Orange Juice - here you have to switch from year to year to see that prices are growing, it shows one year at a time, so in 2012 the prices are about 180, in 2005 the prices are around 100, in 2001 they are about 85, it's an interactive chart.
coffee - 2012, prices are about 250, in 2010 it's about 160, in 2006 it's about 110, in 2004 it's about 80, in 2001 it's about 55
etc.
The governments of all countries are destroying their currencies in response to the USA printing theirs as fast as USA can, that's what all of the fake interest rates set up by the Fed are about, that's what the stimulus and 'QE' are and were all about, bail outs, etc.etc.
Everybody is destroying their currency, you are not paying any attention.
Japanese are printing Yen like crazy, it should be much stronger than it is today and prices in Japan must be much lower than they are today and there should be restructuring.
Looking at relative values between currencies ALL of which are being debased is useless.
European economies, USA economy, Japanese economy, former USSR economy, Zimbabwe economy, Argentina economy, Weimer Republic economy, and many others have done this - borrowed, printed, spent money by the government.
All the evidence points that it didn't make their economies stronger, it made them weaker.
OTOH Swiss economy (before this year, when they turned Franc into Euro), former USA economy (before 1913), have not done this, haven't printed money, prevented government spending, they were doing very well.
USA contracted gov't spending by about 70% in 1921 and by over 60% past WWII, and thus they cut taxes (gov't spending is taxes), and that's how those two depressions ended.
However when the gov't splurged (1925 to 1945, about a decade prior to 1970, then 1990s, 2000s) the economies ended up in recessions and then depressions, as money was misallocated from the private sector to the gov't.
All the evidence shows that gov't spending hurts the economy and when people are given more freedoms (19th century USA, China for the last 40 years,) the wealth of the country grows.
When OTOH the gov't takes over and private spending diminishes (USSR, China before it got over the financial communism, Cuba, Somalia under communism, North Korea, etc.) the country stops producing anything and most people suffer, while the top government officials live in relative wealth.
I can repeat stuff for the third time, if you want to continue reading what I write, that's your choice to read it, nobody is making you, yes?
Based on all of the Japanese productivity the value of their currency is going up and that is a good thing for the Japanese, their problem is that their central bank is trying hard to fight this 'deflationary spiral', which it absolutely must not do, because Japan needs a normal recession to run its course and weed out all of the malinvestments that have accumulated in the economy.
Based on this, the Japanese people should see falling prices, which should help them in a 'deflationary spiral' to get through the rough patch of weather, they would absolutely benefit from falling prices.
Of-course their government has too many people in it that are also running their largest businesses, who are all concerned about exporting their productive output because it's easier for them to understand exports based on high nominal value of their money and low real value of it, rather than to accept that maybe they shouldn't be destroying the value of the currency and instead they simply should lower their prices if they want to export to other countries.
What they really should do is sell domestically, and with a strong yen, the Japanese would be able to buy more of their own goods, the goods would be cheaper.
What the deflation is telling the Japanese is that they have worked exceedingly hard, they have saved plenty and they can enjoy some of that and splurge, but instead their government is stealing their savings by inflating them away, trying to keep nominal prices for goods (and the stock market of-course) up, which is ludicrous Keynesian bullshit.
The Keynesian bullshit ideas on aggregate demand and spending, running deficits by government in order to fight off deflation, which is a huge help to the economy that must go through the recession to cut away excesses, all of this is destroying the Japanese Yen.
Japanese people are just like the people in US are being taught nonsense and not economics, same nonsense that we've been taught in the former USSR, same nonsense that most 'schools' are teaching to the poor children who really do not have a clue and hope that their teachers have one, but their teachers are just like them - little children, being led around by the politicians.
But of-course their teachers are all for this, since they are too on the government payroll and so they are part of this nonsense system.
As I often mentioned, one good thing will come from this incoming economic crash - socialism will be destroyed.
What will replace it, will it be totalitarian tyranny of some sort, a dictatorship or will people finally stop hoping to get something for nothing and start listening to the people who actually know what they are talking about in business and economics and finance and politics? Given the propaganda machine that is built in the 'education' system I am not very hopeful that the current form of socialism will be replaced by free market capitalism in the West, AFAIC the West is up for a terrible dark period in its history, but the Japanese probably will fair better, as they do have plenty of production capacity and their social structure is so different that predicting their psychology is very hard for an outsider.
Probably the Japanese will survive better, the way an ant colony survives through a tough winter, but it's not going to be wonderful if they continue on this path to destroying their own savings and money.
About time they stopped the nonsense and came back to their senses on the nuclear.
But also it's about time they stopped the nonsense and came to their senses on this desire to destroy their own purchasing power, they have to stop printing the Yen and let it rise, so that they can buy the supplies they need cheaper and others would start investing in their economy more, creating more savings and thus investments, which would boost their real economy, create a bunch of new businesses.
Pre-1913 American society was a disaster for most Americans.
- nonsense.
Pre-1913 economy in USA was growing, as the dollar doubled in value since early 18 hundreds to 1913, the prices fell, it was a deflationary environment yet businesses were growing, entire new industries were appearing that never existed before, from steam engines and locomotives and new forms of energy like oil and gas and electricity (by the way oil industry saved the whales), to sewing machines, telegraph, automobiles, airplanes, telephones, new types of fabric, explosion in the chemistry, physics, medical fields. Everything was happening, from coca cola to cinema, from music and voice recording to better cheaper food due to refrigeration and other market advancements.
The population on this planet more than doubled over the 19th century, couldn't be a 'disaster'.
The common people who used to be subsistence farmers became industrial workers and professionals, the industry changed so much, it required so much more specialisation that schools became profitable ventures and people became more educated, not because of ANY government involvement, but specifically because the government wasn't allowed to meddle and destroy things the way it started doing with more socialist type of agenda, power gotten through illegal income taxes and fake money.
Right now, corporations are sitting on larger cash reserves than ever, yet they do not hire.
- first, corporations are not 'sitting on cash reserves', the money is in government bonds (unfortunately for those very corporations) in case of banks and they are buying their own stock back (that's in case of people who believe their own stock is safer than the money that is being inflated by the government).
Why would a corporation hire in America? Give ONE good reason for a company today to hire in America, come up with ONE good reason.
Give me ONE reason.
I will give you plenty of reasons why it is a terrible idea to hire in America.
1. Taxes. Payroll taxes must be paid, so even based on this the workers in USA are uncompetitive to people where payroll taxes do not have to be paid. That's it, I wouldn't hire Americans on this alone.
2. Medical insurance. Why would I want to hire Americans with this nonsense of a deal, where I have to come up with their medical insurance coverage in a system, where government is constantly printing money, pushing prices up, including insurance prices. That's another reason I would never hire in America.
3. Labour laws. No way in HELL I would hire in America based on all the labour laws and all the possible lawsuits that are associated with those. No way in hell. Try and fire anybody - you get into trouble, be it a minority, a woman or a disabled person. The only people you can fire are white able men, but if you only hire white able men, then you are going to get in trouble for not hiring women, disabled and the minorities. I wouldn't hire in America based on this either.
Of-course there are companies like Apple, they hire some people in USA, but they hire much more in Asia, and they are right to do that.
They are able to supply everybody with the products people want and make good money that way, and they have to hire tens of thousands of people to do that, and that's what they CAN do in China, and if they need to FIRE them, they could do so immediately too and replace everybody in a heart beat. Why would I hire in America (or France or Italy or UK for that matter) if I can hire in China?
The companies that have sales abroad DO have money ABROAD, they do that because they are facing huge taxes should they bring the money to USA, and how STUPID they should be to bring the money to USA in the first place!
They should diversify AWAY from America, they should buy into other productive companies ABROAD and they should have gold as well to hedge their
- obviously. To fix the economy it would take this:
1. Shut down most of government offices, shut down departments that didn't exist prior to 1913, all of them.
2. Stop all wars, bring all troops home, shut down all foreign military bases.
3. Stop all SS and Medicare payments, if somebody truly can't survive, bring them to the welfare program, that's what SS and Medicare are anyway, their 'taxes' are not real, they are not appropriated for those purposes, they are used for other things, so it's all the same. SS and Medicare is a way to transfer wealth from the older wealthier people from the young and the future generations and foreigners.
4. Abolish IRS and the Federal reserve, allow people to use gold as money again without penalties and taxes.
5. Take off the books all labour and business regulations.
-- Done. The economy will go into a recession that would last for about 1.5 years, many jobs will be lost, as the economy will restructure from this 'war time', 'big government time' economy, to normal market economy again.
Wrong. This society needs more savings, investments and actual jobs that can be created with those savings and investments, which means it needs free market in price discovery, it needs free market in labour, it needs free market in business, it needs free market in money, it needs to see government sector shrink to pre 1913 levels, that's what it needs.
No amount of 'income equality' can ratify the fact that nothing is produced in USA anymore (and most of the Europe is in the same position).
- and we have to agree with the corrupt government and court systems?
government has the authority to collect taxes.
- read the comment I referred to, income taxes are unconstitutional, are illegal and are collected illegally and in fact the gov't is doing it without even getting courts to say a number of things on very important issues there.
Government can expect reasonable levels of cooperation from all entities.
- not governments that are illegitimate, and the federal gov't is illegitimate, it broke the contract, which is what the ratified Constitution is.
Technically the government can institute draft again and put your life in peril.
- which only can be Constitutional IF the Congress declares a war, which hasn't been done since WWII. But the gov't doesn't have the absolute right to conscript either, only if the nation faces mortal threat.
why you are willing to act so much against your own self interests?
- I have never done that.
It is in your self interest to make sure no body dodges taxes.
- false. It's in my best interest if everybody stopped paying all taxes immediately and put the gov't out of business so that the people would be able to run their lives again and got rid of this corrupt system. Only freedom creates wealth and I am always interested in my own wealth and my own wealth depends on the economy growing and doing well.
Gov't spending destroys the economy, it creates fake money and thus creates inflation, destroys savings and investments and opportunities for legitimate businesses, it crowds out the credit, it distorts prices, it creates malinvestments, it bails out failures with tax money, it creates class envy where there shouldn't be none, it promotes hatred towards minorities, it spends on projects that people don't need but that benefit some special interests, this includes the military.
Gov't is the supreme enemy number 1 of all self interested individuals.
and take down with them all the protections afforded to you by the constitution.
- the gov't has long ago abandoned the Constitution and is now the ultimate force that destroys the liberties, freedoms and the economy, not the other way around.
The people who are truly dangerous are not anybody in the streets with AK47, they are government agents all around.
Income reporting is not violation of privacy you say? Maybe in Australia.
In USA all employers become de-facto uwilling agents of the IRS, since the employers are forced to collect and report data, as well as collect money and transfer them directly to the government without any judicial review?
Why is private property being collected from innocent civilians, confiscated and provided to the government exactly?
The only 'dumbass' Nokia decisions so far in terms of where their stuff is made was that they didn't leave Finland earlier, but the reason why they are leaving Finland is the government, and you are the dumbass for not getting it even now.
you probably draw some of your confidence in the market from those regulations.
- no I do not. I draw only one type of confidence from all these regulations, the confidence that I will be conned by the system, that is set up to prevent real competition and it promotes the type of criminality that government wants - fake money, fake prices, monopolies, etc.
As to whether HFT is damaging to the economy - that is irrelevant in a system that is not set up to create and maintain monopolies, as long as all transactions are voluntary.
By the way, you are also wrong in that the HFT is damaging the economy in concept, the money is changing hands, but it doesn't evaporate and it is not created out of nothing either.
In reality the stock market trading is actually a zero sum game, the same money change hands, it doesn't actually matter to me who wins and who loses in that exchange.
HFT allows somebody to extract the money from others more efficiently with higher percentage of success, this doesn't matter to me or to the economy.
AFAIC the entire stock exchange market today is a ponzi scheme based on price fixing of the interest rates, so it's completely out of whack with the reality any way, I have all the confidence in the world that people will lose money there, and that is SPECIFICALLY because of government regulations, rules, taxes, all that jazz that prevents normal competition.
HFT is not 'good' or 'bad', it makes extracting money from the trades quicker and more efficient, and with real competition it would be up to the exchanges to decide if they want to compete one with another by allowing or prohibiting these sorts of trades.
The retail investor has been almost eliminated from the trading in the last 5 years by HFT, and there are no good alternatives, all thanks to government.
When pundits and politicians in the media announce that investors and businessmen have no 'confidence' because of government actions, they are WRONG.
I think investors and businesses have all the confidence that things will be bad and will go wrong specifically because of the government involvement in business and economy and money.
Bernie Madoff was a privately ran ponzi scheme, something that nobody forces anybody else to join. It's much better than a publicly ran ponzi scheme, like SS or Medicare or the dollar or the bond. At least with a private ponzi scheme nobody forces you to stay in it, once you realise what it is.
However you are suggesting that:
1. The current system, that is heavily regulated is NOT a ponzi scheme and I disagree, the stock market is as much a ponzi scheme today, as the housing bubble was, and all of this is regulated and inflated by the Fed and government.
2. The private exchanges would be ponzi schemes. This is nonsense, ponzi schemes get discovered in the long run, and only businesses with a good model (those that provide customers with a good product/service) stay operational.
Again, nobody forces anybody into a private ponzi scheme unlike government ponzi schemes.
US economy has this problem and many others, all created by the Federal reserve and Treasury, and thus by Congress and Senate and the White House starting from Theodore Roosevelt.
But of-course at the end of the road there is the mob, and it's the mob that decides to vote the politicians in who promise shit that is impossible to deliver without ruining the economy, given the fact that the people who end up promising this stuff are crooks, who themselves want to get into power to steal it and the money that is rotating around it. It's the people who elect the criminals to rule them, and that's the problem.
Democracy is a way to elect yourself out of your freedoms and rights and create a democratically elected tyranny that would then rule everything by force.
What I am saying is that the problem is much deeper than just an oversized financial sector, and the financial sector and is oversized because of how undersized the other sectors of the economy are, specifically those that manufacture and produce stuff, and this is a problem created by the oversized government sector, which is that big and powerful because it promised a bunch of stuff to ignorant fools and greedy bastards who were quite happy being promised all that nonsense.
What should be illegal is government preventing competition in exchanges, preventing companies from going IPO before they complete various government requirements (by which time the IPO has no way to go but down, similarly how the US gov't prevented FB from public trading when it was still at 2-4 bucks and by the time it complied with all the nonsense it was way overvalued).
It should be possible for anybody to open their own exchange and to set their own rules and then there would be competition in exchanges, some could then have their own rules, like no automated trading, etc.
Making something specific illegal with gov't legislation is only another way to prevent competition, and it's about as useful in today's world of technology as trying to invent a workable DRM solution that cannot be circumvented by some coder.
As I repeated multiple times - there is no free market today, the banks are not normal businesses operating by the rules of free market, there are government regulations, fake insurances, etc., all of this maintains monopolies, prevents competition, prevents bad businesses from suffering normal market consequences, gives bank officials power to set the rules actually, that favour them, gives them free money from the Fed and a way to make nominal growth numbers by 'lending' back to the Treasury, etc.etc.
None of this is the free market in action, all of this is government criminality.
1800s? First of all, recessions that occurred in 1800s were local to USA in case of the Continental default and local to specific banks in case of bank runs.
Secondly, the world lost all of the money it had with USA, and USA started printing ever more as people started moving production out because the dollar stopped being money.
Thirdly, it was called 'The Shock' for a reason. Nixon introduced wage and price controls at inflation only being recorded as 4%, and it kept growing, became 13.3% by 1979, the stock market stopped, the prices of oil relative to USD have gone up so much, that USA had shortages of fuel on pump stations.
Have you had shortages this time around YET? Is the stock market stopped YET?
Unemployment certainly was COUNTED at 7-8%, close to what it is counted at today (we know today's numbers are bogus of-course) still, those levels of unemployment and inflation.
USA hasn't seen anything like that in 2000-2012 YET, all that while the world lost all of its US deposits of gold.
So you should shut up and sit your ass down, because it makes absolutely no sense.
Slashdot Mirror
Saying that "all currencies are debased" is ridiculous.
- ha ha ha.
20 year trends:
gold
silver
platinum
palladium
copper
aluminum
lead
nickel
tin
zinc
iron ore
manganese
potash
phosphate rock
oil
Orange Juice - here you have to switch from year to year to see that prices are growing, it shows one year at a time, so in 2012 the prices are about 180, in 2005 the prices are around 100, in 2001 they are about 85, it's an interactive chart.
coffee - 2012, prices are about 250, in 2010 it's about 160, in 2006 it's about 110, in 2004 it's about 80, in 2001 it's about 55
etc.
The governments of all countries are destroying their currencies in response to the USA printing theirs as fast as USA can, that's what all of the fake interest rates set up by the Fed are about, that's what the stimulus and 'QE' are and were all about, bail outs, etc.etc.
Everybody is destroying their currency, you are not paying any attention.
Japanese are printing Yen like crazy, it should be much stronger than it is today and prices in Japan must be much lower than they are today and there should be restructuring.
Looking at relative values between currencies ALL of which are being debased is useless.
Here is an example of their printing plan: 4 year printing plan that started in 2001
Here is part of their plan description from 2010
Here is the result of the third time BoJ 'eased' in August 2011
Here is some more in October 2011
2012, April, the headline is: "BoJ will print as much as it takes."
May, 2012
They are constantly running 'Quantitative Easing' programs, you can even refer to wiki - fourth paragraph in that chapter.
Man, why is this place so full of ignorant people, who believe they actually know or understand something, anything around them?
Just because you don't understand what the Swiss have done with their currency by pegging it to the Euro 1:1.2, doesn't diminish MY understanding.
Actually it's 2 lost decades, and it's precisely because Japan has been following Keynesian charlatanism.
European economies, USA economy, Japanese economy, former USSR economy, Zimbabwe economy, Argentina economy, Weimer Republic economy, and many others have done this - borrowed, printed, spent money by the government.
All the evidence points that it didn't make their economies stronger, it made them weaker.
OTOH Swiss economy (before this year, when they turned Franc into Euro), former USA economy (before 1913), have not done this, haven't printed money, prevented government spending, they were doing very well.
USA contracted gov't spending by about 70% in 1921 and by over 60% past WWII, and thus they cut taxes (gov't spending is taxes), and that's how those two depressions ended.
However when the gov't splurged (1925 to 1945, about a decade prior to 1970, then 1990s, 2000s) the economies ended up in recessions and then depressions, as money was misallocated from the private sector to the gov't.
All the evidence shows that gov't spending hurts the economy and when people are given more freedoms (19th century USA, China for the last 40 years,) the wealth of the country grows.
When OTOH the gov't takes over and private spending diminishes (USSR, China before it got over the financial communism, Cuba, Somalia under communism, North Korea, etc.) the country stops producing anything and most people suffer, while the top government officials live in relative wealth.
I can repeat stuff for the third time, if you want to continue reading what I write, that's your choice to read it, nobody is making you, yes?
Based on all of the Japanese productivity the value of their currency is going up and that is a good thing for the Japanese, their problem is that their central bank is trying hard to fight this 'deflationary spiral', which it absolutely must not do, because Japan needs a normal recession to run its course and weed out all of the malinvestments that have accumulated in the economy.
Based on this, the Japanese people should see falling prices, which should help them in a 'deflationary spiral' to get through the rough patch of weather, they would absolutely benefit from falling prices.
Of-course their government has too many people in it that are also running their largest businesses, who are all concerned about exporting their productive output because it's easier for them to understand exports based on high nominal value of their money and low real value of it, rather than to accept that maybe they shouldn't be destroying the value of the currency and instead they simply should lower their prices if they want to export to other countries.
What they really should do is sell domestically, and with a strong yen, the Japanese would be able to buy more of their own goods, the goods would be cheaper.
What the deflation is telling the Japanese is that they have worked exceedingly hard, they have saved plenty and they can enjoy some of that and splurge, but instead their government is stealing their savings by inflating them away, trying to keep nominal prices for goods (and the stock market of-course) up, which is ludicrous Keynesian bullshit.
The Keynesian bullshit ideas on aggregate demand and spending, running deficits by government in order to fight off deflation, which is a huge help to the economy that must go through the recession to cut away excesses, all of this is destroying the Japanese Yen.
Japanese people are just like the people in US are being taught nonsense and not economics, same nonsense that we've been taught in the former USSR, same nonsense that most 'schools' are teaching to the poor children who really do not have a clue and hope that their teachers have one, but their teachers are just like them - little children, being led around by the politicians.
But of-course their teachers are all for this, since they are too on the government payroll and so they are part of this nonsense system.
As I often mentioned, one good thing will come from this incoming economic crash - socialism will be destroyed.
What will replace it, will it be totalitarian tyranny of some sort, a dictatorship or will people finally stop hoping to get something for nothing and start listening to the people who actually know what they are talking about in business and economics and finance and politics? Given the propaganda machine that is built in the 'education' system I am not very hopeful that the current form of socialism will be replaced by free market capitalism in the West, AFAIC the West is up for a terrible dark period in its history, but the Japanese probably will fair better, as they do have plenty of production capacity and their social structure is so different that predicting their psychology is very hard for an outsider.
Probably the Japanese will survive better, the way an ant colony survives through a tough winter, but it's not going to be wonderful if they continue on this path to destroying their own savings and money.
That's right, a writer, I write you can go ahead and read what I wrote.
About time they stopped the nonsense and came back to their senses on the nuclear.
But also it's about time they stopped the nonsense and came to their senses on this desire to destroy their own purchasing power, they have to stop printing the Yen and let it rise, so that they can buy the supplies they need cheaper and others would start investing in their economy more, creating more savings and thus investments, which would boost their real economy, create a bunch of new businesses.
Pre-1913 American society was a disaster for most Americans.
- nonsense.
Pre-1913 economy in USA was growing, as the dollar doubled in value since early 18 hundreds to 1913, the prices fell, it was a deflationary environment yet businesses were growing, entire new industries were appearing that never existed before, from steam engines and locomotives and new forms of energy like oil and gas and electricity (by the way oil industry saved the whales), to sewing machines, telegraph, automobiles, airplanes, telephones, new types of fabric, explosion in the chemistry, physics, medical fields. Everything was happening, from coca cola to cinema, from music and voice recording to better cheaper food due to refrigeration and other market advancements.
The population on this planet more than doubled over the 19th century, couldn't be a 'disaster'.
The common people who used to be subsistence farmers became industrial workers and professionals, the industry changed so much, it required so much more specialisation that schools became profitable ventures and people became more educated, not because of ANY government involvement, but specifically because the government wasn't allowed to meddle and destroy things the way it started doing with more socialist type of agenda, power gotten through illegal income taxes and fake money.
Right now, corporations are sitting on larger cash reserves than ever, yet they do not hire.
- first, corporations are not 'sitting on cash reserves', the money is in government bonds (unfortunately for those very corporations) in case of banks and they are buying their own stock back (that's in case of people who believe their own stock is safer than the money that is being inflated by the government).
Why would a corporation hire in America? Give ONE good reason for a company today to hire in America, come up with ONE good reason.
Give me ONE reason.
I will give you plenty of reasons why it is a terrible idea to hire in America.
1. Taxes. Payroll taxes must be paid, so even based on this the workers in USA are uncompetitive to people where payroll taxes do not have to be paid. That's it, I wouldn't hire Americans on this alone.
2. Medical insurance. Why would I want to hire Americans with this nonsense of a deal, where I have to come up with their medical insurance coverage in a system, where government is constantly printing money, pushing prices up, including insurance prices. That's another reason I would never hire in America.
3. Labour laws. No way in HELL I would hire in America based on all the labour laws and all the possible lawsuits that are associated with those. No way in hell. Try and fire anybody - you get into trouble, be it a minority, a woman or a disabled person. The only people you can fire are white able men, but if you only hire white able men, then you are going to get in trouble for not hiring women, disabled and the minorities. I wouldn't hire in America based on this either.
Of-course there are companies like Apple, they hire some people in USA, but they hire much more in Asia, and they are right to do that.
They are able to supply everybody with the products people want and make good money that way, and they have to hire tens of thousands of people to do that, and that's what they CAN do in China, and if they need to FIRE them, they could do so immediately too and replace everybody in a heart beat. Why would I hire in America (or France or Italy or UK for that matter) if I can hire in China?
The companies that have sales abroad DO have money ABROAD, they do that because they are facing huge taxes should they bring the money to USA, and how STUPID they should be to bring the money to USA in the first place!
They should diversify AWAY from America, they should buy into other productive companies ABROAD and they should have gold as well to hedge their
Wrong.
There is absolutely no thing that falls into category: "should NEVER be privatised".
Less of all any type of insurance.
We know how to fix it
- obviously. To fix the economy it would take this:
1. Shut down most of government offices, shut down departments that didn't exist prior to 1913, all of them.
2. Stop all wars, bring all troops home, shut down all foreign military bases.
3. Stop all SS and Medicare payments, if somebody truly can't survive, bring them to the welfare program, that's what SS and Medicare are anyway, their 'taxes' are not real, they are not appropriated for those purposes, they are used for other things, so it's all the same. SS and Medicare is a way to transfer wealth from the older wealthier people from the young and the future generations and foreigners.
4. Abolish IRS and the Federal reserve, allow people to use gold as money again without penalties and taxes.
5. Take off the books all labour and business regulations.
--
Done.
The economy will go into a recession that would last for about 1.5 years, many jobs will be lost, as the economy will restructure from this 'war time', 'big government time' economy, to normal market economy again.
Wrong. This society needs more savings, investments and actual jobs that can be created with those savings and investments, which means it needs free market in price discovery, it needs free market in labour, it needs free market in business, it needs free market in money, it needs to see government sector shrink to pre 1913 levels, that's what it needs.
No amount of 'income equality' can ratify the fact that nothing is produced in USA anymore (and most of the Europe is in the same position).
Courts have ruled that it is not undue burden.
- and we have to agree with the corrupt government and court systems?
government has the authority to collect taxes.
- read the comment I referred to, income taxes are unconstitutional, are illegal and are collected illegally and in fact the gov't is doing it without even getting courts to say a number of things on very important issues there.
Government can expect reasonable levels of cooperation from all entities.
- not governments that are illegitimate, and the federal gov't is illegitimate, it broke the contract, which is what the ratified Constitution is.
Technically the government can institute draft again and put your life in peril.
- which only can be Constitutional IF the Congress declares a war, which hasn't been done since WWII. But the gov't doesn't have the absolute right to conscript either, only if the nation faces mortal threat.
why you are willing to act so much against your own self interests?
- I have never done that.
It is in your self interest to make sure no body dodges taxes.
- false. It's in my best interest if everybody stopped paying all taxes immediately and put the gov't out of business so that the people would be able to run their lives again and got rid of this corrupt system. Only freedom creates wealth and I am always interested in my own wealth and my own wealth depends on the economy growing and doing well.
Gov't spending destroys the economy, it creates fake money and thus creates inflation, destroys savings and investments and opportunities for legitimate businesses, it crowds out the credit, it distorts prices, it creates malinvestments, it bails out failures with tax money, it creates class envy where there shouldn't be none, it promotes hatred towards minorities, it spends on projects that people don't need but that benefit some special interests, this includes the military.
Gov't is the supreme enemy number 1 of all self interested individuals.
and take down with them all the protections afforded to you by the constitution.
- the gov't has long ago abandoned the Constitution and is now the ultimate force that destroys the liberties, freedoms and the economy, not the other way around.
The people who are truly dangerous are not anybody in the streets with AK47, they are government agents all around.
Income reporting is not violation of privacy you say? Maybe in Australia.
In USA all employers become de-facto uwilling agents of the IRS, since the employers are forced to collect and report data, as well as collect money and transfer them directly to the government without any judicial review?
Why is private property being collected from innocent civilians, confiscated and provided to the government exactly?
( at least in USA ) income taxes are illegal and are collected illegally.
Here is the proof
The only 'dumbass' Nokia decisions so far in terms of where their stuff is made was that they didn't leave Finland earlier, but the reason why they are leaving Finland is the government, and you are the dumbass for not getting it even now.
and why would it be interesting to me? What do I care what a Marxist or somebody influenced by Marxism had to say?
you probably draw some of your confidence in the market from those regulations.
- no I do not. I draw only one type of confidence from all these regulations, the confidence that I will be conned by the system, that is set up to prevent real competition and it promotes the type of criminality that government wants - fake money, fake prices, monopolies, etc.
As to whether HFT is damaging to the economy - that is irrelevant in a system that is not set up to create and maintain monopolies, as long as all transactions are voluntary.
By the way, you are also wrong in that the HFT is damaging the economy in concept, the money is changing hands, but it doesn't evaporate and it is not created out of nothing either.
In reality the stock market trading is actually a zero sum game, the same money change hands, it doesn't actually matter to me who wins and who loses in that exchange.
HFT allows somebody to extract the money from others more efficiently with higher percentage of success, this doesn't matter to me or to the economy.
AFAIC the entire stock exchange market today is a ponzi scheme based on price fixing of the interest rates, so it's completely out of whack with the reality any way, I have all the confidence in the world that people will lose money there, and that is SPECIFICALLY because of government regulations, rules, taxes, all that jazz that prevents normal competition.
HFT is not 'good' or 'bad', it makes extracting money from the trades quicker and more efficient, and with real competition it would be up to the exchanges to decide if they want to compete one with another by allowing or prohibiting these sorts of trades.
The retail investor has been almost eliminated from the trading in the last 5 years by HFT, and there are no good alternatives, all thanks to government.
When pundits and politicians in the media announce that investors and businessmen have no 'confidence' because of government actions, they are WRONG.
I think investors and businesses have all the confidence that things will be bad and will go wrong specifically because of the government involvement in business and economy and money.
Bernie Madoff was a privately ran ponzi scheme, something that nobody forces anybody else to join. It's much better than a publicly ran ponzi scheme, like SS or Medicare or the dollar or the bond. At least with a private ponzi scheme nobody forces you to stay in it, once you realise what it is.
However you are suggesting that:
1. The current system, that is heavily regulated is NOT a ponzi scheme and I disagree, the stock market is as much a ponzi scheme today, as the housing bubble was, and all of this is regulated and inflated by the Fed and government.
2. The private exchanges would be ponzi schemes. This is nonsense, ponzi schemes get discovered in the long run, and only businesses with a good model (those that provide customers with a good product/service) stay operational.
Again, nobody forces anybody into a private ponzi scheme unlike government ponzi schemes.
US economy has this problem and many others, all created by the Federal reserve and Treasury, and thus by Congress and Senate and the White House starting from Theodore Roosevelt.
But of-course at the end of the road there is the mob, and it's the mob that decides to vote the politicians in who promise shit that is impossible to deliver without ruining the economy, given the fact that the people who end up promising this stuff are crooks, who themselves want to get into power to steal it and the money that is rotating around it. It's the people who elect the criminals to rule them, and that's the problem.
Democracy is a way to elect yourself out of your freedoms and rights and create a democratically elected tyranny that would then rule everything by force.
What I am saying is that the problem is much deeper than just an oversized financial sector, and the financial sector and is oversized because of how undersized the other sectors of the economy are, specifically those that manufacture and produce stuff, and this is a problem created by the oversized government sector, which is that big and powerful because it promised a bunch of stuff to ignorant fools and greedy bastards who were quite happy being promised all that nonsense.
Microsecond trading should be downright illegal.
- no it shouldn't.
What should be illegal is government preventing competition in exchanges, preventing companies from going IPO before they complete various government requirements (by which time the IPO has no way to go but down, similarly how the US gov't prevented FB from public trading when it was still at 2-4 bucks and by the time it complied with all the nonsense it was way overvalued).
It should be possible for anybody to open their own exchange and to set their own rules and then there would be competition in exchanges, some could then have their own rules, like no automated trading, etc.
Making something specific illegal with gov't legislation is only another way to prevent competition, and it's about as useful in today's world of technology as trying to invent a workable DRM solution that cannot be circumvented by some coder.
As I repeated multiple times - there is no free market today, the banks are not normal businesses operating by the rules of free market, there are government regulations, fake insurances, etc., all of this maintains monopolies, prevents competition, prevents bad businesses from suffering normal market consequences, gives bank officials power to set the rules actually, that favour them, gives them free money from the Fed and a way to make nominal growth numbers by 'lending' back to the Treasury, etc.etc.
None of this is the free market in action, all of this is government criminality.
Nokia is going to move their jobs to China as well, and that is the point, did you only now understood what I said about the jobs leaving?
1800s? First of all, recessions that occurred in 1800s were local to USA in case of the Continental default and local to specific banks in case of bank runs.
Secondly, the world lost all of the money it had with USA, and USA started printing ever more as people started moving production out because the dollar stopped being money.
Thirdly, it was called 'The Shock' for a reason. Nixon introduced wage and price controls at inflation only being recorded as 4%, and it kept growing, became 13.3% by 1979, the stock market stopped, the prices of oil relative to USD have gone up so much, that USA had shortages of fuel on pump stations.
Have you had shortages this time around YET? Is the stock market stopped YET?
Unemployment certainly was COUNTED at 7-8%, close to what it is counted at today (we know today's numbers are bogus of-course) still, those levels of unemployment and inflation.
USA hasn't seen anything like that in 2000-2012 YET, all that while the world lost all of its US deposits of gold.
So you should shut up and sit your ass down, because it makes absolutely no sense.