Tag Archives: producers

Tax Havens and the Greedy Rich, by Jeff Thomas

If you want to hang on to your money you’re greedy. Politicians who want to take it all away from you are humanitarians. From Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:

In 1960, 18 European countries, plus the US and Canada, signed on to become charter members of the new Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Since that time, another 20 countries have signed on.

The Organisation was an expansion of an existing French organisation, the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), begun in 1948.

Not surprisingly, the OECD became an extension of the OEEC and was led by France. As such, the tone of the OECD reflected French governmental thinking on economics. As the organisation expanded its power, its direction became more focused on two of the French government’s economic fixations: worldwide collection of tax and worldwide equalisation of tax.

Of course, France is known for its often-crippling levels of taxation, and in 2013, over 8,000 French people saw their tax bills top 100% of their earnings. This extraordinary tax level was, not surprisingly, introduced by socialist President Francois Hollande.

Monsieur Hollande may have been extreme in his tax, but by French standards, not dramatically so. France has long been a bastion for the socialistic belief that the “Greedy Rich” must be forced to pay their “fair share.”

The Greedy Rich

So, who exactly are the Greedy Rich? At what level of income does one become a member of this group? Well, like most things socialist, “rich” is a sliding scale. The man who came up with a new design for widgets and borrowed money and built a factory, employing others to make the widgets, is likely to find himself categorised as “rich.”

Has he has a bad year and actually made less money than his lowest-paid employee for that year? No matter, he is still rich. (The adjective “greedy” is optional, to be used whenever criticising those being described as “rich.”)

In considering the above, if we harbour resentment for such an individual, we might define “Greedy Rich” as “someone who appears to have more money than I do.”

Of course, as stated above, this definition requires a sliding scale, as we cannot place a dollar figure on “rich.” A rich person is simply someone who appears to have more money than we do, whatever that amount might be. Similarly, “fair share” might be defined as “more than they are presently paying.”

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The Kinship of Producers, by Paul Rosenberg

There is indeed a kinship of producers, a kinship of people who create, recognize, and trade value. From Paul Rosenberg at freemansperspective.com:

There is a kinship between productive human beings; one that spreads all across this planet. It may be invisible to power and hierarchy, but we productive people recognize it. When we drive into a new town, we know, almost by instinct, that we can trust the hard-working carpenter further than someone permanently on the dole. It’s possible that the guy on the dole is a saint, but the hardworking man shares our specific ethics, and we are tuned to them. Even if this carpenter is a negative exception, we’ll be able to tell.

I’ve felt this kinship on multiple continents and among people of many flavors; not just on construction sites, but in truck stops, offices, grocery stores and trains. Productive people bear a specific ethic, and it’s consistent not only over distance, but over time. If you were somehow dropped into ancient Rome, the people you’d want to join wouldn’t be the Senators or the people in bread lines, but the people who build and maintain the aqueducts.

Even the old man, recounting his days of building, repairing and creating… He’s not just saying, “I was once strong,” he’s saying, “I am a producer. And even if I’m too old to work, I remain what I was.”

Ethics Born of Work

The ethics I’m referring to are those which are spawned by work… by productive, dedicated, creative work. And yes, even sweeping a floor becomes creative if you take it seriously and do it well. A shop floor is complex, and complexity must be overcome with on-the-fly creativity.

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Middlemen, by The Zman

There are only so many ends you can play against the middle. From The Zman at theburningplatform.com:

The American economy is a middleman economy, designed around the idea of there being a person or group of persons between the parties of a transaction. No matter how trivial the transaction, there is someone trying to get in on the deal. This middleman brings nothing to the transaction. He adds no value and only facilitates the deal because the rules have been set so that he is required. The middleman is the ever-present silent partner that is the point of the economic arrangements.

 

If you go back a century, selling a house involved three parties. The seller and buyer, of course, and the government. You had to register the transaction with the government so it was known who held the deed for the property. If there was a lien on the property, then the bank would be involved, but only on one side. Today there are dozens of people involved in the transaction. The government is promising to add dozens more in order to flood stable neighborhoods with magic.

Just about every transaction in the economy now has silent partners. This is why the economy is still a mess due to the Covid lockdowns. Shutting down supply chains was always a dumb idea, but getting them restarted means activating millions of middlemen who have to get paid for the system to work. In a completely financialized economy, nothing moves without money moving first. The money men are the ever-present middlemen in every deal, no matter how small.

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The Big Skedaddle, by Jeff Thomas

Now, more than ever, productive people will go where they’re treated well. It’s a lesson the US government will learn to its sorrow. From Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:

Skedaddle
In the early twentieth century, there was an exodus out of Europe.

George, my paternal grandfather, looked around England, where the family had been since the eleventh century, and decided that a national fdecline had begun.

Although England was still very much an empire, it had fallen into the decline that ancient Rome had experienced before it. Where it had once expanded its possessions and profited from them, it was now spending millions of pounds maintaining them. The less profitable colonies were becoming a liability and the more profitable ones were breaking away.

In addition, the British class structure was beginning to break down. The ruling class were becoming lazy and unproductive and, increasingly, were bleeding the lower classes in order to continually expand their own idle privilege.

Worse, Britain had fallen into a seemingly never-ending series of wars. Wars have always impoverished countries, creating the necessity of increased taxation. And in the early twentieth century, all of Europe was spoiling for a war that was to become the “Great War.”

Historically, these conditions always have led to decline in a nation or empire, leaving the new generation of adults with a worse future than their antecedents had had. Continue reading

The Insanity Of The Political Left And The Balkanization Of The US, by Brandon Smith

Balkanization and separation are looking like a better and better option to many people, to get away from the crazies From Brandon Smith at alt-market.com:

Can leftists and conservatives of our modern era peacefully coexist within the same society?  If someone asked me this question only ten years ago I would have said “Sure, it’s possible”.  Today, the answer is a resounding “No way”.  The political divide has become so vast that there is simply no chance for the two sides to reconcile or come to reasonable terms, and make no mistake, this is not a two-sided disaster; the majority of the damage is being done by one side of this equation.

Back in 2016 I wrote numerous articles discussing the issues and dangers of the conflict that was developing within the US, and many of these articles focused on who actually benefits. In my article ‘Order Out Of Chaos: The Defeat Of The Left Comes With A Cost’ I stated:

When I mentioned in my last article the crippling of social justice, I did not mention that this could have some negative reverberations. With Trump and conservatives taking near-total power after the Left had assumed they would never lose again, their reaction has been to transform. They are stepping away from the normal activities and mindset of cultural Marxism and evolving into full blown communists. Instead of admitting that their ideology is a failure in every respect, they are doubling down.

When this evolution is complete, the Left WILL resort to direct violent action on a larger scale, and they will do so with a clear conscience because, in their minds, they are fighting fascism. Ironically, it will be this behavior by leftists that may actually push conservatives towards a fascist model. Conservatives might decide to fight crazy with more crazy.”

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Let the Battle for the Tax Producers Begin, by Tom Luongo

States are soon going to be so desperate for revenues that they may actually start making their states attractive for productive, tax paying people. From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:

The great Murray Rothbard cut through the fog of modern class warfare with his observation that in a place with governments issuing edicts the citizenry breaks down into two classes — tax producers and tax consumers.

And if you want to know which group you belong to just ask yourself two simple questions, “Where’s the gun? And is it pointed at you?”

Most of us don’t even think to ask those questions because it’s the world we live in. Government jobs are safe jobs. They’re part of the landscape and dominant economic theory holds that the government can be a source of stability when the free market fails, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.

The truth is most of us hate to ask these questions because it forces us to be honest about where we earn our living. No one likes looking in the mirror and asking hard questions about whether the job they perform is truly useful to someone else.

No one wants to believe they’re a leech upon the riches conferred to society through voluntary exchange between the truly productive and its transformative ability to better people’s lives.

With governments in control of the production of money and so deeply intertwined with our lives, the lines between tax consumers and producers has blurred a bit. But, as I said at the outset of this, in the end, if your salary depends on you or someone else acting on your behalf pointing a gun at someone else then you’re one of the bad guys.

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United We Fall, Divided We Stand, by Robert Gore

Unity is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Everything I said is contained in a single word—collectivism. And isn’t that the god of our century? To act together. To think—together. To feel—together. To unite, to agree, to obey. To obey, to serve, to sacrifice. Divide and conquer—first. But then—unite and rule. We’ve discovered that one at last. Remember the Roman Emperor who said he wished humanity had a single neck so he could cut it? People have laughed at him for centuries. But we’ll have the last laugh. We’ve accomplished what he couldn’t accomplish. We’ve taught men to unite. This makes one neck ready for one leash. We found the magic word. Collectivism.

Ellsworth Toohey to Peter Keating, The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand, 1943

Countless commentators have decried disunity. They fret about our divided nation, warn of impending civil war, and implore us to come together to avert it. Unity’s desirability is taken as given, but what if the longed-for unity is that of passengers on a jet plunging into the ocean? A reappraisal of disunity is in order.

Unity was doomed with the passage of the 16th, or Income Tax, Amendment. It’s hard to feel any goodwill towards a government that forcibly relieves you of what you’ve produced, benefitting itself and those to whom it redistributes. The income tax divides the country into makers and takers, a division that cannot be bridged.

For the productive, “Unite!” is a poisonous bromide, code for: support your own slavery. For a long time they bit their tongues and holstered their weapons as perpetually expanding government and its partner in crime, the Federal Reserve, took an increasing portion of what they produced, made it increasingly difficult to produce, loaded the country with a pile of debt and unfunded liabilities that cannot be paid, and depreciated the unit of exchange. Boxed in, a shrinking minority, the country they and their productive forebears built circling the drain, some are finally realizing they are underwriting their own servitude.

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Choosing Your Immigrants, by Jeff Thomas

Once upon a time immigrants didn’t come to America for handouts, because there wasn’t any. From Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:

In the 18th century, America was made up primarily of people who, of necessity, had had to work hard. Had they not taken full responsibility for their own welfare, there was no one else to do it for them and they would have starved. As this was the case, anyone who did arrive on American shores who was unwilling to work and wanted others to provide for him, could expect to find no sympathy and might well starve.

In the 19th century, the former colonies had become the United States. Expansion was underway and the young people of the 18th century became the entrepreneurs of the 19th century. In order to continue to get the menial tasks accomplished, millions of immigrants were needed. Those who were welcomed were those who were prepared to start at the bottom, often live in poor conditions, receive no entitlements and compete for even menial jobs. If they accepted these terms, they received the opportunity to immigrate and work.

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