Guest Post by Martin Armstrong
Congress has been out to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The national debt keeps growing reaching around $23 trillion, yet Congress as an institution points fingers across the aisle toward the other party to always find a scapegoat. Both parties share the blame and neither party is ever interested in even discussing the problem no less listen to any possible solution. Congress is literally out of order. It is just broken and is beyond repair. Congress passes measures to make it sound like they are addressing the problem, but when it actually impacts spending, like the spending caps, they suspend the measure quietly behind the curtain. Congress refuses to confront the issue of debt and politicians simply run always promising more goodies if you vote for them.
In health care, the issue of surprise medical billing (SMB) has become a top issue. Congress has, yet again, gotten it wrong. The solution for Congress is to push for price controls that will end up short-changing doctors and limiting choice for patients. Physician groups have been pointing out that the solution being proposed “could lead to market consolidation and artificially low payment rates.” The problem was created by insurance companies, yet the doctors and patients are paying the price. Nobody will address the insurance companies or the pharmaceutical industry. They always get special treatment.
The #1 lobbyist is the US Chamber of Commerce which spent a staggering $94,800,000 on lobbying in 2018. The National Association of Realtors spent $72,808,648 on lobbying in 2018. The Open Society Policy Center, of billionaire George Soros who seeks to buy politicians, spent $31,520,000 in 2018. The Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America is a trade association for drug manufacturers. They spent $27,989,250 on lobbying in 2018. The Chicago-based American Hospital Association spent $23,927,842 on lobbying efforts.
The United States health insurance giant, Blue Cross, spent $23,604,221 on lobbying in 2018. Alphabet, which is the parent company of Google, spent $21,740,000 on lobbying in 2018. The American Medical Association spent $20,417,000 on lobbying in 2018. Telecommunications giant AT&T spent $18,529,000 on lobbying in 2018. Boeing aircraft manufacturer spent $15,120,000 on lobbying in 2018. Then there is the National Association of Broadcasters which spent $14,170,000 in 2018. You don’t have to guess which party got the lion share.
The only way to ever address the crisis we face in debt and government is a clean-sweep with term limits. If it is one-time and out, then we get to call lobbying what it really is – an anti-capitalistic system of rebranding the age-old practice of bribery.
We are facing the ultimate collapse of the government because they will not address the problems. The Democrats continue to run with promises of freebies without any sense of how the system functions and never addressing the crisis in debt. Both parties simply see this system as never-ending. What we face is going to be a major shock when the public is confronted by a system that crumbles before their eyes. What comes after that is the real question: Freedom or Authoritarianism?
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Corporations should pay absolutely no taxes. That’s because they actually don’t pay any now but get all the benefits of a taxed citizen.
Corporations collect taxes and pass them on to the gov’t. They are an invisible adjunct to the tax scheme and for that they get the benefit of lobbying (bribing) to get what they want. No corporation pays a tax. Whatever they pass through to gov’t came from a human being – their customer.
Stop all corporate taxation. Force the gov’t to collect the WHOLE tax directly from their tax cattle (you), so you get a better understanding of how badly you’re really being screwed. Then outlaw lobbying by corporations as ‘taxation without representation is tyranny’ and the converse also holds – representation without taxation is an unearned benefit.
Once the BIG money is removed from the political process, our ever so trustworthy public servants will discover we even exist.
Limit the life of a corporation. This infinite protection they enjoy without paying one dime in tax has to come to an end. Let the free market beat the snot out of this problem.
Corporations should be about the gathering of capital for a specific goal – product or service and allowing the investors to profit by their risk taking. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the concept to be artificially limited to some arbitrary termination.
Where would we be without corporations – the voluntary pooling of resources to be able to provide civilization with all the modern conveniences.
Sorry, but corporations are a necessity. Only their ability to influence policy should be strictly limited and they should be prohibited from any and all activities not directly tied to their product or service. No LGBTQLMNOP donations, no think tank founding, etc.
“What Happens when the People are Confronted by a Government Financial System that Crumbles before their eyes?”
And tons of people on this very blog stick up for unlimited wealth. It is this huge buckets of wealth causing these problems. Wealth always takes care of itself. Is it really that hard to understand?
Term limits? Yes. Huge inheritance tax also.
Watch this…
https://youtu.be/zpQYsk-8dWg
Shareholders were, at one time, liable.
“Is it really that hard to understand?”
not at all. you’re unhappy with who controls the wealth, and you want someone else to control it. and you have a particular someone else in mind. yes?
Are you happy with what these people are doing with their wealth? It isn’t obvious to you they intend to use it to control you and the world. No, it isn’t that hard to understand….for thinking people anyway. Are you a thinking person?
“Are you a thinking person?”
sure. I think you’re no different from the people you are talking about.
“Are you happy with what these people are doing with their wealth?”
no. but the answer is to pull our selves up, not to exchange one set of masters for another set …
“for thinking people anyway”
… like you.
I said exchange one set of masters for another? Where? You mean, I’m saying the government instead of the rich? Please, they are one and the same in that it is all about $$$.
G.R.E.E.D
Donkey, the “wealth” has come to be mostly fake: a lot of digital zeros. Other assets that the “wealthy” might now be holding are fast becoming liabilities as they increasingly run deficits, from shopping malls to oil companies.
This is because we confuse DEBTS (promises of future surplus in excess of what is currently available) with REAL PRODUCTIVE ASSETS.
Since NO AMOUNT OF DEBT can effectively be repaid (extremely unlikely that the future will offer more surplus than is currently available) the “wealth” game has always been a shell game which has required sleight-of-hand tricks to expand itself, in order to make energy- and resource-gains from OUTSIDE the system be made to seem as though they were coming from INSIDE the system.
“Capital” is raised in Spain, England and the Netherlands to go exploring, bringing wealth back in from outside the system.
Nixon had to go to China, to bring that wealth in from outside the system. Same reason they have such a hard-on for NK, Iran. etc. .. not so much for resources as from the need to expand the system for purely mathematical reasons.
Fossil fuels were the ultimate and the most massive source of wealth brought in from outside the system!!!!
Existing producing oil fields are declining at a rate of about 6%p.a.
There’s no place any longer to bring wealth in from outside the system.
This set of circumstances BREAKS the concept of debt money for the foreseeable future. There can be no re-set of industrial civilization, because it is literally out of gas.
Any “wealth effect” is only felt as you are using up resources which are now going, going, gone. For the most part it doesn’t stick around: once it’s consumed, it’s consumed.
Chubby,
Who controls the system we all must operate under? The non wealthy? Do you think they will stand for losing their wealth?
They are not as much in control as you think. They cannot conjure an EROEI higher than 10:1 out of thin air.
They can’t create more potable water or arable land or more fish in the sea. Bezos can have a billion dollars, but if there are no bluefin tuna, Bezos won’t get any just like you won’t get any.
In your bluefin tuna example, Bezos may not get any if there aren’t any but, I posit that there will always be some. Just not for anyone else. And that goes for anything they desire…oil, food, land, clean air etc. I’m not against the rich. I’m against the control they leverage over those that don’t. Control is bought. I posit that it is bought more so than taken by gun.
Ultimately, imo, there are simply too many people. Not only that but everyone is forced into the fiat/tax system which is a system of slavery. IMO
From 2012. I thought this was so important, I transcribed some of it for myself:
Lizzie, when the shit hits the fan, I’m going to eat your liver.