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Guest Post: You Want To Create Jobs? Here's How
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
You Want To Create Jobs? Here's How
Keynesian "stimulus" has failed to do anything but prop up the Status Quo. If we want to create jobs, we need to clean the house of impaired debt and lower the cost structure of the entire economy.
Politicos across the spectrum and cargo-cult Keynesians are constantly bleating about "creating jobs." You really want to create jobs instead of just helplessly wringing your soft little hands? Here's how:
1. The only engine for jobs is small business, so quit pandering to global corporations and start pandering to the people who might actually hire someone in America. The back-of-the-envelope number bandied about is that small business creates about 60% of the new jobs in the U.S. I suspect that's a number from a decade or two ago; in the real world of the present, it's more like 90%.
As noted here many times before, Global Corporate America is a profit machine with no loyalty to the nation or its workforce. It only has one prime directive: deploy capital and labor wherever it reaps the most profit and the quickest return. That's it. Everything else is political propaganda and PR.
This is not a judgment, it is a statement of fact. As capital is allowed to flow freely, then it seeks the highest return and the lowest labor costs. Once global supply chains are in place, then that place is rarely America.
Why? Because the U.S. economy has a high cost structure for small business that's getting higher while yielding diminishing returns. Rents are high, thanks to the real estate bubble, taxes for small business are high, healthcare costs are double that of our developed-world competitors--the list goes on. America is not an efficient place to do business; you pay high costs and taxes (if you're a small business or self-employed), and don't get much in return.
It's a great place to be a global corporation or billionaire, because they can buy special favors that exempt them from the same burdens imposed on small business.
The U.S. economy is hobbled by two systemic burdens: sickcare and the insolvent "too big to fail" banking system. Both act as enormous taxes on the productive citizenry.
You want to create jobs? Then stop diddling around with cargo-cult Keynesian "stimulus" which just props up the least efficient and most parasitic elements of the economy: the banking sector, Wall Street, cartels and fiefdoms. Keynesian stimulus is simply another facet of the Wall Street/bank/corporatocracy Status Quo: we've already squandered trillions in "stimulus" government spending, and very little has trickled down to the businesses which might actually hire someone in the U.S. It is a failed policy precisely because it is entirely Status Quo.
If we really want to create jobs, we need deep structural reforms. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic--i.e. trimming the payroll tax 2%--is meaningless. Here's the to-do list for those who are serious about creating jobs:
1. Write off $3 trillion in underwater mortgages, $1 trillion in impaired student loan and consumer debt, and $1 trillion in doomed commercial real estate loans. Here's the core fact: those debts will never be paid back; they're already lost. Keeping them in a zombie state cripple the borrowers and the economy. The 10 million mortgages which are deeply underwater are not coming back; they're gone, let's accept it and set the stage for real growth. This writedown will have several salutary consequences:
A. It will wipe out the 6 "too big to fail" banks which are acting as a dead weight on the economy and on its political governance. It's too bad the Keynesians are too busy painting radio dials on rocks and chanting tired incantations to realize that the only step that will make a difference in jobs is destroying the "too big to fail" banks, and thus destroying their grip on the nation's throat.
Replace them with 50 smaller banks which are precluded from buying each other--or 250 banks. Re-enact Glass-Steagal to separate depository and investment banks--recall the bill was less than 10 pages long. Once the TBTF banks are gone, there won't be enough concentrated wealth and capital to so easily subvert the political system.
B. By wiping out doomed home mortgages, you free up workers who were immobilized and unable to move to where jobs are being created. Labor mobility is absolutely critical, so those with the right skills can move to where the skills are needed; underwater mortgages trap potential employees in dead-ends.
C. Wiping out the debt via auctioning off 10 million homes would drop prices and lower the cost structure of housing across the board. The critical destructive event of the past decade was making housing a speculative playground. That jacked up costs and left underwater owners and lenders fighting to keep prices propped up. That is a hopeless exercise, another "hidden tax" on the economy.
Writing off debt that will never be collected cleans the slate and lowers the cost structure. Once housing returns to its historical levels of valuation, a lower salary will still be enough to buy a house.
In other words, propping up housing to "save" the banks has helped render America uncompetitive on the global marketplace. Historically, a house should cost no more than two years of the median salary in the area.
2. Reduce healthcare/sickcare costs by a third, from 17% of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) to 11%--then reduce it again to the level of Australian and Japan healthcare costs, around 8% of GDP. Sickcare is truly pernicious, as it acts as an 8% "useless tax" on the economy: if our developed-economy competitors can provide healthcare to all their citizens for literally half of what we spend per capita, then we are instantly uncompetitive just as a result of sickcare.
As I have endlessly explained here, "healthcare" in the U.S. is nothing but an enormously profitable assembly of cartels. It is truly sickcare, because in a profit-based system, health is profitless and therefore the enemy of profit: it's illness that's profitable, so the sicker the populace, the better.
That's why 50% of our healthcare costs are expended on 5% of the people. They're where the money is to be made. Diabesity is immensely profitable; low-BMI healthy people are uselessly profitless. Illness is highly profitable, health is unprofitable.
I have covered this many times, and I don't have time to repeat it all. Please enter "sickcare" into the Google custom search bar in the upper left sidebar, and you can find all the source material you want.
If you read the history of healthcare, it seems more an historical accident than some well-thought-out plan that employers were saddled with providing healthcare insurance for their employees. This was workable when healthcare was 1% or less of a workers compensation, but now that it's 50%, and millions of people work part-time or are contract workers, it no longer works on a systemic level. There is nothing written in stone about this system, and in a "freelance nation" it no longer makes sense.
I have often written about healthcare, and what it all boils down to is this: either the system shrinks in a chaotic collapse, or we deal with reality and shrink it via a complete redesign. It's going to implode if the current course is maintained, and then we'll have nothing but shambles. Is that really preferable to grasping the nettle and redesigning the system from the ground up? Isn't America supposed to embrace innovation? Or is that just PR for selling a new electronic toy?
Scrape away the propaganda spewed by cartels and their think-tank toadies, and the bottom line is that there are only two large-scale healthcare systems which are efficient in the U.S.: the Veterans Administration and cash. To understand why this is so, we need to realize the staggeringly negative consequences of not having a nationally mandated "best practices" for care that is also strictly cost-conscious.
Without a coherent, rational, cost-conscious set of national "best practices" guidelines, doctors and their employers are open to claims of wrongful care, inadequate care, etc. This lack of national standards creates wasteful "defensive medicine" on a vast scale. This site has many readers within the medical profession, and I could relate many horror stories of the perverse incentives created by the current sickcare system.
I am not an expert on the VA, but it seems to have a national set of "best practices" which are applied at all VA facilities around the nation. There are limits on care--there has to be. That is simply reality. I knew an older internal medicine doctor in my 20s and 30s, and he often had very ill patients with multiple conditions and diseases. At this stage of illness and life, there is very little anyone can do to restore the health of a very ill person. "Heroic measures" undertaken to stave off lawsuits just throw away money and place additional burdens on the family and the patient.
Why is it so difficult for us to recognize these simple realities? One reason is the system rewards "heroic measures" (highly profitable) and lawsuits (potentially profitable, so "fishing expeditions" are encouraged) if they're not undertaken.
The VA is the only truly innovative healthcare provider in the nation. I don't have time here to explain why, so do your own research on national computer systems in healthcare. The VA is owned lock, stock and barrel by the Federal government, and while it has its problems like any vast bureaucracy, nobody is claiming that it is corrupt. We seem to have forgotten that corruption comes with concentrations of wealth and political power which forms partnerships of cartels and Central State fiefdoms. If there is no profit, then the motivation for corruption falters.
How corrupt is NASA or the VA? Are they really like the banking sector? The answer is no.
Here's the key feature of the VA system: doctors get to be doctors, not gate-keepers or profit-skimmers. Doctors don't own the labs that do the tests they order, and when somebody sues them, the doctors are backed up by a regiment of government lawyers. Doctors don't have to lay awake at night worrying about getting sued or making their malpractice payment.
The common-sense solution to cut healthcare costs in half is a dual system: a VA-like system with universal access but strict cost controls and no profit, and cash: buy whatever care you want, from whomever you want. Don't like the VA system? Fine, save your cash and buy whatever care you want, no restrictions. Don't want to work for the VA system? Fine--get your license to practice medicine and set up shop, cash only.
This would not be a painless transition; after all, the cartel-Medicare/Medicaid complex has been on a hiring spree ever since the cartels realized there was literally no limit to how much they could bill the government. (Recall that 40% of our sickcare costs are paper-shuffling, embezzlement and fraud. That's what's incentivized, so that's what blossoms.)
But the reality is that cutting sickcare in half would restore it from a "profit center" to actual healthcare in the hands of primary-care physicians.
The ultimate answer to improving healthcare is community-based healthcare. As long as isolated "consumers" have few incentives or local options for improving their own health with their peers and primary-care physicians and nurses, then improving health is fighting the headwinds of marketed illness via junk food and techno-entertainment inactivity.
If you don't like these solutions, then come up with your own, but they have to cut U.S. healthcare spending per capita in half. Nothing less will create a competitive economy.
Lest you think this alarmist, the Establishment journal Foreign Affairs reached the same conclusion: How Health Care Can Save or Sink America.
It's easy to predict what will happen is we do nothing; in a few years, Medicare will exist in name, but there won't be anyone left to provide care for IOUs. That's the ultimate irony: when the whole system implodes, the only thing left will be the VA and cash care: the two systems I am recommending as solutions.
3. State and local government "one-stop" permits and oversight for new business. Those outside small business have no understanding of the roadblocks, the junk fees, and the madness-inducing pettiness of competing government bureaucracies, the vast majority of which take no risks and whose employees view small business as the enemy or as tax donkeys upon which they can heap abuse without any fear of retribution. The general mindset of government from the point of view of struggling small business can be summed up in one word: Extortion.
If you think this harsh, please go out and try starting a business from scratch and hire 10 people to work for you. Was the experience enjoyable, low-cost, risk-free and seamless?
The truth is that government workers trying to do a good job of regulation and oversight are just as frustrated as small business: the current system's tangle of self-serving fiefdoms makes it almost impossible for government workers to do their jobs well.
Regulation and oversight are like vitamins: if you don't have any, the economy suffers, but having too much is deadly, too.
I know one growing suburban community that has been trying to get a new train station on an existing rail line for over ten years. The number of agencies and monopolies which can inhibit or block every step of the process is somewhere between 10 and 13. If you think this tangle of competing jurisictions and bureaucratic bloat offers great value to the nation, I invite you to compare efficient nations with low unemployment and bloated banana republics with high unemployment and crony Capitalism.
The latter take 10 years to approve a new commuter train station.--or maybe 15 years, or never. This is the acme of a broken system.
Yes, the issues are complex. But does stretching the decision process out for 10 years add value? Couldn't a decision be reached in two months, if there was any incentive and pressure to do so? Yes or no, proceed or do something else: we have lost the ability to incentivize speed and efficiency in government, and this has crippled the economy being regulated.
If the nation is serious about encouraging new businesses, then government has to strip away the inefficiency and bloat which inhibit growth for essentially zero payoff. Permits are important, and oversight is important; but it is merely common-sense that these functions be centralized and speeded up to foster "best practices" without stultifying new businesses.
Government employees who want to do their jobs efficiently and productively would be delighted to work for a stripped down, centralized agency which was designed to approve or disapprove projects quickly, and regulate the economy like vitamins--enough for safety, but not too much, i.e. a self-serving fiefdom.
It's that simple: lower the cost structure of the economy, and remove the impediments to starting new businesses and hiring workers. For more on these topics:
Unemployment: The Gathering Storm (September 26, 2009)
Here's Why Small Business Isn't Hiring, and Won't be Hiring (July 11, 2011)
Seven Headwinds for the U.S. Economy (August 4, 2010)
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You want to create jobs? You have to lower peoples expectations, and eliminate the sense of entitlement in this country. Make the minimum wage a livable wage and remove the too easy social net. Noone should ever be better off on government handouts than they would be with a job.
Bravo! Cheers!
How do you propose to "make the minimum wage a livable wage?"
Does that go for McDonald's workers?
Hotel maids?
Fruit pickers?
I think those folk's "expectations" are already pretty low. How will you lower them further?
tell them to give up their ipods, directv, and xbox: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/272081/modern-poverty-includes-ac-and-xbox-ken-mcintyre
Fair enough. We can fix many so called "problems" by redefining terms. Poverty might be defined as "no refrigrator, coffee maker, or access to potable water."
America's so called "poverty problem" would be resolved instantly.
Impediments to economic growth would be avoided as well since the "middle classes" would continue to voraciously consume cable TV and iProducts.
Many people living in "poverty" are better off than I am. I don't have an iphone or ipod. I don't have 100 channels on cable TV. I have a tiny little car. Absolutely no jewelry. I keep my shoes and clothes until they're full of holes. I work 50 hours a week and have two graduate degrees. Yet I'm supposed to feel sorry for those who sit at home watching Jerry Springer while leeching off society? Fuck them. They're no better than the bankers. Both groups use Washington DC to rob us. DHHS budget is $900 billion per year. Another $130 billion goes out to SS disability scammers. I feel sorry for those leeches like I feel sorry for the bankers
Wow - nice hair shirt.
Who told you to feel sorry for anybody? I'm w/you: screw everybody who isn't me. Just joshin'. But seriously: why not just say that the poor aren't poor and be done with it? Years ago I used to work with a gal from Vietnam. She grew up harvesting rice and moved to the US at the age of 17. She insisted that nobody in the U.S. was poor becasue everbody could get food and clean water. Poverty to her was starving and drinking dirty water. She was one of the smartest and hardest working people I ever knew.
I live in a region of the Pacific Northwest where there is a lot of fruit and row-crop agriculture. Harvest is done by migrants. I've seen how they live. My guess is that the gal I mentioned above -- and you maybe, even -- would identify them as "poor."
WHY is the minimum wage around $8/hr? Why not $800/hr? Do I hear $8000/hr?
Fallacious thinking along the lines of the Broken Window fallacy came up with minimum wages, and the tell is that the logical conclusion would be to raise the minimum wage to an absurdity, hence the entire notion of a minimum wage should be abolished.
The topic was argued and laid to rest in:
"Economics in One Lesson", ISBN: 978-0-517-54823-3, by Henry Hazlitt
A lot of union contracts are tied to minimum wage.
Congress can give their supporters a raise that way and claim to be humanitarian. Crooked bastards.
You contradict yourself.
==> eliminate the sense of entitlement
==> Make the minimum wage a livable wage
Cognitive dissonance much?
That's not a contradiction at all, but unfortunately most people don't really think the whole 'minimum wage' thing through. It's not an excessive sense of entitlement to expect that a full time job is sufficient for a person to get by without needing the Governments help. The sense of entitlement I'm talking about is everything thinking they deserve a McMansion, everything thinking they should have an iPad, everything thinking that they deserve a slice of someone elses hard work (via taxes).
Minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. For a full time job, that works out to about $15k a year. In the US, $15k is not a 'liveable' wage. That's ok though, because in order to 'get by' there's food stamps, medicaid, section 8 housing, etc etc ETC.
In other words, the gap between minimum wage and a liveable wage is made up by the taxpayer. Why is that? Take away the government handouts and who's going to work for $7 an hour? In other words, the handouts help keep wage expectations/demands artificially low - Why do I the tax payer subsidize walmarts employment costs? Why am I helping make flipping burgers at McDonalds a 'viable' (from a standpoint of 'getting by') job?
That's ridiculous.
I'm not completely anti 'helping those in need' but right now that help extends to people that otherwise shouldn't need it. Why should someone with a full time job need to rely on all manner of government handouts in order to get by? So one option is to raise the minimum wage. Set it at a point where it's actually liveable. You end up with less people dependent on the social net, which means less of a burden on taxpayers. You don't enjoy the fact that a full time employee at Burger King is a burden on tax payers do you?
Ideally, I'd prefer the Government to not even set a minimum wage, to let the market set one instead. Unfortunately that can't happen while the too easy social net is there. If you removed it cold turkey you'd have riots.
So yeah, the too low minimum wage doesn't create jobs, or make it easier for businesses to create jobs. All it does is shift a portion of the costs of being a part of this society onto taxpayers. To me, that is BS.
The problem is that you have stated that people need to be paid a "living wage", which is not a salary, but a concept.
In order to implement that concept, people have to have authority over every single employer in the nation.
That puts us right back to square one, with the system being gamed, manipulated, and eventually controlled by those who have the capital to buy those who make the rules.
Same oligarchy ends up controlling everything. Why?
Cause they print the fuckin money!
pods
The real scandal that most do not think about is: Why are our schools turning out future workers with such useless skillz that they're only qualified for $7.25/hr (if that?)?
There are not sufficient job openings in the US for the 63K scientists and engineers the US graduates every year presently. Job growth over the last decade has consisted entirely of low paying, low skill, service sector jobs (top 50). It's not a question of skills, it is a question of opportunities.
Sorry. With Biflation in the picture you wouldn't even create a single job, and just lose more.
And since when does not feeling entitled equate to a better economy? The whole basis for consumer spending that supports the whole concept of Reaganomics runs on the basis of feeling entitled. Otherwise people stick their money in the mattress. Since when was "The Greatest Country On The Planet" not meant to stoke up feeling entitled?
Not a single job will be created until there's a giant reset.
Know who feels entitled? The supply-side. They offshore jobs and industries and live off corporate welfare. They pay virtually no taxes. Yet they benefit from the American economy, the dollar, and military protection. Ask the CEOs not to feel entitled to building golden parachutes with money from monetary stimulus
Eliminate the sense of entitlements and then have a livable minimum wage? There's a contradiction in principles.
Once home and food prices crash, maybe it will be a livable wage.
Foxconn (makes most AAPL products in Taiwon) announed they are installing 1000s++ robots to eliminate $5/DAY labor demands. Most US labor is demanding 10 to 20 times that paid in Asia where there is no safety net (unemployment, health care, min wage, labor law, student aid, etc.) These Asian workers are essentially the modern day slave who are out of sight just like the 1850s. Most Americans feel the Asia worker is lucky to have work (sound familiar). Those people should be happy. Until the US dollar loses its world reserve status (probably 5 years), We can have our slaves and eat cake. Borrow on!!
Bullshit!
The only way to get enough jobs back in our country to make a difference in three words;
Bilateral Trade Agreements!
That won't happen unless corporations are banned.
Agreed! It really is that simple.
Yet that Obama terrorist monkey either can't figure that out or willfully blinds himself.
What happened to CHS? I used to enjoy reading his stuff....but his last two submissions have missed the mark. Like, a lot.
Well, he is "Of two Minds"!
This article is GREAT. He is 100% right - Small Business grows the headcount, Big Business shrinks the headcount.
Nurturing an environment where small business can thrive is the key to future prosperity. Have a look at Germany, Taiwan, etc.
or just move bitchez
Good ideas, but nothing changes until it all blows sky high...
And then we'd have 15 years of litigation, interspersed with 5 month stints of violence, as the lawyers aquire thier private armies of "loyal" customers. which would actually be traded amongst themselves like washington interns.
more specifically. Under this plan, if you write off chris dood's underwater mortgage, *that he got from mozillo* I am going to fart in that general direction.
`in the tune of R-E-S-P-E-C-T`
R-E-S-E-T,
That is what it means to me,
R-E-S-E-T,
String up Bernanke,
I'm about to give you all of my money
And all I'm askin' in return, honey
Is to give me my profits
When you get home (just a, just a, just a, just a)
Yeah baby (just a, just a, just a, just a)
When you get home (just a little bit)
Yeah (just a little bit)
AS a VA patient, kudos. My commercial experience was fragmentary, little cohesion, with gaps of a serious nature. Let alone the cost.
One of the best posting, overall. There are problems that government can solve, that profit motive and its tendency to price out availability cannot.
Lots of people would like to be doctors.
Did you ever wonder why there are so few seats in medical schools?
Think about it.
Peak medical is not an accident.
The answer: The AMA (and other professional cliques!) are limiting their competition!
Jobism is also like vitamins, it does solve a lot of problems but is not panacea. Does anyone have balls to question whether jobism has limits where its starting to be a problem instead of the solution?
The unemployed are gonna have to stop looking for "jobs" and start looking for "work" -- there is a difference!
here's an idea
bring our troops home and replace the M16 with a Stihl chainsaw and clean up our SCREWED UP FORESTS?
oh wait - that doesn't entail oil
sorry - my bad - democracy and freedom only work if there is oil in the equation
You can't cut down the old growth due to the Sierra Club and other extremist environmental groups. Besides, I believe those chainsaws do use fossil fuels. You can't find an electrical outlet in the forest.
Saw ready jobs. That's the ticket.
Since the Obama administration wants to outlaw coal, we'll just have to kill more trees.
We have tens of millions of dead pine trees all over the Rocky Mountain states which constitute a huge fire danger that need to be taken out. Milestones
Extremists like Teddy Roosevelt?
Chris Hughes Smith for congress!
here is a better idea, start WW3 !
And I quote
If you do not know of EDGAR CAYCE then you should find out more... he was very real. I think he mentioned 2011 as the start
I concur. And as a small business owner, I am tired of fighting the government, working sooo many hours, and still owing some agency somewhere money. All the legal, accounting, and taxations of fees, fines, and what have you, really does take away the incentive to us older set.
I like the healthcare system proposal. I always believe that the insurance cartel started by Nixon was a bad idea. Cash or Gov!
Sounds like a nice duality. Apple vs Droid.
Anyway, through in a socialocracy of having crowd source reglation controls, and I think we can also drive a stake through the pernicious evil virus of regulatory capture.
Vote Ponzi a Nobel!
Apple vs Droid.
Android is a modified operating system based on the Linux kernel. It should be Apple vs Linux.
Totally different application layer. Not Linux. I think the kernel is still forked, too.
Here are seven things that a good attempt at Health Insurance reform should do:
1. Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and
individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits.
Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax-deductible
(for the Employer, that is!), but individual health insurance is not
(So sorry, middle-class, wage-slave!).
2. Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing
across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health
insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able to
use that insurance wherever we live. With no real competition in CA, is
it any wonder that Blue Cross can raise their rates around 39%?
3. Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover.
These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars.
What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual
customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying. Why should a
single man have to pay extra for OB-Gyn coverage, for example?
4. Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay
insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Perhaps then
Doctors can go back to ordering medical tests when they're necessary and not
just to cover their @ss, when dealing with some lawsuit-happy patient!
5. Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health care treatments
cost. Ever see a price list in a Doctor's office? Neither have I, yet we're
expected to pay $?? whenever we get an appointment!
6. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards
bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater patient empowerment, choice
and RESONSIBILITY. Too many people (especially their children!) order Doctors
to "Spare No Expense" when it comes to saving granny's life, even though she's
been bed-ridden and on a ventilator for the last year. With no Quality of life,
just what are these people trying to save?
7. Revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax
deductible donation to help millions of people who have no insurance.
In Minnesota, we can volunteer to spend some extra tax for a Wildlife fund,
why not a "People's Health Fund?"
Note that current proposals in Congress do none of the these things! The Decepticrats and Republicons want a system that will grow the size of Govt, and thus enlarge their own POWER!
When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald
the end of the republic. — Benjamin Franklin
OR:
[quote]
In March 2009, President Barack Obama said, "If there is a way of getting this done
where we're driving down costs and people are getting health insurance at an
affordable rate, and have choice of doctor, have flexibility in terms of their
plans, and we could do that entirely through the market, I'd be happy to do it
that way." This paper explains how letting workers control their health care dollars
and tearing down regulatory barriers to competition would control costs, expand choice, improve health care quality, and make health coverage more secure.
First, Congress should give Medicare enrollees a voucher and the freedom to choose
any health plan on the market. Vouchers would be means-tested, would contain Medicare spending, and are the only way to protect seniors from government rationing.
Second, to give workers control over their health care dollars, Congress should reform
the tax treatment of health care with "large" health savings accounts. Large HSAs would reduce the number of uninsured Americans, would free workers to purchase secure health coverage from any source, and would effectively give workers a $9.7 trillion tax cut without increasing the federal budget deficit.
Third, Congress should break up state monopolies on insurance and clinician licensing. Allowing consumers to purchase health insurance licensed by other states could cover one-third of the uninsured without any new taxes or government subsidies.
Finally, Congress should reform Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance
Program the way it reformed welfare in 1996. Block-granting those programs would reduce the deficit and encourage states to target resources to the truly needy.
The great advantage of a free market is that innovation and more prudent decision making means that fewer patients will fall through the cracks.
Michael F. Cannon is director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute and
coauthor of Healthy Competition: What's Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It.
More by Michael F. Cannon
[/quote]
How about just making it simple: get the fed.gov the hell out of anything to do with health care.
The chances of any of this happening? ZERO
Agree Long John, not gonna happen. +1
The troops are not happy today. AAPL a tell for me still, at day low. And they are flying into the safety of Timmays treasuries. Beyond comprehension.
here is the clip from today's speech where Obama admits we are in a recession
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/ObamaStatem/start/281/stop/324
Want to increase jobs in the US? Start with stopping the import of cheap CHINDA goods.
Cheap chinese imports are killing the economies of the world, including those in africa..........but we did it to ourselves.........$10 trillion dollars of lost wealth thru "free trade agreements".............
Well I hate buying cheap chinese shit, unless I am not counting on it working, then it is fine.
But, this country would have collapsed some time ago if it were not for that cheap chinese shit.
Look at it like what is going on in the food stores now. Value deflation. Smaller package for same price.
Only China cannot make a tool "smaller" per se, only cheaper. That is why we have not felt the squeeze of hidden inflation. We still felt well off cause we can buy the same amount of shit.
Of course, the quality is now down to disposable. Granted, much of that is planned obsolescence anyways. But having cheap ass stuff has allowed us to think we are still okay. If real products were being made there, forget it. We wouldn't buy them, as we (on a whole) could not afford them.
pods
This article makes a lot of sense. And yes, get the troops out of 50+ countries we are in. 28,000 still in Korea. 50+ years after a vicious war. Come on. We are no longer the worlds peace keeper or police. It is OVER.
I have about 150 stocks on my screens that I follow each day and the only green is CHK, FWLT (good earnings) and Every single Miner. It is our day so far. Need GDX to stay over 200dma at the close. Looks super so far. Yup, they really loved the package Congress completed. Looks like a solid F.....
No shorts.
If we want to create jobs, we'll need to get rid of the deep capture that ensures Wall Street & the financial sector, which comprised just 14% of our GDP in 1968 (when manufacturing comprised 44%), but that now comprises 41% of our GDP (manufacturing now comprises only 12%), is done away with.
Deep Capture of the government by Wall Street and the revolving door between K Street & Wall Street is destroying this country.
A nation has to make things of real value to prosper. The fewer nations that can make things as well, or as efficiently, or as prized, the more the nation will prosper. And no, making CDO and CDS does not count as 'manufacturing,' and neither does Big Mac assembly.
But who will stop Deep Capture?
Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich & of course Jessie "The Body" Ventura
And just think how much easier it would be for big companies to bribe the people in control. A little piece of mid-nineties brilliance named MERS comes to mind.
Sorry, but your premise is flawed. Obama is a socialist Marxist, as is most of the Democrat party. Prosperity is the last thing they want. They need to control through hyped crisis's of their own making. If you are doing well, you don't need them, and of course that is something that isn't allowed.
These elite asshats that run Amerika care nothing about "jobs". WTF, it's a useless conversation.
Continually demonize any business or person who is making money while bailing out the failures.
Obama a socialist? Don't make me laugh, that's like saying that New Coke is the real thing.
better solution - legalize prostitution
bitchez?
Great article.
AND KILL THE FED. Let the market set interest rates and we might actually have capital formation instead of asset inflation.
LOL, the last thing Obama wants to do is to create jobs. That just gets in the way of the "Hi-Lo vs. Middle" class warfare agenda that Obama is pursuing.
Conservatives could hamstring the Aristocracy by making common cause with the proles...for a while.
Use the Left's class war rhetoric against them.
Alinsky is useful to all sides.
The Tea Party should demand the USSA confiscate all personal wealth of anyone worth more than a billion dollars. After all, according to the Left, they only have it because they stole it from the poor.
Call their bluff. It isn't like the billionaires have been championing capitalism anyway.
If you stand for freedom, liberty, and free will, you can have nothing to do with the methods of Alinsky, which are based purely on mendacity, manipulation, and deception. Once you get down in the gutter with that filth, you've lost. That's exactly what they want you to do.
Fight fire with fire. There are no rules in war. Throw every billionaire in prison and confiscate their wealth to redistribute it to the middles and lower classes. I really don't give a damn because guys like Soros, Gates, ,Buffett, Wall Street etc are working to undermine the free markets and middle class.
No, no, don't throw these billionaire guys in prison. Give them a chance to donate their wealth to a good cause, helping SMEs and community services in local neighbourhoods. We can be generous and allow them to keep $100M of their wealth. Wouldn't want their families to starve after all.
Prison comes when they refuse.
Prison? So instead of them robbing us through the Federal Government, we will be paying them to live. Screw that. Shoot them in the head and be done with it.
The old ways are the best.
Crucify them.
The system is DESIGNED to DESTROY any upstart business that would seek to offer a real world and common sense alternative to the drab machinery of the controlling global enterprises. Diversity of thought is being extinguised (or in some cases conscripted) and the effect on the grassroots of small business enterprise in this country is suffocating. Entry barriers designed to keep everyone "safe" intentionally create obstacles which can only be surmounted by the malignant Establishment operations. In this way they grind us down over time and in this way they slowly process us into the human equivalent of hotdog meat. Gray goo. Amorphous, nebulous, incapable masses which rely on our masters to tell us what and when to think. Avoid their system by choosing not to participate in it as much as possible ...while staying under the radar of "Skynet".
Somehow, the kill the fed movement is much like the flat earth society.
Somehow you manage to muster up enough IQ to use a computer
Really?
Do tell.
I've never known as many people awakened or awakening to the moral, monetary and sovereign hazard that the Federal Reserve represents.
I meet these people nearly every day. They know, for the 1st time in their lives, about the Federal Reserve.
They may not be the majority yet, but it doesn't take a large % of impassioned people to thwart even the most secretive of organizations.
The End the Fed movement is just beginning. It has legs.
add, end corporate personhood forever and reinstate personal liability. End banking as we know it. End food price speculation. Hire back every whistleblower as head of the department they worked in. Offer suicide or public execution for working against the public good in any way.
might consider amending the constitution in a way only the people can.
Nah, corporate personism just didn't go far enough -- when I go broke, I'm broke. When I die, I'm dead. When I break the law I GO TO JAIL! Pierce the corporate veil. If I don't get one as a person, they shouldn't either. Make them die at age 100, no exceptions, except for sooner. Make all "eye pee" they own go public so innovators can add to it without needing to worry about having to pay so much for the basic stuff -- kill patent trolls outright.
Sony rootkits thousands of computers and gets a fine, small at that, considering, and the rooted boxes get a certificate for a replacement CD? Puleese -- had I rooted a buncha boxes, I'd be in jail for life -- why not Sony? (they have a few other things to feel guilty about lately as well).
I can't make smartphones with rounded rectangular cases? What the crap other shape am I supposed to make them, Apple? Shame on you after basically stealing BSD as your opsys -- some innovation king, yeah, I get it. Just like Disney raping the Grimms fairytales and other public domain, then getting the best copyright laws money could buy -- that ain't working, that's the way ya do it. Money for nothing but being able to afford to buy laws (which takes surprisingly little).
Microsoft, as in "we'll see who is the government here"? Paying SCO to spread fud and sue Linux related companies?
I can't design a computer where the Add instruction is called Add? I'm looking at you, Intel. As well as putting in a hardware breakpoint?
I can't hire an employee without having to pay another rather large chunk for disability and unemployment insurance? Guess that's why every business I ran used contractors for everything -- they get paid more, I keep more, everyone's happy -- but they don't show up as "employed" that way. There's your major job killer right there. Not one person, given the choice, took the employee route, not one, ever -- for software and hardware developers. They're not going to get an on the job injury, tend to be young and healthy, and also understand that when times are good, they get lots of hours, when times are bad, well that's why you saved money when times are good -- with 100% efficiency, rather than the way the state does it.
How bout using the commerce clause to sue states, and prevent their legislatures from mandating every damn thing under the sun be covered? Let the insurance companies compete across state lines!! States should supervise their books, thats it!
We're sorry you couldn't get that new cancer drug, but rest well nowing that some whore is getting her birth control pill.
INSURANCE IS FOR CATASTROPHES, NOT CONTRACEPTION!!
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/08/02/us_health_agency_says_insurers_must_provide_free_birth_control_for_women/
Cui Bono? Chalk up another win for the Pharma industry. Now the taxpayer is on the hook for birth control, as well as cervical cancer vaccinations of rather dubious health benefit. 150 million women is a nice, big, fat target. Now if we can get them all fornicating in a most slatternly fashion, think how much money can be made!
Pharma game plan:
1. Buy Congress
2. Buy the White House
3. Promote moral degeneracy and drug use
4. ...
5. ...
6. ...
7. Profit!
I agree absolutely that insurance is meant for catastrophes...
That said, if it were up to me contraception would be free, or even incentivized. Some idiot that can't afford to feed him/herself is still going to practice the horizontal monkey dance, then before you know they multiply. Another poor person that can't afford to feed themselves. Then some asshole politician will come knocking on my door to help feed the poor child. No thanks.
It should be free as long as the donees are doing so voluntarily. Forcing group or person to provide a service or product to another group or person is slavery
Realy? Oversight by the most worthless, unproductive, slovenly, lazy assholes on the planet, gov't employees, is good? Seriously? And centralizing their function under an easily bribed and captured "uber-tard...erm...tsar" would allow "efficient, productive" government employees to make a more effiecient system?
Man, I want what you're smoking, because those halucinations are fantastic. And you write them with such matter of factness, that you don't even think the premises need to be analyzed.
But, you see, if we're going to have gangs of robbers, called government employees, extorting businesses for "fees" and "permits" the smaller the territory their reign of tyrrany covers, the more gangs there are. The more gangs of looters, the more they have to compete with each other for victims to loot, and thus, the overall average looting declines. It's also a whole lot more difficult for any one entity to capture a host of independent pirates...erm...regulators, than it is one big one.
Just one question; If the government is the "gang of robbers" are government employees, then why are they broke? Follow the money dude, it isn't in the hands of governement workers. Try wall street, big banks, and kleptocompanies like GE.
I agree, crash the fucking system and lets find out who's labor is actually worth a shit. I promise you that in your "pirate world" paper pushers will be eaten first, which is fine with me.
The government isn't broke. We the current taxpayers and future generations are broke. The government is set to spend $3.8 trillion this year. Not exactly broke.
Government is a "gang of robbers" in the sense that it extracts much of its "loot" through taxes ultimately backed by force. It increasing treats its lower level employees like serfs, especially those who do not bring in loot, so only favored members of the gang are rich. Much of this "loot" goes to feed the owner corporations you mentioned in a sort of reverse Robin Hood effect.
Government is "broke" because the loot they extract from the people is not enough, so in addition they are basically paying the minimum on their Amex with their Visa and vice versa (both on our liability) which results in an inflation tax and instability.
Very few companies have been taxed out of business.
I whole shit load have been regulated into extinction.
Maybe I'm missing something. What's the point of making all these policy changes when it's a matter of years before the whole system collapses under its own weight anyway? I don't think any country has degenerated as far as the US has and recovered from it.
I wonder if WB-7 and C.D. can collabotate on a ( Last 15 minutes of N. Y. trading?)
Civil War Style,>>>.
Forcefully evict the 30+ million illegal aliens that are here now and you can imagine all of the avenues of employment that that one act alone would open up. Problem solved.
You too can pick apples in upstate New York, peaches in GA (you can do that now!), and tomatoes in FL.
There are 45 million people on welfare and another 4 million people sitting in prison. How did we ever manage to farm before 1980?
Food cost more then, as a % of family income, and as a % of per-capita income. It was nearly 40% of in 1900, for instance, vs. around 10% today (but once again rising....income doesn't buy what it used to). Source - USDA.
Also, we had poor immigrants picking produce back then too (Latinos, Chinese, Irish, etc), just not as many.
The invasion will continue until the US breaks up.
If the population isn't demanding a tight border even during a depression, that war is lost.
Learn Spanish.
I wonder if WB-7 and C.D. can collaborate on a ( Last 15 minutes of N. Y. trading?)
Civil War Style,>>>.
The VA is the only truly innovative healthcare provider in the nation. I don't have time here to explain why, so do your own research on national computer systems in healthcare. The VA is owned lock, stock and barrel by the Federal government, and while it has its problems like any vast bureaucracy, nobody is claiming that it is corrupt.
Being an innovative healthcare provider doesn't automatically = a win for patients. My impression has always been that VA hospitals get the bottom of the barrel of everything - but maybe they have less layers of bullshit to wade through too. In any case it's news to me that the VA system is the pride of American medicine and if the rest of us are looking up to them it's probably indicative of how far down we've slid.
Before legalized gambling the Bureau of Indian Affairs probably wasn't corrupt either but I wouldn't want to live on a reservation.
Manhattan doctors that only transact in cash are pretty innovative given the environment.
Less government and less central planning please, not more.
Every piece of medical equipment and medicine that the VA uses comes from the innovative private sector. The VA simply take as much money as it needs by taxing the private sector. It's not hard to provide better healthcare when you're using other people's money and don't have to deal with the regulations that you impose on others.
Barney Frank, yes we almost forgot about him
but just when you thought it was safe
the Super Congress will provide a fine stage for his come back
You're kidding right? Exempt mortgages????? So all the millions of dead beats who went far and above what they could afford now get a "free ride"????? What a slap in the face for those that have been responsible. That would set a precedent for the future bubbles of America to be wiped. How about this one - you make your bed, you lie in it. JFC...
https://www.gunsgrubandgold.com/forum
sarcastic truth for many:
But, But, But my small business involved a 175% mortgage + 50% HELOC for cash flow. I was able to write off all the interest, along with all the stuff I bought, including junkets and seminars, a couple of vehicles, a whole bunch of training for my rotating staff of employees and a $15,000 refrigerated sandwich prep table which was essential to my custom roofing business to service the needs of people who need custom roofs, not regular roofs.
Just because my business failed with the bad economy, does not mean I should lose my beachfront house that was valued at $5 Million and is now only valued at $3 Million. Look at my net income. Dont look at my gross according to the IRS tax code, I am on food stamps for goodness sakes.
/sarcastic truth.
Hahaha, yea, I just do not understand what planet some people are on. Who is going to "eat" the trillions that this article speaks about? The taxpayer? Its not like it magically vanishes without repercussions. Hey, I just lost 10K at the casino, can I get my money back? :)
Free Ride? The Mortgage Bankers Association walked away from their mortgage on a $70 million building in Washington DC last year. JP Morgan walked away from $100 million worth of buildings in San Francisco. They both were "business decisions". Are not corporations "persons" according to the Supreme Court? Are not all "persons" equal under the law? Or are some persons more equal than others, ala Animal Farm?
So a few "bads" makes it ok for millions???? How about nutting up and accepting responsibility for decisions a person made??? People are more than welcome to walk away from their homes - the only bitch I have is offering a FREE BE to DEAD BEATS who should have had some econ (econ 101) education (public school offers this) where you do NOT buy something you cannot afford and you do not buy something on a floating interest rate, and you sure as hell don't HELOC your home on a secured debt against unsecured debt, ie cars, toys, etc.
If all persons are equal then I want the average exemption value offered to those people who have their mortgages forgiven in cash money. Why should the responsible take it in the ass just because others do not know how to manage money? Where is the equality in that?
Dont you listen to our leaders and press? what makes us equal is that we are all Keynsians. If you dont want to bail these people out then figure out how to not pay taxes. That is also a key component (no sarcasm) of his theory.
So, what you are suggesting is valid, under keynsian theory. Dont pay taxes and get krugman to be your lawyer (since Keynes himself is dead)
Anyone can walk away just like JPM or the MBA. Just accept the bad credit that comes with it
More jobs you say.... stop buying and making everything in China or force Americans to accept a substantially lower standard of living. Like $2 dollars a day. Let me know how that goes over
That would be to easy. The gov't leadership is either too f'n dumb, or they have a diff't agenda.
You want to solve healthcare problem, bring back the Jack Kovorkian's of the world. I for one don't want to sit in a hospital bed when/if I become terminally ill.
all most any poster on ZH has plans that would increase employment
every politician in office can not think of any way to do it with out expanding debt..and gov control
now there is a riddle.
My humble ideas:
It is not enough to create jobs. One needs to create high end jobs.
Plus 5 zillion on that one. I retired early from my software/product development business because you can't write 10 lines of code without a copyright or patent violation in it.
No one can afford to check for that, and your lawyer will tell you not to because you still have to write code, and that makes your violations wilfull.
The patent system is used by the bigs to eliminate any sort of scary innovation by anyone else. Since you can't do zilch without crossing some patent they just swoop down and eliminate you with court costs -- for each other, they just cross license usually. The current spate of everyone suiing everyone (some more than once) in the mobile space is the anomaly here, and it's because that seems to be the only growing market still. You'd think they'd get tired of sending that huge portion of their profits into the legal system, never to return. Usually, the bigs just cross-licnense, no money changing hands. That makes the patent system even better for them to use to eliminate any new competition. They still hate each other, but the devil you know....
And, having once had an RIAA contract....go work at 7/11, you do better. They take no risk at all - you won't be signed until you already have a big following and are making money, unless you're one of those special "pretty people" they manufacture fake insipid pop musicians out of -- and they don't get real rich either. RIAA takes all the money and all you get is profits from touring, if there are any. They are ripping off the musicians more than any downloader ever does. And in fact, when we took our band private, we "made available" our music as low grade MP3s as promotion, and still got great sales for the CD's - in stores and mailorder. They are clueless fucks.
Want to fix the economy eh?
Hows about these?
Stop threatening people with violence and calling it regulation.
Stop kidnapping people and calling it rehabilitation.
Stop extorting people and calling it voluntary participation in a republic.
Stop brainwashing children and calling it education.
Stop murdering and terrorizing people in foreign lands and calling it defense.
Stop begging the people who are responsible for all these crimes to fix things.
Now, I know that these activities are the backbone of the current economy, and giving them up means a lot of people are gonna be out of a job for a while. Don't you think we could build something better in an environment that values freedom and personal responsibility over murder, theft, and lies?
"The only engine for jobs is small business, so quit pandering to global corporations and start pandering to the people who might actually hire someone in America."
This thinking is totally wrong. Business doesn't create jobs -- consumers do!
Businesses hire to service consumers. A restaurant that's full doesn't layoff anyone, no matter how much he hates the government, and the same goes for department stores, engineering firms, etc.
When stores are empty, there's no way they will or should hire. It's a waste of human endeavor. In fact, business serves public purpose best by producing and selling its output with as few employees as possible. That's called productivity, which is what makes us rich in real terms.
You have that exactly backwards. Production is a prerequisite to consumption. Jobs are only "created" when one person can produce something to exchange with another person who has produced something. The guy who produced something can't exchange it with someone who has no production of their own.
Why produce anything if there is no one to buy it. Consumer income drives it all. If you don't have income, you can't buy shit and a business knowing that ain't going to produce shit, otherwise they lose money. You can make the greatest product in world which everyone wants, but if they can't buy, you are out of business.
Also, labor is a limited resource and if companies can produce without labor, they will do so - improved productivity results in greater profit. Ok if you are an investor ... lousy if you are a humble member of the working (and now the middle) class.
Consumption drives our economy, and consumption is depedent upon income. Incomes have been stagnant for decades, but it was made up by encouraging sheeple to consume with ever increasing debt. Need to get incomes growing again.
No, you have it exactly backwards. First a demand occurs, and then supply will appear to satisfy the demand. This is always and everywhere the case. Production when there is not demand is the classical "bubble". For example, the recent mass production of $300,000 houses when the demand was only for $150,000 houses, is the direct cause of the current "housing bubble" which is still the current "crisis". (The actual "crisis" is the possibility that the banks may actually have to share some of the financial losses now due because the "housing bubble" they encouraged and profited from has burst.)
This is a pretty good blog post, Mr. Smith, but falls down in certain areas.
First, the House (mostly Republi-CONS, but some dems involved as well) recently passed some legislation involving small business loans, which now gives precedence to those small businesses which have already been invested in by private equity firms and venture capital firms.
Definitely putting the screws to real independent small businesses.
Next, with regard to healthcare: the principal two cost drivers in American health care are (1) hedge fund speculation across all areas of the healthcare sector; and, (2) private equity firm leveraged buyouts ("pump and dumps") across the spectrum of the healthcare sector.
This stuff going on is the focus of extensive design; it didn't "just happen" sir!
Eliminate the Federal Min wage.
Reduce permitting and licensing requirements and penalize bureaucratic delays.
Turn the EPA into a research institute, all regulatory powers turned over to the states. Inter-state disputes decided by congress.
Accelerate the auctions of mineral and oil permits. Extend the periods of current permits. Open up ANWAR and other oil fields for auction.
Auction off all extraneous Federal assets; wireless spectrum, TARP assets, land acquired by the Fed since '80 or so, etc.
Simplified tax code; lower rates, fewer deductions/exemptions.
Privatize the failing Fed corporations.
Create single national health insurance market.
So if farmers in Iowa growing corn to sell for ethanol dump lots of perticides and fertilizers into the Mississippi River, and those chemicals wash down the River and create a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, which destroys Florida's fishery industries, then Floridian fishery industry families should seek responsible action from Iowa State Legislators? I don't think that will work. The result will be every State poisoning its neighbors' industries, which is the ancient danger called "the tragedy of the commons". When the States all, at lenght, figure out that they are all at risk, and get together to regulate each other, they do so via their Union, the USA, through the EPA, the USDA SCS, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the National Fishery Service. This is a very good thing for every State's natural resource industries, and thus protects natural resource jobs (such as, fishermen, lobstermen, shrimpers, etc.)
Some of these ideas were touted by yours truly 15 yrs ago on a new fangled internet thingy called Compuserve. From experience, I know you will encounter some seemingly clever people calling those ideas unworkable and dumb.
You see, there are still a lot of people out there who fervently believe in the top down approach to economic growth (Low taxes for the insanely rich, subsidizing global corporations for the money to trickle down to everyone else) and believe the bottom up approach of helping small businesses is wasteful and undermining the great American dream of building pristine temples of consumerism in every town.
But, but, but, they will cry, 'The banks are the ones who supply with us with cash and credit! They need to survive and thrive so that society can function and not sink into anarchy. And besides what will happen to them when you write off $3Trillion worth of their "Assets"? (Remember, debt is an asset to these people). Why should homeowners get a free ride? TANSTAAFL!' - I've heard them all.
Don't let me get started on the verbal violence/diahrrea that can ensue when you discusss healthcare with an American. Most don't give a shit if they end up paying 20 times what it would cost if it were not a profit-motivated enterprise, with middlemen sucking like vampires at every hospital bed to profit from the suffering, as long as what they pay didn't end up help cure a fellow American, because once again, TANSTAAFL. Any effort at non-profit, centralized procurement (economies of scale savings), or a national health service is "COMMUNISM!" "Evil!" "Cock suckingly bad!" Now they know about how the VA works, you bet your ass Americans won't be happy until it is run by a slick corporation or three with middle insurance guys galore taking their cut.
I admire your optimism, Charles, but unless something has drastically changed in the collective American psyche, the challenge of persuading them is insurmountable. America is, ipso facto, a corporatist state. A country for the corporations by the corporations. But not only that, in order for her to have arrived in this situation, the levels of corruption at all levels of her goverment had to be so complete as to appear now, to the average American, to be normal. Normal to have your rights infringed, normal for politicians to leave office far wealthier than they entered it, normal for foreign and domestic lobbyists to wield power over policies, normal to have censored media, and normal for her foreign policies to be morally relative.
Anyway, it was a nice walk down memory lane. Good luck.
Here it is, the only way. And there are many more great articles from Hugo Salinas Price on his site. You only need to read one of these if you don't have enough time:
16/June/2010
The gold standard: generator and protector of jobs
04/February/2009
Gold: the protector and creator of jobs
~also~
Go to the website of Hugo Salinas Price for the step-by-step way of creating a Silver Currency to be used as an optional 'other' choice of paying for everyday items.
http://www.plata.com.mx/mplata/articulos/articles.asp
either of these
Reasons for monetizing the 'Libertad' silver ounce
The world is waiting for the sunrise!
Silver money for China
Silver money for Americans
You don't even need "gold", you could base it off a nations raw material value, ie a currency basket made up of natural resources such as copper, oil, natural gas, gold, silver, moly, corn, pork, etc, etc...
Add These:
Get rid of or reduce: Self Employment Tax. (They create new businesses)
Impose an Alternative minimum corporate tax to offset above.
Tax the wealthiest in the country. They don't do anything but add destabilizing money to markets.
BTW: Obama wanted the govt option for Health Care, but it was overriden by lobbyists. The VA was my idea also.
I'll put it this way - one way or another, what he's outlined will happen. It's just a question of when and how. My guess is it'll happen in a chaotic and discontinuous manner, but it doesn't have to happen this way.
Once again - The VA is the only truly innovative healthcare provider in the nation.
WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
I have family that work there and its a cluster f@ck of cluster f@cks!!!!!!!!!!!! My brain shut down after reading that........ the stupid, it burns!!!!!!!!
https://www.gunsgrubandgold.com/forum
Jobs are easy to get. Just have a college education and put $7.25 on the app.
And be young, not overqualified and without a decent salary history. Know from experience. Try getting any other job after being a CEO of a smalltime, but sucessful outfit. No one will have you for anything else, and no one wants what's percieved as a small time CEO or ex business owner. No one, not now, and for that matter, not back before the crash either. OF course, with those skills you just start anouther business. Now? I don't think so.
Why not start a business?
Plenty good people available at good price. I bet you know quite a few highly skilled people in the same situation. Bring them on board as partners or shareholders. You will have to bootstrap since there is not much start up $$$ available. You will probably not make $$$ for quite a while but you may be able to undercut your competition.
If you start your company now, you will be ahead of your competition when the economy picks up. When it s picks up I do not know, but it will eventually improve.
sorry double post.
End the IRS thugs. Fair tax and get rid of thousands of bankster enforcement thugs.
You can send clean-up crews to FUKUSHIMA which as of three hours ago Reuters reports still shows "Pockets of lethal levels of radiation"
http://news.yahoo.com/pockets-high-radiation-remind-fukushima-plant-dang...
Clean-up can keep 'm busy for a few thousand years I presume.
Seems the problem to all these glorius ideas are all the institutions already in place that are fighting for survival and will literally take us to the depths of hell with them. Only then will such idiotic and ludicrous(lmao) ideas of easier times in terms of regulations etc be possible when they have completely collapsed. Question is will opportunity present itself or will this place just turn into a giant mexico? Politicians won't do the right thing, ever, and the greed of the current overlords is going to keep any dream of this Utopia just that.......a dream. I say bring on the crash. In a big way. Otherwise it will be years of total crap and personally id rather roll the dice.
Excellent points, concisely stated...Thank you.
Technology has been the saviour of the US for a long time now and now the government is going out of its way to destroy the industry by enforcing patents. Patents are nothing more than a grant to create a government enforced monopoly (that's the only kind of monopoly actually).
the obummer regime is not interested in jobs, they are only interested in consolidation of goober's power over the people and the republic where it is getting close to the place where absolutely nothing is allowed.
You're still off the mark. Also, why should someone want to work for an unstable entity like a small business?
Why should businesses be entitled to something without a reciprocal entitlement to someone who is working or seeking work?
That is, why should any size business get to ask for sacrifices out of everyone else, but be able to ask for more for themselves?
For at least the past 2 decades we have known that 80% of new businesses fail. And that was when the real unemployment number was a decent 4%. The real unemploment number is close to 25%, so think 10 times before you start a new business: who will be your customers? What is the unemployment rate in your state? Ask your Republican Congress and State Reps how many people are 99ers now on food stamps? Embarrass the hell out of them.
Most recent unemployed person I know is a Republican. In Kansas City, he had a nifty little City Locator magazine and turned a profit because all business bought advertising. He's trying to resurrect it now and is struggling, struggling, struggling in a state where the Bush tax cuts have been in place for 10 years. Last year, only 2500 new jobs were created in the entire state.
It is good to see all come to Zero Hedge, the capitalists, the anarchists, the commies, the ignorant, the intelligent, the intelligentsia (not to be confused w/ the intelligent) the doers and the crony capitalists/socialists. The gist of the article is correct, setting up rules that create a level playing field (a gallon is a gallon) is why we set-up a government (that and defense--another time). We did not set-it-up to socially engineer us into oblivion, whether it is grandpa taking money from his grandchildren because he paid into and was promised his SS or the fed govt telling banks they have to make loans to people based on skin color instead whether they can actually pay back borrowed money. Unfortuantely we crossed the rubicon years ago (just taking an express train now) and but until we run out of idiots who will continue to loan us money or we gather some common sense and realize there will never be enough money to take care of all the sob stories that are out there, nothing will change. The latter is our only way for civil change, the former when we run out will be ugly, so make sure your gun is loaded. As for the healthcare component, there has not been an actual market in this country since the sixties. Medicare and Medicaid have totally distorted any hope of cost containment. The VA isn't apples to apples as the author proscribes it be. The VA is a small group, and though an important one it will never be large enough to force its will on everybody. But lets say a dual system is set-up, everyone in the govt run system will want what is available in the private sector but at a subsidized cost (can you say medicare), and when even a conservative number of 30% is in it that is a whole lot of votes. Outlook, Bullets and food!
CHS you've nailed it once again. Too bad your suggestions would be viewed as "not politically feasable" (i.e. the 1/10 of 1%ers don't like it). We need to focus on how we can truly effect change. What we have now is a mere facade. But how to put such change in motion, that's the question.
We are a 70% consumer driven economy. We must consume, consume, consume. Our government has tricked us into becoming human foie gras.
As a society we are already grossly obese and we have already bought enough useless crap to make the TV show Hoarders look like a lifestyle goal. Just how much junk can you buy before you're finally exhausted, before you succumb to your gluttony for materialism?
If you want jobs, you'll need to ask America to be even more American and throw away the stuff that still works but isn't new, like all major appliances & all furniture and offer free liposuction, or at least, like the Romans, bring back bulimia.
As a last resort, ask the government to face facts and allow a decade of easing decline so the hunger returns and stuff becomes really needed again instead of constantly forced upon us.
Excellent post.
Unfortunately, if there is no profit, a lot more things than just the motivation for corruption falter.
Incentives might be a more precise word for profits.
Ge moving xray to china, Gm building plants in Mexico, both co's proxy US gov owned.
get it yet?
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