168 results for author: Dave Svetlik

UE UNIT XIII The deadly false belief that taxes pay for spending

We must get this through our heads. At the Federal Level: “TAXPAYER DOLLARS” DO NOT PAY FOR GOVERNMENT SPENDING. THE US TREASURY IS THE CONSTITUTIONALLY AUTHORIZED CREATOR OF THE NATION’S MONEY. GOVERNMENT SPENDING IS THE SOURCE OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS. NOT ONE PENNY OF TAXPAYER MONEY IS EVER NEEDED, OR USED, TO PAY FOR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SPENDING. Whenever progressives or their leaders at the federal level thoughtlessly accept the false premise that taxes pay for government spending, they are effectively saying the Government of the United States of America has no money of its own and must go begging to the private sector for anything it ...

THE UNIVERSAL ECONOMY UNIT XII: THE RICH CLASS WAR ON SOCIAL SECURITY

ec “Social Security” is unusual because unlike most other government programs, we pretend a specific tax finances it. That makes it easy to mentally match payroll tax revenues and benefit payments, and to calculate whether the 75- year actuarial balance is positive or negative. No one knows or cares whether the defense program runs actuarial deficits -- because we don't pretend that a particular tax pays for defense. In reality, Social Security benefits are paid in exactly the same way that the government spends on anything else - by crediting somebody's bank account. Social Security cannot be any more financially constrained than any other ...

THE UNIVERSAL ECONOMY UNIT XI: RICH CLASS WAR ON AMERICA – AVOIDING “HOW ARE YOU GOING TO PAY FOR IT” TRAP

We tend not to see the obvious. In Unit X of this series we saw how whenever government spending or increasing the Federal deficit benefits the rich, not a question is asked. Congress approves a blank check, the US Treasury creates, out of nowhere, the requested money, and the US Federal Reserve Bank issues the funds into the economy. When 16 trillion government created fiat dollars are needed to bail out corrupt Wall Street banks, not a single politician questions, “How are you going to pay for it?” When the wealthy CEO’s from arms corporations want a 100-billion-dollar annual increase in government military spending, not a single politician ...

THE UNIVERSAL ECONOMY UNIT X: THE SECOND STEP IN FIGHTING THE RICH CLASS WAR – QUIT ACCEPTING THE LIE

We, as working citizens of America, are led to believe a great deal of misinformation about the monetary functioning of our nation. It serves the rich class waging economic war on us. To understand this, we must take a moment to review the operation of the United States as a sovereign nation utilizing a sovereign fiat currency: The U.S. Government, through the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed) is the creator of all of the nation’s money. The U.S. Government can never run out of money. Subject to controlling inflation/deflation, there is no limit to how much money the government can create. The U.S. Government never has to ...

THE UNIVERSAL ECONOMY UNIT VIX: FIGHTING BACK AGAINST THE RICH CLASS WAR BEING WAGED ON AMERICA

“The check arrived out of the blue, issued in his name for $1,200, a mailing from a consumer finance company. Stephen Huggins eyed it carefully. A loan, it said. Smaller type said the interest rate would be 33 percent. Way too high, Huggins thought. He put it aside. A week later, though, his 2005 Chevy pickup was in the shop, and he didn’t have enough to pay for the repairs. He needed the truck to get to work, to get the kids to school. So Huggins, a 56-year-old heavy equipment operator in Nashville, fished the check out that day in April 2017 and cashed it. Within a year, the company, Mariner Finance, sued Huggins for $3,221.27. That ...

THE UNIVERSAL ECONOMY UNIT VIII: STRATEGIES OF THE RICH CLASS WAGING WAR ON AMERICA

“The issue of debt cannot be segregated from the overall organization of society. Now, just imagine if instead of banks and their bondholders holding student loans and profiting from it, if the government had made these loans, the government could easily forgive them, because it would be forgiving money owed to itself. But when you privatize not only education, but also student loans, that is what has led to the student loan crisis. It was completely unnecessary. But Joe Biden, as senator for the credit card companies centered in Delaware, pushed it through, saying, “We’ve got to make education a profit center for the banks. Our purpose is not ...

THE UNIVERSAL ECONOMY UNIT VII: THE FINANCIAL WAR ENSLAVING AMERICA

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” – Warren Buffet – one the world’s 8 richest men whose combined net worth equals more than the bottom half (3.6 billion people) of all humanity. “What we are seeing now is a fight for what is going to be the rest of the 21st century by creating a new kind of class, a new class much like the invasions of Europe a thousand years ago. A thousand years ago, invaders from the north and from Italy would grab land and grab public utilities by military means.” “So, what you have today is a new kind of a war. It’s a financial ...

THE UNIVERSAL ECONOMY UNIT VI: WEALTH = (MATTER + ENERGY) X KNOWLEDGE

It is the laws of physics, and how well we understand and apply them, that determine the tangible, usable wealth of humanity. Money is but an aid or, at times, obstruction in the production and distribution of wealth. This is rarely understood by the world’s politicians who, all too often, are elected – and directed – by the self-serving interests of financial manipulators. An expanded definition of wealth seems in order: Wealth = (Matter + Energy) X Knowledge We know there are iron, aluminum, nickel, copper and chromium ores and coal deposits on Earth. In and of themselves they are useless in supporting human life. They are simply ...

THE UNIVERSAL ECONOMY UNIT V: GOVERNMENT “DEBT” IS NOT GOVERNMENT DEBT

Words matter. When a person opens a $5000 savings account at a bank it paints one picture. But if one states that the bank has borrowed $5000 from a person and now is in debt to that person for $5000 plus interest, it paints quite another. It is the same thing, but one statement creates a feeling of safety and wellbeing while the other creates a sense of doubt and fear of loss. So it is with the misleading terms “deficit” and “debt” as applied to the U.S. federal budget. “Deficit” refers to the annual money created by the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed) over and above the amount of money returned to the government in ...

THE UNIVERSAL ECONOMY UNIT IV: THE FOLLY OF THE “BALANCED BUDGET”

We’ve heard it a thousand times. . . “I have to balance my budget. Why shouldn’t the government?” I have to pay my bills. Why shouldn’t the government? Politicians of every stripe jump on board. “Government spending is out of control!” “The deficit is unsustainable!” “We’re mortgaging our children’s future!” But each of these statements is based on false or deliberately misleading premises regarding the monetary functioning of the U.S. Federal Government. Each assumes the government has no money of its own and must tax or borrow from the private sector to “pay its bills.” Let us assume for a moment that this is ...