American Clarity Essays political, philosophical, and theological from an American romantic.

Any way you look at it, Americans are overtaxed.  There’s a tax for gasoline, and a tax for buying a car.  There’s taxation when you get paid, and taxation when you spend.  If you own a corporation, you have to pay ridiculous amounts of money for being a corporation, and if you just own a business, you have to pay taxes for unemployment funds.  If you buy a home, there’s a tax, and if you just sit in your home, there’s another tax.  If you’re in Washington State, you have to pay extra taxes for buying liquor and cigarettes, and if you want a carbonated beverage, you have to pay a special tax for that, too.  And the taxes are for one purpose: to ensure that the things our government pays for are paid for.

Now, it’s fairly obvious to everyone that despite our massive amounts of taxation, we’re still not meeting our budgetary demands (Currently, we’re facing a yearly deficit of 1.5 trillion, on top of last year’s 1.4 trillion.  To put this in perspective, our Fortune 500 only has a yearly net income of 391 billion dollars).  And despite the fact that we can’t pay for everything we want, both parties keep promising tax breaks to specific people.  Republicans want to tax everyone less, Democrats claim to want less taxation for the poor (a bizarre statement, since most truly poor people pay nothing in federal income taxes), and both sides use these arguments against their opponents every time an election season comes around.  This is especially ironic, since our progressively mounting deficit is being met with a political demand: that the person receiving the majority’s vote never win on the promise to responsibly raise taxes across the board. (more…)

When Americans believed in Truth, they used to say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  That is to say, just because a plan of action has a noble purpose doesn’t necessarily guarantee a noble outcome, kinda like the plan to save homeowners from the horrors of foreclosure.  While appearing as a noble goal upon first glance, after a deeper look at the policy is taken, whether due to miscalculation or corruption we find that the only people truly benefiting from his attempts are powerful bankers.

To clarify before making my point, having a banking system is healthy, but investment lending and consumptive lending are two completely different things.  While investment lending lends money for the purpose of potentially increasing the income of the borrower either through business or education, consumptive lending does not potentially increase the wealth of the borrower.  Borrowing money to go to school should result in a higher income for the borrower, after which he or she should be more financially secure than before.  On the other hand, consumptive lending for televisions has no effect upon the borrower’s income, while allowing him to buy something he couldn’t otherwise afford. (more…)

A lot of people are being told that Americans are getting screwed by our government’s rescue plan, but most Americans don’t really know how.  To give the reader a good example of why this bailout reeks of “mismanagement,” all we’d have to do is look at banks and their excess reserves.

Now, as a little background information, every US bank dealing with more than $43.9 million is ordered by the Federal Reserve to have roughly 10% of their deposit money as reserves on hand (12).  This means that if people put $100 in the bank, the bank has to have about $10 on hand and can lend the remaining $90 to other people.  Allowing banks to hold only a fraction of their loaned amount on hand is known as fractional reserve banking, and it essentially allows banks to create money (something that you and I would be thrown in jail for.  Check that last link out)(1)(2). (more…)

Waking up in the middle of the night with a revelation isn’t always a fun thing. Sometimes, it happens on a night when you were counting on making up for the sleep you lost during the last few nights, and sometimes you wish you could forget about whatever it is, and go back to dreaming about multicolored and magical Shamwows with beards and beautiful voices (!).

Fortunately for us, revelation wasn’t something yours truly could shake off, and I wanted to bring it to you so that you could prepare yourselves for what’s coming: massive disappointment in Republican AND Democratic leadership on two major issues, and potentially the collapse of our entire economic system. Those two issues are immigration for Republicans and the green movement for Democrats, both reforms being economically impossible under our current banking system. I’d like to tell you why, through the lens of a man named Chris Martenson. (more…)

Last month the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a statement that they didn’t have enough funds to properly invest in failing countries around the globe, and that they were going to have to “print” money to keep entire sections of the world afloat (1)). Since the world decided that a collective shrug would be a valid response, we can safely assume one of two options:

1)the majority of the western populace is ignorant and apathetic
or
2)western media outlets have decided to downplay the philosophical significance of the event

So why’s this such a problem?

To give a little background, the IMF was created in 1944 to facilitate global economic development, acting as a central bank to the world (2). A central bank’s main function is to provide relief to failing banks, acting as a last source of credit, and within a fiat currency system having the ability to basically “print” money into existence (9). The IMF is a little different, though, because it’s an international organization that focuses on lending money to failing countries instead of banks, giving a list of changes that the recipients have to make, known as the “Washington Consensus(3).” When countries receive money, they then have to agree to implement the changes deemed necessary to stimulate their economies and ensure a return on the IMF’s investment (privatization and reduction of trade barriers are common requests).

Now, the problem with our current situation is that the IMF, an international body of officials you didn’t vote for, has decided to print money, which acts as a form of taxation because it will reduce buying power and the value of savings, all through inflation of the currency it prints. After all, when more money is available within a system, people will have to pay more for the things they want. Some advocates of the proposal have suggested this may be a good thing, since it can be said that the same inflationary function that reduces savings also reduces debts, and both American society and government are insolvently in debt (4)(5)(6). Philosophically and economically, though, this is incredibly backward. (more…)