Thomas Cahill: Conservatives are afraid of pope’s ‘pure Christianity,’ not ‘pure Marxism’ (via Raw Story )And the grand total is… $62.6 billion...
Technically, you could say the additional cost of making college tuition free would be even cheaper than $62.6 billion. How come? Because most Pell Grant money is already spent at public colleges. In 2011 - 2012, state school students received $21.8 billion in grants. So, if you subtract that from the total needed to completely eliminate tuition, it the sum would be closer to $40 billion.The Atlantic
Pope Francis condemns fundamentalism, urges setting an example over proselytizing (via Raw Story )I'm sure you've heard of the debt clock, right? That is that big electronic billboard ticking away at light speed in Times Square that shows the size of the national debt, which is currently at $17.3 trillion, and debt per citizen at $54,000.
Well, what they don't show you are the national assets, which are at least five times more. The national assets are $108 trillion and assets per citizen are at $341,000.
Walk into any bank and ask them for a loan. Then say, "Here are my debts." What do you think the banker is going to ask you? What are your assets!
However, in our national dialogue about debt our assets are never even mentioned. And by the way, our assets are WAAAAAY more than $108 trillion. If you count land value, natural resources, intellectual assets, etc, it's probably closer to a quadrillion dollars.
Northeast was hardest hit. Here's the view looking onto 1st Ave in Manhattan.
The microfoundations project is predicated on a gigantic leap of faith that the existing economy has an underlying structure that corresponds closely enough to the assumptions of the Arrow-Debreu model suitably adjusted for stochastic elements and a variety of frictions (e.g., Calvo pricing) that may be introduced into the models depending on the modeler’s judgment about what constitutes an allowable friction. This is classic question-begging with a vengeance: arriving at a conclusion by assuming what needs to be proved. Such question begging is not necessarily illegitimate; every research program is based on some degree of faith or optimism that results not yet in hand will justify the effort required to generate those results. What is not legitimate is the claim that ONLY the models based on such question-begging assumptions are genuinely scientific.
This question-begging mentality masquerading as science is actually not unique to the microfoundations school. It is not uncommon among those with an exaggerated belief in the powers of science, a mentality that Hayek called scientism. It is akin to physicalism, the philosophical doctrine that all phenomena are physical. According to physicalism, there are no mental phenomena. What we perceive as mental phenomena, e;g;l consciousness, is not real, but an illusion. Our mental states are really nothing but physical states. I do not say that physicalism is false, just that it is a philosophical position, not a proposition derived from science, and certainly not a fact that is, or can be, established by the currently available tools of science. It is a faith that some day — some day probably very, very far off into the future — science will demonstrate that our mental processes can be reduced to, and derived from, the laws of physics. Similarly, given the inability to account for observed fluctuations of output and employment in terms of microfoundations, the assertion that only microfounded models are scientific is simply an expression of faith in some, as yet unknown, future discovery, not a claim supported by any available scientific proof or evidence.Uneasy Money
"Its only necessary to highlight the meaningless language to show the ideas expressed are imaginary..."
“The idea of individual, exclusive ownership, not just of what can be carried and occupied, but of the immovable, near-eternal earth, has proved to be the most destructive and creative cultural force in written history. It has eliminated ancient civilizations wherever it has encountered them, and displaced entire peoples from their homelands, but it has also spread an undreamed-of degrees of personal freedom and protected it with democratic institutions wherever it has taken hold.”— Andro Linklater
[08] As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which, when land was in common, cost the labourer only the trouble of gathering them, come, even to him, to have an additional price fixed upon them. He must then pay for the licence to gather them; and must give up to the landlord a portion of what his labour either collects or produces. This portion, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of this portion, constitutes the rent of land, and in the price of the greater part of commodities makes a third component part.
[09] The real value of all the different component parts of price, it must be observed, is measured by the quantity of labour which they can, each of them, purchase or command. Labour measures the value not only of that part of price which resolves itself into labour, but of that which resolves itself into rent, and of that which resolves itself into profit.
[10] In every society the price of every commodity finally resolves itself into some one or other, or all of those three parts; and in every improved society, all the three enter more or less, as component parts, into the price of the far greater part of commodities.— Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter 6
Sec. 32. But the chief matter of property being now not the fruits of the earth, and the beasts that subsist on it, but the earth itself; as that which takes in and carries with it all the rest; I think it is plain, that property in that too is acquired as the former. As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, inclose it from the common. Nor will it invalidate his right, to say every body else has an equal title to it; and therefore he cannot appropriate, he cannot inclose, without the consent of all his fellow-commoners, all mankind. God, when he gave the world in common to all mankind, commanded man also to labour, and the penury of his condition required it of him. God and his reason commanded him to subdue the earth, i.e. improve it for the benefit of life, and therein lay out something upon it that was his own, his labour. He that in obedience to this command of God, subdued, tilled and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it something that was his property, which another had no title to, nor could without injury take from him.
Sec. 33. Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the yet unprovided could use. So that, in effect, there was never the less left for others because of his enclosure for himself: for he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as take nothing at all. No body could think himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water left him to quench his thirst: and the case of land and water, where there is enough of both, is perfectly the same.
Sec. 34. God gave the world to men in common; but since he gave it them for their benefit, and the greatest conveniencies of life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational, (and labour was to be his title to it;) not to the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious. He that had as good left for his improvement, as was already taken up, needed not complain, ought not to meddle with what was already improved by another's labour: if he did, it is plain he desired the benefit of another's pains, which he had no right to, and not the ground which God had given him in common with others to labour on, and whereof there was as good left, as that already possessed, and more than he knew what to do with, or his industry could reach to.— John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, Chapter V
The weaker eurozone states are particularly vulnerable to default because they no longer have their own sovereign currencies, putting them in the same position as emerging countries that borrowed in dollars in the 1980s and 1990s. Even so, nations have defaulted through history even when they do borrow in their own currency.Right, on the gold standard or if they peg to another currency, there are political factors such as war involved, or the leadership is too incompetent to know what to do — or are poorly advised.
The clear implication of the IMF paper is that Germany and the creditor core would do better to bite the bullet on big write-offs immediately rather than buying time with creeping debt mutualisation.
It is customary to see rising debt as the result of private choices to finance higher expenditures by issuing new credit-market liabilities. But historically, it is equally correct to see rising debt as the result of political choices that increase the real value of existing liabilities.The Slack Wire
A sizable chunk of the adult population is going to punch a clock until they keel-over in the office parking lot and get hauled off in the company dumpster. And those are the lucky ones, the so called baby boomers. By the time we get to the millennials it’ll be even worse because the economy will have been ravaged by 25 or 30 years of austerity leaving the proles to scrape by on hardtack and gruel. Pensions are already being looted, Social Security is under fire, and any small stipend that supports the poor, the unemployed, or the infirm is going to be terminated. That’s why everyone is so down-in-the-mouth, because their expectations of the future are so bleak….
Go figure. And there’s a larger point here too, which is that Americans have always believed that their children would enjoy a higher standard of living than their own. Until now, that is. Now most people think things are going to get worse, much worse. You see it in all the surveys. Expectations have changed, the future looks darker than ever before, and people are scared.
Americans enter 2014 with a profoundly negative view of their government, expressing little hope that elected officials can or will solve the nation's biggest problems, a new poll finds.
Half say America's system of democracy needs either "a lot of changes" or a complete overhaul, according to the poll conducted by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Just 1 in 20 says it works well and needs no changes.
Americans, who have a reputation for optimism, have a sharply pessimistic take on their government after years of disappointment in Washington.
The percentage of Americans saying the nation is heading in the right direction hasn't topped 50 in about a decade. In the new poll, 70 percent lack confidence in the government's ability "to make progress on the important problems and issues facing the country in 2014."…
Regardless of the issue, however, Americans express remarkably little confidence that the federal government can make real progress.
For instance, 86 percent of those who called health care reform a top priority said they want the government to put "a lot" or "a great deal" of effort into it. But about half of them (49 percent) are "not at all confident" there will be real progress, and 20 percent are only "slightly confident."
Even on an issue completely within the federal government's control, the budget and national debt, 65 percent of those who called it a priority say they have no confidence in the government's ability to fix it. Another 20 percent are only "slightly confident."But the good new is that people are at least looking for change. Time to propose a complete overhaul, putting people first and thinking globally, which is what it will take to address climate change.
(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)
Clearly an early proponent of fully fiat currency, zero interest rates, and that a citizenry needs to grant itself enough income to purchase and consume all that it can produce.
Video about economist Silvio Gesell. A currency system & economic order are dependent variables.
Wikipedia entry on Silvio Gesell
The Natural Economic Order, Silvio Gesell, 1929 (full text)
In 1816 Thomas Jefferson made a basic statement that has NOT been properly digested, let alone brought into perspective with various "modern proposals" for special improvements of the present damned and destructive "system" or money racket. The reader had better FRAME Jefferson's statement:-
"And if the national bills issued be bottomed (as is indispensable) on pledges of specific taxes for their redemption within certain and moderate epochs, and be of proper denominations for circulation, no interest on them would be necessary or just, because they would answer to every one of the purposes of metallic money withdrawn and replaced by them." Jefferson to Crawford, 1816.The Natural Rate of Interest is Zero
Paul Ryan serves up the latest Turkey-Hand recipe, relying heavily on promoting volunteerism and advocating charity in the place of food stamps to conquer poverty. And if that doesn’t work, hey, folks — just pray! “You cure poverty eye to eye, soul to soul,” Ryan explained to a Heritage Foundation forum. “Spiritual redemption: That’s what saves people.”Paul Ryan's answer to Pope Francis?
