You have to give Andrew Yang credit for being willing to put forward "UBI" -- a $1,000 a month "stipend" that he foolishly calls a "Freedom Dividend" -- with of course a boat-load of fraudulent claims of how he's going to pay for it.

Chief among these is a 10% VAT -- which sounds good, but it's problematic for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is that it won't raise enough money.

Remember that a VAT exempts government spending, since that's just taxing yourself.  Yang recognizes this and pegs the revenue from a VAT at $800 billion as he also removes groceries, clothing and apparently some other things from it.

He also says he's going to "consolidate" (get rid of) many other welfare programs.  The problem is that the only ones that matter from a budget perspective are health care related.

At the same time Yang wants to expand Medicare to everyone.  The problem is that these two programs are in direct opposition to each other.  He says he'll be able to bring costs under control but Medicare and Medicaid have utterly failed to do so.

In other words Yang is a pie-in-the-sky Democrat protecting and in fact expanding the medical monopolists.

Look folks -- CMS -- Medicare and Medicaid Services, have spent $1.465 trillion through August which is 35% of the federal spending all-in.  The federal budget deficit during that time was $1.067 trillion.

In other words that spending was 137% of the deficit.

If you killed all the medical monopolists and took the "low hanging fruit" as I described in that post you would erase the entire federal deficit, plus some and not one person would be denied medical care.

Further, you'd take roughly another trillion and a half off private forced spending on this alleged "service" since the "service" is 500% overpriced.

This would instantly resolve both the federal debt and all the state and local pension problems -- at once.  It would also eliminate the destruction of personal purchasing power and that of saved funds.

20% of the people in the country -- those who are involved in and require this scheme to make a living -- would hate you.

EVERYONE ELSE WOULD VOTE FOR YOU.

In short this is one of those nearly-impossible to find 80% issues among the electorate.  That's exactly what Trump exploited (a claimed 80% issue that he never actually addressed) to get elected himself -- illegal immigration and displacement of American workers.

He was lying, as we now all know in that instead of resolving any of these problems he has dripped out half-measures where, as the head of the Executive he could have resolved several of them immediately but that sales job is why he's President today.

Yang seems to think that socialism will somehow "work" in health care.  It never has -- in health care or anywhere else.  NHS in Britain is falling apart.  So are the other socialist health care systems.  They're falling apart even though they exist almost-entirely on the back of the 500% overcharge Americans pay in that we effectively fund the R&D and in many cases the reproduction cost of everything they use.  Even with that sort of outrageous transfer and theft they're still fiscally underwater.

Yang could have -- and perhaps, for a very short period of time forward still can -- become a credible candidate.  He needs an 80% issue -- indeed, anyone who intends to try to take on Warren, Bernie or Biden does, just as I've argued for decades that if you want to try to run as a third-party candidate you need to as well.

Remember Ross Perot?  He took up an 80% issue -- the giant sucking sound of "tariff free" trade with Mexico.  Had he not folded his tent he would have likely won too.

There are so many other crackpot ideas on Yang's plate that frankly, I can't take him seriously.  The "vote at 16" idea is one of them.  Representation comes with responsibility, or at least it's supposed to.  Yang is nothing more than pandering with this bullshit -- if my kid can vote at 16 I can eject him or her at 16 and they can go fend for themselves.

There are acts that should define you as an adult in all respects.  Reproduction and Felonious conduct are two of them.  Voting is a third.  Today we refuse to recognize that exercising the most-profound power a human can have -- to reproduce or not -- does not come with the responsibility commensurate with that power.  This must change and since slavery is immoral (never mind illegal) there's only one direction it can that is consistent: Pregnancy, for both sexes, is an automatic and irrevocably emancipating event.  So is a felony conviction.

Further, Andrew is a pie-in-the-sky economic bullshitter.  "Saving for retirement", which is one of his planks, is impossible in a nation where the federal government runs a 25%+ fiscal deficit and thus destroys the value of all saved capital.  This has to be stopped -- or those who both promote policies that allow and expand that practice must be removed from the public square by any means necessary.

Fortunately for Andrew there is a way to stop the deficit spending and get the 80% issue and greatly improve health care delivery while slashing cost by 80% or more.

But he hasn't taken it -- just like the rest haven't either.

That's because he doesn't really believe in any of it, just as neither do the others -- including our current President.

Sadly they're all bullshitters and con artists.

Here's what you get if you basically draft me, since I don't fit either the RINO or Communist party profile:

• Wage, environmental, IP theft, government oppression/subsidy and currency manipulation tariffs.  There will be zero incentive for any entity selling to anyone in America to place manufacturing or anything else (assembly, sourcing, etc) in a foreign nation to try to arbitrage poor people, dump poison in their water, into the air or on their land instead of here, etc.  Each class of goods will have the appropriate tariff calculated on a per-nation basis with no exceptions.  Any nation or firm attempting to circumvent this by cross-shipping or falsifying records will lead to an immediate, 100% embargo of all involved goods with them seized and destroyed on entry.  Again -- no exceptions.  Yes, this includes (but certainly isn't limited to) China, Vietnam, India and Mexico.
  
  
• 100% E-Verify now.  All employers have six months to comply for existing employees, all new hires must have it run.  Liability is personal and cannot be thrown off on a staffing company or other scheme.  All 941s (quarterly withholding filings) must include E-Verify control numbers on them.  Congress will receive a bill on my first day in office to upgrade failure to include same on 941s, hiring or paying people without reporting accurately on same, or any other form of evasion by any means to a criminal felony with 5 years in the slam-slam for each person so not-reported or evaded, served consecutively, with no pleas or reductions allowed along with a $50,000 fine per person, per year who is not reported accurately.  That ends the BS.
  
  
• It shall be the policy of this nation that no free trading relationship nor normal customs and immigration relationship shall exist with any nation that permits either their nationals or foreign nationals to travel through or use their border with our nation for the purpose of unlawful entry into the United States, nor shall such a relationship exist with any nation that suborns or permits its nationals to violate our laws whether in regard to people, goods or services.  Mexico in particular shall cut this crap out or the border will be closed -- period.  The National Emergency required to do this has already been issued by Trump and I will execute on that on my first day in office.  This shall also be applied to China as a consequence of its export of fentanyl and precursors intended for unlawful distribution in the United States.
  
  
• H1b visa sponsors shall be required to pay 200% of the prevailing wage in America.  If there is truly a shortage or is being used to import those who are truly exceptional minds, to the point that we simply can't meet the challenge here, so be it -- the cost of doing so compared to the benefit will be tiny.  If this visa is being abused by corporations a wage suppression artifice, and today it is, that's ending.  Right now.
  
  
• As President my first and foremost duty is to protect the integrity of the United States.  This includes physical security at the US border.  If necessary the military will be deployed to defend same against any and all invaders.  Our military exists for the primary purpose of preventing and repelling any attempted invasion of United States territory.  This is not only Constitutionally permitted it is Constitutionally required of the Commander in Chief.  This does not violate The Posse Comitatus Act; the military will not be there to execute a civilian police action, they will be deployed to prevent and turn back invasion.  If you want to come and apply as an immigrant, whether claiming asylum or otherwise, do it lawfully at a port of entry or US Embassy.
  
  
• 100% enforcement of 15 USC Chapter 1.  Amazon is the poster child in the retail space but hardly the only offender.  The entire medical space will also have this enforced against them.  See my model bill for how to fix it entirely.  Until passed I'll be content to throw lots of hospital executives and virtually every pharma company head in the slam-slam and destroy every one of their firms with ruinous fines.  Yes, as the head of the Executive (law enforcement) I can do that without ANY new laws, and will.
  
  
• 100% legalization and regulation of marijuana immediately by de-scheduling.  The DEA is under the DOJ, and as the head of the Executive I'm their boss.  THC will be de-scheduled immediately.  Period.  In addition a full review of the medical and scientific evidence will be undertaken for every drug currently on said schedule and they shall be adjusted accordingly.  No ifs, ands or buts.  States can do what they wish but on a federal level it's done on Day #1 and I will fire as many people as necessary and replace on an interim basis until it happens.
  
  
• BEA and BLS will be directed to remove all "hedonic" and similar adjustments immediately and permanently.  As they are under the Department of Commerce and Labor, respectively, they too are under the Executive.  Therefore said order will be issued on Day #1.  Inflation numbers shall have all hedonic adjustments removed immediately and on a forward basis, and in addition productivity shall be removed from inflation numbers as well.  That is, inflation is inflation and we're going to stop lying about it.
  
  
• The Fed will either adjust policy to meet its mandate of stable prices over the medium term or I will do whatever I must to destroy and replace it.  Period.  They do not have the privilege of re-writing legislation and "stable" means unchanging, not 2% "doctored and fraudulent" inflation.  Specifically they will control money and credit aggregates to reverse the scam of the false inflation numbers via hedonics and productivity that were unlawfully applied over the last 30+ years.  I understand doing this in a week can't happen, but it will happen and they will run policy commensurate with their Congressional mandate or I will find a way to remove them by whatever means it takes.  Cue President Jackson on this one, if it comes to it; Treasury can be directed to buttfuck The Fed under Executive power, that's already obvious and actually not even slightly difficult given the will and I will do so.
  
  
• A National Emergency will be declared on the first day of my Administration relating to the Internet and threat to our Republic that the current abuse of same both foreign and domestic has incurred.  The specific demands for reform will include separation of utility and application functionality with the former being absolutely barred from discrimination in sales of like kind and quantity for any firm with more than $100 million a year in revenue worldwide.  Any firm that refuses will have all foreign transactions blocked in accordance with the 1970s NEA powers and all dollar-denominated transactions and assets frozen.  Further any coordinated action to ban particular political perspectives, points of view or publishers shall bring instant prosecution under 15 USC carrying felony criminal penalties.  I will perp-walk every single major social media, transport, cloud and DNS company executive straight into federal prison if I must. The bullcrap we're dealing with now will stop or the firms doing it will be destroyed with their executives asset-stripped to their underwear.
  
  
• The 2nd Amendment shall be restored.  I shall seek declaratory judgment from the Supreme Court on the fraud in Miller's instance and, once having secured same shall move to have the entire body of existing "gun control", other than actual commerce between states which does remain a federal power, declared void.  In addition the 14th Amendment guarantees incorporation against State Laws on matters of civil rights.  Any state or local government official who disagrees will find themselves in the federal slam-slam facing 18 USC 242 charges.  Until that is accomplished the DOJ shall be directed to ignore that blatantly unconstitutional set of laws and if they or any other federal agency refuses I shall issue pardons to anyone they arrest on any non-violent firearms offense.  If you want to make, own and carry a firearm, suppressor or whatever -- have at it.  If some federal agency cop shows up and tries to bust you the next morning you'll be pardoned.  I don't care if I wear out 1,000 pens signing pardons.  This bullshit will stop -- right now.
  
  
• The 4th Amendment shall be restored.  The entire "policing for profit" revenue share model on civil forfeiture is rankly unconstitutional and the entirety of that program will be scrapped by Executive Order on my first day in office.  Any state, county or local official who continues it beyond that day shall be subject to arrest and indictment by the federal government under 18 USC 242 which explicitly prohibits the violation of Constitutional Rights under color of law or authority.  That is a criminal statute and I will be more than happy to put 50,000 local cops and county sheriffs in the federal slam-slam if I must.  We'll have plenty of room with all the weed violations that will be released.  This crap will stop; if some copshop claims that money or property is the fruit of an illegal act before they can seize and attempt to forfeit it they must obtain a felony criminal conviction on the underlying offense and prove the connection beyond a reasonable doubt.  Period.
  
  
• The Glo-bull warming scam will be stopped dead.  All federally funded research and data, past, present and future shall be declared as public domain.  Mann and his cohorts will be forced to disgorge same or be charged with theft (or destruction, if they try to evade it via tampering) of government property.  Enough.
  
  
• I shall demand of Congress that the current law permitting International Cartels to operate in facial violation of 15 USC Chapter 1 be repealed.  This is an outrage passed in the 1970s in response to the Arab Oil Embargo.  Congress shall be called upon to repeal it on their first day in session.  Period.  Until they do I shall tariff all cartel-controlled products, including oil, sufficiently to make them non-economic for import and sale in the United States.  We can be oil-independent today and until Congress puts a stop to the OPEC rape-job one way or another we shall be.
  
  
• I shall demand of Congress an immediate rescission of (1) all federal funding of student loans and (2) immediate removal of the "privileged" status of such debt on a forward basis from bankruptcy discharge.  All such lending on a forward basis shall be private and shall be subject to the risk of bankruptcy discharge.  This will instantly collapse the cost of college to something you can afford to attend and engage in by working at Starbucks.
  
  
• It shall be the national energy policy of the United States to explore and, if justified, develop LFTR-based nuclear energy, including using coal as the Thorium feedstock, so as to become entirely energy independent through its use and CTL technology within 20 years.  The math and basis for this is found in this post from 2011, or if you prefer in my book Leverage.  This is achievable given the technology of today and we shall do it as a nation so as to never again be able to be held hostage for electricity, transportation or war-fighting fuels.
  
  
• It shall be the foreign policy of the United States that unless (1) an American or (2) a piece of American property, including a flagged vessel, aircraft, embassy or other item is damaged or destroyed it is not a matter for our military.  The United States shall respect the sovereign power of all nations.  However, no nation shall enjoy a free and open trading relationship nor shall the ownership and control of any US property whether physical, intellectual or otherwise be recognized on an equal and unimpaired basis by any of their firms or nationals if said nation does not afford all of its citizens on a substantially equal basis the freedoms guaranteed by the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments to the US Constitution along with substantially equal rights without regard to sex, race, color and creed.
  
  
• It shall be the goal of my administration to fire half of all Federal Employees within my first term and shrink both the Federal Statute Books and CFRs by 50%.  I think I can do better, but that's the goal for the first 4 years.  We'll see.
  
  
• I shall neither submit or sign any budget that runs a deficit except in a time of declared war and in fact shall sign no budget that does not run a surplus as a percentage of GDP equal to the previous 12 months productivity gain or more if same is positive.  End of discussion, full stop.  Whatever the government wishes to do it will pay for, and all such shall include the room for whatever supplemental appropriations may arise including disasters.  No exceptions.  Disasters are not known in advance but that they happen every year is.  Further the government shall not steal the natural improvement in purchasing power that belongs to the citizens as a consequence of their improvement in productivity either.
  
  
• No, I will not stop using "colorful language" when it is appropriate.  Running a nation is an adult job.  Children do not have a seat at the table -- not because they aren't respected but because they lack the experience, wisdom, impulse control and judgment to be considered an appropriate resource in such matters.  If you're incapable of dealing with adult matters then feel free to go hide in your "safe space" and let the adults do what has to be done -- including, occasionally, erecting a well-earned middle finger.
  
  
• No, I will not publish my tax returns.  The requirements to run for President are in the Constitution.  Tax returns are confidential, period, end of discussion.  Incidentally, so are medical records (HIPPA) so no, I won't be taking any public medical exams either.  However, you're welcome to peruse my running time records in races where I publicly appear and there is a publicly-visible clock, and draw from that whatever conclusions you wish.

To the extent any of this requires Congressional approval I will veto at my discretion every single bill that comes across my desk until the necessary statutes are enacted or repealed.  This specifically includes but is not limited to all spending bills.  In addition to the extent spending is constrained by said vetos I will direct that the first cuts are to all security, maintenance, utility and other facilities and programs that benefit any member of Congress or their staff.  They will either do their damn job or they'll take the brunt of their refusal, unlike Barry Soetero who punished ordinary Americans when Congress didn't do what he wanted.

There's plenty more but this will be a good start for my platform.

I'm available for public debate on any or all of this platform against anyone else who believes they have better ideas and wishes to take the left seat.  As noted, since I'm aware of no party interested in these positions one of them will have to draft me....

As for electors and the state filings for same we'll cross that bridge if there's enough to be worth doing what has to be done to make that happen.

This page is subject to update but no commitment above shall be materially weakened or changed to the detriment of the people of this nation, and if challenged on same I will produce the entire audit log of this page back to the original posting of this message. -- Karl

If you wanted to accelerate the collapse of America and bring on a Civil War you could hardly do it better than by advocating for and managing to enact this nonsense.

A key figure in the “Modern Monetary Theory” economic camp, her assertions that the federal government could spend freely for things like a jobs guarantee or Green New Deal without risking runaway inflation, a debt default or a clubbing by global creditors have been Twitter-bombed by mainstream economists as left-wing free lunchism.

Well that's because it is -- but not really much different than the free lunchism that has been going on for the last 20 years.

Let me remind you that in real terms there has been no economic growth of substance since 2000 and only one positive year -- under 2% at that -- since 2007!

This is in a world where interest rates (since 2008) were indistinguishable, on government debt, from zero in real terms.

Therefore we've already had our experiment and it has failed.  We can fail it harder and more-seriously, and walk right down the road into a literal destruction of our nation, by continuing this crap.

The basic argument made by the MMT "theorists" is that since "inflation is low and contained" we can simply "print" the money we want, spend it, and that's constrained only by inflation, of which there is none of seriousness at present.

The problem isn't the claim of where the constraint comes from -- it's that the claim of "low and and constrained inflation" over the last two decades is a lie.

The cost of medical care has skyrocketed over the last 20 years.  So has post-secondary education.  So has actual housing expense; witness the housing market meltdown in 2008 and the resulting re-inflation of said bubble, which has done exactly nothing in terms of price compared with salaries.

Ditto for a whole host of other mandatory spending.  Property taxes in many jurisdictions have more than doubled in the last 20 years.

Your salary hasn't doubled over that period of time.  In fact quite to the contrary.

The number of households that pay more than half of their income in rent has skyrocketed in the last decade -- it is up by about 50%.  Clearly, they don't think inflation is "low and controlled."

Indeed that's the problem and it's not just rent; it's total cost of basic needs.

It's extraordinarily misleading to cite numbers like "GDP per-capita" as justification for this sort of nonsense, since there's not even a passing shot at reasonably-even distribution of same.  Believing that one can somehow "print" one's way to prosperity is a complete crock; all that emitting more money into the system does is raise the price level, and since you cannot and will not make sure that everyone gets the same amount (not a percentage of their income but in gross dollars) from federal deficit spending the accrual simply screws those on the left side of the curve.

Of course there have always been poor people -- here and everywhere else.  But what's happened over the last 30 or so years in this country is outrageous.  Technological advancement means you can do more with less; that is, it takes fewer hours of labor to produce the minimum requirements for living in a reasonable manner.  Rather than have that outcome on a continuing basis, however, we've seen the opposite over the last 20 or so years in America.

Why?

It's not because there is an insufficient amount of money around.

It's because people collude and either screw you, forcing you to pay more for less, or just flat-out steal it.

At its core MMT is simply a means to steal more and faster.  It's entirely possible for the United States to run a budget surplus, as I've pointed out, simply by taking on the medical monopolists.  In addition were Congress to demand that The Fed stop running interest rates below the federal deficit level as a percentage of GDP then Congress couldn't spend in deficit at large scale without rates going up dramatically and immediately.  This in turn would force the fraud out of the system and it is that fraud and unpunished felony that has hosed everyone in America on the left side of the bell curve and is now reaching well into those on the right side!

A restive population eventually revolts -- one way or another.  It does so at the ballot box if it can effectively do so but if prevented from doing so, say, if every candidate that can be and is elected makes the problem worse for those on the left side then eventually you wind up with the destruction of that government and often destruction of the society itself.

MMT, in short, is a fraud.  It is simply an attempt at extending the frauds that allow "professors" to sit in their ivory towers while their students are buttfucked within an inch of their lives with $100,000 student debts.

The correct answer to people running crap like this, no matter who they are, is to force them into said refrigerator box as their best and highest place of residence -- complete with rats and drug-abusing homeless individuals, many of the latter who are there precisely because of the policies they promoted.

This garbage is just flat-out ridiculous:

I earn my living investing other people’s money in the stock market. I am terrified contemplating how I am going to save my clients’ money, as well as my own, if a Democrat is elected president. The policies that the Democrats are advocating will destroy the American economy, not just the stock market, but the whole US economy. My first instinct will be to raise cash ahead of the stock market crash, but even that is only a temporary safe harbor.

The Green New Deal, renewed regulations, Medicare for All, free college,  as well as the 70-90% tax rates proposed by Democrats, will tank the stock market and US economic growth, leading to higher unemployment and reduced wage gains. All these programs require higher taxes and not just the soak the rich fantasy of the 70-90% rates. Most of the Democratic candidates have pledged to roll back the 2017 Republican tax cuts that fueled the renewal of economic growth in the US.

All of this is true.

But it's irrelevant.

As I've pointed out for more than a decade by 2024 CMS -- that's Medicare and Medicaid -- are incapable of the shenanigans that they use to suppress their budgetary deficit impact.  This is not rocket science, it's arithmetic, exactly as is the so-called "doom dates" on Social Security.

But Social Security's "doom dates" are in fact rather minor.  Being able to pay 80% of a promised benefit (that is, you're running a ~20% fiscal deficit which is consuming assets) is sort of ugly, but that's fixable.  Nobody's going to like a 20% tax increase on FICA (7.65% of wages up to the cap, plus another half you don't see) but raising the cap, increasing that tax by 20% or some combination that gets to the same place resolves the problem.

That's not catastrophic.  Nor, for most people, is a 20% reduction in payments, although the howling (and election losses) that result from the latter guarantees that won't be the outcome.  Those tax changes will and can be made and will not result in a collapse of the economy.

However, CMS is not running a 20% fiscal deficit; in their case roughly one dollar in five is covered, not four dollars in five!  When they run out of that stoked-back powder there are two choices, and only two choices:

1. Essentially default in its entirety on the promises made to Medicare recipients, both current and forward, forever.  This will simply cost-shift basically all of that onto Medicaid, particularly with regard to nursing home care once you bankrupt the vast majority of Medicare (retired) people, which will happen almost instantly.

OR

2. Congress changes the law so as to permit CMS to run without backing, that is, the entirety of their operating deficit shows up on the federal budget as a fiscal deficit.

Social Security and Medicare are currently prohibited by law from doing #2.  Congress will have no choice but to permit #2 for at least Medicare, and since utterly nobody in the political or news space de-aggregates these two programs when talking about "fiscal cliffs" even though they have radically different exposures and funding problems the pressure to do it for both in the same bill will be overwhelming.

Not that it really matters; #2 will roughly double the federal deficit on an essentially immediate and permanent forward basis.

The "big lie" is this:

Whatever you think of President Trump, you know by his record that he will put America first and that his policies have created a robust economy. Unless you want to see the US economy and your standard of life destroyed, there is no alternative to voting for President Trump.

No, he has not.

The GDP data is here.

It shows a 4% gross GDP advance over the last 12 months (to Q2/2019.)

Debt to the penny shows a 3.91% fiscal deficit as percentage of GDP over the same period of time.

In other words there is no "robust economy" at all; it's a lie.

Actual GDP expansion in real terms over the last 12 months is 0.09%!

Statistically-speaking that's zero.

These are not my numbers and not my assertions; they're the government's figures and they're widely-regarded as facts.  Trump's most-recent "budget deal", which he is advocating for, has passed the House and will almost-certainly pass the Senate and be signed into law will remove all fiscal rectitude until the middle of 2021 by suspending the debt ceiling entirely.

Again, I remind you, by 2024 on current trajectories that roughly trillion dollar deficit ($828 billion on a rolling 12 month basis at present, and accelerating) will permanently double.

Yes, GDP will go up, since every dollar of that deficit will be immediately spent.  That's how borrowing works; you borrow money and you spend it, and as soon as you spend it GDP increases.  That's basic math and economics.

However, diluting the currency as a means of "goosing" GDP doesn't actually advance anything in terms of actual economic output.  Worse, productivity, if you believe the BLS, is "advancing" at 3.4% annually as of the last read.  This is, paradoxically, very negative in light of the fiscal deficit because "doing more with less", which is the definition of productivity, means that GDP should be running at least at that level on a fiscally-adjusted basis!

In other words if you include productivity, and for honest numbers you have to, the US is currently in a deep recession as it is in fact contracting real output on a roughly 3.3% annual rate.

How is this possible given "full employment" and the stock market soaring?

It's not hard to figure out; it's happening the same way you're "just fine" if you make $100,000 a year but continually add another $4,000 a year to your credit card balances.  That $4,000 is quite a lift in your standard of living.  It allows your family of four "another" week-long cruise per year, for example, or a very nice trip to Disney, or, for that matter, more than half of the monthly payments on a brand new $50,000 "loaded" pickup truck or Lexus.  Note that if every family did this GDP would increase at that same 4% since you're all spending 4% more than you make and the gross output will thus lift by that same 4%.  The (obvious, to anyone with more than two firing neurons in their brain) problem is that you're not really gaining any prosperity at all; in fact you're going backwards as you're accumulating an obligation that at least has an interest expense and at least in theory eventually must be paid off!

This illusion of "prosperity" can continue for a very long time -- so long as your credit card company doesn't call the loan, or even just shut off the spigot and deny any more charges. But even if just the latter happens not only does that $4,000 a year of "spending" disappear the interest payments do not disappear, and since you can't afford to pay down any of the principle those interest costs go on forevermore into the future.

Again -- as things stand right now we're consuming our capital base at a roughly 3% annual rate.  That depletion rate is set to double within the next five years.

I do not know when the markets will wrap their arms around this just like I don't know when you as a family would if you were running up your credit card on those Disney vacations.  But I do know that the day when it happens will come.  Not might, not could, will.

The willful and intentional denial of this fact by you, Greenwald, along with the others drum-beating for the flying-hair monster currently in office will simply make it worse when it does happen.  After all a market crash from DOW 27,000 to DOW 5,000 is very, very bad.  But one from DOW 35,000 to 5,000 is demonstrably worse because more and more people will believe that the so-called "value" in those assets is not only real but theirs to consume over the coming years when in fact it is not.  How many of those people have a half-million dollar "retirement fund" that is, in fact, really a $50,000 one?

What really galls me, however, is so-called "money managers" like the cited one in this quoted article, who believe that (1) this "prosperity" is real despite the data saying its not being literally in their face, (2) Trump is responsible for it and (3) voting for Democrats will be a disaster while not doing so will continue the "prosperity."

The root problem is that there is no prosperity in the first place; it's a chimera and fraud writ large and has been the case and policy of both parties since approximately 2000, when the accumulation of federal debt crossed the zero boundary and began resulting in negative contribution to GDP.

This is an exponential series.  Like all exponential series the negative impact starts slowly and thus the "belly" in the curve from the two lines on the chart for a while expands.  Yes, the top-line (debt) is accelerating but the imposed cost starts at a lower level and thus there's more "gap" between the two curves for a while.

But arithmetic tells us that exponents always behave exactly the same way.  That the appearing-safe "belly" will disappear, the gap will close and when it does you have a catastrophe because you can't cover the expense.  There is nothing you can do about it other than to halt the excessive spending and pay down the outstanding balance, but this requires not just halting the excessive spending (that is, cutting it to income levels) but going even further in order to pay off some of the outstanding balance.

At present the Federal Government is spending approximately 25% more than it takes in from all taxes combined.  To halt the detonation the spending cuts must therefore be more than 25% in total, now and forevermore into the future.  Everyone in DC has a wipe-out, toddler-style screamfest if you propose not spending more every single year yet the corrective action required is for one quarter of all money spent today be whacked off the budget.  That's how far down the rabbit hole we've gone, all without a single whimper of revolt or refusal to consent by the public at-large.

The mantra for the last 30+ years is that we're "leaving this mess to our kids and grand-kids", implying that we're saddling those who either cannot yet vote or worse, aren't yet born.  That was true 30 years ago,  It was probably true 20 years ago, as the generation just being born then would become adults about...... now.

But today it's no longer true.  We're not leaving anything to anyone.  The problem is here, it's ours, and we either stop it now or it will blow up in our faces.  Five years is a very short period of time to make fiscal adjustments and allow the economy to adjust and come back into balance.  Trying to eke out another 10, 20, or even 50% in stock prices over the next five years is not only unwise it's literally suicidal on a national basis and those advocating for same deserve to be held to account when, not if, their continued drum-beating for a fiscally, economically, politically, morally and ethically bankrupt position results in mortality.  One can only hope it's their progeny, spouses and then theirs personally, in that order first.  Sadly while I can hope and pray for them to be first it will not be only them no matter who goes first; the count of ordinary people who will be utterly destroyed and likely die is going to reach all the way from top to bottom with those at the bottom bearing the greatest percentage of losses.

When someone runs a pack of lies intended to commit theft of trillions while allowing brigands to go free and steal, you should force them from office.

If they refuse to leave then the people should contemplate whether their government continues to enjoy consent of the governed.

And if that contemplation leads the people to the conclusion that it does not, then said government is dissolved.  It may leave in peace or may leave otherwise but the people have every right to compel it to leave.

This is the foundation of America.  You cannot believe that America is a valid nation, with a valid government, and not adhere to all of the above.  If you do then you're Hitler, Mao, or Pol Pot.  You have no more right to continue to be in said government than they did while they were murdering millions.

Thus, I give you Sanders:

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Tuesday compared the push to combat climate change to the response to the attack on Pearl Harbor as he unveiled legislation that would declare a “climate emergency" and demand a massive-scale mobilization to tackle it.

“In some ways...I’m reminded today in terms of the crisis that we face in climate change about where the United States was in 1941 when it was attacked at Pearl Harbor, and what happened at that point, having to fight a war on two fronts in the East and in Europe, the United States came together and within three years it had created the type of armaments program that was necessary to, in fact, win the war,” he said in a conference call with reporters.

This is a lie in all respects.

It is intended to steal trillions from United States citizens.

It is intended to enrich other nations at the expense of said citizens.

It is intended to enslave.

And under the 13th Amendment, it is unlawful, it is unconstitutional, and those who adhere to it must be forced to leave.  Here, now, today, and by any means necessary.

I submit the following facts, which cannot be disputed.

• Human activity is responsible for approximately 3% of CO2 in the atmosphere.
  
  
• Humans are not harmed, nor are any animals, by CO2 levels even more than double that in the atmosphere today.  In fact, the average CO2 level in an American home is twice that of the outside air.  This is simply due to the fact that we limit air exchange with the outside on purpose for energy efficiency reasons, and humans (along with pets) emit CO2.
  
  
• During The Medieval Warm Period, roughly 900-1300 AD, global temperatures were approximately 1-1.5 degrees Centigrade higher than they are now.  There were exactly ZERO SUVs, coal-fired power plants and similar on the planet at the time.  The Vikings explored Greenland at the time and gave that land mass it's name, cultivating both crops and domestic animal food sources including horses, cattle, pigs, sheep and goats.  More than six hundred farms have been found and excavated on Greenland, proving that this was the case.  Post-1300 or thereabouts when the Little Ice Age began these all became non-viable and were abandoned.  I note that the Medieval Warm Period not only did not end the planet from an ecological basis it was thriving, as demonstrated by said civilizations, during that time.
  
  
• During the Maunder Minimum, part of the Little Ice Age, the River Thames froze.  We know this happened because there are paintings, among other historical records, created at that time (~1660) which survive today.
  
  
• Temperatures today are well below the maximum set during The Medieval Warm Period; we have exited The Little Ice Age and the planet is naturally warming.  For exactly how long that will continue cannot be determined but it is important to note that the Earth is currently in an interglacial period, which will eventually (long after everyone currently alive is dead) end.  When it does the planet will cool dramatically, as it has many times through the millennia.
  
  
• This is not the only such anomaly during the time of recorded history.  The Romans enjoyed a similar warm period right around the time of Christ.  Perhaps not coincidentally, a cool period coincided with Roman collapse.  One does not have to wonder why that would have completely hosed the Romans.
  
  
• Climategate exposed an enormous amount of intentional fraud on the part of those promoting the "Global Warming" nonsense, along with their intentional destruction of their claimed original source data.  This is, today, long-documented truth.

There is a long history of scientific fraud associated with various "environmental causes", many of which brought political changes predicated on lies that were directly responsible for massive numbers of deaths.  Here are two of these, one resulting in deaths and one not:

• During the period from the early 1940s to roughly 1975 there was a great deal of concern that the planet was entering another Little Ice Age.  TIME Magazine wrote stories and ran covers about the planet almost-literally freezing over.  This is just one of many scaremongering games politicians and so-called "scientists" have run on the subject of climate and other ecological "disasters."  AOC is not old enough to have been alive when this occurred, but I was and remember it well.  Scientific "consensus" was that we were facing imminent disaster.  Of course the truth, now known. is that we never were, as it never happened.
  
  
• So-called "scientists" also claimed, with much fanfare and universal consensus, that DDT was responsible for the thinning of eggshells among various bird species and, if the substance was not immediately banned, would lead to the destruction of all aviary species and ultimately the planet.  This screamfest culminated in the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.  It was all a fraud.  This is not my assertion, it is that of multiple PhDs, including published articles by same.  The resulting ban on DDT, undertaken by our EPA who knew they were lying, had overstated human exposures from the environment by a factor of 1,000 and never corrected the record, along with other governments worldwide who also went along with the fraud, literally killed millions in the ensuing years by allowing malaria, which had been seriously curtailed by mosquito abatement using DDT, to rebound.  This single fraud, all based on alleged "scientific consensus", killed more people than the entire Holocaust; the people who ran that crap managed for many years to rack up between a million and two million deaths annually.  Not one politician or so-called "scientist" was ever held to account for what was one of the largest genocides ever perpetrated on the human race with nearly all of the victims being brown or black. 

Next up we have the inconvenient fact that with humans being responsible for approximately 3% of all CO2 in the atmosphere (the rest is natural) even if we wanted to we could not drive the climate sufficiently to do damage via CO2 emission.

It's simply impossible from a standpoint of physics.  Approximately 2% of all gases in the atmosphere have an absorption spectrum that renders them involved in the so-called "greenhouse effect."  Of that CO2 is only about 3.5% of the total.  In fact nearly all of the gas that is involved in absorption and radiation of solar energy is water vapor.

Never mind that CO2 isn't a "pollutant."  Find anything green in your home or outside and look at it.  About 50% of what you see was once CO2.

CO2 is in fact scarce on a historical planetary basis.  It has been this low only once before for any length of time in the planet's history -- about 300 million years ago.

Further, and very damning, the so-called "measurements" used to make the claim of increasing CO2 levels "in the modern area" are also a scam.  They were cherry-picked; a look at a scatter graph of actual measurements and applying a best-fit curve shows that levels were near 500ppm in the early 1800s, long before we drove SUVs and burned coal or natural gas for electrical power.  This fact is, of course, conveniently omitted and yet this data is public.

It is certainly true that CO2 levels are higher now than they were 50 years ago.  This is good, not bad, in that it feeds plant growth.

This is beneficial, not dangerous.

Now here's the other problem with the base claim: "Human CO2 rise is causing warming."

From early 1900 to roughly mid-century the Earth was warming and CO2 levels were going up modestly.  Since then CO2 levels have risen at roughly three times that rate but temperatures have not gone up faster than they were before.  The rate of increase has not changed even thought he alleged "driving" factor has roughly tripled in impact.

There is no correlation and therefore the claim is, on a scientific basis, false.

Remember: Correlation cannot prove causation -- it can only suggest that it might be true -- but a lack of correlation disproves causation.

Why is the correlation missing if CO2 in fact captures photons, which we know to be true, and thus can cause warming?

Physics tells us why.  CO2, like all gases, has an absorption spectrum.  That is, it only absorbs certain wavelengths of energy.  The problem is that there are only so many photons of energy at that spectra emitted from the Sun that strike the Earth's atmosphere; once you've absorbed them all more CO2 in the atmosphere doesn't do anything to make the planet warmer because there are no more photons of the appropriate spectrum to be absorbed.

This is physics and those are laws, called such because there is no way to violate them.

Finally, none of the so-called "climate models" of the last 20 years have verified.  The expected rise in temperatures did not happen.

An inconvenient truth: We don't have enough carbon-based fuels on the planet to drive planetary CO2 levels even to the level inside your house.  Long before we got there we'd run out of economically-extractable fuel sources and be forced to use something else.  But government doesn't have to do anything to accomplish this; basic economics will do it all on its own as the cost of extraction rises since we continue to burn up the easier to get at, and cheaper, sources first.

Now let's look at what does correlate -- Ecliptic and Elliptical orbital variation and sunspots.  In fact, if you overlay those three factors on the actual temperature record for the last thousand years you find near-perfect correlation.

Does CO2 "cause" warming?  There's no evidence for it and the lack of correlation in fact disproves it.  In addition physics and thermodynamics argue against it as well.  There is no evidence to support the claim and plenty of evidence to support, on a correlation basis, that natural orbital, cosmic ray and sunspot activity is responsible, none of which, obviously, has anything to do with the number of SUVs being driven or whether we use coal and oil for fuel.

Now let's tackle one final claim: In 12 years -- just over a decade -- we're all dead if we don't stop emitting CO2.

That's so laughable that it should result in an immediate hanging for anyone running that crap in a political context.  Why?  Because through most of the Earth's history CO2 levels were dramatically higher than they are now and far beyond the so-called "runaway" level being pontificated.

If such a "runaway" was going to occur it would have happened millions of years ago and killed everything on this rock -- we would not be here.

This is a fanciful lie at the level of open and outrageous fraud; nobody should be able to run that crap and evade prison or worse.

Oh by the way, before I leave this specific part of the topic, let me make a further observation: After the Soviet Union fell suddenly "measured" temperatures started to shoot up.  Want to know why?  A large number of on-Earth temperature stations were in the former Soviet Union.  The Soviet Government, being Communist, paid for fuel at outposts based on the reported temperature; thus, there was a strong incentive to lie and under-report temperatures, especially in the winter.  Most of those stations went offline when the USSR fell but those that did not suddenly and magically started reporting true temperatures which instantly were materially warmer -- a literal impossibility since no time had passed.  The so-called "climate scientists" know this but have not removed that data as knowingly invalid -- on purpose.  In addition surface observations are naturally concentrated where there are people -- which biases the numbers upward due to well-known "heat island" effects (e.g. masses of concrete, blacktop, a thermometer in proximity to an A/C condenser, etc.)  All of this means the error band is wider than the signal (~2 degrees C, typically) and is majority biased one way -- upward.

In other words surface observation data is worthless since there's no possible way to accurately correct the historical data. 

We do have, however, for the last 40 years or so, high-quality satellite data.  It shows the same slope as prior to the 20th century; in other words yes, it is getting warmer -- but increased human emissions of CO2 is not the cause as the rate of change has not increased.

So let's put this in perspective: Will the planet likely be about a degree Celsius warmer in 2100 than around 2000ish?

Probably.  Unless we're entering into a solar minimum -- which we might be -- and if we are, you're going be rather surprised at the temperature deviation starting in the next 10-20 years or so because it's not going to be upward!

Are we the cause of any of this, and if we were to cut CO2 emissions would we stop it?

NO.

Period.

There's one final point.  Let's assume all of the above is wrong; humans are the cause of global warming, it's going to get a lot hotter in the next 100 years, well over 2 degrees Celsius, and we all need to cut all greenhouse gas emissions dramatically to stop it.

Then you have a further problem because the very scientists who claim we have 12 years to stop this also state that even if the United States cut its CO2 output to zero tomorrow that we'd manage to prevent...... a few tenths of a degree of increase in temperature.

Doing so, of course, would mean:

• All coal, oil, and natural gas electrical generation is immediately shut down.  We cannot supply the nation's electrical needs without these sources at anything approaching commercially-reasonable costs.  Solar + wind + batteries would triple or more the cost of electrical power.  This would take the $200 electrical bill in the southern states and make it $600 a month, or close to $7,000 a year.  The median family could not pay that under any set of conditions.
  
  
• ALL air travel of any sort is immediately and permanently barred. There is no way to operate an aircraft without fossil fuels; it is simply a matter of energy density.  This means no Air Force, no Naval Aviators, no civilian air travel and no Air Force One.  Delta, American, United, Southwest, Fed-EX and UPS would all be instantly and permanently grounded.  Overseas travel and trade would effectively and permanently end.  Every person currently employed in any such job would be immediately and permanently unemployed.
  
  
• ALL current oil and natural gas heating in homes and business must be shut down and removed.  The retrofit costs to electrical system (e.g. Heat pumps) would be enormous and in areas where temperatures go below freezing heat pumps do not work during that time because the outside coil both cannot pick up enough heat and it freezes.  Since fossil fuels, including wood burning, would be prohibited the only option would be electric resistance heating which is three to five TIMES as expensive.  $500 monthly heating bills anyone?  Who can afford that in the Northern states?
  
  
• ALL current farm tractors and similar cannot be used and must be destroyed.  Farm output would instantly collapse.  We can easily feed the United States today; this would no longer be true.  Our agricultural output would fall by at least 80%.  But, it wouldn't matter because.....
  
  
• All trucks, currently operated by diesel fuel, and all internal-combustion cars would be permanently banned.  Even if you had food on a farm 300 miles from the city you couldn't get it to the city and everyone inside said city would starve.
  
  
• All ships and our Navy, along with our Air Force, would have to be be permanently scrapped.  The only remaining vessels allowed would be either nuclear powered in the case of naval vessels or sailboats.  Anything too small for nuclear plant couldn't exist at all.  No landing craft, destroyers, frigates, etc. There would be no point to a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier since there would be no aircraft.  We wouldn't have to worry about trade with China, India, Pakistan or Vietnam since there'd be no way to get anything here.  All recreational watercraft, from jetskis to the largest yachts, would have to be scrapped and all businesses making those and their components would have to be shut down.  Even a pleasure sailboat would be illegal as they all have auxiliary internal combustion engines which could not be sold, used or fueled, nor could a generator be used.
  
  
• Personal transportation beyond the range of single-charge return distance (about 300 miles) would become impossible.  Today you can drive north of 1,000 miles in a day, in your own car.  The best of battery technology, both today and on the horizon, limits you to about 300 miles with no reserve, and a multi-hour charge requirement before you can continue.  This makes your effective ability to personally travel less than one third of today's limit on a daily basis, and you can't decide to get on a plane or train to get around that either because, as noted above, all planes are banned.  Oh, and said "electric cars" would cost twice what fuel on a per-mile basis costs today.  You not only couldn't afford the Tesla you couldn't afford to plug it in to charge it.  Oh, and as for RVs?  Forget it.  Banned.
  
  
• Emergency personal generators are immediately and permanently banned.  Was there just a hurricane, tornado or ice storm and your power is out?  Too bad, so sad.  In the winter your pipes freeze since you can't use auxiliary heat.
  
  
• Re-configuring trains to be all-electric, since diesel fuel is now banned, would take a decade and outrageously increase the cost of rail transport.  There is no feasible way to do this, especially in areas where there is sparse or no electrical infrastructure today.
  
  
• Mass-transit?  Forget it.  Buses?  What are you going to run them on?  Can't use natural gas or diesel.  Now what?
  
  
• Re-configuring personal transportation, not including commercial transport (e.g. trucks, etc) to all-electric would require an approximate tripling of the electrical infrastructure in the United States.  We have no possible way to do so today even with an all-on, decade-long effort using fossil fuels.  It is flatly impossible to provide this level of electrical output using "renewable" energy sources such as wind and solar.
  
  
• Solar, in particular, requires an enormous amount of energy and CO2 release to make the cells; there is no free lunch. You must put the energy in that you wish to later extract.  Since we cannot release any CO2 we also can't make any solar cells.  Sorry, there are no more solar cells.
  
  
• You also can't make wind turbines.  Refining rare earth metals vital to their production requires energy.  The amount of energy returned by said windmill goes negative in this paradigm and thus it makes no sense to build windmills either as the energy to produce the windmill and operate exceeds that which is returned.
  
  
• Finally, renewables such as wind and solar are intermittent; you thus need storage of some sort.  This means batteries or some form or potential or kinetic physical storage.  All require energy to be expended to manufacture and maintain them.  The energy balance of such a scheme is ridiculously unfavorable and, in the case of batteries the environmental damage associated with manufacturing and, in the case of lithium-based cells which cannot be economically recycled, their disposal, is severe.

It just gets worse from here; the bottom line is that a 100% CO2 cessation in the US (or "net zero", which forces capture at additional cost for any CO2 emitted) would instantly collapse the economy and kill an enormous percentage of the population -- likely two thirds or more of those here in America today -- by starvation.  It would ruin our cities by making mass-transit impossible beyond the immediate vicinity of subway stations.  It would also effectively delete our military.

Such a threat to cut CO2 emissions by humans in America, other than by breathing, to zero is a declaration of intent to commit genocide against the American people.  If there's a crime worthy of summary execution, that's it.

Even worse, doing this would accomplish nothing.  Why?  Because the US is not even on the map when it comes to the nations with the largest increases in CO2 production -- both here and into the indefinite future.  If you actually want to reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere you must focus on, and enforce, cessation of emissions in those places where that growth is occurring.

In order to to that what you're actually saying is that we must destroy both India and China along with their entire population right now, and in addition we must also make clear that all other nations, from Vietnam to the Congo, may not develop middle-class lifestyles and advance the comfort and security of their people ever or we will destroy them as well as soon as they begin to do so.

Why?

Because India and China are by far adding the most CO2 to the atmosphere.  In fact the United States is roughly net-neutral at the moment (we were net negative a couple of years ago, and net positive last year.) Among other things while most people in the US and Europe already have air conditioners, which are a huge driver of electrical consumption almost none of the people there do.  The count of households and commercial enterprises there utterly dwarfs the United States and the rest of the Western World.  They will not stop advancing whether we like it or not unless we are willing to kill them all -- period.  Nor will Vietnam or, as time goes by the majority of the African continent.

As the global warming alarmist "scientists" admit, even if we cut our CO2 emissions to zero (not net zero, actual zero) it would make no difference in the outcome on a percentage basis.  Therefore the "cut America to zero" does nothing; the only path to achieve their "goal" is to commit genocide on a mass basis against the people of the world to the tune of billions murdered.

The climate screamers know this as well.

In short it's all a fraud just like DDT was and the people pushing it know it -- except that this time they intend to kill tens or even hundreds of times as many people as they did with the DDT scam.

This is another attempted genocide, just as the ban on DDT was, and must be stopped by whatever means are necessary.

The politicians pushing this crap must be ordered to abandon it by the people of the United States, as those who they represent.

If they refuse they must be removed from office.

If that fails then our only remaining choices are being slaughtered by financial ruin, murdered literally by starvation and inability to transport food and basic needs from the much-diminished production capacity to where they're needed, or we overthrow all governments involved in this scam by whatever means are necessary.