Though why he sent this particular number to me is a mystery…
 

In truth, we occasionally have. Rudd’s strategy of giving “Quantative Easing” -a handout- to people who had very little choice but to spend it back into the economy proved to be much more effective than America’s strategy of handing tax payer dollars over to the very people who stole the money in the first place, and who used the money to ‘shore up their position’ and ‘reduce their vulnerability’ (keep it).
Are the rumblings getting louder? When a merchant banker starts warning about revolution, and calling for a tax on the ‘super rich‘, maybe so.

How about a rich bloke complaining about not paying enough tax?

I don’t know about you, but I get really sick of transparent and blatant self justifications, like ‘the invisible hand’, and Rampant Capitalists claiming credit for the social and economic improvements for the working class.

As King says, ‘if you like weekends off, thank a Union Guy. If you like the forty hour week, thank a Union Guy”.

Where are they now?

This vid by Bill Still and family demonstrates once again the criminality of the fractional reserve system, and gives a history lesson on how it all came about. I don’t know how real the symbolism in the Wizard of Oz is, and frankly I’m sceptical; it looks to me like another case of wishful thinkers putting more into a story than the storyteller himself ever intended. Nevertheless, the background is good, and the defence against the Gold Standard is well reasoned.

The only real advantage of a gold standard is that it is a limited commodity, which makes it difficult for a government to overspend -and thereby cause inflation. This is currently appealing to many in the current circumstances, when we are facing government run inflation on an unprecedented scale.

The disadvantage, of course, is that in being a scarce -and therefore valuable- commodity, all the power of money remains firmly in the hands of the very rich.

As this movie stresses, currency must be considered to be part of the Common Wealth, and therefore controlled by Common People -AKA the democratically elected Government.

Humans have a remarkable propensity for accepting what is, no matter how ludicrous, and being dubious of what isn’t or could be, no matter how sane.

The vast bulk of our money isn’t printed by our governments; it’s borrowed into existence, through our privately owned banks. If you had a license to print money, who would you pay first?

Why does anything more need to be said?

Just stumbled across anothe goodie:

The World’s Most Famous Video

A science teacher who says science never knows what’s true.

recently sent me some links; the first is by Albert A Bartlett.

Bartlett is a mathematician, and has been described as a ‘neo

malthusian’. You may not like his conclusions, but his arithmetic is

undeniable.

For anyone who thinks videos about arithmetic probably won’t be as fascinating as ‘Star Wars’ the important thing to take away from this vid comes very early: Growth and doubling time. In summary, if you see a percentage growth quoted, divide it into 70 to find the doubling time.

IOW, if you see growth (of say population) of 7%, divide that into 70 to arrive at a doubling time of 10 years.

If you want to know the Why and How, watch the vid.