By Jason Russell – Wall Street Examiner, Aug 5, 2015 – Excerpts:
Government size, property rights and trade are among factors used to determine a country’s economic freedom.
Countries with more economic freedom have happier people, according to a study published Tuesday by the Fraser Institute.
Economic freedom determines how much control someone feels they have over their life, which can affect happiness levels.
The happiness benefit is seen even when other factors that might increase happiness and also are prevalent in economically-free countries are held equal. These include higher levels of health, income, trust and employment. Economic freedom actually makes people happier than their income, age, political system or job status, the study says.
“Clearly, living in an economically free society has an important impact on the average citizen,” said Fred McMahon, the Fraser Institute’s Research Chair in Economic Freedom. “Past research concluded that economic freedom spurs prosperity, income, employment and better public institutions.”
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The Leviticus 25 Plan is America’s premier economic acceleration plan, and the only plan in America with the power to relight the fires of economic freedom.
The Leviticus 25 Plan restores economic liberty for all Americans, breaks the government dependency cycle for struggling U.S. citizens, eliminates massive debt burdens – public and private, and generates $383 billion government budget surpluses for each of its first five years of activation. It pays for itself entirely over a 10-15 year period.
The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens. It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.
The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.
The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
Biden says his plans will make America great again. Ask Europe how that has turned out.
Oct 6, 2021 | Excerpts:
… Europe’s little-discussed secret is that its cradle-to-grave welfare states are financed by the middle class via value-added and payroll taxes. The combined employer-employee social security tax rate is 36% in Spain, 40% in Italy and 65% in France. Value-added taxes in most European economies are around 20%. There simply aren’t enough rich to finance their entitlements.
Democrats in Washington know this, which is why they are resorting to budget gimmicks to disguise $5 trillion in spending into the 10-year budget window. They plan to pay for a few years of spending with 10 years of tax increases on businesses and affluent individuals, but this still only gets them $2.1 trillion in estimated new revenue.
Europe’s vast entitlements also mean less money for security and the military. Only nine or so European countries meet their NATO pledge to spend 2% or more of GDP on defense, and only Greece spends more than 3% as the U.S. does. Germany spends a paltry 1.56%.
The U.S. was able to defeat the Soviet empire in the 1980s because a booming economy spun off enough revenue to rebuild the military. Mr. Biden is proposing to shrink defense in real terms, and his welfare-spending wedge will grow rapidly. There will be no Reagan-like military buildup as China rises.
The irony is that some European governments have tried to reform their tax and welfare systems to become more competitive. Germany and Sweden over two decades reformed their welfare and labor policies. Their labor participation and GDP growth have exceeded the rest of Europe’s. Germany’s labor participation rose to 61.3% in 2019 from 58.1% in 2000.
During the 1970s and 80s, Sweden’s tax burden rose to the world’s highest as its welfare system became much more generous. The result: Swedes’ after-tax real incomes stagnated while government debt ballooned. From 1976 to 1995, GDP growth in Sweden was about half the average of developed countries and a third lower than Europe’s large economies.
Sweden’s decline prompted tax and spending reforms in the early 1990s that increased labor productivity, private job growth and incomes. The rate of disposable income growth increased four-fold from 1996 to 2011. Sweden’s average GDP growth from 2010 to 2019 (2.6%) has far surpassed that of most European countries.
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America’s current economic trajectory, according to the GAO, is “unsustainable.”
America needs a plan that will shrink the size of government, shrink entitlement spending, re-incentivize work and productivity, eliminate ground-level debt, generate annual state and federal budget surpluses, and restore financial security for hard-working, tax-paying, God-fearing American families.
The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens. It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.
The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.
The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
Our Washington politicians are ‘blowing up’ federal budget deficits – to the ultimate detriment of economic liberty in America and the ultimate impairment of economic growth and prosperity.
… The jerry-rigged [$1.75 trillion budget] plan is an enormous expansion of government with quarter-baked entitlement programs that will retard work and $1.85 trillion in tax increases that will distort and limit investment. The $1.75 trillion cost that Democrats have assigned their bill is an illusion. They use phony accounting to finance a few years of new spending with 10 years of tax increases.
For example, the plan extends the $3,600 child tax credit for one year at a cost of $110 billion. But Democrats will inevitably extend the credit next year. If Republicans oppose this or try to scale the credit back, they will be attacked for raising taxes on middle-class families. The true 10-year cost is about $1.1 trillion.
The agreement drops the House’s proposed Medicare vision and dental expansion. But it preserves a new hearing benefit, which the White House claims will cost a mere $34 billion and start in 2024. The annual cost of the hearing benefit once fully phased-in is some $16 billion. Congress will invariably make it permanent. True cost: $160 billion.
Democrats also plan to extend ObamaCare subsidies through 2025 for higher earners and broaden them to low-income folks in states that rejected the Medicaid expansion. The White House says this will cost $130 billion, but the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that providing coverage to these folks would cost north of $500 billion over a decade.
These programs are merely illustrative of how Democrats are desperately trying to squeeze a menagerie of spending into their negotiated $1.75 trillion top-line cost, with the real cost likely to be closer to $4 trillion.
At the same time Democrats are inflating the revenue estimates to pay for it. They claim $145 billion in phantom savings from repealing a controversial Trump Medicare drug rebate rule that was unlikely to take effect.
They also claim $400 billion in revenues from $80 billion in IRS “investments”—a 66% budget increase—including to hire more auditors to harass taxpayers. CBO has estimated this would only yield $200 billion in revenue for a net $120 billion.
The $1.85 trillion in tax increases include a 15% minimum tax on book income of large corporations, which will become Swiss cheese after Democrats add carve-outs for progressive interests. Corporations will also be taxed 1% on stock buybacks (which is another way of taxing shareholder dividends). Instead of buying back their shares, companies may hold more earnings in cash or channel them into unproductive investments.
Despite its anti-corporate advertising, the bill represents the biggest expansion of corporate welfare in history. Much of the $555 billion for climate spending will go to businesses for investing in renewables, nuclear, hydrogen, carbon capture, electric vehicles, batteries and transmission lines. This is on top of tens of billions in green-energy handouts in the Senate infrastructure bill.
And don’t believe Mr. Biden’s malarkey that taxes won’t go up for non-millionaires. Small business owners will get slammed by a 3.8% Medicare surcharge on active-investment income. A 5% surtax on income over $10 million and 8% above $25 million will hit the ephemeral rich who experience a windfall, say, after cashing in stock compensation after decades of work.
These surtaxes will raise the top marginal personal income tax rate to 45% or so and around 60% in New York and California, which would be higher than in European welfare states. The top rate in the U.K. is 45%, Italy 47.2%, Germany 47.5% and France is 55.4%. Congrats, Mr. President, you’ve won the tax race to the top.
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Washington politicians have a one-track mind to ‘grow government.’
America’s hard-working, tax-paying, God-fearing citizens now have a plan to shrink government, and return to a citizen-driven free-market economy and a citizen-centered healthcare system.
The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens. It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.
The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.
The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force;
That liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom;
That the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice;
That when government ventures beyond these rightful functions, it accumulates power, which tends to diminish order and liberty;
That the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power;
That the genius of the Constitution—the division of powers—is summed up in the clause that reserves primacy to the several states, or to the people, in those spheres not specifically delegated to the Federal government;
That the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government, and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs;
That when government interferes with the work of the market economy, it tends to reduce the moral and physical strength of the nation; that when it takes from one man to bestow on another, it diminishes the incentive of the first, the integrity of the second, and the moral autonomy of both;
That we will be free only so long as the national sovereignty of the United States is secure; that history shows periods of freedom are rare, and can exist only when free citizens concertedly defend their rights against all enemies;
That the forces of international Communism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties;
The Council on Foreign Relations, founded in 1921, is a non-profit American organization, populated with senior government figures and politicians, bankers, lawyers, intelligence officers, and other from the elite class. With offices in New York and Washington, D.C., it is viewed as the nation’s “most influential foreign-policy think tank.”
They were certainly headed in the right direction with this 2014 proposition…
When an article appears in Foreign Affairs, the mouthpiece of the policy-setting Council on Foreign Relations, recommending that the Federal Reserve do a money drop directly on the 99%, you know the central bank must be down to its last bullet.
The Fed, it seems, has finally run out of other ammo. It has to taper its quantitative easing program, which is eating up the Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities needed as collateral for the repo market that is the engine of the bankers’ shell game. The Fed’s Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) has also done serious collateral damage. The banks that get the money just put it in interest-bearing Federal Reserve accounts or buy foreign debt or speculate with it; and the profits go back to the 1%, who park it offshore to avoid taxes. Worse, any increase in the money supply from increased borrowing increases the overall debt burden and compounding finance costs, which are already a major constraint on economic growth.
Meanwhile, the economy continues to teeter on the edge of collapse….
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The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is generally on the right track. Their proposal, however does nothing to effect massive debt elimination, re-balance government budget deficits, or restore economic liberty in America. It does nothing to free people from the heavy hand of government, controlling and restricting them in the management of their daily affairs.
The Leviticus 25 Plan does restore economic liberty in America, and it frees people from oppressive government programs that actually keep them in poverty and servitude.
The Leviticus 25 Plan would effect wide-scale debt elimination at the family level, thereby helping to insulate millions of Americans from potentially devastating effects of another severe economic contraction.
The Plan would eliminate massive government restrictions and control over healthcare, and replace it with individual control and consumer choice in healthcare access.
The Leviticus 25 Plan would balance the federal budget – immediately in Year One.
The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens. It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.
The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.
The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
“You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller
It is time for a new qualitatively new economic model: The Leviticus 25 Plan
WSJ Letters: Who You Gonna Believe on Monetary Policy?
Judy Shelton on the Fed, inflation and fiscal policy.
June 24, 2021
Who’s in charge of inflation these days? Or perhaps better stated: Who’s to blame? When Congress engages in deficit spending, it must issue debt to cover the difference between federal budget revenues and expenditures. When the Federal Reserve purchases that Treasury debt, it creates new money to pay for it—and the Fed created trillions in new money during Covid by crediting depository accounts of banks.
Now that Covid seems to be receding as an economic threat, what happens to all that potential purchasing power? Who is overseeing monetary policy to ensure that inflation doesn’t undermine economic recovery? Joseph C. Sternberg poses the question: “Is There a Central Banker in the House?” (Political Economics, June 18) and wonders why, with inflation exceeding the Fed’s predictions, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell plays down the risk in his public comments. Delivering price stability is part of the U.S. central bank’s mandate from Congress, after all, yet the Fed remains in “accommodative” monetary mode.
It’s time to confront both the fiscal and monetary aspects of inflation: Government policies that cause prices to rise without expanding productive economic output amount to an expropriation of wealth—one that hurts the poor the most.
The latest “forward guidance” from Mr. Powell may assuage the fears of market investors who don’t want to see any reduction in the Fed’s monthly bond purchases. But it’s a different story for those struggling to pay rising bills—for groceries, gas, furniture and rent. “Who you gonna believe,” goes the famous line from the Marx Brothers’ “Duck Soup,” “me or your own eyes?”
Judy Shelton
Fredericksburg, Va.
Ms. Shelton, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, was nominated to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in 2020.
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The Leviticus 25 Plan is a perfect counter-plan to “expand productive economic output” without expropriating wealth.
It will revitalize productivity and economic growth, restore financial health to millions of American families, stabilize the U.S. Dollar for long-term strength and viability, generate $383 billion federal budget surpluses and price stability in the U.S. economic system.
The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens. It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.
The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.
The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
Global Central Banks are all ‘mushrooming’ their balance sheets up to unheard of levels to try to keep their respective economies from sinking deeper into the global ‘debt bog.’
And they are losing the battle. Global Debt is exploding, and economies are stagnating.
Here in the U.S., the Federal government is on a colossal spending spree, adding hundreds of billions of dollars to already-bursting entitlement programs (rent relief benefits, 25% food stamp enhancement, covering for student loans in default, expanding medicaid, broadening eligibility for Medicare benefits, billions of dollars for ‘free’ Covid immunizations), and things like….
Aug 5, 2021: A few quotes about taxpayer money spent on useless climate studies from a fascinating site called Open The Book
Quote The Third—White House Pluted Bloatocrats
Today, on July 1st, the Biden administration released the annual Report to Congress on White House Office Personnel. President Biden hired czars, expensive “fellows,” “assistants,” and spent on a much larger First Lady (FLOTUS) staff.
The payroll report included the name, status, salary and position title of all 567 White House employees costing taxpayers $49.6 million. (Search Biden’s White House payroll and Trump’s four years posted at OpenTheBooks.com.)
Since January, the Biden administration has quickly staffed up. Here are some key findings from our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com:
• There are 190 more employees on White House staff under Biden than under Trump (377) and 80 more than under Obama (487) at this point in their respective presidencies.
• $9.6 million increase in payroll spending vs. the Trump FY2017 payroll. In 2017, the Trump White House spent $40 million for 377 employees, while the Biden payroll amounts to $49.6 million for 567 employees. All spending amounts are inflation adjusted.
• Hires include 320 female staffers ($28.9 million salaries) vs. 240 male staffers ($20.8 million salaries). In terms of top staffers — Special Assistants — there are 52 female ($6.3 million salaries) vs. 10 males ($1.2 million).
• Currently, there are 12 staffers dedicated – at least in part – to Dr. Jill Biden vs. five staffers who served Melania Trump in her first year (FY2017).
• Counts of the “Assistants to the President” – the most trusted advisors to the president – are the same (22) in for the Biden administration and the Trump and Obama administrations. This year, these advisors make $180,000.
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Meanwhile, overat the Fed…
The Federal Reserve Holds More Treasury Notes and Bonds than Ever Before
The U.S. Federal Reserve has significantly ramped up its holdings of Treasury securities as part of a broader effort to counteract the economic impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Currently, the Federal Reserve holds more Treasury notes and bonds than ever before.
As of July 14, 2021, the Federal Reserve has a portfolio totaling $8.3 trillion in assets, an increase of about $3.6 trillion since March 18, 2020. Longer-term Treasury notes and bonds (excluding inflation-indexed securities) comprise nearly two-thirds of that expansion, with holdings of those two types of securities doubling from $2.2 trillion on March 18, 2020, to $4.5 trillion on July 14, 2021.
By comparison, the Federal Reserve only increased its holdings of Treasury notes and bonds by $116 billion, or roughly 25 percent, between December 5, 2007 and June 24, 2009 (a period known as the Great Recession). Over that same period, the Federal Reserve expanded its total portfolio from $920 billion in December 2007 to $2.1 trillion in June 2009, a total increase of $1.2 trillion. Much of that increase stemmed from the purchase of mortgage-backed securities and the implementation of new programs to address the economic slowdown.
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There is a dynamic economic acceleration plan, loaded up and ready to go, with the raw power to rescue America and restore economic liberty for U.S. citizens.
The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens. It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.
The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.
The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
August 2021 quote: “We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage…. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost.” ― Friedrich August von Hayek
Fed ‘lathered the banks up’ with trillions of dollars in free money, credit guarantees, ‘toxic paper’ transfers onto the Fed’s balance sheet. And they are still at it, 13 years later…
It’s official: at exactly 1:15pm today, the NY Fed reported that for the first time ever, 86 counterparties parked over $1 trillion in reserves at the Fed’s Reverse Repo Facility for overnight ‘safekeeping’ and collecting a nice, fat yield of 0.05% – representing hundreds of millions in absolutely free money as these are reserves that the Fed has previously handed out to banks – for free – who then turned around and handed it right back to the Fed where it collected a small but nominal interest.
Of course, it is month-end (if not quarter-end) so we do get some window-dressing but even without it, it’s only matter of time before we got consistent $1 trillion prints… which then become $2 trillion and so on.
In fact, the question of how big the Fed’s reverse repo facility – which as explained previously is just how the Fed recycles all its massive reserves which it keeps injecting into the financial system (if not economy) at a pace of $120 billion per month – is one we discussed yesterday, and highlighted a calculation by Curvature’s repo guru Scott Skyrm who made the following observations:
During the month of April, RRP volume increased by $49 billion. $296 billion during the month of May, $362 billion in June, and $124 billion in July. If RRP volume continues around the same pace, say $200 billion a month, RRP volume will reach $2 trillion by the end of the year.
Looking at the trendline, it puts RRP volume at $2.5 trillion by the end of the year. However, the RRP volume at the end of the year will be a far larger number due to year-end window dressing, meaning it will likely approach if not surpass $3 trillion on Dec 31, 2021.
A few rhetorical questions from Skyrm to conclude: what will be the impact of $2 trillion going into the RRP each day? How will this affect the markets? Will the Fed need to adjust the RRP rate again?
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The Leviticus 25 Plan, on the other hand, re-targets the Fed’s liquidity flows, so that these types of ‘bank funding infusions’ pass first through the hands of U.S. citizens, via a Citizens Credit Facility, on their way to the banks – in the form of debt elimination (mortgage debt, credit card and household debt, student loans, car loans).
And… then everybody wins – even the Fed, as the Leviticus 25 Plan pays for itself entirely over a period of 10-15 years.
The most powerful economic acceleration plan in the universe.
The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America
