Showing posts with label Wealth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wealth. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Wealth Tax - perfect recipe to destroy investment


Elizabeth Warren’s Wealth Tax – How to Destroy the United States in Less than 10 years


QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; I have been reading your blog for years now. It is obvious that you are well connected behind the curtain. It did not take but perhaps a day or two after you explain the difference between wealth and income to suddenly see Elizabeth Warren adopting the position to impose a wealth tax of two percent on people with assets of 50 million or more. Will this not cause the rich to leave as they did in France?
Thank you for the enlightenment
HT
ANSWER: Warren’s proposal is not only going to be the final nail in the coffin of capitalism and the United States but indeed, investors will migrate to China. The danger is clear. The famous legal case that led to the Supreme Court’s Right to Privacy was Griswold v Connecticut. It involved a doctor who was criminally convicted for giving married persons information and medical advice on how to prevent conception with a condom. The religious extremist took the view that the Bible said go forth and propagate and thus they imposed their religious beliefs upon the majority by criminal law. The Supreme Court correctly created the Right to Privacy out of a simple logical conclusion. How would the state outlaw the use of a condom in marriage? How could it be enforced? Would a state policeman have to inspect before you had intercourse? Would you then have to apply for a license to have intercourse so the state would then know to send the policeman into your bedroom?
In order to impose a Wealth Tax, that means that absolutely EVERYONE would then by law be compelled to list everything they own right down to your wedding rings so the state could then calculate your wealth to impose a tax. You will have to prove you are under the $50 million limit to qualify for an exception. This type of tax would absolutely destroy the Right to Privacy. It does not matter if it starts at $50 million. How do they know you have less than $50 million unless you still report all your assets to says you are exempt. They government needs to know everything you own. This is different from a property tax that only focuses on your home. This is everything from equities and bonds to jewelry that the Italians will weigh if it looks like you have a lot when you are trying to leave the country.

Putting the Right to Privacy aside, the government can NEVER be held to whatever it promises today. The government will always introduce a tax and claim it will only apply to the “super-rich” as she is doing – $50 million will pay 2% annually on the value government claims your assets are worth and $1 billion+ will pay 3% annually. At 8%, you will confiscate all of a person’s assets in less than 10 years. They have constantly altered even the definition of who are these “rich” people they hate so much. It inspires a feeling that you are just an economic slave and we are to be exploited and threatened with prison if we do not comply with their demands. This begs the question – Do you want to live where they hate you so much? Trust me, the hate emails I get from the Democrats for writing something like this reveals a nature that is no different from how the Jews were treated in Germany under Hitler. They hate others simply because you have something they want.
Elizabeth Warren is the new Karl Marx advocating communism in slow motion. To sell the income tax in 1913, it was to be just 1% and ONLY on the rich just as she is claiming today with her Wealth Tax. Ever since, the income tax has risen to 94%, dropped to 35%, rallied back to 91% and then eventually fell to 31% to rise again to 39.6%. This is why companies left the USA. Not to pay a worker $5 instead of $10, but to seek some consistent level of taxation. Now the Democrats once again want to raise the income tax to 70%. No matter what rate they say today, they will always change it. The USA is economically a disaster because the tax rate fluctuates depending on who wins the election. This is what is wrong with Democracy insofar as it allows the majority to exploit the minority be it in taxes or even religion crafting criminal laws to enforce religious beliefs.
Those below that $50 million thresholds will cheer – go get em. They did precisely that in 1913. To sell the introduction of the income tax, they drew the line at $3,000 when a good job paid $0.30 per hour or $18 a week which was just under $1,000 a year. So to get a new tax in, they will ALWAYS place it above the majority of people and pretend they will never be impacted. This is the luxury tax I saw in Australia pitching they would tax their Ferraris, Fur Coats & French Wines. They cheered. When the tax was imposed, it included all electrical products.
Once they create a new tax under false promises, they ALWAYS change the specifics. Just as ONLYthe rich would pay income tax, then comes Roosevelt’s New Deal and morally the same claims were made but suddenly they introduce the Payroll Tax and not everyone pays income tax. They will do the very same thing with a Wealth Tax. You cannot hold the government to whatever it promises. They will constantly change the rates and to whom it applies based upon they need money. They have constantly changed the DEFINITION of the “rich” and now it begins at $500,000. As the pension crisis explodes, they will need money for their own pensions like California, Illinois, and New Jersey, just to name a few. They will drop the Wealth Tax to the same level of income tax. Regardless, EVERYONEwill have to report their total wealth in order to make sure you are paying your Wealth Tax.
The Democrats rely upon Marxism and always preach class warfare which denies the very foundation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and violates the Ten Commandments by coveting what others have materially. They always run on a platform of a vote for me and I will go get the rich bastards. Once any new form of taxation is introduced, then politicians will ALWAYS raise the rates and lower thresholds as they continually need a never-ending source of other people’s money. The $50 million thresholds will crash to normal levels and the criteria will change for everyone. Every person will have to report their entire wealth right down to inheritance or else the government will be unable to confirm you are under the $50 million entry level. There are a lot of “super-rich” kids who inherited companies rather than cash. If your father’s company was worth $1 billion, how do you get $30 million in cash to pay taxes without liquidating at least part of the company? Then you have to pay that EVERY year!
Warren’s tax will cause a collapse in investment which means that unemployment will only rise. When people appear to make a fortune because their company goes public, they have restrictions that prevent them from selling for a period. A wealth tax will be applied simply based upon values of shares they cannot sell. This would certainly lead to a mass exit of the upper-class the very same as what took place in France – they just left!
Like the income tax, Warren’s Wealth Tax will move to 100% application to everyone because of some new event or war. Since we are already in a collapsing state of socialism, they will argue to raise this new Wealth Tax to save government pensions. Effectively, we will have a NATIONAL property tax that will include your home and then you will have to pay income tax on top of that. The pension funds will become a national emergency and the shift to increasing taxes will take place exactly as we are witnessing in California – if it moves, tax it; it fails to move tax it; and if it has any use whatsoever (like water) tax it.
Back in the ’90s, I was working to trying to Privatize Social Security to invest in equities rather than 100% government bonds and reform taxes by moving to a national retail sales tax (indirect) and eliminating the income tax. I was shuttling back and forth between the Speaker of the House Dick Armey and Bill Archer who was Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee. Dick served in Congress between January 3, 1995 – January 3, 2003. I was sitting in Dick’s office one day when he explained the futility of it all. He had his feet up on the desk with his cowboy boots while smoking a cigar. He said to me that he could not support a retail sales tax because he did not believe he would be able to terminate the income tax.
He then said to me that when the political cycle would change, as I told him our computer was projecting, then the Democrats would have both taxes. It was at that moment I saw the light and I agreed. I told Dick he was absolutely correct. Without restoring the Constitution to prohibit direct taxation, it was hopeless to save the future no less Social Security. I made my decision to stop the nonsense of thinking I could prevent the future economic disaster. All I could do was advise my clients to help them survive not the nation. I gave up that day on trying to ever help the country and I knew all the top power people as the press would portray them. It did not matter. There was no fixing the system. We would have to meet our fate as every empire, nation, and city state that went before us.
War is a great excuse, which is why politicians like war for it justifies raising taxes and introducing new powers like the Patriot Act. Make no mistake about it, when they introduced the income tax, the economy plunged into a steep recession in the face of the income tax. INVESTMENT dried up and the stock market shifted buyers. Americans were sellers and Europeans were the buyers as SMART money began to move out of Europe. It had been the assassination on June 28th, 1914, in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina of the Austrian Arch Duke which began to increase the tensions.
But a 43-month economic boom ensued from February 1915 to 1918, first as Europeans began purchasing U.S. goods for the war and later as the United States itself joined the battle. It was February 1915 is when the Ottoman forces attacked the Suez Canal and Germany defeated a Russian army in Poland.  Eventually, the long period of U.S. neutrality made the ultimate conversion of the economy to a wartime base. The economic boom led to real plant and equipment expansion in response to the increased demand from both Europe and the United States.
Those who are in the “rich” category earn their money from INVESTMENT, not wages. This is what Elizabeth Warren is addressing for she wants a tax on wealth – not income. So if you owned $100 million of a stock that was valued at that level because of a bull market, you will then have to pay 2% – $2 million. The stock crashes by 50%. You now pay 2% again every year of the current value of $1 million even though you lost $50 million. This type of Wealth Tax will unquestionably destroy INVESTMENT. You can lose and get no credit for a loss.
What this will do is far worse than the proposed 70% income tax for the new “Green New Deal” of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This dynamic-duo of Warren and Ocasio-Cortez will absolutely complete what our model is forecasting – the end of the United States. Both are completely ignorant of how the economy even functions. They lick their lips at other people’s wealth and just want to get their hands on it to fund their wild ideas of some Green New Deal.
“The Green New Deal we are proposing will be similar in scale to the mobilization efforts seen in World War II or the Marshall Plan… Half measures will not work… The time for slow and incremental efforts has long past [sic].” – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, then-candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, Huffington Post, June 26, 2018
This manifesto is very serious for they reject gradual change but are demanding immediate change to the economy. What has taken place among the Democrats is a band of newly elected members of Congress is accepting the leadership of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to push forward for this Green New Deal by a sheer force of tyrannical power. She is calling her proposal the most significant blueprint for system change in 100 years. She will send the USA into civil war. Even I will be faced with the choice – shut down the company or leave.
The core idea demands the mass conversion to renewable energy and zero emissions of greenhouse gases in the U.S. by 2030. Yes – Global Warming is a great excuse to raise taxes. They argue that a transition is not acceptable for it must be immediate action by the elimination of greenhouse gas emissions from our multi-trillion-dollar food and farming system they claim is long overdue because farming and cows represent a degenerative food system generates that accounts for 44-57%  of all global greenhouse gases.

Warren’s proposal will destroy the economy and lower economic growth providing the strongest incentive for capital to migrate to China. As Europe and the United States spiral downward economically, this is how our model will be correct in the shift from the United States to China of the title – Financial Capital of the World. India and China were where all the wealth was which peaked during the early 19th century. After the fall of Rome and then Byzantium, the Financial Capital of the World began to migrate to India. That peaked by about the 14th century as India gradually declined and it moved to China.
Following the Great Monetary Crisis of 1092, the Financial Capital of the World migrated to India – the land of the Spice Trade. Southern India had long imitated Roman gold coins to facilitate the local economy. We begin to see actual Indian coins but only under the Kushan Empire. Southern India continued to mint Roman imitations until the mid 3rd century AD. After that period, we begin to see actual Indian gold coins being struck showing that governments began to win the confidence of the people.
India’s economic boom period lasted about two Pi Cycles of approximately 630 years. During that time period, India had captured the title of the Financial Capital of the World which it held for only about 224 years. China’s rise also lasted about 224 years. The rise of the United States has come into play for also about 224 years. EVERY country which has EVER engaged in socialism has injected the death of their own society by suicide. When law favors one group over another, the very purpose of coming together to form great societies ceases to exist.


It’s just time. So thank you Warren and Ocasio-Cortez for ensuring our model will be correct once again. What these people refuse to ever look at is that the government is incapable of ever managing anything. Economic growth declines with rising taxation and regulation. No matter how many examples there are of how socialism destroys economies right down to present day Venezuela, they just cannot help themselves trying to change the very nature of human behavior. Any one who believes this tax will stay at $50 million+ is an absolute fool. History would beg to differ.
Will this end up causing a mass exodus of Americans? Yes! It will simply be time to turn out the lights and leave. This is how the United States will be destroyed like every other empire. Far too often there ends up more people in government living off the tax collections disproportionately to the living standards of the people paying taxes.
Socialism MUST be prohibited by the Constitution and it MUST NOT be subject to revision. There can be no equal rights and equal protection of the law once socialism is introduced.

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Unless its people are free to develop the economy in their own self-interest, they will never rise to the top ten list of nations.



Until We Understand the Real Wealth of a Nation Progress Cannot be Achieved 

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Do you have any comment on the latest excuse for the decline in gold is because Trump is forcing it down so he can buy it up and move to gold-backed bonds like Nevada? This is the latest coming from the fringe which just seems so unrealistic any more. I am not sure why these people ignore the past.
Thank you;
PF
ANSWER: The entire issue at its core is this endless desire to eliminate the business cycle. They pitch that ONLY gold is money and if we return to a gold standard that every evil will be cured. They believe that money must be “tangible” and as such, they fail completely to comprehend the true nature of the economy. If ONLY gold was money, then how did Germany, Japan, and China rise to the economic giants without gold and Russia has floundered ever since 1991 when they had the gold, oil, and diamonds? Kondratieff’s long-wave study observed that the rise and fall of the business cycle existed during the 19th & 20th centuries when the world was on a gold standard. The existence of a gold standard FAILED to eliminate the business cycle and it proved that a “tangible” based monetary system did not make money more valuable than a paper money system. Ironically, ever since 1776, we are still arguing over what is money? Should it be any commodity, paper, some fixed-exchange rate, or is the real wealth of a nation its people and their total capacity to produce? Is this why skilled labor forces and education raise the standard of living of a country than merely farming to grow food to sustain yourself? Julius Caesar said: Divide and Conquer. If the people come together and form interconnected economic bonds, the economy expands because the synergy of everyone collectively is greater than the individual sum of the parts.
The true Wealth of a Nation was observed and expressed by Adam Smith in 1776 and nobody has been able to demonstrate anything to the contrary. “Money” is by no means some tangible object or a commodity to be it gold, paper, cattle, slaves, or seashells. The true WEALTH OF A NATION is its people. China, Germany, and Japan lacked the natural resources but their people were its wealth and they produced manufactured goods which they sold to the world and were paid for in return. A country can have tremendous natural resources like Russia, but unless its people are free to develop the economy in their own self-interest, they will never rise to the top ten list of nations.
Spain was the classic example. They discovered all this gold and silver in South America. They exploited it, brought it back to Europe, but NEVER developed their own economy. They spend the money lavishly. Unloading the ships was a job for important labor because it was beneath them. The gold joke was that as Spain got rich, everyone else got richer. They used Frenchmen to unload the ships overall.
Spain could not wait to spend its money coming in on the next fleet. When fleets sank in hurricanes, they could not pay their debts. Spain became a serial defaulter moving from the richest nation in Europe to a 3rd world status. They defaulted in 1557, 1570, 1575, 1596, 1607, and 1647.
So this latest excuse is just absurd. They are unwilling to look at their old theories so they spin wild tales to justify being wrong. Trump is by no means forcing metals to decline so the US government can buy it and issue gold-backed bonds like Nevada. Assemblyman Jim Marchant announced the Nevada Gold and Silver Enabling Act on July 2, 2018. He claimed that gold-backed bonds would avert financial armageddon, retire debt, ensure all creditors are paid in full in nominal terms and begin the process of gold circulation. Here is the argument they use:
“The Federal Reserve has a policy of two percent per annum debasement of the US dollar. Other central banks around the world have similar targets, for example, both the Bank of England and the European Central Bank set their targets at two percent. Creditors should prefer gold assets over dollar-, pound, and euro-denominated assets because gold is not subject to this debasement. The 10-year Treasury yields 2.9% as I write this. Assuming that the Fed hits its target without overshooting it, then the central bank is robbing the investor of most of their return.”
The entire argument assumes that somehow a gold-backed bond will eliminate inflation. Even if we assumed that was correct, you can see what this type of policy would create by creating a money supply that was fixed – it is called deflation. This is what has driven unemployment among the youth in Southern Europe to 60%. Germany has been focused on eliminating inflation because of their experience during the 1920s. This policy of austerity cripples economic growth and will only lead to revolution and civil unrest.
Gold-backed debt has existed for hundreds of years. There was still the business cycle, periods of inflation and deflation, as well as revolutions. This theory that someone a gold-backed bond will eliminate the business cycle is actually the same goal of Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. Marx proposed Communism and the elimination of all private tangible wealth would produce the perfect world. That failed. Keynes argued that the government could manage the economy by focusing on demand and raise or lower interest rates to also eliminate the business cycle. That failed and even Paul Volcker came out and called it the Rediscovery of the Business Cycle back in 1978.
Even Keynes was honest enough to comment before he died that he had been wrong. Smith’s observation of how the economy works remains the only answer. What all of these theories have in common is the assumption that to create money with a tangible value and eliminate the business cycle, the answer lies in manipulating DEMAND side economics rather than the SUPPLY side. In other words, we eliminate all tangible assets or we manipulate interest rates and the supply of money in hopes of influencing the DEMAND of the people.

Gold-backed bonds will no more eliminate the business cycle than any other attempt to date. Not even Larry Summer’s NEGATIVE INTEREST rate policy has been successful in stimulating the economy by compelling people to spend rather than save. His theory has merely created the next crisis as pension funds, who needed 8% interest to remain solvent, cannot function with historically low rates of interest and will default bringing socialism into crisis.
You must always ask: What is the end goal?  It is always the same – ELIMINATE THE BUSINESS CYCLE.

Monday, May 14, 2018

How the Rich Get Richer!




COMMENT: You always support the rich and never see what they do to the rest of us.
LW
ANSWER: You simply believe the propaganda of governments. The rich get richer by INVESTING in assets. They list Bill Gates among the top in the world. Do you really think one gets rich by making more per hour than the next guy? Wealth is created through assets – not wages. The NUMBER ONEsuppressor of the people is all governments. I worked hard trying to get Social Security reformed and privatized when the Dow was 1,000 instead of 100% government bonds. I gave up. There are too many pension funds that are restricted to buying government bonds.
It is not the rich that prevent others from investing. It is always the government. If you really add up what you pay in property taxes each year and subtract that from the value of your home, you will quickly see that you probably lost money. When you sell the house, they do not count the taxes paid for decades as part of the cost.
Wealth is created by INVESTMENT – not buying bonds and certainly not by wages. Who prevents the average person from investing? It’s not Bill Gates.