sell! sell! sell!

[eek.]

The people create the system eek...

My premise is The people corrupt the system(ANY system), which is what happens when too much power is in the hands of too few people.
Representative democracy is a one way trip to the destruction of that society IMO, it might take a few hundred years but it always happens because too few people have too much power

Direct Democracy is the society of the future IMO.
Turn Westminster and Capitol Hill into museums of the past for tourists, which is all they're really good for, and have future policy voted on via the internet society

 

[tiznow]

Here's a small (in the grand scheme of how rigged our system is for the elite) example of the few gaining power and then writing to laws to favor themselves... Not sure how you can stop the process other than creating a monetary system who's main focus is on creating as much equality as possible.. Not our current rigged fiat system where u can do whatever you want and zirp to infinity.. And allowing laws to be written that blatantly favor the elite...

bulk of laws and stagnant wages in terms of inflation etc started soon after we completely rid of gold standard.. Gold standard stands in the way of the powerful and connected being able to do as they please.. Can now enslave a nation of citizens in mounds of debt without even asking their opinion...

--------

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/robert-reich--why-your-cable-bill-is-so-high-130034408.html

Reich offers another example of where the rules have been rewritten in the last 30 years to benefit the few instead of the many, in his view: bankruptcy laws.
“It is possible, for example, for a major industrialist to declare bankruptcy four times to shield his fortune,” he said in a not-so-veiled reference to one Donald Trump. “But if you’re a homeowner and you got caught in the downdraft of a major recession to the point where you owed more on your home than the home was worth, you cannot use bankruptcy to reorganize your mortgage debt. Or if you graduate with a huge amount of student debt and you can’t manage it, you cannot use bankruptcy to reorganize that student debt. Now, is that just the way it is? No! It’s politics. It’s power.”

 

[tiznow]

Having posted this in a while .. A young Greenspan sums things up well

rome also debased its currency...

--------------

Gold and Economic Freedom​

by Alan Greenspan​

An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense — perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire — that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other.
In order to understand the source of their antagonism, it is necessary first to understand the specific role of gold in a free society.
Money is the common denominator of all economic transactions. It is that commodity which serves as a medium of exchange, is universally acceptable to all participants in an exchange economy as payment for their goods or services, and can, therefore, be used as a standard of market value and as a store of value, i.e., as a means of saving.
The existence of such a commodity is a precondition of a division of labor economy. If men did not have some commodity of objective value which was generally acceptable as money, they would have to resort to primitive barter or be forced to live on self-sufficient farms and forgo the inestimable advantages of specialization. If men had no means to store value, i.e., to save, neither long-range planning nor exchange would be possible.
What medium of exchange will be acceptable to all participants in an economy is not determined arbitrarily. First, the medium of exchange should be durable. In a primitive society of meager wealth, wheat might be sufficiently durable to serve as a medium, since all exchanges would occur only during and immediately after the harvest, leaving no value-surplus to store. But where store-of-value considerations are important, as they are in richer, more civilized societies, the medium of exchange must be a durable commodity, usually a metal. A metal is generally chosen because it is homogeneous and divisible: every unit is the same as every other and it can be blended or formed in any quantity. Precious jewels, for example, are neither homogeneous nor divisible. More important, the commodity chosen as a medium must be a luxury. Human desires for luxuries are unlimited and, therefore, luxury goods are always in demand and will always be acceptable. Wheat is a luxury in underfed civilizations, but not in a prosperous society. Cigarettes ordinarily would not serve as money, but they did in post-World War II Europe where they were considered a luxury. The term "luxury good" implies scarcity and high unit value. Having a high unit value, such a good is easily portable; for instance, an ounce of gold is worth a half-ton of pig iron.
In the early stages of a developing money economy, several media of exchange might be used, since a wide variety of commodities would fulfill the foregoing conditions. However, one of the commodities will gradually displace all others, by being more widely acceptable. Preferences on what to hold as a store of value will shift to the most widely acceptable commodity, which, in turn, will make it still more acceptable. The shift is progressive until that commodity becomes the sole medium of exchange. The use of a single medium is highly advantageous for the same reasons that a money economy is superior to a barter economy: it makes exchanges possible on an incalculably wider scale.
Whether the single medium is gold, silver, seashells, cattle, or tobacco is optional, depending on the context and development of a given economy. In fact, all have been employed, at various times, as media of exchange. Even in the present century, two major commodities, gold and silver, have been used as international media of exchange, with gold becoming the predominant one. Gold, having both artistic and functional uses and being relatively scarce, has significant advantages over all other media of exchange. Since the beginning of World War I, it has been virtually the sole international standard of exchange. If all goods and services were to be paid for in gold, large payments would be difficult to execute and this would tend to limit the extent of a society's divisions of labor and specialization. Thus a logical extension of the creation of a medium of exchange is the development of a banking system and credit instruments (bank notes and deposits) which act as a substitute for, but are convertible into, gold.
A free banking system based on gold is able to extend credit and thus to create bank notes (currency) and deposits, according to the production requirements of the economy. Individual owners of gold are induced, by payments of interest, to deposit their gold in a bank (against which they can draw checks). But since it is rarely the case that all depositors want to withdraw all their gold at the same time, the banker need keep only a fraction of his total deposits in gold as reserves. This enables the banker to loan out more than the amount of his gold deposits (which means that he holds claims to gold rather than gold as security of his deposits). But the amount of loans which he can afford to make is not arbitrary: he has to gauge it in relation to his reserves and to the status of his investments.
When banks loan money to finance productive and profitable endeavors, the loans are paid off rapidly and bank credit continues to be generally available. But when the business ventures financed by bank credit are less profitable and slow to pay off, bankers soon find that their loans outstanding are excessive relative to their gold reserves, and they begin to curtail new lending, usually by charging higher interest rates. This tends to restrict the financing of new ventures and requires the existing borrowers to improve their profitability before they can obtain credit for further expansion. Thus, under the gold standard, a free banking system stands as the protector of an economy's stability and balanced growth. When gold is accepted as the medium of exchange by most or all nations, an unhampered free international gold standard serves to foster a world-wide division of labor and the broadest international trade. Even though the units of exchange (the dollar, the pound, the franc, etc.) differ from country to country, when all are defined in terms of gold the economies of the different countries act as one — so long as there are no restraints on trade or on the movement of capital. Credit, interest rates, and prices tend to follow similar patterns in all countries. For example, if banks in one country extend credit too liberally, interest rates in that country will tend to fall, inducing depositors to shift their gold to higher-interest paying banks in other countries. This will immediately cause a shortage of bank reserves in the "easy money" country, inducing tighter credit standards and a return to competitively higher interest rates again.
A fully free banking system and fully consistent gold standard have not as yet been achieved. But prior to World War I, the banking system in the United States (and in most of the world) was based on gold and even though governments intervened occasionally, banking was more free than controlled. Periodically, as a result of overly rapid credit expansion, banks became loaned up to the limit of their gold reserves, interest rates rose sharply, new credit was cut off, and the economy went into a sharp, but short-lived recession. (Compared with the depressions of 1920 and 1932, the pre-World War I business declines were mild indeed.) It was limited gold reserves that stopped the unbalanced expansions of business activity, before they could develop into the post-World War I type of disaster. The readjustment periods were short and the economies quickly reestablished a sound basis to resume expansion.
But the process of cure was misdiagnosed as the disease: if shortage of bank reserves was causing a business decline — argued economic interventionists — why not find a way of supplying increased reserves to the banks so they never need be short! If banks can continue to loan money indefinitely — it was claimed — there need never be any slumps in business. And so the Federal Reserve System was organized in 1913. It consisted of twelve regional Federal Reserve banks nominally owned by private bankers, but in fact government sponsored, controlled, and supported. Credit extended by these banks is in practice (though not legally) backed by the taxing power of the federal government. Technically, we remained on the gold standard; individuals were still free to own gold, and gold continued to be used as bank reserves. But now, in addition to gold, credit extended by the Federal Reserve banks ("paper reserves") could serve as legal tender to pay depositors.
When business in the United States underwent a mild contraction in 1927, the Federal Reserve created more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve shortage. More disastrous, however, was the Federal Reserve's attempt to assist Great Britain who had been losing gold to us because the Bank of England refused to allow interest rates to rise when market forces dictated (it was politically unpalatable). The reasoning of the authorities involved was as follows: if the Federal Reserve pumped excessive paper reserves into American banks, interest rates in the United States would fall to a level comparable with those in Great Britain; this would act to stop Britain's gold loss and avoid the political embarrassment of having to raise interest rates. The "Fed" succeeded; it stopped the gold loss, but it nearly destroyed the economies of the world, in the process. The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market, triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed. Great Britain fared even worse, and rather than absorb the full consequences of her previous folly, she abandoned the gold standard completely in 1931, tearing asunder what remained of the fabric of confidence and inducing a world-wide series of bank failures. The world economies plunged into the Great Depression of the 1930's.
With a logic reminiscent of a generation earlier, statists argued that the gold standard was largely to blame for the credit debacle which led to the Great Depression. If the gold standard had not existed, they argued, Britain's abandonment of gold payments in 1931 would not have caused the failure of banks all over the world. (The irony was that since 1913, we had been, not on a gold standard, but on what may be termed "a mixed gold standard"; yet it is gold that took the blame.) But the opposition to the gold standard in any form — from a growing number of welfare-state advocates — was prompted by a much subtler insight: the realization that the gold standard is incompatible with chronic deficit spending (the hallmark of the welfare state). Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money, by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.
Under a gold standard, the amount of credit that an economy can support is determined by the economy's tangible assets, since every credit instrument is ultimately a claim on some tangible asset. But government bonds are not backed by tangible wealth, only by the government's promise to pay out of future tax revenues, and cannot easily be absorbed by the financial markets. A large volume of new government bonds can be sold to the public only at progressively higher interest rates. Thus, government deficit spending under a gold standard is severely limited. The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. They have created paper reserves in the form of government bonds which — through a complex series of steps — the banks accept in place of tangible assets and treat as if they were an actual deposit, i.e., as the equivalent of what was formerly a deposit of gold. The holder of a government bond or of a bank deposit created by paper reserves believes that he has a valid claim on a real asset. But the fact is that there are now more claims outstanding than real assets. The law of supply and demand is not to be conned. As the supply of money (of claims) increases relative to the supply of tangible assets in the economy, prices must eventually rise. Thus the earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value in terms of goods. When the economy's books are finally balanced, one finds that this loss in value represents the goods purchased by the government for welfare or other purposes with the money proceeds of the government bonds financed by bank credit expansion.
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.
This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.

 

[eek.]

Socialism only gives people the basics, a leg up in life I would call it. Healthcare, education and housing.
If you want to make anything of your life, you've still gotta do it yourself.

Taxes only temporarily divert cash away from the wealthiest elite, even at 95% tax the wealthy would still sock everything away eventually, it just takes them longer to do it with higher taxes, this is what they are really squealing about.

Inflation stops people socking their money away and sitting on it once they have a pile.
Inflation forces people with money to make it work, or it devalues, which is a good thing IMO
Nobody gets to sit on their ass for long when inflation is around, even the rich.

 

[eek.]

Those gold standard sites are just rich people squealing about how they have to keep working forever to stay rich if inflation is around

Hey guys! Now I'm a rich dude can we stop this inflation thing? it's killing me!

 

[tiznow]

America is a prime example of socialism failing on a large scale due to inefficiencies/corruption/breeding laziness/abuse

welfare/disability system in this country is massively abused .. And now coupled with stagnant wages created by all these pseudo monopolies gives many people incentives to do nothing rather than work for a little bit more...

 

[brucefan]

America is a prime example of socialism failing on a large scale due to inefficiencies/corruption/breeding laziness/abuse

welfare/disability system in this country is massively abused .. And now coupled with stagnant wages created by all these pseudo monopolies gives many people incentives to do nothing rather than work for a little bit more...

AMEN

Yet capitalism will be blamed for the next crisis, just like the previous one

 

[eek.]

Well you can have pure capitalism if you want, every man for himself and fuck the consequences

A couple of chaps called Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin did extremely well from the global social backlash when the gloves were off.

But they were bad for stability and long term profitability so the backbone of any future system was mitigated to ensure basic social cohesion after 1945

 

[eek.]

Don't forget that every welfare dollar ever given away to the poor in the whole of history, ends up in the hands of the rich

The poor don't save, they spend, and spending oils the wheels of the rich elites capitalist machine, fattening their bank accounts

The capitalist ponzi scheme rolls forwards

 

[eek.]

And if the poor on welfare are having such a fabby time of it how come we don't all just sell up and move in next door to them in the ghetto?

When one dog sees another dog getting a dog biscuit then it's jealous, but that doesn't mean it wants to move home

woof woof

 

[tiznow]

You are correct welfare dollars go to wal mart etc...

the point is massive socialism breeds laziness and keeps people stuck at the bottom as there is no incentive for them to try to climb up.. I can sit on my ass gaming the system rather than make a bit more flipping burgers at McDonald's

tae minimum wage hike in your more socialistic thinking locales many found that with higher wages they would lose their welfare benefits so they just work less to get same dollars..

education a very big part of the problem too.. If u born at the bottom into a poor economic situation with no parental education direction where u see your parents massacring using the welfare/disability system it's really tough to drag yourself out of that.. It feeds on itself.. Expense for higher education now out of reach for many.. And public education system in this country continues to deteriorate..

socialism itself isn't just the problem there are many other things wrong at the same time including crony capitalism (favors rich and connected) not true capitalism where no matter if your "too big to fail" or little mom and pop shop you are treated the same...

 

[eek.]

Some people don't want to climb up Tiz, I would say about 20% of the population are happy with a basic job, basic wage and enough for some beers and a pizza every few days and CNN sports, and they're happy to do that for 60 years
Around 3% seem to want to do nuffink at all, they don't care about anything, such is darwinism

The internet is the biggest educational tool in history, there's almost nothing you can't learn nowadays to get yourself ahead in life... but only if you want to

To can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink

 

[tiznow]

Massive socialism/welfare just a way to keep the have nots happy that they don't revolt as a few continue to concentrate more and more wealth.. The median income guy with stagnant wages in terms of inflation the last 30 years the guy getting screwed.. This generations median worker will be lucky to retire most will work till they physically can't anymore or die... Zirp (allowing people to live beyond their means) don't help that either..

anyway my point is there are are many bad things at play not just socialism..

Again socialism in an ideal Nordic country type setting works just fine.. In America miserably fails it's intended purpose (helping those in need get a leg up). here it just drags then down and keeps people down and also gives them no incentive to fight against our crooked system and maintain status quo.

 

[tiznow]

35.4% on welfare, 18.7% disability lot more than 3% ha

im sure there are plenty that have legitamate reasons and actually making an attempt to get outta it.. But especially in the disability category it is massively abused by don't wanna do nothing types.. It feeds on itself creating lots of welfare babies that will follow in footsteps of parents..

 

[eek.]

How many of us sit and stare at crap on the TV every night of our lives instead of learning something new?

How much time does that waste over a lifetime?

Most people are happy doing that, they don't want nor do they need, anything more out of life

Darwinism makes the world what it is

 

[eek.]

Darwinism makes the world what it is

Man-monkey finds a comfy seat in his tree, munches a banana, stares out at the view, and is contented

What more could he want...

 

[tiznow]

The only guy running for potus that has at least a remote clue about what ails this country will be gone soon.. American idolization of politics.. Lose/lose whoever who choose.. Well global elite win rest of us lose..

----------------

[h=1]Rand Paul Is Right: The Fed Is Increasing Inequality With Its Low Rates[/h]

There was a great moment of economic clarity at the third GOP debate, thanks to Rand Paul, on the surprisingly overlooked role the Fed has played in increasing economic inequality. (Photo credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

Last night’s Republican debate was supposed to be about economic policy, but instead it was, once again, more about moderators asking gotcha questions. A few candidates managed to get in mentions for their tax plans, entitlement reform or over-regulation, but for the most part we learned little because the questions didn’t seem designed to educate the viewers about the candidate’s ideas for moving the country forward. There was, however, a great moment of economic clarity, thanks to Rand Paul, on the surprisingly overlooked role the Fed has played in increasing economic inequality.
Virtually all economists agree that the Fed’s low interest rates have been responsible for inflating stock market values. By reducing the returns to savings accounts, certificates of deposit and bonds, the Fed has intentionally driven ordinary investors to increase their investment allocation to the stock market, thereby boosting stock returns. Because people with more wealth tend to own more stock, those higher stock prices have led the rich to gain much more than the poor and middle class.
Low interest rates have meant low borrowing costs for large corporations with direct access to capital markets. This low-cost borrowing has boosted corporate profits which also flow mostly to the wealthy.
Poorer individuals, with smaller savings and few other assets, tend to be heavier users of credit cards for borrowing. In other words, they are more likely to carry a balance on their credit cards. Unfortunately, while the Fed has pushed down interest rates for big corporations, average credit card interest rates have only dropped about 1.5 percentage points (from about 14.5 to 13%).
The average credit card balance is about $15,000, meaning this drop in credit card interest rates has resulted in those borrowers saving about $20 per month. This helps a bit, but is hardly a big benefit to those struggling in today’s economy.
Wealthier individuals, with more savings and other assets, rarely need to carry a credit card balance, but they do borrow (tax-deductible) funds in the form of mortgage debt, often in large amounts. Thanks partly to the Fed’s many moves to lower interest rates, mortgage rates have fallen about 2.5 percentage points (roughly from 6.5 to 4% for 30 year fixed rate mortgages).
That 40% decline is much larger than the 10% drop in credit card rates. Thus, wealthy borrowers have seen a much larger percentage decline in their borrowing costs. For example, somebody with a $400,000 mortgage could save $10,000 per year (although perhaps only about $7,000 per year after losing some tax deductions). Still, that means savings of $600 to $800 per month, way more than the $20 per month the poor are saving on credit card debt.
Finally, the low interest rates set by the Fed combined with the additional labor costs thanks to the Obama Administration (Obamacare and its associated taxes) are changing the relative prices of labor and capital. By making labor expensive and (borrowing in order to buy) machines cheap, the Fed is slowing job growth and encouraging businesses to increase automation.
This also increases economic inequality because the poor and middle class earn most (or all) of their money from labor income, while the rich collect a significant share of their income in various forms of returns to capital (dividends, interest, capital gains and business profits). Purposely tilting the economy in favor of capital and against labor is pretty close to taking from the poor and giving to the rich, the exact reverse of normal government attempts to redistribute income.
The most interesting aspect of this flawed Fed policy is that at a time when the left is consumed with economic inequality, nary a voice on the left is complaining about the Fed’s role in making it worse. Rand Paul is correct that the Fed is causing a widening of economic inequality. The question is will any Democratic presidential candidates or other voices from the right or the left join him in calling for the Fed to return monetary policy to normal.
The old saying reminds you that to get out of a hole, you should first stop digging. If you want less economic inequality, we should begin by stopping policies that make it worse. The Fed meets again in December; we have six weeks to convince them to stop digging and start raising rates.

 

[PatsFan1283]

Yeah they talked about the fed for about 3 minutes last night. Not good.

Eek nobody is saying pure capitalism with no rules, regulations or safety nets.

But socialism/crony capitalism is why a psych 101 class costs 4500 bucks, why we've had no meaningful energy innovation for over 100 years, rate of transport has slowed since the mid 60s, health care costs skyrocketing, social security/medicare debt bombs, etc

All of this stifles upward mobility in one way or another.

 

[eek.]

health care costs skyrocketing

Private healthcare around 20% of GDP in the USA
Public healthcare 8% of GDP in the UK, and 100% of people covered
Plus in a democracy, you can buy private healthcare if you want,(if you're mad)

My last dental, a descale and a tooth being removed was about 50 bucks

Insurance companies run your "public healthcare" as it's laughingly known, Insurance companies are legalised financial rapists.

 

[PatsFan1283]

health care costs skyrocketing

Private healthcare around 20% of GDP in the USA
Public healthcare 8% of GDP in the UK, and 100% of people covered
Plus in a democracy, you can buy private healthcare if you want,(if you're mad)

My last dental, a descale and a tooth being removed was about 50 bucks

Insurance companies run your "public healthcare" as it's laughingly known, Insurance companies are legalised financial rapists.

Yes, I know how F'd our health care system is. I wasn't advocating for it. It is gov't run, just a different kinda gov't run.

Tiz and I like to call this crony capitalism.

If we had more medical facilities/doctors in this country competing then these services would be far less. No way an MRI should cost 12k.

Not to mention the actual physical and mental health of our citizens isn't great, but that is another issue.