U
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Monty PelerinOur economic problems rightfully dominate the news. However, they are merely symptoms of a bigger, underlying problem: government.
For many, the previous paragraph is heresy. They "know" that government is necessary and good. They "know" that government solves problems and brings order to the chaos that would prevail in its absence. "They" are wrong!
Government has become little more than a carefully crafted myth based on propaganda disseminated by government itself. It has devolved into a scheme of plunder whereby the elites plunder the masses.
It did not start that way, at least not so egregiously. Government transmogrified into a vicious predator, preying on the wealth of the productive to enrich the political class and its cronies. It is no longer a force for good, but for evil. It has turned into the biggest criminal enterprise known to man.
This quote from Albert J. Nock is eight decades old, but appropriately describes what passes for government in Washington, D.C. today:
Americans have always viewed government skeptically. The vast majority of people still believe government is necessary. They also believe government is a potential, if not actual, evil because of its monopoly on power. Our Founding Fathers were explicit regarding this potential. George Washington described government as follows:Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.
A carefully crafted Constitution was drawn up to contain government and its power. Over time, it was effectively demolished. With it went most limitations on government.Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
The myth of government rests on two key assumptions -- government is necessary and beneficial. Both are supported via the State's propaganda machine. Few citizens recognize government as a predator enriching the elite. More realize that something is terribly wrong and that government has become too big and intrusive.
Government is deemed necessary because, it is claimed, there are things that the private sector would not or could not do, at least not efficiently. This assumption contains both a value judgment and an efficiency judgment.
The value judgment implies that individuals or firms would be unwilling to provide important services justifying government coercion to improve society. But this belief raises the question of whether the value judgments chosen are correct.
A small cadre of men imposing its will on the rest of society is very dangerous. Even if one accepts a particular role for government, it does not mean that the form which is implemented will be acceptable.
The efficiency aspect of government can be meaningfully explored. How well government has measured up on the efficiency criterion is discussed in the next section.
There are two levels on which to explore government efficiency:
The Macro Level pertains to the performance of government with respect to the economy.
Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, leading figures in Austrian economics, maintained that an economy is too complex to be managed centrally. Infinite decisions based on infinite pieces of knowledge cannot be managed by a central decision-maker. From their standpoint, economies afford greater efficiency and satisfaction with limited government and a laissez-faire approach.
John Maynard Keynes and his disciples saw economies as inherently unstable. They believed that government management of an economy is necessary to ensure full employment and high output. For eighty-plus years, the Keynesian interventionist views have prevailed and enabled government to continue to grow and become increasingly intrusive.
Studies generally show an inverse relationship between large government and economic growth and well-being. These can hardly be termed decisive. Extreme cases of centralized economic management like Communist Russia, Communist China, Nazi Germany, Cuba, and North Korea are clear-cut. All were economic failures which produced great human tragedy.
East Berlin and West Berlin, North Korea and South Korea, and Taiwan and Communist China were laboratory-like experiments. In every instance, free-market economies dramatically outperformed government-directed economies.
The Social Welfare State has been the philosophy and excuse for bigger government. The European States, its leading proponent, are in process of failing. They will shortly be unable to meet their social promises and sovereign obligations. This collapse appears imminent and will likely signal the retreat of this philosophy, at least for a while.
Whats really scary is how gubmint is relentlessly obtrusive with its empire building. In Fubar County its illegal to raise poultry (one or a million), even in rural areas. The 4H is pissing and snorting about the law, and the county commission is considering changing the law to allow restricted possession of poultry (hens only) with bans for slaughter and egg/meat consumption.
http://www.worldnewstribune.com/201...going-to-save-the-global-economy-guess-again/Creeping up on the outer edges of Wall Street soothsayers’ economic crystal ball, until now dominated by American and Euro crises, is growing concern about China.
The inane idea China [and India, which is also in trouble] would somehow rescue the world economy is now, finally, dismissed by the pundits — without apologies. How a largely export-led, mercantilist economy was to save the world with its principle markets in the U.S. and the EU winnowing down was never explained. Continued wishful references to Chinese leadership’s equally improbable promises to boost domestic consumption are also falling away.
China's central bank in Beijing cut the reserve requirement ratio for its banks on Nov. 30 for the first time in nearly three years to ease credit strains and shore up activity in the world's second-largest economy.
There is, in fact, a growing consensus the Chinese economy is spiraling down. One respected Hong Kong economist, Ms. Wang Tao of UBS, is predicting a gross domestic growth [GDP] rate toward 7 percent before year’s end. That’s below the red line 8 percent long considered by the double-domes as the minimum to satisfy jobs for China’s growing population.
Soon we can hope to hear an end to those straight-line projections — so wrong two decades ago in Japan predictions — which take China’s current world No. 2 GDP to soaring heights. Indeed, China is the classic example of inadequacies of GDP as an economic barometer. Even assuming official figures are reliable — which is a far stretch — China’s GDP has inflated with vast over expansion of infrastructure and massive corruption indicating enormous activity but not necessarily a basis for continued stability and growth. [Remember Euroland’s GDP/consumption figures before the fall!] Nor do we have more than a notional figure for huge military outlays.
Granted, some of us who have been predicting a China crash for years, arguing its miraculous transformation was jerrybuilt. But we have always said what would trip the fall, when, and how the Chinese would cope with it, is unpredictable — as so many things in life. Some full-time observers are now turning to the banking structure as chief concern. Whether you look at inadequacies of Communist Party decision makers in their see-saw battle to maintain maximum growth but head off any hint of inflation, a traditional Chinese destroyer of dynasties, the outlook is grim.
Larry Lang, a Hong Kong TV personality and Chinese University professor of finance, recently labeled provincial finances as “China’s many Greeces”. Beijing’s writ — as an old proverb goes — ends no longer at the village gate but increasingly at the provincial capital where regional authorities defy the center, desperate to meet growing resources demands.
Local politicos have wheedled, persuaded, bribed and threatened local government banks into credit far beyond their capacity to repay. Add that to the huge stock of non-performing loans banks give their Party buddies in the huge inefficient government companies and you have what could be the mother of all financial fiascos.
Just as politics does not end at the banks’ doors, the Communist Party is moving into a generational leadership succession year. In theory, the new president and prime minister have been anointed. But there is a lot of shin-kicking with the usual Communist turn to so-called ideological arguments masking personality, regional and purely economic interests.
A kind of neo-Maoism has surfaced. And it could take on new life as economic problems deepen because there has always been a strong Party constituency for preserving Soviet controls, planning and government ownership. Never mind that the fabled Chinese entrepreneurial spirit has taken hold with the partial liberalization of the past two decades. But much of this private sector with its disproportionately higher productivity was exports now hit hard with the downturn in the U.S. and Europe.
This has collapsed thousands of private businesses, particularly in South China’s clothing and gizmo assembly operations, leading to dramatic literal disappearances of owners and managers and growing unemployment. This, in turn, has fed already escalating unrest; Beijing has stopped reporting even the very suspect official figures.
It’s early on, of course, to predict this would develop into the kind of provincial disintegration bringing down virtually every China ruling dynasty through its long history. Still….
Meanwhile, China’s drop in demand for raw materials is already hitting world commodity markets — iron ore, for example, and soon to be coal and soya. That will have its effects on the overseas suppliers from Angola to Brazil to Australia [which has already seen a 10 percent drop in its high-flying dollar of a few weeks ago.]
There is room for America to grow again if we can just overcome the altruistic Socialist desire for ever more government intervention and largess...


There isnt
its all a LIE![]()