Solution to America's Debt Crisis

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Accusations of Propaganda Should Warrant an Indictment and a Trial

In a recent political debate on reddit, many people express doubts about whether or not Congress can be trusted to even want to end dissension in this country, let alone actually pass a fair bill into law that gives news organizations the right to resolve their grievances with other media/propaganda outlets in court.

I can't say I really blame them. Such a law would have to be very well worded. Here are some major issues that would have to be outlined:

1. fair, open, and sincere trial (no illogical 'debating', no hiding 'evidence' from the public, no shady shills gaining complete control over the investigation and prosecution)

2. to file an indictment on this type of felony (or misdemeanor), the crime has to be committed by what is technically an economic special interest (some type of company, preferably a wealthy one that is well connected to the economy in many controversial and powerful aspects)

3. the obvious lawsuits that come to mind would be something like "Fox News vs MSNBC". actually, i think it'd be impossible for Fox News to not receive the brunt of these types of charges being filed (i'm guessing). frivolous lawsuits can't be the emphasis, while major sources of propaganda and dissension get a free pass.

4. if a news organization wants to tell its audience that the trial banning it from saying something was done improperly, then they will be allowed to say this (because this type of argument cannot be considered propaganda until it gets a separate trial).

5. if a previous trial's legitimacy is reviewed in its own separate trial, efforts will be made to improve the education, replication, and broadening of that trial's appeal toward the masses. (this includes making the trial more believable to people who could have any kind of sensible grievance with the original trial)

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Attempt at Explaining How Ron Paul Lied (to idiots) About Purchasing Power

Ron Paul: ".. The Federal Reserve has destroyed 98% of the value of the purchasing power of the dollar since 1913.."

So, let's take a look at what this means in terms of a comparison between the purchasing power of a person in 1913 vs the purchasing power of a person in 2011:

1913: 100% purchasing power 2011: 98% less than 100% (2%)
ratio: 50 : 1

He's trying to make you subconsciously believe that a person in 1913 somehow had 50x the purchasing power of a person living in 2011, by assuming that you're too stupid to understand the basic algebraic implication of his talking point! And it gets worse: he has propaganda outlets that are trying to distract with misleading supporting evidence.

So, let's take a look at the supporting evidence for those who empathize with his belief about purchasing power reduction. It's based on the observation that if someone in 2013 had a time machine, traveled to a store in 1913, and tried to purchase any item (assuming that they brought their wallet with them, and that it had cash that was legal tender for 1913 for some reason), they'd find that yes: it would be roughly 50x easier for them to buy something. For instance: you can go to this website, and without having any real understanding of what you're actually looking at, you can pretend that 2013's economy has no purchasing power compared to 1913's economy, simply by examining discrepancies between some numbers dealing with value conversions (this is basically how an idiot's mind works; they're too lazy to really try and grasp what they're looking at, because they just want an easy excuse to start a rebellion, regardless of whether or not they're even correct in their reasoning).

Now let's take a look at what 1913 was actually like in terms of spending power. In order to challenge the credibility of the source I just linked, we'll even calculate later what 1913 must've been like in order for Ron Paul's statement to hold merit, just to gauge the limit for margin of error that Ron Paul would have to use in order to accuse such a source of lying. The average wage was $585, and if they wanted to spend that wage to buy an average house, they would've had to save 100% of their yearly salary every year for over 10 years, and 1 year for a car. In 2011, these ratios went down in favor of an increase in purchasing power by a factor of 2 (100% more value for your salary).

Now to figure out what a 50:1 ratio would mean in terms of margin of error for the original source linked in the previous paragraph. Seeing as how the original source used roughly 2 kinds of unique data (1913 salary for prices of things you'd buy + 2011 salary for prices of things you'd buy) and arrived at a ratio of 1:2 (50% increase in purchasing power since 1913), this would mean that 1 set of numbers is either skewed by a factor of 100 (50x2), or that both sets of numbers are skewed by a factor of 10 (√(100)). So, go back to that source and ask yourself, "What's more likely: Ron Paul lying to idiots who then use propaganda to cheat themselves into believing that they're rebelling against the establishment for the exact correct reason OR that this website is fudging some or all of its numbers by a factor of at least 10 to 100?"

Let's take it a step further and place ourselves in the shoes of a person who really wants to try and skew these numbers to match the projected reality of Ron Paul's propaganda. If you look at this set of information and this set of information, and interpret it as 4 unique sets of data rather than just 2 sets, you can use the fact that they scale inversely with one another to marginalize the odds of getting caught. So, because skewing the factor by 10 for both page's ratios works, you can minimize this to the √10 (which is 3.16). This would mean multiplying 1913's salary by 3.16, dividing 1913's cost of certain items by 3.16, multiplying 2011's cost of certain items by 3.16, and dividing 2011's salary by 3.16 all just to make Ron Paul's numbers seem correct under exact mathematical and historical scrutiny. I have a link here where someone attempts to accomplish something similar to this effect, where certain numbers are conveniently doubled or divided by two to give the kind of correlation that the author wants to convey.

Note: see my older posts for more thorough examination of this issue. This particular article is a more simplified version of this post.

And before I get accused of being an anti-conspiracy shill, take a look at this post by the same author on the very same blog that you're reading.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

The Government Should Promote Unconditional Basic Economic Needs Security

Example of Success Story: A Rational Response to Homelessness

(I talk about how a government should fund itself in my 2nd blog entry. So, bear that in mind before reading this 5th entry and assuming that we can't afford to talk about something like this.)

The goal of any successful country's government should be from the start: to guarantee that everyone will be provided the basic needs of food and shelter, unconditionally. (there are other supplemental needs such as: utilities, manufactured home supplies, transportation, internet access, minimal health care, etc. but those first 2 are the most important).

There should be government-run grocery stores and government-run homeless shelters. Instead, what we have are government assistance programs. The key problem with this is that you always have to be employed (or in a work training program where you're forced to accept any shitty job) in order to qualify.

Every grocery store should be a government-run grocery store, so that decent, healthy food is no longer a living expense for anyone. Not all homes should be government-run micro apartments, but there should be enough of them so that if a person chooses to live in one, he/she should have the option of doing that (as a service provided for free by the government).

Instead, America is a country with an economy that is completely dependent on a demand for high employment rates. This will eventually be hopelessly unsustainable. An investment banking driven economy can't sustain such a high employment rate without eventually making progress in ways that use only a few jobs to make many jobs obsolete. (for example: the small kickstarter company that manufactures the video game console 'OUYA' could potentially cause major companies like Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony to significantly downsize their employee count).

This is especially disastrous when the government tries to create government jobs that aren't a reliable investment (such as education, when 50% of college graduates are massively underemployed while saddled with humongous student loans that they can't pay back). In general, most government spending does not really go toward negating living expenses (creates financial dependence). What's worse is: there's talk of trying to cut government spending by ~90% (see Romney-Ryan budget proposal). So, it's often a choice between a delusional democratic economic world-view and a brutally unforgiving republican/libertarian world-view.

A country with an economy where citizens have virtually no living expenses is almost completely immune to any deceleration of growth. The only jobs that are needed are the government jobs that provide these basic necessities, and also you need jobs that motivate the government employees to actually want to earn and spend money. For instance: one person works on a government farm supplying a government grocery store that gives everyone free food, while another person is a professional movie director/actor/producer. Both types of employment are necessary for the functioning of society, so it's reasonable to assume that both would pay handsomely and that these people would enjoy being wealthy.

However, what is not necessary are shitty slave labor jobs like scrubbing toilets and mopping floors (unless of course someone has a good reason to pay well for this, like a hospital that needs a clean room or a mansion that needs a well-paid maid). Just put a toilet brush next to each toilet, and if you're using the toilet, and you want it clean, give it a quick brushing. It's the same with the dirty floor: just leave a mop out and if the floor is bothering you so much, just spend 5 minutes to make it tolerable. There's a point where if something is just a shitty meaningless job, a country's economy is better off without it. This sets a high standard for a minimum wage and a minimum quality of life.

This is important because freedom from labor guarantees that a country can survive the point where its economic growth is eclipsed by the demand to hoard savings. Economic opportunity can't just go forever into infinity. Eventually, some people/companies have to go completely bankrupt (hopefully without dying in the streets from hunger), while others have to continually upgrade their large business to be more and more exclusive (marketing products more exclusively to the very wealthy). This dual class dichotomy between the bankrupt and the ultra-wealthy is an inevitable consequence of the eventual limits of the reality of investment banking.

It's not that investment banking is flawed. It's just that, eventually, not investing has a better opportunity cost than investing. Otherwise, an economy could pretend to have more investment momentum than it actually has and cause a massive financial bubble to pop. Regardless, an economy has to decide what does it actually want. No economy is going to place more value in a huge amount of poor people than in a small amount of extremely rich people. The only way to guarantee the rights of acquisition of the poor is through governing the responsibilities of the ultra-wealthy establishment.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

The Secret Reality of How The US Economy Wins And Fails

(Don't know what m0 and m1 are? click here)

(For Source Links on m0, m1, $131T in assets, etc., see this post; the $17T debt link is rounded up)

-WIN-

the m0 can be increased easily by selling over $100T in financial instruments to foreign investment firms for cash to act as American reserves (after the currency is exchanged for dollars)
the m1 can serve investment firms as fuel for their financial investment empire; all they have to do is convert the national debt and/or profits into the 10% reserve for spending over $100T into what is essentially a "pour money into a hole" project.. but then again if foreign investors will honor it as a legitimate financial asset, then I guess it's not bad at all.
the threat of a bank run (everyone cashing their checking accounts) is laughably innocuous, to the point where we're rich off the fact that we're covering the credit defaults of the entire world

-FAIL-

to levy taxes in any kind of way that actually stands a chance of paying off the national debt, the IRS would have to either a) ask the Fed's owners to bring them back lots of cash from selling off their financial instruments or b) just assume that devaluing the global exchange rate of the dollar is basically as good as the same thing. (obviously both of these scenarios are unlikely given the racketeering in politics.)
the Fed could practically effortlessly bankrupt America any time it feels like, just by pouring a ton of money into its financial asset investments, without replacing the reserves (just explained how easy it is to replace m0, but my point is: they don't have to do that if they're assholes)
the average American is COMPLETELY FUCKING CLUELESS as to how the American economy actually works, unless they have a non-libertarian/real understanding of what m0 and m1 are, as well as understanding how their country could be worth $131T in financial assets (the whole thing is completely unreal to them, so they will easily elect anybody that does a shitty, non-existent, or misleading job of explaining it to them)

:PLEASE NOTE:
In this blog post, I use the term "m0", but in reality, it might literally be the MB (monetary base). This is not meant to be misleading, but in the event that you doubt me, please consider this chart proving that in the event of a bank run, there is sufficient reserves to cover the entire m1.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Libertarian Belief That Fractional Reserve Banking is Flawed Does Not Reflect Responsible Journalism

(Confusing? See the previous video for part 3(click this link))

The m0 of the United States exceeds the m1, AND the m0 and m1 are almost identical (~$2.7T : $2.42T is a 112% reserve ratio! This shows it a little more clearly.)
The total financial asset value of the United States is $131T. We are a RICH, RICH nation. If there's a country on this entire planet where it makes sense for the citizens to have no poverty or economic deficiencies, it's definitely the United States.
Here is an example of misinformation by Libertarian sources. It's about Ron Paul claiming that the Federal Reserve has destroyed 98% of the value of the dollar since 1913. This calculation holds no merit whatsoever, and is a blatant misinterpretation of this source of information by leaving out the fact that people historically were earning less and less money the farther back in time you go. (for instance- in 1933 the minimum wage was less than a thirtieth of what it is today, which is completely ignored when claiming that this is 'evidence' of the destruction of the purchasing power of the dollar.) In fact- since 1913, the dollar buys things that people in 1913 could never have dreamed of: cell-phones, sex toys, video games, computers, affordable GPS technology for their tractors, etc. The likelihood of someone being able to afford a 12 dollar steak dinner in 2013 matches the likelihood of a person in 1920 being able to afford a 1 dollar steak, which is really what it boils down to- the reality of all the context that governs one time period's citizens' financial standings vs that of the present era.
YES- Conspiracy theory is REAL. Here is what I would show anyone, regardless of whether or not they believe or disbelieve, in order to prove beyond reasonable doubt that conspiracy theory is definitely legitimate. But if people are becoming conspiracy theory empathists because of Ron Paul (cough Tila Tequila), then we all end up looking like a bunch of bigoted buffoons. Conspiracy theory should be removed from a political party affiliation, in my opinion, simply because it's about good journalism. Journalists should always select the parts of any political ideology that are correct, and abstain from any loss of their sense of humor and political flexibility. In short- indoctrination and journalism do not and should not go hand in hand as they do when it comes to libertarianism and conspiracy theory journalism.

Update: OK technically the version of 'm0' that I'm using is actually "monetary base", but it's not like federal reserve deposits aren't reserves that actually back the m1 or anything. It's just a technicality, and it only confuses things if you're approaching the question from how you'd learn about it as a student.

My wall of shame for various libertarian blogs that are spouting complete bullshit lies and propaganda (will update this on a continual basis, but keep in mind that it's too depressing to find these jewels of insanity on reddit "buried" amongst the top comments on all the most ignorant sub-reddits):

This ignorant fool thinks that somehow $32B is backing $7.4T (I have no idea wtf kinda evidence there is for that, but I know the article does not explain it at all.)
This example of propaganda shows how m0 and m1 are confused for the federal deficit in relation to america's financial assets. The 1:9 ratio does not show up in the actual m0 and m1 values at all, but these people don't care and think they know everything about how "fractional reserve banking is insanity".
Here is another example of propaganda claiming that the present day economy's money is worthless in comparison to the money of the past. The incomes of the people living in 1913 are never mentioned, so you're forced to assume that people in 1913 must've been getting EXTREMELY cheap prices on things, as if opening your wallet in today's economy is the same as opening your wallet in a 1913 economy. People in 1913 didn't have money in their wallets, and if they did, it was a direct reflection of the CPI for that era, as would be normally translated by what you'd expect as rational in today's economy.
This example shows the "truth" that Libertarians want to believe. It's completely misleading and does not reflect any actual understanding of what m0 and m1 actually are.

Monday, March 25, 2013

3% Reduction in int'l Exchange Rate of USD Generates $3.93T, Eliminates All Taxes

The United States has 131 trillion dollars worth of financial assets. A 3% dollar exchange rate devaluation is therefore worth $3.93T. It's a perfectly legitimate way for the IRS to levy revenue for the government, that makes income taxes obsolete. People would keep on average 22% more income.

The purpose of the government's revenue should be to manage charity in order to promote an economy where people don't have to use money. This leaves the question: why would people choose to work if they don't have to? The incentive is: people who work get a much higher quality of life because they will be much more likely to actually have money.