Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Two Legs Good, Four Legs Bad

"The way to crush the bourgeois is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation."

Vladimir Illyich Ulyanov (AKA Nicholai Lenin) 
1870 - 1924

First, we have to define a couple of words.

The word bourgeois, for Lenin, was to help him define society into three players - the workers, the exploiters and HIM.

An exploitative bourgeois did not simply describe the fat, mean, selfish, sloppy, gluttonous man, with money dropping from his pockets and blood dripping from the club he used to keep everyone in his factory working 19 hours a day.  The bourgeois also included the single shop keeper, a baker, or accountant, or business manager.

(The other two players were proletariats, or workers, and HIM.  If you were like HIM, it was important to do everything he said.  One had to truly be like HIM.  Then you could join his party...  In the end, this group really was the exploitative fat, mean, selfish, sloppy and gluttonous, which Orwell characterized in his book Animal Farm as the pigs.)

Second, we need to define inflation.

Inflation is gubment policy!  And so for a number of reasons, the biggest being that gubment derives the most benefit from it. 

How?  First and foremost, the currency becomes further devalued (sound familiar?) such that the national debt is easier to pay off.  The national debt is BORROWED and as the currency becomes cheaper it is easier to keep the scheme going.  While this seems like it will end in economic doom, this has been the gubment's policy for decades.  Very Keynesian, you know...

Second, inflation gives the APPEARANCE of economic "growth."  Economic growth does not necessarily mean economic health!  Was wealth really being accumulated during the real estate boom?  No you say?  You mean that wealth wasn't health?  Those soaring "values" did improve the gubment coffers though!  Didn't it?  Sales taxes, property taxes - you name it.  Why, they needed to hire more people to handle it all! GROWTH!  Which, by the way, builds in future taxes, that do not go away when the "wealth" evaporates.

Third, inflation is a built-in, hidden tax.  Notice how 45% of our family budgets (energy and food) is mysteriously excluded from the gubment's inflation statistic?  Is this a mere oversight?  The gubment says these two things are very "volatile," and therefore not accurate indicators.  What thinkest you?  When the basic family budget is strained because of those two things that really aren't' getting more expensive, don't you know, it is NOT inflation.  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...

So, inflation allows the spending scheme to stay afloat, our economy is getting "bigger," and, as people are pushed into higher tax brackets, more taxes are collected without passing new tax laws!  How cool is that!

So, when you hear how we must "PAY" for ever-burgeoning gubment, and borrowing for that can ONLY come from TAXES, remember, remember, remember, brothers and sisters, Vlad's statement - THAT IS HOW YOU CRUSH AND TAKE OVER.

And control.  Two legs good, four legs bad.

VOTE SMART.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Poverty Or Ease?


"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it."

Benjamin Franklin (1705 - 1790)

Those sound like the words of an adult. They are the words of a leader.

Why would people want to be in an "easy" poverty? What is easy about that?

And why would a leader want people to be in an "easy" poverty? Where is that leading them? It is leading them to a controlled corral. And where is that?

Franklin viewed every individual as a potential entrepreneur, when properly encouraged!

And where does that start? In his view, education.

But Franklin did not have a "formal" education as we would understand it now. How did he get educated?

He educated himself by involving himself in many things. And apprenticing in what interested him the most - like printing. He apprenticed to his brother, James.

But, at 15, and a mere apprentice, Ben wanted to write for the paper. How could this be done by a mere apprentice? Writing was something that brother James would never let him do.

So he began writing letters to the editor at night, signing them the name of a fictional widow of his invention, "Silence Dogood." He slipped the letters under the door to the paper at night. They were printed and became an instant hit. Everyone wanted to know who the widow was! A year or so later, he admitted to writing them. His brother was very jealous at all the attention everyone paid to the "precocious and funny" Ben.

And thus it began for Ben. This style was continued later in life with his "Poor Richard's Almanac."

Ben got himself out of poverty by becoming an all around person!

So, in our fast, tedious, difficult society, how do we lead people out of poverty, especially when so many want to sit on the sofa, as they say, and simply receive a check?

Remember, that check does not get them out of poverty! It simply makes it easier to stay in it! As Franklin said.

Activities that are subsidized (financed essentially) grow. Activities that are taxed do not grow.

As our gubment goes about making life more and more difficult, more and more tedious, condemning, as it were, and driving people out of or away from entrepreneurship, Franklin would do it differently.

He would make conditions leading to entrepreneurship easier, thus leading those away from poverty as they are attracted to a better life.

What drives the poor out of poverty? The poor themselves! As they see what is available to them.

Franklin then went about trying to create a society, and an economics therein, that was conducive to and encouraging toward individual development, individual freedoms and liberty, and individual progress.

WE FIND OURSELVES AT A CROSSROADS - DO WE WANT TO GET BACK TO INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM AND LIBERTY OR FURTHER AWAY TOWARD DIFFICULTY AND TEDIOUSNESS? FOR CERTAINLY, WE ARE MOVING RAPIDLY TOWARD THE LATTER.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

True Witness or False Witness?

"It should be noted that people in the free market rarely bare false witness; integrity is the rule. The morning milk, phone calls, planes the airlines buy, autos by the millions - no one could list the instances - are as represented. We have daily, eloquent, enormous testimony that the Ten Commandments can be and are observed by fallible human beings. Contemporary politics is the most glaring of all exceptions.

Leonard E. Read (1898 - 1983)

And all the recent talk of civility and not attacking the person but engaging the idea, is all so much fluff! Those who talk about "civility" are the most "glaring exceptions" to the body of those trying to conform themselves to the Ten Commandments!

But what's this about false witness in the free market place?

He is right! There is none!

Well, in the FREE market place that is. The controlled, contrived, compelled market place is FULL, FULL, FULL of false witness!

Such control, contrivance and compulsion is the source of subsidy, and skews the market toward things that are not efficient or profitably viable. Green energy comes to mind. Things that are subsidized for decades and yet still cannot be profitable are not good uses of market efforts. They represent a false witness because the market is controlled, contrived or compelled.

Some forms of "subsidy" really are not. Encouraging home ownership by offering a mortgage interest tax write off is not really a subsidy. Encouraging oil development in certain locations by offering incentives to do so is not really a subsidy. Encouraging the planting of one crop over another by offering incentives to do so is not really a subsidy. Encouraging someone not to work by offering incentives not to do so is not really a subsidy.

But all of these activities skew the market that would otherwise develop more efficiently and profitably. This includes not only things - such as goods and services - but also PEOPLE!

But, under normal conditions, people will respond with their money to something in which they find integrity. And profits will always result. The so-called Better Mousetrap. Money will always flow toward that which is most desired.

And that shows integrity and is TRUE witness!

When gubment money flows toward that which gubment most desires, there is always inefficiency and never profit.

And that lacks integrity and is FALSE witness!

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

The Swimming Pool

"Unfortunately, it is not in the power of government to make everyone more prosperous. Government can only raise the income of one person by taking from another."

Hans F. Sennholz (1922 - 2007)

Austrian-school economist Hans Sennholz understood that gubment has a lot of power.

But, as an economist, he understood that it only goes so far.

It is not powerful to take. It is powerful to be able to set the rules so that the taking can "legally" happen! Especially under the guise of "doing good."

But what happens when gubment redistributes "wealth" with impunity, penalizing those who would not want to participate but create wealth instead?

IT IS NO DIFFERENT THAN TAKING WATER OUT OF ONE END OF A SWIMMING POOL AND PUTTING IT BACK INTO THE OTHER END - OF THE SAME POOL!

  • If money is taken, even if a small but ever-increasing percentage, from working people for, say, the medical care of "the elderly," (and the definition of medical care and "the elderly" changes all the time), and so much is transferred that the "program" is continually going broke, IT IS NO DIFFERENT THAN TAKING WATER OUT OF ONE END OF A SWIMMING POOL AND PUTTING IT BACK INTO THE OTHER END - OF THE SAME POOL!
  • If money is taken, even if a small but ever-increasing percentage, from working people for, say, the medical care of "the poor," (and the definition of medical care and "the poor" changes all the time), and so much is transferred that the "program" is continually going broke, IT IS NO DIFFERENT THAN TAKING WATER OUT OF ONE END OF A SWIMMING POOL AND PUTTING IT BACK INTO THE OTHER END - OF THE SAME POOL!
  • If money is taken, even if a small but ever-increasing percentage, from working people for, say, their "security" in "supplementing" their "retirement," (and the definition of how this money is set aside, "invested," what and who it is spent on, and and all the rules implemented to get the "program" started are broken, and what "retirement" means, changes all the time), and so much is transferred that the "program" is continually going broke, IT IS NO DIFFERENT THAN TAKING WATER OUT OF ONE END OF A SWIMMING POOL AND PUTTING IT BACK INTO THE OTHER END - OF THE SAME POOL!
  • If money is taken, even if a small but ever-increasing percentage, from working people for, say, the "general welfare" of a "needing" sector of the population (and the definition of "general welfare" and the "needing" sector of the population changes all the time), and so much is transferred that this "needing" sector STAYS a "needing" sector for generations and learns to expect such monies in ever-increasing amounts, IT IS NO DIFFERENT THAN TAKING WATER OUT OF ONE END OF A SWIMMING POOL AND PUTTING IT BACK INTO THE OTHER END - OF THE SAME POOL!
  • If money is taken, even if a small but time-after-time amount, from working people for, say, the "bail out" of a sector of the economy to "save the world from disaster" (and the definition of "bail out" and "disaster" changes all the time), and that transfer helps to enrich that sector at the expense of the rest of the population, IT IS NO DIFFERENT THAN TAKING WATER OUT OF ONE END OF A SWIMMING POOL AND PUTTING IT BACK INTO THE OTHER END - OF THE SAME POOL!

And all of these wondrous "programs" are scammed and scammed and scammed to the point of ridiculousness!

I could go on with the above bullets, now couldn't I!?

What we need instead is to be released and unfettered from the "wisdom" of the gubment takers so that we, as a people and creative operators can create wealth, and make the pool larger and deeper, with more and more for all.

GUBMENT DOES NOT CREATE WEALTH. GUBMENT DOES NOT ENLARGE THE POOL. GUBMENT DOES NOT MAKE THE POOL DEEPER. IF ANYTHING, IT DOES THE OPPOSITE. ONE WONDERS IF THAT IS NOT THE GOAL OF THIS CURRENT GROUP IN POWER. TO MAKE THE POOL SMALLER AND SHALLOWER, WITH MORE AND MORE PEOPLE TRYING TO SWIM IN IT?

Wealth transfer IS NO DIFFERENT THAN TAKING WATER OUT OF ONE END OF A SWIMMING POOL AND PUTTING IT BACK INTO THE OTHER END - OF THE SAME POOL!

Get real people. Vote smart.