Guest Post by Bill Bonner
It’s no secret that socialism – in all its forms – doesn’t work very well.
You soon run out of other people’s money. And people don’t always want to give up their money readily. Or let you boss them around.
Inevitably, the more ambitious your plans, the more people you need to kill.
Reform Capitalism
But today, we turn our attention to those who say we need to “reform” capitalism to save it.
In this category, we lump all those who claim to support free markets – such as most of today’s Republicans and Democrats – but still think they can make them work better, with trade barriers, phony tax cuts, fake money, fake interest rates, regulations, controls, etc., etc.
Journalist Edward Luce, for example, writing in the Financial Times, explained that we need to “save American capitalism from itself.”
Whenever you read somebody in a newspaper suggest that “we need to,” you can be almost sure that the next words are nonsense. This is no exception.
“The question America’s financial and tech elites must ask,” Luce continues, “is ‘what price social peace?’”
Circuses are not enough; the mob wants more bread. And after having cheated them out of trillions, Luce thinks we should at least toss them a few crumbs.
Winners and Losers
The first thing we notice is that anyone who says he wants to “reform” or “improve” capitalism must not know what it is. Capitalism doesn’t allow you to pick winners and losers. There is no way to improve it. And it doesn’t care whether there is “social peace” or not.
It is a free spirit… wandering around, with no knowable destination… going where it whilst, at its own speed, in its own way.
Where it will end up, no one knows; but wherever it is… it is where it should be. And it must be left alone, unmolested and undisturbed… or it will end up somewhere else!
Which is precisely what so aggravates the world improvers. AOC and Bernie Sanders whoop for socialism because they think capitalism has failed.
The reformers – Luce and Dalio – think it has succeeded too well; leaving the masses hopelessly behind.
But the lynch mob – socialists and capitalist apologists alike – has grabbed the wrong man.
America’s economy is not really capitalist. It is a form of late, degenerate state-controlled, crony-manipulated, empire-addled, pseudo-capitalist claptrap. And you can quote us on that!
A quarter of the economy is directly run by the feds. Another quarter – including medical care and education – is guided and approved by them. And the remainder is chock-a-block with rules and regulations… All of them intended to upgrade, or at least to genetically modify, the fruits of naked capitalism.
We don’t know what America would look like if capitalism were permitted. But it would certainly be a whole lot richer. Especially the working stiffs.
Socialism is always a drag on an economy. And the more the feds decide who wins and who loses, the more they tilt the playing field to favor their friends, cronies, and the Deep State elite.
We’ve seen studies suggesting that if economic freedom had been allowed in the USA, average incomes would be more than twice what they are today.
JPMorgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, says the U.S. economy should have added $4 trillion more to GDP in the last decade alone; it should have grown by 40%, not 20%, he says.
“Why have productivity and economic growth been so anemic,” he asks? Good question. And here’s the companion question that Edward Luce should have asked: “How come the rich got so rich while everyone else was losing ground?”
Here’s why…
Giveaways and Throwaways
Every year, trillions of dollars of output are wasted. Silly wars, goofball programs, giveaways, and throwaways – at least half the federal budget is tossed down the drain.
In fact, the government’s entire monthly budget was sunk on just three federal spending items: Social Security, Medicare, and interest on the national debt.
Then, too, all the paperwork, delays, malinvestments, tax filings, labor-law mandates, make-work, and standing in line demanded by the feds must easily cost the nation another few trillion.
And we haven’t even gotten to the big losses, caused by the feds’ fake money system. There, of course, is where we find the real source of the “inequality” that so worries Obama, Ray Dalio, AOC, and so many others.
It was not capitalism that boosted stock prices close to 150% of GDP while wages flattened. Normally, the stock market is worth about 80% of GDP. That would mean about $16 trillion worth of stocks today. But at 150%, investors – the rich and the elite – got some $14 trillion more.
Where did that money come from? Why were America’s corporations suddenly worth so much more?
Looking at pre-tax earnings, we see that corporate America hardly made a penny more in 2018 than it had in 2012. In an honest, capitalist system there was no reason for stocks to go up. But the fix was in.
The feds were lending fake money at fake rates, so the corporations could earn fake profits and buy back their own shares with free money.
The result? A huge shift of wealth from the middle classes of Main Street to the upper classes of Wall Street, Washington, and cronies everywhere.
Did these pseudo-capitalists say “Thank You”? You bet they did!
They slipped the feds campaign contributions; they offered jobs in their think tanks and lobbying firms; they gave them lavish “speaking fees” for blah-blahing about nothing to people who weren’t even listening.
And now, having banged, bent, and bamboozled capitalism for their own ends…
…and feeling perhaps a little guilty… and worrying that the masses might be getting restless… they propose to take a sledgehammer to what’s left of it.
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Free markets (a better term than the Marxist term “capitalism”) don’t promise that only the best will become rich and successful. The free market system gives people what they want. That’s why there are a million Thai restaurants and almost zero English restaurants. Because shepherd’s pie isn’t that popular.
Obviously my friend you never got a blow job from Nikola Tesla.
There was only one form of governance the communists and capitalists teamed up, like a fist in a glove, to destroy.
That should tell you something.
http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/globalism/monteith/1-communist-capitalist-2007.htm
“ . . . the way the economy worked under finance capital, and the way it still works even today, is based on usury.
Let’s suppose you’ve got German tractors needed in Brazil and Brazilian coffee needed in Germany. The old fashioned capitalist way of exchanging those two commodities is that the Germans go to a Jewish bank in Frankfort and borrow the money to buy the Brazilian coffee beans, at a handsome rate of interest, and the Brazilians go to another Jewish bank in Rio and borrow money to buy the German tractors, again at interest. This way the Jews get their cut on both ends of the transaction, for providing nothing that is really essential either to growing and brewing coffee or manufacturing tractors. This is how these people have gotten over for thousands of years.
But then under the Third Reich a financial genius named Hjälmar Schacht figured out a breathtakingly simple way to accomplish the same transaction much more efficiently, much less expensively, and above all eliminating the banker as middleman and eliminating the undeserved accrual of interest for doing nothing.
Schacht established a German trade bank that issued a kind of Monopoly money called trade credits, which could be used for German goods.
When the Brazilians needed German tractors, they sent a big freighter full of Brazilian coffee to Hamburg and in exchange got X number of trade credits, which they used to purchase German tractors.
The big advantage to using this kind of system was that in order to get Western goods, the developing countries could in essence use barter of their own natural resources instead of having to come up with huge amounts of cash money which they could only raise by borrowing. If Nazi Germany had won the war and imposed their system in the place of usury, the entire International Monetary Fund would never have come into being and the international banks wouldn’t have the entire world by the throat.”
Capitalism is just Judaism repackaged for Libertarians.
“What if America Tried Capitalism”
Better yet: What if Amerika tried Public Hangings?
I have used the term circle jerk to describe the economic command and control of what was our free republic countless times and it appears there is some traction finally taking root in true capitalist Americans . The few still standing !
Wall Street to K-Street to Capitol Street is the circle jerk oligarchy are the real owners of everything in America now . The group of wealthy elites have a web of deceit and bribery that makes any organized criminal enterprise look like a group of beginners .
Only a Nuremberg style investigation and trial with prison sentences and Capitol punishment for economic treason and fraud perpetrated against the American people will do anything to bring justice to the millions of working Americans damaged by the circle jerks enterprise .
Right here right now in Baltimore county there is a bridge closed due to corroded support steel beams and the beams need to be ordered from a foreign supplier . Yes Baltimore County where the largest steel plant on tidal water capable of manufacturing and fabricating any steel product you could envision is “GONE” and so are the high paying jobs that supplied the surrounding counties and city with a strong economic tax base . The solution for local government , tax those old steel workers and their surviving widows hanging on thanks to social security and Medicare out of their homes after their pensions were bankrupted . Once again organized theft at the hand of government but the owners of the Baltimore Ravens investment group got $80 MILLON to generate $15 dollar an hour jobs at the old steel plant site and the new county executive introduced a tax increase plan to cover a $80 MILLON dollar deficit . WTF ….
When you wonder why socialism is raising its ugly head with all the horrors of history in its wake . Wake up and smell the shit being feed to us as well as the piss raining down on us , no it ain’t raining !!!
Good analysis with just one issue to bring to your attention: it is “capital” punishment and its return to standard practice for evil doers is nigh.