I'm just saying....seeing a lot of sick viral videos of outrage, not like i can do anything about it....
As a Canadian I've always found it funny to hear the world prefers bloody oil over our supposed Canadian 'dirty' oil.We need to tell Congress to stop allowing sales of weapons to other Countries. We need to get the Keystone Pipeline going and stop sending money to the middle east for oil. We need to call our State Representatives every day and never stop until it's done.
Again, it all boils down to economics..People feel threatened and their money buys less and less (of any value). You can eat with a plastic spoon, but it will never be of any value. And by having created this sub-culture where people have been raised on plastic crap that has to be thrown away every few months, cheap clothes from slave wage economies, they have cheapened life itself.
https://mythfighter.com/Economic growth should include the “bottom” 99.9%, not just the .1%, the only question being, how best to accomplish that. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) favors giving everyone a job. Monetary Sovereignty (MS) favors giving everyone money. The five articles describe the pros and cons of each approach.
4. FREE EDUCATION (INCLUDING POST-GRAD) FOR EVERYONEFive reasons why we should eliminate school loans
Monetarily non-sovereign State and local governments, despite their limited finances, support grades K-12. That level of education may have been sufficient for a largely agrarian economy, but not for our currently more technical economy that demands greater numbers of highly educated workers.
Because state and local funding is so limited, grades K-12 receive short shrift, especially those schools whose populations come from the lowest economic groups. And college is too costly for most families.
An educated populace benefits a nation, and benefiting the nation is the purpose of the federal government, which has the unlimited ability to pay for K-16 and beyond.
5. SALARY FOR ATTENDING SCHOOL
Even were schooling to be completely free, many young people cannot attend, because they and their families cannot afford to support non-workers. In a foundering boat, everyone needs to bail, and no one can take time off for study.
If a young person’s “job” is to learn and be productive, he/she should be paid to do that job, especially since that job is one of America’s most important.
6. ELIMINATE CORPORATE TAXES
Corporations themselves exist only as legalities. They don’t pay taxes or pay for anything else. They are dollar-tranferring machines. They transfer dollars from customers to employees, suppliers, shareholders and the government (the later having no use for those dollars).
Any tax on corporations reduces the amount going to employees, suppliers and shareholders, which diminishes the economy. Ultimately, all corporate taxes come around and reappear as deductions from your personal income.
7. INCREASE THE STANDARD INCOME TAX DEDUCTION, ANNUALLY. (Refer to this.) Federal taxes punish taxpayers and harm the economy. The federal government has no need for those punishing and harmful tax dollars. There are several ways to reduce taxes, and we should evaluate and choose the most progressive approaches.
Cutting FICA and corporate taxes would be an good early step, as both dramatically affect the 99%. Annual increases in the standard income tax deduction, and a reverse income tax also would provide benefits from the bottom up. Both would narrow the Gap.
8. TAX THE VERY RICH (THE “.1%) MORE, WITH HIGHER PROGRESSIVE TAX RATES ON ALL FORMS OF INCOME. (TROPHIC CASCADE)
There was a time when I argued against increasing anyone’s federal taxes. After all, the federal government has no need for tax dollars, and all taxes reduce Gross Domestic Product, thereby negatively affecting the entire economy, including the 99.9%.
But I have come to realize that narrowing the Gap requires trimming the top. It simply would not be possible to provide the 99.9% with enough benefits to narrow the Gap in any meaningful way. Bill Gates reportedly owns $70 billion. To get to that level, he must have been earning $10 billion a year. Pick any acceptable Gap (1000 to 1?), and the lowest paid American would have to receive $10 million a year. Unreasonable.
9. FEDERAL OWNERSHIP OF ALL BANKS (Click The end of private banking and How should America decide “who-gets-money”?)
Banks have created all the dollars that exist. Even dollars created at the direction of the federal government, actually come into being when banks increase the numbers in checking accounts. This gives the banks enormous financial power, and as we all know, power corrupts — especially when multiplied by a profit motive.
Although the federal government also is powerful and corrupted, it does not suffer from a profit motive, the world’s most corrupting influence.
10. INCREASE FEDERAL SPENDING ON THE MYRIAD INITIATIVES THAT BENEFIT AMERICA’S 99.9% (Federal agencies)Browse the agencies. See how many agencies benefit the lower- and middle-income/wealth/ power groups, by adding dollars to the economy and/or by actions more beneficial to the 99.9% than to the .1%.
Save this reference as your primer to current economics. Sadly, much of the material is not being taught in American schools, which is all the more reason for you to use it.
The Ten Steps will grow the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and you.
What is Monetary Sovereignty?A nation having the characteristics of Monetary Sovereignty flips the traditional understanding of the hierarchy of control over the money supply, leaving the Government in control of interest rates (rather than private banks and investors) and ensuring solvency. For a nation displaying the characteristics of MS, insolvency or bankruptcy is an impossibility, as they are always able to produce the necessary funds to pay or roll over its bills.
Frances Coppola: Rethinking Government Debt and Monetary Sovereignity | naked capitalismIt is indeed necessary that the government debt of the world’s “premier” countries should remain “safe”. But draining their economies by forcing austerity policies upon them is not the way to keep it safe. On the contrary, it is likely to make it LESS safe. Safety is ensured through investment in the physical and human capital of the country to secure growth and prosperity for the future.
Clearly, even governments of “Premier League” countries can’t do entirely as they please. There is bound to be a tipping point at which trust is lost and the country is relegated to the second division. We don’t know exactly what that tipping point is. But the message from today’s low interest rates is that we are nowhere near that point. For the sake of both their own citizens and the global economy, these countries can, and should, invest.
http://adamsmithslostlegacy.blogspot.com/2009/02/correct-summary-of-adam-smiths-ideas.htmlUnlike Karl Marx, who was a revolutionary, Adam Smith was a reformer. Where Karl Marx saw class struggle, Adam Smith saw special interests that were often at odds with the public interest. If Adam Smith were alive today, it is unlikely that he would join the chorus of triumphant anticommunists. Instead, he would warn that capitalism is prone to excess. He would observe that vigilance is required to ensure that the political system is not manipulated for the economic benefit of a few to the detriment of the entire society. He would be advocating political reforms to make sure that the system is not corrupted by special interests.
A. Smith.........It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, a merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.
https://unfashionablylate.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/adam-smith-and-collective-bargaining/Many would not be able to find employment even upon these hard terms, but would either starve, or be driven to seek a subsistence either by begging, or by the perpetration perhaps of the greatest enormities.
Or as Krugman says:
The whole budget debate, then, is a sham. House Republicans, in particular, are literally stealing food from the mouths of babes — nutritional aid to pregnant women and very young children is one of the items on their cutting block — so they can pose, falsely, as deficit hawks.
Nihilism can be scary to the sentient being."The only absolute truth is that there are no absolute truths." (Feyerabend).
MMT recognises this problem, but doesn’t recommend the mainstream solution.
For a sovereign nation – that is a “modern money regime” – that includes flexible exchange rates, the government has more domestic policy space than the maintream consider.
The government can make use of this space to pursue economic growth and rising living standards even if this means expansion of the CAD and depreciation of the currency.
While there is no such thing as a balance of payments growth constraint in a flexible exchange economy in the same way as exists in a fixed exchange rate world, the external balance still has implications for foreign reserve holdings via the level of external debt held by the public and private sector.
But it is also advisable that a nation facing continual CADs foster conditions that will reduce its dependence on imports. However, the mainstream solution to a CAD will actually make this more difficult.
Indeed, IMF lending and the accompanying conditions that are typically imposed on the debtor nation almost always reduce the capacity of the government to engineer a solution to the problems of inflation and falling foreign currency reserves without increasing the unemployed buffer stock. A policy strategy based largely on fiscal austerity will create unacceptable levels of socio-economic hardship.
Targets to reduce budget deficits may help lower inflation, but only because the “fiscal drag” acts as a deflationary mechanism that forces the economy to operate under conditions of excess capacity and unemployment.
This type of deflationary strategy does not build productive capacity and the related supporting infrastructure and offers no “growth solution”. And fiscal restraint may not be successful in lowering budget deficits for the simple reason that tax revenue can fall as the taxable base shrinks because economic activity is curtailed.
This is a lesson all countries should learn. International capitalism, ultimately does not really take ‘political’ decisions – it just pursues return.
The clear lesson is that sovereign governments are not necessarily at the hostage of global financial markets. They can steer a strong recovery path based on domestically-orientated policies – such as the introduction of a Job Guarantee – which directly benefit the population by insulating the most disadvantaged workers from the devastation that recession brings.
Argentina’s defiance has lessons for Australia. Many critics of the Job Guarantee argue that the international financial markets would wreak havoc on the Australian economy if it was introduced here. This is clearly just a neo-liberal myth. My view is that the international investment community would soon realise that rather than being a threat to their activities, the introduction of a Job Guarantee would provide them with an even better investment climate in which to chase return. It is time that we abandoned the neo-liberal myths and instead realise that in capitalism ‘greed comes before prejudice’.
Even if ultimately the higher growth is consistent with a lower exchange rate this is not something that we should worry about. Lower currency parities stimulate local employment (via the terms of trade effect) and tend to damage the middle and higher classes more than the poorer groups because luxury imported goods (ski holidays, BMW cars) become more expensive.
These exchange rate movements will tend to be once off adjustments anyway to the higher growth path and need not be a source of on-going inflationary pressure.
Finally, where imported food dependence exists – then the role of the international agencies should be to buy the local currency to ensure the exchange rate does not price the poor out of food. This is a simple solution which is preferable to to forcing these nations to run austerity campaigns just to keep their exchange rate higher. The IMF would do well to reform its charter and adopt this role instead of the destructive role it currently plays around the world.
Spread the word ...
Congressman Ron Paul:
"Strictly speaking, it probably is not necessary for the federal government to tax anyone directly; it could simply print the money it needs. However, that would be too bold a stroke, for it would then be obvious to all what kind of counterfeiting operation the government is running. The present system combining taxation and inflation is akin to watering the milk: too much water and the people catch on."
right idea.. wrong conclusion..Please don't fall for these alternative taxing SCHEMES. The banking cartel doesn't care what form it is they fleece your hard earned dollars (flat tax, fair tax, sales tax, etc.) - just as long as they continue to steal from us: