Student Loan Debt (Photo credit: Nastassia Davis [www.nastassiadavis.com
Students are in a different kind of boat than home buyers were in, but they’re floating on the same river of debt which leads to the same place, serfdom. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Government and Politics’ category
Young People Get Hooked Into Huge Debt When They Take The Student Loan Bait.
March 6, 2013Is The President, Pinocchio, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Or Just A Politician?
February 27, 2013Here is a video of the President using the police as props in order to give him more credibility as he tries to tell us about all the dire consequences if the sequester cuts go through. Watch the video, then we will look for the truth about sequestration.
1) The sequestration was the presidents idea. It led to a compromise with the republicans during the debt ceiling farce in the summer of 2011. 2) He wanted to push dealing with debt problems far enough down the road so it wouldn’t interfere with the 2012 elections. 3) The Government will actually spend more money this year than last year because it will be a cut in the rate of government growth, not a cut in the actual amount of dollars the Government will spend. (more…)
We Are Reaching The Tipping Point.
February 20, 2013
Teeter Totter (Photo credit: lambdachialpha)
Consumption is starting to over take production as these charts show. Government spending is an exchange of confiscated, borrowed, or counterfeited dollars for a good or service that has been produced. These dollars represent certificates of purchase that can be exchanged for anything produced in the market. Legal tender laws decree that these dollars have to be accepted for all debts, public or private. The Fed has a legal monopoly on money production, and the fact that the Fed has counterfeited 3 trillion plus dollars since 2008 means that they have stolen 3 trillion dollars worth of goods and services from the private sector over the last four years. (more…)
Why Do People Think The Government Is The Economy?
February 17, 2013
leech (Photo credit: KCBIO)
PRODUCTION AND EXCHANGE
Government can only exist if it is funded. In the market, people produce a good or service, and exchange it for a good or service that someone else has produced. You might think that through this exchange process each of us funds each other, but that would be incorrect. Each person funds himself from what he produces. If I don’t produce anything, not only would I have nothing to use for exchange, I would have nothing to consume. If I decide not to produce, I would have to depend on other people’s generosity, or I would have to steal someone’s production (more…)
Random Thoughts And Other Thoughts by Thomas Sowell.
February 13, 2013
Intellectuals and Society (Photo credit: arellis49)
Read Thomas Sowell’s “Random Thoughts” column.
Here are a couple of samples.
“I can’t get excited by the question of whether Senator Robert Menendez had sex with a prostitute in Central America. It is her word against his–and when it comes to a prostitute’s word against a politician’s word, that is too close to call”.
“One of the talking points in favor of confirming Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense is that he was a wounded combat veteran. How does that qualify anyone to run the whole military establishment? Benedict Arnold was a wounded combat veteran!”
Now read two articles by Thomas Sowell titled “Prophets And Losses, and “Prophets And Losses II”. Dr. Sowell talks about what we have been discussing in the last few articles, (more…)
Is The President Our Boss? No. Each Individual Is His Own Boss.
February 12, 2013INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM
The battle for individual freedom is summed up in these statements by Chris Rock. Will we allow ourselves to be ruled by an “intellectual elite” , and socialize all of the costs. Or will we allow each individual to rule himself, with each person being responsible for his actions . You either believe that top down decision-making by “the intelligent few” creates the best possible order for society, or you believe that each individual cooperating and competing with each other in the market, creates an order that utilizes scarce resources and knowledge more effectively. This is what the history of the world is all about.
THE CONSTITUTION PROTECTS THE INDIVIDUAL FROM THE GOVERNMENT
The American Revolution set a different course in human history, a course that had never been tried before. It was fought for the idea that the individual was sovereign and had the right to rule himself. The constitution protected him from the concentrated power of Government run by a tyrannical “intellectual elite” from interfering in his decisions. The constitution doesn’t protect the Government from the people, it was set up to protect the individual from the Government. It is very difficult (more…)
A Look Over The Horizon At What Lies Ahead If We Continue Down The Central Planning Road.
February 8, 2013
Nebraska tornado, May 24, 2004 (DI02257) Photo by Bob Henson (Photo credit: AtmosNews – NCAR & UCAR)
Read this article titled, Greek Tax Hikes Backfire As Tax Revenues Plunge 16%, at Zerohedge.com, if you want to see what will happen in the U.S. if we continue to make economic decisions through the political process.
CENTRAL PLANNERS IGNORE THE FIRST RULE OF ECONOMICS
No matter how hard Government and politicians try to create a world of abundance, the reality that we live in a world of scarcity hits them square in the face. Their answer when their plans don’t work as advertised, is to ignore the reality of the first rule of economics, which is scarcity, and continue going ever faster down the same central planning road that created the problem in the first place.
CENTRAL PLANNERS WORK AGAINST ECONOMIC FORCES
As a Government starts its intervention, slowly at first, into the workings of the free market through regulation, and taxes, the economy will reach a point where it will not (more…)
The Fed’s Policies Are Counterproductive.
February 4, 2013
Host Lauren Lyster interviews Jim Grant on The Daily Ticker in this video from economicpolicyjurnal.com.
Here is a quote from the article, “…the Fed intends to buy 85 billion, with a B, in securities every month. What you might ask is where does it get that money. It creates it, it didn’t exist before the Fed materialized it through the very humble action of a keyboard and a computer, that’s the way it does it. But notice that this money is coming into the system without any commensurate increase in production. This is money in search of mischief, and it is likely to find it. The Feds actions are counterproductive.”
If the Feds injecting 85 billion counterfeit dollars a month into the economy (QE3,4), since September, is considered counter productive, how much more counter productive was QE1 and QE2’s injection of 2.3 trillion total dollars since 2008. An even better question is (more…)
Capital Consumption, aka, Eating Our Seed Corn.
January 30, 2013
Corn Seeds (Photo credit: Stevie Rocco)
This article on ZeroHedge.com, R.I.P. Retirement: 28% Of Americans Are Raiding Their 401k Plans, talks about how people are withdrawing a portion of their retirement savings and spending it on present consumption. A large part of these savings will be used to produce capital goods (tools, buildings, vehicles, machines, etc.), which will be used to produce future goods more efficiently. When we start to use money saved for capital formation and use it for present consumption, we are eating our seed corn. If we start to eat a portion of the corn we’ve set aside for use as seed, we won’t produce as much corn for next years consumption. This has been happening for the last four years. Individuals have been using savings earmarked for the future, in order survive in the present.
CAPITAL FORMATION
The money an individual gets paid for the good or service he produces (more…)
AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ADDICT 