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Don't Feed The Zombies...
Submitted by Bill Bonner via Bonner & Partners,
Headline reports give you only the public stories – simpleminded narratives that even voters can understand.
The hidden story – and the real story – is that these are all clashes, battles, and skirmishes in the Great Zombie War.
On the one side: honest workers, businesses, entrepreneurs, and households.
On the other: fixers, meddlers, thieves, layabouts, and criminals.
Is it really that easy to understand?Probably not. But it helps us put things in perspective.
Take the proposal for a higher minimum wage. The Financial Times (Britain’s equivalent of the Wall Street Journal) is usually wrong about everything. But it is right today: “Politicians cannot ‘magic up’ a national pay boost.”
From the dawn of time until the moment you read this, politicians have never added one single cent to the wealth of the world.
They can move it around. They can suppress it. They can steal it and destroy it. But if you could add wealth by legislation, they would have gotten the hang of it long ago.
Everything has a price… and a value. You can change price by passing a law. But you can’t change value. And when the price gets out of line with the value, it triggers distortions, shortages, or hoarding.
So why is a minimum wage the “law of the land” not only in Britain, but also in the U.S. and many other developed nations?
Because the way the news media tells the story you’d think the politicians were protecting workers from greedy employers. But it really just helps the zombie politicians keep the masses in line.
A Debt-Addled Economy
The British government’s push for a higher minimum wage is just one more front in the Great Zombie War.
In China, the zombies in power are desperately trying to prop up a debt-addled economy by goosing up the stock market with borrowed money and empty promises.
According to Anne Stevenson-Yang, a leading China expert and the research director of J. Capital Research, Chinese government debt is 300% of GDP.
The average interest rate on Chinese debt is about 7%. So, the economy would need to grow in real terms by between 14% and 21% just to service its government debt alone.
Officially, the Chinese economy is growing at roughly 7% a year. According to London-based economic forecast consultancy Lombard Research, average GDP growth was about 4.5% after-inflation.
And according to Lombard’s calculations, the Chinese economy suffered its first quarter of negative economic growth since 2009 during the first three months of this year.
But that hasn’t stopped the Chinese debt binge. There are even reports that Chinese investors can pledge their homes as collateral for their stock market loans.
Why is keeping stock prices high so important for Beijing?
Because asset prices are the collateral backing the entire capital structure. The zombies’ credit depends on it.
In Greece, the Tsipras government tries to keep the credit flowing its way, too.
Greece is already so deeply in debt that its creditors are threatening to cut off any further emergency financing.
Why is Athens so eager to borrow more?
Because that’s the only way to keep the zombies on the state’s payroll fed.
A Zombie Nest
What about the London Underground?
Yesterday, we were walking through the City of London (the equivalent of Wall Street in New York) at about 6 p.m.
The sidewalks were mobbed. A 24-hour strike by unionized London Underground workers had left hundreds of thousands of people to make their way home as best they could.
Public employee unions have become nests of zombies. The market should set their wages near their real value.
But zombies aren’t content with market wages; they want the politicians to set the price. And they’re willing to bring London to a standstill to get the wages they want.
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This article is racist.
are we talkin "Night of the living dead" zombies? or "28 days later" zombies?
There is a difference....
Zombies = Serfs = The 99%
http://galeinnes.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-3-profiteers.html
If the underground workers can bring a city to a stand still apparently they are worth more other wise their actions wouldn't of brought the city to a stand still (what is the lost value of the city at a standstill as appose to not being at a stand still). I am not saying that the action is ethical but it shows what their value worth or rather the power that they wield.
The sole purpose of raising minimum wages is to destroy small businesses. That's it.
Down the Visigoths. Up the Byzantines.
Hey!! I happen to be a Visigoth!
So watch it!
But it's so much easier to use your Obamaphone while using your EBT card at the strip club and what's this job thing your talking about anyway......
Except, on rare occasions, Gov't can initiate wealth creating projects that otherwise wouldn't be addressed by the private sector, because either they don't want to, or they simply can't.
That's the truth, and that's where Austrians fail like Keynesians.
Because I guess the Space Program by Kennedy never created wealth... I mean I guess Apple never created anything, but of course, Apple wouldn't of been created without Kennedy.
Gov't can create conditions for business and help give them the tools to create wealth, or they can do the opposite. Austrians and Keynesians promote that 'opposite'.
Keynesians by their belief that any spending is good.
Austrians by their belief that any spending by gov't is bad.
<-----government is an impediment to human progress
<-----government is a facilitator to human progress
It can be both, that's the point.
Right now it is used as an impediment, to a massive degree.
People trying to say it's only one or the other are engaging in dogma.
It's BOTH. There is no right answer... there is just... the people who are running it today... what are THEY doing.
React accordingly.
Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. -Thoreau
Even Thoreau couldn't have imagined the waste and corrution of government today. He was being nice. 99/100 times, government is an impediment to human progress.
Aain't no private enterprise gonna build a nuclear power plant...let alone 100 of them as the USA currently has.
No way gonna get "Rocket Row" in Florida either.
The U.S. taxpayer bails out General Motors for 80 billion...and what do they do? Close a MASSIVE Saturn plant in Tennessee firing tens of thousands of US workers.
THANKS NANCY FUCKING PELOSI YOU WORTHLESS BITCH.
So...IN THE INTERIM
THE STATE OF TENNEESSE cuts a deal to start producing all electric cars at that PELOSI IS A FUCKING WHORE plant in Tennessee.
And indeed...the Nissan Leafs keep getting pumped out LKKE FUCKIN BIC RAZORS BLADES...sticking it up General Motors' fucking ASS.
Meanwhile that HEBRAIC FUCKING WHORE CAN WATCH as BALTIMORE FUCKING BURNS.
Move along...move along...
Or, most of what GM makes is inferior quality, and Saturn was a dead brand? So it would be preferrable to prop up a mediocre quality, dead brand than consolidate and focus on building decent cars like the Japanese? Not a Nissan Leaf fan, but I bet it would compare favorably against a similar Saturn, were they still around. Although profits go home to Japan, there would be many more people out of work were it not for the Japanese auto factories here. Meanwhile GM and Ford are building in Mexico.
Although I have severe distaste for Pelosi, let's have some intellectual honesty here.
GM has not made any cars in America for a long time they all come from a town they made in Indonesia called Detroit , that's why they say "inported from Detroit"
I thought Detroit was in Zimbabwe or similar?
what the people who are running it today are doing, is par for the course for government, it's not an aberration.
what you are missing, is that a system of violence is rotten at its core, it has no solid moral foundation.
if i point a gun at you and tell you, give me your wallet, i'm going to do something good with the money.
even if i do spend some of the stolen money in a way that benefits you, i still had no right to threaten you, to take your money, or to decide what to do with it.
I remember a line from a book about Communist Russia, "We pretended to work, and they pretended to pay us." We're all Soviet now.
There are only a very few things where government can be an expedient. Education, defense, justice system, transportation infrastructure and some utilities, like water. From ancient Rome until today, those are about the only things government typically does better than non-government. Everything else, it makes worse. So, if government is doing 10,000 things, 9,995 of those are a problem.
I have seen no evidence that government does education better than non-government. If the choice for my kid is between a government school, private school and home schooling, the government school will be the third option hands down.
Agreed, on a local level sure education may be better if the local population pools its resources but since the Dept of Education was formed and you have had never ending meddling in education from the Federal and State levels thrust upon the local schools so they (The Feds and State govts) have messed that up too. So Gov't education is also 3rd option on my list.
Why the obsession with human progress? You a progressive?
The author of this ZH post needs a (several) lessons in thermodynamics and ecology.
Dam dude turn off the TV!
You missed something: collectivism (and all its variants) suppresses innovation and progress.
They are also masters at falsehoods, they, for example, currently refer to themselves as “progressives” in an attempt to distance themselves from the destructive history of collectivism.
They would better be titled, “regressives”.
You forgot the sarc tag......
By definition, government programs are those that are neither desired nor needed.
"Gov't can create conditions for business and help give them the tools to create wealth"
business doesn't need any "tools" from gov, the only tool we need is for gov to get the hell out of the way and stop meddling and interfering.
Stopped reading Bonner after he shut down TDR forum. That was a great place.
pods
"The free market should set wages near their real value" they cry, as they export and offshore entire industries, import millions of cheap laborers via lax immigration laws and H1-B programs, and use noxious treaties like NAFTA and GATT to crush working people everywhere. Then, after burning down the entire village and salting the farmland to ensure nothing will grow there, they say "well, I'm willing to offer ten cents an hour, but only for those who are willing to work very very hard, it's what the market will bear you know" as they laugh their asses off all the way to the bank. They manipulate and use supply and demand like a hammer and anvil, with humanity being the work that is crushed between them.
"Treason does never prosper, for if it does, none dare call it treason." - John Harington
Yes, the (currently) erroneous assumption is that there is a real market, operating without bribery, insider trading, and big money influence of "regulators" by de facto persons.
I separate real workers in productive jobs for private industry from the thieving thugs of public employee unions. They rip off the real workers via taxation to fund their fat lifestyle. None worse than cops and firefighters.
Yeah, but they don't have a guy running things like we do in the US, who can even lower the frickin' SEA LEVELS!
U S A! U S A!
Whatever
When are all the TTIP & Other Pacts kicking in? We're ALL gonna get Rich and forget about DEBT DEFAULT and DEATH.
Happily Dazed!
what a bunch of simplistic bullshit.
strawman much, Bill?
"Shovel Ready!"
Any minimum wage (MW) law should be linked directly to import/export surplus/deficit. If there is a deficit in a year then MW gets reduced. If a surplus then it gets increased.
Edit: Ohhh, wait.....then they would start or increase manipulation of that statistic too :(
Honest entrepreneurs - this would be Goldman, right?
and CORZINE!
Silly monkies...
You're alive because the biosphere is alive.
Industrial growth and, "progress," are the enemy of the biosphere and would have led to our extinction already if they were allowed to run amok without hindrance.
A downvote for me is an upvote for ecological suicide.
The farce is strong in this one.
Another holier than thou ding dong who wouldn't be alive today without antibiotics and modern plumbing.
Innovation and progress are enemies of totalitarianism, which must suppress both to maintain its stranglehold (thru regulation) on productive and thrifty classes.
It is totalitarianism that decides which group (company) of thieves shall hold monopoly privileges, who use such privileges to destroy competitors and rape the biosphere.
Nature isn't kind either, and can be quite the intolerant and tyrannical bitch if you're not careful. She will eat you alive when you're stupid, and put you to the test when you're smart.
There is pleanty of support for reality at zero pies left to swipe.
It would be very nice to see all them useless zombies busting a sweat doing truly productive shit like some others do. Fiat magic makes zero extra pies. Thats the rub and its going to suck real bad for everyone.
That said. There is another way to do this. Fix the real value of the coin and it will be a real limit on all these clowns. Fiat aint magic its theft. If there is no other way to stop the theft then the only good move it to stop producing anything they can use to run this shitshow.
Fed govt union worker here.checking in..working from home...yawn...now get yer ass back to work...someone's gotta pay for the 3 pensions I will soon be collecting...sell some of that gold...someone will have to pay for my retirement obamacare
without a minimum wage [and granted, artificially boosting it is highly problematic and not necessarily fair] all that would happen is a race to the bottom wage wise.
Add to that th eopen borders nations are constructs idiots who reduce human life to economics and you'd have people working 16 hour days for pennies.
No system is perfect, and the idea that the "free market" is either truly free or fair requires ideological blinders, and/or abject stupidity.
junk away, cunts.
Didn't junk you but with current overcapacity, the value of human labor is almost at zero. Inevitable robotics and AI advances over the next decades will make human efforts worth less than zero.
Raising the minimum wage is a salve that does nothing to fix the fact that the current economic and political order is not bringing us closer to getting off this rock so that the human race can be free from the confines of our meat cage to experiment with new modes of governance and make real technical and scientific progress.
Don't like it? Better make friends with the Amish.
Me and the Amish get along just fine. Its the freeshit army that is going to be sucking hind tit.
I disagree about the value of human labor. Thats all that keeps the plates spinning. This dine and dash shit stops when the honest stop serving food before getting fed themselves.
Theoretically speaking, I think the value of human labor is naturally deflationary, and will always be so due to the natural tendency towards gaining efficiencies in completing a given task. The more efficiently a given task is completed, the less human labor is needed to complete that task, which has become standardized. But these gained efficiencies then free up human labor for other uses, which can be more profitable than the given, now standardized, task. The natural key to profit is being first to innovate. In a truly free market with a huge overabundance of cheap labor, working for pennies per day is unfortunately the natural value of that labor. But that natural reality is only caused by the market distortion of letting too much cheap labor into the market. Without that distortion, the value of construction labor would be higher than pennies. The natural solution to one market distortion is not creating another market distortion of a minimum wage, it's in correcting the first market distortion.
“The Chinese government debt is 300% of GDP.”
It’s an alarming ratio for sure… but what is the real GDP.
If Chinese bureaucrats are as careless with the composition of their GDP as American bureaucrats are with theirs, the above ratio could be 500%... 1,000%... or worse.
And, how do US federal accountants fabricate the American GDP?
Oddly enough, you can find this answer in recent Financial Reports issued by the US government.
I recently examined one of these Reports, and found their GDP was comprised with several components that measured consumption (permanent and temporary destruction) of property. Their fraction of the GDP approximated 35% of published GDP.
There was more: these accountants made 75-year projections as if the government would not pay interest on its debt instruments during that time.
And then there were street gangs and drug cartels, the government’s – and China’s – role in arming, protecting and forming alliances with such gangs and cartels… and a dozen or so other items. They all point to a conclusion that a vast operation is being perpetrated… I began this Part 2 (of my examination) with the question, ‘What financial shock do Judeo-Bolsheviks plan?’ Do they plan to inflate the dollar to zero… push stocks to PE ratios of 300, then slam them to a ratio of single digits or even minus numbers… repudiate the federal debt… replace Federal Reserve bank notes with Treasury bank notes…?’
And, how do China’s ghost cities fit into this unprecedented operation?
And, when will they pull the plug?
Don’t believe me? Let me walk you thru their maze, Part one and Part two.
The Piper’s invoice depends not on whether his victims know or not about it.
GDP is largely a measure of industrial inefficiency, overall waste, and recycled sudsidy/welfare money (unless you are counting hookers and blow too).