29 of March 2004, the interview is with Irwin Schiff, the tax protester who is spending a 12 year sentence in federal prison.

In that interview Irwin Schiff is talking about some of his books, "Biggest Con" and "The Federal Mafia", as well as making accurate predictions about the incoming housing crisis, debt crisis, economic crisis, education crisis in USA. Mr. Schiff is talking about the reasons for the incoming problems and he is giving an interesting look at the history of US over the past 100 years and how economy was changing. Also throughout the interview (really, it has to be viewed fully to see all of the points), Irwin Schiff shows that the income taxes in USA are voluntary and are collected illegally.

Edited slightly from a recent post that I made:

The internet isn't going to end. The internet will change for the worse. There's a big difference.

Mostly-legitimate sites like YouTube and MegaUpload will arguably be hit the hardest. Their primary draw is the rampant copyright infringement. Users who upload original content will have to jump through hoops in order to validate that their content does not infringe anyone's copyright. There will probably be an initial month-long validation queue, which will eventually be streamlined down to a week-long wait. Some people will leave in protest, but most will just decry any dissent as "whining". In most likelihood, parody and other fair use exceptions will be suppressed, in the name of simplifying administrative duties. I predict the argument will go, "If we allow legitimate parodies through, then everyone will simply claim to be a subtle parody. Thus, our rule on no parodies, even if they are technically allowed, by law." In the end, YouTube will survive, but it will be nothing but insipid pet videos and hot, up-and-coming pop stars from major labels. Alternatives will pop up frequently on darknets, but none of the YouTube users will ever figure out how to access them. MegaUpload goes commercial, with no free accounts, in a move to pay for all the censorship that is required to clean up the site.

Quasi-legitimate sites, like 4chan, will either disappear or radically transform. My guess is that they'll all go underground. Anyone who can't figure out how to access them will be ridiculed as a lamer or noob. The government will swat at them, off and on, but nothing will ever really stick. A couple of them will simply move to European or Asian servers and abandon U.S. users. I have trouble imagining these sites going fully legit, but I guess stranger things have happened. In that case, full-time moderators would roam the boards, searching out any kind of copyright infringement and handing out frequent bans. After a while, the workload gets to be too much and the site closes down.

"Rogue" websites, such as piratebay, would be the first victims. They'll put up a token fight for a few months or years, but it won't go anywhere, and they'll all be forced to relocate to darknets or other various underground locales. Some will simply shrug and ignore the U.S. Again, the government will swat at them, and some of them will eventually be taken down, but new ones will simply pop up to replace them. Eventually, someone will be made an example of, with a 10-15 year prison sentence (if they're lucky). A show trial will briefly made the news, then be forgotten by all but the civil libertarians. A huge uproar on civil libertarian blogs will follow, along with further threads of "it's time for the ammo box!", but absolutely nothing will come of it, and they'll all stew in impotent anger. Slashdot follows every single fucking story with dogged perseverance, long after the mainstream media move on to other topics. In every single story, at least one person states, "If only you sheeple had voted for Ron Paul, none of this would have happened!", which becomes the newest Slashdot meme.

Controversial web sites, such as those espousing hate speech, expressing sympathy for terrorists (pro-Hamas or pro-Hezbollah), and right-wing militia groups will quickly be added to the lists. Most people won't miss them, but the civil libertarians will go berserk. A freedom of speech case will make it to the US Supreme Court, but nothing will come of it. In a 5-4 decision, the censorship will be upheld as constitutional. All the web sites move to European servers or darknets. The government halfheartedly swats at them off and on for the next ten years, until an example is made of someone, who probably ends up successfully fighting off the charges. It's hailed as a major win for civil libertarians, but nothing really changes, because nothing ever does. The government goes back to swatting halfheartedly at websites on darknets.

Sites like Flickr and Facebook, which generally depend on original content, rather than copyright infringement, escape unscathed. Uploading content becomes more tedious and annoying, as websites nonetheless attempt to cover their ass. More ads appear, as the sites attempt to pay for the additional time and effort necessary to patrol submissions by users. Users grumble, site administrators grumble, and everyone talks big about how they're going to vote out everyone who voted for SOPA. In the end, it's all just talk.

Most sites end up unaffected. A few end up blacklisted "accidentally". The end of the world is averted, and the internet goes on, like it always has... just in a way that's more authoritarian, less fun, and more annoying. Eventually, SOPA gets struck down by a liberal Supreme Court, and Slashdot goes berserk over something else that will surely cause the sky to fall.

I think SOPA is a horrible bill, and I hope it fails. The worst case scenario is frightening and admittedly could lead to some chilling effects. In fact, I think it's inevitable that many controversial sites (hate speech, for example) will end up being blacklisted, as well. However, to think that the internet, as a whole, will end up going down in flames seems simplistic and over-the-top.

Chinese Sustainable Building Company, Broad Group, put together a 30 story hotel in 360 hours or 15 around the clock days of work out of structures pre-manufactured on a factory floor. The feat was accomplished in December of 2011. Using a factory floor to assemble floors and side panels allowed for very high precision in fabrication (+/- 0.2mm), better coordination of on-site construction, shorter construction time span, lower construction waste. The building includes various innovative features, such as air monitoring in every room and low energy consumption.

All of the wiring and laying of the pipes, insulation, even floor tiles is done on the factory floor as can be seen in the video. As one of the features, the building is designed to withstand magnitude-9 earthquakes.

This goes to prove a point, that innovation comes out of manufacturing and engineering needs, which means that research and development and basic sciences and need for more education is also pushed by the engineering and manufacturing sectors.

On the December 31, 2011, President of the USA, Barack Hussein Obama II has signed the National Defense Authorization Act.

In itself this wouldn't be anything out of ordinary, indeed NDAAs have been signed for years, however this one, for the fiscal year of 2012 is different in an important way, because it ends the Democratic Republic of USA and installs a dictatorial power of the 'elected' POTUS.

The MSM propaganda machine has been deployed to ensure that the population of USA (and probably of the world) does not understand that it was the President himself, who required that the current NDAA, which has provisions for 'indefinite detention' of 'suspected terrorists' by the military would also apply these powers against US citizens, which means that at this point the POTUS (any POTUS, Obama or anybody who comes after him), can capture and detain anybody in the world, including US citizens and hold them in military containment without a trial, without even possibility to contact any lawyers for any length of time.

This is clearly a complete violation of human rights, US citizen rights, the Constitution and the power of POTUS, who forced Congress to remove provisions from NDAA that would exclude the US citizens from these super dictatorial powers that the POTUS has assigned to himself.

You can read an MSM story for an example of how the MSM is used to confuse the issue, to make it seem that Obama was trying to do the right, the Constitutional thing, while in reality it is Obama who insisted that NDAA could not be signed without all of the provisions necessary to become a dictator.

At this point it is clear that the powers that govern USA are making their last preparations before the USD collapses and ensures the survival of the elite with this dictatorial nonsense and basically establishment of the martial law.

Say hello now to the Fourth Reich, say goodbye to any pretense of being a democratic republic.

Iowa caucuses are coming up in a few days, everybody is looking at that, I think Ron Paul has more chances than anybody else there, however few people are thinking beyond Iowa, but there is an interesting case of West Virginia now, where only Romney and Paul are registered for Republican primaries.

Here is something you might not have known: in West Virginia anybody can participate in the caucuses, regardless of party denomination! That's right, but since only Paul and Romney are registered, who do you think is more likely to win that State if one doesn't have to be a Republican to vote?

I believe if Ron Paul takes Iowa and comes within the first 3 in NH, he'll take Virginia.

South Carolina is also his for losing, and given this, I think the rest of the States can be swayed.

I don't think Texans are dumb enough to vote for Perry over Paul also, by the way.

Connecticut is Paul's and this should give him a real boost in New York.

Is it just me, or does Slashdot seem to be a bastion of misogyny, racism, and homophobia? I'm not talking about the simplistic trolls who just throw around offensive words. I'm talking about people who really, truly mean what they're saying and write passionate posts about just how much they hate women/feminazis, gays, and various racial/religious minorities. It's startling. Normally, I'd chalk most of those posts up to simple trolls, but... well... take a look.

The story that made me actually write this is about the revenge blog order. A man wrote a revenge blog, harassing his ex-girlfriend, and a judge ordered him to take it down. I figured most of the debate would center around free speech vs harassment (and I was mostly right), but a few misogynist threads popped up, too.

The first post that stuck out is actually relatively harmless. The guy says that he doesn't date women when he's unemployed, because he can't provide for them, if they get pregnant. Well... OK. That's a bit patriarchal. It's nice that he takes responsibility for his actions, but, like another poster, I was a bit struck by his flippant attitude toward women. I think we can assume, given his user name, that he was just trying for laughs, which perhaps backfired, giving some people the impression that he's a bit of a dumbass. Then again, it's entirely likely that he's also role-playing an erratic personality. In any case, nothing he said was misogynistic -- simply patronizing and a betrayed a bit of lack of respect for women, even as he seems to pride himself on his sense of responsibility.

I have certain sympathies with the radical feminists, and I think they are right about some things. I'm probably going to sound a bit like one right now, critiquing this post. It reeks of "men have been emasculated in our society, and now women/feminazis have all the power". Without actually saying anything specific, he insinuates that women are faking their fear, when they seek restraining orders, only to use them as offensively, as a weapon, against the poor men. This may very well be true, and I'm not saying that it can't happen, but it's a very dangerous POV that diminishes sympathy and compassion for victims of domestic violence. I find it disturbing. I will stop short of saying that he's actively sympathizing with actual abusers (his friends, who are the victims of these restraining orders), because I dislike when people make those kinds of assumptions about people. I'd also like to believe that, in his mind, at the very least, these guys are actually innocent of any wrong-doing and that he's not making excuses for their behavior.

There's another "men are powerless in today's society" post following that, decrying that men are now commonly scapegoated as the cause of all things bad in this world. He doesn't stop there, though. He also claims that they are essentially non-citizens in family law. While I understand that there are certain issues that we as a society still need to resolve (traditional gender roles dictate that the women raise children), instead of recognizing that strict gender roles are the problem, the poster turns his anger toward women, instead. This is not healthy. It's also deeply frustrating.

And this post seems to be saying that it's only the poor, emasculated men who have face the repercussions of the actions. The law does not apply equally to women, because that would be not be PC. At least, that's my reading of his post. I may have put a few words into his mouth. I don't understand where these people are coming from or why they believe the things that they believe. Did someone repeatedly hurt them, without repercussions? That sucks. I feel bad for you. But that does not mean that women are out to get you.

The emoticon on this post indicates that the poster was joking, but... come on! This is a really disturbing thing to say. You're taking the side of someone who broke a restraining order, wrote a revenge blog that violated the privacy of a mentally ill person, and then aggressively advertized it to her friends, family, and coworkers? You're saying what he did was a good thing, for the benefit of society? I understand it was supposed to be a joke, but I'm not laughing. I'm not claiming to have some kind of moral ground here, like I'm some kind of saint, as I can be an unrepentant asshole at times, but, seriously.... this is just wrong, and if an acknowledged asshole can see that it's wrong, you should know better, too. I'm astounded that my own lack of empathy is soundly trounced by others. This, more than any moral outrage, is what shocks me the most about this guy's post. But it's just a joke. Yeah, sure. Let's just give our implicit support to those who would harass the mentally ill.

Moving on. This post could simply be a troll. However, there are a lot of people out there who -- without any irony whatsoever -- use terms such as feminazi. While this poster showed admirable restraint, I think he got the point across, just the same, by characterizing the judge as a "neo-feminist windbag". He further asserts that "a lot of them [judges] are [neo-feminist windbags]". It would be nice if that were true. My fear is that he's just so much of a misogynist that it seems true, from his viewpoint.

And here's another "it's just a joke" post, in which the poster asserts that all Minnesota women are crazy. This isn't so bad, and I'd probably just write it off as a guy who's been unlucky in love trying to make a joke about it, but... again, he's taking the side of someone whose actions are indefensible. This guy hasn't actually asserted that what the guy did was right or in the public's best interest, but it's disturbing that he's making jokes at the expense of the victim. That post is quickly followed up by several others claiming that all women are crazy. Of course.

This post seems to be reinforcing the commonly held belief that men are constantly victimized by false accusations and unjustly punished by society, as a result. While nobody can deny that these false accusations happen and quite certainly do destroy the reputation of innocent people, it's yet another cliched, misogynist argument that appears constantly on the internet. If you listen to these people, you'll sometimes hear crazy statistics about how most rapes are actually false accusations. It's disturbing that society seems to believe that, in some certain cases, innocence needs to be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt (rather than proving guilt), but to actively attack the very victims of these crimes is inexcusable. Our compassion for the falsely accused should never turn into an attack on the legitimate victims. This poster, however, refrains from going any further than asserting that it's the accused that we need to be sympathetic to, especially if it's a man, rather than the accuser. The implicit characterization of the accusers, however, is that they are manipulative liars. This may very well be true in some cases, but, like I said, it's not a healthy attitude to have toward the accusers. Followups by the same poster reveal a deep misogyny that was hinted at by his original post. Unfortunate.

Infuriatingly, this poster invokes "blaming the victim". I thought perhaps the poster might be a bit on the progressive side, trying to point out that people are being wildly misogynistic in the comments. Not so. Instead, he takes the defense of the man. I understand that his argument is based on free speech, which is a legitimate argument, but framing it in terms of "blaming the victim" is just inexcusable. Apparently, to the anon, telling the truth can not be a form of harassment, even when it... nevermind. I'm just getting myself worked up again, and I've already covered this elsewhere. For what it's worth, the post itself does not betray any misogyny, though it does frustrate me to no end. The followups are more misogynistic, pointing out that women will, of course, be protected by the law, while men's concerns will be tossed aide. So, luckily, we still get our quota of misogyny.

This guy annoys the fuck out of me. I don't know why I haven't enemy listed him yet. He's an ignorant, misogynistic asshole. In fact, I think I'll do it now. I had a debate with him once over whether "women's night out" was sexist, and thus feminists were hypocritical for not opposing it. I thought maybe I could reach him, but apparently he's too far gone. Well, can you really blame people for ignoring my huge essays?

A simple troll.

LOLOLOL.

He's just telling it like it is.

More misogyny from gmhowell. He posted a link to a hilariously whiny Men's Rights Activist (MRA) web site once that made me laugh, until I realized it wasn't ironic. Disturbing. Still, his comments are amusingly whiny enough in themselves that I usually end up being amused, rather than outraged. Haven't enemy listed him yet. Could just be a troll, faking the misogyny, though. I haven't quite decided yet.

This is probably just a troll. It could be a kook, though. Normally, I'm pretty good at picking up on generic, garden variety trolls, but the legitimate, unending misogyny in these comments might have knocked by trolldar off a bit. I'm leaning toward legitimate kook, but it's got all the hallmarks of a troll.

I feel better for having gotten all this off my chest. I doubt anyone has read this, but it'd be gratifying to know that I'm not the only one who sees this as a real problem on Slashdot.

Adapted from a recent comment.

Slashdot has a long history of shrilling crying out doom and gloom, and it's been wrong on every occasion that I can remember. I don't blame someone for thinking that a paranoid rant on slashdot is total bunk. When RFID chips were first discussed on Slashdot, people worked themselves into a paranoid frenzy, suggesting that you microwave any clothes that you buy from a retail store, so that you destroy any errant RFID chips. I laughed then, and I'm laughing now, as I recall it. Slashdot has always had a loud paranoid wing, and most of us have learned to tune them out. Their first reaction is always to predict a wildly unlikely worst case scenario, then rant and scream about how we're headed toward some fascist police state, because their Pentium III has a serial number (that can be disabled in the BIOS). I've heard it all before, I wasn't impressed by it back in the late 90s, and I'm still not impressed with it. The Pentium III serial number, RFID, Vista's DRM, Trusted Computing... these have all been complete non-issues. I agree that there's deeply troubling potential, but let's face it:

1) People generally want authoritarianism. It makes them feel safe and secure, regardless of the reality. Ranting about how walled gardens are evil is just going to make all the Apple fanboys tune you out, rather than convincing them to ditch their iProduct.
2) Security, by design, reduces functionality and ease-of-use. People hate that. Thus, security is generally minimized, unless it's authoritarian in nature. In that case, refer back to the first point.
3) Most -- not all, but most -- authoritarian controls can be disabled. Occasionally, it requires some action that voids your warranty.

Once I realized these things, I stopped caring so much. When I heard XP was going to require activation, I thought it was going to change everything. When I heard that Vista was going to have all kinds of evil DRM, I thought that would finally kill off everything that I loved about PCs and turn them into locked-down consoles. When I heard that Windows 8 was going to have secure boot, I'd shrugged my shoulders and said, "So fucking what? Slashdot has been wrong about everything they've ever panicked about, and I'm not falling into that trap again."

Maybe the Windows 8 secure boot will turn out to be a huge issue, and Linux will be locked out of 90% of all new brand name PCs, but I seriously doubt it. Every other time that Slashdot has panicked over DRM, trusted computing, or other initiatives, it's turned out to be a huge non-issue. If this does turn out to be a legitimate threat to Linux, open source, or the PC architecture, I'll deal with it then, rather than panicking about it now, like some slashbot version of Chicken Little.

p.s. I'm not saying we're not headed toward a fascist police state, but CPU serial numbers are not one of the warning signs of fascism. It may be indicative of a tolerance for fascism, but it is not, in and of itself, any barometer of political discourse.

India Moves To Censor Social Media http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/12/06/231228/india-moves-to-censor-social-media

Russian Websites Critical of Elections Targeted In DDoS Attack http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2557796&cid=38259624

Interpreting the Constitution In the Digital Era http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2556930&cid=38250212

Why America Doesn't Need More Tech Giants Like Apple http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2550822&cid=38213416 (chinese salaries)

China Probes US Renewable Energy Policy http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2546330&cid=38184848 (Steve Jobs argument to stop
taxes)

Hard Drive Prices Up 150% In Less Than Two Months http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2544838&cid=38169958

Climate May Be Less Sensitive To CO2 Than Previously Thought http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2544398&cid=38166022 (go
nuclear)

OSHA App Costs Gov't $200k http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2541628&cid=38154444 (USPS is subsidized and failing. Forever
stamps.)

A Drone Helicopter That Can Land On a Moving Truck http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2536050&cid=38122678 (more money on war
based economy)

OpenSUSE 12.1 Released http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2529350&cid=38099264 (insane chick arguing with me)

Rambus Loses $4B Antitrust Case http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2529836&cid=38080384 (imagine world without patents)

Back in 2009 Paul Krugman said this about the 787 Billion dollar bail out

Now, if that in Paul Krugman's eyes wasn't 'big enough' to fix the problem, then I assume he wanted a much bigger bail out, correct?

Now we find out that the real bail out was given out by the federal reserve and it was at least 7.7 TRILLION dollars, that's 11 times the official bail out voted by the US Congress. Even that's not true. The bail out was over 13 TRILLION.

The obvious failures of Keynesian ideas are immediately obvious - it's never big enough, they say. Well, what if it was bigger than your GDP? Is that big enough?

It's always easy to say for a Keynesian - the bail out is not big enough so that's why the economy didn't recover. Then the truth about the actual size of the bail out comes out. What now? What now?

Will Krugman say now that the real bail out should have been not 7 or 13 Trillion but instead it should have been 700 Trillion to have worked?

Should it have been 700 Quadrillion?

What now? When will it become obvious even to the most dense Keynesian followers that their ideology is fatally flawed?

It should be obvious to anybody by now that price and wage controls set by governments don't work. These ideas end up creating unemployment and black markets. But what about minimum wage, which is also a type of a wage control?

Well, minimum wage makes it illegal to hire somebody below a certain price (7.25 in US, but may differ to the higher side from State to State). What does it mean from point of view of employees?

1. This doesn't affect those who work above the minimum wage.
2. Those who work below minimum wage are suddenly priced out of their jobs.

What does this mean? If somebody only has the skills necessary to provide a company with about 3-4 dollars worth of benefit (profit) are now a net loss for a company if the minimum wage is above that amount of money. So hiring somebody at 7.25, who after all expenses only generates the company say 4 dollars makes absolutely no sense. Who is affected by this? Students, people who didn't even go to school, anybody who is just starting out.

When governments sets a floor price for a product, it makes it illegal for those, who cannot afford the item (or labor) below that price to buy that product. Some believe it makes sense to have government set the minimum wage, what would these people say about government setting minimum price on milk for example?

If milk had a government dictated minimum price of $5/liter, this would price a lot of people out of buying milk, this also would put many milk producers out of business, because now they have a much smaller customer base, much fewer dollars in that market.

So if you believe that it makes sense for government to set minimum prices, think about government setting minimum price of milk, or whatever your preferred product and think what this means from point of view of competition as well. So now it's illegal to sell milk at a lower price, this prevents any new competition from entering the market, trying to produce milk cheaper, because they can't even sell it legally.

Setting minimum price on labor creates similar problems, and with real unemployment being where it is (above 20% in US, see shadow statistics), it's preposterous that government talks about fixing unemployment without actually dealing with all of the regulations that it has on the books that actually creates unemployment.

From minimum wage laws, to 'equal opportunity employment' laws, any so called 'civil rights', which are just entitlements and obligations, which make it more expensive to hire people who have special government protections. Anything that government does regulating business, causes labor costs to go only in one direction, and that's the opposite direction to where they must be going.

---

Now realize that the government is schizophrenic, because on one hand it sets minimum wage and on the other it creates inflation, which in reality only 'helps' to grow economy (from Keynesian perspective) actually by reducing the purchasing power, it really only 'works' by lowering the actual earnings of a worker!

Yes, inflation (counterfeiting or money printing) is all about stealing the purchasing power, and when the Fed says it has a mandate to ensure price stability and maximum employment, it should admit that its mandate is a direct contradiction of the only tool in Fed's disposal - the printing press (figuratively speaking, they don't even have to print physical cash to increase the money supply.)

Some old stuff, explaining gov't power over people and the solutions.

This is a list of demands found on 'occupy wall street' website. This was posted by some Lloyd J Hart 508-687-9153 - again, right on that website.

Let's look at the demands, see what is it that the people want, must be good stuff.

- OK, so this is a 'proposed' list. I wonder who'll be approving the proposals?

- some guy. Don't know who that is.

- so this is a demand to hike prices for goods.

First part of the demand is to establish trade tariffs.

Obviously Lloyd thinks that Americans need to pay more for goods. He also believes that the only thing that is standing between American based manufacturing/agriculture jobs and sales is a bunch of cheap goods produced elsewhere. Well, it's a reasonable assumption that if all goods were made more expensive to import into USA, then there would be no difference between buying an American made good and a Chinese product.

The only two questions are:

1. Does USA actually have the capacity to produce anything any longer that has been outsourced to other countries (USA has 53Billion USD/month trade deficit and half of the government spending is borrowed from foreign lenders). Where is the capital, where are the factories? Are there tools left? Factories? Experience? Shipment lanes? Supplier chains?

2. How will buying more expensive goods make the economy better? Isn't the point of industrialization to bring all goods to all people by using capitalism and increased efficiencies in production, so that anybody can afford anything that only the richest people used to be able to afford? Who benefits the most from industrialization and capitalism? Is it the rich person, who can hire a dish washer to wash his dishes, or is it a commoner, who can get all the cheap mass produced products, like dish washers and enjoy the same quality of life as a rich person used to have?

So the very first demand is: increase our costs and somehow this is supposed to return production capacity that USA lost. But by increasing the costs of products that Americans are consuming by installing all sorts of tariffs, how are the Americans supposed to then save capital to restart the lost production? There are no factories. There are no tools. There are no supply chains.

Second part of the demand is to set minimum wage at $20/hour.

Clearly Lloyd thinks that the current unemployment levels at $7.25/hour are not high enough, he is interested in pushing the minimum wage to $20/hour and pricing out those people, who produce less than $20/hour of goods (not including the production costs). Lloyd should rethink this position and aim higher. He really should start at $2000/hour, because given inflation levels that his demand would generate and given the amount, by which the prices of goods will be raised (because all of that lost production capacity will have to be covered somehow). The cost of living in USA will obviously be much higher given the first part of the demand - introducing tariffs. One does not introduce tariffs to keep prices down, one introduces tariffs so that prices can go up (in case of USA it's not just going to be prices that will go up, the products will no longer be accessible, because USA doesn't produce anything to cover its consumption.) 90% of US sea food is bought from Asia. Introducing tariffs will increase the prices, does Lloyd really believe that the amount of $20/hour will be enough for him to have that comfortable life he is probably hoping to have?

$20/hour is not just a piece of paper. Somebody must produce $20/hour worth of goods in order for somebody else to consume that amount. We are going to go over the next demands, where probably there will be a demand for 'guaranteed employment', so it's likely Lloyd wants everybody to make $800/week or $3200/month. So if everybody is making $3200/month but the prices for all of the foreign products are raised due to tariffs and there is no domestic production, what will the inflation have to be (money printing for consumer loans) in order for people to afford any goods, because $3200/month becomes the base line income for everybody. In real life this means that $3200/month become equal to 0.

I don't see Lloyd thinking this through very much. Anyway, let's look at the second demand.

- what we have here is a monopoly on health care that Lloyd wants to institute. Of-course the minimum payment for everybody will be $20/hour, I am not sure what Lloyd thinks about taxes on this money, who is supposed to pay for this single payer health care system, it's not defined in this demand.

But clearly the private insurance will be outlawed, which means the costs of insurance will be whatever government insists it will be, and government will have to provide this to everybody. In order to provide health insurance and care to everybody via government, the taxes will have to be raised, because currently large number of Americans (likely up to 50 Million) do not have health insurance - many are on government health insurance already, those are the seniors and the unemployed. Of-course with $20/hour minimum wage, there will be many more unemployed people (unless work is somehow guaranteed by the government, like it was in the former USSR, where employment was full, but production was minimal.) If at $7.25/hour there are at least 9.1% or 14,000,000 unemployed, in reality the number is over 20%, which is about 28,000,000 unemployed. At $20/hour, the number of unemployed is likely to triple. That means anywhere between 42,000,000 and 84,000,000 unemployed. Since 14,000,000 is just over 9%, then 100% is under 150,000,000 total people that are supposed to be working, which is about half of the population of USA. Having a quarter to over half of these people unemployed raises the question: what are the taxes supposed to be to give everybody full medical coverage?

Maybe what Lloyd really means is that government should be paying for the health care by any means necessary, so taxing/borrowing/printing the money. Well, that's how USSR did it. Of-course what that means is that the money is artificial, as nobody will give USA anymore loans at that point with such high unemployment, the credit interest is likely to be in double digits. So USA will tax and then print the difference, which means very high level of inflation again, so Lloyd's $20/hour is really not enough at all, as prices will be forced up by that type of inflation. Of-course printing money is the last resort of the failed government. Money is not paper, money is reflection of production. Somebody has to produce $20 worth of products in order for that $20 to buy those products. If there is no production corresponding to that $20, then the 20 will be used to bid up prices of products that are produced. Of-course government is unlikely to admit this type of inflation, it's not admitting it now.

What is more likely is that there will be price and exchange controls implemented, once government takes all of the above measures, and price and exchange controls always lead to one thing: shortages and black markets, as money becomes worthless, nobody wants to sell anything for it and products disappear and are only sold for type of money that will be considered more stable. What that will be is not difficult to imagine: any type of foreign currency that is still backed by production and precious items, metals. Of-course, back in the USSR any use of foreign currencies and precious metals for trade was completely illegal and punishable very harshly, it could be punishable by death. Will US population agree to such measures to stop its economy from going underground completely?

The problem with this demand also is that somebody will have to provide these medical services. Of-course printing currency and paying with it is exactly the same as stealing labor. Who exactly will have to suffer from this? Clearly the doctors and nurses. So in order to make sure that they don't just quit in huge numbers, there will have to be incentives implemented - from punishment to special treatment, like providing them with food stamps and stamps for whatever consumer items that they will be able to get for the money that is paid to them.

So the economy will be rotating around printing large amounts of money, paying it to the doctors/nurses and making sure that they can buy stuff with that cash not from the black market. It's not going to be easy for the average American to agree that the doctors and nurses should be getting these privileges. After all, everybody else has their $20/hour and they want to buy stuff too. The politicians will obviously have special access to food and other types of stamps, this will divide the people into those who have just the cash, and those who have cash and stamps to buy things with. I am afraid Lloyd will be on the barricades again, requiring food and other types of stamps for himself and everybody. The question is: who is going to be making stuff?

- since $20/hour becomes 'minimum wage' in Lloyd's world, then living wage is that very $20/hour, if I am not mistaken? So then regardless of whether one works or does not work, he/she should be getting these $20/hour. OK, so the real question is this: why work?

Why work if the living wage is given to you anyway?

OK, so why should anybody work?

But then the final question: if NOBODY WORKS where are these products going to come from? Why should the doctors and the nurses work? What is the incentive for anybody to work?

If the inflation is so high, that $20/hour becomes much LESS than the living wage, because any available items are in thousands of dollars per item, is Lloyd going to come back to the barricades and require that the minimum living wage is increased to whatever it is at that point (like I said: $2000/hour)? If he is successful then and everybody starts receiving $2000/hour regardless of whether they work or not, how does that change the situation at all?

Why work at $2000/hour? Why should anybody work if they are giving the minimum living wage at that level anyway? $2000/hour? What will happen to the inflation at that level, will the products be repriced to cost in millions?

So if products are repriced and now cost millions, will Lloyd come to the barricades requiring that everybody gets $2,000,000/hour?

Do you get my point?

Do you know that during the twenties in USSR this what was happening with money and prices and markets? Has Lloyd ever study history of other countries? USSR? Soviet China?

- Same as with doctors and nurses, now the professors going to be forced to work while everybody else is just getting their minimum living wage. Why should the professors work? I guess they also will have to receive their special privileges of food and other products as stamps with their cash. Also if one gets minimum living wage regardless of what it is, why bother going to college at all?

In USSR the employment was 100%. Everybody was REQUIRED to work in fact. In the time of Kruschev it was a CRIME to be seen outside of work place during work hours. This became a curiosity, since anybody who was getting a haircut or was in a movie theater could be arrested (and some did), because they were not at their required work place.

The governmnet had to force people to be at whatever work places in order for them to receive their assigned salaries. But this goes against the demand that Lloyd is issuing for a required minimum wage regardless of whether one is working or not, so Lloyds demands go much beyond of even what USSR was doing. In USSR people were required to work. Of-course most of them did worthless unproductive work, that's why there was so little produced, from food, to shoes, to TVs, there were huge shortages, and even with the money that people were getting it was very difficult to buy anything. Inflation - everybody was guaranteed their salaries, so salaries meant very little when somebody wanted to buy a car.

Indeed, how would one buy a car, when his salary is maybe 120 rubbles/MONTH and a car starts at 6,000 rubbles? Even when a person was able to produce that amount of rubbles somehow (never mind how), even then actually BUYING a car was hard. One had to have these special sort of 'stamps' to buy a car.

But Lloyd doesn't even want anybody to be forced to work, otherwise he wouldn't have demanded a minimum living wage whether they are working or not. So I wonder what a car would have to cost relative to people's salaries, and what type of special privileges would be required to own one.

- Solindra. Of-course in a society that put tariffs on everything that is imported, even if it is produced in other countries with subsidies already (so it's really unproductive NOT to buy the things that were already subsidized by foreign governments, which means tax payers, which means these things are sold at a loss). But never mind that. How would it be possible to get away from fossil fuel economy? I suppose the reason behind it is GREEN, but this means that not only Americans would be required to switch from fossil fuels, but to be consistent, Americans would have to stop drilling and exporting their fossil fuels to other countries.

At that point I wonder what Americans could even trade with at all with other countries? At $2,000,000/hour living wage (or whatever it is), not producing anything because nobody will work - why work if you are paid 'minimum living wage? What will Americans be producing at all and what will anybody want to trade with them for? Again - nobody wants to trade for empty promises, people trade because of competitive advantage, to exchange products they are good at for products somebody else is good at. So what will Americans be so good at, that they will produce with their non-working work force, special privileges for politicians, doctors, nurses and teachers/professors? It really is not clear.

Switching from fossil fuels and not selling fossil fuels abroad due to ideology will put a real strain on the American market. It's not clear why would anybody be doing anything and why would anybody sell anything to Americans from abroad.

- Of-course USA is broke. But never mind that, at $20/hour work force, 1,000,000,000,000 dollars will buy 50,000,000,000 hours of work. That's 50 billion hours of work. Of-course that's 6,250,000,000 work days or 17,123,287 work years (counting at 365 days/year). If this project goes ahead, then this will provide over 17 Million Americans with 1 year of work. On the other hand it can also provide 34 Million Americans with half a year of work. Or it could be 68 Million Americans with 3 months of work. It also could be 1.5 months of work for 134 million Americans. Well that's good. That would keep them occupied if they are forced to work, because government can't really do anything but get people to work on some infrastructure projects. Government doesn't do anything else but shovel ready stuff and here is an opportunity to do a lot of shoveling. I just don't know why stop at 1Trillion. Why not just hire every American to do this for a much longer time, the way USSR did it?

Of-course I am also at a loss as to why would anybody want to do this hard work when they can just kick back on their guaranteed minimum living wage?

- Ah great, 1 more Trillion. Same questions as above.

- I don't understand this demand. Isn't there already all of this done in USA? Hasn't pretty much every employer been sued one way or another, which is part of the reason there is such huge unemployment among those, who are given all these various privileges?

- I have news for Lloyd: Lloyd, the economy that your demand will create will only have one direction for migrant workers. It's going to be OUT of USA. This demand cannot be satisfied at all given all the other demands. You will have to impose an iron curtain to make sure there is still somebody left in the country to do all this free work: teaching, healing, growing forests and building bridges.

- whatever. I don't even understand why this silly demand is here given everything else? It's incompatible with all the other demands again, because you can't have change of policy once you instrument all these demands on minimum wages, work, etc., you can't change the government, because you will end up losing those demands for sure. You have to enforce one party, one rule, one time and try and keep it as long as you can, otherwise none of these demands will stay in action, once the true costs of them are understood. What is the point of elections if Lloyd is going to dictate the policy from barricades is what I am actually asking?

- ah, so Lloyd is now telling the entire planet what to do.

OK, how about trying that just in the USA first and then telling everybody how that went? Don't forget - your bank 'deposit'.... it's a loan to the bank. Your grandmother's pension .... it's a loan to the bank, and it was loaned out as a mortgage or a student loan. But of-course at that point it doesn't matter, because everybody is getting 'minimum living wage', working or not. Of-course 'debt' really means assets. The banks OWN 'your' houses, because banks bought them for you and gave them to you. What you really want to do is confiscate bank's assets. OK, whatever, you want to crash the banks. That's fine. In fact WHY HAVE BANKS AT ALL?

If everybody is just getting $20/hour, whether they are working or not, if everybody is just given somehow what they need (I don't know who is producing it all, but OK), then why have banks?

It's not just Communism - it's beautiful. Anything you ever wanted is immediately given to you, all of your dreams are fulfilled, why have banks? Just have one Central Bank (like they had in USSR), and have it print all that cash and be done with it. Who needs deposits and loans and financial instruments, anything? I guess ATMs are still banks' property. It can be confiscated too. Why not? You are confiscating all of their assets anyway (the houses, all of the collateral), why not confiscate the remaining assets as well, after all, what use are those to the banks if they are not allowed to collect on their assets anymore? The holders of the banks - the shareholders, they are the people who now have their investments wiped out, it's them and all of the depositors and all of the counter-parties that have their assets and investments wiped out.

Of-course the question is: why didn't the government just allow that to happen ALL BY ITSELF back in 2008? I guess there wasn't Lloyd around with the list of these wonderful demands.

- Again, what's the point of any reporting agencies if the banks are destroyed? I don't even understand this point, there will be no credit agencies because there will be no credit. Who is going to be THAT STUPID to give credit to ANYBODY EVER AGAIN if credit can be 'forgiven' by a Lloyd's popular/populist demand? Never mind credit agencies, just outlaw credit (and that's what market will do for you, once it realizes what just happen with these 'debt forgiveness' idea.)

- This is just gratuitous. Who wants to be in a union if you can just get minimum living wage without working? Lloyd, stop rubbing the salt all over the wounds.

- OH!

Oh my god.

I don't know who Lloyd is, but if he is any older than 5 years of age, then I hope that people find him and comfort him, because he is lost. He is so absolutely lost.

I wonder how many people read this list of demands and thought: this is a good list, it makes sense?

Anyway, I don't need to write anymore on this subject. I hope it is understood what kinds of ideologies we are presented here with - 4-5 year olds can come up with this. At that age, when a kid is told that the parent has no money to buy something, the kid can tell the parent to just "buy some money". Anybody above that age should know better that money is not just paper, it's production, and that people who don't have to work will not work, because there is no reason to do it. It should be clear to everybody that this list is a product of USA's current education system that has completely failed to produce individuals who are capable of any rational intelligent thought and have no idea about what money is, where it comes from, why it exists, why people work, why people don't work, what people want in their lives, what products are, etc.etc.etc. This is completely unbearably ridiculous, yet here it is, black on white.

All I can tell you is this: beware. BEWARE! This is the same ideology that crashed the tsarist Russia at one point in time in 1917 and created what was known as USSR - Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. But this list is even more ridiculous, because while the Marxist/Leninist slogan of USSR was: "From everybody's abilities to everybody's needs", the slogan here is: "I want, I want, I want". That's all there is to it.

This is a tantrum of a 5 year old child. This is no different than those bankers who said the same thing during 2008, well, people should understand that failures should allow to fail. Risk must be dangerous, that's why it's risk and not a 'guarantee'.

Yes, students have it hard. No, I don't think students who sign under the demands above should ever even have an OPPORTUNITY to go to any university/college or even high school. They belong as apprentices somewhere in wood shop or on a fishing boat. This government will likely forgive their debts, why not, bank debts were forgiven and having too many students with these grievances is dangerous for the society. Of-course the ONLY way to forgive these debts is to make sure that nobody can every get into the same debts ever again, so all loand guarantees by government must be stopped. How likely is that to happen in USA today? This is a tragedy.

However I understand their frustration with their loans. They were tricked into these loans by the system, that told them they needed to get a bachelor's degree in something even to have any job at all, and the market was crashing all around them, and they were too young to understand these problem, and their parents were born into a system that already lost any sense of what money was. Federal reserve, FDIC, FHA, Freddie/Fannie, SS, Medicare, minimum wage, civil rights - those are not just bad ideas (civil rights are entitlements and obligations that cause less employment and higher employment costs by the way, and minimum wage just creates unemployment and destroys opportunity for a first job), these are idea that remove REALITY of what work is, what money is, what risk is.

Even the parents of these kids, who sign under these demands don't know any better. The parents OF the parents of these kids maybe could know. The people who DID know where the parents of the parents of the parents of these kids. THEY KNEW. They were there when understanding what work and what money and what risk is was still clear and important. They were there, but they did not stop the catastrophe of the cancerous growth of government, that lead to this level of ignorance for millions of people and 2-3 generations of people. This is not going to be easy to overcome, you should expect great deal of dissatisfaction and danger coming from these very people, who are like 5 year old minds in 20 something year old bodies, who don't know any better but they know that 'No Child is Left Behind'. They'll have to learn the hard way that when 'No Child is Left Behind', then EVERY child is left behind.

I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke the following question:

-Does USA need China more, or does China need USA more?

I am even more amazed and amused by the answer that is always given to this question by various TV personalities, so called 'economists' and politicians:

- Who else is going to buy their products, obviously China needs USA more!

I don't know if they are just saying this as part of propaganda or are they really this stuck in their thinking or are they just stupid, but consumption is a trivial consequence of production.

Chinese based companies export and make their money based on cheap Chinese labor force, but this labor force wouldn't be so cheap at this point, if Chinese government was not destroying Chinese currency - Yuan.

Chinese labor is very skilled and efficient, but it is not efficient because the Chinese swivel their hands faster or some such nonsense. Chinese labor is efficient because Chinese labor has all kinds of capital invested into it - the factories, the tools, the shipment lines, all of the infrastructure makes Chinese workers extremely efficient and the more productive a worker is, the more purchasing power he should be enjoying and they should be easily consuming all of those goods they are creating.

However Chinese government is destroying the Chinese purchasing power because they are printing Yuan to buy back all of those dollars, that exporting companies deposit into Chinese banks. Of-course USD is supposed to be reserve currency, so the more reserve one has, the more of his own currency one can print in principle, however in reality the US dollar is not backed by any production of its own and it's not backed by any gold reserves that can be used to get anything back for that dollar, so Chinese government debasing Yuan is the wrong thing to do, the reserve is not really a reserve.

Of-course currency debasement is inflation, and in China, which buys a lot of raw materials and energy for production the prices for all of those raw materials immediately goes up (which in should in principle increase the production capacity of this materials, but this takes time). So Chinese government decided to combat the problem of inflation, the problem that it itself creates with every new printed Yuan by raising interest rates - price of debt, which means that Chinese government will have to pay more for sovereign debt papers of its own.

But just how STUPID should one be, to do these two things simultaneously: to produce all of these consumer goods and to give them away for currencies that are not backed by any production, and thus are worthless paper, that is printed in huge quantities to sustain failing non-producing economies of the West, and at the same time to raise interest rates for Chinese government sovereign paper and money, which means this:

1. China is providing everybody outside of the country with free products.
2. China is giving an opportunity for any currency counterfeiting foreign central government and banks to place their counterfeit, un-productive currencies into Chinese debt and collect rent from the coupons for free from Chinese tax paying producing population?

This is height of insanity!

THIS IS MADNESS!

I cannot fully comprehend the Chinese government, maybe it is trying to put the entire world on heroin of free Chinese goods, which is causing the rest of the world to lose their manufacturing bases, and then stop supplying these goods to the world and not provide them with anything any longer, but what could possibly the reason for this? To have the entire world so mad at China that the world would start a war against it?

Just how blind are the Americans and British and French etc. to believe that they are necessary to Chinese for anything at this point? (China has trade deficit with Germany, so out of all others, Germans at least are able to supply their own products that Chinese want.)

China is giving away its products for FREE and it is lending money, to vendor finance this consumption and it is allowing anybody to get high interest, so this is preventing the Chinese from buying the products that they produced and they deserve to buy, and this will cause Chinese to owe all this debt to all these foreigners that they will have to pay for with higher taxes!

Obviously China has over 3 Trillion US dollars in reserves. They can just return that paper to all that debt, but what is the point of this insane game? Useless, worthless expenditure of human resources and production and the growing unhappiness among the Chinese population with its own government, not to forget the huge gender imbalance, also caused by the government's policy of 1 child per family. This is the only real product that other countries can export to China that China would really want to import - female population.

American women and more generally, women of the West, get ready. Your future husbands are not speaking the same language as you do, start learning Mandarin.

It's hard to understand all of the things that happen during a war and it's hard to understand a drug war. This is what drug war looks like.

USA does not have a choice, if it is ever going to do the right thing, this right thing must be done now. Ron Paul is the only candidate who promised to end the drug war. All other candidates will continue with it.

Every single day that drug war continues, the stuff above will continue and if it is not easy to look at 2 people having their heads cut of with a chain saw and a knife, then it should be difficult to vote for more of the same.

Whether CIA funds some of its operations with the war on drugs.... I don't know, but that's what people say happens. So I imagine CIA would not be too happy if Ron Paul won the presidency. Of-course his policy that CIA is unconstitutional as it is spying on people inside the USA and it is used to change regimes all over the world, so instead of trading with countries, USA uses special forces and CIA to establish regimes, and it always has the blow back effect. From the Shah being established in Iran to Saddam Hussein, to Libya now, who knows what will happen there?

I don't know what other evidence you need to vote for the correct candidate on all fronts: economic, political and humanitarian, but I don't see anybody, except Ron Paul address these issues and all other candidates look like puppets, actors.

How does it feel having an 'actor' president (and I don't mean Reagan, though he was an actor before he came to the office and he became an actor while in it.) I mean - actor, as in he is put there to act for you, but not to make actual policy changes based on any ideology.

I don't see anything change for the better if yet another actor president is elected.

This topic comes up so often that it became necessary to write out the argument explaining in detail why SS is an unconstitutional ponzi scheme and why it is immoral and why it hurts the economy.
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The text will be divided into following sections:

1. Constitutionality argument.
2. Ponzi scheme argument.
3. Economic argument.
4. Moral argument.
5. What are the alternatives?
6. Q&A

---------------------------------------------

1. Constitutionality argument.

SS was sold as an insurance program, thus payments were called 'premiums'. Of-course payments were called premiums in public, while in court government was very specific about the payments being made under general taxation power of Congress, as it would be impossible to push the SS taxes through legally if they were just premiums. First reason being that government cannot force a person to buy a specific product (and it was understood to be unconstitutional), secondly the direct property (income) transfer from an employer to an employee was also unconstitutional, and the 10th amendment wouldn't let that pass through, the government is basically not authorized to take money from person A to give it directly to person B.

The actual court case, that was decided in front of SCOTUS was:

Here is a bit more detail from it, that is very relevant:

There were four Justices: Pierce Butler, James Clark McReynolds, George Sutherland, and Willis Van Devanter who dissented on this case as well, declaring that the decision was giving Congress powers it was unauthorized to have.

Thus SS was never found to be Constitutional by SCOTUS, instead the issue was sidestepped, as the government lied to the court (and the court was complicit in buying this argument obviously, that the SS taxes were not earmarked for any particular purpose.)

It is difficult not to admit that saying that taxes are not earmarked is not the same as saying that taxes go into any specific fund, and obviously the SS money was used in the Space Race and in Cold and 'hot' Wars in ways that were just cavalier. There was never any asset that was bought with the money, the most that the government did was put government bonds into this so called fund, but that's just an accounting gimmick, because bonds cost nothing to print, while money can be spent.

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2. Ponzi scheme argument.

Now to the question of SS being a ponzi scheme. Given that there was never a fund with money in it (as was argued by the government that there wouldn't be), let's look at the following evidence:

the first monthly payments were made to this lady - Ida May Fuller. She paid a total of $24.75 into SS and she got $22,888.92 back over her life time. That is quite an investment. If a private insurance tried to sell a product, which didn't have any assets in it, but promised a return of over 92480%, this 'insurance company' would have been (correctly) investigated for fraud and money embezzling as well as running a ponzi scheme.

Of-course eventually ponzi schemes have to end, because they basically run out of money as they run out of fools, but this is not a problem that applies to government ran ponzi schemes, as government ponzi schemes are mandatory, one cannot actually exist them and government can always change the rules, so that to make the scheme 'work' further by increasing the amount of payments that go into the scheme, while reducing the benefits that one gets out of it.

So for the first 2 decades after introduction, the employee paid 1% and employer paid 1% of taxes, and the tax cap was at $3000. However the self employed individuals, making over 3 times the national average earnings were excused from the program.

So if you were an entrepreneur, or you were rich, etc., you didn't have to pay into it. Of-course if these people were forced to pay into that program immediately, it would have been much more obvious to the people, that it is in fact not an insurance program at all. What do you need to insure for if you can definitely take care of yourself? Today even Warren Buffet pays into this. Even Bill Gates has to pay into this. So all of the pretenses of this being an 'insurance', have been dropped long time ago.

By the time Reagan had to 'fix' it, here is what he had to do:

In 1984 the payroll tax was raised from 10.8 to 11.4% and kept creeping up. They increased the amount of income subject to tax from 32400USD to 37800USD in one year (16.6%). So SS was raised in total by over 20% in one year. Also SS was originally (in 40s and 50s) paid by employees, not by self employed. However self employed didn't have to pay employer payroll portion of the tax. In 1983 they started collecting the "employer" payroll portion of the tax, so the SS tax went up from 6.8% to 14% 106% increase in one year. This + the SS tax increase of 16.6% described above, the effective rate of tax increase on self employed individuals was 140% tax hike in one year, and kept getting worse.

Reagan also imposed income taxes on SS benefits for higher earning individuals, which is means testing and reduction in benefits.

Reagan basically cut SS benefits for higher income people by applying income tax to SS benefits, while increasing taxes on higher income people by 140%.

This allowed the program to continue by pushing the problems further into the future, of-course over time these measures also became insufficient to continue the scheme going, soon the taxes will have to be raised further and the benefits will have to be cut again.

SS and Medicare trustees were interviewed and asked what is the difference between the way SS is funded and the way any ponzi scheme is funded:

-Charles Blahous (One of two public trustees for Social Security & Medicare)
-Andrew Biggs (Former principal deputy commissioner at the Social Security Administration )

Parts of interviews with both, Charles Blahous and Andrew Biggs, and full interview with Charles Blahous.

The answer from either of the above interviewees were basically these: Government mandates that people pay into these programs, thus these programs cannot end unlike private ponzi schemes and government increases the payments over time and decreases benefits, though they argue that the intent of the program is different from intent of any ponzi scheme, but the way SS/Medicare are funded is no different.

Of-course the effect of this entire situation, with government being able to force people into paying and having to increase amounts that are paid over time is that 17 Trillion dollars more was paid out by the programs so far than was taken in. So 17 Trillion dollars was transfered from workers (mostly from still current workers), to the recipients of the benefits. Of-course it's easy to understand how this works on the example given earlier of Ida May Fueler, who paid under 25 dollars, but received almost 23000 dollars back.

Nobody again will receive over 92480% return on their 'investment' into SS and Medicare.

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3. Economic argument.

Now the other argument that this is an economic disaster beside being a mandatory ponzi scheme is the very fundamental nature of wealth transfer programs and the way they destroy economic activity and are a net drag on the economy.

Person A makes widgets. He sets up a shop, uses his savings, maybe takes loans, hires some people, buys some tools, rents a place and starts a business of making widgets. Market likes his widgets, so it buys them at a premium, that is enough to cover all of the costs, cover the corporate taxes (which are also causing the same economic problem as SS itself), and then some money is left over to be paid to the business owner as dividends or possibly as a salary, whatever.

Person A has spending habits that use 20% of his earnings, but the other 80% he can save and invest, and he does invest it, it doesn't go under the mattress, because obviously government creates inflation, and also it makes more sense to try and use the money to make more money. It's a natural thing, and if the person already has a business, it's likely he'll be able to invest into his own business to expand, or do something else entirely, maybe try and build an affordable space rocket, who knows?

So this is how person A earns his living - he provides useful widgets to the market, the market loves them, pays him, he pays salaries, workers are paying income taxes (also completely wrong economically and from POV of freedom), and he creates all sorts of economic activity.

There comes government and says: you must now give part of your money to us. We will spend it on whatever and we will give part of your money to this person B.

Person B is not wealthy at all, he is quite poor by the standards of the country. However person B is part of a majority in the voting block, so government likes to buy his votes with person A's money.

Now, person B does not produce widgets that market likes. He does not hire other people, who also pay taxes. He does not increase wealth. But he CAN spend the money on consumer goods.

Question:

What really happened to that money?

Answer:

That money became a net negative for the economy.

Question:

Why?

Answer:

That money was going to be used as an investment, which could increase the wealth in the economy, possibly create more widgets (any kind of widgets), that society likes to consume.

Instead that money was used WITHOUT being part of that circle of being used to create widgets, so it wasn't paid as part of a salary to anybody, it was instead taken out of the investment circulation and used to buy a consumer good.

Question:

Doesn't this increase economic activity, there was something bought?

Answer:

No, because whatever was bought, was bought with a unit of currency, that otherwise would have gone through production cycle once again, before being used for consumption or for further production cycle.

Question:

So why is that bad?

Answer:

It is bad, because people do not trade for pieces of paper. People trade for comparative advantage of being able to buy goods that they do not produce, but they exchange goods that they do produce for goods that somebody else produces.

In this case, the goods that were produced were exchanged not for goods that somebody created, but they were exchanged for an amount of money that was extracted from production without doing that production.

Generally this is the problem with all income taxes. Taxing income is against human freedoms, but it's also destructive to the economy. But this is not just taxing, this is also spending by giving it to somebody who is not producing, which is doubly bad.

When government says: a dollar we spend in government has a "multiplier effect" - the answer is yes, of-course, it's a net negative effect for the economy and it's multiplied by that dollar being denied as an investment and being used to spend on consumption without production happening first.

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4. Moral argument.

From point of view of morality, SS taxes are wrong. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is always wrong, especially when it's done by politicians to gain power and when it's done by majority of voters to oppress a minority (employers vs employees), in a system that is supposed to be protective of minorities and thus specifically not being a direct mobocracy - democracy, but rather being a republic.

It is also wrong morally because it eventually by its very nature ends up being bankrupt, as all ponzi schemes do. Money is transfered from future generations to the past generations, and it was not future generations who voted for this system, it was past generation, and future generations end up holding the bill (in this case 17 Trillion dollars that were transfered and spent already, and a bad economy, which is a result of government, that was able to grow based on this money and to take on more and more powers based on using the recipients of the SS benefits as a single voting block).

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5. What are the alternatives?

There are better alternatives to SS, which are economically sound, moral and are not ponzi schemes, and cannot be used to grow government power and do not put all of the eggs into one proverbial basket for all people. It's done by private investment and it's possible to do if no income is stolen from the citizens. Chinese don't have SS, they save and invest their own money.

US citizens used to do so as well, and in 19 century, before all this nonsense, USA was growing economically, became the biggest creditor nation, producing cheap, high quality consumer goods.

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6. Q&A

Question:

Answer:

-absolutely agree.

This has nothing to do with government, the best time for middle class is when the government does the least amount of damage to undermine the economy and when businesses are allowed to compete on merit of market vote and not on any preferential treatment by the power of government intervention.

Question:

Answer:

- this is not a good description of what makes economy work.

Money 'circulating' around is worthless without context. Context must be production. Without production economies do not work. You can have all sorts of money circulation, but if nothing is produced, because the governments prevents production via regulations, laws, subsidies, taxes, then economy will not do anything.

Zimbabwe and USSR also had all sorts of circulation and you can argue that USSR had a middle class of some sort. It may be a 'middle class', but the entire graph was very very low, so an engineer could afford a car if he saved all of his money maybe for 20 years, but then he couldn't afford anything else.

Question:

Answer:

-Agree. However the economy basically depends on some people who do become richer from what they do, because they fill the important niches of market.

Government on the other hand cannot create any wealth, it can confiscate it and dissipate it to buy power, but it does so while destroying investment and economy and while growing. Any amount of money that government receives, is the amount of money that brings that economy just much closer to destruction.

Question:

Answer:

- That's what taxing should be about.

That's the only sound and correct and moral way to have a government at all - by taxing consumption.

A person doesn't want to invest and create some jobs in your country, he wants to buy a BMW? Well that's when you tax him. You put an excise, an import tax on that. USA economy was funded by alcohol prior to 1913. 50% of all taxes came from alcohol sales in saloons. The other 50% was excise taxes.

Question:

Answer:

- when a person decides to give his money to a poor person, that's because he is charitable and also that's because he does not feel that he needs this money for investment. Not all rich people will invest, some do charity. Most rich people do some or other type of charity already.

70% of taxes are paid by higher earners. A person who has a company may already be taxed near 50% before he spends a single dime.

Warren Buffet owns his company, any amount of corporate taxes come out directly out of his pocket, because he is the largest shareholder, so that's his dividends. He pays whatever in corporate taxes (I hear he is not paying full 35% though, and is fighting IRS about it), and then he pays 15% dividend tax. So if he did pay 35% corporate, that's a total tax of 44.5% BEFORE he spends a single dime, which then means he pays more taxes, like other people: property, gas, sales, excise, import.

AFAIC anybody who pays income tax, any amount, one single cent, one single percent is already overtaxed. Any one single cent that goes to government out of people's incomes - is too much and it ends up growing the government and destroys the economy.

AFAIC, in order to have a working economy, government must not receive any income taxes and it must not be allowed to print money, to set interest rates, to regulate business, to subsidize businesses or people.

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Hopefully this demystifies the entire subject.

(this came about because of the recent story on /., which drew plenty of interest on this subject.)