Mike, I got that you weren't for the flat tax from an earlier post.
This came in today in my unsolicited e-mail. This is taken from one of the
local rags that come in from brokers on the internet. The people who send
them are without culture, nation, ethnicity or heart. They carry their
name but they have been eaten by the ants of monetarism and their souls are
impossible to see until their daughter gets married and then you may see it
only for a moment. My comment is below the plea for money by the acolyte.
REH
A Sad Day for Western Civilization
Claus Vogt | Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 7:30 am
When the currency of great nations and unions sinks steadily in value - as
we are seeing now with the once-mighty U.S. dollar and even the once-proud
euro - one must step back from the day-to-day fray of financial markets and
look at current events from a much broader, historical perspective.
What we see is a history littered with examples of horrendous crimes. But
the biggest, the worst, and the most devastating have, almost without
exception, been perpetrated in the name of the state.
It is this unmistakable conclusion that has led philosophers of freedom to
adopt a healthy mistrust of government and its representatives.
Based on the most thorough analytical and empirical arguments, they see the
government as the greatest threat to freedom, against which a society must
protect itself at all costs, lest it degenerate into dictatorship.
The separation of powers is one such protective mechanism. But equally
important is strict adherence to a currency that cannot be multiplied at
will.
This is what forces governments to treat the nation's finances in a
responsible manner, while protecting the people from the greed of the
politicians.
In principle, there are two ways freedom can be abolished and slavery
introduced: Through revolution or evolution.
Investors are familiar with revolutions that have led to the rise of
dictatorships. The communist revolutions, causing untold suffering and
poverty across great swaths of the globe have, after all, only recently been
consigned to history.
That is not the threat Western Civilization faces right now. Instead, the
greater threat stems from an evolutionary process initiated long ago - a
not-so-subtle, insidious progression in which the government spreads
gradually like a cancerous tumor, increasingly limiting individual freedoms.
The decline in the U.S. dollar is the centerpiece of that trend. It not only
threatens the freedom to spend. It also threatens a series of other
freedoms.
Where did it begin? Many years and presidents ago.
For example, the administration of former president George W. Bush, despite
all their rhetoric to the contrary, were, in fact, out-and-out Keynesians.
This is so obvious it should not even be worth mentioning. However, in the
wake of the debt crisis, since the blame game and search for scapegoats is
so ubiquitous, and since neoliberalism is first in the firing line, this
observation is nonetheless necessary. It's ironic that liberalism and free
market philosophies are getting lynched, when the real culprit that deserves
to stand trial is Keynesianism.
The key point here is not whether government intervention in the economy -
including massive economic stimulus programs - are financed by deficits or
not. We know that Keynes proposed that the government should accumulate
reserves in good times so that it could afford to finance stimulus programs
in bad times.
But because Keynes himself was, in large measure, a politician, it is
inconceivable that even he considered the implementation of this proposal to
be possible - let alone probable.
The interests of politicians who depend on votes are diametrically opposed
to Keynes's proposition of accumulating reserves in times of plenty. Voters
almost invariably demand that surpluses be spent today - not in some elusive
future.
To reveal a government's hidden agenda - even behind its smokescreen of
public relations - all that is typically required is to consider a few key
variables: You can look at the trend in the government's share of total
economic activity, the amount of legislation passed or, more commonly, the
level of national debt.
If each of these is expanding, you can be almost certain that the government
is not pursuing a liberal agenda. It is immaterial what kind of rhetoric the
government is deploying. Do not let them fool you. And don't be hoodwinked
by false critics, either. Judge both sides not by their words, but by their
deeds.
Classical liberalism and the Austrian School of economics stand, as we do,
for freedom of the individual - with no ifs or buts. Classical liberalism
and the Austrian School are the offspring of unwavering philosophers of
freedom.
And these are philosophers who think ideas through to their logical
conclusion with inexorable consistency, even in circumstances in which
others would prefer to take a more relaxed view - to further their career or
to avoid established taboos.
It should therefore come as no surprise that thinkers of this provenance
have no powerful friends. They are a thorn in the side of the powerful.
In The Denationalisation of Money, F.A. von Hayek sums it up as follows: "I
fear that since 'Keynesian' propaganda has filtered through to the masses,
has made inflation respectable and provided agitators with arguments which
professional politicians are unable to refute, the only way to avoid being
driven by continuing inflation into a controlled and directed economy, and
[the only way to] ultimately save civilization, will be to deprive
governments of their power over the supply of money."
I agree. But some of the world's most powerful men - controlling trillions
of a nation's money supply - do not. They run their money printing presses
nonstop. They drive up the price of virtually every commodity under the sun.
And they place their entire national economies at risk.
My advice: Extreme caution with U.S. dollar, long-term bonds. Look for
opportunities to profit from the inevitable inflation.
Best wishes,
Claus
Horrendous Crimes? Civilization?
Growing up in the ghetto of the Quapaw Indian Reservation, the government
schools taught us that we should not be angry with Europeans because they
brought us Civilization. Now it seems every white man around holds a
grudge for hundreds of years but we were being told to be peaceful because
we were given Civilization. And I could agree with that given the fact
that I'm a musician. Mere money never compensated for the loss of anything
serious. But Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms, Mozart, Schubert, well they are
amazing. Of course, none of my students ever speak of freedom when they
sing in Vienna either. Freedom is just not what the Austrians are about or
what gives them pride and purpose. Kunst, yes but freiheit means
something more profound than money although German does confuse the concept
linguistically.
Beethoven made that very clear when he refused to get off of the road and
made the aristocrat drive his carriage around him while Goethe hid in the
gutter. He was not confused in the least. Beethoven has a lot more to do
with civilization than von Hayek, a man afraid to have a beer with a serf.
Did he think it might rub off? Did he ever forgive the Austrians for
driving him to England where his tongue became his enemy? It is the
people, and their artists who body forth the identity of a culture and place
it for the ages, that deserve to be called civilized. Not the bankers.
They are just middlemen trying to claim artistry for their profession.
Claus Vogt is the sad day for Western Civilization. It has come to this.
Was it for this that we gave up our rage for five hundred years of rape and
pillage?
But that is only a part of this balderdash. Supply Creates Demand. You
have no supply of money and there is no stimulus. You also have to believe
in feudalism to think that it's OK for another citizen to be sick and poor
when you are wealthy. Aristocratic Feudalism is not the root of American
Democracy. The Austrian school is locked in the Aristocratic model that
has nothing to do with Democracy and certainly not the American Democracy
that came from the people the European immigrants destroyed so casually
while absorbing their intellectual capital and property.
That America is slipping back to the Austro-European model is proof that
"American Democracy" (and the real freedom given by the Creator of All) is
not native to the European immigrant's culture here. Native Americans know
they are free even when the European locks them in jails. Native Americans
know that genuine freedom is not found in things, or walls, but in
competence and the flight of soul through the artistic structures of genuine
civilizations. Native Americans know that all Americans are equal and that
to have one American as sick or poor is to diminish us all.
Although the Austrian Aristocratic school does not know that, Ludwig van
Beethoven did, and he resisted. That's why, as a Native American and a
classical musician, I honor Beethoven. What is truly strange is to find
this Aristocratic script fabricating myths about governments as the "root of
all evil" when democratic governments are the projection of the soul of a
people. Is he ignorant of European history? Religion has destroyed far
more than governments.
Religion has been the stimulus for horrendous crimes while government was
the handmaiden. It was religion that burned old ladies at the stake by the
millions in Germany. It was religion that killed and converted Jews in
Spain. It was the "religion" of German racialism that destroyed Jews,
Gypsies and Homosexuals in the ovens. It was religion that said that
America was the new Jerusalem and murdered my ancestors with impunity.
Claus is either an ignoramus or evil.
Something is amiss here and I feel that we are in danger of losing our
country to it. Perhaps it would help if Claus remembered that the wealth
of Europe came from the riches stripped from our people and our cultures and
that the great flowering of his Austrian "culture" is really not much older
than the rape and pillage of the Americas.
To say the least, I found Claus Vogt hyperbolic. At the most it was an
insult to those who have suffered horrendous crimes at the hands of people
claiming the latest religion, the amorality of business, as a mantle of
protection. You may not know it but we are all connected to each other as
Americans and will succeed or fail as we realize that.
Ray Evans Harrell
Artistic Director
The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble, Inc.
NYCity
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of michael gurstein
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2011 12:06 PM
To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'
Subject: Re: [Futurework] What class war looks like
A very belated answer... I certainly wouldn't support a flat tax... (Not
sure where that one came from BTW
M
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell
Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 7:14 AM
To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION'
Subject: Re: [Futurework] What class war looks like
Mike, do you believe that a simplification of the tax code and a flat tax
would help the poor even though it would decimate the funding for the not
for profit structures currently in place. Are you advocating direct
government funding of these structures rather than the tax structure?
REH
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael Gurstein
Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 8:25 AM
To: [email protected]; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME
DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'
Subject: [Futurework] What class war looks like
http://jackdean.posterous.com/must-see-chart-this-is-what-class-war-looks-l
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