already been costly.
“Every year the trustees warn us we have to make changes and the sooner we make them, the better and easier it will be,” says Macguineas. “And every year we fail to make those changes.”
Medicare and disability solvencyWhile Social Security’s retirement program is in danger of running short of cash, a separate program that supports disabled people appears to be solvent for the long term, trustees said.
Medicare’s finances have also improved somewhat in the last year, thanks to a strong economy and lower-than-expected spending. Still, the program which provides health care for nearly 67 million people, is expected to face its own cash crunch in 2036.
You have been fed lie after lie after lie. Your information sources wring their hands in mock horror that one day soon, the federal government will run short of dollars, perhaps right after the universe runs short of stars and politicians become honest.
Even the densest among us can see the solution: The federal government should pay for Social Security and Medicare, period.Eliminate FICA. It doesn’t fund SS or Medicare. It doesn’t fund anything. Those FICA dollars are destroyed upon receipt.
FICA serves only as a convenient excuse (convenient for the rich) to limit and cut your SS and Medicare benefits, thus widening the income/wealth/power Gap and making the rich richer and you poorer.
In technical terms, that pisses me off, and it should piss you off, too. What are you going to do about it?
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary SovereigntyTwitter: @rodgermitchellSearch #monetarysovereigntyFacebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.
In our previous discussions, we’ve introduced you to Gap Psychology, a concept that fuels the desire to widen the income/wealth/power Gap below and to narrow the Gap above.
This psychological phenomenon not only perpetuates social disparities but also has dire implications for our environment.
The very rich want wide Gaps because, without Gaps, no one would be rich. We all would be the same. The wider the Gaps, the richer the rich, and the poorer the poor, i.e., “inequality.”
The rich are a major cause of global warming.
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 our lives.
The rich bribe our thought leaders to tell us wide Gaps are just and necessary, a result of innate superiority and hard work — that the rich and the poor have earned their places.
The rich bribe the media through ownership and advertising dollars.
They bribe economists through university endowments and jobs in think tanks. They bribe politicians through campaign contributions and promises of jobs in the industry.
The rich try to convince us that federal benefits are unaffordable and unsustainable, but we have the power to demand these benefits and make a significant change in narrowing the Gap and protecting the environment.
It’s part of the Big Lie that taxpayers fund such benefits as Medicare, Social Security, poverty aids, college loan forgiveness, and other benefits to the middle- and lower-income groups. (No mention is made of taxpayers funding tax breaks for the rich.)
But in a Monetarily Sovereign government like ours, taxpayers fund nothing. (Taxpayers do fund monetarily non-sovereign state and local government spending.)
All federal spending is funded by federal government money creation, ad hoc. Federal tax dollars, unlike state/local government tax dollars, are destroyed upon receipt.
The sole purposes of federal taxes are:
To control the economy by taxing what the government wishes to discourage and by giving tax breaks to what the government wishes to reward.
To assure demand for the U.S. dollar by requiring taxes be paid in dollars.
Here are excerpts from a NewScientist Magazine article describing another problem caused by the Gap, aka “inequality”:
Inequality is a major obstacle to sustainability. The super-rich are an environmental horror story that we can’t ignore. By Graham Lawton
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, the average greenhouse gas emissions of someone in the richest 10 per cent of global society are around 20 times the average of someone in the poorest 50 per cent.
Research by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute found the world’s richest 1 per cent collectively emit the same as the poorest two-thirds.
A new book by Ingrid Robeyns puts this in stark personal terms. In Limitarianism: The case against extreme wealth, she calculates that to get to net zero, the average per capita carbon footprint needs to be 2 tonnes a year. The European average is 8 tonnes.
The top 1 per cent emit over 100 tonnes, with billionaires emitting a mind-blowing 8000 tonnes, mostly through the use of private jets and superyachts.
There are very few billionaires, but their consumption is only part of the equation. Huge inequality is bad for everyone – and the planet.
In a recent webinar about the book, Pickett said: “What The Spirit Level showed was that economic inequality, specifically income inequality, was related to a whole range of different problems: health problems, issues to do with human capital development, such as educational attainment and social mobility, and everything to do with relationships.
The crucial point is that inequality seems to affect almost all of society.” In the years since 2009, the evidence for this has only grown stronger.
As for the environment, inequality isn’t just bad for the obvious reasons.
A recent paper in Nature Climate Change makes a compelling case that inequality is a major obstacle to sustainability, because people at the lower end of the income spectrum don’t have the resources – money and time – to make the necessary lifestyle changes.
Not only does inequality limit people’s opportunities to make sustainable choices, it also drives unsustainable consumption at lower income levels.
Humans are hardwired for “social evaluative threat” – anxiety about how we are seen by others.
This threat induces a type of stress called status anxiety. Subconsciously, we are all evaluating where we stand in the economic pecking order and trying to climb to the next rung, or at least not slide down.
One of the easiest ways to alleviate status anxiety is conspicuous consumption.
The cause for “status anxiety” is “Gap Psychology.” You can read more about Gap Psychology here, here, here, and many places elsewhere in this blog.
In any society, the poorest people have the highest levels of status anxiety and the richest the least. But here’s the rub: in more unequal societies, status anxiety is higher across the board.
One study found that in the most equal societies, the poorest have a status anxiety score of 2.2 out of 5, as judged by their degree of agreement with questions such as “others look down on me because of my job situation or income”.
The richest score about 1.8. In the most unequal societies, the scores are 2.7 and 2.1. In other words, the richest people in very unequal societies have roughly the same level of status anxiety as the poorest in more equal ones.
How do people respond to status anxiety? In part by consuming high-status goods.
Multiple research projects have found that people living in highly unequal parts of the US tend to spend more on swanky cars and designer clothes, which have a very large carbon footprint.
“Status competition driving consumerism upward is a huge obstacle to moving towards sustainability,” said Wilkinson in the webinar with Pickett.
Many Western societies are still tolerating, or even encouraging, eye-watering levels of inequality.
But they also underestimate the obscene wealth held by a few people who emit more than just greenhouse gases. It is a tough argument to make, but it has to be made.
Louboutin shoes: Affordable. Saving the world: Unaffordable.
As Wilkinson said: “We cannot solve the environmental crisis without solving the inequality crisis.”
Gap Psychology dictates that the last thing the rich want is to solve the inequality crisis. It’s what makes them rich.
That is why they bribe the media, politicians, and the economists to tell you various forms of the Big Lie in economics, including such lies as:
Social Security and Medicare will run short of money because fewer workers are supporting more older people.
To prevent Social Security and Medicare from running short of money, FICA must be increased and/or benefits must be reduced.
The federal deficit and debt are unaffordable and unsustainable.
Taxpayers pay for federal spending.
Comprehensive, no-deductible Medicare for All, Social Security for All, increased poverty aids, free college for all who want it, and other benefits for the middle- and lower-income groups are unaffordable.
All of the above are untrue. They could not exist without the active counter messaging by your information sources.
They want you to believe the Big Lie that the finances of our Monetarily Sovereign government are the same as your personal finances.
The federal government not only can afford to fund all of the benefits to you, while also funding the efforts to counter global warming.
The rich want you to believe that either global warming doesn’t exist, or if it exists, the costs to end it are too great for the government to fund, or for taxpayers to fund. All lies.
The government has the infinite ability to fund anything, without collecting a penny in taxes. To admit that, your information sources also would have to admit paying for your benefits also are affordable.
But that would narrow the Gap and make the rich less rich.
The sole benefits the rich allow are the tax breaks that only they can access. Those supposedly are “affordable” and “sustainable.”
Meanwhile, life on earth is threatened as the climate becomes less survivable. Eventually, the rich will discover that they need to support more equality for them to remain rich.
But that may be too late to save the world.
There’s still time to contact your Congressperson, tell them you are quite aware that the federal government can create infinite money without taxing or borrowing, and can provide far more benefits than it currently does.
Tell them the Gap is not sustainable, and the rich may have the money, but not the votes. Demand federal benefits for those who are not rich.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary SovereigntyTwitter: @rodgermitchellSearch #monetarysovereigntyFacebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.
Debt is an obligation that requires one party, the debtor, to pay money or otherwise withheld from another party, the creditor. Debt may be owed by a sovereign state , country, local government, company, or individual.
Loans, bonds, notes, and mortgages are all types of debt.
Here is what an AI (Artificial Intelligence) says about federal debt. Read it, keeping in mind that the Monetarily Sovereign U.S. government has the infinite ability to create its own sovereign currency.
As we will discuss, the so-called federal debt isn’t debt and it isn’t federal.
The U.S. government never, unintentionally, can run short of U.S. dollars:
The federal debt of the United States is the total national debt owed by the federal government to Treasury security holders.
It encompasses the accumulated borrowing and the associated interest owed to investors who purchased these securities.
Federal debt is the same as national debt?? Immediately we arrive at confusion because “national” debt can include the debt of the non-federal (private) sector, i.e., the total of mortgages, car loans, business loans, etc., and state/county/city debt.
Because the federal government is Monetarily Sovereign and the other entities are monetarily non-sovereign, one rightly should assume that federal debt should be treated differently.
Let’s break it down further:
Federal Deficits:
Federal deficits occur when the government spends more money than it collects in revenue during a fiscal year. To cover these deficits, the government borrows money by issuing Treasury bonds, bills, and other securities.
These deficits contribute to the overall national debt because they represent the accumulated borrowing over time.
Treasury Securities:
Treasury securities are financial instruments issued by the U.S. Department of the Treasury to raise funds for government operations.
These securities are issued to the public and other entities, including individuals, corporations, state or local governments, foreign governments, and other non-federal entities.
Federal Debt Held by the Public:
The federal debt held by the public consists of securities held outside the government. It includes:
Interest-bearing marketable securities: These are marketable Treasury securities (bills, notes, bonds, TIPS, and FRN) held by various entities.
Interest-bearing nonmarketable securities: These include Government Account Series held by fiduciary and certain deposit funds, foreign series, state and local government series, domestic series, and savings bonds.
Non-interest-bearing marketable and nonmarketable securities: These include matured and other types of securities.
The total federal debt held by the public is calculated based on face value less net unamortized premiums and discounts, including accrued interest.
The federal debt represents the total outstanding obligationsowed by the U.S. government, including both deficits and the issuance of Treasury securities. It reflects the financial position of the government and its ability to meet its obligations.
That is generally what most people believe. It is wrong on several counts.
First, the federal debt does not “reflect the financial position of the government and its ability to meet its obligations.The federal government has the infinite ability to meet its obligations.
Deficit reductions (red line) result in recessions (vertical gray bars), which are cured by deficit increases.Even the COVID recession of 2020 was cured by the increase in federal spending — the so-called “debt” — that year.
Read it again while again keeping in mind the Monetarily Sovereign U.S. government has the infinite ability to create its own sovereign currency. It never, unintentionally, can run short of U.S. dollars.
Now ask yourself: Why would the federal government borrow dollars? The answer: It doesn’t.
Notice the definitions of federal debt encompass two completely different things:
The total of federal deficits, i.e. the net total difference between what the government has spent and what it has received in taxes.
The total of Treasury Security accounts.
1. Total Federal of Deficits: In most years, the federal government spends more than it receives in taxes. This is called a “deficit.” Over the years these deficits total to what is called the “federal debt.”
All forms of debt require at least one debtor and at least one creditor. But with regard to federal deficits, who is the debtor and who is the creditor, and what is owed?
A quick response might be that the government is the debtor, and those supplying the government with goods and services would be the creditors. But that quick response would be wrong.
Although the federal “debt” is upwards of $30 trillion, the federal government does not owe its suppliers $30 trillion. They all have been paid.
Clearly, the total of deficits is not federal debt. There are no creditors, no debtor, and nothing is owed.
2. The Total of Treasury Security Accounts: Are they “federal debt”? If so, how and why did the “debt” occur.
Look back at the definitions: The Treasury Securities are bills, notes, and bonds, issued by the federal government to raise funds for government operations.
A “bill” is a request for payment of money owed, or the piece of paper on which it is written. In the private sector, a bill is created by a creditor and sent to a debtor as a demand for payment. The way most people understand it.
But federal terminology is diametrically different. Here, the “debtor” (the government) creates and issues the T-bill and the creditor buys it, as though it were a bond.
Consider a dollar bill. It is not a request for payment by a creditor, but rather a document created by the debtor — the federal government, which owes the holder one dollar. The dollar bill itself is not the dollar. It is an IOU for a dollar.
The dollar is just a number in the federal government’s financial books.
You cannot see, feel, smell, or taste a dollar. It has no form or substance. If someone asked you what does the number “five” look like would your answer be: “5,” or “V,” or “(2+3);” or the binary “101,” or “√25.”
Although you can describe a five dollar bill, you cannot say what five dollars look like. Dollars result from laws, and again, no one can say what a law looks like. Like dollars, laws are just concepts, not physical entities.
That fact that dollars are not physical gives the federal government the infinite ability to create them just by pressing computer keys.
But that’s a minor, though confusing, semantic issue. The major, and even more confusing, semantic question: Why does a Monetarily Sovereign entity, having the infinite ability to create dollars, ever borrow dollars?
As two former Chairmen of the Federal Reserve have said:
Alan Greenspan:“A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency. There is nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody. The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print the money to do that.”
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.”
Question: If the U.S. government cannot become insolvent, can create as much money as it wants, and can pay any debt, why does it borrow dollars? Why does it pay interest when it can produce as many dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost?
Answer: It doesn’t borrow, and the interest is produced at no cost.
Because of words like “bill,” “note.” and “bond,” many people, including even economists, believe these represent federal borrowing and debt.
They do not. The federal government never borrows dollars.It creates all the dollars it needs by spending dollars. Spending is how the government creates new dollars. The process is:
When an agency of the federal government pays an invoice (a bill) from a creditor, it sends instructions (not dollars) to the creditor’s bank. The instructions may be in the form of a check or a wire (“Pay to the order of ____”)
The bank obeys the instructions by increasing the balance in the creditor’s checking account. At that instant, new dollars are created and added to the M2 money supply measure.
The bank balances its books by informing the Federal Reserve of the instructions, which debits the government’s account.
At no time are any physical dollars exchanged because there are no physical dollars. It’s all numbers in bookkeeping accounts.
But what is the purpose of those T-security accounts? They have two purposes, neither of which is to provide spending money for the government:
A. To provide a safe place to store unused dollars, which stabilizes the dollar. Because dollars have no physical existence, they can’t be stored in a box and watched. So, it is especially important that large, unused sums be kept on trusted books
No books are more trusted with dollars than the U.S. government’s.
B. To help the Fed control interest rates. Because T-securities are known to be safe, the interest paid by federal storage sets a floor for all private sector interest rates.
T-security accounts resemble bank safe deposit boxes in that the contents are not owed to the depositors and not used by the bank. They are not federal in that the contents of the accounts are wholly owned by the depostors. The federal government never touches those dollars.
Just as they are not debts, they also are not federal. To close an account, the bank and the government simply return the contents to their owners, the depositors. The government does not owe the money because it never takes ownership of the money.
Why then, does the federal government need to lend rather than give money (for instance, student loans) or need to collect taxes.
It doesn’t.
The federal government could forgive all student loans and continue spending forever, all without collecting a single penny in taxes. It could accomplish this simply by creating dollars.
Some claim that “excessive” federal deficit spending would cause inflation. That claim is false; the reasons are described here. While a government response to inflation may be to print currency, the cause of all inflations has been shortages of critical goods and services.
The most recent inflation was caused not by federal spending, which had been go on for many years, but by new, COVID-relaed shortages of oil, food, computer chips, lumber, paper, shipping, steel, and many other products, and labor.
While state/local taxes and borrowing help monetarily non-sovereign government pay for things, the purpose of federal taxes is not to pay for things but rather:
To control the economy by taxing what the government wishes to discourage and by giving tax breaks to what the government wishes to reward.
To support demand for the U.S. dollar by requiring taxes be paid in dollars.
But the biggest, unofficial reason for taxes is to support the myth that federal debt is paid by taxes, and that taxes are necessary to fund spending. It’s a myth promulgated by the people who really run America, the rich.
They are rich because of the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest. The wider the Gap, the richer they are.
The debt/taxation myth limits the federal spending that supports the middle- and the lower-income groups, but allows for the federal tax breaks that are given to the rich. Contrary to popular belief, federal taxation widens the Gap between the rich and the rest, making the rich richer.
Without the debt/taxation myth we could fund free, comprehensive, no-deductible Medicare for every man, woman, and child in America, no-FICA Social Security for everyone, an end to poverty in America, free college for everyone who wants it, and many other benefits (free public transportation, housing support, local infrastructure improvements, lower local taxes, etc.) all of which are of no interest to the rich.
Donald Trump didn’t pay less taxes than you paid the past ten years, not just because he cheated, but also because, being rich, he took advantage of the tax breaks that you can’t.
Tax breaks are financially the same to the federal government as such benefits as Social Security and Medicare, the difference being there is no financial limit put on tax breaks while the benefits are limited by tax collections.
SUMMARY
Unlike state/local governments, businesses, you and me, the federal government is Monetarily Sovereign. It cannot unintentionally run short of dollars. It can pay any financial obligation immediately.
The federal government and its taxpayers are not burdened by federal debt. The federal government does not borrow dollars. It creates dollars ad hoc, by spending.
People have complained about the fictional “federal debt” since 1940, calling it a “ticking time bomb.”yet after all these years the ticking time bomb hasn’t exploded. In that time, the “federal debt” rose from $40 billion to $30 trillion, the economy is healthy, the government is paying its bills, and all the scare stories have proved to be false.
The federal debt, whether it be the total of deficits or the total of T-securities, neither is federal nor debt. It is not a burden on taxpayers nor on the federal government. It doesn’t cause inflation or recession.
Deficit spending is necessary to grow the economy and attempts to reduce deficit spending have caused causes recessions and depressions.
Accepting deposits into T-bill, note, and bond accounts does not constitute borrowing or debt, for a Monetarily Sovereign entity never borrows its own sovereign currency.
It’s not debt if there is nothing owed, nothing borrowed, no creditors, no debtors, an no payment burden.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 