The Meaning of America

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.
●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.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive.
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What has made America great? We were founded by brave men, moral giants who dared fight for liberty, risking their lives and fortunes, not just for their own liberty, but liberty for all.

There was a time when this is was the meaning of America’s greatness:

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand,
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name,
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command,
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she
With silent lips. ‘Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’”

Today, we are led by moral and intellectual midgets, frightened little cowards, selfishly clinging to what they have amassed for themselves, uncaring about others, who now that they are here, would build a wall of meanness around America, to prevent others from achieving the American Dream.

They are here only because they or their ancestors were given sanctuary by benevolent Americans, and now, this is their mantra of meanness:

“Screw you. I’ve got mine.”

Senate group considers large reduction in family visas as part of immigration deal
By David Nakamura, Thursday, March 14,

Key senators are developing plans that would make it harder for U.S. citizens to get visas for their family members while easing the path for more high-skilled foreign workers, according to aides and advocates familiar with negotiations over an emerging immigration deal.

Translation: We don’t give a damn about families. America is not about families. America is politics — and me.

The plans — which would run counter to policies that have been in place for generations — are part of ongoing talks between a bipartisan group of eight senators, whose bill is expected to serve as the template for a comprehensive immigration deal between Congress and the White House.

Translation: “Bipartisan” is a magic word — a way to provide political cover for bad ideas. Americans love “bipartisan,” so will agree to anything with that title.

The senators agree that a limited number of people should be allowed into the country each year; the question is who those people should be.

“Right now you get green cards to adult children, to grandparents,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said. “What I want to do is reserve green cards based on the economic needs of the country, and we’ll do something for families.

But the goal for me is to replace a chained migration immigration system with an economic-based immigration system.”

Translation: Dollars are more important than families.

Sen. Graham was the son of Millie and Florence James Graham, neither of whom finished high school. Now, he doesn’t want those kind of people coming here.

The current waiting list includes an estimated 1.9 million people from Asian countries, including China, Vietnam, India and Bangladesh. The wait for processing visas from the Philippines — which has the most family applicants other than Mexico — extends more than two decades, the longest of any country.

“Everything has to be balanced here,” said a government policy adviser at Covington & Burling. “We’ve all been inspired by the Statue of Liberty. But if you have 10 to 20 million people, many of whom are not well educated or skilled, coming in all at once, that does potentially create some problems.”

Translation: “Balanced” is another magic word. If something is “balanced” it must be good. The question remains, what is “balanced” about excluding family members.

We know 10 to 20 million people will not come in all at once, but we like to scare you people. Hey, what’s wrong with those aliens having to wait 20 years, just to be united with their families?

We say we care about “family values,” but really, we care only about our own families.

Bottom line, the “Screw you. I’ve got mine.” crowd provides various excuses for their meanness, among which are:

1. The U.S. is too crowded. We have no room for more aliens.

Actually, the U.S. is among the least populated nations, with only 84 people per square mile. Compare that with South Korea: (1,288), Netherlands: (1,259), Japan: (836); Israel: (809), UK: (650), Germany: (609), Italy: (512), Switzerland: (490), China: (365), Poland: (328), France: (289), Hungary: (280) and Spain: (210)

2. These aliens will take our jobs.

Immigrants are more likely to take menial jobs others don’t want or create jobs by opening small businesses. The irony is, the Senators want to allow in “educated and high-skilled foreign workers,” the very people most likely to take your job.

Immigrants are consumers, who create jobs by purchasing goods and services

3. These aliens will use up our services like Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, etc.

The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, can support any amount of social services. And to the degree immigrants need social services, they create jobs for the people who supply social services.

The mean-spirited xenophobes who, having been given citizenship, now want to keep anyone else from having that same good fortune. So they create a false picture of an America overrun by “the wretched refuse of teeming shores.”

The anti-immigration effort is mean-spirited bigotry: anti-gay, anti-black, anti-Mexican, anti-women. Sen. Graham’s parents owned a little café that offered only takeout service to blacks, while whites could eat inside.

Those were his formative years, where he learned his meanness at his parents’ knees.

Today, we witness the meaning of America. Cut Social Security; cut Medicare; cut Medicaid; cut federal employment; cut payments to the millions of people who rely on federal payments; cut immigration.

It’s bad economics. It’s not the world’s moral leader, the America in which we like to believe. It’s small. It’s wicked. It’s selfish. It’s stupid. It’s just, plain mean.

“Screw you. I’ve got mine.”

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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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

The secret: Why Obama really, really wants to cut Social Security

Some of you may be amazed that a Democratic President has, for many years, been so insistent on cutting Social Security. He’s made you believe he is “giving in” for the sake of “compromise,” but in fact, he is as right-wing-ruthless as the Republicans, when it comes to cutting benefits to the middle-and lower-income groups.

It’s no compromise. He actively wants cuts. Further, this self-anointed “friend of the middle class” could hardly wait to raise FICA, the most regressive tax in American history.

So what motivates this right-winger in left-wing clothing? Here’s a clue:

Bill Clinton’s $80 Million Payday, or Why Politicians Don’t Care That Much About Reelection

On December 21, 2000, President Bill Clinton signed a bill called the Commodities Futures Modernization Act. This law ensured that derivatives could not be regulated, setting the stage for the financial crisis.

Just two months later, on February 5, 2001, Clinton received $125,000 from Morgan Stanley, in the form of a payment for a speech Clinton gave for the company in New York City. A few weeks later, Credit Suisse also hired Clinton for a speech, at a $125,000 speaking fee, also in New York.

The dirty secret of American politics is that, for most politicians, getting elected is just not that important. What matters is post-election employment.

It’s all about staying in the elite political class, which means being respected in a dense network of corporate-funded think tanks, high-powered law firms, banks, defense contractors, prestigious universities, and corporations. If you run a campaign based on populist themes, that’s a threat to your post-election employment prospects.

In 2004, Clinton got $250,000 from Citigroup and $150,000 from Deutsche Bank. Goldman paid him $300,000 for two speeches, one in Paris.

As the bubble peaked, in 2006, Clinton got $150,000 paydays each from Citigroup (twice), Lehman Brothers, the Mortgage Bankers Association, and the National Association of Realtors.

In 2007, it was Goldman again, twice, Lehman, Citigroup, and Merrill Lynch.

Those are “message” payments. They tell all politicians, “See how if you play ball now, you’ll be rewarded later.”

Today, the Democrats lie, “The deficit should be reduced,” the Republicans lie, “the deficit should be reduced,” and Obama and the media say the same thing.

But, economics says there is no reason to reduce the deficit. In fact, it should be increased. The government can pay any bill of any size, and inflation is widely predicted not to be a threat for many years.

So why do Congress, the President and the media lie, knowing their lies not only hurt America, but specifically hurt the middle- and lower-income classes?

Answer: They are paid to lie.

The upper .1% income group derives its power from the income/wealth gap between them and the 99.9%. If there were no gap, no one would be rich, and the greater the gap, the richer and more powerful the .1% is.

Even if you made $1 million a year, you wouldn’t be rich, if everyone else also made $1 million a year. But, if you made $10K a year, and everyone else made $1K, you would be fabulously wealthy.

In short, “rich” and “wealthy” are not absolute terms; they are comparative terms.

So the top .1%, wanting more power, bribe the politicians (via campaign contributions and promises of lucrative employment later) to widen the gap by cutting the deficit. And, of course, the media are owned by the rich,so they lie, too.

Because the vast majority of deficit spending benefits the 99.9%, cutting the deficit widens the gap — exactly what the rich want.

Before the past election, I urged readers to vote for Obama as the better choice between two really bad choices. My opinion was Romney would have been a greater disaster for America than Obama.

That said, Romney at least, could point to some pre-politics accomplishments. Although he hated the underclasses, he did build Bain Capital, and he successfully led the Salt Lake Olympics.

And what were Obama’s pre-politics accomplishments? He was a “community organizer” (whatever that is), and he . . . er, ah, was sort of a lawyer, briefly.

So, how did Obama rise though the ranks to attain his position, despite having few accomplishments. As a Chicago-style politician, he understood the way to success is to do the bidding of the moneyed class. He was trained to do as he was told.

I’m a life-long Chicagoan. I know how Obama came to be a state senator, a national senator and the President. Big money backed him, because he was dependable (for them) and now, he wants big money to reward him when he retires from the Presidency, by building a large Obama library in Chicago and by making him “Clinton-rich.”

That is how it’s done, and those who don’t understand these facts, continue to argue economics, when the real argument revolves around the income/wealth gap.

The words “rich” and “wealthy” are not absolute terms; they are comparative terms. Many years ago, someone making $50K per year was fabulously wealthy, because most people made less than $5K. Today, $50K is middling.

If I asked you, “Is someone making 20,000 naira per year, wealthy?” your first question would be, “How many naira does the average person earn?” Wealth is defined by the gap.

Not only does the income/wealth gap define wealth, but the wider the gap, the wealthier and more powerful the rich are. So the rich are not interested in absolute dollars; they are interested in comparative dollars. They are interested in the gap.

You can widen the gap by giving the rich more money or by taking money from the poor. Cutting Social Security widens the gap, as does cutting food stamps, cutting Medicaid and increasing FICA payments — all Obama proposals and initiatives.

For the sake of his wealthy supporters, Obama’s goal is to widen the gap, so he will be “Clinton-rich” after he leaves office.

To understand today’s sequester arguments, forget about the lie that the debt is “unsustainable” or that the government is “broke” or that the government, like you, “should live within its means.” Those claims all are misdirection from the real issue.

The real issue for politicians, left and right, is how best to curry favor with the rich. The rest is just to brainwash you, the public.

Don’t pay attention to what Obama says. He doesn’t want to “compromise.” He doesn’t want to “save” Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He doesn’t want to lift the middle class.

He wants to please the wealthy by widening the gap. And if you’re real generous, he’ll invite you to dinner in the White House, with him and Michelle.

How do I know? A dear friend of mine was quite generous, and recently had that very dinner. I guess his contribution was pretty good, but for a few bucks more, he might have had Obama cut food stamps.

Hmmm . . . I wonder how much it would cost to get the National School Lunch Program eliminated. Those kids are too fat, anyway.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Germany: “Eat our neighbors, then kill our citizens.” WWII revisited.

“I’ve been applying leeches to cure your anemia, but for some reason, the more blood I draw, the weaker you become.” Barack Obama, MD

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In The United States of Europe: The when and the how. (Monday, Apr 30 2012), we said:

The long term survival of any monetarily non-sovereign government requires money coming in from outside its borders. Germany, for instance, survives by exporting goods and services (i.e. importing euros).

Of course, Germany has to get those euros from someplace, and unfortunately for their neighbors, that “someplace” is them. The flow of euros toward Germany sucks the life blood from France, Greece, Portugal, Spain and other nations having negative balances of payment.

Apparently, Germany is confident it will continue to bleed its neighbors, because:

German cabinet approves drastic reduction in new debt

Germany would take on no new debt, while a budget surplus of five billion euros (will) be secured in 2016.

Translation: In 2016, five billion net euros will be taken from Germany’s private sector, impoverishing the middle- and lower classes.

“With all modesty, this is a result of historic proportion,” Economics Minister Philipp Rösler told reporters in Berlin. “The lesson from the sovereign debt crisis is that solid finances are essential.”

Translation: “I’m brilliant, because I have figured out how to run a surplus in a monetarily non-sovereign nation: Tax the hell out of the little people. But when things turn sour, don’t blame me. I’ll do a ‘Sergeant Schultz’ and deny I had anything to do with it.”

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble used the occasion to once again brush aside accusations from fellow eurozone countries Germany had been insisting on too much austerity in southern Europe. He argued the Germany example was proof there was no contradiction between budget consolidation and growth.

Translation: There is no contradiction if you use the other guy’s money.

The cabinet said the strong performance of the German economy and its labor market had helped to boost tax revenue and produce a solid fiscal basis for the country. But it added increased tax income had not been used to increase spending.

Translation: “The spending increase came from the money we took out of our neighbors’ treasuries. But don’t tell them that. They are too stupid to figure it out for themselves.”

Rösler’s crowing aside, the Germany is building on the flesh and blood of its neighbors and its citizens. In a brilliant campaign, reminiscent of the American .1% income group’s campaign to impoverish the U.S. middle- and lower classes, Germany has convinced the world its success is based on “budget consolidation” and “solid finances.”

A growing Gross Domestic Product requires a growing supply of money. In the case of Monetarily Sovereign nations, like the U.S., Canada, China, Australia et al, that money can be created ad hoc by their sovereign governments.

But for monetarily non-sovereign nations, which have no sovereign currency and so the total supply cannot be increased, each nation must try to steal euros from the others, in a nationalistic riot of mutual cannibalism.

When the other euro nations finally surrender to the eventuality that they either return to Monetary Sovereignty and re-adopt their own currency, or merge into a financial version of a United States of Europe, Germany will run out of blood donors.

At that point, German citizens will begin to suffer so much they will seek out a strong, ruthless leader, who will identify and persecute scapegoats, then renounce the euro, so as to finance a war.

During the chaos, the German uber-reich will feed off the dying German populace, as salaries are diverted to taxes and the focus turns to saving the government. Soon there will be but two classes: The very wealthy and the very poor. The gap will be complete.

By the way, eurozone, how’s that austerity thing working out for you?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Lawrence Summers: Failing to the top

Mitchell’s laws: The more budgets are cut and taxes inceased, the weaker an economy becomes. To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments. Austerity = poverty and leads to civil disorder. Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
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The Peter Principle holds that employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence. They are promoted until they arrive at a position where at which they no longer are competent, where they remain forever.

While the Peter Principle usually describes one company, a variation of it can apply to the ability of some people to rise to a high level in one organization, fail there, then move to another organization at a high level, fail there, and continue to fail, always finding jobs at a high level, the previous title being more important than the previous results.

Common example: Sports managers often are fired, only to be hired as managers elsewhere.

In that vein, I give you Lawrence Summers, who became Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001, under President Clinton. Summers helped create the disastrous Clinton surplus which led to the 2001 recession (as deficit growth reduction usually does).

Based on his previous title, Summers was hired to be president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006, then was forced to resign after a no-confidence vote by the faculty. One of several reasons: He said few women were scientists because they had a “different availability of aptitude at the high end.”

Based on these failures, President Obama made Summers director of the White House National Economic Council. (What’s wrong Mr. President, wasn’t Cosmo Kramer available?)

All of which brings us to:

Financial Times
April 29, 2012
Growth not austerity is best remedy for Europe
By Lawrence Summers

Once again Europe’s efforts to contain its crisis have fallen short. It was perhaps reasonable to hope that the European Central Bank’s longer-term refinancing operation to provide nearly $1tn in cheap three-year funding to European banks would halt the crisis for a while if not resolve it.

“Reasonable” only if one agrees with lending money to nations, that because they are monetarily non-sovereign, have no means to repay.

It is now clear it has been little more than a palliative. Again, both Europe and the global economy approach the brink.

What a surprise! Who could have predicted that?

The premise of European policy making is that countries are overindebted and so unable to access markets on reasonable terms and that the high interest rates associated with excessive debt hurt the financial system and inhibit growth. So, the strategy is one of providing financing while insisting on austerity.

Unfortunately, Europe has misdiagnosed its problems and set the wrong strategic course. Outside Greece, which represents only 2 per cent of the eurozone, profligacy is not the root cause of problems.

In this, Summers is right, although profligacy is not the cause of Greece’s problems, either.

Its financial problems stem from lack of growth. The right focus for Europe is on growth. In this context increased austerity is a step in the wrong direction.

At this point, I thought the old Lawrence Summers had disappeared, and a new, well-informed person had taken his place. But it was not to be.

Yes, there will ultimately be a need to raise retirement ages, reform sclerosis-inducing regulations and restructure benefit programmes. Phased in, commitments in these areas would be constructive.

Summers continues to enhance his legacy. He has helped cause a recession (under Clinton), exacerbate another one (under Obama), insulted women’s intelligence and abilities, suggested punishing older people by raising retirement ages, suggested abetting corporate dishonesty and advocated reducing benefits to the poor.

What next for Lawrence Summers? Based on his ability to fail to the top, President of the United States?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

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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 exports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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