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Ron Paul Exposes The Fed-Driven Erosion Of US Living Standards
Submitted by Ron Paul via The Free Foundation,
One of the least discussed, but potentially most significant, provisions in President Obama’s budget is the use of the “chained consumer price index” (chained CPI), to measure the effect of inflation on people’s standard of living. Chained CPI is an effort to alter the perceived impact of inflation via the gimmick of “full substitution." This is the assumption that when the price of one consumer product increases, consumers will simply substitute a similar, lower-cost product with no adverse effect. Thus, the government decides your standard of living is not affected if you can no longer afford to eat steak, as long as you can afford to eat hamburger.
The problem with “full substitution” should be obvious to anyone not on the government payroll. Since consumers did not choose to buy lower-priced beef before inflation raised the price of steak, they obviously preferred steak. So if the Federal Reserve’s policies create inflation that forces you to purchase hamburger instead of steak, your standard of living is lowered. CPI already uses this sort of substitution to mask the costs of inflation, but chained CPI uses those substitutions more frequently, thereby lowering the reported rate of inflation.
Supporters of chained CPI also argue that the government should take into account technology and other advances that enhance the quality of the products we buy. By this theory, increasing prices signal an increase in our standard of living! While it is certainly true that advances in technology improve our standard of living, it is also true that, left undisturbed, market processes tend to lower the prices of goods. Remember the mobile phones from the 1980s? They had limited service, constantly needed charging, and were extremely expensive. Today, almost all Americans can easily afford a mobile device to make and receive calls, texts, and e-mails, as well as use the Internet, watch movies, read books, and more.
The same process occurred with personal computers, cars, and numerous other products. If left alone, the operations of the market place will deliver higher quality and lower prices. It is only when the government interferes with the operation of the market, especially via fiat money, that consumers must contend with constant price increases.
The goal of chained CPI is to decrease the government's obligation to meet its promise to keep up with the cost of living in programs like Social Security. But it does not prevent individuals who have a nominal increase in income from being pushed into a higher income bracket. Both are achieved without a vote of Congress.
Noted financial analyst Peter Schiff correctly calls chained CPI a measurement of the cost of survival. Instead of using inflation statistics as a political ploy to raise taxes and artificially cut spending, the President and Congress should use a measurement that actually captures the eroding standard of living caused by the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies. Changing government statistics to exploit the decline in the American way of life and benefit big spending politicians and their cronies in the big banks does nothing but harm the American people.
And here is Ron Paul addressing - among other things - the counter-factual supporting the "but what would we do without them" argument for the Fed...
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Learn it early say it often: President Hillary Clinton
Like it's going to make any difference what clown is at the helm of a sinking ship?
You're only encouraging people to spend energies voting (against- not that I'd EVER vote for that pig) when it's not going to make a damn bit of difference. Votes are only advisory, they tell TPTB whether they need to tighten the screws if people aren't buying in to their System.
During the Bush regime it was the energy sector.
During the Obama regime it's the financial sector.
Both these sectors are highly dependent upon the other. It's all but a fucking ping-pong match. You cannot have "ping" without "pong." If you don't like "ping" then turn away from the arena and don't look back.
i'm impressed how much more respectful the media is of ron paul now compared to the way they used to treat him. i'm also noticing that the mainstream also openly acknowledges that the stock marked is in a bubble caused by qe. maybe the people are finally starting to wake up to the fraud that's been perpetrated on them... or not.
"i'm impressed how much more respectful the media is of ron paul now compared to the way they used to treat him."
They neutralized him. He's now just a regular grand-dad (no longer painted cooky), one that we can ignore because we're busy doing other things...
BTW - I guage NOTHING based on what TPTB's media has to program us with. If I were to go by their programming I'd be like most others: totally broke and dependent upon bread and circuses.
Sure. When Dr. Paul has no governmental power any longer. Too bad he was pilloried when in office.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2013/11/07/the-good-news-in-congress-voting-for-bad-pro-wall-street-bills
That'll help too!
Cant blame me, I was a 2 time delegate for RP here in the great State of Texas. We had a good showing...
Can't blame me, I didn't add legitimacy to the illegitimate system.
NOTE: I did, however, before I relalized that voting only encourages them to steal, support and vote for RP.
The party pussies are going to keep this game going for far too long...
" It is only when the government interferes with the operation of the market, especially via fiat money, that consumers must contend with constant price increases."
...uhh, no. For those with some appreciation of Roman History, one might recall that prices of certain essential commodities such as bread/grain would spike so high that the Roman Government ultimately had to subsidize the cost. Eventually, they created the "dole" (frumentationes).
And Rome was on the gold standard.
During the later Republic period of Rome, Roman rule came to span the entire mediteranean with effects paralleling that of today's "Gobalization". Simultaneous to this expansion in dominion, citizen-farmers, the bed rock of the Roman legions, were exploited and taxed off their family farms. Army deployments grew in length and left soldiers destitute and their farms foreclosed on.
Meanwhile, massive numbers of slave labororers were imported from the newly acquired Roman territories to work the Italian farms now consolidated and controlled by the wealthiest patricians of Italy.
The Roman army had been founded on the citizen-farmer-soldier model. Traditionally, only Roman citizens with farms could become part of the legion. Service was for short periods of time and then the legions would disband after the end of conflicts so soldiers could return to their waiting farms. But with the advent of "globalization", there were too few landed Romans to meet the military needs of this new Empire. So the rules were changed and Rome adopted a professional Full-Time army model. The displaced and landless men of Rome (former farmers) now looked to military careers to feed their families.
In many ways, the citizentry had been reduced from dignified citizen-farmers to plain old mercinaries reliant on wealthy patrons. Shortly after these developements, the Roman Republic comes to an end and dictators take control.
Does any of this sound familiar.?
If you have a recommendation for a book that covers both the general history of Rome and this part in particular, I would be happy to have it.
No down arrow, especially when one spends the time to present a reasonable argument, bits of information.
If you're still around I'd be interested in hearing at what point the extreme price swings were occurring, whether there could have been influences from Rome's currency devaluations (reducing precious metal content in coins). Also, it would be interesting to see if the price jumps were based on a REAL shortage, shortages due to a lack of ability to provide for growth. It's the later point that can be shown to be the always repeating theme with every empire and every growing collection of peoples.
Ron, I thought that we got 'exposed' a long time ago.
<--- Growing Feudalism, thanks to CBs, fiat currency and FRB
<--- Growing Socialism/Communism, thanks to CBs, fiat currency and FRB
Given the statements* by Ron Paul, which system best fits the FACTS??? And please stick to observed facts, no to your pre-programed notions.
* "This is what Austrian economics has been predicting... this is what we're witnessing, that the wealthy get wealthier, and the poor get poorer and the middle-class gets wiped out... The wealthy got bailed out, and the average person lost their job, lost their house...right now only the rich are feeling good, the poor are not doing well and the middle-class are getting much poorer"
Feudalism, the money printing drives asset prices up so the only people that will have assets are those that had the assets before hand, the working class will never be able to afford anything other than to rent a living with debt under FIAT.
The only way FIAT works to empower and distribute wealth is if oil is 10$~20$ a barrel.
Once real energy in the form of oil stops entering all you are left with is un-backed currency.....
The cheap oil drove growth, so that products were being manufactured faster than money so things were affordable even though inflation was out of control.
Now that oil isn't cheap...... products are being produced slower than money, so prices are starting to climb....,. encouraging class entrenchment, if your in the middle class your struggling to stay in that class, if your in the poverty class, your struggling to not starve.
There is no opportunity to leave your class to enter a higher class, not with 100$ a barrel oil.
The only way to exit the lower classes is to
1) win the lotto
2) Fraud/Theft
3) Scams
4) Conspiracy to Defraud someone else in a class above you out of their wealth.
The ages of "study and work hard" to get ahead are over.
The age of "take it by force or finesse" has started.
Bottom up economics is what we have now, trickle up wealth.... the only way anything "trickles down" is by crime..... because all the wealth is trickling up by crime....... only way to profit is crime..... barriers to entry on all the markets are making it impossible to compete with a new enterprise.
100+$ oil = breaks FIAT system and brings it to its knees.
Or I could be wrong, and everything is fine /kool-aid.
You're pretty much spot-on.
"The only way FIAT works to empower and distribute wealth is if oil is 10$~20$ a barrel."
I am always cautious about assigning $$s values as it's really more about affordability. If that $10-$20/bbl oil exists in a climate in which people are making $0.10/hr then there's unlikely to be any "wealth" build-up by the lower-classes.
Oil = Work
POWER requires Work.
Just as the masses are becoming less able to have access to oil so too will be the outcome for most of the "wealthy." Without adequate volume the cost of production on a per bbl level is going to go up- this is what I've been hammering on for some time now, "economies of scale in reverse." It's a reason why I don't think that TPTB are necessarily happy that things are going this way: they really don't have any control; they are, in essence, victims of their own success, and if they are now not experiencing difficulties they soon will. We're ALL hitched to the same locomotive that's running head-long toward the cliff: no one checked what was at the end of the line/rails, we were too enthused about the rush of the ride.
The wealthy get bailed out, the middle class gets wiped out and the poor get a hand out. Has a certain ring to it.
I'm quite certain that we could make for more moral "wealthy" if only we would reduce all those tough requirements from them. They really don't want to pay "death taxes" and such as that cuts into their ability to rear their young for continuing to do god's will... </sarc>
My aim here is to not advocate for "death taxes" (Edward Bernays would be proud of how well this slogan works), but to make the point that there's little difference between empires and family dynasties (and quite often they go hand-in-hand). Didn't someone once mention something about Power not readily ceding itself?
Rand Paul has as much chance of being president as the crazy pizza guy and the crazy lady with the gay husband last election. 0.0%!
Or you could say he's ot about as much chance as his dad. They'll just ignore him, too.
Lindsey Graham ran for President?
Of the Log Cabin Republicans, maybe.
If that fucker would repent!
As someone who was engaged in stopping all the empire's illegal wars I was NOT a fan of Walter "Freedom Fries" Jones. Now that Walter has repented (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/02/26/gop_rep_walter_jones_c...) I have to say that I admire the guy. Far too few are able to voluntarily change after being exposed to facts.
Steak>hamburger >roadkill>=no inflation.
The Hitchhiker Cook Book?
By now, everybody with 2 functiong neurons in their front lobe should understand what's going on. Unfortnuantyely, that's not the majority of the people, so the majority is helplessly lost and utterly effed at this point. For them the game is over and they don't have a clue they've already lost everything.
Just waitng on the music to stop.
Got to hand it to the FedRes for keeping the party going until the bouncers were fully
armed ,and prepared.
Next comes the hangover.
People overlook how much stronger people have become. Fifty years ago you needed a very strong man to carry $50 of groceries whereas these days a 12 year old can do it on his own with one hand.
Precious!
Always stay optimistic I say....
"provisions in President Obama’s budget is the use of the “chained consumer price index”"
I love Ron Paul...but first and foremost, this president has not had a BUDGET in his 5 going on 6 years of buffoonery. Might want to start with that...if a business tried to run this way, well, it woud be the government.
The budget at the federal level is a joke, so let's not even pretend that it even matters. EVERYONE in DC aims to get as much pork as possible. The great champion of "small govt," Newt Gingrich, pulled home more pork than any other US district sans D.C. itself.
Unless one is willing to eliminate the entire federal govt all one is doing is looking to push others away from the trough in order to beat out the competition. (hypocrites)
possibly the safest and best way for a president to blow up the FED would be to not have a budget and dissolve it by diluting it with its own product. There is no point to attempt to slow down this debt machine untill after the fed is gone and then we can talk about balanced budgets and fiscal dicipline.
As long as we are spending fedbux it doesnt matter.
I've speculated that the Fed is pretty much the fall-entity. And in a world in which all paths are pretty bleak it makes sense to take the path in which you eat your own dog-food: more trouble getting others to eat it- they might revolt and threaten war.
To allow a small group of bankers to ruin the lives of billions is a crime. How do we stop them?
Short lived nuclear reactions take place during supernova explosions and produce heavy elements such as gold and uranium.
So I guess gold is fairly limited and a gold standard might help.
But I often wondered about gold from the oceans, the moon, asteroids and Mars.
is that you Jack Handy?
Here is the whole picture:
Mike Maloney: The Biggest Scam In The History Of Mankind - Hidden Secrets of Money
Finally, in this episode everything comes together and Mike Maloney presents The Federal Reserve System in all its glory. With over 1 million views only on this YouTube channel the information is going out now. Mike Maloney has made the great job - everything is explained in crystal clear terms and now you can start move forward and understand why FED is as "Federal" as Federal Express and who owns it, why there is ongoing manipulation of Gold and Silver and nobody can be held accountable for it and what will happen next with QE and Taper.http://sufiy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/mike-maloney-biggest-scam-in-history...
China, India, Turkey and Thailand Buying Record Amount of Gold - What Do They Know The Others Don't? GLD, MUX, TNR.v, GDX
So, if China, Indai, Turkey and Thailand know about the money scams then why are their countries STILL fucked up?
Does Mike sell gold (or sell paper that holds gold shares)?
Not dissing PMs, just poor logic...
Besides, lower PM prices are good for buying! (I'd then think that the people in those other countries would encourage fiat devaluation, yes?)
Yup, it's a WORLD OF DEBT (See the music video below):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99xsqxzJnXs
Equally funny, is this one: JIM CRAMER'S TERRIBLE STOCK PICKS--MUST SEE!! Very Funny:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhwplunz7-I
Keep trying. But when yesterday's responder commented "vomit," that should tell you something.
And we must always keep in mind that "debt" is that which is pulled forward from the future. And as a result that future is looking pretty bleak for the next generations.
From steak to hamburgers to slime to resynthesized excreta - this game can go on for some more time....
I dont suppose this had anything to do with Ron Paul being SHUT OUT of the Republican primaries??