The arbitrary injustice system: The more laws, the less justice.
If you went into a courthouse today, and you were listening to a ruling from a judge, if the judge ruled that the Earth was flat and the center of the universe, would you blindly accept his ruling without question?
What if he justified his ruling with a large amount of bureaucratic legalese speak? Would that mean that the Earth is flat? Would you throw away everything you know about science and accept his ruling then?
Of course you wouldn’t. As a rational human being, you would conclude that the judge is an absolute crackpot for making such a ruling, because the ruling is contrary to known science.
If you were a juror, and heard the judge make these crackpot arguments, you would rightfully ignore them.
But, what if judges do this all of the time? What if there isn’t always a jury to stop them from unjustly taking liberty and/or property from the citizens?
A picture of the arrogance of wealth.
Posted by Spencer in Economics, Politics, Technology on November 19, 2011
The wealthy need to pay their fair share. There is no way in the world that the lower classes will ever be able to improve their standard of living if the wealthy people do not help them. The wealthy do not need private jets or personal Yachts while so many people are impoverished. We need the government to take things away from them on behalf of the common good. The market just can’t do it and there is absolutely no proof that a market, without government regulation and high taxes on the wealthy will ever improve the life of the masses.
Why Warren Buffet is misleading you about his taxes.
Here we go again.
Last month, Warren Buffet came out with his opinion piece titled “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich” (Link)
In the article, he argues that he’s only paying “17.4 percent” on his taxes. In this blog post, I’m going to explain why this number is misleading. I’ll also explain why some rich people are in favor of higher taxes on rich people.
Hint: It’s not because they’re generous and want to help people.
General Welfare: No, it doesn’t mean everything under the sun!
I hear it all of the time.
The government is allowed to do such and such because of general welfare! The government is allowed to run social security ponzi scheme because of general welfare, the government is allowed to run medicare because of general welfare, the government is allowed to regulate every facet of our lives because of general welfare. It goes on and on.
Pretty much everything that the Federal government does not have a legitimate constitutional grounds to do, the politicians fall back onto general welfare (or the interstate commerce clause, but that’s for another post).
What is general welfare? This post will discuss general welfare, using the words of the man who was the principle author of the constitution.
Why Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme
I am going to lay out a case against one of the biggest sacred cows of all. Social Security.
Social security was initially started as an insurance program, it was an insurance program against living too long.
The idea was a small part of your paycheck would be taken from you, and if you managed to live past the age set in the Social Security Act, you would be paid a benefit from the money you paid into it. On it’s surface there is nothing wrong with this arrangement.
Until you realize that, you cannot opt-out of the system. It’s time we learn why it is operated by force.
Fiat currencies always eventually fail.
Posted by Spencer in Economics, Miscellaneous on October 8, 2010
I remember as a kid watching cartoons. One of my favorite cartoons was Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner around, never seeming to catch a break. No matter how hard he tried to catch that damn bird, he failed, every time.
There is an interesting connection between Wile E. Coyote and our current fiat currency. You’ll notice how occasionally he is chasing the Road Runner, and ends up running off the cliff. More often than not, he magically appears to be able to stand on thin air as if by magic, only falling after he looks down.
NEWSFLASH: Prosperity does not come from Government money printers!
People seem to think that somehow, when the government prints new money and spends it, it creates prosperity for everybody! As if numbers in a computer system or pieces of paper with numbers on them somehow have the ability to create wealth and prosperity for all.
I frequently debate people that think “How can prosperity exist without the government printing more money?!”, they can’t seem to fathom a system where the government does not manipulate the money supply, that somehow a market will collapse if a government doesn’t step in to keep prices stable. (keep prices stable… ahahahaha)
The truth of the matter is, the government cannot increase the ‘real money level’, they can increase the amount of dollars in the system, but the prices of the products will eventually adjust to the new level.
Income Taxes: A short history of the income tax.
The income tax has been with us for nearly 100 years. It was enacted the same time as the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. It was sold as a solution that would enable the government to lower or remove tariffs and to solve other related revenue problems. Next to the Federal Reserve, it is one of the biggest changes that the Progressive Era gave us.
They promised that it would never go above 7%, and the richest people would pay most of the taxes anyway. In this post we’re going to go through the history of the income tax and how the income tax has changed over the years despite it’s promises of making paying taxes simpler.
Minimum Wage: Why it is counter-productive.
In this post, I’m going to give my opinions on the minimum wage requirement, about how it’s a nice gesture by the government to give people a leg up, but ends up hurting other people at the same time.
For this post, I want you to think of labor as a product. In order for you to buy a product, it has to be worth it’s purchase price to you. If you decide a product is not worth it’s purchase price, you have the option to not purchase the product.
I want you to picture yourself driving down the road in your car, as you are idling at a light, you car gives you the low fuel warning. You think to yourself, I need to get some gas. You look around real quick for a gas station, and you can immediately see that there are two gas stations with different fuel prices. Both gas stations are the same distance from you and it’s very easy for you to pull into either of them, both gas stations have the same quality gas, and they are both self-service.
The first gas station has the gas price listed at $5.00 a gallon. The second gas station has the price of gas at $2.50 a gallon.
Which gas station are you going to pull into?
Not Made In The USA: Why is the United States punishing US businesses?
When you are reading my blog, my blog is hosted in the United States on a server. The server has components in it much like your every day computer, it is brought to you over a network of billions of other computers, switches, routers, all over the United States, as the information transfers over to your computer, your computer converts the information into a format which you can read, once it’s displayed onto your computers monitor.
In order for you to see this website, you have to have a computer, and your computer is broken down into several individual parts, the motherboard, the CPU, the memory, the hard drive, the sound card, the power supply, the keyboard, the mouse, the monitor, the speakers.
What do all of these things have in common?
We (as in the United States), can’t make any of those devices. Every single one of these devices is imported from other countries. Every single computer is pretty much made in another country. Yes, you may have bought it from Dell, Apple, or any other company, but they just assembled it. The actual parts aren’t made here.
And it’s not just computers. I promise you, you would be hard pressed to find anything in your house that says Made In USA. Most of everything you buy isn’t made here at all.
A majority of the parts in your supposedly ‘American’ vehicle? Yup, not made here. Assembled.
The media will tell you that it’s simply because of wages, and that the labor overseas is cheaper than in the United States, this is true, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle.
Note: The lower wages may be low by our standards, but in those other countries those ‘low’ wages are actually damned good, which is exactly why so many people would do these jobs.
But this post isn’t going to be about wages. We’re going to look at the other things that affect the cost of making things, right here in the USA.