Number 3 is false. The government clearly does not operate on tax revenues alone. It may be a part of their expenditures, but it is primarily used as a tool of compliance and fear inducement rather than a means of revenue. The vast majority of the government expenditures come from black ops- running the drugs routes, liquidity injections, etc. The money used to bailout the banks came from the Fed simply creating it out of thin air, not taxpayer pockets. Not that that’s any better.
Just sayin’.
John the bruce
October 17, 2014 10:10 am
Number 3 is true
Printing money, dollar debasement, is theft of purchasing power, or a stealth tax
Its just a different methodology of taking
michaelbl01
October 17, 2014 10:15 am
I would still say number 3 is true, in the sense that the money created from thin air is debt, and so the government is still taking it from others, only difference is those “others” by and large just haven’t yet been handed the bill (or haven’t yet even been born). Now, as to whether or not the government really has any intention on making good on that debt, well…
Stucky
October 17, 2014 10:22 am
Debt = Theft
[img[/img]
Administrator
Author
October 17, 2014 3:56 pm
The Fed’s new weapon against inflation.
[img[/img]
Westcoaster
October 17, 2014 5:02 pm
Re Admin: It’s the all-new & improved Popiel $100 bill shooter. From Bernanko!
Billy
October 17, 2014 10:00 pm
I’d say that #3 is true.
Governments produce nothing. They generate no wealth, and don’t even feed anyone, except maybe their own soldiers.
Since they produce nothing – at all – then by default anything they DO have is taken from someone else, whether it’s coercion, strong armed robbery under Color of Law, or having some 3rd party invent it out of thin air so they can “borrow” it at interest…
EC
October 17, 2014 10:13 pm
You should have expected it when one of the Keating 5 was running for president.
A little reflection would have disclosed, ‘wait a minute, did reality give way to the twilight zone, how he fuck did the architect of the S&L fiasco end up as the Republican frontrunner?’
The following list was written by William J.H. Boetker, a Presbyterian minister, in 1942:
1. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
2. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
3. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
4. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
5. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence.
6. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
7. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
8. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
9. You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
10. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they will not do for themselves.
—
Damn Christians, I’d hate their guts if they weren’t so right.
Jake
October 18, 2014 5:11 am
Those are not truths. They are religious beliefs. Remnants of a bygone age before you can say ‘singularity’.
Already most jobs in the western world are the product of adding ever more wasteful complexity, creating the need for ‘services’ people can do without. It creates the illusion of productivity. But production is already outsourced, or automated. And we’re reaching the point where smart machines, using the internet to harvest the needs of consumers, are (far) better equipped to design, produce and deliver the goodies than any group of human beings. Even the ‘bright lights’ in engineering and programming will be without a job soon.
Unless we redesign society, we’ll end up with a tiny elite, protected by fully automated surveillance and weaponized security, in very private Gardens of Eden, able and willing to guard access to all the resources they need to improve their standard of living as they desire, without anything even resembling a ‘market’. Their robotic army of servants will be no match for us, human beings. And this tiny group of owners is unlikely to have a need for bloggers, politicians, Presbyterian ministers, scientific advisers, healthcare-workers, people peddling ‘financial services’ or ‘insurance policies’, or money. Leaving us with the crumbs, in areas that do not interest them.
This rather grim image of the future awaiting us is by no means the future we can’t avoid. But it will be if we stick to those truths listed, as they are from a day and age that embraced feudalism as the Gospel.
The trouble is, that most people cling to misrepresentations of what Adam Smith had to offer. Usually those that refer to his work never even read ‘An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations’. Let alone his other book, ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’. But even those who did seem to miss the point that these books and thoughts belong to a day and age that was still waiting for the Industrial Revolution, and fiat money and debt to finance expansion by borrowing from future generations. Which is us. So, before we abolish money altogether, I want my stake. And so do you. Believe me! Or you’ll all end up as beggars, fighting each other over the leftovers. Needless to say that people in the western world are not well equipped to come out on top, once the protective shield of their superior military apparatus is no longer available. And it won’t be, if we insist on tearing apart the fabric of society, cheerleading perverse excess as the pinnacle of human endeavor.
Please note that I’m not being cynical. Nor do I promote socialism as the way forward. In fact, socialists in Switzerland recently opposed a proposal to offer every citizen a guaranteed income, since they considered it their duty to fight for a right to work. Now, doesn’t that sound familiar for those who cling to those five truths listed above?
As a lifelong libertarian, I always had this desire to create a future where people did not have to work for a living. Indeed, let the machines do it! While we, human beings, devote our attention to explore the universe and the realm of our inner selves. This vision is within our grasp. Not just for us, in the western world either. But we’re about to waste this opportunity by insisting on our right to be slaves. I don’t get it……
CrisisMaven
October 18, 2014 8:15 am
The powers that be but also claim that you cannot divide wealth by multiplying it. So they try at least to stifle it selectively.
Roy
October 18, 2014 9:23 am
Jake – The machine will save the Planet. Creation of artificial intelligence will be humanity’s greatest achievement. It will also be man’s last achievement. The self-perfecting machine will inevitably eliminate humans. I see artificial evolution of the Machine, helped along by brilliant people and corporations, until She will become autonomous and powerful enough to begin exterminating us. There is a poetic and Hegelian justice in us preparing our demise through a series of brilliant scientific discoveries and cutting-edge engineering applications. Without humans the robots will save the Planet. Who will go first?
Roger
October 18, 2014 9:58 am
Are you really so simple minded? I think you must be. Look, we have been fed this nonsense for years. It sounds like a right wing version of Soviet polit-bureau speak. It’s economics suitable for a five year old. Read something else other than “Atlas Shrugged” for goodness sake. Oh, and by the way Atlas was a failure. He was forced to hold up the sky (not the earth) as a punishment. Zeus, who was the god who rewarded altruism and care of the weak, forced him to do it to keep him out of trouble. Ayn Rand appears to have been ignorant of this, as she was of most things. Zeus was what you would call a socialist. Atlas was a looser.
Since our own government, aided and abetted by that pack of Red Shield jackals over at The Fed, has done the exact OPPOSITE of those 5 truths since forever, how do you figure ‘we’ve been fed this nonsense for years”?
I call you out as a liar.
“It sounds like a right wing version of Soviet polit-bureau speak.”
Since you’re so familiar with what the Soviets, communists and their retarded cousins – the socialists – say, I’ll have to take your word for it.
“It’s economics suitable for a five year old.”
Because the clusterfuckery they’ve been doing since forever has worked out so well, right? How’s that 18 Trillion debt gonna work out for you, boy? That’s just what they’ll admit to – right NOW. It’s actually more like 100 trillion, if you add in unfunded liabilities…
“Read something else other than “Atlas Shrugged” for goodness sake.”
I’ll stop reading that if you stop reading Marx, Engles, Trotsky, Lenin, Mandel, Alinsky, etc. Deal?
Other than that, feel free to fly to Russia and ass rape Lenin’s moldy old corpse. Pics, or it didn’t happen.
srv
October 18, 2014 11:58 am
At best morally bankrupt, bigoted drivel…
I suppose, focus on the ruling elite established system (through fraud and corruption) designed to marginalize (they thank you for your help on that), demonize, and keep the unwashed masses living in poverty with brain dead theories (actually lies) on how the ‘economy’ would be devastated if the poor were paid a living wage… is out of the question!
… and ‘Burning Platform’ is pleased to earn a living distributing this crap to the pseudo elite, who pile on in a pathetic display in an effort to be seen as one of the chosen few “makers” who make the world go round.
Dismissing human life is, well… inhuman!
Billy
October 18, 2014 1:28 pm
I was going to flame srv out of existence… but why bother? Not one damn thing that I can say will make a dent in his/her zealotry.
srv’s post illustrates clearly that they are using their head for nothing more than a butt-plug and are incapable of anything other than parroting the vile spew their ex-hippie Marxist “Professor” told them… first attempting to hurl a Word of Power – “bigot” – in order to shut down any coversation, and then blind support for ‘a living wage’… whatever the fuck THAT’S supposed to be..
Go back to your Occutard buddies… maybe might want to take a bath and perhaps try to find gainful employment…
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Billy
October 18, 2014 1:37 pm
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[img[/img]
juujuuuujj
October 18, 2014 4:15 pm
1. In a kleptocracy you can! In fact, screwing the rentier class parasites never fails to produce amazing results. See Germany’s debt defaults and industrial booms as an example. It restores health and wealth to the society
2. The economy is not a zero sum game. All workers create products of bigger value than what they receive. The leak in the system comes from the kleptocrats and rentiers syphoning off that wealth.
3. You can, if means of production are publicly owned. The author hasn’t been abroad much. Example: the government of Singapore produces tons of wealth from publicly owned enterprises just like any privately-owned firm. But that’s a well-managed government.
4. You can, if wealth is monopolized.
5. The author is a demented, blood-sucking vampire who thinks “the lower class doesn’t work hard enough”. One week of actual work and he’d be fired, homeless and dead of a heart attack.
Billy
October 18, 2014 4:55 pm
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[img[/img]
[img[/img]
[img[/img]
EC
October 18, 2014 5:48 pm
Your a commie, Billy?
Don Robertson
October 18, 2014 6:04 pm
Well, hell… Legalize marijuana then, and there will be a lot more gimmie-gimmie.
archie
October 18, 2014 8:14 pm
Roger says, “Zeus, who was the god who rewarded altruism, and care of the weak…”. Um that’s the most peculiar description of him I’ve ever heard. Above all Zeus was the god of wisdom and justice. He also meted out punishment with brutality, that is when he wasn’t fucking some chick. C’mon dude you’re just trying to be a provocative douche.
Pipes
October 18, 2014 8:55 pm
The 5 truths you cannot disagree with, expanded or re-stated version (cutting through the OBVIOUS propaganda intent of the original);
1)You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity, but you CAN legislate the wealthy into GREATER prosperity by legislating the poor and middle class OUT of it.
2)What one person receives without working for, another must work for without receiving. Wall Street, the banking cartels, Big Pharma, and Big Corps. are testament to this fact. They ALL benefit through the corporatocracy we live under, while the bottom 75% (and their descendants) subsidize them.
3)The government cannot give to anybody, that which the government does not first take from somebody else. No additional clarification needed, as truer words were never spoken.
4)You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. You CAN however, increase wealth for a few, if you indebt, extort, and rob from the masses.
5)When half the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them; and the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for…that is the beginning of the end of any nation. Of course, this is merely an expression of a false duality-based paradigm which does not actually represent the reality of these United States currently. More truthfully, an ever-increasingly powerful central government has facilitated the concentration of power – and thereby wealth – into the hands of a relatively few people. In the course of this journey, propaganda has cleverly been employed to create a divided population. This propaganda conveniently removes all responsibility for the divide from the state, and directly pits the people against each other, in a patently false and overly simplistic narrative that should fail at first examination…that being that HALF of the population is supporting the OTHER HALF, as though that were even possible in reality, and as though there were no facilitator, and as though there were no third-class of people benefitting from this scheme, and as though THAT class were not the instigators of the scheme.
So, while IN THEORY the original #5 statement may arguably be true, it IS NOT the circumstance we are in. A more accurate – AND HONEST – #5 would read; When .01% of the people get the idea that they do not have to work, because the other 99.99% will effectively be made to work for them, and the other 99.99% can be convinced or coerced to participate in that system…THAT is beginning of the end of any nation.
No arguing with this. John
Number 3 is false. The government clearly does not operate on tax revenues alone. It may be a part of their expenditures, but it is primarily used as a tool of compliance and fear inducement rather than a means of revenue. The vast majority of the government expenditures come from black ops- running the drugs routes, liquidity injections, etc. The money used to bailout the banks came from the Fed simply creating it out of thin air, not taxpayer pockets. Not that that’s any better.
Just sayin’.
Number 3 is true
Printing money, dollar debasement, is theft of purchasing power, or a stealth tax
Its just a different methodology of taking
I would still say number 3 is true, in the sense that the money created from thin air is debt, and so the government is still taking it from others, only difference is those “others” by and large just haven’t yet been handed the bill (or haven’t yet even been born). Now, as to whether or not the government really has any intention on making good on that debt, well…
Debt = Theft
[/img]
[img
The Fed’s new weapon against inflation.
[img
[/img]
Re Admin: It’s the all-new & improved Popiel $100 bill shooter. From Bernanko!
I’d say that #3 is true.
Governments produce nothing. They generate no wealth, and don’t even feed anyone, except maybe their own soldiers.
Since they produce nothing – at all – then by default anything they DO have is taken from someone else, whether it’s coercion, strong armed robbery under Color of Law, or having some 3rd party invent it out of thin air so they can “borrow” it at interest…
You should have expected it when one of the Keating 5 was running for president.
A little reflection would have disclosed, ‘wait a minute, did reality give way to the twilight zone, how he fuck did the architect of the S&L fiasco end up as the Republican frontrunner?’
Same story, different times.
http://no-maam.blogspot.ca/2012/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-lunch.html
The following list was written by William J.H. Boetker, a Presbyterian minister, in 1942:
1. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
2. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
3. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
4. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
5. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence.
6. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
7. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
8. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
9. You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
10. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they will not do for themselves.
—
Damn Christians, I’d hate their guts if they weren’t so right.
Those are not truths. They are religious beliefs. Remnants of a bygone age before you can say ‘singularity’.
Already most jobs in the western world are the product of adding ever more wasteful complexity, creating the need for ‘services’ people can do without. It creates the illusion of productivity. But production is already outsourced, or automated. And we’re reaching the point where smart machines, using the internet to harvest the needs of consumers, are (far) better equipped to design, produce and deliver the goodies than any group of human beings. Even the ‘bright lights’ in engineering and programming will be without a job soon.
Unless we redesign society, we’ll end up with a tiny elite, protected by fully automated surveillance and weaponized security, in very private Gardens of Eden, able and willing to guard access to all the resources they need to improve their standard of living as they desire, without anything even resembling a ‘market’. Their robotic army of servants will be no match for us, human beings. And this tiny group of owners is unlikely to have a need for bloggers, politicians, Presbyterian ministers, scientific advisers, healthcare-workers, people peddling ‘financial services’ or ‘insurance policies’, or money. Leaving us with the crumbs, in areas that do not interest them.
This rather grim image of the future awaiting us is by no means the future we can’t avoid. But it will be if we stick to those truths listed, as they are from a day and age that embraced feudalism as the Gospel.
The trouble is, that most people cling to misrepresentations of what Adam Smith had to offer. Usually those that refer to his work never even read ‘An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations’. Let alone his other book, ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’. But even those who did seem to miss the point that these books and thoughts belong to a day and age that was still waiting for the Industrial Revolution, and fiat money and debt to finance expansion by borrowing from future generations. Which is us. So, before we abolish money altogether, I want my stake. And so do you. Believe me! Or you’ll all end up as beggars, fighting each other over the leftovers. Needless to say that people in the western world are not well equipped to come out on top, once the protective shield of their superior military apparatus is no longer available. And it won’t be, if we insist on tearing apart the fabric of society, cheerleading perverse excess as the pinnacle of human endeavor.
Please note that I’m not being cynical. Nor do I promote socialism as the way forward. In fact, socialists in Switzerland recently opposed a proposal to offer every citizen a guaranteed income, since they considered it their duty to fight for a right to work. Now, doesn’t that sound familiar for those who cling to those five truths listed above?
As a lifelong libertarian, I always had this desire to create a future where people did not have to work for a living. Indeed, let the machines do it! While we, human beings, devote our attention to explore the universe and the realm of our inner selves. This vision is within our grasp. Not just for us, in the western world either. But we’re about to waste this opportunity by insisting on our right to be slaves. I don’t get it……
The powers that be but also claim that you cannot divide wealth by multiplying it. So they try at least to stifle it selectively.
Jake – The machine will save the Planet. Creation of artificial intelligence will be humanity’s greatest achievement. It will also be man’s last achievement. The self-perfecting machine will inevitably eliminate humans. I see artificial evolution of the Machine, helped along by brilliant people and corporations, until She will become autonomous and powerful enough to begin exterminating us. There is a poetic and Hegelian justice in us preparing our demise through a series of brilliant scientific discoveries and cutting-edge engineering applications. Without humans the robots will save the Planet. Who will go first?
Are you really so simple minded? I think you must be. Look, we have been fed this nonsense for years. It sounds like a right wing version of Soviet polit-bureau speak. It’s economics suitable for a five year old. Read something else other than “Atlas Shrugged” for goodness sake. Oh, and by the way Atlas was a failure. He was forced to hold up the sky (not the earth) as a punishment. Zeus, who was the god who rewarded altruism and care of the weak, forced him to do it to keep him out of trouble. Ayn Rand appears to have been ignorant of this, as she was of most things. Zeus was what you would call a socialist. Atlas was a looser.
I bet Atlas could spell loser.
Who is this “Roger” thing?
“Look, we have been fed this nonsense for years.”
Since our own government, aided and abetted by that pack of Red Shield jackals over at The Fed, has done the exact OPPOSITE of those 5 truths since forever, how do you figure ‘we’ve been fed this nonsense for years”?
I call you out as a liar.
“It sounds like a right wing version of Soviet polit-bureau speak.”
Since you’re so familiar with what the Soviets, communists and their retarded cousins – the socialists – say, I’ll have to take your word for it.
“It’s economics suitable for a five year old.”
Because the clusterfuckery they’ve been doing since forever has worked out so well, right? How’s that 18 Trillion debt gonna work out for you, boy? That’s just what they’ll admit to – right NOW. It’s actually more like 100 trillion, if you add in unfunded liabilities…
“Read something else other than “Atlas Shrugged” for goodness sake.”
I’ll stop reading that if you stop reading Marx, Engles, Trotsky, Lenin, Mandel, Alinsky, etc. Deal?
Other than that, feel free to fly to Russia and ass rape Lenin’s moldy old corpse. Pics, or it didn’t happen.
At best morally bankrupt, bigoted drivel…
I suppose, focus on the ruling elite established system (through fraud and corruption) designed to marginalize (they thank you for your help on that), demonize, and keep the unwashed masses living in poverty with brain dead theories (actually lies) on how the ‘economy’ would be devastated if the poor were paid a living wage… is out of the question!
… and ‘Burning Platform’ is pleased to earn a living distributing this crap to the pseudo elite, who pile on in a pathetic display in an effort to be seen as one of the chosen few “makers” who make the world go round.
Dismissing human life is, well… inhuman!
I was going to flame srv out of existence… but why bother? Not one damn thing that I can say will make a dent in his/her zealotry.
srv’s post illustrates clearly that they are using their head for nothing more than a butt-plug and are incapable of anything other than parroting the vile spew their ex-hippie Marxist “Professor” told them… first attempting to hurl a Word of Power – “bigot” – in order to shut down any coversation, and then blind support for ‘a living wage’… whatever the fuck THAT’S supposed to be..
Go back to your Occutard buddies… maybe might want to take a bath and perhaps try to find gainful employment…
[img
?h=200&w=156[/img]
[img
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[img
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[img
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[img
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1. In a kleptocracy you can! In fact, screwing the rentier class parasites never fails to produce amazing results. See Germany’s debt defaults and industrial booms as an example. It restores health and wealth to the society
2. The economy is not a zero sum game. All workers create products of bigger value than what they receive. The leak in the system comes from the kleptocrats and rentiers syphoning off that wealth.
3. You can, if means of production are publicly owned. The author hasn’t been abroad much. Example: the government of Singapore produces tons of wealth from publicly owned enterprises just like any privately-owned firm. But that’s a well-managed government.
4. You can, if wealth is monopolized.
5. The author is a demented, blood-sucking vampire who thinks “the lower class doesn’t work hard enough”. One week of actual work and he’d be fired, homeless and dead of a heart attack.
[img
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[img
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[img
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[img
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Your a commie, Billy?
Well, hell… Legalize marijuana then, and there will be a lot more gimmie-gimmie.
Roger says, “Zeus, who was the god who rewarded altruism, and care of the weak…”. Um that’s the most peculiar description of him I’ve ever heard. Above all Zeus was the god of wisdom and justice. He also meted out punishment with brutality, that is when he wasn’t fucking some chick. C’mon dude you’re just trying to be a provocative douche.
The 5 truths you cannot disagree with, expanded or re-stated version (cutting through the OBVIOUS propaganda intent of the original);
1)You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity, but you CAN legislate the wealthy into GREATER prosperity by legislating the poor and middle class OUT of it.
2)What one person receives without working for, another must work for without receiving. Wall Street, the banking cartels, Big Pharma, and Big Corps. are testament to this fact. They ALL benefit through the corporatocracy we live under, while the bottom 75% (and their descendants) subsidize them.
3)The government cannot give to anybody, that which the government does not first take from somebody else. No additional clarification needed, as truer words were never spoken.
4)You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. You CAN however, increase wealth for a few, if you indebt, extort, and rob from the masses.
5)When half the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them; and the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for…that is the beginning of the end of any nation. Of course, this is merely an expression of a false duality-based paradigm which does not actually represent the reality of these United States currently. More truthfully, an ever-increasingly powerful central government has facilitated the concentration of power – and thereby wealth – into the hands of a relatively few people. In the course of this journey, propaganda has cleverly been employed to create a divided population. This propaganda conveniently removes all responsibility for the divide from the state, and directly pits the people against each other, in a patently false and overly simplistic narrative that should fail at first examination…that being that HALF of the population is supporting the OTHER HALF, as though that were even possible in reality, and as though there were no facilitator, and as though there were no third-class of people benefitting from this scheme, and as though THAT class were not the instigators of the scheme.
So, while IN THEORY the original #5 statement may arguably be true, it IS NOT the circumstance we are in. A more accurate – AND HONEST – #5 would read; When .01% of the people get the idea that they do not have to work, because the other 99.99% will effectively be made to work for them, and the other 99.99% can be convinced or coerced to participate in that system…THAT is beginning of the end of any nation.
THESE are the 5 thruths you cannot disagree with.