And where will the 'small businessmen' take the capital from? Capital is not cash, the gov't can print any amounts of cash and it doesn't mean anything, have you ever seen Zimbabwe dollars or Weimar Republic Marks? Would you take them in exchange for a steel mill or an excavator for example?
You see, capital investment comes from savings, not from the printing press, that's why the current Western societies are all on the brink of the complete economic collapse, they are indebted so much, that they can NEVER pay the debt back, but they won't admit it, they will most likely try to print their way out, and if they do, they'll print their way into abject poverty.
It takes much more time to put together meaningful savings in a very poor economy than in a wealthy economy, and the economy without the rich people is a poor economy, you can't borrow, there are very few jobs available, it's all subsistence level.
The jobs are a function of desire to make a profit, but the ability to make a profit is a function of savings and the regulatory environment. If the regulatory environment is such, that savings leave (for all the reasons I always talk about, from inflation and business and labour regulations to income taxes), then the ability to create jobs is extremely limited.
What people will be doing is not starting small businesses, they will be working for themselves, not for others, but they will be working just to survive.
Capital is not cash that you can run off the printers, it's supposed to be savings - real money or type of money that people are willing to accept. People are willing to accept your cash as long as they believe that they can get SOMETHING back for it from you. Real trade is not cash for things, it's things for things, and if one side provides things and the other can only print cash, it's not real trade and it will stop.
But this means that the tools will not be available. In fact what is going to happen is that without the savings and the capital investments, whatever tools will still be remaining will be SOLD OFF to buy food, that's the unfortunate part.
Here is the problem: lack of real capital investment.
The rich are people who have successfully amassed some amount of capital, and capital formation is what allows the productivity of people to be increased to make them better off than just being hunters, gatherers, subsistence farmers.
Don't forget, before capitalism there were plenty of lands on this planet, rich with resources, and tribes of people lived above those resources and didn't even know they had all that wealth just underneath their feet.
Apparently it takes thousands of years for the tribes to become productive enough to amass the capital required to build the tools that allow the resources to be mined, used in whatever way, that increases the standard of living of the people who live there.
Removing the capital does not just mean losing cash, in fact cash is not the problem at all. If cash was the problem and the solution, USA wouldn't be in any trouble at all, but neither would Zimbabwe, former USSR, Argentina, Weimar Republic, etc.
It's not about cash, cash doesn't mean anything if you can't buy anything with it, and nobody wants your cash in exchange for the goods, if you cannot gives something back for those goods.
Would you take 100 Trillion Zimbabwe dollars for an excavator? How about 1000,000 Trillion Zimbabwe dollars?
Do you see the point? When the rich leave, they are not taking cash, they are moving their capital, entire factories are gone, equipment, machines, tools, but also management knowledge.
Don't fool yourself, management knowledge of how to run a profitable business is extremely important to have any kind of economy. Profitable business is what makes the economy.
The government does no such thing. The politicians use the popular trends in order to become famous for introducing (and maybe passing) the bills that are popular with the mob, sure, but this does not equate to 'enforcing the will of the people'.
The will of the people is subjugated to the number 1.
The will of the people is finely presented in the law, that is supposed to govern the government, and that law is completely tossed out (of-course I am speaking of the Constitution).
The taxes are needed to pay for the government, that is true, but 1913 became the aberration, the year when the government was finally in a position to take away the will of the people, as it introduced the tools necessary to destroy the ability of the people to fend for themselves, the Fed and the IRS were created to steal the productivity of the people in a number of important ways, and none of it should have ever happened; it was tried earlier a number of times and failed, but finally they figured out how to put together the right people into the key positions to have this implemented and since then the gov't became something it was NEVER intended to become from the beginning of the USA, it became the ruler of the people rather than the protector of their freedoms.
Incidentally, the top tax bracket in that period was 80-90%.
First: nobody paid those taxes. People paid less taxes than they are paying today.
Nobody paid 94 or whatever % taxes. Entire industries were created to avoid taxes and every single thing was a write off against taxes and IRS didn't have direct link to every bank account, checking information was a very long manual process.
Second: what kind of logic is that, marginal tax rates were high and so this is why the economy was better or whatever the point is? That's a huge logical fail, none of that follows.
Thirdly: the real time when USA was actually a real economic power, when people truly had individual liberties was not any time past WWII, it was the time from the 1870 to 1913.
Incidentally 1913 was the year when IRS and the Fed were finally pushed through (after a number of unsuccessful and temporary attempts), the stars lined up so to speak, or more correctly - the POTUS, SCOTUS, Congress and Senate lined up in a way that allowed this atrocity to take place.
That became the beginning of the end of the Republic.
While sounding somewhat good, this also has a potential downside.
What I am saying is - if you are working for Google and you have a spouse, make sure they don't want to see you dead, because all of a sudden this may become a lucrative enterprise. I mean, there is clearly a well defined step 2 in the: step 1, step 2, profit! scheme.
Prof. Farnsworth: Let me show you around. That's my lab table and this is my work-stool. And over there is my intergalactic spaceship! And here's where I keep assorted lengths of wire.
Fry: Whoa! A real live spaceship!
Prof. Farnsworth: I designed it myself. Let me show you some of the different lengths of wire I used.
1. You are wrong on Somalia. Somalia is not an example of lack of cooperation, it is a story of a country that was occupied by the British and then ruled by the Communists for another few decades before it plunged into a civil war, looking for liberation from the dictatorship.
2. You are wrong on the standard of living being dependent on modern type of government that denies individual freedoms and engages into confiscatory policy, denying the right to private property with the income, payroll, corporate taxes as well as with the business regulations and inflation.
The actual rise of standard of living depends on the growing economy, and this is best produced by the free market industrial economy, that is free of government intervention policies, free of gov't inflation, free of income, corporate, payroll taxes, free of illegal wars, free of the welfare state mentality. This is obvious from the example of USA, which became largest manufacturer, exporter, creditor nation past the Civil war before the IRS and the Fed were established.
The welfare state mentality is what is causing the global economic meltdown. Canada is going to be exporting resources to China, where the productivity is higher than in the Western world, so Canada, Australia will not suffer a similar fate as the USA and most of Europe. USA will also export the natural resources to China and others, but USA's population is much larger, so the benefit of the export is going to be diluted among the population so much more (10 times more at least).
- she died in 1982, which means she paid into the system for quite a number of years since it was established. Being unjustly forced to pay into the unjust system and then voluntarily refusing to draw from it is stupid, and it doesn't prevent one from being against the injustice of being forced into the unjust system.
I suggest that everybody, Democrats, Republicans, come to the elections with one mission - put either Ron Paul or Gary Johnson in the office and nobody else.
So you are saying that those 5,000,000,000,000 dollars should have been taken OUT of the economy with taxes? And how exactly does it work in your world, if the money that you earn is taken from you, so you can't reinvest? Inflation, regulations, taxes - NONE of this helps the economy.
It's a tax and a power grab. You are going to be taxed, whatever the cost of installation will be (5 bucks? I don't think so) and it's a power grab by the government, that will use the device you'll be paying for to track your ass.
Survivor benefits, what a scam. As I said: the money that you would have if you simply split your investment into 25% chunks, gold, cash, bonds, stocks, you'd have more money there at any moment, and it's ALL MONEY that you have put there, not monthly payments based on various gov't schemes. It's money that is available to you at any moment, you don't have to live to 65. If you want to start your business, you don't have to go to a bank or to a VC, you can start it on your own if you have savings.
So think about it for a moment and tell me, would you opt out of SS if you could? What I mean is - if you didn't have to pay the payroll tax and you couldn't get any SS 'benefits' because of it once you are 65 (or older, it's not going to be 65 for too much longer), and you could have your money stored in whatever form you want, so you don't have to rely on gov't fiat cash, which IS becoming more worthless with every passing year. You wouldn't opt out?
- they are nets, alright, but they have nothing to do with safety. They are the nets that are designed to hold you down, prevent you from being able to have your own independent wealth, from investing, they are the nets designed to steal from you.
you also firmly believe in doing for yourself, and fuck the rest of them, correct?
- see, gov't education didn't help you to develop logic. Doing it for yourself - yes, absolutely.
'fuck the rest of them'? - this does not follow. Everybody should be doing it for themselves, and that's how the economy flourishes, that's how everybody wins. That's how the stuff gets cheaper, that's how there are more choices, that's how there are more products, people start more businesses, save more, invest more. That's how the jobs are really created, because that's how productivity is increased.
That's how people have more money and people are a charitable bunch (unfortunately from my perspective anyway, because that's the weapon used against them in groups, to force them into this gov't violence driven 'charity', which is no charity at all).
Would you rather have a private company take the money and fuck you over for the profit of two people, or the government take it and fuck you over for the benefit of millions?
- more proof complete failure of gov't 'education' system. Those are not the choices.
I rather have everybody who wants to try running their companies, doing their own business and I rather have no government meddling with any business, money, no income taxes obviously, no inflation via printing.
I don't want to be 'fucked' for the benefit of millions at all. In a private system, in a free market I don't get fucked more than I have to, because if I do something stupid and lose money, I won't do it again. So I can learn and move on, but with the government fucking me for the benefit of whoever, I have to devise very complex and time and energy consuming schemes to avoid being fucked and I still end up living in a society that is very much sick economically speaking, because the gov't is there, fucking everybody.
Selfishness, no matter how it's labeled, is always selfishness.
- I prefer selfishness to theft 100% of the time, and gov't is theft. It's theft of freedoms, it's theft of life.
Freedom to live your life without being harassed, without having the outcome of your work stolen.
Freedom to live your life without being accused and prosecuted for things that are completely none of anybody's business, but gov't makes it its business.
Freedom from being part of a system that discriminates and kills people because they are powerless.
What millions are you talking about? All I see is millions of poor and murdered people, all poor and all murdered by the governments of the world. Or is it selfish not to want to have wars?
Or is it selfish to allow people to live their lives as they want to and not to be harassed by the powers above them, because gov't IS power, it's all power, it's all threat of violence.
The best thing to do for an individual, the most selfish thing to do for an individual in this system is to be part of the government - to harass others.
The least selfish thing is to run your own business to make products that people want to trade with you for.
I did. Of course, I didn't lose my house. I did, however, lose a lot of my equity.
- so you overpaid and you didn't refinance like the rest of them, and in your own words: Everyone knew it was a bubble. This makes you a liar OR it makes you stupid, it's your choice, which one do you take?
Either YOU knew about the bubble and you didn't refinance in order to pull the money out, you didn't sell the house to pull the money out, which makes you stupid.
OR (which I think is the case)
You didn't know anything. You were just another lemming, jumping off the cliff with the rest of them, and that's why you didn't pull the equity out (which was an easy way to pull money out of the bubble into your own account) and you didn't sell.
Bullshit, stop revising history. Everyone knew it was a bubble, people just differed on when they thought it would burst. Seriously, how can you possible misremember that?
- Bullshit, you are the one revising history and I can easily show it.
(October 20, 2005) "House prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years. Although speculative activity has increased in some areas, at a national level these price increases largely reflect strong economic fundamentals."
(February 15, 2006) "Housing markets are cooling a bit. Our expectation is that the decline in activity or the slowing in activity will be moderate, that house prices will probably continue to rise."
(January 10, 2008) "The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession."
(March 28, 2007) "At this juncture, however, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained. In particular, mortgages to prime borrowers and fixed-rate mortgages to all classes of borrowers continue to perform well, with low rates of delinquency."
(July, 2005) "Weâ(TM)ve never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. So, what I think what is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumption spending a bit. I donâ(TM)t think itâ(TM)s gonna drive the economy too far from its full employment path, though."
(February 15, 2007) "Despite the ongoing adjustments in the housing sector, overall economic prospects for households remain good. Household finances appear generally solid, and delinquency rates on most types of consumer loans and residential mortgages remain low."
#18 (May 17, 2007) "All that said, given the fundamental factors in place that should support the demand for housing, we believe the effect of the troubles in the subprime sector on the broader housing market will likely be limited, and we do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system. The vast majority of mortgages, including even subprime mortgages, continue to perform well. Past gains in house prices have left most homeowners with significant amounts of home equity, and growth in jobs and incomes should help keep the financial obligations of most households manageable."
"The GSEs are adequately capitalized. They are in no danger of failing."
(Two months before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed and were nationalized) "They will make it through the storm."
It wasn't just subprime, it was almost all mortgages, it was the ARMs, it was all mortgages that had government backing (F&F and FDA fake insurance) behind them. It was the policy of easy credit by the Fed that allowed the banks to gamble with money that wasn't bank's money and the losses were socialised by the gov't fake insurance.
As to people who 'lost everything', don't be so quick in that judgement. How many of the people that lost their houses actually had any equity?
You see, it matters very much in this question, whether they lost ANYTHING or whether they were allowed to live far beyond their means for a prolonged period of time (that's why the general population doesn't rise up against its gov't, because these policies DO provide short term gain, even if at the cost of destroying the economy).
If you have no equity or very little equity in that property, then what do you lose? If you were refinancing your house every year as prices were being inflated all the time and people thought prices could never fall, then how much did you actually pull OUT of those homes?
How many people thought that they would never have to work, they could have this bubble inflated forever? Nobody wanted to admit it was a bubble (almost nobody, those who talked about it were laughed at).
How many people bought second homes, bought cars, expensive furniture and gadgets, took vacations, etc.etc., all by refinancing their homes that they thought could never fall in price?
So some of them are being kicked out of the houses? They never owned them. Who actually got screwed? The people whose money was loaned out to buy those houses, but because so much of that money was just printed, it was everybody and every business that suffered from inflation, the costs of which pushed investment capital to Asia and other places.
Sure, the people do suffer at the end, but not because of being pushed out of the properties they never paid for, it's because they now have a broken economy they can't do anything with.
Both Romney and Obama are running on the platform of tax cuts. Romney wants to cut taxes for all and Obama wants to cut taxes for the people who are not 1%, so I supposed the 99%, right?
Obama is accusing Romney of 'Romneyhood' - taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich, but what does he mean by that? He means that Romney will have all these tax cuts, including the tax cuts for the rich and the poor will end up paying for that.
But wait just a second, Obama also proposes tax cuts, and in his version of tax cuts, who is going to be paying for them?
In order to have real tax cuts government must cut spending, otherwise it's not a tax cut (that's why Bush didn't really have tax cuts, he grew spending, and spending is the real tax, it's the future tax + interest, somebody must pay).
Obama is clearly not interested in cutting government spending, but really then how can he say that Romney is going to grow taxes on the middle class and the poor by ALSO cutting taxes on middle class and the poor while also cutting tax on the top 1%.
See, it's sleight of hand here as well, Obama is doing the same thing as Romney - promising tax cuts and the difference is that Obama is not going to cut spending. Romney IS talking about cutting spending, whether he'll do it........ (that's why I am pro Ron Paul or Garry Johnson, not any of these other clowns).
So back to the topic - here is the gist of this social contract - politicians promise the voters something NOW and they are promising NOT to tax for it. So the government spending continues and grows, and taxes are cut, so nothing is balanced.
And this is the 'social contract' - it is the FUTURE that ends up with the bill. It's the credit, it's the tab. The future (whoever that is) is NOT voting in the elections. The future isn't being promised anything, but they are getting stuck with whatever the bill is.
Of-course AFAIC the future is now, there is no future, the generations that are alive today will be paying for all this economic catastrophe that is happening today.
Yeah, but realise that even then Madoff wasn't on SEC radar, even though he was stealing from the wealthier individuals. In fact his fund was seen as something exclusive, people didn't dare to pull money out because they thought they wouldn't be able to get back in.
One interesting thing is that he never provided his clients with an online interface to check their balances, I wonder why not? He could have faked the transactions there, he could have faked their balance information and as long as they saw a good consistent return, they wouldn't have ever tried to pull the money out. Why? They didn't need the money to spend it, they needed a good investment opportunity, and Madoff was giving them an impression of a good return. Sometimes somebody needed the money for whatever reason and they could always cash out, as long as it wasn't everybody at the same time, as long as there were new people getting into it.
That's a private ponzi scheme. Governments run this type of scheme constantly with pension funds, SS and Medicare are a good example of this same thing.
You THINK you have something, in reality it's all bonds - just IOUs. Think about this: there is no difference to the government whether there are bonds in the so called SS 'fund' or there are no bonds there, because in order to make payments they have to sell bonds anyway. There is no material difference in how the payments are funded, now that the taxes don't cover the payouts. The thing is bankrupt, it's broke and there is no difference whether the bonds are IN the so called 'fund' or not, there is no difference as to how the money is paid out.
So now think about this: government takes your payroll tax (both, your part and the part that the employer pays if you are an employee) and it spends all of it, it's not invested in anything as it could have been with real insurance or if you just managed your money yourself. You are presented with some statement that says: here is what you will get eventually IF you live to that age of 65 or whatever (and the age is going to be raised obviously).
WHAT IF YOU DIE?
If you had that money invested all on your own, your family would have that money. If you are dead, they are not going to see a cent of it. It's your money and now it's gone.
Now how about this: in 1971 one ounce of gold was 35 bucks, today it's 1615 or something like that, so if you had your own money invested with a strategy of 25% stocks, 25% bonds, 25% gold, 25% cash, then even just on GOLD ALONE you are WAY AHEAD of anything that the government promises to give you, and you ACTUALLY HAVE IT as opposed to not having it.
SS is a huge scam, much bigger than Madoff's scam, and who is running it? Right.
Of-course. And that's just one way they steal legally. There are untold number of ways they steal. Gov't contracts... Who is running welfare schemes? Who is running food stamps? It's JPMorgan. I mean, think about this: the unlimited credit that the central bank provides to the preferred institutions. It's given out at no cost and the Treasury needs the money, so this is legal money laundering - using the infinite Fed's fake credit line to finance the Treasury through the intermediary, so that the intermediary can front run the deals (the Treasury announces what it's going to buy and at what price upfront!)
This is freaking madness and it's all legal. Military contracts and undeclared wars. ALL government contracts. Infrastructure? It's child's play.
The gov't doesn't care about people it also doesn't look into its own people, the gov't is there to steal money from people, companies who do legitimate business. It's a racket, nothing more. If you are doing legitimate business - you are a target. You have a legitimate business, legitimate clients, real earnings, you are satisfying market demand - you are a target.
You are stealing? Who gives a shit, you can't be used to make consistent profits from, you aren't buying licenses, you aren't going to pay untold amounts of money because of all the audits, the compliance costs, nobody cares about you.
Here is a thing: you can steal, just don't steal too little, like this guy in the story. You can run a pump and dump scam, SEC doesn't care, it's not there to do anything about it, this should be obvious by now. Enron, Madoff and such (NIA is small potatoes, only maybe 10-20 million has been stolen so far).
SEC, FINRA... they exist to prevent competition to the banks and large investment firms, they don't exist to prevent fraud, don't be mistaken thinking that.
While the government protects the preferred banks, gives them infinite credit, while destroying the currency, the person who is punished is a guy that 'stole' some source code.
While the banks are using the infinite credit and fake insurance by the government to pump one credit bubble after another, from stocks, to house prices, to bonds and dollars themselves, the person who gets busted is somebody who doesn't have anything to do with any financial transactions.
The lesson is - if you steal, steal huge and make sure that you have strong government protection and cover. Actually be the government, that's the best way to steal. Have ties to all the governments in the world, finance wars and government debt by using central credit from the central banks. In fact just steal individual customer funds, if you are somebody like Corzine.
But if you are a schmuck who decides to steal pencils from the bank, you are going to be made example of.
People are constantly being bombarded with various messages that are most often false or wrong.
A politician kissing babies is just one of those things. Political advertising campaigns are using pictures from sites like istockphoto.com while pretending that the people in the pictures have anything to do with reality.
Actually any type of advertising shouldn't be taken literally, it's all a figure of speech, a sleight of hand, cherry picking, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow! How much more epic can one company get?
And where will the 'small businessmen' take the capital from? Capital is not cash, the gov't can print any amounts of cash and it doesn't mean anything, have you ever seen Zimbabwe dollars or Weimar Republic Marks? Would you take them in exchange for a steel mill or an excavator for example?
You see, capital investment comes from savings, not from the printing press, that's why the current Western societies are all on the brink of the complete economic collapse, they are indebted so much, that they can NEVER pay the debt back, but they won't admit it, they will most likely try to print their way out, and if they do, they'll print their way into abject poverty.
It takes much more time to put together meaningful savings in a very poor economy than in a wealthy economy, and the economy without the rich people is a poor economy, you can't borrow, there are very few jobs available, it's all subsistence level.
The jobs are a function of desire to make a profit, but the ability to make a profit is a function of savings and the regulatory environment. If the regulatory environment is such, that savings leave (for all the reasons I always talk about, from inflation and business and labour regulations to income taxes), then the ability to create jobs is extremely limited.
What people will be doing is not starting small businesses, they will be working for themselves, not for others, but they will be working just to survive.
Capital is not cash that you can run off the printers, it's supposed to be savings - real money or type of money that people are willing to accept. People are willing to accept your cash as long as they believe that they can get SOMETHING back for it from you. Real trade is not cash for things, it's things for things, and if one side provides things and the other can only print cash, it's not real trade and it will stop.
But this means that the tools will not be available. In fact what is going to happen is that without the savings and the capital investments, whatever tools will still be remaining will be SOLD OFF to buy food, that's the unfortunate part.
60% Insightful
20% Troll
20% Informative
- one man's 'Insightful' or 'Informative' is another man's 'Troll'.
Here is the problem: lack of real capital investment.
The rich are people who have successfully amassed some amount of capital, and capital formation is what allows the productivity of people to be increased to make them better off than just being hunters, gatherers, subsistence farmers.
Don't forget, before capitalism there were plenty of lands on this planet, rich with resources, and tribes of people lived above those resources and didn't even know they had all that wealth just underneath their feet.
Apparently it takes thousands of years for the tribes to become productive enough to amass the capital required to build the tools that allow the resources to be mined, used in whatever way, that increases the standard of living of the people who live there.
Removing the capital does not just mean losing cash, in fact cash is not the problem at all. If cash was the problem and the solution, USA wouldn't be in any trouble at all, but neither would Zimbabwe, former USSR, Argentina, Weimar Republic, etc.
It's not about cash, cash doesn't mean anything if you can't buy anything with it, and nobody wants your cash in exchange for the goods, if you cannot gives something back for those goods.
Would you take 100 Trillion Zimbabwe dollars for an excavator? How about 1000,000 Trillion Zimbabwe dollars?
Do you see the point? When the rich leave, they are not taking cash, they are moving their capital, entire factories are gone, equipment, machines, tools, but also management knowledge.
Don't fool yourself, management knowledge of how to run a profitable business is extremely important to have any kind of economy. Profitable business is what makes the economy.
The government enforces the will of the people
- now that is prime time bullshit.
The government does no such thing. The politicians use the popular trends in order to become famous for introducing (and maybe passing) the bills that are popular with the mob, sure, but this does not equate to 'enforcing the will of the people'.
The will of the people is subjugated to the number 1.
The will of the people is finely presented in the law, that is supposed to govern the government, and that law is completely tossed out (of-course I am speaking of the Constitution).
The taxes are needed to pay for the government, that is true, but 1913 became the aberration, the year when the government was finally in a position to take away the will of the people, as it introduced the tools necessary to destroy the ability of the people to fend for themselves, the Fed and the IRS were created to steal the productivity of the people in a number of important ways, and none of it should have ever happened; it was tried earlier a number of times and failed, but finally they figured out how to put together the right people into the key positions to have this implemented and since then the gov't became something it was NEVER intended to become from the beginning of the USA, it became the ruler of the people rather than the protector of their freedoms.
Incidentally, the top tax bracket in that period was 80-90%.
First: nobody paid those taxes. People paid less taxes than they are paying today.
Nobody paid 94 or whatever % taxes. Entire industries were created to avoid taxes and every single thing was a write off against taxes and IRS didn't have direct link to every bank account, checking information was a very long manual process.
Second: what kind of logic is that, marginal tax rates were high and so this is why the economy was better or whatever the point is? That's a huge logical fail, none of that follows.
Thirdly: the real time when USA was actually a real economic power, when people truly had individual liberties was not any time past WWII, it was the time from the 1870 to 1913.
Incidentally 1913 was the year when IRS and the Fed were finally pushed through (after a number of unsuccessful and temporary attempts), the stars lined up so to speak, or more correctly - the POTUS, SCOTUS, Congress and Senate lined up in a way that allowed this atrocity to take place.
That became the beginning of the end of the Republic.
While sounding somewhat good, this also has a potential downside.
What I am saying is - if you are working for Google and you have a spouse, make sure they don't want to see you dead, because all of a sudden this may become a lucrative enterprise. I mean, there is clearly a well defined step 2 in the: step 1, step 2, profit! scheme.
Prof. Farnsworth: Let me show you around. That's my lab table and this is my work-stool. And over there is my intergalactic spaceship! And here's where I keep assorted lengths of wire.
Fry: Whoa! A real live spaceship!
Prof. Farnsworth: I designed it myself. Let me show you some of the different lengths of wire I used.
1. You are wrong on Somalia. Somalia is not an example of lack of cooperation, it is a story of a country that was occupied by the British and then ruled by the Communists for another few decades before it plunged into a civil war, looking for liberation from the dictatorship.
2. You are wrong on the standard of living being dependent on modern type of government that denies individual freedoms and engages into confiscatory policy, denying the right to private property with the income, payroll, corporate taxes as well as with the business regulations and inflation.
The actual rise of standard of living depends on the growing economy, and this is best produced by the free market industrial economy, that is free of government intervention policies, free of gov't inflation, free of income, corporate, payroll taxes, free of illegal wars, free of the welfare state mentality. This is obvious from the example of USA, which became largest manufacturer, exporter, creditor nation past the Civil war before the IRS and the Fed were established.
The welfare state mentality is what is causing the global economic meltdown. Canada is going to be exporting resources to China, where the productivity is higher than in the Western world, so Canada, Australia will not suffer a similar fate as the USA and most of Europe. USA will also export the natural resources to China and others, but USA's population is much larger, so the benefit of the export is going to be diluted among the population so much more (10 times more at least).
Ayn Rand died on welfare and medicare
- she died in 1982, which means she paid into the system for quite a number of years since it was established. Being unjustly forced to pay into the unjust system and then voluntarily refusing to draw from it is stupid, and it doesn't prevent one from being against the injustice of being forced into the unjust system.
I suggest that everybody, Democrats, Republicans, come to the elections with one mission - put either Ron Paul or Gary Johnson in the office and nobody else.
So you are saying that those 5,000,000,000,000 dollars should have been taken OUT of the economy with taxes? And how exactly does it work in your world, if the money that you earn is taken from you, so you can't reinvest? Inflation, regulations, taxes - NONE of this helps the economy.
How about 2?
Ron Paul.
Garry Johnson.
It's a tax and a power grab. You are going to be taxed, whatever the cost of installation will be (5 bucks? I don't think so) and it's a power grab by the government, that will use the device you'll be paying for to track your ass.
Survivor benefits, what a scam. As I said: the money that you would have if you simply split your investment into 25% chunks, gold, cash, bonds, stocks, you'd have more money there at any moment, and it's ALL MONEY that you have put there, not monthly payments based on various gov't schemes. It's money that is available to you at any moment, you don't have to live to 65. If you want to start your business, you don't have to go to a bank or to a VC, you can start it on your own if you have savings.
So think about it for a moment and tell me, would you opt out of SS if you could? What I mean is - if you didn't have to pay the payroll tax and you couldn't get any SS 'benefits' because of it once you are 65 (or older, it's not going to be 65 for too much longer), and you could have your money stored in whatever form you want, so you don't have to rely on gov't fiat cash, which IS becoming more worthless with every passing year. You wouldn't opt out?
So we should do away with safety nets?
- they are nets, alright, but they have nothing to do with safety. They are the nets that are designed to hold you down, prevent you from being able to have your own independent wealth, from investing, they are the nets designed to steal from you.
you also firmly believe in doing for yourself, and fuck the rest of them, correct?
- see, gov't education didn't help you to develop logic. Doing it for yourself - yes, absolutely.
'fuck the rest of them'? - this does not follow. Everybody should be doing it for themselves, and that's how the economy flourishes, that's how everybody wins. That's how the stuff gets cheaper, that's how there are more choices, that's how there are more products, people start more businesses, save more, invest more. That's how the jobs are really created, because that's how productivity is increased.
That's how people have more money and people are a charitable bunch (unfortunately from my perspective anyway, because that's the weapon used against them in groups, to force them into this gov't violence driven 'charity', which is no charity at all).
Would you rather have a private company take the money and fuck you over for the profit of two people, or the government take it and fuck you over for the benefit of millions?
- more proof complete failure of gov't 'education' system. Those are not the choices.
I rather have everybody who wants to try running their companies, doing their own business and I rather have no government meddling with any business, money, no income taxes obviously, no inflation via printing.
I don't want to be 'fucked' for the benefit of millions at all. In a private system, in a free market I don't get fucked more than I have to, because if I do something stupid and lose money, I won't do it again. So I can learn and move on, but with the government fucking me for the benefit of whoever, I have to devise very complex and time and energy consuming schemes to avoid being fucked and I still end up living in a society that is very much sick economically speaking, because the gov't is there, fucking everybody.
Selfishness, no matter how it's labeled, is always selfishness.
- I prefer selfishness to theft 100% of the time, and gov't is theft. It's theft of freedoms, it's theft of life.
Freedom to live your life without being harassed, without having the outcome of your work stolen.
Freedom to live your life without being accused and prosecuted for things that are completely none of anybody's business, but gov't makes it its business.
Freedom from being part of a system that discriminates and kills people because they are powerless.
What millions are you talking about? All I see is millions of poor and murdered people, all poor and all murdered by the governments of the world. Or is it selfish not to want to have wars?
Or is it selfish to allow people to live their lives as they want to and not to be harassed by the powers above them, because gov't IS power, it's all power, it's all threat of violence.
The best thing to do for an individual, the most selfish thing to do for an individual in this system is to be part of the government - to harass others.
The least selfish thing is to run your own business to make products that people want to trade with you for.
I choose the latter, not the former.
I did. Of course, I didn't lose my house. I did, however, lose a lot of my equity.
- so you overpaid and you didn't refinance like the rest of them, and in your own words: Everyone knew it was a bubble. This makes you a liar OR it makes you stupid, it's your choice, which one do you take?
Either YOU knew about the bubble and you didn't refinance in order to pull the money out, you didn't sell the house to pull the money out, which makes you stupid.
OR (which I think is the case)
You didn't know anything. You were just another lemming, jumping off the cliff with the rest of them, and that's why you didn't pull the equity out (which was an easy way to pull money out of the bubble into your own account) and you didn't sell.
Bullshit, stop revising history. Everyone knew it was a bubble, people just differed on when they thought it would burst. Seriously, how can you possible misremember that?
- Bullshit, you are the one revising history and I can easily show it.
Let's look at Bernanke first.
(October 20, 2005) "House prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years. Although speculative activity has increased in some areas, at a national level these price increases largely reflect strong economic fundamentals."
(February 15, 2006) "Housing markets are cooling a bit. Our expectation is that the decline in activity or the slowing in activity will be moderate, that house prices will probably continue to rise."
(January 10, 2008) "The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession."
(March 28, 2007) "At this juncture, however, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained. In particular, mortgages to prime borrowers and fixed-rate mortgages to all classes of borrowers continue to perform well, with low rates of delinquency."
(July, 2005) "Weâ(TM)ve never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. So, what I think what is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumption spending a bit. I donâ(TM)t think itâ(TM)s gonna drive the economy too far from its full employment path, though."
(February 15, 2007) "Despite the ongoing adjustments in the housing sector, overall economic prospects for households remain good. Household finances appear generally solid, and delinquency rates on most types of consumer loans and residential mortgages remain low."
#18 (May 17, 2007) "All that said, given the fundamental factors in place that should support the demand for housing, we believe the effect of the troubles in the subprime sector on the broader housing market will likely be limited, and we do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system. The vast majority of mortgages, including even subprime mortgages, continue to perform well. Past gains in house prices have left most homeowners with significant amounts of home equity, and growth in jobs and incomes should help keep the financial obligations of most households manageable."
"The GSEs are adequately capitalized. They are in no danger of failing."
(Two months before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed and were nationalized) "They will make it through the storm."
Let's look at the talking heads, what were they laughing at back then?
What they laughing at now?
Many fewer than you imagine.
- on
It wasn't just subprime, it was almost all mortgages, it was the ARMs, it was all mortgages that had government backing (F&F and FDA fake insurance) behind them. It was the policy of easy credit by the Fed that allowed the banks to gamble with money that wasn't bank's money and the losses were socialised by the gov't fake insurance.
As to people who 'lost everything', don't be so quick in that judgement. How many of the people that lost their houses actually had any equity?
You see, it matters very much in this question, whether they lost ANYTHING or whether they were allowed to live far beyond their means for a prolonged period of time (that's why the general population doesn't rise up against its gov't, because these policies DO provide short term gain, even if at the cost of destroying the economy).
If you have no equity or very little equity in that property, then what do you lose? If you were refinancing your house every year as prices were being inflated all the time and people thought prices could never fall, then how much did you actually pull OUT of those homes?
How many people thought that they would never have to work, they could have this bubble inflated forever? Nobody wanted to admit it was a bubble (almost nobody, those who talked about it were laughed at).
How many people bought second homes, bought cars, expensive furniture and gadgets, took vacations, etc.etc., all by refinancing their homes that they thought could never fall in price?
So some of them are being kicked out of the houses? They never owned them. Who actually got screwed? The people whose money was loaned out to buy those houses, but because so much of that money was just printed, it was everybody and every business that suffered from inflation, the costs of which pushed investment capital to Asia and other places.
Sure, the people do suffer at the end, but not because of being pushed out of the properties they never paid for, it's because they now have a broken economy they can't do anything with.
Sleight of hand and.... nothing changes.
Yeah, here is a list of crimes that gov't is involved with, and 'social contract' is one of those crimes.
How about that social contract?
Both Romney and Obama are running on the platform of tax cuts. Romney wants to cut taxes for all and Obama wants to cut taxes for the people who are not 1%, so I supposed the 99%, right?
Obama is accusing Romney of 'Romneyhood' - taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich, but what does he mean by that? He means that Romney will have all these tax cuts, including the tax cuts for the rich and the poor will end up paying for that.
But wait just a second, Obama also proposes tax cuts, and in his version of tax cuts, who is going to be paying for them?
In order to have real tax cuts government must cut spending, otherwise it's not a tax cut (that's why Bush didn't really have tax cuts, he grew spending, and spending is the real tax, it's the future tax + interest, somebody must pay).
Obama is clearly not interested in cutting government spending, but really then how can he say that Romney is going to grow taxes on the middle class and the poor by ALSO cutting taxes on middle class and the poor while also cutting tax on the top 1%.
See, it's sleight of hand here as well, Obama is doing the same thing as Romney - promising tax cuts and the difference is that Obama is not going to cut spending. Romney IS talking about cutting spending, whether he'll do it ........ (that's why I am pro Ron Paul or Garry Johnson, not any of these other clowns).
So back to the topic - here is the gist of this social contract - politicians promise the voters something NOW and they are promising NOT to tax for it. So the government spending continues and grows, and taxes are cut, so nothing is balanced.
And this is the 'social contract' - it is the FUTURE that ends up with the bill. It's the credit, it's the tab. The future (whoever that is) is NOT voting in the elections. The future isn't being promised anything, but they are getting stuck with whatever the bill is.
Of-course AFAIC the future is now, there is no future, the generations that are alive today will be paying for all this economic catastrophe that is happening today.
Yeah, but realise that even then Madoff wasn't on SEC radar, even though he was stealing from the wealthier individuals. In fact his fund was seen as something exclusive, people didn't dare to pull money out because they thought they wouldn't be able to get back in.
One interesting thing is that he never provided his clients with an online interface to check their balances, I wonder why not? He could have faked the transactions there, he could have faked their balance information and as long as they saw a good consistent return, they wouldn't have ever tried to pull the money out. Why? They didn't need the money to spend it, they needed a good investment opportunity, and Madoff was giving them an impression of a good return. Sometimes somebody needed the money for whatever reason and they could always cash out, as long as it wasn't everybody at the same time, as long as there were new people getting into it.
That's a private ponzi scheme. Governments run this type of scheme constantly with pension funds, SS and Medicare are a good example of this same thing.
You THINK you have something, in reality it's all bonds - just IOUs. Think about this: there is no difference to the government whether there are bonds in the so called SS 'fund' or there are no bonds there, because in order to make payments they have to sell bonds anyway. There is no material difference in how the payments are funded, now that the taxes don't cover the payouts. The thing is bankrupt, it's broke and there is no difference whether the bonds are IN the so called 'fund' or not, there is no difference as to how the money is paid out.
So now think about this: government takes your payroll tax (both, your part and the part that the employer pays if you are an employee) and it spends all of it, it's not invested in anything as it could have been with real insurance or if you just managed your money yourself. You are presented with some statement that says: here is what you will get eventually IF you live to that age of 65 or whatever (and the age is going to be raised obviously).
WHAT IF YOU DIE?
If you had that money invested all on your own, your family would have that money. If you are dead, they are not going to see a cent of it. It's your money and now it's gone.
Now how about this: in 1971 one ounce of gold was 35 bucks, today it's 1615 or something like that, so if you had your own money invested with a strategy of 25% stocks, 25% bonds, 25% gold, 25% cash, then even just on GOLD ALONE you are WAY AHEAD of anything that the government promises to give you, and you ACTUALLY HAVE IT as opposed to not having it.
SS is a huge scam, much bigger than Madoff's scam, and who is running it? Right.
Of-course. And that's just one way they steal legally. There are untold number of ways they steal. Gov't contracts... Who is running welfare schemes? Who is running food stamps? It's JPMorgan. I mean, think about this: the unlimited credit that the central bank provides to the preferred institutions. It's given out at no cost and the Treasury needs the money, so this is legal money laundering - using the infinite Fed's fake credit line to finance the Treasury through the intermediary, so that the intermediary can front run the deals (the Treasury announces what it's going to buy and at what price upfront!)
This is freaking madness and it's all legal. Military contracts and undeclared wars. ALL government contracts. Infrastructure? It's child's play.
Sure, SEC 'missed' Madoff. They were only warned about him for almost a decade.
SEC was warned about NIA multiple times as well, but you see, NIA's clients don't matter and Madoff was a 'respected' individual, used to have strong ties in government.
The gov't doesn't care about people it also doesn't look into its own people, the gov't is there to steal money from people, companies who do legitimate business. It's a racket, nothing more. If you are doing legitimate business - you are a target. You have a legitimate business, legitimate clients, real earnings, you are satisfying market demand - you are a target.
You are stealing? Who gives a shit, you can't be used to make consistent profits from, you aren't buying licenses, you aren't going to pay untold amounts of money because of all the audits, the compliance costs, nobody cares about you.
Here is a thing: you can steal, just don't steal too little, like this guy in the story. You can run a pump and dump scam, SEC doesn't care, it's not there to do anything about it, this should be obvious by now. Enron, Madoff and such (NIA is small potatoes, only maybe 10-20 million has been stolen so far).
SEC, FINRA... they exist to prevent competition to the banks and large investment firms, they don't exist to prevent fraud, don't be mistaken thinking that.
While the government protects the preferred banks, gives them infinite credit, while destroying the currency, the person who is punished is a guy that 'stole' some source code.
While the banks are using the infinite credit and fake insurance by the government to pump one credit bubble after another, from stocks, to house prices, to bonds and dollars themselves, the person who gets busted is somebody who doesn't have anything to do with any financial transactions.
The lesson is - if you steal, steal huge and make sure that you have strong government protection and cover. Actually be the government, that's the best way to steal. Have ties to all the governments in the world, finance wars and government debt by using central credit from the central banks. In fact just steal individual customer funds, if you are somebody like Corzine.
But if you are a schmuck who decides to steal pencils from the bank, you are going to be made example of.
People are constantly being bombarded with various messages that are most often false or wrong.
A politician kissing babies is just one of those things. Political advertising campaigns are using pictures from sites like istockphoto.com while pretending that the people in the pictures have anything to do with reality.
Actually any type of advertising shouldn't be taken literally, it's all a figure of speech, a sleight of hand, cherry picking, etc.