by Jacob G. Hornberger
Imagine a society in which there is no income taxation, one in which everyone keeps everything he earns and then decides what to do with his own money — invest, spend, lend, save, or donate it.
Along comes someone who exclaims, “I’ve got a great idea. Let’s change the system to enable the federal government to confiscate 10 percent of young people’s income and transfer the money to senior citizens.”
Someone else pipes in, “That’s a great idea. I’ve got a better one. Let’s change the system in that way and also enable the federal government to confiscate 30 percent of people’s income and transfer the money to people who need it more.”
Of course, this isn’t just fantasy. That’s pretty much what happened here in the United States. Our economic system was founded on the idea that people have a fundamental, God-given right to engage freely in economic enterprise, to keep the fruits of their earnings, and to voluntarily decide for themselves what to do with it.
Owing to the efforts of Americans who were enamored with socialism, all that changed in the 20th century. The federal income tax was adopted. The welfare state was enacted. The Federal Reserve was established. Paper money was implemented. The system changed from one based on economic liberty and freedom of choicer to one based on confiscation of income and mandatory redistribution of wealth.
The people who have suffered most from this economic revolution have been the middle class and the poor. That’s ironic because they are among the biggest supporters of this economic revolution.
Why would people support something that is contrary to their interests? One reason is that they don’t realize that the welfare state has victimized them. And, two, oftentimes they become dependent on the system, thereby losing the concepts of self-reliance and belief in one’s self.
In the original American system, the poor had a realistic chance of becoming wealthy. By working hard and saving their money, they were able to keep 100 percent of what they earned. With their savings, they were able to start businesses in competition against the well-established wealthy businesses or simply multiply their savings through the magic of compound interest.
That’s the biggest reason why thousands of penniless immigrants were flooding American shores every day, especially during the late 1800s. They knew that they had a good chance at becoming rich.
But there was another way that the free market benefited the poor and the middle class — through the offering of a vast array of consumer goods at ever-decreasing prices. Producers and manufacturers realized that they could make tremendous profits through production of consumer goods for the masses, as compared to focusing solely on the rich.
Thus, the poor and middle class found their standard of living soaring simply through the inexpensive clothing, food, and other items that were being offered to them in the marketplace.
How were the poor getting jobs? In large part, they were being employed in businesses being opened by the rich. This is what statists oftentimes simply do not understand or appreciate. When a rich person opens a business, he is risking his own money, sometimes everything he owns. In the process of doing that, he offers employment to people at wages that he is guaranteeing.
Thus, if it weren’t for people who were willing to risk their own money, many of the poor wouldn’t have jobs.
Does an owner of a business operate out of altruism? Of course not. He’s operates out of self-interest. Perhaps he wants to get wealthy. Or perhaps he just loves his work. But notice that even though he’s operating out of self-interest, his efforts benefit others, including the people he’s hiring and the consumers to whom he’s offering goods and services.
Consider Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Let’s assume that they were motivated purely by the quest to become rich and by their love of creating things. They both became tremendously wealthy. So what? Why should that bother us? Look at how those two men improved the lives of all the rest of us.
Why is this so important? Because it shows us that God has created a consistent universe, one in which people’s interests dovetail in a free society, and one in which the sins of “Thou shalt not covet” and “Thou shalt not steal” create severe disharmonies in society.
In a free market, there is a harmony of interests between employers, employees, and consumers. But once people permit covetousness to grab hold of them and make stealing an official part of their economic system, things turn rotten.
That’s precisely what has happened with America. Everywhere you look, the economic system is in crisis. Social Security? Bankrupt. Medicare and Medicaid? Soaring costs, rampant fraud, and doctors fleeing the profession. Education grants? Graduates drowning in debt and hounded by federal debt collectors. The dollar? Forever dropping in value. Federal spending? Out of control.
It’s no different, of course, in the foreign policy sphere, where America abandoned the philosophy of a limited-government constitutional republic in favor of a vast permanent military establishment, overseas empire of military bases, and foreign interventionism. Anti-American anger and hatred grows by the day, and the federal government continues to clamp down on the civil liberties of the people, while continuing its worldwide campaign of assassination, occupation, and drug busts.
It boggles the mind to imagine what the American standard of living would have been like if the federal government had not turned in the wrong direction — had not confiscated the billions of dollars necessary to fund the welfare state and warfare state for the past 50 years. Imagine, say, being able to buy a brand new Lexus for the equivalent of $5,000 instead of $100,000. Or a $300,000 house for $10,000. It is impossible to measure the extent of damage to the poor and middle class by virtue of having removed all those savings and productive capital from the private sector, but the damage nonetheless has to be extensive.
The real debate America should be having is not over which variation of statist reform should be adopted or over which statist would be best at running the statist system. The real debate should be over which economic system should be embraced by the American people — the free-market system our American ancestors bequeathed to us or the statist one that was later foisted upon our land.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
Link:
http://www.fff.org/blog/index.asp
16 Critical Economic Issues That Obama And Romney Avoided During The Debate
Mike Snyder
Did you watch the presidential debate on Wednesday night? It is absolutely amazing how they can have an hour and a half debate about the economy and say so little. It seemed like both candidates were falling all over each other wanting to talk about how much they value education, but will more education really solve our problems? After all, 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor's degree under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed in 2011. So perhaps they should just both agree that education is a good thing and start talking about how to create more jobs for all of us. If you want to grade the debate from a technical standpoint, clearly Romney was the winner of the debate. Romney was full of energy and was generally sharp with his answers. Obama looked like he had just popped a couple of antidepressants and was ready for nap time. As a result, this might have been the worst blowout in the history of presidential debates. A CNN/ORC International poll that was taken right after the debate found that 67 percent of all Americans that had watched the debate thought that Romney was the winner. Never before had any presidential candidate crossed the 60 percent mark in the history of their post-debate polling. So Romney definitely had a big night. But the reality is that both candidates were telling the American people what they want to hear. If either Obama or Romney told the truth about what we are facing they would lose votes, and in a race this tight both of them really want to avoid doing that. Obama and Romney both desperately want to win this election, and the words that are coming out of their mouths have been carefully crafted to appeal to the "undecided voters" in the swing states. If you actually believe that they can deliver on everything that they are promising, then you must not have been paying much attention to U.S. politics over the past several decades.
Perhaps the biggest failure on Wednesday night was debate moderator Jim Lehrer of PBS. His questions were about as far from "hard hitting" as you could get.
The hour and a half debate was almost entirely about the economy, and yet almost all of the critical economic issues were ignored.
Yes, Obama and Romney have slight differences when it comes to tax rates and regulations, but those small differences are not going to do much to change the direction of this country one way or another.
Meanwhile, there were some really huge issues about the economy that were not addressed at all last night....
1 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the Federal Reserve was not mentioned a single time.
2 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, Ben Bernanke was not mentioned a single time.
3 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, quantitative easing was not mentioned a single time.
4 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the term "derivatives" was not used a single time. Considering the fact that derivatives could bring down our financial system at any moment, this is an issue that should be talked about.
5 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, there was no mention of the millions of jobs that have been shipped out of the country. Considering the fact that both Obama and Romney have played a role in this, it is probably a topic they both want to avoid. Overall, the United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
6 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, neither candidate mentioned that the velocity of money has plunged to a post-World War II low.
7 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the fact that the rest of the world is beginning to reject the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency was not mentioned a single time, but this has enormous implications for our economy in the years ahead.
8 - The fact that the Social Security system is headed for massive trouble was only briefly touched on during the debate. At the moment, there are approximately 56 million Americans that are collecting Social Security benefits. By 2035, that number is projected to grow to an astounding 91 million. Overall, the Social Security system is facing a 134 trillion dollar shortfall over the next 75 years. When are our politicians going to honestly address this massive problem?
9 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the nightmarish drought the country is experiencing right now was not mentioned a single time.
10 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the financial meltdown in Europe was basically totally ignored. But considering the fact that Europe has a larger economy and a much larger banking system than we do, perhaps someone should have asked Obama and Romney what they plan to do when the financial system of Europe implodes.
11 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the student loan debt bubble was only briefly mentioned.
12 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, there was not a single word about the fact that the gap between the wealthy and the poor is now larger than it has been at any point since the Great Depression.
13 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, there was no mention of TARP (which they both supported at the time). Would they both bail out the big banks if another financial crisis erupted?
14 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, there was no mention of the economic stimulus packages (which they both supported at the time). Would they both want more "economic stimulus" if we entered another recession?
15 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, neither candidate talked about the fact that most of the jobs our economy is producing now are low income jobs. In fact, since the end of the last recession, 58 percent of the jobs that have been created are low paying jobs.
16 - In an hour and a half debate about the economy, neither candidate mentioned that more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government or that more than half of all Americans are now at least partially financially dependent on the government. I can't blame Romney for avoiding this point though - he probably wanted to avoid the phrase "47 percent" at all costs.
Is this really the best that America can do?
Tens of millions of Americans tuned in hoping to become more informed about the candidates, and instead what they got was an hour and a half of tap dancing as Obama and Romney constantly tossed out buzzwords such as "education", "energy independent" and "middle class".
I honestly don't know how you can possibly have a debate about the economy without talking about the Federal Reserve, quantitative easing, the trade deficit, Europe or the decline of the U.S. dollar.
But it just happened right in front of our eyes.
I don't think that I can ever remember another presidential debate that lacked substance as much as this one did.
Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/16-critical-economic-issues-that-obama-and-romney-avoided-during-the-debate
Presidential candidates debate while Rome burns
Jon Rappoport
Since these two guys are actors, can’t they get better actors to debate? Since these two guys are gangsters, can’t they get Tony Soprano to square off against Sonny Corleone? That would give us some fabulous TV viewing.
I tried watching the debate. I got so bogged down in numbers I gave up.
“No, it’s not the 600 percent added on to the rebate on the other tax, it’s the minus 40 percent, and then you divide by 2, not 3. And that’s what I’ve been saying since day one.”
“Well, if you divide by 2, the figures don’t match up to what happened to my grandmother.”
The postmortem media reaction was, of course, all about performance. The pundits were schoolteachers in a public speaking class.
“You looked down at the podium. You didn’t stand straight. You were slumping. You have to keep your shoulders back and your head level. Try to smile more. Never look at your hands. The moderator is your friend. Don’t interrupt him…”
The country is falling apart, the economy is taking hits from all sides, the food supply is brimming with GMOs, the US is fighting covert wars all over the Middle East, crime in the streets is spreading, the surveillance state is recording everything that moves, the Fed is printing money like it’s toilet paper, but…Obama kept looking down at the podium, that’s the takeaway from the debate.
The stretch I watched was two accountants trying to figure out how to cook the books.
I would have preferred matching clips of Romney water-skiing versus Obama shooting hoops on the White House lawn.
Here are a couple of the incisive after-debate poll questions from CBS and CNN: how do you feel now about (candidate) caring about your needs and problems; did (candidate) perform better than you expected.
Caring about my needs and problems? What the hell does the president have to do with my needs and problems? I need the dissolution of the two American political parties. My problem is they’re actually one party with two heads.
Perform better than I expected? I expected both of them would be mind-numbing, and they exceeded even Dr. Phil.
The psychology of elections boils down to something simple. If people see two guys in suits disagreeing about something, people think what they’re disagreeing about must be important. That’s it. That’s all you have to know.
That’s how you stage politics. The real issues and the real crimes are buried, because the candidates agree on what they’re supposed to argue about up front.
They won’t take questions on the obscene number of medically caused deaths, on GMO destruction, on the explosion of surveillance, on the phony war on terror or drugs, on the patent crime of stock manipulation, on black budgets, on the encroaching forces of Globalism, on the fake science behind global warming, on chemtrails, on the massive failure of public education, on US-government empire building, on corporate statism, on the bureaucratic army of unelected regulators who run federal agencies and illegally make laws, on Agenda 21, and on a host of other issues.
They’ll skirt all that.
They’ll fiddle while Rome burns.
You want a Monsanto president? Elect either Obama or Romney. Facts show both men are in the pocket of that heinous corporation.
CBS, NBC, and ABC accentuate “performance” in the debates. FOX slams Obama; MSNBC slams Romney. CNN tries to look neutral while supporting Obama. It’s all for show. Nobody dares say both candidates (and thus both political parties) are disasters. That would derail the ratings of the stage play. That would blow the ongoing cover-up.
During the run-up to every presidential election since 1980, I have heard people say that THAT ELECTION was the most important in history, and a failure to vote would be treasonous. That’s because engendering fear is the primary way to keep the population locked into two-party electoral politics. In every election season, there is always some “overriding issue” that demands picking sides. There is always a new disaster, a new crisis.
In that sense, the purpose of the election is not to solve the crisis; the crisis is generated to make the election seem vital.
The best after-debate comment of the night was delivered by Al Gore. Obama coming to Denver at the last moment, Al opined, could have created, at that altitude, a brain oxygen deficit. On this basis alone, if Obama is reelected, Al should win the directorship of the Dept. of Health and Human Services.
Speaking of brain cells, any American with at least two functioning cells should realize that the road to the presidency, coming up through the two-party system, means any puppet who gains the job is a lowest common denominator. It’s not just about party, either. It’s about the men who control the parties. The Rockefeller types who run the whole show delight in superficial presidential thinkers who can’t separate the real wheat from the phony chaff.
These presidents actually believe their own “secret agendas” have a chance of success. They refuse to understand that what they want is just a minor flea on the body of the true Plan: global takeover by Globalist elites.
This isn’t conspiracy, this is history going back at least as far as 1913.
Why don’t people want to see it? Because they’ve struggled to assert and cement in a picture of reality by the time they’ve reached the age of consent. And having done that, they can’t face the idea that what they’ve begged, borrowed, and stolen might be completely wrong.
During my life, I’ve met two significant politicians. Norman Thomas, who for years ran for president on the Socialist ticket, came to our house for dinner. He was a bore. Nothing I heard or saw reflected a vigorous mind at work. As far as I could tell, he was just going over old cliches for the thousandth time.
The other politician was Senator Hubert Humphrey. My parents dragged me to a lecture of his when I was 16. I listened to the Hump talk for close to three hours, and at the end of it, I was convinced he was the greatest man in the world. At that time, he was at the height of his oratorical powers. He was something to see.
A week later, I couldn’t recall a single thing he’d said. It was then I began to wonder what politics was all about.
Last night, I watched two sold-out specimens take their show on the road in Denver. It was so, so tired. I waited for the water-skiing and the hoops, but they never came.
Democrat-Republican politics in America is a walking dead man. We who know this are trending, as they say. We need to expand our ranks. Two pernicious book-end gargoyles aren’t going to save the day.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/presidential-candidates-debate-while-rome-burns.html
Who really won last night's Presidential debate? Goldman Sachs
Mike Adams
Political theater is so amusing these days that it deserves some comment. All across the internet, people are asking, "Who won last night's presidential debate?" The conventional wisdom is that Mitt Romney won the debate and that Obama turned in a very poor performance, but even that's not the real story. The correct answer is that Goldman Sachs won the debate. And why? Because both candidates are beholden to Wall Street interests and the global banksters who now influence nearly everything that happens at the highest levels of government.
The recent Fed announcement of QE unlimited (infinite money creation) is, for example, an unlimited, never-ending banker bailout pledge which will destroy the value of the U.S. dollar over the long term. It is a massive theft program that steals from the working middle class and gives to the rich. Both candidates quietly support this program because they're both puppets of the banking power elite. QE unlimited was never even mentioned during the presidential debate.
Who lost the debate? The People of America
If the bankers won the debate, then who lost? The People, of course.
Nowhere in the debate was there any mention or discussion of the following subjects which are crucial to restoring America to a nation of abundance and freedom:
• No mention of GMOs. Neither candidate seems to even know what a genetically engineered seed really is.
• No mention of legalizing industrial hemp farming across America so that farmers could grow a highly profitable crop that we currently import from Canada, China and elsewhere.
• No mention of solving the health care spending crisis by legalizing healing! Why is there still no freedom to practice holistic medicine in America? Why no freedom to tell the truth about the health benefits of nutritional supplements and medicinal herbs?
• No mention of cleaning up the U.S. water supply by removing toxic fluoride chemicals. Both candidates are perfectly happy with the idea of Americans continuing to poison themselves via tap water.
• No mention of protecting Americans from the runaway corruption and criminality of the TSA, which is staffed by thieves, pedophiles, perverts and people who can only be described as "total scum."
• No mention of the rapidly expanding police state surveillance "spy" grid across America, with the NSA now constructing a multi-billion-dollar spy center to monitor every phone call, every email, and every facial recognition camera across the nation.
• No real discussion of paying off the national debt. Obama wants to spend us into oblivion by adding $1 trillion a year to our national debt while expanding the power and reach of government. Romney wants to ignore the problem and hope we can "grow out of it" by expanding the economy while spending yet more debt money. Neither explanation has any basis in logic or mathematical reality. Both are little more than "political numerology."
Enjoy the political theater while it lasts
If you watched the presidential debate, what you were watching was essentially political theater. The deception is all based on what you didn't see or hear. For example, why were there only two people on stage who largely share the same establishment views? Why was Gary Johnson shut out of the debate? (www.garyjohnson2012.com)
Answer: Because he's the only candidate that doesn't want to bomb Iran. That's the truth you won't hear on television.
The debates, in other words, are largely just word games for an uninformed public. Theater to make you think that you're in charge when, in reality, the real power players are the behind-the-scenes banksters who don't care one iota who gets elected.
We would all do well to keep this in mind as we watch this political theater unfold. There will be more debates, more "platforms" explained, and more analysis by the mainstream media of what Obama or Romney said. None of it matters. It's all just mental masturbation to keep the masses occupied while the bankers steal everything.
After all, this race is already decided in advance, and the winner, no matter how you slice it, is Goldman Sachs.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/037425_presidential_debates_Mitt_Romney_Barack_Obama.html#ixzz28RJ2ftzm
Was Obama rattled by developing donor scandal story?
President Obama's reelection campaign, rattled by his Wednesday night debate performance, could be in for even worse news. According to knowledgeable sources, a national magazine and a national web site are preparing a blockbuster donor scandal story.
Sources told Secrets that the Obama campaign has been trying to block the story. But a key source said it plans to publish the story Friday or, more likely, Monday.
According to the sources, a taxpayer watchdog group conducted a nine-month investigation into presidential and congressional fundraising and has uncovered thousands of cases of credit card solicitations and donations to Obama and Capitol Hill, allegedly from unsecure accounts, and many from overseas. That might be a violation of federal election laws.
The Obama campaign has received hundreds of millions in small dollar donations, many via credit card donations through their website. On Thursday, the campaign announced a record September donor haul of $150 million.
At the end of the 2008 presidential campaign, the Obama-Biden effort was hit with a similar scandal. At the time, the Washington Post reported that the Obama campaign let donors use "largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity."
Link:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2509895/#.UG68KpjA_Iv
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