How shall I begin? With Faust? No, too morally hot. With hegemony? No, too cerebrally cold. And thusly, something to which we all agree; to wit:
Let us not be fools. The general rule—if not the absolute rule—is that great nations fall.
The fall is not always cataclysmic, but often in a series of missteps occurring over a long period of time. In the present moment, such as it is, some patriots hubristically think that their great nation will last forever, but time gets its day.
Of course, patriotism and foolishness are not mutually exclusive. Each nation thinks itself the better, only to be proven wrong. Alas, Ancient Rome, time did claim way, and Ancient America, time claims on a future day.
There are lots of reasons that great nations fall, as taught by Edward Gibbon in his tome, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. For this post, I will provide “Cardinal Deadlies” for the decline of America. No particular order is necessary, since each tends to work circularly synergistically with the others, but a triangular conceptual building order is presented for convenience.
As usual, nothing here is professed as truth, but only that it is believed to be true enough, which is an important deprecation. [1, 2, 3, 4] Time will be the judge. [5]
The Deadlies are summarily stated, but they are sophisticated issues of political science necessitating critical thought. The policies implicated were developed by academically brilliant people from the best reputed institutions. [6, 7] Even so, it was log-cabin Aesop-reading [8] Abraham Lincoln [9, 10] who showed that wisdom is distinct from intellect and education, as he surrounded himself with the most educated people—the best and brightest—and yet he was still better, and wiser. Educated brilliant people do foolish things—if not all the time, then often enough. [11, 12] We know the world is filled with intelligent fools.
Here goes, in the usual colloquial and vernacular form:
[Ed. Note, each of the sections below has been separated and updated into separate chapters. Click here to review in updated chapter form on LinkedIn.]
1. Detethering from the Gold Standard >>. Detethering the money supply from the Gold Standard is not inherently wrong. The problem is the implementation tendencies of weak human nature in both the controlling politicians and the electorate; that is, the failure of human discipline and endurance. [13, *1]
Let’s say we have a stagnating capitalist economy that we want to stimulate. The government can print money and inject it into banks, then the banks loan the money to build factories and hire more people, then the hired people use the wages to buy more goods, and buying more goods requires more factories, and more factories require more hiring, etc. Moreover, the dynamic re-feeds the tax base. This is economic stimulation through money supply. The system can be better defined, honed, and debated, but it’s true enough for this purpose.
As to money, we recall that, in the old days, we might trade two pigs for a cow, or a hen for fixing a fence. But equalizing the inverse half-cow to one pig to barter this “life value” was cumbersome, so we moved to a fungible divisible common unit of measure, with gold to represent the pig or cow. But, gold is itself heavy, so, instead, we traded with paper dollars to represent the gold on reserve that represented the pig and cow. You could call me to back up my paper dollar bills by the fixed amount of gold that represented the half-cow.
But, what if the government wants to print money to stimulate a stagnating economy, but it does not have enough gold to represent the life value?
What to do in such economic doldrums? Well, the captaining politicians and their academically brilliant financier advisors had a bright idea similar to bringing a fan onto a ship to blow into the sails… That is, simply “detaching” printed dollars from the gold reserve to allow printed money without gold or life value to back it up. That is, simply printing untethered money, fabricating value.
Printing paper money as a facade of life value is a formulaic false utopia.
Regression from: a) a cow that provides Mother Nature’s essential life value (milk, meat and clothing); b) to sort of an inanimate rock, being gold that represented life value; c) then to paper that represented the gold that represented the life value; d) then to untethered paper money representing nothing at all. Life value now as a brilliant financier’s utopian money game.
Even so, in the short term, everyone is ecstatic for the flowing of loose money. But, behold, printing money is like the water damage caused by putting out a fire; the solution adduces its own new damage, sometimes itself catastrophic, but only in a different way, not readily apparent in the relief of the moment.
First, the problem with access to printing untethered money is that health of the political body requires discipline. [14, *2, 15] The systemic mechanism of money supply, as an unlimited steroidic function of desire and facade, and by those who also control it, has a tendency to an inflative destructive cost, sooner or later. [16]
Second, if the cycle of this untethered money is paid back into the same closed industrial system that created it, then the economic stimulation at least serves its master; that is, when untethered American money is printed and used to stimulate and build American factories and products made in America.
But, what if American stimulus money is used to buy goods manufactured in foreign countries that stimulates their economies, and builds their factories, and hires their citizens, for their competitive success? That is, instead of Americans buying American-made items, the Americans buy foreign-made items. [40]
If stimulus dollars move out of the American system, particularly by the systemic influence of short-term Wall Street profits, it builds an economic, political, and military rival. [*14, *2] And what does a competitive country do with all that profit from America’s stimulus money? The competitive country buys selfish influence and dependencies in poor islands and needy countries on the American borders to create geographical strategic advantages, beyond the control and regulation of America: Cuba today, Mexico tomorrow. [*2] Wall Street doesn’t care, it will profit again from the war machinery that it induced.
Poor George Washington, who wisely advised against entangling alliances.
People who profess a world dependent debt-based economy are probably not American, or selfishly profiting from it, or work for Wall Street, or pandering selfish politicians, or are academically intellectually brilliant economists, or fools, or work for Budweiser, none of those being mutually exclusive. [*6, *7]
2. The National Debt >>. The national debt, within limits, is also not inherently bad. Leveraging debt is a powerful mechanism to increase life value, when the debt seeds production. [17] Consumption without profitable production by the work of another is a draining dependent, which is systemically acceptable only for children or the statistically special need exception. Indeed, “You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves,” said sage Abraham Lincoln, who knew how to save a country.
National debt to leverage for productive resources tends to be a good thing, but debt on debt to survive to consume and to consume, not so much. It is formulaically unsustainable. Failure is assured, it is only a matter of time. Wall Street only cares that the market moves predictably, and the term of sustenance is longer than the life of the person who will benefit from the transactions.
Lest we forget, debt must be repaid. The bondsman cometh. [*17] All debtors are slaves, by definition. But I’ve overstated it, rather someone is enslaved, we or our children. False prosperity for someone is always easier in a framework of slavery because the benefit and burden are disjoined. It will work for a time.
So said Dickens by his Prophetic Marley to Ebenezer, “We wear the chain we forge in life, we made it link by link, and yard by yard. It is a ponderous chain!”
The national debt is $34T, that is $34,000,000,000,000, a new link of someone’s repayment slavery created every second, taking time from life to pay it back. [18, 19] It’s an ominous chain, and, depending upon how many citizens have it attributed pro rata, it’s somewhere between 175,000 and 260,000 links per person—that is, $175,000 and $260,000 per person. [20] A new measure, “Links Per Person (LPP)“. We just look rationally at that ticking ponderous ominous Debt Clock. This should be in the background of every politician stumping to spend on debt, showing the correlation to time, slavery, and death by LPP.
There may be brilliant people, probably wealthy financiers, who will profess that we should not look at the national debt as a bleary-eyed middle class worker, [21] who is living paycheck to paycheck, and trying to work to pay back a credit card for the Wall Street induced foreign-made car, the foreign-made flat screen television, and the foreign-made clothing, while also trying to pay back his $200,000 pro rata share of national debt, all before his first cup of coffee in the morning, and yet, there it is. As a common man, he might not know what’s hitting him, but he feels the pain all the same. Alas, the days in his life are not enough to repay his debt, but it will take someone else’s time. Someone is indentured by the debt, now or later.
Debt is a Faustian trade in life-timing. “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today,” said J. Wellington Wimpy, being a “self-centered[…,] intelligent and educated, a lazy coward, a miser, and a glutton.“
Intelligent and educated financiers or politicians may vainly try to excuse some debt as a debt of a nation to its own citizens, who pay the cost of the tax that pays the interest on the interest and the new borrowing to pay more interest. But that is a rhetorical sidestep. The issue now is not how this catastrophe was created, but how will it be destroyed and repaid. Brilliant financiers said it’s all too big to fail, until it failed. [22, 23] “Wisdom is vindicated by her works,” says Jesus, and each financial manipulation—each failure-required bailout that feeds upon itself—proves the works ain’t working. [24.1]
Educated brilliant intellect does not a sage make. [*6, *7] What the academic brilliant wonkish narrative does not express, being too painful an admission of fault, is that the only probable way that America can repay the ever-growing $34T national debt is by hope, prayer, luck [25], or to be victorious in a war with the creditor, and then writing the history, smugly self-justifying a self-interested determination that the debt was the losing creditor’s own fault. [26, *14]
3. A Failure to Control the Source of Fuel >>. In 1954, post WWII, America was booming, economically, politically and militarily. The automobile industry was powerful and at the core of the bustling American economy. The American Middle Class was naturally strong because the economy was strong. [27]
The problem was fuel. Fuel. America was so hubristically preoccupied enjoying freedom, being cool in that American GTO, and in being the envy of the world, that it foolishly forgot that its industrial engine was a slave to the master of fuel it did not control. And the automobile infrastructure caved-in upon itself. Those academically brilliant financiers didn’t see it coming, or maybe they didn’t care, making too much Wall Street short-term money, so an “F” here to them.
“He who feeds you enslaves you,“ says sage Aesop, who understood human nature, and automobiles were being fed by non-American fuel. [28, *2] The 1970’s fuel shortage brought long lines at the gas pumps by a “gas crisis,” with a progeny of a lot of really ugly cars, from the representative power of the American Goat GTO to the beaten-down eunuched wimpy American Pacer…
Says one university:
The gas crisis was prompted by two events, a war between Israel and surrounding Arab countries and the Iranian Revolution, both of which resulted in serious cuts in the supplies of oil from the Middle East. [30]
The Middle East, seemingly always at war as a general rule, not as the exception. Entangling economic alliances and reliances, embracing religious wars.
And then came the fuel economic regulations matched with environmental regulations, upheaving the power of the American economy, regulating—that is, limiting—the mighty American economic engine that granted the prosperity.
America killed its own industrial might, from within, by economic foolishness of not owning its own fuel, and then regulating the manner of its own competitive power. America’s Wall Street built Dubai, the prosperity of Dubai, and the sheiks who are driving luxurious gas-guzzling Rolls-Royce limousines.
There is a natural hubristic human tendency of people who purport to be “good” to conflate what is noble with what is wise. [31] What is good for a church and what is good for a country—and what is good for this life and what is good for any after-life—are not necessarily the same thing. Die now, live later, does not work for the existential principles of a country.
People can rightly debate the cost on the economy to achieve non-producing (environmental) “good” benefits, but there are two problems.
First, the self-limitation on industrial success in a capitalist economy tends toward existential martyrdom. This is not to bait a rhetorical hyperbolic retort that all regulation is bad, but rather only for the proposition to recognize that self-constraining competitive advantage—that is, killing industry in a capitalistic economy—has an existential cost. Save a tree, kill a country.
Second, it is folly in error to repeat a problem of failing to own the source of fuel, yielding even more self-enslavement by economy-sourced foolishness.
If the enemies of the state wanted to kill a capitalist free country, they would support tripping regulation into the core competitive running industrial engine for a non-money producing purpose (environment), selling it as noble (who can argue with noble?) which it certainly is, and then it would keep the foolish enemy country a slave to its own source of power—fuel—whether it’s oil or EV batteries. We already played this slavery dependency game and lost.
Driving an EV is a badge of American cool only if America owns the fuel; otherwise it’s not the badge of American cool, but only the badge of an American fool.
It’s not about sustaining trees, it’s about sustaining America. Lest our education fail us, the environment issue only exists within the subsidiary Venn-space of the “America Sustainability Crisis.” Every systemic issue in America must yield to existential America sustainability as the critical path priority objective. The environmental issue defeats its own objective if it is cause of American economic failure, because, in such event, concerns over environment sustainability are vaporized by the greater catastrophe of world destabilization.
Being a powerful band-wagon celebrity “leader” may give hopeful heart-warming influence, but it does not grant socio-politico-economic existential wisdom. [32] If the “blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch,” wisely says Jesus, noting that he presupposed the blind guy is a leader of others. [24.2, 24.3] Idealists may hope, but the pragmatists keep them alive so they can hope. The sages teach that the pain comes either way, in time. [33]
For America to build an economy with battery-fueled cars, America must have the triumvirate of materials, technology, and the industrial might to produce that fuel, independently, such as America had in 1908 with Henry Ford’s Model T; that is, when America owned the steel, the patents, and the factories. Right now, America owns inflated vapor paper money and $34T of debt. Our own Wall Street sold our industry to foreign countries for its monetary profit, and stock bonuses.
America is a slave, it just doesn’t know it yet; to fix it, America must admit it.
If America repeats the evolution of folly into foreign EV fuel dependence of the materials, technology, or industrial power—that is, doing the same thing and expecting a different result—then American genetics are not fit to survive.
4. Failure of Education >>. The education system is failing and it’s not smart enough to know why. Before anyone can develop a systemic educational system, such as any strategy, a determination must be made as to what is trying systemically to be achieved, which is exactly this: a virtuous human being, balanced in practicality and philosophy, a “Philosophical Fighter Pilot” said Vice Admiral Stockdale. [34] Now, of course, a perfect virtuous human being is not obtainable, but we do not need to touch the star to be guided by it. [35]
We know the educational system is working if it produces intellectually astute, curious, socially aware, mentally tough, disciplined, physically healthy, secure, spiritually reflective, empathetic, human beings. [36] Not vices converted into virtues by some ironic theory of coddled goodness, where excellence has no measure. No one is perfect, but that is not the point. The human manifestations of gluttony, avarice, despair, wrath, sloth, vanity and hubris are not beautiful as such, and none of those Seven Deadly Vices implicates someone who is LGBT++. [37, 38] Social conformity and virtue are different issues. [39, 40]
The weaker a society gets, the more it will condemn the standard of excellence that it would otherwise fail to satisfy. A mother’s coddling love may embrace the weak, until the mother teaches to be weak. Embracing the weak is a service, teaching to be weak is a disservice. Fortitude is virtue, not weakness.
Indeed, it’s a horrible thing to do vice, but it’s a catastrophe to teach it, as “it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” [*24.2, 24.4]
Traditionally, life required a certain wisdom to survive. No one cared to listen to whining [41], because everyone else was trying elementally to survive; to wit:
There was no Facebook and Twitter in the Age of Enlightenment. Indeed, in those days, the time spent with book learning was based upon the liberal arts classics of history, science, philosophy and literature, including, of course, the most widely read book of all time, The King James Bible.
A man in those days tended to be combination of philosopher, business owner, farmer and soldier, by life necessity. In result, men of sufficient means tended to be balanced human beings, and, from this broad foundation of learning and experience, sprang a font of wisdom.
When complaints are stated about the idiocy of society, we must acknowledge our own complicity and failure in training the same people being condemned. [42] A free democratic country cannot long endure without virtue in the People.
[43] If we look at the current tendency of higher education, it is more-and-more isolating and vacuuming disciplines of knowledge into vertical silos of training; that is, “School of….[this or that]” But core life-knowledge is horizontal, not vertical. Life does not exist in silos. Such as real world life, the general rule of education is horizontal knowledge, only the exceptive specialty is vertical. [44]
The tendency to pigeon-hole education is because higher education is now so expensive (college presidents becoming incredibly wealthy) that the demand is not to virtue, as such, but to immediate job placement, which then drives a short-term money-driven education without necessary holistic rounding. The seed of knowledge must germinate immediately into money, which tends to adduce task-doing wonks “who see but do not perceive.” [24.5] Virtue must be the guiding star. Excellence will adduce leadership, leadership does not adduce excellence.
Moreover, myopic tendencies produce the divisive one-issue voter who cannot see beyond the nose of self-centered and selfish interest, not being trained in the virtuous selfless discipline of duty. Indeed, bad economies require short-term money that thereby tends to a wonkish silo of education that thereby tends to elect foolish politicians who listen to foolish financiers, who thereby make the economies worse, over time. Rome did not fall in a day. Time exposed the weakness. “So sorry,” said the Brass Pot, but it was too late. [45]
5. The Divisive Systemic Intrusion of “God” >>. A lot of people want America to be their church. This human tendency of misery-loves-company, and justified-righteousness-by-volume-numbers insecurity is completely humanly natural, for those who can perceive it. [46, 47] But, alas, America is not church. [48]
For those who can reference it, the framework of America is like the Justice of Plato’s Republic. Justice in a free-thinking society is that quality that allows the framework to sustain unto itself. Justice in a free-thinking framework is amoral, not immoral, but amoral, by its own necessity of existential principle.
Justice in America allows the atheist, the agnostic, and all the sects of the theists to coexist equally before the law. [*46] Justice is abstract and independent, as it must be in a free-thinking society. Systemic abstract justice invites higher tiers of society to apply concrete rules within an offered legal framework equal for all.
In a free-thinking society, justice in government is a controlled abstraction.
The Founding Fathers specifically de-weaponized religion, because they understood the selfish weakness of human nature to succumb to divisiveness by irrational socialized delusion, being the body-burning torturing medieval horror of Europe from which America rebelled. The Founding Fathers were eradicating an ancient persistent socio-politico problem of human nature by creating America. They knew that civil morality never ever requires god (or the gods). Yes, they were that smart, that “loving neighbor as self,” and that selfless. [49, 24.6]
“It does me no injury,” said Thomas Jefferson, “for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” [*49, 24.7]
In 1954, after WWII, with growing reliance upon foreign fuel, the threats of communism, and the rage of returning soldiers (“everyone prays in a foxhole“), the phrase “under God” was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance. Of course, priests loved this fact, because they want America to be their church. (Which church and which “god” is not clear.) Yet, it was Thomas Jefferson who said,”[I]n every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty.” [50]
Until 1954, the Pledge closed with “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” This text was unifying perfection, perfection. Perfection.
Perfection, until the folly of the edit by lesser emoting selfish minds that contradicted the Pledge’s own overt reason for being; breaking what was fixed, dividing what was unified, to wit, adding “under God”; that is, “one nation [under God], indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” It confuses the premise, and introduces—ironically within an adjacent statement of indivisibility—the most divisive topic known to mankind, that we cannot even discuss at happy weddings. [51]
One nation, with justice for all, except for the poor patriotic atheist who can no longer say the Pledge with applied equal justice. “Well,” say the selfishly smug theists, “he can just omit the words…” What a hypocritical politico-socio-legal-philosophical ironic wreck. It is not justice for some, but equal justice for all, even atheists. Such divisive folly; that is, to add Odin (or might it be Zeus, or Marduk, or Bastet the Cat) to the Pledge. Even Porky Pig knows better.
Church is systemic theism. America is not by the blood of its rebellion.
Some might say that America needed the divisive references to god (or the gods) to be a morally strong country, but others might suggest—if it is to be correlated—that 1954 was the climax of American strength and power, not to be matched ever since. That is, the country was pretty strong before 1954 without words purporting to fix something that was never broken and previously better.
And then the premise kept creeping and feeding upon itself. In 1956, the also secularly-perfect slogan, “E Pluribus Unum,” meaning “From Many, One” embodied all the diverse unity that America is and professes. It was also unifying perfection. Perfection, until lesser weaker uneducated or undisciplined minds changed it to “In God We Trust.” [*51, 52, 53]
A tragedy framed in travesty. Religion is the most divisive subject ever devised by humanity, hubristically purporting itself to be a fact, when it is properly deprecated to be merely an opinion, like a virus that must attach to a host and thereby replicate itself to live, being insufficient, incomplete, and too insecure to exist all alone in its own perfect environment of self-truth and self-revelation. [54]
Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself…And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature.
[*49] Poor Thomas Jefferson, as dead as a doornail, with mud on his nose. He gave America perfection, with lesser selfish undisciplined minds nullifying his revolution bringing it full circle from where it escaped, blood to blood. [55, 56]
Some people, some cultures, and some countries simply will not de-weaponize ancient religion, as they selfishly think everything serves them and theirs, as slaves to religion as their master. [57] They won’t let it go. But the American Founding Fathers were strong enough to let it go, expressly, unselfishly, and selflessly, so that America and its idea could live. [58] If god should bring the peace of divine revelation through love, then it is the devil who weaponizes it by death through hate, as a thing is known by the fruit of its production. [24.8, 59]
Death, destruction and pestilent war tied to any religious purpose is no part of the objective of America, but, indeed, exactly, exactly the opposite. [*55] America does not fight religious wars for itself or for others. [*57] But for the slavery of the inflation of vapor money, slavery of national debt, failure of education, and slavery by fuel, American would be free of self-destructive wars.
We are charged to open our eyes to look at cause and effect, and to perceive what is, why it is, why it tends to be, and what will tend to be. [*24.2-*24.5]
First, the American Middle Class is not a natural construct. [60] It is a necessary contrivance of social manipulation, and the Tax Code, such as it is, proves it.
The rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer—as the strong will naturally use selfish advantage—except as artificially constrained by law. “If men were angels,” says Founding Father James Madison, we would not need laws in the first place. [*1, 61] Such as it is for the NFL, and the anti-trust laws, and other legal constraints, managed laws keep the game in America strong, by governing with incentives, punishments, and limits.
When wealthy friends ask rhetorically, “Who should say in America how much money a person can make?” The answer is, “America, it’s that simple.“
Certainly, “a workman is worthy of his meat” [24.9], but we should be sufficiently educated to perceive the rhetoric of ideals cleverly used to defeat common sense implementation, but self-interested Wall Street short-term profit and the media have everyone angry and confused and not really knowing why, because the presentation is under the sweet guise of a kiss. [24.10]
The utopian abstract ideal of America may suggest no limitations laissez-faire, but the robber barons and the 1929 Stock Market Crash prove human tendencies in a capitalistic framework, requiring American Middle Class management as an economic contrivance to keep the game of America dynamic, and sustained; otherwise, the tendency is to the few in oligarchy, making all the money in plutocracy, getting all the education in aristocracy. The systemic framework of prioritizing man over a tree is not the same thing as prioritizing one man over another. Wisdom loves a man as a man, a dog as a dog, and a tree as a tree, often conflated by children and by those not properly educated.
Indeed, the entire United States Tax Code is essentially wealth redistribution. [61] Every time there is a granted fringe benefit, or an allowed deduction or exemption, it is effectively wealth redistribution. Money moves from here to there, for the good of America’s sustainability. Every time there is a government contract to buy or to build the American infrastructure, wealth moves systemically from someone to someone else. Towering wealth stands on the shoulders of American People and the American eco-system.
Let us not be outwitted by the educated wealthy Wall Street selfish rhetorical narrative. Rather, let us perceive that every economic system from the beginning of time is inherently a social construct among people—as is capitalism—and each construct requires discipline and control to sustain itself by a methodology of its existential principles. A dog on a leash does not make it a cat.
The issue is not simply wealth redistribution, per se, the issue is where the wealth is going and why, and how does that transfer serve the objective of a prosperous American People, which tends to be a function of a healthy American Middle Class. [*60] Every wise shopper prioritizes on value, rather than being “penny wise and pound foolish.” [62] And it should be no less with tax expenditures; it’s not about what is spent, but about the value received. A fool does not know how to spend, no matter how much money is placed into his hands.
American survival on inflated vapor money and national debt proves Wall Street financier folly by admission, and allocating to consumption without seeding systemic production and industry, sold to foreign countries by Wall Street, tends to be folly feeding upon folly. It’s a short-term profit for Wall Street that works only for a limited time. If Wall Street really knew what it was doing, America would be financially healthy, but, alas, it is gravely unhealthy.
Statistics indicate that the rich are getting richer. Says Motley Fool, “The latest edition of Oxfam’s annual Inequality Inc. report is out, and it states: ‘Since 2020, the richest five men in the world have doubled their fortunes. During the same period, almost five billion people globally have become poorer.’” [63]
“No man is an island,” said John Donne. Indeed, in America, systemic prosperity is by a product of social influences, and systemic rewards and punishments. The transfer of wealth is bound to a systemic privilege only to the extent that the rule serves the objective. “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away,” says Jesus. [24.11] The member serves the body and the body’s objective standing as a holistic undivided unified entity.
If Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos formed a corporation to achieve wealth, or implemented use of Wall Street, or enjoyed the write-offs of the Tax Code, then he is not self-made, but only standing on the shoulders of Americans.
If a multi-millionaire cannot be happy as such, being increasingly taxed from surplus, the problem is not with the tax, but with the man. But, as said, the tax must seed production some other way as men must not be given the fish, but taught how to fish.
Second, the systemic capitalist entrepreneurial commercial engine of America revolves around artificial legal constructs of business that are themselves contrived creatures of law; that is, the “corporation” (and similar entities). [64]
The corporation, such as America inherited it, is derived from England, where it was matched to the risk of debtor’s prison. The investors in enterprise consisted of sending ships (no GPS in those days) into vast bodies of water with the risk of Mother Nature’s unpredictable storm sinking the ship. That is, the investor was subject to the uncontrollable accidents of the weather. If the ship sank in debt, the bankrupt investor would be put into debtor’s prison until the debt was paid, which was difficult to pay then being in prison. Therefore, for the exceptive and socially-beneficial purpose, the Crown effectively granted advance economic dispensation by limiting liability for the social good of the realm and for the common weal. The granted corporation was an exception, not the rule. The general rule was that the entrepreneur was liable for his choices.
Early in the 20th Century of America, the corporation laws generally required a purpose to be stated in the corporate charter for approval by the state. The statement became a formalism, now no longer required with the implicit default being any lawful purpose. But, we note that a lawful purpose is not necessarily a socially meaningful purpose. Every purpose is now equal for the benefits of limited liability, that is, making society share every entrepreneurial venture.
Now, having created countless creatures over 35 years, I do not wish to debate who is to judge corporate purpose in a free-thinking society. The point is simply to expose the descension of essence from the good purpose by the exception, to any purpose by the general rule. There are now so many ways to escape financial liability for business choices, thereby socializing the risk, that only a foolish or poor entrepreneur is not exempt from liability for decisions, and general society now bears the essential pervasive risk of both sense and nonsense within its fabric of cost of living, the common weal made immaterial.
Moreover, there is now bankruptcy protection instead of debtor’s prison. This may be an advancement in civility in some regards. However, if we take the systemic limit of liability by the safety net of the corporation, and for any remaining liability by the safety net of bankruptcy protection, there is a socialized socialistic tendency in effect, because all the risk is placed upon the backs of general society for any purpose or folly of the entrepreneur, which was never the original intention of the legal construct, but only by the creatures evolving so by the experiments of doctors of law. The transition started as a capitalist creature in causation and then evolving in increments into a socialistic creature in effect.
The corporation is no longer a privilege of entrepreneurship for uncontrollable risks, but a construct of socialized risk without rare necessary social or economic responsibility. A creature corporation, being a piece of paper filed with a state, is now evolved to be a legal person in the same manner of a human being.
“Confusion hath made his masterpiece,” said Shakespeare, and likewise the results of Citizens United, the 5-4 Supreme Court decision treating corporations like human beings, being a foolish wonkish tail-wagging-the-dog view of the corporation structure and the American eco-system. [*64] Creature corporations now make the master into their slave. [*64] So said dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens, arguing correctly that the court’s ruling represented “a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government.” [65] A corporation does not eat, it does not sleep, and it does not feel pain. Mother Nature did not create it, and it has no natural rights. [66, *64] The creature serves America, its master, or it is a monster, a rogue who cannot be imprisoned now holding the whip of legal precedent.
Third and finally, another reason that the money interests in America are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer is because the wealth transfer taxation system favors the monetarily free transfer of wealth, which is an incident of royalty with disproportionate benefit. [66] The personal satisfaction of the gift may be equal, but the associative tax benefit is not; to wit, says Bing AI:
In 2024, the annual gift tax exclusion allows individuals to give away up to $18,000 to as many people as they wish without incurring any gift tax. This means you can generously gift up to that amount to your loved ones without worrying about tax implications. If you’re married, the combined limit for you and your spouse is $36,000. So go ahead and spread some financial cheer!
[67] And some people are indeed cheerful for this rule.
That’s the abstract rule, but consider the real-world implementation as a matter of statistics. How many of the increasingly poorer people, who are strapped in debt, and surviving only with inflated vapor dollars, paying the pro rata share of national debt of $34T, being bailed out by failed Wall Street policy, are actually spreading all around unlimited cheerful gifts of $18K per person or $36K per couple, per year. The Wall Street rich, made so by the American eco-system. Says Bing AI regarding, for example, Disney’s Bob Iger’s annual compensation (emphasis added):
[Disney] Iger’s 2023 pay package included a base salary of $865,385, stock awards totaling $16.1 million, $10 million in stock option awards, $2.1 million in performance-based compensation and $2.48 million in other compensation…
According to a filing with Securities and Exchange Commission, Iger will receive a compensation package valued at $27 million each of the 2 years—though the actual number could be higher or lower, depending on the company’s performance and stock price.
Take note of the Wall Street annual (that is, in one year) stock price incentives regarding decision-making correlated to why Wall Street executives sell Americans into foreign industry slavery for annual profit. A lion is entitled to his meat, until he starves the pride.
Indeed, the annual payment into the pockets of one human being are so big, that it’s hard even to contemplate, so the conversation is cleverly diverted to the common man staple debate, minimum wage rather than the wealthy man maximum wage, although both are jointly implicated to sustain a healthy capitalist Middle Class economic game. And, we keep in mind that many CEOs at Iger’s level have intersecting highly paid board of director positions on other brethren Wall Street public companies.
Wall Street corporation CEOs, like Iger, are certainly cheerful to give unlimited tax-free gifts to their own family, only because they have the money to implement the rule. Sure, the rule is the same for everyone, but it does not play out the same for everyone:
They said the rule was mutual and thus it must be fair, sure as a hare may eat a lion, and a lion may eat a hare.
[68] Sure, the rule is mutual, but it’s not equal or fair.
Think it through, the transfer of money to a person who did not work a moment to earn it, and without tax. Luxury transferred to luxury; this is an incident of royalty, not capitalism. The rule is equal only in theory. The proverbial uneducated little old lady who is Wall Street media propagandized to love a tax free gift does not understand that her pittance of a saving is providing billions of savings for the rich. The education system did not teach her the subject, so she’s a victim of the self-interested narrative.
The same principle applies to “stepped up basis.” [69, 70] This tax-free “benefit” eliminates taxable gain on appreciated property at death. Yes, eliminating the benefit will take away a tax benefit for everyone’s heirs, but the monetary burden ratchets up for the wealthy.
When wealthy friends ask rhetorically, “I worked for this money. I paid my tax when I earned it. Who should say in America how much money I can leave tax free to my children?” The answer is, “America, it’s that simple.“
Let us not get confused again by the brilliant educated Wall Street narrative. The income tax on the working earner is a coordinated function of the gift tax on the non-working children estate beneficiaries, as well as a function of everything else in the voluminous Tax Code. The eco-system that giveth is the eco-system that can taketh away. That is the proper managed contrivance of maintaining the healthy American Middle Class capitalism that creates the bundle of rights, privileges and enjoyments appurtenant to, “I am a citizen of the United States of America.“
And, let’s look at even one more tax privilege of kings, to the demise of the hard-working American Middle Class. In addition to wealth transfers of 1) unlimited tax-free $36K gifts for couples, and in addition to the 2) tax-free gains of stepped-up basis at death, we can pile on even more, being the 3) tax-free gifts $13,610,000, $13.61M, for individuals, and tax-free $27,220,000, $27.22M for couples. [71, 72] The only people who will say that $27M is not a vast amount of money are people with vast amounts of money. The incredibly wealthy will brilliantly argue about the taxes they pay during life, but not about the unpaid taxes they don’t pay at death.
And, such as it is, the “trust,” similarly to the “corporation,” is a legal fictional construct that is implemented to avoid the very death and transfer taxation that the law has otherwise implemented for the common weal. It is legal dysfunction benefitting only the wealthy to achieve wealth transfers to family in the same manner as royalty, not in the manner of true capitalistic incentive. The common man knows nothing of tax trusts, neither having the family money to give or the family money to take. I know this dog of trusts after 35 years of practicing law, because, well, I am its breeder.
Therefore, let us select the best answers; to wit: Whose income should not be taxed during lifetime? The worker who worked to earn it. Who should be taxed the most? The beneficiary who never worked for it. When should a worker be taxed, during life or after death? After death, of course. Who should be incentivized to the virtue of work and not rely upon gifts and hand-outs, the heir who never worked for it. The rich complain about the poor worker getting handouts, but not their own children getting handouts.
There’s a reason why tax policy is upside down. Wealth is power. The wealthy know the game, and keep the productive poor Middle Class scurrying about diverted and bleary-eyed, thinking only about the now, the paycheck to paycheck. The tax-free transfer of wealth tends to defeat the incentive to earn in the expecting beneficiary, and it gives an unfair head start to the privileged children of the wealthy, unnaturally keeping the wealth in a family line, being an incident of royalty, not natural systemic capitalism.
“‘Since 2020, the richest five men in the world have doubled their fortunes. During the same period, almost five billion people globally have become poorer.’” [*63]
7. Wall Street Betrayal >>. Watching a pack of killer dogs, wolves, or lions hunting prey is a thing of natural beauty, unless of course, we’re the prey. But I digress.
Statistically, most or many Americans watch the news, such as CNN or FOX, where the pundits banter about social issues. The conversation is biased by media ownership and agenda [73] being mostly owned by only 15 billionaires and 6 corporations [74] and needing to keep viewer eyes entertained to meet advertising profit requirements with the relatively new time-vacuumed media profit animal called, “24 Hour News.” [*7]
Walter Cronkite is long gone as is his esteem and integrity for the ideal of journalistic discipline of facts-only reporting. [*38] If there were a public interest federal disclosure disclaimer law whereby a yellow band was necessary, “This program contains perspectives and opinions beyond factual reporting,” the yellow band would never go away. (Sort of like a food ingredients disclosure notice, the information, better or worse, being “mind food.”)
Indeed, “news” tends now as an op-ed feature of opinionated characterizations. The once-virtuously disciplined Cronkitian integrity of “200 Killed in the War,” is now characterized, “200 Innocent Slaughtered,” or “200 Freedom Fighters Die Bravely,” often entwined with that easy pickings, go-to, low-hanging, propaganda fruit: non-objective, biased, delusive, selfish, religion. [*51] Propaganda sugar feeding ignorance [75], such as it is, depending upon the media channel profit agenda as a Wall Street public company, and with the poor American, who we have failed to educate in the tools of Aristotelian Rhetoric and Socratic Cardinal Virtues [*37, 32] being led by the nose into a base and mean form of candied slavery, and failing to perceive it. [76, 77, 78, 79]
But, if you’ve never done it, try watching a “money channel” like Bloomberg. Go ahead, like a mind exercise, for 7 minutes a day. It’s not for children or the weak. It’s serious business, with a mature tone, cadence and language of business is business. Monetary profit is a form of scientific truth, it does not care if you like it. The reason it’s so serious is because the result—that is, success or failure—is objective and measurable. The numbers land black or red. If a business is unprofitable, such as Amazon in the early years, the strategy must be rational, articulated, and persuasive enough to adduce confidence in the market. [80, 81]
The pundits on the money channels are killers, metaphorically speaking. While common people are bantering about whether sit-ups exercise the hip flexors, the money guys are debating cell mitochondria and fast-twitch fibers. These money guys are the organic chemists of the business world. They are brilliant, trained, and with essentially one objective on their mind—one prey—profit. [*17]
Don’t get me wrong, truth be told, after 35 years of practicing corporate law, some people might say that I am their ordnance manufacturer. “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it,” said Robert E. Lee. When these guys pack into a room, it is a brutal thing of beauty, in a way. [*80, *82]
But, behold, said Jesus, “a man cannot serve two masters, for he will love one and hate the other.” [*24.7] And therein lies the issue. In working with clients raising capital, I have said countless times, “You may love your business, but the money-guys love the profit generated by your business. There is a difference.” This concept is exposed over and over by those killer sharks, particularly often candidly by Mr. Wonderful, on Shark Tank. [82, 83, 84, 85]
If we ask a Wall Street guy about zygote gestation rights, the response might start as Jeffersonian, “It does me no injury if a woman never terminates a gestation or terminates gestation 20 times, it neither picks my pocket nor break my leg. It’s her business… Wait, ‘business’? Who’s paying for it? This might have systemic cost implications with a paradigmic shift. Let’s determine medical institution profitability by demographic metrics, and identify source of funds, with implications of equipment and impact on international imports.” [*48]
If we reduce social prosperity to a function of competing economics within the field of money game-play, Wall Street is going to win. Money is power. It’s that simple. They have the tools, they know the game, and they stay hungry. They have these attributes of self-power, because, in the world of business, just like in the world of Mother Nature, only those fit to survive will survive. We might detest the rule of science, but it doesn’t care. [*1]
According to Motley Fool, the largest brokerage houses are only 4, and those 4 have 88% of the assets under management, and 6—only 6—of those have 99% of assets under management, that is, controlling 26,880,000,000,000, $26T. [86] $26T buys a lot of influence, and weaponry ordnance. $26T is pervasive social power, as much as it has a too-big-to-fail risk of catastrophic national failure.
Only 6 brokerage houses control that 99%, $26T, in monetary assets, and then with mostly 15 billionaires and 6 corporations controlling the media in America, and all of those are part of the Wall Street infrastructure as cause or effect. Anyone who thinks the oligarchical plutocrical perfect storm of money and media don’t own and control the American framework will not survive, being their prey. I can love and respect the predator lion, but it does not follow that I want it to eat me.
Human beings are wired to conquer, in their sentient [87] self-interest of survival and comfort, which is why we rule the Earth as a competitive species, and why we feed upon ourselves as individuals; that is, as a general rule. The exceptions are only two: selfless perfect love where it exists, and selfless disciplined duty where perfect love does not exist. (Perfect love does not need discipline. Where perfect love exists, duty gets a free ride.) [*55]
Notwithstanding that the money media pundits will say that more Americans are in the stock market than ever before, sources indicate that it’s not a whole truth. If managed retirement plans are excluded—that is, owned stocks directly—it is only 15% of the population [88], which generally comports with education and disposable income, without 85% of Americans, perhaps to correlate with 15% of top wealth. Therefore, Wall Street increasingly tends to the brilliant already wealthy money guys or motley fools. [89] The rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. [*63] America’s bailing-out financial messes and the rich keep getting richer. Distasteful, but “proof of the pudding is in the eating.“
As a general rule, an investor needs some volume of discretionary money to invest, and the shrinking Middle Class is losing it, now deep in credit card debt, particularly because of the inflation resulting from the unteathered inflated vapor money and crippling national debt, and paying credit card rates in excess of 16%. Indeed, current average personal debt interest is 16.5% [*90] and the average rate of return on Wall Street is 10%. [91] Therefore, staid monetary prudence would suggest to pay all personal debt prior to investment in the stock market, which thereby leaves the rich.
That said, Wall Street is an excellent facility to broker a stable system of investment by the public into commercial enterprises; it is inherently a necessary structure in a capitalist economy.
To its credit, the SEC has gotten much better control over constraining the operation of human nature of non-disclosure. The patient is still dying, but that is not the fault of the SEC. The role of the SEC is to manage available information, not to prevent stupidity.
Preventing stupidity is the role of the education system, which (except for the private schools for the wealthy, of course) is funded by the government. But the government is broken, now bailing out infrastructural flaws, encumbered by inflated vapor money and crippling national debt, incurred in part to support the war machinery of religious wars, to create local military bases to protect the slavery by the source of the unholy fuel dependency. But, other than war killing a lot of people and keeping a country poor, the Wall Street investors can still make a lot of money. “Pfizer shares hit record high with COVID-19 vaccine stocks on a tear,” said Reuters [92]. The COVID vaccine was not “free,” as touted in the media, but about $30 per person that somebody had to pay, and anyone who does not understand the socialization of cost onto the backs of the American People with the profit into Wall Street wealth is a grave fool. [93]
I will suggest that failure of the political system is because of the influence of Wall Street corporate money and media to buy political influence. Some people claim in frustrated disbelief, “Woe unto America, we have two bad presidential candidates, I can’t figure out how this happens. That darn two-party system…” Well, I will suggest that it’s not per se the two political party system that is the problem. That’s only where everyone is directed to look. [94] I will suggest that it’s actually because of the other two parties, being corporate Wall Street money and corporate media, and their resultant influence on the self-governance democratic free-press eco-system.
Furthermore, as to the “corporations” which Wall Street rightly makes investment fungible, we can observe the decline of the paradigm that was originally intended to serve funding the entrepreneurship that served the common weal. In essence, the market was traditionally a substantive reflection of confidence in the entrepreneurship enterprise itself.
Indeed, some may remember the inefficiency of the equity markets before computerized trading, when there was a staid natural barrier of entry, requiring, as a general rule, research, actually talking to a broker, then a purchase of 100 share multiple “lots”, and natural resisting average longer-term hold. Computerization is a natural evolution, but the devolution of traditional investing into day-trading speculation does not serve the grander social purpose of per se investment in the capitalist commercial enterprises.
Let’s take a football game for example. Someone assesses the players, history, and considers probabilities, and then can wager for a profit on the preferred team winning. This is a bet-to-team wager.
But let us say that the wager is no longer regarding the team itself, but rather the wager is actually directed to the collective psychology of the people making the wager about the team. This is a bet-to-wager wager, or perhaps derivatively a bet-to-wager-to-team wager. That is, we are no longer assessing the substantive merit of the team, but we are assessing the human psychology of betting about the teams. It’s not the same thing.
Betting on the market trends is not the same as investing in a company. It is a one-off diluted speculative mirrored facade created by Wall Street for Wall Street, but not it is not capitalism in any manner of traditional essence. It is now a game of producing income without substantive traditional life value.
Trading in a market “index” is not investing in the capitalist entrepreneurship enterprise that serves the common weal. It is no longer love of the American capitalist entrepreneurial enterprise through investing, but rather love of money through gambling. Day trading and trading in an index is more gambling than gambling, and more poker than poker.
It creates no substantive life value benefits, but only self-interested paper wealth that is only vapor wealth. When the markets fail, it will occur as a computer blip of a needle to a balloon, because that’s the economic construct.
And, if we should think that failure of economic strength does not adduce social atrocities through out the world, then our education system has failed us, again. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 had a profound influence on the rise of Hitler. [95]
Wall Street is the engine for the American capitalist economy. The failures that exist today were predictable or known by Wall Street, but continue in betrayal by short-term profit motives, evidenced by resultant inflated vapor money, crippling national debt, costly wars driven by the predictable slavery of fuel dependency, all necessary only because Wall Street sold our American industrial might to foreign countries to make self-interested short-term profit and stock bonuses. It’s not working. Reform is required. The pain is coming, either way. [*33] It is a matter of priorities, “for where your treasure is, there your heart will be.” [24.12] And therein lies the issue.
American prosperity is now only a facade of substance. Indeed, the government is financially bailing out students, banks and businesses. [96, 97]. No government bailout is ever required, but for the implicit admission of systemic failure of a critical component of the social or economic eco-system.
“Let us not be false to any man” said Shakespeare, or more so to ourselves. More bailouts are coming, as sure as the night follows the day. But the buckets are growing smaller, and the holes are growing larger. And we sink blinded in folly.
“According to Gibbon, the Roman Empire succumbed to barbarian invasions in large part due to the gradual loss of civic virtue among its citizens.”
“All’s well that ends well,” and this is not going to end well. [98]
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Go To Complete Reference Citations Post
[20] https://www.zippia.com/advice/working-age-population; https://usafacts.org/articles/what-is-the-us-national-debt-and-how-has-it-grown-over-time/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=ND-ElectionsGov&msclkid=902217b370f613d502bb7273af761b54 [$36,000,000,000,000, divided by 207,406,609 working age is $173,572 or at two third middle and upper class feeding the system debt of 136,888,362 $262,988]
[24] ONE®: The Unified Gospel of Jesus, Divine Version [Second Edition] Published [#GRZ_59] 24.1 ONE: 1022 [T11:19] (“Wisdom Vindicated By Works“); 24.2 ONE: 1325 [T15:14] (“Blind Lead Blind-Ditch“); 24.3 ONE: 296 [L4:23] (“Physician Heal Thyself“); 24.4 ONE: 1661 [T18:6, R9:42, L17:2] (“Millstone); 24.5 ONE: 1143 [T13:13, R4:12] (“Perceive“); 24.6 ONE: 1040: [L10:27] (“Love Neighbor As Self“); 24.7 ONE: 582 [T6:24] (“Serve Two Masters“); 24.8 ONE: 635 [T7:20, L6:44] (“Tree By Its Fruit“); 24.9 ONE: 921 [T10:10] (“Workman Worthy Meat“); 24.10 ONE: 2632 [T26:50, L22:48] (“Betray With A Kiss“); 24.11 ONE: 514 [T5:30, R9:43] (“Right Hand Cause to Sin“); 24.12 ONE: 577 [T6:21] (“Heart Treasure“) 24.13 ONE: 2227 [T23:24] (“Filtering Gnat, Swallowing Camel”)
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A Farmer had a Goose that began to lay golden eggs.
Each day one new golden egg would be laid by the Goose, and the Farmer grew very rich. However, the Farmer was impatient and tried to get the Goose to lay more than one golden egg each day.
In desperation for even more golden eggs, the Farmer cut the Goose open to get all of eggs at once! And, when he cut the Goose open, he got only the death of his Goose, and no more golden eggs.
Moral of the Story: Unsatisfied with some, we lose all. [99, *58]
“Tempus ipsum recipit diem.” (“Time gets its day.”) ~grz
The statements or opinions made in this article are solely the author’s own and not representative of any institution regarding which the author is affiliated.
© 2024 Gregg Zegarelli, Esq. Gregg can be contacted through LinkedIn.
“Et nunc possum mori.”-grz
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