Need to look at what Bitcoin can't pay for.

by Glen Wallace

While there may be plenty of places you can buy stuff with Bitcoin, and that list may be growing, the important point is what you cannot 'pay for' with Bitcoin. 

In the US and other developed nations, there is a list of expenses that make up what is commonly referred to as the 'cost of living.' It is those expenses that must be spent in order to maintain a foundational level of modern industrialized society living comfort one is accustomed to.

It is those cost of living expenses that cannot be payed for with Bitcoin and I've seen no signs of any adoption of acceptance of Bitcoin as consideration of payment in those costs. 

Examples of those expenses that cannot be payed for with Bitcoin: Mortgage payments, HOA fees, Rent, Property taxes, public utilities, gas and electric, all types of insurance including property insurance, health insurance, auto insurance, student loan payments. It is only after all those essential expenses are made that maybe one can look for some nicety they can buy with Bitcoin. I think this lack of use for Bitcoin to pay for the costs of living expenses will greatly weaken future demand for the cryptocurrency. 

Right now I think people are mostly just flipping or hoping to flip the virtual currency with the goal of acquiring more dollars that can be then used to pay for those cost of living expenses and maybe a few niceties if there is some dollars left over.

Bitcoin Bubble

My comment in response to this article in the Atlantic

The reasons stated in the article for owning gold and silver were only the reasons why the elements sometimes do bubblize. But gold and silver also have some special properties that are very useful in industry and desirable in jewelry and decorations.

Gold and silver, and their inherent properties, cannot be practically duplicated. Bitcoin's only useful value is its blockchain technology that is open source and non-proprietary and therefore can easily be duplicated through the creation of a new cryptocurrency.

Currently there are around a 1,000 different cryptocurrencies out there that have either the same or variations of the same blockchain technology that Bitcoin uses. Because the blockchain technology is open source, public domain technology, there is no central authority that dictates how many different virtual currencies can be created.

Without any central control there is either the current problem of deflation with Bitcoin where everyone wants to save their coins and nobody wants to spend, or inflation as new virtual currencies come out and get used. But in the case of inflation, the retailers would start to become reluctant to accept virtual currencies because they will lose value before the retailer has a chance to turn around and use the virtual currency to buy more supplies and pay the bills.

There are some virtual currencies that are pegged to national currency, but with many of these cryptocoins, including Bitcoin, their monetary value is based on an exchange market prone to speculation by flippers who just are in search of more regular Dollars. And I think the bulk of the current demand is coming from flippers blowing up the bubble.

After other bubbles burst, the asset price comes back down to what end users are willing to pay for the asset. For instance, after the tulip bubble burst, I imagine tulip bulbs came down to a price gardeners, both professional and amateur, were willing to pay for the garden plant.

But what are end users, who just want to use a virtual currency for use in a transaction and not to flip, are willing to pay for a single Bitcoin? When thinking about that question, keep in mind that the use of gold and silver as a currency is founded upon the idea that they are both inherently scarce and have inherent demand beyond that of a currency.

With Bitcoin, the only end use for which there seems to be a demand is for use as a currency. Bitcoin doesn't seem to have the same scarce underpinning foundational value that gold and silver have. Rather, Bitcoin bitcoin has more of the characteristics of a fiat currency, but without the measured control of a central governing body carefully determining monetary supply and value. But without any agreement by a central authority that effectively pegs the supply and value of a fiat currency to the supply of goods and services of a nation, there doesn't seem to be any limit up or down in value. With Bitcoin right now we are seeing the 'no limit up' part, I'm guessing pretty soon we will see the 'no limit down' part.

Why I think Bitcoin’s price is so high and why I think it is a bubble approaching the bursting point.

The price is so high because so many people do not have a good conceptual understanding of how speculative financial bubbles work. All they see is the price of an asset continually rising and they don’t want to miss out. What they don’t realize is that a point of saturation is eventually reached where most that want to buy have already done so. And I think we are getting close to reaching that point given the current ‘hotness’ of the topic in regular mainstream non-financial news and forums.

Once all these newbies have jumped in that are going to jump in, then they just sit back and watch their computers and say “OK, let’s see it rise!” But the only thing that had been driving the price higher was from all the demand from all those Bitcoin newbies versus the supply from willing sellers. But with everybody already in that is going to get in, the balance shifts to a heavier supply of those wanting to sell than those wanting to buy. That is the point where the bubble bursting point approaches.

Now, as the trading price starts to steadily slide people say “Uh oh, let’s cut our losses and sell”. But if everyone wants to sell at the same time with few buyers, then you have a bursting of the bubble — a crash in the price of the asset. And the price doesn’t settle until it reaches a price where the asset’s intrinsic value is seen by the end users of that asset as worthwhile. For instance, after the tulip bulb bubble burst, I imagine the price of the bulbs settled back down to a price that gardeners were willing to pay for the bulbs.

To determine the non-bubble fair value for any asset, you need to be confident there is enough demand from a market of buyers who will say “sure I’ll pay that much for such and such an asset because I really want it or need it or know of somebody else that I can sell it to who really wants it or needs it for its intrinsic value.” But it’s hard to gauge Bitcoin’s intrinsic value even if it does have some useful value in a transaction, because while the number of Bitcoins may be necessarily limited, the number of other virtual currencies that use the same or basically the same blockchain technology that provides that usefulness, is not limited.

The Group Ownership of America

The Group Ownership of America

by Glen Wallace

by Glen Wallace

After the resignation of US Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price, once again I’m hearing people on the television tell how he misused ‘taxpayer dollars’.  I’ve written about this before, but apparently the message didn’t get around that well.  So once again I repeat, once the government has received the dollars paid by a taxpayer, those dollars no longer belong to the taxpayer.  It seems like a simple and clear enough concept, but the widespread misuse of the term ‘taxpayer’ continues.  So, if the money spent by the government does not belong to the taxpayer at the point of transaction between someone in the government spending some of that money, why do so many politicians, writers and news reporters insist on continuing to imply that the taxpayer’s have ownership of those dollars spent?  Some better terms to use would be ‘public dollars’ or the ‘people’s funds’ or the ‘citizen’s dollars’.

The payment of income taxes is just one form of revenue that the federal government relies upon to pay its expenses.  To my knowledge, however, there is no quid pro quo legal relationship between paying of those taxes and having that revenue be spent either in the interests of the taxpayer or at the direction of the taxpayer.  The taxpayer has no special standing compared with a citizen who, whether due to a tax loophole or deduction or low income, pays no income taxes.

I sometimes wonder if the misuse of the term ‘taxpayer’ is a deliberate attempt to maintain the illusion of a contractual understanding between paying taxes and how those revenue dollars are spent.  Maintaining the illusion could benefit those in power who are able to avoid contributing more to the government’s revenue than they currently are.  Once the common citizen realizes that income tax is merely one of many potential sources of revenue and not a payment for services for themselves or for the country, they may start to creatively look for those other potential sources of revenue — especially revenue derived from taxing wealthy individuals, corporations and institutions.  After all, if the ordinary workaday citizen starts thinking that maybe this country could be run with little or no money coming from the hourly and salaried worker, then they might start searching in earnest for those other revenue sources.

And those other potential sources of revenue are many:  tariffs are one — we could really leverage our trade deficit by increasing tariffs.  There would be a double benefit since not only would we be getting all that new revenue, but an incentive would also be created to bring back more manufacturing and the associated jobs to America — since a company that makes stuff here wouldn’t have to pay the tariff.  A high frequency trading machine tax could also be implemented that would directly tax Wall Street while leaving Main Street largely alone.

Additionally, a federal asset tax on billionaire individuals and corporations could be implemented that would act much like local property taxes, only this new property tax on billionaires would apply to all their assets, not just real estate.

And I think there are many more potential revenue sources outside of ordinary income tax, but for now I’ll list just one more:  While I’m a strong proponent of conserving our nation’s natural lands in as close to a natural state as possible and protect those lands from exploitation for natural resources, but if all those efforts at conservation on federally owned lands fails and the decision to exploit a parcel of land has been made, then I think we should at least act to maximize the fiduciary benefit to the country of that resource extraction on those lands.  But I think there has been and continues to be a long history of acting in a fiscally irresponsible manner when it comes to deriving revenue from natural resource extraction by privately owned companies on federally owned lands.  That needs to stop.

We, the citizens of this country should look at ourselves as an ownership group of a vast real estate empire.  As owners we have to decide on three main categories of use for that land: recreation, conservation, and income revenue.  Of course there can be a lot of overlap between those three categories, but we should always strive to do the best job we can in whatever direction for land use we decide on.

Given that we have representatives in Congress that are supposed to be managing the affairs of our ownership group, we should hold them responsible when they mishandle our real estate portfolio.  While those representatives will maybe get a passing grade when it comes to the first two; conservation and recreation, I think I’ll have to give a failing grade when it comes to income revenue when the land we own is primarily used for that purpose.  From my understanding, when a lumber company or a mining company wants to extract a natural resource from federal lands all they have to do is bid on the mineral rights or timber rights for that land in a no reserve auction, and the winning bidder gets to extract all they want and keep the entire bounty from that extraction, no matter how low the bid is.  There is a reason private landowners do not use a similar process when they decide to open their lands for resource extraction: it is a fiscally irresponsible way to do things.  We the people should be using the same methods to derive income from natural resource extractions that any private landowner would use who is acting in their own fiduciary best interest.

Edit to add:  After completing the above essay I started to think about Puerto Rico and all the hardships they are facing in the aftermath of hurricanes.  Well, we should see ownership as not just in the business sense of the term, but also in the responsibility sense of the term.  That is, we as a country need to take ownership of the responsibility to take care of those citizens in our country when they are in dire need.  Puerto Ricans are US citizens living in a territory owned by the United States.  We as a country need to take responsibility for doing what it takes to help our fellow citizens out whether they are on an island in the Atlantic or our next door neighbors.  There are currently just over 2 million combined active and reserve military personnel in the United States armed forces.  The last I heard there have been only about 7 thousand US troops sent to aid Puerto Rico.  I realize it might not be practical to send a large proportion of those 2 million members to Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, but I’m confident we could, without that much difficulty, send over ten times the number of troops currently there.  It seems like conditions there are extreme enough to warrant a large scale deployment to rescue, rebuild and provide food, water, generators and medicine and medical care to our fellow citizens over there in need.

Medicare for All for American Greatness

by Glen Wallace

To the editor:

In the article announcing Angie Craig's plan to run for Congress in 2018, Jason Lewis was quoted as saying: "One candidate already wants to threaten Medicare solvency with a government-run single payer plan...", presumably in reference to DFL Congressional candidate, Jeff Erdmann, and his support for Medicare for All.  I find Lewis's stance to be rather negative and pessimistic.  

I'm sure if Erdmann is elected to the House, he will work with the other members of Congress to find ways to fund Medicare to insure its solvency.  America's greatness is due to a history of big thinkers who had a can-do attitude and envisioned the wonderful possibilities that could be achieved through cooperation, perseverance and a positive attitude.  For instance, it was that positive attitude that Republican President Eisenhower had when he supported building the interstate freeway system -- a government built system that has provided the freedom for Americans to hop on the freeway, without charge, and enjoy a safer, more streamlined route between locations all around the country.  

Imagine what might have happened if Eisenhower had Jason Lewis's negativity and pessimism? Surely then Eisenhower would have then nixed the freeway plan after concluded that building such a highway system would lead to insolvency in whatever government department that took it on.  But fortunately, instead, we had an optimistic visionary in Eisenhower who made possible the single-payer federal government owned and operated interstate highway system that we largely take for granted today.
  
But still, unfortunately, healthcare coverage in America seems to be one area that got overlooked by the visionaries of yesteryear.  As a result we are left with the costly mess that is the private insurance based system -- a system that has been a drain on businesses funding employee coverage and a drain on families struggling to meet monthly dues and who sometimes find themselves mired in a struggle to get insurance companies to cover pharmaceuticals and needed surgeries.

But there is a way out of this mess and it's called Medicare for All.  To get there, all we need is some old-fashioned American can-do spirit.

Debt-Free Fiat to pay for government expenses

The following is my comment regarding this article

by Glen Wallace

A possible solution not mentioned is to begin using the US Treasury as a significant source of new money to fund federal government projects and operations. Currently, federal government and governing costs are paid for by either revenue, mostly tax revenue, or by debt revenue, mostly through the sale of US treasury bonds. However, I'm talking about the third option that very few others are even publicly considering; debt-free fiat dollars computer generated by the US Treasury to pay for much of the US budget that is not debt service. Such large pieces of the budget pie as SNAP (food stamps), defense, medicare, medicaid, highways and a host of earmarks could all be paid for without incurring any debt or dipping into tax revenue.

I believe the generation of debt-free fiat is the ideal situation under circumstances such as the ones we face now. Presumably, as the Fed unwinds all that debt it paid for with new QE dollars, it will be receiving back those QE dollars and proceed to 'shred' most of it, thereby reducing the money supply. Such a huge reduction in the money supply could have a very negative effect on the overall economy. The solution then is to balance out the unwinding of the debt-based quantitative easing rounds with debt-free quantitative easing by way of US Government spending. And unlike the Federal Reserve's QE that directed funds largely at Wall Street, my easing suggestion would be one that would flush mainstreet with a gusher of currency.

And I think concerns about excessive inflation are unwarranted given that the debt-free generated fiat would match with real goods and services being paid for. Excess inflation occurs when the money supply grows much faster than the supply of goods and services paid for with the money in circulation. However, when the new debt-free fiat is used to pay for goods and services at competitive market prices, the ratio between the goods and services and the dollars to pay for them remains largely the same.

Meanwhile, the debt service on all those mountains of public debt would be much easier to service using dollars obtained from usual means of revenue -- but now hopefully without having to again resort to taking on even more public debt.

Open letter to Senator Klobuchar regarding insulin prices

by Glen Wallace

Hi Senator Klobuchar, I just saw a feature on the KSTP news featuring some comments by you about the recent run-up in the price of insulin recently. I believe an ideal solution is one you and your colleagues on capitol hill have not even considered legislatively. The solution to spikes in the price of pharmaceuticals and medical devices would be for the government to take on the production and distribution of those pharmaceuticals and medical devices at cost. Currently there seems to be a habit of thinking among healthcare policy makers that traps them into assuming that the only option to getting a needed healthcare product to the patient is by way of the commercial markets.

But there shouldn't be any barriers to the federal government taking on the role of the production and distribution of at least the medicines and devices that are outside of patent protection. And keep in mind many of the most notorious recent cases of price spikes occurred with products that were already outside of patent protection -- including, but not limited to insulin and the epipen.

Also, there is a long standing precedent of the federal government owning and operating the means of production and distribution of a product -- the US Government Publishing Office, also known as the Government Printing Office, has been around for many decades manufacturing, printing, publishing and selling to individuals and institutions everything from books to pamphlets to posters and just about everything printable in between.

Therefore, there should be nothing stopping the Senate and House from mandating the opening of a Government Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices Office to bypass the market and get the needed healthcare products directly to the patients at the mere cost of production.

For years now I have been seeing hearings and statements from representatives such as yourself ranging from scolding to pleading of manufacturers to try and keep their prices down. I ask you; who's in charge here? When I hear only talk from you in the form of scolding and pleading to some Big Pharma executive, it sure looks like it is the Big Pharma companies that are the ones in charge. I thought we were a country of, by and for the people. If they will not bring the prices down, then we the people should engage that American can-do spirit, and make those products ourselves.

And this could be just the beginning -- we could start building a medical system that is entirely patient driven instead of where it is now in being market driven. I think people that go into the medical profession do it first and foremost because they care about people. With a patient driven, patient based system we can have as the primary decision makers, about what medical drug or device goes into production and their prices, be those medical professionals that care about the patients and not some bean counting CEO with only a legal fiduciary responsibility to some distant shareholders.

Referenced news story about insulin prices featuring Klobuchar comments

Why hasn't Congresswoman Betty McCollum yet cosponsored H.R. 676 Medicare for all single payer act?

I just discovered that Democratic Party congresswoman Betty McCollum has not yet signed on as a co-sponsor of  H.R. 676 Medicare for All bill that has already garnered 112 cosponsors.  Here is the official listing of the co-sponsors.  I thought about this after watching a Jimmy Dore youtube video where he interviews a guy who is primarying against Nancy Pelosi -- Pelosi also not yet a cosponsor and has said words to the effect that she is against single payer.  This makes me wonder if maybe I should primary against McCollum, even though she doesn't represent my residential district.  That would be a little ironic because Represents congressman Jason Lewis 'represents' my district, but resides in McCollum's district.

Democratic constituents, in these congressional districts that lean so heavily Democratic that the Dem candidate is all but guaranteed to get elected, should see the primaries as brass ring opportunities to get the most progressive candidate possible.  By that I mean there isn’t much of a need in those districts for a candidate to compromise in order to acquire the moderate fence sitters that might get put off by the far left progressive positions of a candidate.  But instead, it seems more so that the opposite has occurred, whereby the constituents of perennial House Democrats settle for progressive mediocrity in electing very conventional neoliberal, corporate friendly candidates.

Democrats need to embrace good regulations and progressive taxations to lure the Republican vote.

by Glen Wallace

We need a strong central government imposing regulations to protect the common man from the tyranny of the wealthy.  While, as a leftie progressive, I'm willing to admit that some regulations are onerous and unnecessary, I never seem to hear from a right wingnut regressive admitting that some regulations are helpful and needed to protect the worker, the consumer and the environment from harm or exploitation at the hands of a ruthless businessman.  It seems like the free market set want to create a social political environment where we return to the days of company towns where the residents are considered to have freedom because they aren't physically restrained from leaving -- never mind that the company town is in the middle of nowhere and none of the residents own a car or have a dime to their name that could be used to move out.

Let's remove the income tax and put in its place a federal property tax on the wealthy that covers not just real estate but any and all assets held by the top one tenth of one percent.

Good regulations are proactive whereas, any competitive marketplace without any regulation, is, at best, reactive in dealing with problems.  I say 'at best' because some business can go on harming customers, the environment or workers for years or decades before, or if ever, they get punished in the marketplace for their actions.

The Democratic Party could gain their biggest strength by undermining or outright removing the biggest rallying points for the political right wing.  Democrats could start by eliminating income tax for most, if not all, the 99 percent.  The loss of revenue could be compensated for by increasing the income tax on the top one tenth of the top one percent.  Additionally, there are a great number of other sources of potential revenue the could, and should be tapped -- high frequency trading machine tax, VAT tax, where resource extraction on Federal lands is a given, the transaction should be designed with a fiduciary responsibility towards the owners of that land -- the citizens of the U.S.

Additionally, the power over the ability to create money needs to be returned entirely to the people and taken away from the private Federal Reserve Banking system.  I'm not saying "end the Fed".  If they want to continue as a industry association where banks can voluntarily join, that's fine.  But monetary policy should be set by the US Treasury.  While supporters and representatives may claim that the Fed is audited and nothing untoward has been found, I would counter that there still could be something untoward going on with the Fed and its relationship to the American people it is supposed to be looking out for.  While the Fed may have only one set of accounting books, it may have two sets of strategy books.  That is, it may have a public strategy that complies with the Congressional mandate it is supposed to follow, it may have a private strategy that it instead follows that is directed at aiding the Fed's shareholders at the expense of the American people.  For, instance, had Fed insiders known early in the 2000's where the housing crisis was heading they could have made some strategic shorts, thus benefiting from the Fed's strategy to blow up the housing bubble.  Then when the bubble burst, Fed insiders could have had inside knowledge of the QE program and how it would be used to boost commodities and the stock market for which the insiders could take a long position ahead of the rise.    

But regardless, Democrats need to look at what is motivating the populist base of the Republican party that leads them to vote the way they have.  And then have an answer that might just persuade them to switch sides.  Remember, most of those Republican voters are not rich.  Hired disinfo agents may try to fire up that middle to lower class Republican base by complaining about wealth redistribution.  But I find it hard to believe that base will get worked up into much of a lather when hearing about how some sherry swilling, tailored suit wearing, manicured men with soft hands that never have seen a callous in its life, with a sixty thousand dollar Patek Philippe watches sitting just above those soft hands, has to fork over more in taxes -- especially when that would mean those working class Republicans get to avoid paying income tax altogether.

Additionally, where regulations are concerned, show how good regulations protect the consumer, the environment and the worker from unscrupulous business owners and how a strong government acts as a measure against such businesses.  Without a strong government there is a power mismatch between the little guy and the tycoon.  But where there is unnecessary, onerous regulations, Democrats should be seen working hard to end such bad regulations while continuing to strengthen, tweak, enhance good existing regulations while enacting new good helpful regulations.

Too big to bail banks are still a problem

by Glen Wallace

 A decision needs to be made regarding financial institutions as to whether they are a capitalist private enterprise or a public utility -- they shouldn't try to be both at the same time. Well, a bank can be both at the same time but we saw the consequences of attempting those dual roles in 2008. I'm concerned though that the government regulators and politicians have not learned the valuable lessons of the great recession. Instead there seems to continue to be an intermingling of poorly regulated or completely unregulated speculation on risky derivatives by the same financial institutions providing both needed business and personal lending and insurance, and also wealth management of retirement and life savings of individual citizens.

 If, say, the speculations on derivatives were to fail spectacularly, as they did for the failed financial institutions in 2008, would any jeopardizing of large bank standing on the losing end of those bets, amount to a corresponding jeopardization of the flow of lending capital keeping the business world running and the funds of savers entrusting their savings and investments in those jeopardized banks? If so, then it seems that would be prudent to take measures to completely separate banks engaging in traditional lending and cautious, well regulated investing, from investment banks that are willing to take on the risks associated with derivative trading.

 A possible world needs to be envisioned where we imagine that a given bank fails, and decide whether letting it fail will jeopardize the entire economy of the country and therefore will need to be bailed out by the country or if it will be largely just a loss for the shareholders of the bank. If it is the former, then either a separation of the risky investment banking element from the conservative traditional banking element needs to be done, or the bank needs to be broken up into smaller pieces in a manner similar to the actions by Teddy Roosevelt on Standard Oil Corporation. We need to keep taking those measures until we wind up not having to bail out any financial institution, outside of insured deposits, regardless of the scenario.

Michael Hudson, how do we extricate the economic parasites from the main street host?

Comment I posted following the above youtube video speech by economist Michael Hudson.

by Glen Wallace

I still have some questions.  I guess my main question, from which all my other questions or concerns regarding Michel Hudson's philosophy, revolves around how to safely extricate the parasitic elements of FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) from the main street host.  I  say, the parasitic elements of FIRE, because I think it oversimplifies things to imply that all of FIRE is a parasitic malevolent force on society.  But reading and listening to Mr. Hudson, it isn't entirely clear to me whether he thinks all of FIRE is parasitic or for what aspects are so, how do we go about the extrication process safely.  It would seem to me that we living in a much more complicated situation insofar the parasite and the host are sharing the same 'blood supply', so to speak.  Therefore, just yanking off the parasite could be very hazardous to the health of the host.  While the top 5 percent may own the bulk of stock equities, I think a lot more than 5 percent of the population own a significant amount of stocks, usually through their 401k's or 403b's and IRA's.  So any actions that has knock-on effect of crashing the stock market and a lengthy trough could be financially devastating to much of the remaining middle class population.  While maybe the markets and the economy could have let Citibank fall, I'm not so sure about AIG.  While lending may be currently tight, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there is still a great deal of small business lending going on with banks and credit unions providing loans for businesses very frequently.   However, if that lending were to really dry up completely as we were warned could have happened if not for the infusion of stimulus cash into the economy soon after the fall of Lehman Brothers, then wouldn't we be facing an economic crisis on a scale severe enough to lead to a civil emergency similar to a natural disaster?

Further complicating matters, isn't that there is a legitimate element to each area of FIRE.  How are we going to, in any parasite extraction process, separate any legitimate actors from the malevolent ones?  I'm not saying it can't be done, but we need to make sure we aren't throwing the baby out with the bath water, so to speak.  To take an analogy from the movies that I think has some realistic relevance to main street finance -- let's make sure we don't take measures that bring down the Bailey's Savings and Loan of the world while trying to go after the Potter's empire of the world, from the movie 'It's a Wonderful Life'.  And to take examples not from the movies but straight from today's economic realities -- in terms of a mass discharging of debt, that sounds nice for the students facing mounting student loans but it doesn't sound so nice for the current and future retirees expecting municipalities and corporations to meet their highly underfunded pension debt obligations.

I don't mean to be a naysayer but we need to come up with a plan where we have covered all the bases so that we can not only answer the tough questions, but also to get to where we are to trying to go.   Indeed, I'm concerned that if we were to implement a plan, for instance, that did crash the markets and dry up small business loans, then the parasitic malevolent elements would sweep in like the Potter character from the movie previously mentioned, and say to the effect "see, you were wrong all along, so from now on let me do the thinking and planning while I buy up all of your land and shares for pennies on the dollar."

I have all sorts of ideas myself for how to go about the parasite extraction process.  I think Bernie Sanders has some good ideas that are a good start, but I think we can safely be a lot more aggressive with progressive reforms than even he is suggesting.  For instance, I haven't heard Sanders even mention what I think we need to delve into and that is Federal asset taxes on corporations and the top one tenth of one percent of individuals.  That, and we need to access revenue from other novel sources as well such as a Wall Street high frequency trading machine transaction tax.  We can also get revenue from increased Tariffs and Excise taxes.  We should also be better leveraging revenue when natural resources are extracted from federal lands.  Personally I would rather Federal lands be preserved as much as possible in their natural state, but if it is already decided to sell some of the land's resources, we might as well do so in a financially responsible manner.  So, instead of selling off the rights to all the timber in a tract of Federal land in a no-reserve auction, sell the timber for the going rate per board foot just as a private landowner would.  Additionally, the US Treasury could bypass the private Federal Reserve, and increase the money supply by minting more coins in larger denominations.  Then all this new revenue and money could be used towards instituting an FDR type of civilian conservation corp like program to rebuild our nations infrastructure.  Additionally we will be needing a lot of revenue if we are to have any chance of making up for the looming pension shortfalls that, if not remedied, will be hard on not only the pensioners, but also the overall economy due to the resultant lowering of aggregate demand from retirees have much less dollars to spend in their pockets.  

Wealth Redistribution to Lift All Boats

The dwindling middle class indicates that the only boats rising are yachts sitting in the torpid pools of wealth amassed by the capitalist sharks. Meanwhile, the middle class tributaries are running bone dry, leaving the middle class row boats sitting on dust. Therefore, the only logical solution is to install pumps in the form of asset taxes into those stagnant wealth pools to insure that the wealth gets rerouted and redistributed back into those tributaries. Trickle down economics has been proven false time and again. However, getting money into the hands of those who will in turn put those funds back into circulation by spending it, the middle class, has been shown to have a tremendous positive knock-on effect throughout the overall economy. But to keep the economy booming you need to keep those tax pumps going to insure money doesn't start stagnating again and rotting in those torpid wealth pools.

Everything is pointing to Hayek being completely wrong -- in fact he had everything backwards. Instead of a free-market being the road to freedom, it turns out that the term 'free-markets' is just a rebranding of the term 'laissez faire'. And laissez faire has always been and always will be the direct route to serfdom -- and with the struggling middle class we are seeing that first hand in the form of the handywork of Hayek's intellectual descendants, the Chicago School of economics. And despite the clear evidence that the Chicago school's laissez faire or freemarket methods of hands-off through repeal of Glass-Steagall and lack of oversight and control of the derivatives market lead directly to the great recession, there has been little corresponding acknowledgment or recognition of the evident refutation of the Chicago School's economic paradigm.

We can get the middle class back on its feet again, but we need judicious government oversight and regulation along with a good amount of wealth redistribution. One excellent means of redistributing the wealth would be through programs similar to FDR's programs involving the Civilian Conservation Corp. A massive government program to repair, rebuild and reinforce our nations infrastructure would go a long ways towards getting money back into the economy and refresh and enhance the conduits of commerce. It would be a win win for everyone, including the much more heavily taxed very wealthy who didn't even know what to do with all that they had, but with such a program, could be proud that their tax dollars were put to such good use; rebuilding a great America.

The Need for a Reserve Fund to Fund Underfunded Pensions

by Glen Wallace


Here is another one of my responses to another essay by John Mauldin about the looming pension crisis:

This is something that the federal government should be building a lock box rainy day reserve fund for.  We should be looking under every revenue sofa cushion for every extra potential revenue source and raising corporate tax rates and taxes on the wealthy -- those best able to absorb the increased tax rates.  There are all sorts of taxes that could be imposed on Wall Street such as a high frequency trading tax and special capital gains tax that would only be applied to stock gains realized by the wealthy one percent.

While some may claim that the looming pension crisis is not their problem, it may well become everyone's problem insofar as we are all tied to the overall economy that will be negatively effected when the crisis hits.  Part of the problem is that, as John touched on in his piece, if all these retirees have their pensions reduced or eliminated altogether, all those retirees will have less money in their pockets to spend on purchases -- a reduction in aggregate demand.

Additionally, don't forget that the last economic crisis almost sunk the entire economy.  Maybe the pension crisis, when it hits, will not be something that, like the last crisis, that we can muddle through and dig ourselves out of.  The pensions may be too big to bail.  And an economic disaster that the economists warned could have happened in 2008, if it were too happen, could lead to a physical disaster on the scale of a natural disaster.  All the goods and services we take for granted in a developed economy could be in jeopardy in an economic crisis because all the providers of those goods and services, and in turn their vendors, depend on the ability raise funds through the ability to borrow money.  If a pension crisis, perhaps combined with another crisis such as mass student loan default, a complete stalling of the economy could lead to an inability of the chain of suppliers of those goods and services, including groceries, to reach the everyday consumer.  But instead of engaging in massive financial reform and the building of a massive rainy day bailout fund, we've only seen some mild patchwork repairs and bracing that everyone can only hope, perhaps unrealistically, will safeguard us from another crisis like we saw in 2008.  People don't seem to realize how disastrous an economic disaster could be and how it could lead to a civil emergency or how close we came to that happening in '08.  

   We should be seeing any potential economic disaster as something that we need to invest big dollars in too defend against just as we invest big dollars in the military for defense -- whether we need to spend so much for military for defense is an open debate, but my point is that the public generally agrees that spending large sums on defense is considered worth while and so they should be considering the possibility that investing in defense against economic calamity is worth while as well.  Maybe we should be shunting towards economic defense reserve funds some of that massive sum currently spent on the military.

Will the looming pension crisis lead to widespread municipal bankruptcies?

by Glen Wallace

The following is my response to John Mauldin's recent post Angst in America, Part 4: Disappearing Pensions:

Not mentioned in the article is the possibility of municipal bankruptcies as a means to avoid paying out on these government pensions. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe government debts to pensions can be discharged through bankruptcy (unlike student loan debt where the debt typically remains even if the debtor declares personal bankruptcy -- the student loan debt bubble, another storm cloud on the horizon that could potentially merge with the looming pension crisis cloud to perhaps form an economic 'perfect storm' situation).

I'm starting to wonder if maybe Meredith Whitney wasn't completely wrong about her prediction she made several years ago that widespread municipal bankruptcies would occur soon after she made her prediction. Instead of being all wrong, maybe she was merely premature in her predictions. Perhaps what threw her off was that she couldn't have predicted the Fed's rounds of QE and the profound stimulating effect QE would have on the stock market. I'm thinking she then couldn't have known that all those government pension funds would be able to cover those pensions for so long, drawing from such robust returns from the markets combined with being so much more heavily vested in the markets than in the past.

Maybe if the run up in the markets hadn't occurred soon after she made her prediction, Ms. Whitney would have been proven correct as all those government pensions and local governments wouldn't have been able to turn to the markets to keep pace with pension plans expecting such high rates of return? And rather than increasing property taxes exorbitantly to meet those pension debts, governments would declare bankruptcy in an effort to avoid servicing those debts. And now looking to the future, once the markets inevitably slow down and almost certainly decline for an extended period of time, will we be seeing widespread municipal bankruptcies on a scale similar to Meredith's earlier prediction?

Single payer government health care as an incentive to bold entrepreneurship

by Glen Wallace

From the perspective of what I like to call 'applied social political philosophy', I prefer to bypass the whole debate about whether health care is a privilege or a right that the state is obligated to provide.  Instead, I ask the question, is a society that provides universal health care coverage achieving an ideal compared to a society that doesn't?  Can that ideal be practically achieved using a reasonable level of human and material resources?  If the answer to those two questions is 'yes', then proceed with taking steps towards the state providing universal coverage.  If there isn't yet sufficient support from the constituents for such coverage, then proceed with arguments and facts to sway them otherwise.

Regarding any counter arguments about government coverage leading to complacency, I think the facts and reasons point in the opposite direction.  If memory serves me correctly, I believe I read a statistic that European nations are greatly outpacing the U.S. in rates of business startups.  And given that universal single payer coverage is much more common in Europe, it would stand to reason that that difference is a fundamental reason for Europe besting the U.S. in such bootstrapping.  That's because here in America, the worker is much too dependent on their employer for health care coverage and thus discouraged from even dipping their feet into the business startup waters.  

Compare the American worker with dreams of starting their own business but are wary of leaving their employer with its comfortable health insurance coverage with the Scandinavian worker who knows they and their family would be assured of health care coverage whether their business startup idea works or not.  Our system of private insurance, generally provided through employment, acts as a disincentive to bold entrepreneurship.  Conversely, a single payer universal coverage system, by limiting risk, would act as an incentive to the sorts of bold bootstrapping that built the United States business empire -- an empire that is now showing signs of flagging compared with the rest of the developed word that wisely provides universal healthcare coverage.

VA problems are no reason to abandon single payer idea

by Glen Wallace

While some may like to point out how the VA has supposedly done such a bad job, as a reason why the government shouldn't take over health care, they are ignoring some important counter arguments or reasons supporting government takeover.  For one, the negative accounts about the VA that people tend to refer to, are to a large extent brought to you by private, for profit, news media that gets a substantial portion of ad revenue from private insurers that have a vested interest in retaining the private health insurance system.  As a result I believe the private news programs are highlighting, focusing and magnifying the VA's problems, while largely ignoring similar issues and problems that plague the private health insurance system.  One need only look at the online reviews of private insurers to find a plethora of examples that make those insurer's look even worse than the VA.  And if a single payer system were implemented, then it would be more of an expansion of Medicare than an expansion of the the VA.

Before Obamacare was implemented, while listening to an NPR feature about individuals having problems with private insurers, if I remember correctly, I believe they quoted a statistic that two thirds of all individuals that declare medical bankruptcy, already had health insurance at the time of their bankruptcy.  And the reasons for such bankruptcies wasn't just due to high deductibles, many were the result of disagreements between insurers and providers about what procedures are, or should have been covered.  As a result, a patient ends up being responsible for for medical bills they thought were covered.  Sometimes the patients can end up getting such bills lowered or covered by the insurer, but getting to that point often turns into a full time job for the patient in the form of phone calls, and negotiations with a hospital and insurer.  Hearing such stories one has to wonder "There has to be a better way!"  Well there is a better way and there also is no need to reinvent the wheel -- that better way is already being used successfully in most of Europe in the form of a government run single payer health care system.

Venus Project oversimplifying scarcity and human behavior

by Glen Wallace

I think Jacque Fresco of the Venus Project is oversimplifying the principle of scarcity and how that relates to how humans value any given good or services.  People don't, wont and wouldn't act in a way that would fit in so neatly into his idea of how people respond to an abundance of any material good.  When some thing that is needed or wanted by the public becomes abundant, there is always some subset of the population that wants that abundant thing in an improved form that is not so abundant.  People often are not satisfied with some thing being merely adequate in a utilitarian sense.  It varies with the product as to how satisfied the general population of consumers tends to be with some product being merely adequate to getting a job done.

It is not difficult to find examples for demonstrating how the principle of dissatisfaction with adequate works and comes into play in everyday consumerist life.  In fact, the difficult part is in finding examples of products where satisfaction with adequate is nearly universal.  Instead, just look at any group of consumers in any category of shopping and you discover a plethora of varying desires and ideas for what they are looking for in a product beyond merely getting the job done.  

For a first example, think of any of the house shopping and house remodeling reality TV shows.  If you watch one of those shows, it wont take long to find either the potential buyer or seller or often both complaining about how a perfectly functional kitchen is outdated.  I watch such shows and I wonder to myself what are they complaining about as the kitchen usually looks perfectly fine to me.   And usually such kitchens are indeed perfectly functional but merely the style is no longer in vogue.  So in they come with all their drills, saws, pry bars and hammers and start ripping the thing apart, expending all sorts of human labor and money and time to get right back where they started from functional point of view.  

And even for a product where a large majority of the population is satisfied with merely getting the job done, there usually is going to be some subset of connoisseurs that are unsatisfied with adequate and still want something special in the product.  An example there would be the ordinary CD player that has become so ubiquitous that you can find them built into the cheapest boom box and still sound pretty good.  Nonetheless, audiophiles insist that the sound of CD players can be significantly improved through circuitry and better DAC chips.  As a result a demand quickly emerged in the audio market sufficient for a great number of manufacturers building and selling boutique CD players for prices ranging from hundreds of dollars for a single unit to many thousands of dollars.  The demand for a product and a scarcity of the higher end product emerged despite a dearth of scarcity of the adequate, lower end product.  

But from my understanding of Jacque Fresco, he seems to be claiming that people wouldn't do in his vision of the ideal Venus Project world what people are indeed already are doing time and time again here in today's everyday world.   Even if something is not scarce, people will continue to desire that same something in a deluxe form that some of those people believe is a better form, but is scarce in that deluxe form.  All this demonstrates two of my main concerns with the Venus Project and the Zeitgeist movement -- First, there seems to be disconnect with the reality of everyday world and how people behave in this world and how they would behave in the worlds envisioned by those movements.  The people behind those movements seems to have become so fanciful in their ideas that they never seem to come up with a starting point in today's world where the first 'baby steps' are taken that would move society towards their utopia and what those first steps would and should be.  The second concern is with the possibility that people might be told, by the powers that be in a Venus Project that has come to fruition, what they, the citizens, want or should want in terms of products.  Would the Venus Project political powers make it illegal to buy and sell scarce, hand crafted objects? 

 OK, now were delving into the area of where it might sound like I'm supporting the ideas of Hayek in his book 'The Road to Serfdom' -- but I'm not, at least I am not a universal supporter of the so-called free market system of economics.   Indeed, I think a great deal of government intervention is needed to create an environment where smaller entrepreneurs are on a more even competitive plane with the larger corporations.   It is these smaller crafts people that improve the merely adequate product, that have a more difficult time absorbing many of the costs of doing business compared with the giant corporation.   So with government intervening to redistribute the wealth of the big business towards the small business, the freedom of both the budding entrepreneurs ability to bootstrap and start a small business and the shopping consumers ability to choose from a greater variety of products, is increased.  With Hayek's brand of laissez faire economics, the economies of scale present inherent advantages to the large conglomerates that lead to monopolies and trusts that decrease the choices of the consumer, the worker and the budding entrepreneur.  

Net Neutrality, What is it, Why it's a good thing and why it' not likely in jeopardy

by Glen Wallace



Bear in mind, the following is my understanding of what net neutrality is, however, I could very well be wrong.

What it's not:  net neutrality does not effect your choice of internet service providers nor their ability to offer packages of varying speeds and data limit levels.  Nor does net neutrality effect your ability to choose web hosts if you want or need your own web page nor does net neutrality effect the hosts ability to offer various packages of hosting features involving things like server space, private or shared servers, monthly data levels, email accounts and so on.  We already have choices involving ISP's and Hosts and the vendors providing those services already have the ability to offer different packages involving different services.  And, we already have net neutrality. 

So, where's the neutrality?  The neutrality that we already have and we want to keep involves the physical backbone of the internet and the computerized 'switching stations' through which all internet traffic must flow for connections and communications to be made between web sites and web viewers.   I put 'switching stations' in single quotes because I don't think that is the correct technical term for the infrastructure part of the internet that I'm thinking of, but, regardless, I think the term gives a good picture of what that part does with the ones and zeros flowing through the internet. 

Net neutrality enforces rules requiring the owners of those switching stations not to charge a toll on the data through those stations.  Of course the switching station owners would love to charge a toll as that would provide a bountiful of revenue corresponding to the bountiful flow of traffic on the internet.  But with net neutrality, there is no such toll, and as a result we have a great deal of freedom and variety in terms of what we can post, upload, view and read on the internet.

Now, bear in mind, I don't think that an end to net neutrality would result in individual web site viewers paying a toll directly to the switching station owners.  I'm not certain, but I think the tolls would be paid by either the website owners or the hosting companies for those websites or a combination of both the sites and the hosts.  But of course, if one individual wants to create their own little website, the costs of doing so could become out of reach.  Similarly, Google, the owners of YouTube, might have to start being much more restrictive and selective for what they allow users to upload.  As it is now, YouTube makes it very easy to publish a video and anyone can do so as long as the video meets their reasonable community standards such as not being hate speech or harassing or copyright violating. 

But if Google has to pay a toll for each and every video that gets uploaded and then has to pay another toll each time that video is viewed, it may have to start filtering and selecting only those videos that are conducive to creating the best ad revenue.  Similarly, Amazon and Netflix would likely have to charge considerably more for streaming their movies and shows.  Facebook might have to start charging membership fees. 

As one might expect, charging tolls to websites could also have a quelling effect on freedom of speech across the whole political spectrum as video and written postings presence on the web may start to be based on the posters ability to pay or generate revenue for the website they're posting on and not on the value the poster is bringing to the world with their post. 

However, the reason I don't think Net Neutrality is in too much jeopardy is because there is a confluence of the needs and wants of the populace and the needs and wants of some very powerful corporate financial interests.  As a matter of fact, I suspect that the primary reason that net neutrality has survived some past challenges, is more the result of corporate power than citizen activism.  I wish I could be confident that net neutrality is still here because of popular uproar in its defense, but it doesn't seem like the interests of the plebs holds much sway in the halls and meeting places on capital hill. Just look at the corporate interests whose bottom lines would be squandered if net neutrality were to end and tolls would have to be paid: Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Netflix to name a few. 

Well, you may be wondering, just who owns those switching stations if not any of the previous corporations named.  Once again, I could be wrong on this, so I wont name any names, but I believe it is the traditional phone company giants that own most of the 'backbones' of the internet, including those 'switching stations' I keep talking about. 
One might wonder, how are the phone companies able to stay in business if they have to maintain and operate those switching stations if they don't get to charge any tolls?  That I'm not sure of, but they seem to be doing alright under the current system of net neutrality.  What I believe is the case is that the big phone companies have been able to stay in business and do so quite nicely for many decades under a system of economics involving a relationship between private enterprise and the government known as 'well regulated monopolies.' 

Under certain circumstances, usually involving utilities, competition to provide a particular service is impracticable.  As a result, either the government itself provides the service or it all allows one business to provide the service as a monopoly.  But if a business provides the service such as a utility to the public, the business must be specially regulated so that it can't take advantage of its advantageous position  as a monopoly and engage in such activities as price gouging.  As a result you have such government organizations as the FCC acting as an regulator and intermediary between the public and the private utility ensuring that both the public receives a reliable service at a reasonable cost while the provider is able to continue to pay the bills it needs to, to keep the service to the public running.

If the private service provider discovers that it needs more funds to pay for an essential part of that service -- such as, for instance, a switching station, it can petition the regulatory body, such as the FCC, to allow them to tack on an extra fee to the bill of the consumer.  If the FCC finds the request reasonable, then the utility will be allowed to charge that fee.  Those of you who still have land line telephones or who remember those bill recall seeing a charge called something like the "federal access charge" -- I think that is an example of one of those extra fees that the utility allowed the phone company to tack on to cover the costs of some of their physical infrastructure, whether it be the installation of telephone polls and lines out to remote parts of the country or some major upgrade of equipment. 

Regardless there is ways of making sure utilities are adequately compensated to ensure continued reliable delivery of some necessary service.  And I think that indeed, especially in this era, the internet is a necessary service that should be regarded as a utility.  If those switching station owners were able to start charging tolls, that would effectively result in a legalized form of racketeering, where websites would be required to pay for their data to pass through the switching stations and be viewed on the web.