Since I put a lengthy comment on the topic, explaining that income taxes are illegal and are collected illegally, I am going to link to it here, since it could be a useful reference at some other time. It has the arguments and plenty of referential material in it.

It is amazing what length a government can go into to steal some more people's freedoms and money and create so called 'jobs'.

Now there is a new type of police force to prevent people from playing a ball on a beach unless it is a 'beach ball' or a 'volleyball'.

One can't dig a hole that's deeper than 18 inches, but government now can hire people as defined in section 13 of that document:

"Each member of the Beach Commission shall serve at the pleasure of the Board of Supervisors.

A. The term for each Commission member shall be four years...

Section 16: Code enforcement officer - an employee of the Department of Beaches and Harbors who has been authorised to enforce any and all statues, ordinances, regulations, or policies pertaining to the beaches....

Section 17: Director

New licenses must be acquired as described in section 20.

Fines for violation are described in section 28 - a violation of sections ... is a misdemeanor and the fine is not to exceed USD1000 and/or imprisonment in the County Jail for up to 6 month (or both, a fine and an imprisonment).

(And government insists there is no inflation?)

Some of the regulations:

Section 30: digging prohibited of a hole deeper than 18 inches, and vertical sand structures are prohibited (unless there is a license)

Section 42. License required to set canopies or tents or to 'use amplified sound'.

Section 43: something about nudity and disrobing.

Section 44: smoking prohibited.

Section 45: model operation prohibited (so can't float a toy boat).

Section 49: It is unlawful for any person to cast, toss, throw, kick or roll any ball, tube, or any light object other than beach ball or beach volleyball (unless there is a license).

Section 51: prohibition to swim beyond 200 yards seaward.

Section 53: A person shall not use, POSSESS, or operate in the Pacific Ocean opposite to any beach regulated by this Part 3 a sailboat, kite board, surfboard, paddleboard, ocean kayak, surf ski, rigid hull surf-craft or similar device other than a surfmat or bodyboard, at such times when the ocean is restricted for swimming and bathing only (and except within 200 yards from shore or 750 yards seaward of the point at which the farthest wave is breaking, whichever distance is greater, or when used by a skin diver)

Section 54: No person shall hand glide, paraglide, or parasail on, from, or above any beach, cliff, or bluff adjacent to a beach that is owned, controlled or managed by the County (unless with a license).

I liked this novel more than the rest of Rand's books, while it wasn't as down with the reality and history as 'We the Living', this one wasn't an attempt at science fiction and a gospel at the same time, it was more honest, it wasn't trying to provide a reason for why a person should want his own individual freedoms as much as Atlas was. The people in it were not portrayed being as super-human as they were in Atlas and the story line and the ending were much more plausible.

Atlas of-course, is what is currently happening, not because there is a massive conscious attempt at putting capital on strike, but because Asia provides a good alternative for engaging in relatively free enterprise and gold is not illegal to hold (yet), so putting capital on strike and moving savings and investment out of the failing currencies and economies is done organically without really too much of an ideology, just based on competition alone.

On the other hand the Fountainhead is sending a similar message in less contrived terms and it is actually more interesting to read for anybody concerned not only with the message in the book, but also from point of view of learning something new from the writing, in this case something that most people probably never think of too much - architecture and construction, and it shows that Rand spent plenty of time researching in this area, and she did, apparently she worked for free for over half a year as a typist in architecture bureau just to understand the trade.

I think this is her best book, it provides more than just a message, it provides a good setting for it as well, and also I think it is more honest in many ways, including views on sexuality. Definitely Atlas had to be written after the Fountainhead, compare Dominique and Dagny, even their names are telling something different, never mind their roles and behaviour. What's interesting though is that in a sense Dominique and Lillian Rearden have something in common, but only in their methods, their goals are quite different.

The theme of the corruption of the courts is raised in We the Living, the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, but only in the Fountainhead the jury appear not be corrupted enough by the system yet, while in We the Living, the new provisional government of the USSR was completely corrupt and so was the court in Atlas.

It almost seems that this is a trilogy, where the first book shows the history of going towards socialism in one country, the Fountainhead shows a transitional period in a relatively free society towards socialism and Atlas Shrugged finishes the journey for the entire planet causing massive inevitable collapse and a glimmer of a possible salvation through restoration of freedom at the end.

I think these books should be viewed as a trilogy, they do have many in common elements, they go over the same concepts from different perspectives and what's most important, they are stylized versions of what has actually happened, what is still happening and what is about to happen, so it's a strong recommendation.

When the ideal that you are chasing the entire life betrays you, you die.

However what matters is that while you are chasing the ideal you are Living.

Requiem for Marx by Yuri Maltsev, defector from the former USSR, former economic advisor to Gorbachev and Professor of Economics at the Carthage College in Wisconsin and is a Senior Fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.

Interview with Yuri Maltsev (starts at 41:40) - talks about his defection, his work in the former USSR and USA and the change that he sees in USA, that he believes is going to take the society towards violent socialism (as no socialism can exist with government violence).

Finally, after almost 3 decades of just hearing about this book, I decided to read it, simply because I am quite tired of the people answering to my comments with: "put away Atlas Shrugged". I never held it in my hands before so now at least this type of commentary will have some merit.

I read it now, it's very good, I understood the meaning in it simply because I came to the same conclusions on my own long ago, and this was just a nice summary put into a somewhat interesting half science fiction, half detective novel. Of-course it was fairly easy to understand most of the 'mystery' of the detective portion of it even from the first part, the plot was easy to figure out, so if you are just looking to be surprised with a good detective story, it's not for you (unless you are easily surprised.)

The narrative is very straight forward and easy to read, mostly. It takes about 2 full days to finish all 3 parts.

As an atheist it's interesting to see Rand attack the religious believes of a large portion of the population through this book, now I understand why so many religious folks hated it. The good and bad are shown for what they are - the self-sacrifice is properly displayed for being in reality contradictory to the very concept of justice. Of-course it is unjust that the best people are being sacrificed by the worst and the mediocre and the average on the altair of what these mediocre and average people believe to be their right because they understand that they are weak and thus they believe they deserve compassion. They believe they deserve the sacrifice of the strong. They want the strong to sacrifice themselves to the weak and they want the strong to believe that this is the right thing to do as well, so that the weak can feel that they are free of guilt of requiring this sort of masochism from those, who really don't deserve to be sacrificed.

So in the most basic sense, the main protagonist - John Galt is a creator, who decides that he will not allow the crowd to sacrifice him to their wants and needs simply because they are weaker than them, and he refuses even to feel bad about it, which removes all leverage from the crowd that they could use to force him into this sacrifice. To the religious this is an atrocity, John Galt becomes the Anti-Christ, because of-course, Christ is a god (or part of god, or whatever that religion does with the 1 x 3 god ratio), so Christ is the ultimate Creator, and he is the strongest, and the weak want him to sacrifice himself, they want him to die for them and simultaneously to take away their own responsibility for his demise.

The crowd wants Christ to do so and Christ does it, but John Galt does not. John Galt thus is the Anti-Christ - a powerful creator that they want to sacrifice for them, to be their slave while abdicating them from all of the responsibility, giving them everything, the material and the spiritual safety with his own life.

This is the the main theme of the book - the weak requiring the sacrifice of the strong and motivating it simply with the fact of their own weakness, lack of desire or ability to take care of themselves. The strong telling them - get out of my way and you will get what you desire, do not require me to sacrifice myself but let me live and you will get fruits of my labour but you will pay the fair price for it so that I would not have to sacrifice my life for you in this unjust manner, that also requires me to take away your responsibility not just for you stealing the fruits of my labour, but also for you stealing my own morality for me, forcing me to accept that I must be responsible for you in an unnatural unjust manner, not requiring anything in return for this work.

The book uses multiple examples of this type of behaviour on all sides, from those who take care of themselves and by proxy of the market and the rest of the people, to those who expect the sacrificial behaviour, to those who don't expect it, but are uninterested in changing the status-quo and are simply going with the flow of things.

In the book all of the nations are going in that same direction and the USA is portrayed as the last of the nations that is still standing on its own feet, the last one to be destroyed by this socialist movement.

I think the only real criticism of the idea that I can come up with is of 3-fold.

1. Some of the characters are too thoughtful, they are too rational, I would say too theoretical in their thinking, I am not sure that too many people think too much. I don't believe that the majority of really good business people would listen to somebody like John Galt, so they wouldn't become his disciples and leave the system to disintegrate, people are not that intelligent, they would stay in the system much longer and would keep doing what they do mostly by inertia and false hope.

2. A socialist system is capable of prolonging its suffering for longer than just a decade or two, I think especially given the power and wealth that is collected over a few generations in a free society cannot be dissipated that quickly, not in 12 years, not even in 50 years. Given the fact that Rand correctly showed that the only innovation that takes place in a powerful formerly free society is military driven, it's unlikely that the knowledge could be lost so quickly. The inertia in the system would keep the society going for a longer period of time, we know this for sure, after all USSR lasted for about 75 years and USA is still going despite the 1913, 1929, 1971 and 2008, it's quite impressive actually how long the road to total destruction is. Of-course Rand shows correctly that the end will be self-destruction through all of the banditism and wars and hunger once the business leaves and lets the system digest itself and collapse as that huge oak tree that was struck by a lightning, but it collapsed because its core was rotten and it could no longer stand on its own.

3. It is a rarity today or any day to see a very smart individual who is a real creator - from ideas to implementations to business and even to being near perfect in every way themselves, it's an idealistic view, not a realistic one. But I am pretty sure that it is not that Ayn Rand believed herself in that image, but she really was building a stark contrast between the polar opposites of who she was writing about, so she just wanted to distil the naked concepts into sometimes unbearably rational and intelligent individuals who don't really exist in the world, but it's one way to bring the point across. It's not completely black and white that way in real life, but fundamentally it is the reality and I think some of the criticism is just that - that you don't see people like that in real life. Well no, don't often see that, I think Apple computer or Google or Facebook today are much better examples than Rearden with his metal and Dagny with her trains and I am unconvinced that the people behind Google, Facebook and Apple are as rational and intelligent and so self-reliant as the characters in Atlas Shrugged, but they don't have to be, they are still a good enough approximation. On the other hand the politicians as they are shown in the novell I think are much closer to the true individuals found in politics everywhere, and the average people are probably also closer to the average people the book portrays. Of-course it had to be done that way, because that is how Rand wrote, that was her way of quickly brining the point across (even if 'quickly' takes a bit over 2 days to read).

Of-course Bible also had very unbelievable characters, but at least the New Testament was created based on the exact opposite idea - that the strong must self-sacrifice for the weak and they must forgive the transgressions and the sins of the weak and they must accept their own sacrifice and take the responsibility for this away from their 'flock'.

I read a few reviews of the book after I read it myself and I find that the criticism suggested by others, especially those who did not like the novel is really lacking in the understanding of the meaning of what they just read or it is a complete denial, not of the book even, but of the idea that self-sacrifice of the strong for the benefit of the weak is unjust. I think they missed the fact that they are the characters from the book.

The main positions that the author takes are these:

1. Government is inherently evil but it has to exist to do a few things, like provide border security, protect individual freedoms, and criminal and contract law.

2. Taxing labour, work, production, income is morally wrong and it also turns out to be a bad economic practice.

3. Allowing government to regulate individuals in business, taking away rights, like the property right, right of speech, etc., all of this must not be allowed, otherwise the society falls apart.

4. Going alone with the society on the so called 'social-contract' that one did not sign is self-sacrifice for the benefit of the bandits, who are looking for that sacrifice and they are looking to everybody to give them the justification that their expectations are good and moral. Sacrificing self for the benefit of others is always wrong, because it goes against the morality of living and also it ends up destroying the economy and enslaving people, everybody, regardless of their position on things. Sacrificing self only puts the weapons into the hands of these bandits - politicians, sociologists, philosophers, judges, various corporate groups that are benefiting from close ties to the government.

5. The crowd is used as leverage against its own long term interests because the crowd only is interested in short term gains and it has no problem sacrificing somebody, in fact it's looking to sacrifice somebody immediately to achieve those short term gains and further destroying any long term profits.

6. Allowing government to set the standard for what money is, is a horrible idea and practice, because destroys money but that means it destroys investments and productivity and labour and economy and society and promotes violence and destruction.

Conclusion: the book is a good read, but by looking at various other reviews it's clear that it does not change the position of those, who are on the opposite side of this idea.

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.

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.

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.