Although I do not share either her one-sided view of the Founders or her apparent preference for pure democracy over constitutional republicanism, I nevertheless agree with much of what Vi Ransel has to say in the following article -- particularly her assessment of the Gilded Age (which is certain to make Austrian School ideologues cringe) and her point about how “slavery” -- despite being officially abolished in the 19th century -- was never truly eliminated, but simply transformed into more sophisticated, less obvious guises, and how it thrives to this day.-------------------------------------http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=RAN20100406&articleId=18524
-geoliberatarian
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On the other hand, the financial meltdown-inducing quadrillion-dollar derivatives bubble could never have existed without the repeal of a particular government "regulation" -- namely the Glass-Steagall Act: http://www.counterpunch.org/kaufman09192008.html http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10588 Hence the consistent reluctance of Austrian School commentators to even mention the word "derivatives" -- preferring instead to focus on the comparatively miniscule "housing" bubble. See what happens when ideologues try to oversimplify reality so that they don't have to think as much? We wind up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I am in the subservient position because i have to go to the bank and ask permission from them for the money to be created. They are in the dominant position. They are also in the predatory position because they get to charge interest on that money. And that, of course, is precisely why elite bankers have always been vehemently opposed to debt-free Greenbacks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRpK7jj9ghY (The Money Masters - part 10 of 22) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUh-h7MvwMA (The Money Masters - part 11 of 22) Thanks for making my case for me.
As I've already explained both here and elsewhere, neither does the economic snake-oil peddled by the Austrian School.
Keep falling for the Austrian School's aristocratic concept of "freedom," and you'll continue to fall hook, line and sinker for one ridiculously false solution after another. |
-geolibertarian
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Note by Me: I don't agree with Barack Obama is a poverty pimp.
By Timothy
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=163559.0
I know that those who frequent this forum are mostly "conservatives" or Austrian School "libertarians" who, as such, don't have to be told that there are certain "liberals" and "progressives" who don't necessarily have their best interest in mind.
Nevertheless, I assume at least some of the many hundreds of "guests" here are left-leaning independents and relative newcomers to the world of politics. It is primarily to them that I address the following.
If Ralph Nader is a classic example of a true and sincere liberal who, as such, is genuinely concerned with eliminating poverty, Barack Obama is a classic example of both (a) a smug, manipulative, insincere “limousine liberal” and (b) a foundation-funded “poverty pimp” whose only real concern is with protecting the vested interests of the ruling-class oligarchs pulling his strings, while fooling his gullible followers with carefully crafted, euphemism-laced rhetoric into believing all the while that he’s serving their interests.
With particular regard to elite “foundations,” it seems that most people are woefully unaware of the alarming extent to which these supposedly “benevolent” institutions have shaped the horribly and increasingly dysfunctional social and political realities that have grown up around us in recent decades.
It is thus my hope that the following excerpts from Chapter 2 of Webster Tarpley’s book, Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography, will help spark a dramatic reduction in this acute lack of mass awareness.
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Since the value-added tax (VAT) has been in the news lately, and since most Americans seem to know little if anything about this horrendous tax -- and thus how it compares with other taxes -- I thought I’d start off by posting the following excerpt (all emphasis original):
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“One proposal is to substantially reduce or replace personal and corporate income taxes with a tax on consumption. One such tax is the value-added tax (VAT), which is like a retail sales tax except that it applies only to the difference between the value of a firm’s sales and the value of its purchases from other firms. For example, Intel would pay the VAT—say, 7 percent—on the difference between the value of the microchips it produces and sells and the value of the materials used to make the chips. Compaq, IBM, and other firms which buy the chips and other components to make personal computers would subtract the value of these materials from the value of their sales of personal computers. They would then pay the 7 percent tax on that difference—on the value they added.
“Economists reason that since the VAT would apply to all firms, sellers could shift their VATs to buyers in the form of higher prices without loss of sales to other firms. Final consumers, who cannot shift the tax, would end up paying the full VAT as 7 percent higher prices. So a VAT would amount to a national sales tax on consumer goods.”
-- Campbell R. McConnell & Stanley L. Brue, Economics, 14th ed., pp. 657-8
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There’s a widely propagated myth concerning the VAT that is revealed in the above quote:
“Economists reason that since the VAT would apply to all firms, sellers could shift their VATs to buyers in the form of higher prices without loss of sales to other firms.”
The establishment economists who employ this argument are obviously counting on the gullible masses to ignore or overlook the obvious questions it begs: If, due to the VAT-caused spike in prices, retail stores experienced a consequent drop in sales, wouldn’t this force them to reduce how much they purchase from the producers of what they’re attempting to sell? And wouldn’t that, in turn, trigger the very “loss” in sales -- and hence in available “investment” dollars -- from which the process of “shifting” the VAT to consumers would allegedly protect mining, agricultural and manufacturing firms?
One doesn’t have to have a degree in economics to see clearly that the answer to both questions is a resounding “yes!”
So we see that, contrary to popular belief, the VAT penalizes and discourages not just “consumption,” but production as well. It is a tax on -- as Robert De Fremery would put it -- the “privately created values” of labor and capital goods (“capital” for short). Only in the Orwellian fantasy world of economic snake-oil salesmen can such a tax be imposed without penalizing production as well as consumption, and without reducing (consequently) the ability of the average firm to invest in production.
Bottom line: like the ridiculous carbon tax, the VAT is just one more glorified way of taxing labor and capital to death while leaving publicy created land values largely untaxed -- all so overprivileged landlords, slumlords and banklords can continue to quietly parasitize both wage-earners and productive entrepreneurs through systematic rent-gouging.
Ever notice how you never hear that particular assessment from either Keynesians or Austrians? And on the issue of monetary reform, ever notice how both groups -- despite being supposed “opposites” -- seem equally opposed (albeit for different reasons) to debt-free Greenbacks?
If so, why do you suppose that is?
Could it be that Democrat-vs.-Republican is not the only “false paradigm” within which countless people have allowed their minds and intellects to be literally enslaved via elite-funded propaganda campaigns? Could the reason why Austrians obsessively attack Keynesians -- and vice versa -- be that each group must rely heavily upon the other’s fatally flawed agenda as comparative foil against which to define its own, lest the masses they’re trying desperately to dupe notice the respective flaws in each?
Read the following and decide for yourself:
http://www.henrygeorge.org/isms.htm
http://www.politicaleconomy.org/gaffney.htm
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