dennisimoto Loc: Washington State (West)

In early January 2014, Bob Lonsberry, a Rochester talk radio personality on WHAM 1180 AM, said this in response to Obama's "income inequality speech":

The Democrats are right, there are two Americas.

The America that works, and the America that doesn’t.

The America that contributes, and the America that doesn’t.

It’s not the haves and the have nots, it’s the dos and the don’ts.

Some people do their duty as Americans, obey the law, support themselves, contribute to society, and others don’t. That’s the divide in America .

It’s not about income inequality, it’s about civic irresponsibility.

It’s about a political party that preaches hatred, greed and victimization in order to win elective office.

It’s about a political party that loves power more than it loves its country. That’s not invective, that’s truth, and it’s about time someone said it.

The politics of envy was on proud display a couple weeks ago when President Obama pledged the rest of his term to fighting “income inequality.” He noted that some people make more than other people, that some people have higher incomes than others, and he says that’s not just.

That is the rationale of thievery. The other guy has it, you want it, Obama will take it for you. Vote Democrat.

That is the philosophy that produced Detroit . It is the electoral philosophy that is destroying America.

It conceals a fundamental deviation from American values and common sense because it ends up not benefiting the people who support it, but a betrayal.

The Democrats have not empowered their followers, they have enslaved them in a culture of dependence and entitlement, of victim-hood and anger instead of ability and hope.

The president’s premise – that you reduce income inequality by debasing the successful – seeks to deny the successful the consequences of their choices and spare the unsuccessful the consequences of their choices.

Because, by and large, income variations in society is a result of different choices leading to different consequences. Those who choose wisely and responsibility have a far greater likelihood of success, while those who choose foolishly and irresponsibly have a far greater likelihood of failure. Success and failure usually manifest themselves in personal and family income.

You choose to drop out of high school or to skip college – and you are apt to have a different outcome than someone who gets a diploma and pushes on with purposeful education.

You have your children out of wedlock and life is apt to take one course; you have them within a marriage and life is apt to take another course.

Most often in life our destination is determined by the course we take.

My doctor, for example, makes far more than I do. There is significant income inequality between us. Our lives have had an inequality of outcome, but, our lives also have had an inequality of effort. While my doctor went to college and then devoted his young adulthood to medical school and residency, I got a job in a restaurant.

He made a choice, I made a choice, and our choices led us to different outcomes. His outcome pays a lot better than mine.

Does that mean he cheated and Barack Obama needs to take away his wealth? No, it means we are both free men in a free society where free choices lead to different outcomes.

It is not inequality Barack Obama intends to take away, it is freedom. The freedom to succeed, and the freedom to fail.

There is no true option for success if there is no true option for failure.

The pursuit of happiness means a whole lot less when you face the punitive hand of government if your pursuit brings you more happiness than the other guy.

Even if the other guy sat on his arse and did nothing. Even if the other guy made a lifetime’s worth of asinine and shortsighted decisions.

Barack Obama and the Democrats preach equality of outcome as a right, while completely ignoring inequality of effort.

The simple Law of the Harvest – as ye sow, so shall ye reap – is sometimes applied as, “The harder you work, the more you get." Obama would turn that upside down. Those who achieve are to be punished as enemies of society and those who fail are to be rewarded as wards of society.

Entitlement will replace effort as the key to upward mobility in American society if Barack Obama gets his way. He seeks a lowest common denominator society in which the government besieges the successful and productive to foster equality through mediocrity.

He and his party speak of two Americas , and their grip on power is based on using the votes of one to sap the productivity of the other. America is not divided by the differences in our outcomes, it is divided by the differences in our efforts. It is a false philosophy to say one man’s success comes about unavoidably as the result of another man’s victimization.

What Obama offered was not a solution, but a separatism. He fomented division and strife, pitted one set of Americans against another for his own political benefit. That’s what socialists offer. Marxist class warfare wrapped up with a bow.

Two Americas , coming closer each day to proving the truth to Lincoln’s maxim that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

SeniorVerdad

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :-( :-(

Rufus Loc: Deep South

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: A reasonable person cannot dispute this. But democrats will

MarvinSussman

The conservative belief that liberals want wealth equality is a self-induced hallucination. Liberals want a true equality of opportunity.

The conservative philosophy of government was best stated by President Coolidge: “The chief business of the American people is business.” He was wrong. The business of our nation is exactly and only that found in the preamble to our Constitution: “to... promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessing of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Times change but the Founding Liberals can’t change with them. They wrote what they wrote, and the most important word in the preamble to the Constitution is “Posterity”. The Founding Liberals understood why we are here on Earth: survival of the species is the motivating force of life.

A nation without a thriving young generation faces its doom. Care of the young is the highest priority of all the creatures on earth - except Conservatives. Care of our young must not end at birth. Post-natal care must also be the highest priority of federal, state, and local government.

Government must provide children with health care, education, and homes in a secure neighborhood. Children, from conception through university, must get all the health care, food, shelter, and play they need and as much education as they can absorb. Care of the young is a civilization’s wisest investment.

A thriving young generation must include all children regardless of the wealth or poverty of their homes. Providing excellent care only for children of the rich will not produce enough brilliant leaders in technology, industry, and government. If you want all the cream, you have to milk all the cows. (Ninety-nine percent of all discoveries are found by one percent of all scientists.) A level playing field and equal opportunity from the moment of conception are the liberal’s core beliefs.

Support for children by local taxes inevitably results in deprived areas, from Watts to Mississippi. To be equitably distributed, care of the young must be financed by the federal government. Commensurate with their means, all Americans, together as one, must share the load. Fairness and cooperation are the liberal’s core beliefs.

Conservatives hold the opposite view. They believe children should be rewarded or punished depending on how well or how poorly they choose their parents. They want the care of the young to be financed by local taxes so that school quality varies with class and so that science education is stunted by fundamentalist school boards. Is it a wonder that, according to the National Academy of Sciences report, while half of GDP growth depends on technology, the US is rated 48th in science and math education?

Instead of taxing wealthy estates, consisting mostly of untaxed capital gains and municipal bond interest, conservatives would endow the least productive segment of society: children of the rich. Since Congress can be bought, wealth is power and inherited wealth is the inherited power to increase and endow wealth, aristocracy, the exact opposite of democracy, the exact opposite of meritocracy. This is dishonesty and corruption. Conservatism is a crime against Nature.

The health, education, and shelter of the young are more important than the leisure activity of the rich. Nobody deserves to inherit enough money to bribe Congress for wealth-growing advantages. Ban the tax havens! Eliminate tax-free municipal bonds and special deals for hedge-fund managers and their money-changing brethren in the temple!

The human race succeeded only because evolution gave it enough intelligence to understand the value of community: the solidarity of the clan, the tribe, and larger groups that does not exist among other primates. We succeeded only because we took care of each other through fire and flood.

Conservatives want to destroy that social solidarity. While the economic burden of disease far exceeds that of weather, does it make sense that we help communities struck by a tornado but not individuals struck by cancer? Now, Conservatives want to defund FEMA! Come hell or high water, you're on your own! Conservatism is a crime against Nature.

Conservatives believe the tax burden should be shifted from the rich to the middle class, from capital to labor. They would create a polarized generation: a small aristocracy and a large underclass — a lost generation. Conservatism is a complete betrayal of Posterity and the Founding Liberals.
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…© 2014 Marvin Sussman All Rights Reserved. Permission granted only to copy entirely.

Rufus Loc: Deep South

This won't fly here. The intent of the Constitution was to begin a country that honored God and a country that would write its laws using God's laws as the example. I won't adress your entire comment because it doesn't deserve it. But if libs are so intent on protecting our children then why has Obama already spent our grand children's inheritance?

MarvinSussman

The purpose of a nation’s economy is to maximize the nation’s wealth by the full employment of its resources. When a nation’s private industry does not fully employ the nation’s resources, it is the duty of a rational government to employ the nation’s idle resources to help those in need and to build as much infrastructure as possible by spending almost enough money to cause harmful inflation.

Our nation’s economy depends only upon its resources. Whatever is technically feasible is financially possible. The myth that federal spending is limited by tax revenue vanishes in every crisis, rests upon false logic, corrupts political dialogue, promotes austere budgets, and destroys our infrastructure. The federal government, as a currency issuer, is not bound by business or household logic. Its maximization rule is: (Idle Resources) x (Time) = (Wasted Opportunity)!!

Government spending does not depend upon tax revenue. Only the reverse is true.

Think about it. Where did the first American taxpayer, a Pilgrim, get the currency to make his first tax payment? On landing at Plymouth Rock, the Massachusetts Colony had no currency.
During the first month, out of thin air, the governor printed fiat money and used it to pay for the goods and services supplied by the colonists as they built the colony’s infrastructure. Of course, the colonists used the printed money in commerce with each other. The money was the only legal tender for tax payments.

Government spending did not depend upon tax revenue! Only the reverse was true.

For the first year’s budget, the governor simply estimated the labor man-hours that were available to the colony during the first year, chose a convenient hourly wage, and multiplied the two numbers to arrive at the annual budget. He printed and spent just that amount during the first year.

For the second year, the governor planned a new budget but, instead of printing the entire budget amount, he imposed a tax that repossessed most of the first year’s spending. Money not retaken as taxes became savings for the colonists. Annual budget deficits = annual private sector savings! And sufficient annual deficits/savings are an essential need for a thriving economy!

For the second year’s budget and for every subsequent budget, the governor used the previous year’s tax revenue plus additional printed money as needed. If, instead of taxing the first year’s income, he had simply printed all the money needed for the next year, market prices would have almost doubled. Without an annual income tax, the colony would eventually suffer hyper-inflation.

With fiat money, the purpose of taxation is NOT to finance spending but to prevent inflation. Ideally, to avoid wasted opportunity and maximize wealth, government must balance two goals: wisely spend almost enough to cause harmful inflation and tax barely enough to avoid harmful inflation.

It still works that way, but not very well. While crafting a budget, Congress NEVER EVER asks the Treasury if it has enough money. Congress spends the amount of the budget and taxes most of it back to avoid inflation. If we have both unemployment and low inflation, it is only because Congress is not spending enough to help those in need and to hire idle resources to build necessary infrastructure.

But, as the nation grew larger, it became difficult to estimate the spending and taxation that would avoid harmful inflation. To stabilize the dollar’s value, it was pegged at a fixed gold price. The government stored gold and promised to redeem dollars with gold at that price. It worked, more or less.

But due to frequent budget deficits, the nation’s money supply grew faster than the government’s gold supply as wealthy savers redeemed gold with their excess paper currency. To prevent depletion of the gold supply, the Treasury recaptured the annual budget deficit by auctioning US bonds for that amount. The annual debt interest expense became part of the annual federal budget and of the national debt.

But there was another problem. Due to frequent annual trade deficits, foreign exporters with excess US dollars redeemed enough gold to threaten the US gold supply. Eventually, In 1971, Nixon had to end the gold standard. So, ever since, we live with fiat currency and it works, more or less.

But without the need to protect a gold supply, there is no longer a rational reason to auction US bonds to recapture the deficit. The Treasury could simply auction enough bonds to serve our government’s purposes: interest rates, liquidity, etc. The minimized borrowing would stop Wall Street’s fake “debt crisis” scam, crafted to privatize Social Security and gain a fortune in stock brokers’ commissions.

The federal government’s financial assets are infinite. Our only problems are unemployment and inflation. High unemployment existing with low inflation is due only to insufficient deficit spending.

If you could legally print dollars in your attic, why would you balance your household budget? You would only have to balance your desires against your family’s well-being. The federal government does not have to balance its annual budget. It only has to balance unemployment against harmful inflation.

An intelligent, rational, informed US citizen would vote against the deficit hawks in Congress. You? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This essay is based on works by: (e-books cost about $10 at Amazon)

Frank N. Newman, former Deputy Secretary of the US Treasury, author of “Freedom from National Debt” (Two Harbors Press);

Francis X. Cavanaugh, US Treasury economist for over 30 years, author of: “The Truth about the National Debt”: Five Myths and One Reality” (Harvard Business School Press);

Warren Mosler, economist, author of “Seven Deadly Frauds of Economic Policy” (Oxford U. Press);

Dr. Stephanie Kelton, Chair of the UMKC Economics Department, at NewEconomicPerspectives.org.

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© 2014 Marvin Sussman All Rights Reserved. Permission granted only to copy entirely.
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Rufus Loc: Deep South

Good point. It hasn't worked has it?

dennisimoto Loc: Washington State (West)

Marvin you are a real rocket surgeon aren't you? The Income Tax started in 1913 with the 16th Amendment. Where did the Pilgrims get money to pay taxes in 1620? Ans. There WERE no taxes in 1620. I had not known that a human being could move his own brain into his lower colon and speak though his grommet until I read your posts above but now I know it's a fact of life!

MarvinSussman

What exactly has not worked?

stevenkalka

He's not just doing it by income. He and Holder are doing it by race. Others in his party are doing it by gender. Just listen to all that rhetoric about white privilege and the war on women.

How do you like that phony 'Rape on Campus' issue? Rape on campus is just as illegal as rape off campus. It sounds like they're asking for kangaroo courts stacked against male students.

Rufus Loc: Deep South

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

SeniorVerdad

I've always wondered if the elitists have their way and the middle class goes the way of the dinosaur and all you have is the very rich and very poor, who is going to have money to buy the products the wealthy folks are selling? How long can an economy keep going when the majority of its people are on government subsistence? Eventually the wealthy will get tired of paying for the rest. What then?

stevenkalka

You have a global economy. They could sell their products abroad. It would take quite a while for that to happen and it would in stages like the the lower middle class, working class, near poor, poor, very poor. What they sell domestically could be tailor made for their modified customer base.

MarvinSussman

I thank you for your criticism. It's exactly what I need for improvement of the essay, on which you did not otherwise comment. Assuming my version of history were correct, what response would you have had?

Snoopy

Dennis

Well put!

Unfortunately the low information group will NOT listen to any of your statements. They will continue to cry about being treated unfairly by society.

Snoopy