"http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/library/chart-graph/value-us-dollar-over-time"
Posted on 02/15/2013 8:29:27 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Economists have been talking for decades about why some countries get wealthy, and some do not. It was the subject of Adam Smith’s famous book, The Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. I suggest that the secret could be expressed in four words: Low Taxes, Stable Money. I call this the Magic Formula.
The reason for this is simple. The primary way that countries have become wealthy is via capitalism. Capitalism works best with stable money and low taxes.
If taxes are too high, and money is too unstable, capitalism – the incredibly complex arrangement of relationships that allow humans to cooperate together in vast networks of investment, production and trade, via the market system – becomes impaired, or collapses completely.
Recent books like Why Nations Fail, by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, take up this fascinating subject for our own age. In general, they tend to focus on a menagerie of what I would call secondary factors, while missing the foundational importance of the Magic Formula.
If you don’t have the Magic Formula, you might maintain a decent standard of living. Many European countries maintain a high standard of living today, despite rather high taxes. But, they didn’t become wealthy this way. If you look back into the history of Germany or Japan, or the United States, you typically find a period when the Magic Formula is in full effect. Most of the gains are made during these eras.
In U.S. history, most of the gains were made in the 1870-1914 period, the 1920s, and the 1950-1970 period. Today, we have neither Stable Money nor Low Taxes. The result? The U.S. median male full-time wage has stagnated and declined for forty years.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
How Do Countries Grow Rich?
By watching Barack Obama and American democrats, then doing the exact opposite.
Alas, it’s not the slightest bit easy in the modern world - unfortunately, egomaniacal government meddlers think they have to “arrange” everything for everyone else.
The problem is that a nation can only prosper when the government gets out of the way with its conventions and its redistribution and its taxes and its egomaniacal “officials” and its blatant corruption.
A nation can only prosper when it sets free its creative and entrepreneurial people and lets them do their thing without messing it all up with government-sponsored and government-mandated bullsh*t.
It’s a lesson that’s been forgotten in America, which is why our Marxist president is driving the economy - and America - to its knees.
Print money? - no
IMO the answer to how countries grow wealth is by creating something of value.
It just so happens that capitalism and low taxes are the best incentives to creating value.
(Saudi Arabia is a wealthy monarchy, because they “create” oil, but their system of government stinks.)
...along with the respected right to have private property. Unless you can “own” something (esp. land), which is protected by the state by law, then it isn’t worth the investment - leading to people only doing what they have to for survival.
Basically, there’s no point in building personal wealth if somebody, or the state, can (and does) just come along and take it.
Convince America to borrow money to shower them with.
also
1) private property rights and freedom
2) rational culture + science
3) capital accumulation, saving and investment,and capital markets
4) utilization of technological advances
All wealth is created by taking stuff out of the ground and making into things that people need and use everyday. Some people are smart and hard working and can do this very well. Some people are lazy and dumb and aren't very good at it. Government also can support this process or act as an impediment.
Singapore is the poster child for such success. In 1966, the country was newly independent and colonial backwater only 20 years from the total devastation of World War II. The Malays hated the Chinese majority as not only capatalistic exploiters but as religious infidels. There was a significant Malay minority and the ethnic Chinese and whites who were (mostly) in charge of Singapore knew they could never hope to win a military conflict with its much larger Malaysian neighbor. The wholesale slaughter of ethnic Chinese which was happening in nearby Indonesia made that clear. In addition, Singapore's strategic location astride the world's biggest source of raw materials for heroin and other illicit drugs meant that it was not only a haven for the dirty business of the narcotics gang but that roughly 1/8th of the Singaporeans were addicted in one form or another.
If today's Democrats had been in charge here, Singapore would have fared little better than Yemen, another former British colony astride a strategic trade route.
Instead Singapore rocketed from a third world country whose very survival was in doubt to one of the wealthiest nations on earth within less than half a century.
Low Taxes, Stable Money - how is that applied to the states?
Since they don’t print money, but do create budgets and regulations how can one modify that to apply to a state?
Lets bring back the gold standard and low tax rates... (I would see a flat tax of 14.5%
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
- Robert Heinlein
Simple, really. When regulations are abused to be revenue-generation (tax-like) or to allow for certain people/companies to excel at the price of others ("pay-to-play") then they [respectively] alter the [effective] taxing rate and the stability of money -- the latter because the same amount of money changes it's purchasing-power based on if you're part of the in-crowd or not. ($1000 a licensed plumber might buy tools & supplies, but $1000 for an unlicensed plumber might not even purchase the license.)
Low taxes - this harps on the one side of the equation, forgetting the other, which is low government spending.
If government spending stays high, and yet taxes are kept lower than what is necessary to pay for this spending, this requires government either creating money or borrowing it.
New world order (international banking) wants governments to borrow from them (even if they don’t lend their own capital, they collect fees for arranging the marketing of the debt).
As you can guess, it’s essential, in the international banksters eyes, for them to weasle a way to get a “central bank” for every government created that they own, or at least control it’s board of directors. This way, if they can’t find enough buyers of government debt, they can have this “central bank” have the power to create money, then buy the government debt with that.
If you want to control government - be its creditor. If you owe someone money, they have quite a bit of control over you.
Now we proceed to the next item, stable money. This is where the faux-conservative new world order “establishment”, trying to show a veneer of capitalism, cry that monetary policy is so important to the economy. We can’t have the government just print money like crazy ! It won’t have any value !
What’s left... (duhhhhh) borrowing from international banking. Voila !
It’s a process of two simultaneous steps - a) get government spending to go beyond what can be collected in taxes and b) convince government that it can’t create its own money, that it needs to borrow money from you to make up the difference.
Thanks, New World Order International Banksters !
yep...Folks need to look at the results of Chile and Colombia...both had help from the US..in limited ways but now both are doing quite well.
Abject poverty is not the normal condition of man. I know too many folks with 8th grade educations that retired quite well, and I’m aware of more than a few empires and nations of history where people lived relatively well. IMHO, the typical notion of ancient Rome, for example, grossly underestimates the comfortable enjoyments of it’s citizens. Fatalistic notions of “bad luck” can certainly contribute to poverty, however.
Exactly! Witness Singapore, and before it, Hong Kong. Oh, wait a minute . . . .
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