–Suggested: The National Enquirer approach to solving the mythical “deficit crisis.”

Mitchell’s laws:
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor,
which leads to civil disorder.
●Cutting the deficit is the government’s method for taking dollars from the middle class and giving them to the rich.
●Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.

●The penalty for ignorance is slavery.
==========================================================================================================================================

For every motive, there’s yet another motive

An article in New Scientist Magazine, ”The link between devaluing animals and discrimination,” makes a connection between our treatment of animals and our treatment of other human beings.

Our feelings about other animals have important consequences for how we treat humans
21 December 2012 by Gordon Hodson and Kimberly Costello

“AUSCHWITZ begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals,” wrote the philosopher and social commentator Theodor Adorno. He argued that humans degrade, exploit and willfully murder “under-valued” other people once they are considered to be animal-like.

Genocides can happen, therefore, when we think of members of other groups – outgroups – to be considerably less human than ourselves.

These observations led prejudice researchers, including us, at Brock University in Ontario, Canada, to develop two novel propositions about the nature of dehumanisation and prejudice. The first is that the perception of a divide between humans and animals fuels prejudice toward human outgroups, such as immigrants or racial minorities.

The second is that this animal-human divide effect is explained by heightened dehumanisation of the outgroups.

In previous posts we have argued that the public, already brainwashed into believing the federal deficit should be reduced, does not accept a scientifically-based, non-intuitive re-education in economics. Instead, we should indulge human nature, and provide the public with an intuitive, “National Enquirer” approach to learning: Begin with the scandal, then flesh it out with facts.

The scandal is: The upper .1% income group pays politicians (via campaign contributions) and the media via ownership) to increase the income gap by impoverishing the 99.9%.

The facts are:
*Deficit reduction is not necessary, indeed is harmful, in a Monetarily Sovereign nation, which has the unlimited ability to pay its bills.
*The upper .1% income group pays politicians and the media to lie about the need to reduce deficit spending, nearly all of which benefits the 99.9%, as a way to increase the income gap.

Increasing the gap is vital to the wealthy, because it is the gap, not absolute earnings, that defines “rich.” Were there no income gap, no one no one would be rich.

And that is where the above article comes to play, because deficit cutting is inhumane. It causes poverty, hunger, sickness, homelessness and every sort of human misery one can imagine. Even the most cynical occasionally must be struck by the cruelty of the .1% in dooming their fellow human beings, the 99.9%, to lives of pain, misery and despair. Austerity is the ultimate genocide.

But, the 99.9% are not viewed as human beings, perhaps not even as animals. In the eyes of the .1%, the 99.9% have become caricatures, viewed as lazy, indolent, lawless, and deserving of their misery. And that is not the worst of it.

Building on experiments with university students, the results provided direct evidence that young children dehumanise other children along racial lines.

We replicated these patterns among the parents. We were intrigued to find that parents who endorsed social hierarchy and inequality reared children with stronger beliefs in dehumanisation and racial prejudice.

Nothing startling here. Children raised by bigots are more likely to be bigots. Since the .1% are biased against the 99.9%, their children inherit that bias, and the anti-99.9%% bigotry continues through the generations.

However, it is not just the .1% who are biased. It is the 1%, the 10%, the 50%, indeed all groups seem to be biased against groups below them on the income scale. Groups near the bottom even seem biased against themselves, inheriting a group inferiority complex.

The implications are stunning. Everyone despises those below them, a phenomenon which plays directly into the .1%’s hands. When Republicans sneered about “food stamp queens,” much of America agreed.

Psychologically, the .1% are the “parents” of our economy, and they have reared us to dehumanize those earning less. So we accept the notion the poorer are sloths who deserve their misery, and those who ask help from the government are freeloaders.

This bias serves the .1%’s efforts well. It promotes acceptance of reduced benefits for lower income groups. In essence, even when a government action hurts those in one income group, they will accept it if it hurts a lower income group even more, widening the gap between them and the lower group.

The .1% plays on the common desire to widen gaps below. To change perceptions, Monetary Sovereignty must play on the common resentment at widening gaps above.

Summary: Human nature desires the gap below to be widened and the gap above to be narrowed. Deficit reduction punishes lower income groups most, thus widening all gaps, which benefits the wealthiest most.

The middle and lower classes have been brainwashed by the .1% (via their paid representatives, the politicians and the media) to ignore the widening of the higher income gaps and to relish widening the lower gaps. This is furthered by dehumanizing the lower income groups.

The solution is first to focus on the .1%’s shameful successes in widening the upper income gaps, and the scandal of how these successes were purchased. With that scandal as a platform, the 99.9% will be more amenable to discussions of economic facts.

That is what I term, “The National Enquirer approach to solving the mythical ‘deficit crisis.’” Reveal the scandal first; facts to follow.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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

Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D — for everyone
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Long-term nursing care for everyone
5. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
6. Salary for attending school (Click here)
7. Eliminate corporate taxes
8. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
9. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99%

No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia. Two key equations in economics:
Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–To be considered rich, I don’t need more money. . .

Mitchell’s laws:
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor,
which leads to civil disorder.
●Cutting the deficit is the government’s method for taking dollars from the middle class and giving them to the rich.
●Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.

●The penalty for ignorance is slavery.
==========================================================================================================================================
Here is how deficit reduction really works:
. . .

To be rich I don’t
.
need more money. . .

Monetary Sovereignty

.
I just need you to have less money.

Monetary Sovereignty Monetary Sovereignty Monetary Sovereignty

Cut food stamps . . . Cut Social Security . . Cut Medicare
.
Widen the gap between the rich and the rest of us
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D — for everyone
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Long-term nursing care for everyone
5. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
6. Salary for attending school (Click here)
7. Eliminate corporate taxes
8. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
9. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99%

No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia. Two key equations in economics:
Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Treason: It’s hard for the public to accept the crime without knowing the motive.

Mitchell’s laws:
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor,
which leads to civil disorder.
●Cutting the deficit is the government’s method for taking dollars from the middle class and giving them to the rich.
●Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.

●The penalty for ignorance is slavery.
==========================================================================================================================================

Never believe your opponent is ignorant. It’s what he wants you to believe.

The man stands accused of murdering his wife.

He claims he loved his wife and had no reason to murder her. He was not in an affair, nor was his wife; he was not known for fits of temper; they never had fought in public; there was no financial benefit to her death. By every available measure, he had no reason to kill her.

Despite the evidence – finger prints, DNA, his purchase of the murder weapon, his proximity at the time of the murder – the jury refuses to believe he could do it. Why? He had no motive.

Now change one fact: He was in an affair. Now it all adds up. The jury believes the accusation, and convicts.

The difference between belief and non-belief was the motive.

Background: For months, I have advised that economic facts alone will not change the federal government’s suicidal mission to reduce the deficit. I discussed this most recently in Why MMT frustrates the hell out of me and in Some blowback from MMT.

The public has been misled by the words “debt” and “deficit.” When applied to personal finances, these words flash danger signals. Who wouldn’t want their personal debt reduced and not to run a deficit?

The politicians and the media take advantage of this confusion, by brainwashing the public into wrongly believing the same danger signal applies to the federal government, the sole Monetarily Sovereign entity in America – the sole entity having the unlimited ability to create the dollars that grow the economy — the sole entity that cannot unwillingly run short of dollars.

Then, in those rare cases, where a member of the public begins to understand that federal deficits are absolutely necessary for economic growth, we are met with the other myth: Money printing causes inflation.

This too makes superficial sense, in that increasing the supply of something generally reduces its value. The fact that this can be true only if demand does not rise proportionately and in fact, has not happened since the U.S. went off the gold standard, seldom is mentioned by politicians or the media.

So the question becomes, “Why have the politicians and the media lied to the American public? Is it a matter of ignorance or malevolence?

My complaint with MMT is that they act as though it were ignorance, so continually try to explain the economy in simpler terms – terms even a politician could understand, while being loath, for lack of evidence, to accuse the politicians of intentional, bought-and-paid for deceit.

MMT shows flashes of anger, but it is anger at the misunderstanding of what is obvious. This anger never seems to transition into direct accusations of intentional malfeasance. Implicit in this is the notion that politicians – the President, Congress et al – really do want what is best for America, but are ignorant about economics and are neither intelligent enough nor motivated enough to learn. “So let’s make it simpler for them.”

Or at worst, the politicians merely are “playing politics,” that is, the Democrats are trying to make the Republicans look bad and the Republicans are trying to make the Democrats look bad.

But, evidence indicates neither ignorance nor “playing politics” is the problem, and barring ignorance and politics, the sole conclusion is that our politicians do understand the facts, but intentionally are voting to injure America. In short, the President et al are committing treason.

Here is the evidence: As I have stated in other posts, neither the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of Treasury, the Chairman of the Fed, nor the 435 members of Congress ever has admitted that federal deficits are necessary to grow the economy. Not one of them. Not ever. That is a too-great-to-believe number of people all sharing the same “ignorance” and the same “politics.”

Additionally, we have the Council of Economic Advisers, to greater or lesser degree, all experts in economics:

Chair: Alan Krueger; Members: Katharine Abraham; Chief Economist: Jim Stock; Director of Macroeconomic Forecasting: Steven N. Braun; Senior Economists: Bevin Ashenmiller: Energy and the environment; Benjamin Harris: Tax, budget, and retirement saving policy; Sue Helper: Manufacturing policy; Chinhui Juhn: Labor policy; Paul Lengermann: Macroeconomics; Emily Lin: Tax policy; Rodney Ludema: International economics; James Williamson: Public finance issues in agricultural and resource economics; Wes Yin: Health economics and policy; Staff Economists: Jeff Borowitz, Colleen Carey, David Cho, Judd Cramer, Reid Stevens, Research Economists: Pedro Spivakovsky-Gonzalez; Research Assistants; Matt Aks, Sandra Levy, Carter Mundell, Seth Werfel; Statistical Office: Adrienne T. Pilot; Director
Statistical Office Analysts: Brian Amorosi & Lindsay Kuberka

To my knowledge, none of the above has stepped forward and correctly said, “Cutting the deficit hurts America by reducing three of the four elements that constitute Gross Domestic Product: Personal Consumption Expenditures, Gross Private Domestic Investment and Government Consumption Expenditures & Gross Investment.”

Then we have the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, which according to its own web site:

“Economic research at the Federal Reserve Board is conducted primarily within the Division of Research and Statistics, the Division of Monetary Affairs, and the Division of International Finance. Together, the three divisions have approximately 450 staff members, about half of whom are Ph.D. economists.

The Division of Reserve Bank Operations and Payment Systems, the Division of Consumer and Community Affairs, and the Division of Banking Supervision and Regulation also conduct economic research and employ Ph.D. economists.

Board economists produce numerous working papers and are among the leading contributors at professional meetings and in major journals. Board economists also produce a wide variety of economic analyses and forecasts for the Board of Governors and the Federal Open Market Committee.

Have you seen or heard of any of these Ph.D. economists writing or saying that austerity, i.e. deficit cutting, injures the American economy, just as it has injured the European economy, and in fact, every economy in which it is tried?

I could go on and on, adding the thousands of Ph.D.s floating about in all the colleges and universities, but the point is clear. Is it truly possible that these thousands of people, all of whom have devoted their lives to studying economics, do not understand basic economics?

No, not possible.

So, either Monetary Sovereignty is wrong, and by some miracle of arithmetic, taking dollars out of the public’s pockets actually spurs economic growth or – or something more insidious is happening. I vote for the later.

Belief flows downhill. If your boss says “Pigs fly,” and he pays you quite well to say, “Pigs fly,” and will fire you if you don’t agree, you probably will agree – not just agree, but actively promulgate the notion that pigs fly. And if everyone around you also is saying that pigs fly, you may come to believe that despite all evidence to the contrary, pigs actually do fly.

So if anyone shows you evidence that pigs are too heavy to fly and they don’t have wings, and no one ever has seen pigs fly, you will ignore the evidence and perhaps even ridicule it, with comments like, “There’s always a first time,” or “Why do you know this and no one else does,” or “Heavy animals have flown, and flying squirrels don’t have wings, so pigs can fly.”

And that, I suggest, is what is happening. Not ignorance. Not party vs. party politics. But slavish devotion to the hand that feeds you.

And that, I suggest, is why every criticism of the austerity policy should – no, must – include the motive, which is this: The rich have bought the obedience of the politicians via campaign contributions, the obedience of the media via ownership, and the obedience of the universities via charitable contributions.

And because the rich want the gap between them and the rest to widen, and austerity widens this gap, the politicians, the media and the economists toe the line, and spread the myth that a Monetarily Sovereign nation must “live within its means.”

The leaders and the economists will not respond to education. They are paid not to. The public will not respond to education. They are predisposed not to.

But the public will respond to a scandal, and that is what we must provide them. Every article should follow the format: “Deficit cutting is paid for by the rich. Here is how. The motive is to widen the gap between them and you. Here is how.”

The politicians, the media and the mainstream economists commit treason by accepting money intentionally to injure America.

But, it’s hard for the public to accept the crime, without knowing the motive.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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

Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D — for everyone
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Long-term nursing care for everyone
5. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
6. Salary for attending school (Click here)
7. Eliminate corporate taxes
8. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
9. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99%

No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia. Two key equations in economics:
Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Here is how deficit reduction really works

Mitchell’s laws:
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor,
which leads to civil disorder.
●Cutting the deficit is the government’s method for taking dollars from the middle class and giving them to the rich.
●Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.

●The penalty for ignorance is slavery.
==========================================================================================================================================
Here is how deficit reduction really works:
.

The Government Doesn’t
.
Have Enough Dollars

Monetary Sovereignty

.
So send us some of yours

Monetary Sovereignty Monetary Sovereignty Monetary Sovereignty

Cut food stamps . . . Cut Social Security . . Cut Medicare
.
Widen the gap between the rich and the rest of us
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D — for everyone
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Long-term nursing care for everyone
5. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
6. Salary for attending school (Click here)
7. Eliminate corporate taxes
8. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
9. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99%

No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia. Two key equations in economics:
Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY