Posted on 06/02/2019 8:14:00 AM PDT by Kaslin
Pierre Omidyar had the Midas touch. In 1995 he founded what became eBay. I don’t doubt that Omidyar worked hard, but his $11 billion fortune may be a case (compared to the typical toiler) of easy come, easy more -- and that may mean trouble for the rest of us.
Stay with me for several paragraphs, please. Psychologists know some people who have inherited lots of money feel undeserving, and some who have earned billions almost magically feel smart enough to run everything. Marxists during the 1930s sometimes joked that the American working class was Democratic, the middle class was Republican, and the upper class was Communist.
Much of American journalism is coming under the authority of new, so-smart multibillionaires: In the past six years alone, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has bought “The Washington Post,” Salesforce founder Marc Benioff bought “Time,” Laurene Powell Jobs (widow of the Apple founder) bought “The Atlantic,” and biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the “Los Angeles Times.”
Those publications are all on the left, as is Omidyar’s $250 million investigative reporting group, First Look Media. Ryan Grim, an Omidyar Washington bureau chief, is among those pushing Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), the new hot term among Democrats. Grim’s boast: He and they are no longer “constrained by a mindset” that sees national debt as a problem.
Grim quotes Stephanie Kelton, who advised the Bernie Sanders campaign: “The federal government cannot run out of dollars. . The federal government -- as the issuer of the U.S. dollar -- can create all the money that is needed to guarantee health care for all of its people.” Grim concludes his analysis with a 2011 quotation from former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan: “The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that.”
Greenspan designed his “zero probability of default” comment to offer reassurance after S&P’s downgrading of the credit rating of the United States. But Donald Trump said the same thing in 2016 when CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked him about the soaring national debt: “This is the United States government. ... You never have to default because you print the money.”
Trump is right. Even Zimbabwe and Venezuela never had to default: Their dictators just printed more money. But I have a 10 trillion Zimbabwe dollar banknote that may be worth a penny -- or maybe I could trade it for a similar number of Venezuelan bolívars.
Hyperinflation can’t happen here? Bill Mitchell, 67, the Australian economics professor (and reggae band guitarist) who coined the term “Modern Monetary Theory,” is an MMT guru. He seems fine with inflation as long as it’s not accelerating. He wrote in 2010, “If the price level or a wage level rises by 10 per cent every month ... the inflation rate would be considered stable -- a constant rise per period. If the price level was rising by 10 per cent in month one, then 11 per cent in month two, then 12 per cent in month three and so on, then you have accelerating inflation.”
Other MMT proponents say the United States should deliberately inflate the currency as a way to reduce the real value of our national debt and transfer money from creditors to debtors. Many newly elected House Democrats seem to be MMT fans: They hope to control the White House and all of Capitol Hill in 2021. Journalists need to sound the alarm on this, but they are unlikely to if socialism continues to gain popularity, and the most influential media companies are under the control of owners who hit a high-tech gusher and are also prone to magical thinking.
You’d think the failure of socialism and communism in Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, and other countries would be sufficient discouragement, but most Americans don’t know much about history, and most journalists don’t know much about economics.
Pierre Omidyar’s publicist in 1997 apparently fabricated the story that Omidyar started what became eBay so his fiancée could trade Pez candy dispensers. But the real story of how Omidyar gained a fortune is almost as magical: The first item sold on his site was a broken laser pointer. He did not think anyone would buy a broken device, but the buyer said he was a collector of broken laser pointers. Omidyar learned that even broken things have a buyer. But what about a broken economy?
Not a chance.
I have posted for years, incorrectly it turns out, that the king’s secret for eliminating debt has always been inflation. Modern economic kings, the world over, prefer to allow debt and to allow it to grow.
The quest for a $15 minimum wage and a living wage are steps down the inflation path. Since it can not be accomplished at the federal level, it is being done by the states.
I just pray the economy keeps on rolling through the 2020 election. If it doesn’t Trump will be defeated & the Dems will move full steam ahead to turn us into Venezuela.
Thye Democrats do not have guns
The war will kill them off before they are able to destroy America
We have presidents on our dollar bills.
In Zimbabwe, they have a pile of rocks.
They must be very special rocks.
The Law of Effect shows us that generally, you get more of the behavior you reward and less of the behavior you punish.
Government dollars should not just be handed out.
All welfare should cease.
We are rewarding people for doing nothing.
We will get more of that behavior.
Government dollars should be worked for.
Imagine the effect of 100,000 people cleaning up the human waste in San Francisco.
You could assign a 24 hour watch to every hobo.
And I guarantee you, those government workers would be looking for private sector jobs real fast.
I read his book “The Tragedy of American Compassion”. Not bad reading.
The Democrats do not have guns.
Democrats have lots of guns. And not all of them are in the hands of inner city gangs. Don’t assume that Antifa is not training.
Inflation hurts everyone and every business. Remember when interest rates went up to around 18% when Jimmy Carter was president? Our dollars were essentially devalued and bought us fewer goods as prices for goods and services went up. Our savings account dollars that took years to build up were devalued. Home mortgages went up—I got one at 12% just before banks in Wisconsin quit making or lending mortgages and loans. Borrowers making repayments at those high rates were barely able to cover interest, let alone repay principle. It wasn’t until Reagen became president that rates came back to lower interest rates. Then, I refinanced my high priced mortgage.
No. The king is printing money like crazy. We’re getting no inflation though because the velocity of money is falling. If it ever stops falling then we will get the inflation. The king doesn’t care whether there is inflation so long as he can print money.
Gold is the only one that really works.
I think Sigmund would have a few things to say about the gold watermark on the side.
Most autiefags prefer incendiary or explosives of the Ron Popeil type. Set it and forget it, holding a gun tends to shorten their life spans.
Do you really think that we will shoot RATs when we do not dare to shoot foreign invaders at our southern border?
I see nothing ‘gold’, but on the far right, I do see some interesting shapes. Lower right is either a fertility symbol or phallic. Try just proposing to do anything like that in the USA. A whole lotta triggering going on. The US is becoming provincial again.
Vennnnnnn-zooway-lah, where the gauchos thunder ‘cross the plain...
oh, wait, that’s Argentina, all those Latin countries look the same.
And those shut-down confiscated Yankee enterprises
can’t produce no food to ease a belly’s pain.
Ev’ry night my hungry kids and I,
sit alone and talk and watch the po-lice squawk
at the empty markets they pass by.
Caaaali-for-nia, this is where you’re headed
and the tipping point was long ago.
You can sit right back and watch the Dems in Sac
spend the money that you owe.
Sooo-cial-ism is just Marxist hooey that keeps
getting buried but won’t die, ‘cause there’ll always be
folks who’ll vote to see how much free stuff
they can confiscate as time goes by.
We have guns & they will prove useful if/when we have an economic apocalypse. But if the Dems get back in charge in 2020, we ARE going to have an apocalypse & it won’t be fun for any of us.
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