How Keynes Got it Right and the 'Right' Got it Wrong!

by Len Hart, the Existentialist Cowboy

Many have proposed a 'flat' tax. It sounds good but isn't! Flat taxes are not really 'flat'. Ten percent of the income of a poor or middle person is a much, much greater burden than is the same percentage against the income of a millionaire. The difference is that merely keeping a roof over the family's head and food on the table is a MUCH bigger percentage of income/wealth for a poor or middle class family.

The very, very wealthy, in fact, find it difficult to spend all their wealth. What is left over after the cost of maintaining a villa in Spain or a swanky lodge in the Alps is invested in enterprises that earn even more wealth. Moreover, even Libertarians --if pressed --may admit that 10%, 20%, 30% percent, indeed, any percentage of a poor person's income is a much greater burden than almost any rate on the income of a millionaire! Among the many reasons this is so is that mere necessities --food, water and to varying degrees, shelter --are not only fixed, they will always amount to a much higher PERCENTAGE of a poor or middle class budget than that of the budget of a multi-millionaire or richer.

Libertarians, however, will maintain that income tax is immoral because tax policy may have the effect of re-distributing wealth and income. My reply is that when just one percent of a nation's population owns more than the rest of the population combined, it is time to raise taxes on the very rich.

The whole system is pure criminal as from the installation of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913 by Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Not only the American people suffers, the whole world has been sandwiched by the private banks behind the central banking system.

--G. Edward Griffin, Legalized Plunder of the American People

The best argument against a flat tax, ironically, has come from a so-called 'libertarian' who wrote:

That 10 percent is a greater burden on the poor than is 10 percent on the very rich is the very reason that income tax is immoral --as it is currently imposed upon us.

Alas! The Libertarian does not go far enough. A flat tax of any sort will penalize the poor while enriching the rich.

During the 'Great Depression', the American comedian Bob Hope was asked to comment on it. He quipped (and I paraphrase)

"..I looked up the word depression. A 'depression' is a hole. I looked up 'hole'. A hole is 'nothing'. So --if you think I am going to waste my time talking about nothing, you have another think coming!"

There is nothing mysterious about depressions. They are defined by 'negative GDP growth' from which follows negative job creation rates --not to be confused with mere slowdowns or periods of slow growth. Thus depressions are disastrous for the poor. The very, very rich can actually benefit from them by buying bargains that are beyond the reach of the poorer or middle classes. The 'ruling elites' are capable of rigging markets with cleverly timed 'sell-offs'. They have the luxury of buying back in at bargain prices.

A 'depression' is a period of 'contraction'. In the U.S. every recession/depression at least since World War II has occurred during a Republican administration. That is but one reason I am not now nor have I ever been a Republican.

If FDR had been either a Republican or what is commonly called a 'libertarian' (in the Ron Paul sense of the word) the U.S. would have eventually collapsed. Even so, it may have required the U.S. entry into WWII following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to get the U.S. into the war. As a stimulus, 'war' created millions of new jobs and put women to work where --earlier --their presence had been unknown. The image of 'Rosie the Riveter' is still symbolic of the period. The good effect is that women would never again consent willingly to 'second class' citizen status.

As for Keynes, he would not have been surprised by the American experience. He was, after all, famous for his proposal that in times of increased joblessness, the government may do well to bury 'pound notes' in a landfill and let 'private enterprise' dig them up.

If it's all about jobs, why wait for a war to create jobs? A 'liberal' administration has a responsibility to society overall --not just to the 'ruling elites' who finance his campaigns. Rather, a liberal and/or progressive regime will support a more egalitarian society, in fact, a more efficient society as a result.

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Right Wing Scams: 'Why Don't You Start Calling Me Gordon?'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

All but forgotten now, Enron --it's rise and calamitous fall --dominated front pages and sucked up airtime until knocked out of contention by 911. As I was reminded, it was the ghost of Gordon Gekko, brilliantly portrayed by Michael Douglas in 'Wall Street', who both presaged and haunted the fail of Enron and all those who served it or were temporarily enriched by its corporate shams and schemes.

As was the case in the 'Roaring Twenties', fortunes were lost in a heart beat, economic empires collapsed in the blink of an eye. Enron was one of them. Conveniently for the new Bush administration, indeed, the GOP itself a crime syndicate, corporate 'person-hood' benefited from a timely stay of execution -- 911.

Wall Street was one of Hollywood's more pertinent parables even if the name "Gekko" was a bit obvious. Real Gekkos (spelled Gecko) make fairly good pets --or so I am told! They eat roaches. And of late there are no shortage of roaches. The largest roach colonies are found in Washington D.C., Austin, TX, K-street or Wall Street --all sites of irradicable infestations. As we have seen, the GOP eats it own.

Opportunities for metaphor and analogy are endless and every comic needs a foil. Had there been no crooks or idiots, the careers of Voltaire and Mark Twain would have been much less brilliant. We owe a great debt to totalitarians, snobs, goppers, corporate crooks, Bush's surrogate torturers and would-be dictators. Where would Stephen Colbert be without them? Alas, the blog-o-sphere would be scrambling for material.

Enron was run by a gang that most certainly thought that, being "captains" of "industry", they could just pull out and disappear. I suppose every crook thinks that they will get away with it.

Enron will prove to be one of the most important episodes in the history of American business, and its story, from beginning to end, is inseparable from Ken Lay, its founder and long-time chairman. Thus, what people make of Enron—and what lessons they draw from it—will depend to a considerable degree on how they understand Lay.

As I’m sure you know, Enron has to date been blamed largely on free-market politicians, heartless corporate managers, and an egoistic chairman. In fact, as my book will show, Enron relied heavily on government favors, was run by postmodernist managers, and had as its chairman the kind of person Ayn Rand would have called “a second-hander.”
--On the Fall of Enron and Ken Lay: 'Philosophical Fraud' at an Errant Energy Company (and cap-and-trade, renewables forerunner), Robert Bradley Jr.

The US is, likewise, a financial shell. When GM, at last, is swallowed up by a foreign auto maker, what incentive will the new entity have to employ American workers when they can do just as well in Japan or Malaysia or China?

We have become a nation of consumers lent money by China so that we can buy goods manufactured in China. We are cattle, cows to be milked. When the teat runs dry we will be abandoned to third world status if we are not already.

In the meantime, the Bushies and other GOP Geckos will have run off with the last scraps of US wealth if they have not done so already. See the CIA's World Fact Book which lists the U.S. at the very bottom of the list with the world's largest negative Current Account Balance, formerly called the 'balance of trade deficit'. China tops the list with the world's largest POSITIVE Current Account Balance. Every banker can equate that with his own balance sheet and conclude that China, because of the policies of the GOP, now owns America if not the entire world.

The house of cards appears to have fallen --but not just yet! Like Ken Lay, Bush and his gang are most surely clinging to the belief that, unlike Lay, they will get away with it. Chances are good that Bush will live out the rest of his wasted life too stupid to regret a damn thing! It is this luxury, available only to the stupid, that I resent most!

Iraq was a big screw up. The invasion and theft of Iraqi oil was supposed to bail them out. Things have not quite worked out as planned. Then again, perhaps they have exceeded Bushco expectations. They are not yet jailed nor executed for capital war crimes (see: U.S. Codes, Title 18, Section 2441).

Just as Hitler thought he had learned from Napoleon's mistakes, Bush most certainly thought he had learned from Hitler's.

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