This post was published at Amicus Humani Generis
The True Cause of Prosperity and a Return to the ‘Old Normal’ of Slow Growth
While many think of fast economic growth, such as we saw after the end of World War II, as the norm, for most of history, that fast rate of growth has been the exception rather than the rule.
This time on Financial Sense, we spoke with Mark Levinson, author of An Extraordinary Time: The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy, about his take on economic growth and the real causes of prosperity.
Two Eras of Growth
In his book, Levinson breaks down the history of American prosperity into two periods: the period from WWII until 1973, and from 1973 to the present.
Within each era, we saw economic performance that was distinctly different from the other. After WWII, we had fast economic growth, while after 1973, growth rates slowed around the world.
If we look at all wealthy economies at that time, Levinson noted, in the period between 1948 and 1973, we see very rapid economic growth driven by very rapid productivity growth. As a result, living standards improved.
‘After 1973, things were quite different,’ he said. ‘We had much slower economic growth, productivity growth fell very significantly, and people felt like they were crawling ahead.’
In the 1948 to 1973 period, the world economy was robust almost everywhere, however, that hasn’t been the case since the ’70s.
This post was published at FinancialSense on 01/11/2017.
ELDERLY COUPLE EVICTED, THROWN OUT ON THE STREET, FOR FAILING TO PAY PROPERTY TAXES ON THEIR HOME
Albion, ME – Maine Governor Paul LePage wants to rewrite the law after becoming incensed at the plight of an elderly, disabled couple – one of whom is a veteran – who were evicted from their home of 33 years because they are too impoverished to pay taxes.
According to the Portland Press Herald, in December 2015, the town of Albion moved to foreclose on the ‘rundown camp’ of National Guard and Marine veteran Richard Sukeforth and his wife, Leonette, when taxes went unpaid.
Then, the town put the couple’s home up for auction – it sold for just $6,500 – and the new owner, Jason Marks, kicked the two 80-year-olds to the curb last week.
LePage is irate – and wants to ensure this can never happen again.
‘He’s living in poverty,’ he said of Richard in an interview with the Morning Sentinel. ‘Now, we’re throwing him out on the street. That’s just awful.’
‘I’m livid about it,’ LePage asserted of the ‘legal’ but seemingly unscrupulous eviction, ‘and I think we have to have laws to protect our most vulnerable.’
LePage appealed to nonprofit Pine Tree Legal – an advocacy group providing free legal advice for Maine residents with limited income – but, it turns out, the eviction followed the letter of the law.
As the Sentinel reports,
This post was published at The Daily Sheeple on JANUARY 12, 2017.
Hoover’s Folly
Submitted by 720Global’s Michael Lebowitz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,
In 1930, Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law. As the world entered the early phases of the Great Depression, the measure was intended to protect American jobs and farmers. Ignoring warnings from global trade partners, the new law placed tariffs on goods imported into the U. S. which resulted in retaliatory tariffs on U. S. goods exported to other countries. By 1934, U. S. imports and exports were reduced by more than 50% and many Great Depression scholars have blamed the tariffs for playing a substantial role in amplifying the scope and duration of the Great Depression. The United States paid a steep price for trying to protect its workforce through short-sighted political expedience.
On January 3, 2017 Ford Motor Company backed away from plans to build a $1.6 billion assembly plant in Mexico and instead opted to add 700 jobs at a Michigan plant. This abrupt reversal followed sharp criticism from Donald Trump. Ford joins Carrier in reneging on plans to move production to Mexico and will possibly be followed by other large corporations rumored to be reconsidering outsourcing. Although retaining manufacturing and jobs in the U. S. is a favorable development, it seems unlikely that these companies are changing their plans over concerns for American workers or due to stern remarks from President-elect Trump. What does seem likely? Big changes in trade policy occurring within the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency. The change in plans by Ford and Carrier serve as clues to what may lie ahead and imply a cost-benefit analysis. In order to gain better insight into what the trade policy of the new administration may hold, consideration of cabinet members nominated to key positions of influence is in order.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jan 12, 2017.
Obamacare: Is It Worse Than What Came Before It?
One of the most debated issues right now is Obamacare, and specifically whether and how the new republican-dominated Washington DC apparatus will repeal it – and when. Democrats are expectedly up in arms and fear any change to the policy, the suggested legacy of President Obama. Republicans are considering their options: whether to repeal parts of it or the whole thing, how to best do it, if it should be replaced by something else (perhaps Romneycare?), and how to deal with a repeal’s ‘millions of people losing insurance’ (to paraphrase Paul Krugman).
Many things enter the political calculus of policy change. It’s not easy to find a good solution within the State’s zero-sum (rather, negative-sum) game of economic planning.
From a more nuanced and better-informed, sound-economics perspective, the question of whether Obamacare ‘should’ be repealed also isn’t obvious. Some of course call for immediate repeal, and it is easy to see the benefits of this approach: it would potentially undo the many problems it has caused, including skyrocketing insurance premiums (and the eventual limited access to care). But – given that the health-care system was anything but free-market before Obamacare – repealing Obamacare is in no way the same thing as going back to a market order.
This post was published at Ludwig von Mises Institute on Jan 12, 2017.
Cut The Crap, Trump
That goes for the rest of the so-called “analysts” as well.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion.
You are not entitled to your own made-up claims which you present as fact.
Again, the facts:
Last year the Federal Government spent $1,417 billion dollars out of $3,854 billion, or 37% of every dollar it spent, on Medicare and Medicaid. This was a 9.3% increase over last year’s expenditure of $1,296,731 (million), all-in.
But inside this figure are even-more damning numbers.
Payments to the health care trust funds were up 13.4% (!)
Spending on CHIP, the plan for poor kids, rose last year by an astounding 56%. While the total spent was only $14.3 billion that rate of rise is utterly astronomical by anyone’s measure.
Don’t believe for a second that administrative expenses are under control, which is a claim often made for Medicare and Medicaid: They were up 32% last year for the primary hospital insurance trust fund. No, that’s not a misprint.
Hospital benefit payments for Medicare? Up 8.4% — the bright spot, believe it or not.
Medicare Part “D” (drugs)? Sit down: Up 26.2% to a total of $95.2 billion.
Folks, at this rate of change within the next four years Medicare and Medicaid will consume just over $2,000 billion a year, or $2 trillion — an increase of $600 billion a year in spending.
This post was published at Market-Ticker on 2017-01-12.
Senate Takes First Step To Repeal Obamacare With 51-48 Vote
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Early on Thursday morning, in a 51-48 vote, the Senate took the first concrete step toward dismantling Obamacare, when it voted to instruct key committees to draft legislation repealing Barack Obama’s signature health insurance program. Republicans needed a simple majority to clear the repeal rules, instructing committees to begin drafting repeal legislation, through the upper chamber, with the vote falling largely along party lines.
Rand Paul was the lone Republican to vote against the budget resolution because it didn’t balance. Paul said in a statement after the vote that while he supports nixing ObamaCare “putting nearly $10 trillion more in debt on the American people’s backs through a budget that never balances is not the way to get there.”
Meanwhile, no Democrat supported the repeal rules. Instead, Democrats rose one by one from their seats on the Senate floor in protest to state why they were voting against the resolution. In dramatic fashion, Bernie Sanders warned that if the GOP resolution moved forward Americans would die.
“Up to 30 million Americans will lose their health care with many thousands dying as a result,” he said. “Because when you have no health insurance and you can’t go to a doctor or a hospital, you die.”
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jan 12, 2017.
How Globalists Predict Your Behavior
The globalists seem to have an overarching obsession with data collection. As we have seen with revelations from multiple government whistle-blowers, the establishment spends most of its time, energy and manpower collecting information not just on known threats to their supremacy, but information on EVERYONE through FISA-based surveillance protocols. This is because the establishment sees every individual as a potential threat.
Thus, the system, without warrant, is programmed to collate data from everywhere, not necessarily to be analyzed on the spot, but to be analyzed later in the event that a specific person rises to a level that poses legitimate harm to the globalist power structure.
There was a time not long ago when this notion was considered ‘conspiracy theory’ by the mainstream, but with multiple exposures from Wikileaks to Edward Snowden it is now common knowledge that the government (and the globalists) spy on us en masse. However, I do not think that many people understand the greater implications or uses for this full spectrum surveillance. This is why you sometimes hear the argument that ‘if you aren’t doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about…’
This post was published at Alt-Market on Wednesday, 11 January 2017.
FBI Reportedly Sought FISA Court Warrant To Spy On Trump Campaign Officials
A new report released today features both the FBI seeking to launch a surveillance operation against an active US presidential campaign, and the ultra-rare case of the FISA courts actually turning down an FBI request to conduct surveillance against somebody.
The report, originating at the Guardian, claims that the FBI had sought broad surveillance powers over four high-ranking members of President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign during the election, claiming them to have had contact with Russian officials.
The FISA court turned the request down, telling investigators they needed to narrow the request.
Though the four are not directly named in the report, it is related to claims in a dossier of Russia having substantial blackmail dirt on Trump, and that dossier centered heavily around accusations against a handful of Trump campaign personnel, including Carter Page, Paul Manafort, and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, along with Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen, meaning some of them may well be among the targets.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jan 11, 2017.
Hungary Cracks-Down on all Soros Funded NGOs
21st Century Wire says…
Extraordinary information has come to light that perhaps, goes some way to explaining the vicious EU and corporate media backlash against Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, for his ‘nationalist’ policies regarding the influx of refugees from various nations that have been targeted by the predatory interventionist alliance of the US, EU, UK, Turkey, Gulf States, Israel, Canada, Australia, Jordan and other smaller players.
‘Hungary does not need a single migrant for the economy to work, or the population to sustain itself, or for the country to have a future,’ he told a joint press conference in Budapest with Austrian chancellor Christian Kern.
‘This is why there is no need for a common European migration policy: whoever needs migrants can take them, but don’t force them on us, we don’t need them,’ Orban said.
The populist leader added that ‘every single migrant poses a public security and terror risk’.
‘For us migration is not a solution but a problem … not medicine but a poison, we don’t need it and won’t swallow it,’ he said. ~ The Guardian
Orban is also a keen Donald Trump supporter:
Mr. Orban, who has ordered border fences built to stop migrants, said that the ideas of the ‘upstanding American presidential candidate’ about the need for the best intelligence services and his opposition to ‘democracy export’ were also applicable in Europe.
Mr. Orban, whose speech was broadcast on Hungarian state media, blamed the West for what he saw as failed interventions in countries such as Egypt and Libya. ~ New York Times
This post was published at 21st Century Wire on JANUARY 11, 2017.
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