Virginia Libertarian

Damn, I just can’t let it go:

This may seem radical at first glance, but how else are you going to stop the banks from their mad computerized gambling, political lobbying and creating credit for corporate raiders to borrow and pay their financial backers by emptying out pension funds and cutting back long-term investment, research and development?

Hmm, how about – a bank should be a bank, not an investing firm. ?When I put my money in a bank, it should damn well stay there, not be used by the bank to invest in stuff and make money for the bank. If that means I pay annual fees to cover bank costs, so be it. If you don’t want to pay annual fees, you are free to put your money in an investment bank, where they may lose your money. I’m really not sure why the government has to provide “insurance” to us for our own money. When “banks” started lending out more money than they had in deposits (fractional reserve), that used to lead to a “run” on the bank when people thought it wouldn’t be able to give them their money back. People need to be able to distinguish between the two (I don’t think there are any real banks left any more).

The guiding idea is to take away the banks? privilege of creating credit electronically on their computer keyboards. You make banks do what textbooks say they are supposed to do: take deposits and lend them out in a productive way. If there are not enough deposits in the economy, the Treasury can create money on its own computer keyboards and supply it to the banks to lend out. But you would rewrite the banking laws so that normal banks are not able to gamble or play the computerized speculative games they are playing today.

See, this confuses the idea again. Banks should hold your money, that’s all. They have a big god-damn safe and all your money is in it. If they’re lending it out, it’s not a bank, it’s an investment firm.

The most obvious fiscal task that most people understand ? and support ? is to restore the progressive tax system that existed before 1980, and especially before the Clinton and Bush tax cuts. It used to be that the rich paid taxes. Now they don?t. But the key isn?t just income-tax rates as such. What needs to be recognized is the kind of taxes that should be levied ? or how to shift them back off labor onto property where they were before the 1980s. You need to restore the land taxes to collect the ?free lunch? that is not really ?free? if it is pledged to pay the banks in the form of mortgage interest.

Blah, class warfare BS. ?Flat tax rate, everyone pays same percentage of their income. I’ve recently converted to this from the national sales tax, because as some mentioned a national sales tax unduly burdens the lower economic class (more of a percentage of their income has?to be spent on basics). No more taxes on something you have supposedly already “bought” (You really own nothing, you’re just renting it from the government. Don’t think so? Try not paying your property taxes and see what you really own). I’d even go so far as to abolish Federal taxation upon citizens. The states need to be the ones paying the Fed, not us. We would still indirectly be paying, as the states would be taxing us, but each state could come up with its own way of doing things. Don’t like it? Move to another state, at least you’d have a choice, unlike now.

The Progressive Era that emerged from classical economics understood the economic benefits of taxing unearned wealth (?rent extraction?) at the top of the economic pyramid, provide basic infrastructure services at cost rather than creating fiefdoms for privatizers to install tollbooths and make their gains tax-exempt.

I definitely disagree with this. “Unearned wealth”? Do renters not do anything at all? Who maintains their property? Would you use a toll road that was littered with potholes? Or one that charged an exorbitant price? People pay what they feel something is worth. Charge too much, or too little, and you’ll go out of business.

This can be done either by a Clean Slate across the board, or it can be done more selectively, by applying what?s been New York State law since before the Revolution, going back to when New York was still a colony. I?m referring to the law of fraudulent conveyance. This law says that if a creditor lends to a borrower without having any idea how the debtor can pay in the normal course of business, without losing property, the loan is deemed to be fraudulent and declared null and void.

This latter I can barely stomach, because I saw first hand how the banks try to do this. When I was looking for a home, they offered to lend me an amount that would have had me paying almost 50% of my income to my mortgage. Now I knew that was BS because I did my homework and knew that not so many years earlier they would only go to a maximum of 25%. I think that kind of lending is fraudulent, but part of the blame is on the debtor as well, you need to know how much you can pay back, not just blindly borrow whatever someone will give you with no means of paying it back. That just makes both sides stupid.

From Wikipedia

Social justice is based on the concepts of human rights and equality and involves a greater degree of economic egalitarianism through progressive taxation, income redistribution, or even property redistribution. These policies aim to achieve what developmental economists refer to as more equality of opportunity than may currently exist in some societies, and to manufacture equality of outcome in cases where incidental inequalities appear in a procedurally just system.

from CESJ:

Social justice encompasses economic justice. Social justice is the virtue which guides us in creating those organized human interactions we call institutions. In turn, social institutions, when justly organized, provide us with access to what is good for the person, both individually and in our associations with others. Social justice also imposes on each of us a personal responsibility to work with others to design and continually perfect our institutions as tools for personal and social development.

Distinguishing Justice From Charity

While often confused, justice is distinct from the virtue of charity. Charity, derived from the Latin word caritas, or "divine love," is the soul of justice. Justice supplies the material foundation for charity.

While justice deals with the substance and rules for guiding ordinary, everyday human interactions, charity deals with the spirit of human interactions and with those exceptional cases where strict application of the rules is not appropriate or sufficient. Charity offers expedients during times of hardship. Charity compels us to give to relieve the suffering of a person in need. The highest aim of charity is the same as the highest aim of justice: to elevate each person to where he does not need charity but can become charitable himself.

True charity involves giving without any expectation of return. But it is not a substitute for justice.

There are very important differences in these definitions, and I think that a lot of people are using the first definition, trying for equality of outcome, which is not what we want, that path leads us down the road to socialism.

While listening to podcasts this week from both sides about the “occupy” movements, from what I can glean from the “real” people (not the ones trying to co-opt the movement for their own agendas), these people have very legitimate complaints, mainly against crony capitalism (or “capitalism” as those in the beltway call it).  I have no issue with what they are complaining about, but from what I’m hearing their proposal for a fix, more regulation, stinks.  I’m not sure what it is that these people think government could do to better regulate the problem, when the problem is caused by government regulation.  By this I mean that in regulating wall street the regulators have the power to set the rules, and the power to bend or change those rules for specific companies if they choose.  That gives those with the most money power over the rules, so making more rules just gives those with money more power.