For some reason, the majority of Democrats and a few republicans believe that the American taxpayer is supposed to be the sugar daddy for the rest of the world. The way I see it if we have enough to send billions of dollars to 40 or 50 countries then our government is overtaxing the American people. Period.
We need to look at a little history of Social Security to see how it started and how it has been changed as well as decimated over its lifetime. Continue reading
Once upon a time, America’s money was based on real value that could be held in one’s hand. A dollar is still defined in the Constitution as a silver coin containing 371.25 grains of pure silver. Gold and silver coins or currency backed by gold and silver were the only legal tender.
Fiat money notes were forbidden. When our country was founded, a solitary cent (commonly called a ‘penny’ today) was a substantial slab of solid copper. (Today a cent is zinc disc with a thin layer of copper on the outside.) A nickel, also known as a ‘half dime’ in the 1800s always had some copper in it. During WWII there was a nickel shortage and so the nickels were actually 35 percent silver and the rest copper. Continue reading
According to numbers released by the US government, consumer prices have increased by 7.5 percent in the past year, the steepest increase since 1982. The actual price increases are even worse than the government numbers suggest, given that the “official” statistics are manipulated to understate the real rate of price increases. According to John Williams of ShadowStats, prices have actually increased by around 15 percent over the past year.
The fact that prices remain at historically high levels shows that inflation is far from “transitory,” as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell had described it. Continue reading
Economic sanctions serve as a powerful foreign policy tool for the US government. But could this ultimately backfire on the US?
Over the last several years, many countries have made a concerted effort to limit dependence on the US dollar. The economic warfare waged against Russia reveals exactly why. Continue reading
In the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), savings are established as the difference between disposable money income and monetary outlays. Disposable income is defined as the summation of all personal money income less tax payments to the government. Personal income includes wages and salaries, transfer payments, income from interest and dividends, and rental income. Continue reading
In 1690, Massachusetts Bay Colony embarked upon a short-lived experiment in unbacked paper money. It did not go well.
George Washington – surveyor, farmer, soldier, and statesman – never thought of himself as an economist but experience taught him a great deal about fiat (unbacked) paper money. When the Congress foisted it on his Continental Army and tried to pay for food with it, his men suffered privation.
By contrast, the nearby British ate well because they paid in gold and silver. (Continue your Education > > >)
“We’re in a situation now where, uh, um, you know, you should have peace of mind.” ~ Joe Biden on inflation
We don’t know about you, dear reader, but we absolutely do not have peace of mind knowing that everything we buy — if we can find it — costs significantly more than when Biden took office. Heck, everything costs a lot more than when he dismissively asserted last July that “no serious economist” believed all these price increases were anything but “temporary,” all while bragging that he’d saved you 16 cents on a cookout. Continue reading
One of the more famous ethologists in recent decades was John B. Calhoun, best known for his mouse experiments in the 1960s. To what extent do the mouse utopia lessons apply to humans?
Signs in national and state parks all over America warn visitors, “Please Don’t Feed the Animals.” Some of those government-owned parks provide further explanation, such as “The animals may bite” or “It makes them dependent.”
The National Park Service’s website for Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan advises,
It transforms wild and healthy animals into habitual beggars. Studies have shown that panhandling animals have a shorter lifespan.
Continue reading
Modern currencies such as Bitcoin expect to find success in a more technological world, but a new currency known as Goldbacks might corner the post-apocalyptic currency market.
In 2019, Goldback president Jeremy Cordon said he had a dream in which he saw people paying for groceries using golden bills. Cordon had previously worked for years trying to make gold into functional money, but the dream gave him a new idea: What if a bill small enough to buy groceries could include a tiny percentage of gold? Continue reading
Franz Pick
By now, anyone with half an inkling of curiosity about why prices and values don’t add up has traced the divide back to the money itself. It’s not hard to see.
Asset prices, like houses and the major stock market indexes, have lost all visible connection with the underlying economy. However, wage growth has stagnated; over the last 40 years low level wages have only increased by $0.32 per hour in real inflation adjusted terms. Stocks and residential real estate, at the same time, have gone to the moon.
Even with the NASDAQ’s 11.2 percent decline from its all-time closing high set on November 19, the index is still up over 110 percent from its March 2020 low. What will it take for the NASDAQ to crash back to earth? Continue reading
