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Robbing The Global South, Then Scorning Its Poverty: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Posted by M. C. on December 6, 2022

Ever known someone who’s always moving from relationship to relationship, job to job, city to city, but always running into the same problems because the real source of their discontentment sits between their ears? Maybe that’s humanity in general in our visions for the future.

Caitlin Johnstone

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/robbing-the-global-south-then-scorning?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Michael Parenti has said that “Poor countries are not ‘under-developed’, they are over-exploited.” The west tends to look down on the rest of the world for reasons that either directly or indirectly relate to the poverty in those nations, which is silly because that poverty comes largely from western theft and exploitation. It’s like mugging someone and then scorning them for their empty wallet.

If you boil it right down and get real about it, most of the pride in western civilization is ultimately pride in being better at killing and stealing than other people. We’re still morally at the level of invading and plundering nations while claiming it’s justified because we are stronger than them, it’s just procedurally a few clicks removed from doing that directly.

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Here’s a good example of how empire managers try to make China’s government look like a weird alien invader who must be removed by constantly bleating “Chinese Communist Party” and “CCP” instead of just saying “China”, “Beijing”, or “the Chinese government” like they do with other countries:

Mike Pompeo @mikepompeo

The Chinese Communist Party doesn’t represent the people of China.8:30 PM ∙ Nov 29, 202227,002Likes3,977Retweets

Constantly repeating the word “Communist” evokes cold war fears from the past in older people, and saying “CCP” rather than the correct CPC (Communist Party of China) is designed to remind people of “CCCP”, Russia’s abbreviation for the USSR. The goal is to mentally uncouple the nation’s government from the nation in the minds of the public, so that removing it looks like an intervention to remove a strange outside force which doesn’t belong there instead of the obscenely intrusive imperialist agenda that it is. 

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Attempts to address the 2020 Hunter Biden laptop story censorship shenanigans will never gain sufficient traction, because the entire liberal political/media class believes any and all actions to hurt Trump’s re-election odds were justified. They would have supported a lot worse. As far as US liberals are concerned, “unethical things were done to hurt Trump’s re-election bid” is a moot point, because they would have supported far more unethical things to hurt Trump’s re-election; arguing about its morality will therefore never mean anything to them.

After 2016 a consensus was formed among liberal US media that they should have actively worked to manipulate the public into voting for Hillary Clinton, rather than reporting on her numerous scandals at the time. Killing the laptop story was the manifestation of that consensus.

The Hunter Biden laptop story will therefore never move from a partisan talking point into a nonpartisan discussion about political censorship and journalistic ethics. It is firmly locked in to the former category. They all universally believe that they did the right thing. Where the moral imperative to defeat Trump is viewed as superseding any other possible concern, nobody who does not share that view will have any inroad to talk about those other concerns. They will always be dismissed by those who viewed helping to defeat Trump as a sacred duty. It’s an intractable quasi-religious belief based on their own certainty of the superiority of their worldview.

The censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story is therefore doomed to remain another Republican partisan issue that never goes anywhere like Benghazi or Monica Lewinsky, even though its far-reaching implications for media and tech mean it really shouldn’t be categorized as such.

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One of the most under-discussed topics in the world right now is how governments are incrementally normalizing the use of police robots that can kill you and acting like it’s no big deal.

See the rest here

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Watch “Wicked Globalists Are Causing Starvation and Poverty Under the Guise of Environmentalism” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on October 30, 2022

Solves the “useless eater” problem the WHO warns us about.

https://youtu.be/tF5spyudTYA

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The New Antieconomics | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on February 17, 2022

Economics is about human action and choice within the context of scarcity. The problem facing economists is how to understand and explain human betterment, which is another way of saying production. The critical question, posed correctly by economist Per Bylund, starts with scarcity as the default point for understanding purposive human behavior.

https://mises.org/wire/new-antieconomics

Jeff Deist

What causes poverty? Nothing. It is the original state, the default and starting point. The real question is what causes prosperity.

Antieconomics, by contrast, starts with abundance and works backward. It emphasizes redistribution, not production, as its central focus. At the heart of any antieconomics is a positivist worldview, the assumption that individuals and economies can be commanded by legislative fiat. Markets, which happen without centralized organization, give way to planning in the same way common law gives way to statutory law. This view is especially prevalent among left intellectuals, who view economics not as a science at all, but rather a pseudointellectual exercise to justify capital and wealthy business interests.

Antieconomics is not new; even alchemy might be considered a medieval version of the endless quest to achieve something for nothing. It holds enduring appeal in modern politics and academia, where communism, chartalism, Keynesianism, and monetarism all represent twentieth-century variations on the central theme of commanding economic activity.

But today’s most visible version of antieconomics takes the form of modern monetary theory. MMT featured heavily in a recent flatteringprofile of Professor Stephanie Kelton in the New York Times titled “Is This What Winning Looks Like?” “Winning” in this context refers to MMT’s growing popular appeal, with Kelton as the public face following her 2020 book The Deficit Myth.

Kelton’s MMT is a political and fiscal program, not a macroeconomic theory. It argues deficits don’t matter because money issued by a sovereign government is never constrained (unlike resources, as Kelton admits). Thus governments don’t “pay” for things the way individuals or businesses do, and furthermore, public debt is actually a private benefit to someone. The problem is not paying for government programs, but rather identifying them—robust public works, job guarantees, universal basic income, food and housing, Green New Deal programs, Medicare for All, etc.—and, more importantly, creating the public will to support them politically.

In Kelton’s words, MMT “teaches us to ask not ‘How will you pay for it?’ but ‘How will you resource it?’ It shows us that if we have the technological know-how and the available resources—to put a man on the moon or embark on a Green New Deal to tackle climate change, then funding to carry out those missions can always be made available. Coming up with the money is the easy part.” The Deficit Myth, in sum, is what one commenter called “a plea to use permanent wartime mobilization for civilian ends.” Endless stimulation, not better and cheaper production, is the goal of fiscal (or monetary) policy.

This is antieconomics in its fullest expression. Resources exist (from whence?); are commanded by or at least available to the state, if not outright owned by the state (taxes? seizure? forfeiture?); and then are put in service of an undefined political mandate (what “we” want). Funding is an afterthought, as the fiscal authority creates money as needed. But in fairness to Kelton, the US federal government in 2020 spent roughly $6.5 trillion, twice what it raised in taxes ($3.4 trillion). In a very narrow sense, MMT “works” in the short term for the benefit of politically favored groups.1 This is the seen. But proper economics, as Henry Hazlitt and Frédéric Bastiat explained, requires looking at the long-term effects of a policy on everyone. This is the unseen. For MMTers, the vast opportunity costs of government spending, even when the economy is nowhere near “full employment,” go unseen.

Perversely, media critics defended criticisms of Kelton’s Times feature on the grounds of sexism. She is lauded, not surprisingly, as a rare standout in the male-dominated field of academic economics. The attacks on her work, we are told, come from older jealous white men (e.g., former Treasury secretary Larry Summers) who don’t appreciate the “new” economics she proposes and who envy the attention she has brought not only to herself and MMT, but to the broader push for egalitarian economic justice. Kelton, after all, served as an economic advisor to democratic socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and supported Elizabeth Warren. Old neoliberals like Summers, by contrast, still support the outdated idea of fiscal constraints.

But beyond the absurd allegations of sexism—surely Kelton knows how merciless Twitter and other platforms are to everyone—is the more alarming suggestion that the practice of economics is too male and needs a female version. Economics is too adversarial, too concerned with being right, and in need of a more collaborative (read: female) approach. The implications of this for all social sciences, not just economics, are staggering: we would upend the search for knowledge to reflect a different logic between men and women—what Mises called “polylogism.” Would this not require an entirely new epistemology across all scientific disciplines?

None of these diversions will allow us to escape reality. Economics starts and ends with scarcity, an inescapable feature of human reality. Any conception of freedom from material and human constraints requires a posteconomics world, either an earthly utopia or a heavenly abundance. In our world, however rich relative to the past, scarcity is the starting point of economic analysis. In our world, individual human actors make “rational” choices only within the context of constraints: time, capital, intelligence, ability, health, and location. And every choice has an opportunity cost. 

Professional economics is in big trouble, and only an aggressive new generation of Austrian-trained praxeologists can undo the damage done by the prescriptive and political antieconomists. 

  • 1. The US government is one such favored group, given the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency coming out of the Bretton Woods agreement, a powerful military, plentiful land and natural resources, and other economic advantages. Is MMT only a viable system for wealthy, powerful countries? 

Author:

Contact Jeff Deist

Jeff Deist is president of the Mises Institute. He previously worked as chief of staff to Congressman Ron Paul, and as an attorney for private equity clients. Contact: email; Twitter.

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The Poverty of the United Nations – Foundation for Economic Education

Posted by M. C. on November 6, 2021

Would Burundi Be Better Off If America Impoverished Itself?

The fact is that Americans consume more because Americans produce more. That’s right—more than 6 percent of the world’s potato chips, baseballs, skateboards, and countless other things. If we didn’t first produce, we wouldn’t have it to consume or to trade for what we really wanted. How can such an elementary point, such a basic principle of life and economics, be lost on anyone who doesn’t have to sign his name with an “X”?

https://fee.org/articles/the-poverty-of-the-united-nations/

Lawrence W. Reed

Lawrence W. Reed

wenty years ago, a United Nations report listed the United States as consuming 115,540 kilowatt-hours of energy per person per year. At the same time, each person in the tiny central African nation of Burundi was using up just 120 kilowatt-hours. My guess is that today, the average American is still consuming about a thousand times as much energy as the average Burundian. It’s also a safe bet that the “experts” at the United Nations want Americans to feel just as guilty about the disparity today as 20 years ago.

Is this something about which Americans should flog themselves in unremitting guilt? Does Burundi use less energy because America uses too much? Is world energy a fixed pie, with America greedily hogging more than its quota at the expense of the Burundis of the planet? Would Burundi be better off if America impoverished itself? Questions like these were answered definitively by free-market economists decades ago, but like a nagging mother-in-law, the questions just never go away.

You’ve heard this international class warfare stuff before, from many sources besides the United Nations. A few years ago, the mantra of the international statist community—repeated endlessly in the media—was this: “Americans are only 6 percent of the world’s population but they consume 40 percent of the world’s energy.” Greed was supposed to be the explanation for this disparity, and the solution offered was for America to spread its wealth in foreign-aid gifts to the less fortunate countries of the world.

Energy, of course, wasn’t (and still isn’t) the only thing of which America consumes more than its share of global population. We also eat more than 6 percent of the world’s potato chips and broccoli. We enjoy more than 6 percent of the world’s indoor plumbing, hearing aids, and baseballs. We operate more than 6 percent of the world’s cars, trucks, hang gliders, tricycles, and skateboards. We listen to more than 6 percent of all lectures and read more than 6 percent of the world’s books. And we probably put up with more than our share of nonsense too.

The fact is that Americans consume more because Americans produce more. That’s right—more than 6 percent of the world’s potato chips, baseballs, skateboards, and countless other things. If we didn’t first produce, we wouldn’t have it to consume or to trade for what we really wanted. How can such an elementary point, such a basic principle of life and economics, be lost on anyone who doesn’t have to sign his name with an “X”?

Unfortunately, the U.N. is at it again. Last September it issued a document called “The Human Development Report 1998.” The richest fifth of the world’s nations, declares the report, accounts for 86 percent of private consumption. Never mind the inherently dubious nature of adding up “private consumption” in almost 200 different countries.

The report is yet another lamentation about how the rich have it and the poor don’t: the richest fifth purchase nine times as much meat, have access to nearly 50 times as many telephones, and use more than 80 times the paper products and motorized vehicles than the poorest fifth. While two billion people worldwide supposedly go without schools and toilets, self-indulgent Americans are painting themselves with $8 billion in cosmetics and Europeans are feasting on $11 billion in ice cream. To reduce these horrid inequalities, the report recommends that “consumption levels among the poor” be increased to “basic” levels.

Think about that. The poor nations don’t consume much now, and the U.N. tells us that the answer is for them to consume more. How are the poor nations to get more? Change their ways? Produce more, perhaps? If the U.N. thinks that poor nations’ low productivity is at fault here, there’s little sign of it. As the New York Times revealed, “the report only skirts the issue of what role the poorest nations themselves play in this predicament.”

The sad fact is that in those poor countries like Burundi, indigenous political and cultural barriers to production constitute the overwhelming if not exclusive source of poverty. Routinely, the chronically destitute nations of the world are the ones that make war on private property, keep out foreign investment, impose viciously punitive taxes and regulations, spend inordinate sums on the military, squander resources on corruption and public works boondoggles, and in general, penalize or even kill anybody with enough spunk to start a business. These nations don’t consume much because, as a result of these barriers, they don’t produce much. It’s as simple as that. And it’s no coincidence that reports to the contrary come forth from a world body in which the ranks of the benighted are legion.

What poor nations need to do is to create the enlightened political and cultural conditions whereby capital investment and the resulting production are encouraged instead of suppressed. This is not new information. It’s the same formula by which America emerged from the status of 13 poor backwater colonies to the wealthiest nation on the globe. With a relatively free economy, America has shown the world how to go from Model T’s to space shuttles in less time than most peoples have taken to get from dirt paths to gravel roads. Other countries from England to Hong Kong can boast similar accomplishments as well, and for similar reasons.

It is no disgrace that Americans consume 40 percent of the world’s energy, or whatever the number may really be. Rather, it is a tribute to our ingenuity, creativity, and enterprise. We’ve put our God-given abilities to work within a system that even with all its government intervention is still infinitely more hospitable to production than Burundi’s. If we restricted our energy consumption to just 6 percent of the total world supply, our lives would be shorter, less healthy, and a lot more painful. There would be fewer of us, and not by choice. The rest of the world would be worse off too because poor people cannot materially do much to help other poor people through trade.

People who are interested in ending poverty and really solving economic problems would do well to read Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and ignore any report that comes out of the United Nations.

5b157b58ff7b1592725821-eiollarge.png

Lawrence W. Reed is FEE’s President Emeritus, Humphreys Family Senior Fellow, and Ron Manners Global Ambassador for Liberty, having served for nearly 11 years as FEE’s president (2008-2019). He is author of the 2020 book, Was Jesus a Socialist? as well as Real Heroes: Incredible True Stories of Courage, Character, and Conviction and Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism. Follow on LinkedIn and Parler and Like his public figure page on Facebook. His website is www.lawrencewreed.com.

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Congrats Poverty, for winning the war on poverty

Posted by M. C. on October 1, 2021

Another war lost. Poverty and inflation won.

Congratulations Poverty, for Winning the War on Poverty

But the fundamental premise is flawed. Government can’t eradicate poverty anymore than it can eradicate a virus.

For starters, poverty in the US was already in decline, dropping from 18.5% in 1959, to 13.9% in 1965 (according to US Census Bureau data).

Yet in 1974, a decade into LBJ’s ‘all-out war’, poverty started rising again. Go figure— the 1970s saw the beginning of hardcore economic stagnation and debilitating inflation.

No amount of government support could counteract the destruction they were causing.

And by 1993, the poverty rate in the US was roughly the same as it had been in 1965.

So essentially the United States government had declared War on Poverty… and Poverty won. It was a stalemate at best.

See the rest here

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Our New Normal: Inflation, Poverty, Starvation, Economic Collapse, Fascism, Marxism, Communism, and Murder – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on September 18, 2021

In reality, it has but one objective, and that is to achieve total global governance and universal control over all.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/09/gary-d-barnett/our-new-normal-inflation-poverty-starvation-economic-collapse-fascism-marxism-communism-and-murder/

By Gary D. Barnett

“So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.”

~ Voltaire

The gullibility of man it seems has no bounds, for if it did, how could so many be so blind? As I reflect on the past 18 months or so, it is quite alarming to understand the scope of this scam called a ‘pandemic,’ and how this entire country (and world) have embraced lies, deception, and tyranny of such magnitude. Mass murder at the hands of the state has already begun, but with the rollout of deadly and poisonous injections purposely mislabeled as ‘vaccines,’ the murder of large numbers that is democide, will be evident among this entire population for years to come. The perpetrators of this genocidal takeover of society are now coming after all children, and will attempt to poison as many as possible with their ‘vaccines’ over the course of this year and next.

Only a nation of pathetic cowardly fools would allow such an abdominal fate for their own defenseless offspring. This type of behavior indicates a total lack of intellect, and a mass ignorance of reality. It also indicates widespread indifference, which is the incarnate of a sick and immoral society.

So, it seems that the so-called “new normal” of totalitarian rule over a slave-like society, is not just the fault of those who wish to rule over us, but more so the people at large for allowing this to happen without proper resistance. Blaming the enemy is easy, but accepting blame of self is avoided at all cost, and this attitude is even worse than that of tyrants. It is expected that the evil among us who are the ruling class exist, but the evil of mass apathy can never be accepted or excused.

In the course of the past few months, this country’s citizens have fully acquiesced to the will of a totalitarian regime, and in the process, have laid bare their weaknesses due to an unfounded fear. Many believe there is safety in numbers, but that is only the mindset of herd animals, not humans. By voluntarily allowing for the death and destruction of part of the herd, the rest survive to live one more day, but when people accept this attitude, they also have to accept the death and destruction of their family, friends, and neighbors as normal for survival. If that is the case, it seems that the evolution of the human species is going backward, and that is exactly what collectivism is meant to accomplish.

With this comes the consequences of non-action, and under these circumstances, those consequences are always at the discretion of the tyrants. What has happened to date should be enough for anyone to see the folly of having confidence in any state or nation. What began with lockdowns and quarantines, led to business closings, job loss, extreme stress, supply line disruption, shortages, higher prices for goods and services, (inflation) and of course economic chaos. This in turn led to much more poverty, despair, and starvation, setting the stage for the next phase of this takeover. By this time, the people should have recognized the totalitarian nature of what was going on, but alas, they remained obedient and passive, and watched as their world was decimated.

In order to see the writing on the wall, one must seek out and accept the truth, regardless of the risk involved in doing so. To avoid the truth in favor of hiding from reality, hoping that someone else will ‘fix’ things, is exactly what all tyrannical rulers seek in the populations they are attempting to control. It is my expressed opinion, that the timing of this takeover coup was based fully on the fact that the master class knew that the general population was too afraid, too dependent, and too apathetic to fight back against this dictatorial authoritarianism that had been planned for decades. The timing of this was genius, because the masses acted in exactly the manner desired.

While no such thing as ‘Covid-19’ actually exists, and has never been identified, the real threat that is the real pandemic, had been held aside for just the right moment, and early this year the ‘vaccine’ pandemic was released. The ‘vaccine’ is the bio-weapon, and the so-called non-existent variants a of a non-existent virus, are the result of the deadly ‘vaccines.’ In other words, the ‘vaccine’ is the pandemic, and all those who have voluntarily taken the injections will be the victims of this staged pandemic. Once the deaths from these jabs reach unprecedented numbers, and they will, the rest of society who have not succumbed to the idiocy of taking such a dangerous concoction, will be blamed. In effect, all will have been targeted by the criminal state, whether they got the injection or not. The ‘vaccinated’ group will be sick and dying, while the unvaccinated group will be hunted by the state. This is why this society has already been divided by stealth in order to pit those vaccinated against those who are unvaccinated; a sinister plot meant to solidify control of both groups.

This is a communistic takeover attempt, that has all the elements of Fascism, Marxism, and Communism rolled into one. It is the most dangerous time in history for the inhabitants of this planet, as it is an attempt to achieve a globalized takeover of all in order to convert to one technocratically controlled system, where there are an ‘elite’ few’ at the top, their enforcers and corporate partners below, including government, with the rest being a slave class known as the proletariat.

While this ‘pandemic’ is thought to be about a mystery virus, it is not, as the virus narrative is just the tool being used to accomplish the real agenda, which has its roots based in the guise of ‘sustainable development’ marketed through the idiocy of man-made climate change. This has been fully outlined in the UN’s Agenda 21 and Agenda 30, and in the aptly named “Great Reset’ agenda described by Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum. In reality, it has but one objective, and that is to achieve total global governance and universal control over all. To be successful in this venture, many hundreds of millions, or more likely billions, will need to be murdered. The ‘vaccines’ are the tools of murder, so avoidance of these injections at all cost is imperative.

This is not a new threat, but it has been carefully manipulated to occur at this time in order to coincide with the people’s ignorance and indifference, their prepared division, their weakness and dependence on the state, and therefore their cowardice in the face of adversity. This ‘vaccine’ is the key to success for the evil and criminal rulers, so the fewer of us that take this witches brew, the more of us who will be able to fight back against this heinous attempt to destroy humanity. Our only hope is to remain non-compliant, to disobey every order, and to abolish the current governing system that has assumed dictatorial powers with the voluntary cooperation from the masses.

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

~ Elie Wiesel

Source and reference links:

The silent weapon that is the mRNA ‘vaccine’

The non-existent ‘virus’ called ‘Covid-19’

Sustainability and super pandemics

Agenda 21

Agenda 2030: Global communism unleashed

‘Covid’ equals murder: the children are next

Covid-19 ‘Vaccine’: A slow-motion genocidal bioweapon

Gary D. Barnett [send him mail] is a retired investment professional that has been writing about freedom and liberty matters, politics, and history for two decades. He is against all war and aggression, and against the state. He recently finished a collaboration with former U.S. Congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney, and was a contributor to her new book, “When China Sneezes” From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Political-Economic Crisis.” Currently, he lives in Montana with his wife and son. Visit his website.

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Biden’s Rescue Plan Won’t Reduce Poverty | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on March 20, 2021

The Urban Institute’s study claims that the Rescue Plan will reduce the number of people in poverty in 2021 “by about 16 million, from over 44 million to 28 million.” This will be accomplished, according to the study, because the plan will increase “aggregate net resources” for households currently under the poverty line by $87 billion, or an average of about $3,850 per family.

The report, however, gives away the game early on. “Our analysis does not include the macroeconomic effects of the policy changes.” This is often referred to as a “static” analysis.

This admission alone should be enough to dismiss the Urban Institute’s findings.

https://mises.org/wire/bidens-rescue-plan-wont-reduce-poverty

Bradley Thomas

Imagine thinking the government can reduce poverty.

For most readers of this website, the thought is laughable. And for good reason. The government has no resources of its own. Every dollar it spends it must first either tax, borrow, or print. Taxing and borrowing redirect money from the voluntary, productive sector of the economy to the hands of politicians. Printing new money erodes the value of currency already held by citizens, harming low-income households disproportionately, while distorting important market signals like interest rates that are vital to coordinating the economy’s complex patterns of production and exchange.

Nevertheless, the Urban Institute—a highly influential and deep-pocketed left-leaning think tank—just released a report claiming that the recently passed American Rescue Plan will reduce the poverty rate by one-third in 2021.

Major media outlets like the Washington Post and CNN wasted little time in reporting on the study’s findings.

The report’s methodologies and assumptions, however, are highly questionable and cast doubt on the legitimacy of its conclusions.

The Urban Institute’s study claims that the Rescue Plan will reduce the number of people in poverty in 2021 “by about 16 million, from over 44 million to 28 million.” This will be accomplished, according to the study, because the plan will increase “aggregate net resources” for households currently under the poverty line by $87 billion, or an average of about $3,850 per family.

The report, however, gives away the game early on. “Our analysis does not include the macroeconomic effects of the policy changes.” This is often referred to as a “static” analysis.

This admission alone should be enough to dismiss the Urban Institute’s findings. Assuming that the massive changes to the money supply, government debt, and incentives to work, spend, or save will have no effect on behavior or other “macroeconomic effects” like price inflation is wholly unrealistic.

For starters, how many households will fall back below the poverty level when price inflation pushes up the cost of living, especially the cost of common household needs like groceries, gas, and utilities?

In January, grocery prices were already up 3.7 percent year over year, the largest such increase in a decade, with beef leading the way with an 8 percent rise.

Gas prices are up more than fifty cents per gallon already this year, and are expected to surge beyond three dollars a gallon this summer. Oil prices are up more than 20 percent this year, and continue to climb.

Add in a “rescue plan” of $1.9 trillion, most (if not all) of which will be newly created fiat currency, and price increases should be expected to accelerate still further. The rescue plan will cost nearly $5,800 for every man, woman, and child in the country (more than $23,000 per family of four). Yet according to the Urban Institute’s calculations, even those households targeted for the greatest amount of relief will receive on average $3,850 per family.

Basic math indicates that low-income households will struggle to keep pace with the rising cost of living, even with the financial relief.

More specifically, the Urban Institute attempts to evaluate the impact of four specific measures contained in the rescue plan.

Unemployment Benefits

The plan will add another twenty-five weeks of federal benefits, along with an additional $300 a week. This would continue to be in addition to the normal state unemployment insurance benefits, which average about $300 per week.

At an annualized rate, a household with two people collecting an average of $600 per week in UI benefits would be receiving the equivalent of more than $62,000 per year, nearly matching the national median household income of $68,703.

This obviously provides strong incentives for people not to work, and to hold out for ideal, well-paying job opportunities that may never materialize. Fewer people actively working means lower amounts of production, which limits the quantity of available goods and services. A limited supply of goods and services being chased by a dramatically increasing amount of dollars will help to drive up prices more significantly.

Discouraging work and productive activity is the opposite of helping to alleviate poverty.

And what about the longer-term effects on the recipients once the benefits expire? How much more difficult will it be for them once again to find work after another six months of being out of the workforce? The Urban Institute leaves such questions unaddressed.

SNAP Benefits

The Urban Institute report also estimates that the extension of increased Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits would serve to reduce poverty by one-tenth of a percentage point.

The assumption here again is that the value of the benefits isn’t being traded off against higher food prices, an assumption that is naïve at best and intellectually negligent at worst. The higher cost of living may force more people below the poverty line than the benefits would enable to exceed it.

“Stimulus” Checks

Of the four measures analyzed in the Urban Institute’s report, the “stimulus” checks of $1,400 for most Americans are predicted to “produce the largest projected poverty reduction.”

The checks are purported to provide “relief” to families enduring financial struggles thanks to the covid lockdowns. But in spite of the significant spikes in unemployment, especially concentrated in the fields of hospitality and leisure, the majority of people receiving the stimulus checks will have suffered little to no interruption in their incomes.

Once again, however, the Urban Institute simply adds in the stimulus check amounts to low-income households’ incomes and declares that the additional income will propel many households above the poverty threshold with the assumption that the stimulus checks will have no other “macroeconomic effects” like price inflation.

Child Tax Credit

Finally, the study claims that the Rescue Plan’s child tax credit increase from $2,000 to $3,600 or $3,000 (depending on the age of the child) will “substantially boost the income of families with children.”

I recall Nancy Pelosi describing $1,000 tax cuts for working Americans as “crumbs” in 2018. But now a similar amount is described by the Urban Institute as a substantial boost in income.

Nevertheless, even though on the margins this additional income from the credit could push some families above the measured poverty rate, it remains irresponsible for the Urban Institute to merely wish away the negative impact of rising prices on low-income households in their analysis.

Only Productivity Reduces Poverty

Claims that government can “boost” the economy, or “create” jobs, or reduce poverty should be met with harsh skepticism.

With no resources of their own, the government can at best rearrange jobs, incomes, or patterns of production. But even more likely, the process of doing so will hamper economic progress, destroy jobs on net, and exacerbate poverty.

As John Chamberlain, the late economic historian, stated, “Poverty in society is overcome by productivity, and in no other way. There is no political alchemy which can transmute diminished production into increased consumption.”

Government “stimulus” or “relief” plans are long on encouraging more spending of newly created dollars, but short on encouraging actual production. The combination makes for a perfect recipe for price inflation, but not poverty reduction.

The fact that a report like the one produced by the highly esteemed Urban Institute must resort to such damning assumptions to conclude that the Relief Plan will reduce poverty bolsters my point. Author:

Bradley Thomas

Bradley Thomas is creator of the website EraseTheState.com, and is a libertarian activist and writer with nearly fifteen years of experience researching and writing on political philosophy and economics.

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Historical Lessons in Prosperity vs. Poverty – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on February 5, 2021

By 1350, Kublai Khan had been dead for decades. But the Yuan dynasty’s economic overseers were still printing paper money like crazy. And it was causing severe hyperinflation across China.

People’s lives were turned upside down by the government’s fiscal irresponsibility, and rebellions broke out across the country.

By 1368, the Yuan dynasty had completely collapsed, and a destitute peasant farmer-turned-monk named Zhu Yuanzhang rose up to become Emperor and found the new Ming Dynasty.

To stimulate the economy ravaged by inflation, the Ming dynasty created an unprecedented level of economic freedom.

Markets and industries were deregulated; the government abandoned its monopoly on salt production, for example, and merchants were encouraged to allow market competition to set prices.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/02/simon-black/historical-lessons-in-prosperity-vs-poverty/

By Simon Black

Sovereign Man

As the grandson of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan had a lot to prove.

So he set his eyes on the biggest prize in the known world at the time: southern China.

Kublai Khan completed his conquest of China in 1279, forging a new empire and creating the Yuan dynasty.

The Mongols were known for their expensive habits— they liked war and women especially. So when the money started to run out, administrators in the Yuan dynasty started printing paper money.

Yuan officials weren’t the first to come up with this idea; the government from the prior Song dynasty had also printed paper money. But there was a huge difference—

Paper currency from the Song dynasty, known as guanzi, was backed by copper, silver, and gold coins.

The Yuan currency, however, was backed by nothing. So whenever the government started to run out of money, they simply printed more.

By 1350, Kublai Khan had been dead for decades. But the Yuan dynasty’s economic overseers were still printing paper money like crazy. And it was causing severe hyperinflation across China.

People’s lives were turned upside down by the government’s fiscal irresponsibility, and rebellions broke out across the country.

By 1368, the Yuan dynasty had completely collapsed, and a destitute peasant farmer-turned-monk named Zhu Yuanzhang rose up to become Emperor and found the new Ming Dynasty.

To stimulate the economy ravaged by inflation, the Ming dynasty created an unprecedented level of economic freedom.

Markets and industries were deregulated; the government abandoned its monopoly on salt production, for example, and merchants were encouraged to allow market competition to set prices.

In time, the government stabilized the currency and reintroduced metallic coins. And by the 1500s Ming officials even allowed foreign currencies like the Spanish Silver Dollar to circulate in China.

This proved a much more stable medium of exchange than fiat currency, and the Chinese economy blossomed as a result.

Wealth rose dramatically. China was able to build canals, bridges, expand and fortify the Great Wall into the brick and stone mammoth we know today, and complete numerous other public works projects.

(Incidentally, as we discussed recently, taxing the rich was not the main method of funding this infrastructure. Instead, merchants were praised, and held in high esteem, for their voluntary contributions to the public good.)

And overall China had become one of the wealthiest, most powerful countries in the world.

It’s not hard to see why. Economic freedom. Deregulation. Stable currency. Responsible spending.
We’ve seen these elements over and over again throughout history.

In the 10th century, the city-state of Venice followed a similar model of economic freedom.

At a time when Medieval Europe was choking on the feudal system, Venice was one of the few places where even peasants could strike it rich.

The Venetian government established limited partnerships, enshrined the rule of law, and eventually established the Venetian Gold ducat– a gold coin that quickly became widely accepted around the world for international trade due to its purity and stability.

As a result of such policies, tiny Venice became one of the wealthiest and most powerful economies in Europe.

Centuries later, the Netherlands advanced this model even further, becoming the most capitalist country the world had ever seen up to that point.

The Dutch established the first stock exchange, the first publicly-traded companies (like the Dutch East India Company), and countless other financial innovations ranging from mutual funds to stock options.

The government stepped out of the way and allowed the private sector to flourish. They kept taxes reasonable and the currency stable; in fact the Dutch guilder– a silver coin– became the reserve currency of Europe during the 1700s.

History is full of more examples that show how economic prosperity is actually a pretty simple formula.

All it takes is economic freedom, fiscal responsibility, and a stable currency. This is also how the United States became the wealthiest country in the world.

But the direction that the US and most of the West are taking now is the opposite.

They demonstrate a complete lack of fiscal responsibility. They spend trillions of dollars now like it’s no big deal. $30 trillion in debt– 50% larger than the size of the entire economy– is nothing to them.

The central banks also keep debasing the currency; they ‘printed’ so much money last year that the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet nearly doubled in the span of a few months.

And there are plenty of examples of that throughout history as well.

The Western Roman Empire collapsed as a result of its never-ending corruption, fiscal irresponsibility, and currency debasement.
The French Bourbon Monarchy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire— they all ended as corrupt, bloated, highly-regulated bureaucracies with enormous debts.

Sometimes it helps to just step back and look at the big picture— 5,000 years of human history makes it pretty obvious what elements create prosperity versus poverty.

So when you see your government actively embracing extreme deficits, money printing, nationalization of industries, debilitating taxes, and other Marxist principles, ask yourself– are these the principles of prosperity or poverty?

Again, history is quite instructive.

Remember, though, we’re talking about trends here– the bottom won’t fall out tomorrow morning.

But that makes it even more important to think about the future (and your family’s future). Because your government certainly isn’t thinking about it.

You can’t control what politicians and central bankers are going to do. You can’t control the national outcome. But you can control your own outcome… and your own future prosperity.

If they raise taxes, for example, you can be prepared to take legal steps to reduce what you owe.

If devalue the currency, you can preserve your savings in alternative assets.

If they excessively regulate business, you may consider restructuring in a more advantageous jurisdiction.

This is what a Plan B is all about– ensuring that whatever happens or doesn’t happen next, you’ll always be in a position of strength.

On another note… We think gold could DOUBLE and silver could increase by up to 5 TIMES in the next few years.

Reprinted with permission from Sovereign Man.

The Best of Simon Black Simon Black is an international investor, entrepreneur, and founder of Sovereign Man. His free daily e-letter Notes from the Field is about using the experiences from his life and travels to help you achieve more freedom, make more money, keep more of it, and protect it all from bankrupt governments.

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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Fedcoin: A New Scheme for Tyranny and Poverty

Posted by M. C. on July 28, 2020

Fedcoin poses a great threat to privacy. The Federal Reserve could know when fedcoin is used, who is using it, and what they use it for. This information could be shared with government agencies, such as the FBI or IRS.

Is it so hard to believe that the ability to track purchases would be used in the future to “discourage” individuals from buying guns, fatty foods, or tobacco, or from being customers of corporations whose CEOs are not considered “woke” by the thought police? Fedcoin could also be used to “encourage” individuals to patronize “green” business, thus fulfilling Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s goal of involving the Fed in the fight against climate change.

http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/july/27/fedcoin-a-new-scheme-for-tyranny-and-poverty/

Written by Ron Paul

If some Congress members get their way, the Federal Reserve may soon be able to track many of your purchases in real time and share that information with government agencies. This is just one of the problems with the proposed “digital dollar” or “fedcoin.”

Fedcoin was initially included in the first coronavirus spending bill. While the proposal was dropped from the final version of the bill, there is still great interest in fedcoin on Capitol Hill. Some progressives have embraced fedcoin as a way to provide Americans with a “universal basic income.”

Both the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee held hearings on fedcoin in June. This is the first step toward making fedcoin a reality.

Fedcoin would not be an actual coin. Instead, it would be a special account created and maintained for each American by the Federal Reserve. Each month, Fed employees could tap a few keys on a computer and — bingo — each American would have dollars added to his Federal Reserve account. This is the 21st century equivalent of throwing money from helicopters.

Fedcoin could effect private cryptocurrencies. Also, it would limit the ability of private citizens to protect themselves from the Federal Reserve-caused decline in the dollar’s value.

Fedcoin would not magically increase the number of available goods and services. What it would do is drive up prices. The damage this would do to middle- and lower-income Americans would dwarf any benefit they receive from their monthly “gift” from the Fed. The rise in prices could lead to Congress regularly increasing fedcoin payments to Americans. These increases would cause prices to keep rising even more until we face hyperinflation and a dollar crisis. Of course, we are already on the path to an economic crisis thanks to the Fed. Fedcoin will hasten and worsen the crisis.

Fedcoin poses a great threat to privacy. The Federal Reserve could know when fedcoin is used, who is using it, and what they use it for. This information could be shared with government agencies, such as the FBI or IRS.

The government could use the ability to know how Americans are spending fedcoin to limit our ability to purchase goods and services disfavored by politicians and bureaucrats. Anyone who doubts this should recall the Obama administration’s Operation Choke Point. Operation Choke Point involved financial regulators “alerting” banks that dealing with certain businesses, such as gun stores, would put the banks at “reputational risk” and could subject them to greater regulation.

Is it so hard to believe that the ability to track purchases would be used in the future to “discourage” individuals from buying guns, fatty foods, or tobacco, or from being customers of corporations whose CEOs are not considered “woke” by the thought police? Fedcoin could also be used to “encourage” individuals to patronize “green” business, thus fulfilling Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s goal of involving the Fed in the fight against climate change.

Fedcoin could threaten private cryptocurrencies, increase inflation, and give government new powers over our financial transactions. Fedcoin will also speed up destruction of the fiat money system. Whatever gain fedcoin may bring to average Americans will come at terrible cost to liberty and prosperity.

Copyright © 2020 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
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Some Facts Worth Knowing – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on June 3, 2020

A recent study by Just Facts, an excellent source of factual information, shows that after accounting for income, charity and noncash welfare benefits such as subsidized health care, housing, food stamps and other assistance programs, “the poorest 20% of Americans consume more goods and services than the national averages for all people in the world’s most affluent countries.”

Scientific surveys of U.S. residents have found that the mental health of about one-third to one-half of all adults has been substantially compromised by government reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. There are deaths from non-psychological causes, such as government-mandated and personal decisions to delay medical care,…

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/06/walter-e-williams/some-facts-worth-knowing/

By

Imagine that you are an unborn spirit in heaven. God condemns you to a life of poverty but will permit you to choose the country in which you will spend your life. Which country would you choose? I would choose the United States of America.

A recent study by Just Facts, an excellent source of factual information, shows that after accounting for income, charity and noncash welfare benefits such as subsidized health care, housing, food stamps and other assistance programs, “the poorest 20% of Americans consume more goods and services than the national averages for all people in the world’s most affluent countries.” This includes the majority of countries that are members of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, including its European members. The Just Facts study concludes that if the U.S. “poor” were a nation, then it would be one of the world’s richest.

As early as 2010, 43% of all poor households owned their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage and a porch or patio. Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. The typical poor American has more living space than the average non-poor individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other cities throughout Europe. Ninety-seven percent of poor households have one or more color televisions — half of which are connected to cable, satellite or a streaming service. Some 82% of poor families have one or more smartphones. Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher. Most poor families have a car or truck and 43% own two or more vehicles.

Most surveys on U.S. poverty are deeply flawed because poor households greatly underreport both their income and noncash benefits such as health care benefits provided by Medicaid, free clinics and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, nourishment provided by food stamps, school lunches, school breakfasts, soup kitchens, food pantries, the Women, Infants & Children Program and homeless shelters.

We hear and read stories such as “Real Wage Growth Is Actually Falling” and “Since 2000 Wage Growth Has Barely Grown.” But we should not believe it. Ask yourself, “What is the total compensation that I receive from my employer?” If you included only your money wages, you would be off the mark anywhere between 30% and 38%. Total employee compensation includes mandated employer expenses such as Social Security and Medicare. Other employee benefits include retirement and health care benefits as well as life insurance, short-term and long-term disability insurance, vacation leave, tuition reimbursement and bonuses. There is incentive for people to want more of their compensation in a noncash form simply because of the different tax treatment. The bottom line is that prior to the government shutdown of our economy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Americans were becoming richer and richer. The question before us now is how to get back on that path.

Speaking of the COVID-19 pandemic, Just Facts has a couple of interesting takes in an article by its co-founder James D. Agresti and Dr. Andrew Glen titled “Anxiety From Reactions to Covid-19 Will Destroy At Least Seven Times More Years of Life Than Can Be Saved by Lockdowns.”

Scientific surveys of U.S. residents have found that the mental health of about one-third to one-half of all adults has been substantially compromised by government reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. There are deaths from non-psychological causes, such as government-mandated and personal decisions to delay medical care, which has postponed tumor removals, cancer screenings, heart surgeries and treatments for other ailments that could lead to early death if not addressed in a timely manner. Interesting and sadly enough, New York state enacted one of the strictest lockdowns in the U.S. but has 22 times the death rate of Florida, which had one of the mildest lockdowns.

As I pointed out in a recent column, intelligent decision-making requires one to not only pay attention to the benefits of an action but to its costs as well.

 

 

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