A Challenge To The CRFB

This is a challenge to the CRFB.

To: Maya MacGuineas, President;

I recently received an Email from you, which I will quote in its entirety.

Congress has until December 16th to fund the government and avoid a federal shutdown. If they avoid that, they’ll likely have done so with the same tired Washington tactic of promising billions in new deficit-funded spending or tax cuts, driving the national debt even higher.

We have asked Congress not to borrow any new money for the rest of 2022.

With our Debt Fixer interactive tool, you have the opportunity to craft a national budget that puts America on a sustainable fiscal course heading into 2023.

How It Works: The Debt Fixer gives users the opportunity to confront many of the same budget decisions that lawmakers face and to see how those choices affect the debt. You’ll be asked to make decisions on a range of policy options with the goal of stabilizing the debt at 90 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) within ten years and 60 percent of GDP by 2050.

Afterwards, users can share select to share their fiscal choices with Members of Congress and social media. Can you do better than Congress? Give it a try now!

If you’re a teacher and would like to use the Debt Fixer in your class, please let us know by e-mailing debtfixer@crfb.org.

We can provide additional resources for your classroom including guest speakers and a customizable link where you can compare your classes results. If you enjoy Debt Fixer, we encourage you to check out our other interactive resources: Budgeting for the Future, Is It Worth It, and the Social Security Reformer.

Here you’ll be able to test your budget knowledge, compare the costs of proposals and policies, and choose the options to stabilizing the debt at 90 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for future generations.

I have bolded the following phrases from your Email: “driving the national debt even higher,” “not to borrow,” “not to borrow,” “sustainable fiscal course,” “stabilizing the debt at 90 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and “stabilizing the debt at 90 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).”

As I suspect you know, the U.S. federal government is Monetarily Sovereign, i.e., it has the infinite ability to create its own sovereign currency, the U.S. dollar. This ability sometimes (incorrectly) is referred to as “printing” dollars.

The infinite ability to “print” dollars means the U.S. government never unintentionally can run short of dollars.

THE CHALLENGE

Given the fact that the U.S. government cannot run short of dollars, I challenge you to answer the following questions:

DRIVING THE NATIONAL DEBT EVEN HIGHER: Given the federal government’s infinite ability to “print” (create) dollars why should anyone be concerned about the size of the “national debt”?
NOT TO BORROW: Given the federal government’s infinite ability to create dollars why should the federal government need to borrow dollars?
DEBT FIXER: Given the federal government’s infinite ability to create dollars, why does the federal debt need fixing?
SUSTAINABLE FISCAL COURSE: Given the federal government’s infinite ability to create dollars, and the fact that it has sustained its fiscal course for the past 80+ years while the federal debt has increased 62,500%, why do you believe it’s current fiscal course suddenly has become unsustainable?
STABILIZING THE FEDERAL DEBT AT 90 PERCENT OF GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT (GDP): In what way does the ratio of federal debt / GDP affect the economy?

I have followed your Emails for several years, during which time you repeatedly have voiced the same concerns about federal deficit spending. Yet, you never have answered the above questions.

Here are the facts you continually ignore:

The government’s infinite ability to create dollars means it never needs to be concerned about any debt. It has a greater ability to pay its debts than Elon Musk’s ability to pay a 1 cent debt.
The federal government does not borrow, nor will it ever need to. As the St. Louis Fed reported: ““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 U.S. government provides T-security accounts into which other governments and private citizens are allowed to deposit dollars for safekeeping.
The purpose of these accounts is not to provide the federal government with dollars, but rather to provide the world with a safe place to store unused dollars. This helps stabilize the dollar.
To pay off these deposits, the federal government merely returns the dollars that are in those accounts. Returning existing dollars is no burden on the federal government or on U.S. taxpayers.
The federal debt is not a real debt. It is deposits that are owned by other governments and private citizens. It does not need “fixing.” If the federal government stopped issuing T-securities tomorrow, that would have no effect on the government’s ability to spend dollars and to pay its bills.
The federal government has proved, year after year, that its course is sustainable. Despite a massive increase in the so-called “debt,” the government has no difficulty funding every expenditure.
The ratio of federal “debt” to GDP is economically meaningless. It has no effect on the government’s ability to spend or on inflation, or on any aspect of economic health. GDP dollars do not pay for federal debt.
The ratio also is ludicrous because it compares a multiyear figure (debt) to a one-year figure (GDP). One easily could ask, “Why not compare debt to the six-month GDP or the one-month GDP, or even the ten-year GDP?”

**There is no relationship between the Debt/GDP ratio (blue) and inflation (red).**

**There is a strong relationship between reductions in federal debt and recessions or depressions. Most recessions have resulted from periods of declining deficits.**

U.S. depressions tend to come on the heels of federal surpluses.

1804-1812: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 48%. Depression began 1807.
1817-1821: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 29%. Depression began 1819.
1823-1836: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 99%. Depression began 1837.
1852-1857: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 59%. Depression began 1857.
1867-1873: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 27%. Depression began 1873.
1880-1893: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 57%. Depression began 1893.
1920-1930: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 36%. Depression began 1929.
1997-2001: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 15%. Recession began 2001.

**America’s debt /money supply growth parallels America’s GDP growth**

Using the tables below, see if you can determine which economies are “healthiest.”

(You won’t succeed, because the debt/GDP ratios tell you nothing about the health of a nation’s economy:

SUMMARY The CRFB never has and never will accept my challenge. They never will answer the questions, because the true answers would eliminate their reason for existence.

The CRFB is worse than useless. It is harmful to America. I believe they know they are harmful, in which case that would make them traitors.

I believe they are paid by the rich in America to widen the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest of us, in which case that would make them paid traitors.

I am angry at them. They hurt America.

If you believe they have answers and can meet the challenge, feel free to contact them. I’d be interested in seeing how they try to squirm out of this. Contact Maya MacGuineas at MacGuineas@crfb.org and find her on Twitter @MayaMacGuineas.

If you think I am angry at the CRFB, you’re right. I believe they have done, and continue to do, irreparable harm to America by giving aid and comfort to politicians who vote against benefits.

The claim that Medicare and Social Security can run short of money is absurd, especially so when the federal government, at the touch of a computer key, can provide all the money these agencies need.

The claim that the federal debt is too high also is absurd, when it isn’t even debt and it could be paid off entirely simply by returning the dollars in storage.

Even more absurd is to worry about the debt/GDP ratio, which compares a multi-year figure to a one-year figure, and is indicative or predictive of nothing.

Good luck.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

An example of how the forces of ignorance are relentless

This is frightening. It’s a letter I just received from that notorious disseminator of misinformation, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).

Hello Rodger

With economic conditions making fiscal issues impossible to ignore, we hope there will be opportunities to improve our fiscal situation in the coming months.

This past year saw both victories and setbacks, and many policies that would have been far worse were it not for the hard work of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Without the support of our loyal donors, none of our work would have been possible.

For the last year, we have worked tirelessly to push back against the narrative that deficits do not matter.

Actually, the narrative is that deficits do matter. Federal deficits are absolutely necessary for economic growth. Without deficits, we have depressions and recessions.

U.S. depressions tend to come on the heels of federal surpluses.

1804-1812: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 48%. Depression began 1807. 1817-1821: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 29%. Depression began 1819. 1823-1836: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 99%. Depression began 1837. 1852-1857: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 59%. Depression began 1857. 1867-1873: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 27%. Depression began 1873. 1880-1893: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 57%. Depression began 1893. 1920-1930: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 36%. Depression began 1929. 1997-2001: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 15%. Recession began 2001.

The measure of our economy, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is a spending measure, and spending requires the money that deficits provide:

GDP = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports

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

**Vertical gray bars are recessions, which are preceded by reductions in debt growth and cured by increases in debt growth.**

Those “tireless efforts” of the CRFB represent efforts against economic growth and for recessions and depressions.

However, as we write this, our national debt is on track to surpass record levels, the federal government is still operating without a budget, and the major trust funds are edging even closer toward insolvency.

The “major trust funds aren’t real trust funds. They do not fund anything, and like the federal government itself, they can become insolvent only if Congress and the President want them to become insolvent. We could eliminate those fake trust funds today, and that would have no effect on Medicare, Social Security or any other federal program.

How we tackle these challenges will not only impact our nation’s fiscal future but determine what type of country our children and grandchildren will inherit.

That is true. If we continue to worry about federal debt, deficits, and fake trust funds, our children will inherit a country ruled solely by the wealthy elite. That seems to be the goal of the CRFB.

With the fiscal future of our country hanging in the balance, we wanted to share a summary of our work with you. Because of the generosity of our donors, we achieved the following this year:

Published more than 150 analyses, including 21 papers and testifying on Capitol Hill;

Participated in more than 225 meetings with more than 155 Members of Congress and their staff;

Launched our Student Debt Cancellation project and expanded our Trust Funds Solutions Initiative to include new insolvency countdown interactives;

Hosted six virtual events with policymakers and experts on timely topics, such as Social Security and inflation, as well as in-person events engaging more than 3,000 people;

Cited more than 1,200 times by hundreds of unique outlets, including CNBC, CNN, The Economist, Fox News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

The massive misinformation keeps coming at us from all sides, with scant voices to protest. –Student debt cancellation not only would benefit students and not only would benefit America by educating more students. It also would benefit the American economy by pumping dollars into the pockets of Americans. –The Trust Fund concerns are 100% fake and are a blatant attempt by the rich to reduce benefits to the middle- and lower-income groups.

None of this would have been possible without support from people like you. Will you consider supporting the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget this year with a tax-deductible donation?

The people can spread their misinformation on a tax-deductible basis.

Your gift ensures that fiscal responsibility has a champion and a voice during key fiscal moments and debates in Washington.

Looking ahead to 2023, we hope you’ll continue following our work, attending events, and making your voice heard.

While our country faces formidable fiscal challenges, together, there is a lot we can do to meet them. We appreciate any help you can provide,

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget Support Our Work

Sadly, there isn’t a Committee for a Truthful Federal Budget (CRTB) that would disseminate such facts that:

The Federal government has infinite dollars. It cannot become insolvent. Even if it collected zero taxes, it could continue spending, forever.
Increased federal deficit spending is necessary for economic growth. The lack of deficit spending causes recessions and depressions which can be cured only by increased deficit spending.
Federal deficit spending is not socialism. Ownership and control, not spending, are signs of socialism.
Inflations are caused by shortages of key goods and services, not by federal debt and deficits. Inflations can be prevented and cured by federal deficit spending that targets shortages.

You and your children already suffer from the lies that reduce federal benefits. The federal government could do so much more; taxes could be so much less. Is there anyone with the knowledge and financial resources to counter the massive misinformation campaign coming from sources like the CRFB? Anyone? Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Another reason for real Medicare for All

The U.S. federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, has infinite dollars. It never can run short of dollars. The government can pay for comprehensive, no-deductible health care for every man, woman, and child in America without collecting a penny in taxes. This would not be the Bernie Sanders Medicare for All, which is merely an expansion of our current Medicare. It would be a comprehensive, no-deductible, no FICA, no Part A, Part B, Part C, Part D, Medicare that truly is for All. It would cover everything and everyone one. The 10 Poorest States in America

And it would not be government-provided health care. It would be government-funded healthcare. Everyone still would have their own doctors. Hospitals would remain privately owned. The only differences would be that insurance companies no longer would be the middlemen, and everyone would have free health care. There is no functional reason why America needs privately-owned, for-profit insurance companies that collect medical dollars but provide no medical services. It is a costly scam. The insurance companies, in essence, tell you, “Give me your healthcare dollars. We’ll give some of them to doctors, nurses, and hospitals and keep the rest for ourselves.” What’s the purpose of having middlemen take some of your hard-earned medical dollars? It would be far better for the federal government to tell you, “You don’t have to give us anything. We’ll create the dollars and pay them to the doctors, nurses, and hospitals. It won’t cost you a cent. You and your doctors will make all the medical decisions. We’ll just pay for them.” That is the way medicine should and could operate. An article in today’s Palm Beach Sun Sentinel reminds me of these simple facts. Here are excerpts:

More than half of hospitals in rural Miss. facing closure Leaders at the publicly owned Greenwood Leflore Hospital in Greenwood, Miss., say they will be out of business before the end of the year without a cash infusion. Rogelio V. Solis/AP By Michael Goldberg Associated Press JACKSON, Miss. — Over half of Mississippi’s rural hospitals are at risk of closing immediately or in the near future, according to the state’s leading public health official.

Dr. Daniel Edney, the state health officer, spoke to state senators at a hearing last week about the financial pressure on Mississippi hospitals. Edney said 54% of the state’s rural hospitals — 38 — could close.

Rural hospitals were under economic strain before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the problems have worsened as costs to provide care have increased.

Mississippi’s high number of low-income uninsured people means hospitals are on the hook for more uncompensated care. At the same time, labor costs weigh on hospitals as they struggle to pay competitive wages to retain staff.

Why does America have uninsured (for healthcare) people when the federal government has infinite dollars? It makes no sense at all.

“The costs on an income statement for a hospital have skyrocketed,” said Scott Christensen, chair of the Mississippi Hospital Association Board of Governors. “The liabilities on the balance sheets of hospitals around the state have reached some unsustainable levels given what we face.”

The crux of the problem facing Mississippi’s hospitals is that revenues have not kept pace with rising costs, Christensen said.

The strain is most acute in Mississippi’s Delta region, an agricultural flatland where poverty remains entrenched. Greenwood Leflore Hospital has been cutting costs by reducing services and shrinking its workforce for months.

But the medical facility hasn’t been able to stave off the risk of imminent closure. Hospital leaders say they will be out of business before the end of the year without a cash infusion.

At Greenwood Leflore and other hospitals across the state, maternity care units have been on the chopping block. Mississippi already has the nation’s highest fetal mortality rate, highest infant mortality rate and highest preterm birth rate, and is among the worst states for maternal mortality.

Does anyone care? Do the Republicans who run Mississippi care?

A rising number of healthcare deserts are emerging in the Delta, but financial pressures are bearing down on hospitals in more prosperous areas of the state as well, experts at the hearing said.

But hospitals in poor communities often treat patients who don’t have insurance and can’t afford to pay for care out of pocket. An expansion of Medicaid coverage would reduce costs that result from uncompensated care.

Gov. Tate Reeves and other Republican leaders have killed proposals to expand Medicaid, which primarily covers low-income workers whose jobs don’t provide private health insurance.

Opponents of expansion say they don’t want to encourage reliance on government help for people who don’t need it.

This is the same -old, same-old trope that poor people are lazy takers, and giving them help will make them even lazier. It is a vicious lie promulgated by the richer to keep the more destitute down. It is the classic expression of Gap Psychology, in which the richer want to widen the Gap between them and the poorer.

As a near-term solution, the Mississippi Hospital Association has suggested the state’s Division of Medicaid work with federal officials to raise the Medicaid reimbursement rate cap.

The move would lower the cost of providing care for people who are already covered under the state’s current Medicaid plan.

It’s a Band-Aid, as are Medicaid, Obamacare, and Medicare. They all should be merged to provide comprehensive, no-deductible, 100% coverage, fully government-funded, no taxes healthcare insurance for every American of every age and every income. No exceptions. Finally, it isn’t “socialism.” The rich falsely chant “socialism” every time a benefit for the not-rich is mentioned. But socialism is government control, not government funding. With real Medicare for All, the government only would take over funding from the for-profit insurance companies. All Medical decisions would remain with your doctors and hospitals. It is a disgrace of American politics that we don’t already have it. Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Yes, some still wander among us (though many have died).

There is a strange confluence among Trump’s MAGAs, QAnons, COVID deniers, coup deniers, election deniers, mask deniers, pro-gunners, and anti-vaxxers. They all receive their information and beliefs from right-wing-owned media and social media. They trust conspiracy theories more than actual data. They learn by rumor. They lack compassion for others. And many die from or for their beliefs. Anti-vaxxers: The November 19 edition of Science News contained an article about Louis Pasteur, “the father of microbiology.” The article included the following excerpts:

Pasteur not only made milk safe to drink, but also rescued the beer and wine industry.

He established the germ theory of disease, saved the French silkworm population, confronted the scourges of anthrax and rabies, and transformed the curiosity of vaccination against smallpox into a general strategy for treating and preventing human diseases.

He invented microbiology and established the foundations for immunology.

Vaccination, of course, had been invented eight decades earlier, when British physician Edward Jenner protected people from smallpox by first exposing them to cowpox, a similar disease acquired from cows.

Later Pasteur confronted an even more difficult microscopic foe, the virus that causes rabies, a horrifying disease that’s almost always fatal.

He decided to grow the disease-causing agent in living tissue — the spinal cords of rabbits. He used dried-out strips of spinal cord from infected rabbits to vaccinate other animals that then survived rabies injections.

In 1885 when a mother brought to his lab a 9-year-old boy who had been badly bitten by a rabid dog, Pasteur agreed to administer the new vaccine.

After a series of injections, the boy recovered fully.

Soon more requests came for the rabies vaccine, and by early the next year over 300 rabies patients had received the vaccine and survived, with only one death among them.

Popularly hailed as a hero, Pasteur was also vilified by some hostile doctors. Vaccine opponents complained that his vaccine was an untested method that might itself cause death.

Two hundred years after his birth, ignorance and war remain perniciously prominent, as ineradicable as the microbes that continue to threaten public health, with the virus causing COVID-19 the latest conspicuous example.

Gov. DeSantis proudly displays his anti-vax laws.

Vaccines, though, have substantially reduced the risks from COVID-19, extending the record of successful vaccines that have already tamed not only smallpox and rabies, but also polio, measles and a host of other once deadly maladies.

Yet even though vaccines have saved countless millions of lives, some politicians and so-called scientists who deny or ignore overwhelming evidence continue to condemn vaccines as more dangerous than the diseases they prevent.

Dick Farrel, conservative talk show host and avid Trump supporter, changed his mind about the vaccine after he fell sick, but too late. He died of COVID after a two-week battle.

True, some vaccines can induce bad reactions, even fatal in a few cases out of millions of vaccinations.

But shunning vaccines today, as advocated in artificially amplified social media outrage, is like refusing to eat because some people choke to death on sandwiches.

The website “Notable Anti-Vaxxers Who Have Died From COVID-19”, lists just a handful of the many thousands who denied the efficacy of vaccination and paid for their denial with their lives. They had what they claimed to be “good” reasons for not vaxxing, but they denied the clear facts. They claimed not to trust an “unproven” drug that had millions of success stories but instead trusted unproven conspiracy theorists who had no successes. By failing to vaccinate, they helped spread the disease among all those with whom they came into contact. This did not concern them. Relatives of the anti-vaxxers are the anti-maskers. The primary purpose of masks is to help prevent COVID from drifting to others. It’s why surgeons and nurses wear masks in operating rooms — not to protect themselves, but to protect patients. Anti-maskers do not care about protecting others. They want their “freedom.” This selfishness is personified by such as Gov. Ron DeSantis, who never shows concern for COVID victims, but only for people who must “suffer the hardship” of wearing a mask. To him, protecting others is a hardship that impinges of freedom. To support the lie, he promulgates the myth that masks don’t work. One wonders whether he would feel comfortable being operated on by a surgical team that goes maskless. Anti-vaxers and anti-makers are similar to QAnon believers, in that both groups blindly accept the words of unreliable sources. The more outrageous (even hilarious) the claims, the more fervently they are believed. For example, here is the utter nonsense, invented out of whole cloth, that the brainless not only believe but promulgate:

I believe because I believe.

The core QAnon theory is that a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic sexual abusers of children operating a global child sex trafficking ring conspired against former U.S. President Donald Trump during his term in office.

Followers of the conspiracy theorists say that the Trump administration secretly fought the cabal of pedophiles, and would conduct mass arrests and executions of thousands of cabal members on a day known as “the Storm” or “the Event”.

QAnon has also claimed that Trump stimulated the conspiracy of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to enlist Robert Mueller to join him in exposing the sex trafficking ring, and to prevent a coup d’état by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros.

QAnon is described as antisemitic or rooted in antisemitic tropes, due to its fixation on Jewish financier George Soros and conspiracy theories about the Rothschild family, and the myth that Jews harvest the blood of children for ritual.

Unlike the anti-vaxxers, the QAnons have not been killed by their beliefs. They merely have lost years of their lives wandering in the diseased labyrinth of misinformation — years they never will recover. They also had no concern for the people their bigotry would hurt, the millions of people they want to be arrested and executed because of their mythical “cabal” identification.

Police officer's death intensifies Capitol siege questions | MPR News — **Entering Congress in an orderly fashion. A normal tourist visit.**

In a similar vein, coup deniers will not accept what their eyes tell them. Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga.: “Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall, showed people in an orderly fashion in between the stanchions and ropes taking pictures. “If you didn’t know the footage was from January 6, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.” And people actually believed him. Hundreds of coup participants now have lost their freedom, their jobs, and their friends because of their beliefs. To rot in a jail cell, your reputation gone, and eventually to realize you have been taken by a con artist, must be a terrible fate. Whether it will be a lesson learned still remains a question. The fact that the many millions more who voted for Biden than voted for Trump would have had their votes invalidated did not bother the rioters, whose only concern was the happiness of one man. Then there are the MAGAs:

Surveys of hundreds of fervent Trump voters, whom researchers refer to as Make American Great Again (MAGA) supporters, reveal strong beliefs that the election was stolen; that COVID-19 is a bioweapon from China; and that the riot was the work of Antifa.

Why do they believe? Not because of any facts, which repeatedly demonstrate the lie, but rather because:

These people feel like they’re losing their country and their identity. They feel like they’re being displaced by communities of color, by feminists and by immigrants.

They do not care about people of color, women or immigrants. They care only about themselves. So they send Donald Trump, the billionaire, their money — dollars that could have been put to good purpose; dollars for which they worked much harder than Trump did — and they see those dollars used to defend a criminal against justice. Finally, we come to the pro-gunners. They consistently vote against any restrictions on gun ownership. They claim to believe in the incredibly brainless proposition that giving everyone easily obtainable guns, including high-powered, exceptionally lethal guns, makes America safer. Not only does this deny all data, but common sense, too. The notion that “guns-for-all” makes us safer it is illogical on its face. Statistics show that if you own a gun you are more likely to be shot than if you didn’t own a gun.

Most American gun owners say they own firearms to protect themselves and their loved ones, but a study published this week suggests people who live with handgun owners are shot to death at a higher rate than those who don’t have such weapons at home.

“We found zero evidence of any kind of protective effects” from living in a home with a handgun, said David Studdert, a Stanford University researcher who was the lead author of the Annals of Internal Medicine study.

The study followed nearly 600,000 Californians who did not own handguns but began living in homes with handguns between October 2004 and December 2016, either because they started living with someone who owned one or because someone in their household bought one.

Living with a handgun owner particularly increased the risk of being shot to death in a domestic violence incident, and it did not provide any protection against being killed at home by a stranger, the researchers found.

The pro-gunners don’t care about the lost lives and health due to the continual shootings, so long as guns remain available for hunting and personal use. SUMMARY Believing conspiracy theories can be hazardous to your health. Believers are more likely to waste years of their lives, be injured, or die from their beliefs. People who are more susceptible to myths and tales fall into several categories:

White supremacists. They secretly feel weak or fearful; they hope to find protection as members of the cult
Those who resist taking direction from accepted authority; it makes them feel impotent.
Those who want to be “in the know” regard non-believers as uninformed and gullible.
Those who lack empathy and compassion: As psychopaths, they are inward-directed. Others’ pain and sorrow does not affect them.
Republican Trumpers: They have been trained to support only what Trump tells them, not reality.

We do not have laws against cruel stupidity. In the land of the free, even such as Herschel Walker can walk the streets, mouth ignorance, lie with impunity, and still attract votes from his peers The “messiness” of democracy is simultaneously its weakness and its strength. The genius and the fool each have one vote. But I sure wish the voting public was at least a little bit smarter. Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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