Yes, Mint Our Money

The $1T coin idea you may have heard of is being mocked by conservatives. I, too, think it is a terrible idea, but not for the same reasons conservatives typically give.

Let me propose a better, yet similar, idea.

In order to meet our budget, the government is spending north of $1T more than it brings in in revenue. Right now, we’re borrowing that money from lenders, one of whom is this corporation you might have heard of called the Federal Reserve. Rather than mint currency and deposit it in the Fed, we should, instead, stop borrowing the money altogether. Let’s just print what we need.

Now, people are going to scream that that is inflationary. It’s too late. What the Federal Reserve is doing by financing our debt is inflationary. They’re already printing cash in absurd amounts and sending it off to DC. The difference between us printing it for ourselves and us printing it for the Federal Reserve is that when we do it for ourselves, we don’t enslave our children, grandchildren, and great-great-great grandchildren to debt. The money is ours.

If we do print too much money and cause inflation, then it’s a problem we deal with right now. Once the deficit matches the growth of the economy, inflation disappears. On the other hand, if we don’t print enough money, then we may see deflation, which is a horrible beast far more devastating than inflation, but the solution is, once again, simple and immediate, with no long-lasting effects.

How much should the deficit be? I propose it should be about the change in the real, non-governmental GDP. That is, if our economy grows from $15T to $16T in 2013, then we print $1T in new currency to keep inflation and deflation away. If we’re not too certain, then we can print a little extra, maybe $1.2T, so that we definitely won’t hit deflation. Think of it: this is free money, money that we owe no one for, money that must be printed and put into circulation anyway so that the people have a stable currency they can trust and use for everyday transactions.

We can, today, write a law preventing the Federal Reserve from printing another red cent using our country’s name. Let them make their own money, and see if anyone wants to use it, like any other bank. We can print all of the money our economy needs with our own name and faith and credit, and we can use the surplus that needs to be printed to keep our economy growing for whatever we like.

Some will argue that the Fed serves an important purpose by preventing bank collapses and keeping the economy stable. I say they have a terrible track record, and we are better off leaving that responsibility with congress than the Fed.

If President Obama chooses to print that $1T coin, then I hope he doesn’t stop there, and pulls an Andrew Jackson and takes on the banks and wins by keeping the power to print money to the federal government alone. If he were to exercise his dictatorial presidential powers to do something like that, I would call him a hero.

Just print more money!

I have a group of fans that are die-hard liberals. They find all the liberal talking points and shout them at me in the comments to my posts, as if I were completely unaware that there is a group of liberals trying to shout down their opponents with talking points.

Regardless, I appreciate them. The more time the spend whining to me, the less they call into my favorite talk shows and interrupt my listening pleasures. Plus, it shows that my forum is more powerful than the liberal ones.

One of the liberals is absolutely, positively convinced that the normal laws of finances do NOT apply to the government. That is, you don’t need to bring in more than you spend, you don’t need to balance your budget, and you don’t need to worry about debts and interest rates and all those sorts of things “regular” households and businesses have to worry about. Government simply doesn’t need to concern itself with these mundane affairs mere mortals have to deal with daily.

The idea is that since government can print money, they can spend as much as they want! Hooray! It’s Christmas every day! Here’s a pony for every little girl in the world! And free health care! See? All we had to do was BELIEVE and USE OUR IMAGINATION! Look there’s a unicorn!

This is, of course, absurd.

We have a recent example of a government that tried to print its way to prosperity: Zimbabwe. We have a more obvious example: The Weimar Republic, the predecessor to Nazi Germany. These are only two examples from history. There are countless more. And if you expand your definition of money, you will find inflation happening in every industry where the supply of a good rapidly increases beyond the needs of demand.

I’d like to approach this a different way. See, families and businesses have the same power as the government to print little pieces of paper. They can even write dollar signs on them, and color them green and put drawings of important people from history. (OF course, forgery is a crime since it is lying and a fraud. But you can create your own designs.)

The line of business I’m in, internet advertising, is just such an industry. I can take people’s web content and put it in many different places. But that doesn’t mean they’re willing to exchange little green bits of paper, US Dollars, for my services. No, they are interested in things like “ROI” and “effectiveness.” Apparently, they suffer from a critical disease called “reality”, where they want to get more out of what they spend than what they paid. What I have to do is CREATE value for the services I provide, my money. Then I can exchange these services for something of lesser value to them, but of greater value for me.

Did you know I actually spend almost 100% of my time thinking about how I can increase the value of advertising based on where and when I show it? The same ad in two different places has different value.  Interesting how that works. Money is the same kind of thing.

See, bartering NEVER ENDED. We are still bartering today, even though almost all of the transactions we engage in involve dollars or promises of dollars. It is only because we value dollars that dollars have value. The same is true for gold and silver. These are all really “fiat” money, meaning money that is money because people believe in it. (Could an Atheist society have money if they reject the idea of belief altogether? News at 11.)

The Federal Government CANNOT simply print money. Or rather, they CAN, they just can’t print WEALTH. That is, if congress passed a bill, and President Obama signed it, granting the US mint to print a QUADRILLION dollars — a thousand trillion, $1,000,000,000,000,000.00—they could NOT use this to purchase a quadrillion dollars worth of things. What would immediately happen is everyone would whine about the super-inflation that would hit the US. Money would fall to a fraction of its value. Bubble gum would cost $1,000. Cars would cost hundreds of millions. Homes would be worth billions. And people’s wages would of necessity raise to compensate. I’d probably make that million I’ve always been working towards — in a few months. Medicare and Social Security recipients would be literally left on the streets, since their checks wouldn’t even be enough to buy a drop of water.

It”s funny that the very method my political opponents suggest as the path to prosperity would ACTUALLY ACHIEVE what they claim I want to achieve. That is, you’d really kick the poor and the sick and the old into the street if hyper-inflation ever occurred.

We tried this, by the way, in the 70′s. It really, really sucked. We tried to peg prices as well. That was even worse. Ask someone who was an adult in the 70′s, ask them what it was like to get gasoline.

That lead to Reagan’s landslide victory, and his executive order to put the US mint on vacation until inflation stopped.

Odd how that works, right?

The US Made Cuba Poor?!?

Cuba received their first shipment in a long time from the US: humanitarian goods.

Liberals point to Cuba and say, “It’s not a failure of communism. It’s because the US cut them off!”

This is horrible reasoning, not that liberals are strong in reasoning. It’s horrible because it you built a wall between two people, and one person thrives while the other dies, what does that tell you about the relationship between the two people?

It’s rather obvious that the US has been an economic producer, while Cuba has been an economic consumer for the past 50 years.

That brings me to another point. People whine that the US consumes the vast majority of the resources in the world. This sounds terrible! It sounds like we’re stealing food and clothing from other people! The truth is rather more simple: America outproduces everyone else, and so we simply have more stuff than anyone else because we make more stuff.

It’s like you walk into a village, and you see one guy has all the iron tools in his shed. You wouldn’t think it’s because he’s hoarding them. No, you’d probably assume he’s the blacksmith, and he has all those tools because he made them himself.

Anyway, the thing that brought Cuba down wasn’t America. It was a murderous communist regime that vilified wealth and property, kind of like the president we have today. Remember that next time he attacks the rich: We would be like Cuba if it weren’t for the fact that the rich are just as welcome in our country as the poor.

Reflexive

One of the most curious things about trying to view the universe the way it really is, rather than the way we wish it would be, is that we have to remove ourselves, completely, from the equation.

For example, when Einstein first described the special theory of relativity, what he was really doing was trying to reconcile the laws of physics for every imaginable frame of reference. If you’ve ever done the gedankenexperiment (thought experiment) he did, you’ll see why this is important.

For instance, consider what a bystander sees when a train is passing by, and simultaneously consider what the passengers of the train see. Then think of what passengers on a train passing in the opposite direction see, as well as passengers on a spaceship traveling close to the speed of light. When you can reconcile all of these with each other, without changing the speed of light for any of them, then you understand what is really going on with our perception of time and space and speed and distance.

I won’t try to describe the truth to you. I honestly can’t. No one can. Those who refuse to perform the experiment so carefully laid out in his original paper will never really understand the special theory of relativity. They are left to beg for scraps from the table. They will be forced to accept whatever slivers of knowledge those who know are willing to share, and then left to try and interpret them into a consistent world view.

Science, knowledge, the art of knowing, not just guessing, but actually knowing what is out there, is not something you learn in a classroom. It is not found in textbooks. It is found in one-on-one interviews with the universe itself. It’s primary goal is to eliminate error from the scientists’ thinking. After all, we are all free to think what we wish, including the thought that we somehow know of ourselves something we cannot know for ourselves.

The reflexive nature of science started, I believe, with the simple twin commandments, “Love God, Love your neighbors as yourself.”This is encoded in a simple phrase, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” When we really think and ponder what that means, it leads us to the reflexive property of science. Simply put, what is true for me is true for you, and is true for all. Conversely, what is false for me is false for you and false for all. Truth and error are thus beyond the definition of humanity, but something that exists whether or not any thinking creatures existed at all.

What is the truth? When you try to find laws of nature that satisfy this reflexive requirement, you quickly discover that there are only so many possible laws just like there can only be so many knots. Most ways of combining things together are really combinations of even simpler things, just like fantastically complicated knots are really one or two knots put together in a sequence or pattern.

In economics and politics, two “sciences” which seem to be the most distantly removed from reality, despite the fact that they are so important to our well-being, the reflexive property is hard to be found. “Do as I say, not as I do” is everywhere. We detest it, innately. We label it as one of the grossest crimes any politician can commit: “Hypocrisy.”

Some of us take it a step further, and suppose it is not unlike the hypocrisy that Jesus denounced, and so it is. However, the subject that the pharisees were being hypocrites with were laws of nature, particularly nature’s God. We cannot imagine that our politicians are committing a crime so gross when they act hypocritically in their respective fields.

Another property thinking reflexively, really the point of this whole post, is when people think some people in one place are fundamentally than other people in another place. We see this in two principle divisions.

One is government vs. business. Somehow, we have allowed ourselves to believe that government magically transforms people into angels. I know why this idea exists: it certainly benefits government. A similar parallel exists within business, that you are justified in doing whatever you wish economically, as long as you make profit, since by making profit you are transformed into angels of wealth. Neither of these do justice to the fact that humans are human. Humans are one step away from the angels, but likewise one step away from the devils. I cannot trust myself, morally speaking, anymore than I can trust anyone else. I am well familiar with my failings, despite the fact that those who know me best claim that I am fundamentally good. And so I know the same is true for the people around me.

Let me put that in plainer language. People in government are only human. Just like I (and doubtless, you) feel tempted to do things that are morally wrong, and sometimes I act on those things, people in government are the same, maybe more, maybe less. People are the same everywhere, really. The reflexive property demands we understand that.

What is the best political policy then? Simply this: empower people to control their own lives. Give a tiny bit of power to your neighbors to interfere with your life when you’ve obviously gone too far. Government should always be a tiny fraction of our life, something distant, something unnecessary except for when people cross gross moral limits.

When we empower others, people who do not care for us more than we care for ourselves, we give them an awful power. They do not have to live with the consequences of their actions, and so there is no control mechanism. See, in our life, if we make a bad choice, we suffer the consequences. If we give the power to choose to someone else, and they make a bad choice, they say, “Sorry,” and move on with their life, suffering no consequence.

Two, and this is important, is our thinking that we are somehow superior to someone else. One of my brothers once said, “People are stupid.” I nodded in agreement, thinking he had lumped himself into that group. Certainly I knew I was stupid. But then he added, “We can’t let them choose for themselves.” I shuddered at that thought. What made him think his special brand of stupid was better than other people’s brands of stupid? The reflexive property demands that anyone who thinks they are more or less human, or rather, anyone who thinks anyone is more or less than human, is wrong. Yes, circumstances are different, our intellectual capacity, our education, our habits, may distinguish us. But where is there among us someone who knows enough, who is wise and mature enough, who has pure moral intentions, and who can tell us which one of us is better or superior, or worse? Nowhere.

The Reflexive Property demands that the judge of humanity must himself be non-human. If he were human, he would judge himself, and that would make him an impartial judge. We certainly can’t have that. That’s why I ascribe all powers of judgment not to men or a man, but to God. We can’t influence him one way or the other, we can’t even understand his mind, but for fragments he feels we are ready to accept. (Not unlike those who are trying to understand relativity but only feed on the scraps of knowledge that those who really know share.)

That’s why I feel all Atheists must, immediately, create a God to worship, something that is distinctly not human, something worthy of our powerful instinct to worship and revere and trust. Then we can move forward, applying the Reflexive Property between us.

 

Living With the Rich

People often get upset at the income difference between rich and poor in America. They say it is some sort of injustice that there are people in America who make billions of dollars each year while there are others who can only make a few thousand dollars.

I say I’d rather make a few thousand dollars in a country with billionaires than a country with only millionaires.

I think I have a logically sound explanation of why that is. The simple explanation is opportunity.

Suppose I make no money at all and have no financial assets at all, and have no credit whatsoever. I am literally penniless, and I have no way of getting any money at all except for selling my time. Suppose I am relatively unskilled compared to the people I live with in my country. This would represent a poor kid from the “hood” (sorry to use 90′s terminology) who finds himself thrust into reality.

If I lived in a country with very many very rich people, I’d be much better off than if I lived in a country where people were more similar to my status.

The reasoning is rather simple. In a classic economic logical exercise, we can prove that even if you are not as good as others at doing something, you will still get paid for doing it. The thought experiment works like this. Suppose there are two islands, A and B, and two products that people on those islands can produce, C and D, each unit of equal value on the world market. Now, the people on island A are educated and have technology and training available, and each person can produce about 1000 C’s and 500 D’s. On island B, the people are backward. They use stone tools and cannot even read or write or do basic arithmetic. Each one can only produce 10 C’s or 10 D’s. Now, suppose the two islands entered into trade. What sort of arrangement would benefit everyone the most? Should the people on both island produce some C’s and some D’s, or should everyone on A produce C’s and everyone on B produce D’s, or vice-versa? The answer is to have everyone produce what they are comparatively good at. On island A, people produce twice as many C’s as D’s. so they should focus on that. On island B, they can produce C’s or D’s with equal ease, so they should choose between one or the other. Since island A is making all the C’s, they should focus on making D’s. No other combination will yield as much value for the people of islands A and B.

So, given the fact that in terms of the national economy, I am at the very bottom rung, there is something I do comparatively better than the people around me. It may take a while for me to figure out what that is, it may require someone with more experience and education to tell me what to do, but in the end, there is something I can do. If I focus on doing that, it will be in the rich people’s interests to pay me to do that task so they can focus on what they are comparatively good at. Say I’m comparatively good at cleaning toilets, while the rich people are comparatively good at running factories or buying and selling stock on the stock market, or programming computers, or inventing new apps for mobile devices. If I just focus on cleaning toilets, then it won’t be long before a rich person comes a long and says, “You know, if you clean my toilet, I can spend a few more hours a month focusing on what I am good at, and I’d make more money as a result. Here’s a part of the money I make because you’re cleaning my toilet.”

Ta-da, I have a job, and it probably pays pretty well, because the rich people I work for are making millions of dollars for every hour they don’t have to clean their toilets.

In a poor country, I still have the same opportunity. However, the time it takes to clean the toilets is not nearly as valuable to the rich of that country. So when they go to negotiate my pay, there is a much, much lower limit to it. Beyond a certain point, and it doesn’t make any economic sense for them to hire me.

The above is logically sound. I can’t see an issue with it. If you are poor, you are much better off living with enormously rich people. There are vast opportunities available to you that would not be available if you were living in a country with more “fair” income distributions.

So, when communists and socialists and leftists and progressives and nazis alike quote to you the income disparity, and you find yourself near the bottom of the scale, just keep in mind that you have vast opportunities that would not exist in countries where the rich and poor are much more similar in income to each other.

Obama did NOT cut spending

There is a lot of hay over the fact that under Obama, spending has fallen. Except, you’d be wrong. It hasn’t fallen at all. We’re spending more money in the federal government than we ever have.

Let me break it down for you.

Go to the treasury website: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt.htm

That’s the balance/debt of the government. It’s how much we owe or have on hand. It would be the equivalent of your all your debts. If it’s 0, then you don’t owe anyone anything.

Note that this does NOT take into account money owed to the entitlement programs. No one really knows how much we owe them. It is only how much money we borrowed.

Now, copy and paste that data into your favorite spreadsheet program. It’s not formatted particularly well, but that’s ok. It’s not rocket science to fix the numbers.

Add a column to the right that simply subtracts the previous number from the next number. That’s the surplus/deficit. It’s how much more we bring in than we spend. Notice that there is NO surplus in the 90′s. The last surplus was in the late 50′s, and then the 20′s. (Quiz: Who was president then?)

Now that we have the deficit, we can measure how much the deficit changed. If the deficit is reducing, thent that means we are slowing our borrowing, even though we are likely to still be borrowing. You’ll not that what Obama claims to have achieved is not remarkable. No president has ever increased deficit spending faster than him. On the other hand, several times President Bush achieved a slowing of the deficit.

Here’s a link to that in LibreOffice format: http://jonathangardner.net/balance.ods

President Obama has NOT reduced the size of government debt. He just slowed the pace of how fast the debt is growing.

The Problem With Statists

The problem with statists is that they refuse to accept reality as it is, but instead pretend that things are the way they are not.

A healthy understanding of Christian theology clears up any confusion about the state of man. We are fallen sons and daughters of God. The thing that separates us from perfection is our unwillingness to accept the authority of God in our lives. No one can be forced to obey God and love him; we must all independently choose to do so, or not. The power is within us, and no one can change that.

The Statist looks at the world, and ignores some fundamental qualities of the nature of physics and the nature of man. They suppose that science isn’t an observational art, but an art that can be used to obtain the results one wants to see. Do we need to look very hard to find instances of Statists embracing pseudo-science? Is it any wonder why? No one really likes to have their world-view changed. No one really likes to know they were wrong.

No one, that is, but the pure Christian. See, as a Christian, I admit and embrace the fact that I am wrong about many things. God’s ways are not my ways. If I ever hope to do anything good in this life, it is only in changing my understanding of the universe. Change towards a more godly understanding is not just a good thing, but a necessary thing. Of course, not every change is good, so we must weight carefully whether a change is for the better, or towards error. There is an influence just as strongly influencing our hearts that is set in opposition to that influence for good. If it weren’t so, we really wouldn’t be free to choose for ourselves.

The Statist looks on the nature of man and sees an animal that can be trained much like dogs or goldfish. If only they were trained properly, they could behave in ways that benefits everyone, they vainly imagine. They refuse to admit that men have the power to choose for themselves what they will do with their lives. As such, the Statist looks to mold and bend people’s minds to their wills, while the Christian seeks only to influence respectfully. That’s why we have the death camps and starvation campaigns in socialist and communist countries that murdered hundreds of millions, while no such parallel exists in the Christian world.

Capitalism is a description of the way things are. It is not a philosophy that is taught or imposed. The very fact that the universe is the way it is, and human nature is the way it is, means that capitalism will be with us forever, as long as men have needs and have choice. You can no more overthrow capitalism than you could overthrow death, or disease, or hopelessness. You may try to pervert nature such that death, disease, and hopelessness, along with capitalism disappear, but all you are really doing is hurting people.

The Christian does not look to the state to do what he would not do himself. The idea that if government doesn’t take care of the poor, no one will, is an insult to men’s free will. Every time I hear this, I think, “What are you saying about me? That I won’t step forward to care for the people around me unless I am compelled by my government? Do you really think I am as horrible as that?” No, not everyone is charitable, but enough of us in this country are, so much so that I am confident that if we simply stopped all the social welfare programs at all government levels, that the communities would spontaneously organize to meet and exceed whatever aid people received from the government.

And so it is for defense. The government is merely a by-product of our willingness to help each other in securing each other’s liberties. If you eradicated the government, we would build it again for the same reason. We pool our resources and freedoms in the constitution of the government, and we do so for a specific reason. Defense is not one of many reasons for government, it can be argued that it is the only reason. When you see our governments spend the majority of their budgets on securing people’s liberties, then we have a government doing what it was intended to do, even if it means you have to hold a bake sale to procure books for schoolchildren.

The Statist, in short, is the one living in a fantasy world. The fact that they have never been right is testament to this. Every prediction they have made has always turned out to the contrary.

The Book of Mormon Endorses Capitalism

These two verses in the Book of Mormon seem to declare and obvious cause and effect, something that Adam Smith discovered and described in The Wealth of Nations:

 And it came to pass that the Lamanites did also go whithersoever they would, whether it were among the Lamanites or among the Nephites; and thus they did have free intercourse one with another, to buy and to sell, and to get gain, according to their desire.

And it came to pass that they became exceedingly rich, both the Lamanites and the Nephites; and they did have an exceeding plenty of gold, and of silver, and of all manner of precious metals, both in the land south and in the land north. (Helaman 6:8-9)

A few verses later, it seems to endorse prosperity and industry as the key to peace:

 And behold, there was all manner of gold in both these lands, and of silver, and of precious ore of every kind; and there were also curious workmen, who did work all kinds of ore and did refine it; and thus they did become rich.

They did raise grain in abundance, both in the north and in the south; and they did flourish exceedingly, both in the north and in the south. And they did multiply and wax exceedingly strong in the land. And they did raise many flocks and herds, yea, many fatlings.

Behold their women did toil and spin, and did make all manner of cloth, of fine-twined linen and cloth of every kind, to clothe their nakedness. And thus the sixty and fourth year did pass away in peace. (Helaman 6:11-13)

Indeed, it wasn’t the riches that lead to their subsequent downfall, it was the love of their riches (rather than God and each other.)

For behold, the Lord had blessed them so long with the riches of the world that they had not been stirred up to anger, to wars, nor to bloodshed; therefore they began to set their hearts upon their riches; yea, they began to seek to get gain that they might be lifted up one above another; therefore they began to commit secret murders, and to rob and to plunder, that they might get gain. (Helaman 6:17)

When members of the LDS church talk about the secret of prosperity lying in individual righteousness, this is what they are referring to. If we set out into the world with intent to love God and love our neighbors as we love ourselves, then capitalism is the natural result. We won’t need government programs for the poor because we’ll have more than enough wealth to go around. People will naturally apply themselves to whatever job they decide on, and will naturally build the wealth that is needed not only to eliminate poverty, but to build a lasting peace.

The problem arise when people begin to value wealth over God, themselves, or their neighbors. When this happens, then it is only natural to see why you’d go about hurting people to make your money, even killing those who stand in your way. War is a natural result, because if you’re willing to kill one person, you’re capable of killing many to achieve your desires.

Wealth doesn’t cause wickedness any more than poverty causes righteousness. The two concepts are completely orthogonal one to another, meaning that there are endless combinations of relative righteousness and relative poverty.

One cautionary note: Note that when people attack the “rich” and want to “punish” them to help the poor, they are no different than those who value wealth over people. They falsely ascribe maliciousness to people who simply have done well for themselves, and then prescribe injustice as the cure. This is just as bad as a rich man who abuses the poor to get what he wants out of them, such as an employer who hires people far below the wage they deserve! (Thee are scriptures condemning both actions; both are a sign of pride or a lack of love for fellow men.)

I would love to live in a society where we have groups of insanely wealthy people, groups of extraordinarily wealthy people, and groups of fantastically wealthy people, with no poor among them. In this society, it would be no burden to see that even the least among us, those who are incapable of communication and bound to wheelchairs, would be treated with the highest level of attention and care. If anyone had any lack, they could simply ask the nearest person for assistance, who would not only freely share his substance but help of all forms because he has no real needs that are not met and exceeded.

As long as people in this society put God, their neighbors, and themselves even, above wealth, there would be no wars, no contention, no conflict of any kind, just industrious people trying to create ever more vast sums of wealth to satisfy their desires and the desires of the people around them, as well as to glorify God. This is what I imagine Zion to be, and the reason why in the future paradisaical world we would have buildings encrusted with rare gems and precious metals, and why we would have fantastic gardens of unimaginable beauty: the people on the earth would have so much wealth that providing such luxuries to their communities would hardly be a sacrifice, and that every pressing matter of higher importance than what to put on the walls of our buildings would be taken care of.

Why You’re a Communist Stooge

If you think that Mitt Romney’s work in dismantling failing companies is something bad, then you’re a communist stooge. You really don’t belong in America.

Let me help you understand.

A corporation is a legal entity where many stockholders own the company and have a claim to its profits. They elect a board of directors, who appoint officers to actually run the company.

When a company is mismanaged, the officers and board are cheating the stockholders out of their money. It’s no different than a plumber who shows up, ruins your plumbing system, then demands to be paid.

You may not like stockholders because they are rich. That’s a communist knee-jerk reaction that has nothing to do with reality. Even if you own 0 shares of any corporation, your life is dependent on people making money for their stockholders.

If you have some money in the bank, if you buy a CD or buy insurance, if you interact with money in a financial institution in any way, then you are affected by how boards and officers are held accountable to their stockholders. Heck, the company that pays you likely pays you with money that comes directly from the sale of stock. Or were you naive enough to think that your company put its payroll cash in a warehouse?

When a company goes bad, when it no longer delivers as much profit as it could, something needs to change. Either the officers and board need to develop a new plan and implement it successfully, or the stockholders need to change the board. When things go really bad, such a change isn’t possible, likely because the stockholders are too naive or too powerless to do anything.

In comes companies like Bain Capital. They raise money to buy the stock of a failing company. Then they go in and hopefully fix things up so it becomes a successful company. If it can’t be made successful, then they salvage the company and sell it off, just like you’d sell your car to a junkyard which would take the car apart and try to make as much money as possible from the parts.

In the first place, additional money flows into the pockets of the shareholders who leave the company. Bain must pay more than the company is worth to buy enough shares to take it over. That is a net benefit to you, because your company or insurance or bank may own quite a few shares of the failing company. Cha-ching!

In the second place, Bain may restore the company to profitability. If your bank or insurance company or payroll company held shares in the company, then Cha-ching!

Or maybe the company is sold for parts. In this case, the stockholders actually make a positive return, because the company is paid more than it’s worth. Cha-ching!

Let’s suppose you had no connection whatsoever with the company. That doesn’t matter. The additional wealth made from the takeover ends up funding companies you are invested in.

It’s impossible to track every economic transaction made every day. What can be said is that as long as the transactions are made with good knowledge and freely, every transaction creates wealth, both for the seller and the buyer. Bain Capital simply looks for particular kinds of transactions that would be profitable both for them and their takeover targets, and executes on them. The fact that they are done with knowledge and out of free will means that wealth is created, despite the fact that it isn’t much better than a junkyard buying a car that can no longer be driven.

If you don’t get this, you’re a communist stooge. A stooge, I say, because you are not intelligent enough to realize how the communist movement and ideology is using you. If you’re reaction is to deny the label communist and apply “liberal” or “socialist” or whatever else, then you’re still a communist stooge, so stupid to be incapable of realizing that you are a stooge. That’s a classic stooge.

Taxes Hurt the Poor the Most (The Rich can Flee)

Reuters: More US citizens and legal residents are leaving the US over tax issues.

Liberals argue that using the tax system as a form of “Robin Hood” economic policy is a good idea. Conservatives argue that it’s a terrible idea.

Why is it a bad idea? Because the inevitable target of the taxes, the rich, are able to modify their behavior or flee. Tell me: Have you ever seen a rich person become poor due to taxes? Of course not.

Taxes inevitably end up hurting the poor.

1. The poor tend to be more ignorant about tax policy, and come tax time, end up paying.
2. The poor are not as mobile as the rich, and end up caught in bad tax systems while the rich flee.
3. The poor rely on the rich providing them with handouts and jobs, which dry up when taxes are too high.
4. The income tax is a tax on getting rich, not a tax on the rich, and so the poor stay poor.

Conservatives want a fairer tax system, a tax system that gives the poor as much as an advantage as the rich.

1. A simple tax code means even those with little time or mental capacity can effectively weigh their economic decision, and make decisions that favor themselves rather than the government.
2. A low tax rate, the lowest in the world, means there is no economic incentive to flee, and every economic incentive to come to America.
3. With taxes low, not only people but investment capital will flow into our country, giving the poor opportunities to get rich that would not exist.
4. With taxes low, the poor will be very mobile on the economic ladder, since there will be no tax keeping them poor.

Liberals would like people to believe that if the government doesn’t do it, it doesn’t get done. What backwards thinking! Government is corrupt, the very definition of corruption. Government works by force, not persuasion. When government grows, freedoms are lost. This is exactly what we need less of in our society today.

Especially in the charity sector of our economy! What horrible thinking that no one will “pay their fair share” and help the poor on their own? What horrible thinking that only the devastating power of state coercion can cause people to do what needs to be done to help their neighbor! If we lived in such a society, it would be worse than living in hell.

That’s not the America I know. America is powered by volunteers at every level doing what needs to be done not for personal gain but for the benefit of their family, friends and neighbors. A tax code that punishes people for getting rich, that teaches people that it is not their job to look after the needy, that teaches people that they must turn to the awful power of the state to obtain generosity and compassion—that is the very opposite of the American spirit that makes us special and unique.

If you care for the poor, you’ll want to lower taxes for all. If you care for the sick, the hungry, the needy, you’ll want to join the conservative movement in keeping government limited and small and well apart from charity.