Gross domestic product

Underground Commerce Is The Real Economy

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BATR  April 2 2014

TaxOfficeStampAs the deadline for filing yearly income taxes is rapidly approaching, businesses especially hard pressed to make a profit in a depressed economy struggle with their tax compliance. Reporting legitimate deductions and costs is the easy part. When you are losing money, disclosing a diminished income stream based upon lower margins, is not a difficult decision. Nevertheless, small enterprises burdened with government regulation costs and tax obligations, often are unable to conduct business and retain a net return. Self-proprietorships frequently are so scared that many look to the cash underground economy to hide income earnings.

This shadow commerce, practiced throughout the world, is the real economy. Actually, in the United States, tax compliance is quite high by comparison. With the acceptance of instruments of credit, the banking system has become more of a tax reporting service than a financier of a healthy economy. The taxman would have you believe that voluntary transactions in cash constitute a black market in illegal dealing. Casting the dispersion of seedy activities upon the motivation to subsist is a common practice of governmental revenue agents.

Building upon this attitude, a deceptive title to a USA report, $2 trillion underground economy aids recovery, would have you think constructive criticism returned to the mainstream press. Sorry to disappoint, you can always count on the Gannett media to be a government mouthpiece. Continue reading →

Banks Are Obsolete: The Entire Parasitic Sector Can Be Eliminated

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OfTwoMinds  February 19 2014 (Thanks, Kevin)

What else can we do with the $1.25 trillion we’ll save by eliminating these obsolete financial middleman parasites? A lot.

Technology has leapfrogged the banking sector, rendering it as obsolete as buggy whips. So why are we devoting 9% of our economy to an obsolete parasite?Financial sector profits now total a staggering 4.5% of GDP (gross domestic product), while the expenses generated by financial churning account for another 4.5% of the economy.
FinancialProfitsVsDebt

chart courtesy of Market Daily Briefing

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Cancer Of Corruption, Seeds Of Destruction: The Monsanto GMO Whitewash

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The Intel Hub | December 21 2012

Because of the power vested in the EU Commission in Brussels, Belgium, with command over a space encompassing 27 nations with more than 500 million citizens and the largest nominal world gross domestic product (GDP) of 18 trillion US dollars, it’s perhaps no surprise in this era of moral promiscuity that powerful private lobby groups such as the tobacco industry, the drug lobby, the agribusiness lobby and countless others spend enormous sums of money and other favors—legal and sometimes illegal—to influence policy decisions of the EU Commission.

This revolving door of corrupt ties between powerful private industry lobby groups and the EU Commission was in full view recently with the ruling of the European Food Safety Administration (EFSA) trying to discredit serious scientific tests about the deadly effects of a variety of Monsanto GMO corn.

cartoon_gmo_cornCancer of Corruption

In September 2012, Food and Chemical Toxicology, a serious international scientific journal, released a study by a team of scientists at France’s Caen University led by Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini.

Before publication the Seralini study had been reviewed over a four-month period by a qualified group of scientific peers for its methodology and was deemed publishable.

It was no amateur undertaking. The scientists at Caen made carefully-documented results of tests on a group of 200 rats over a two-year life span, basically with one group of non-GMO fed rats, a so-called control group, and the other a group of GMO-fed rats.

Significantly, following a long but finally successful legal battle to force Monsanto to release the details of its own study of the safety of its own NK603 maize (corn), Seralini and colleagues reproduced a 2004 Monsanto study published in the same journal and used by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) for its 2009 positive evaluation of NK603.

Seralini’s group based their experiment on the same protocol as the Monsanto study but, critically, were testing more parameters more frequently. And the rats were studied for much longer—their full two year average life-time instead of just 90 days in the Monsanto study.

The long time span proved critical. The first tumors only appeared 4 to7 months into the study. In industry’s earlier 90-day study on the same GMO maize Monsanto NK603, signs of toxicity were seen but were dismissed as “not biologically meaningful” by industry and EFSA alike. It seems they were indeed very biologically meaningful.

The study was also done with the highest number of rats ever measured in a standard GMO diet study. They tested also “for the first time 3 doses (rather than two in the usual 90 day long protocols) of the Roundup-tolerant NK603 GMO maize alone, the GMO maize treated with Roundup, and Roundup alone at very low environmentally relevant doses starting below the range of levels permitted by regulatory authorities in drinking water and in GM feed.” [1]

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It’s The Interest, Stupid! Why Bankers Rule The World

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Truthout | November 8 2012 |Thanks, A.L.

Interest charges are a strongly regressive tax that the poor pay to the rich. A public banking system could realize savings up to 40 percent – allowing taxes to be cut, services increased and market stability created – with banks feeding the economy rather than feeding off it.

BankIn the 2012 edition of Occupy Money released last week, Professor Margrit Kennedy writes that a stunning 35 percent to 40 percent of everything we buy goes to interest. This interest goes to bankers, financiers, and bondholders, who take a 35 percent to 40 percent cut of our GDP. That helps explain how wealth is systematically transferred from Main Street to Wall Street. The rich get progressively richer at the expense of the poor, not just because of “Wall Street greed,” but because of the inexorable mathematics of our private banking system.

This hidden tribute to the banks will come as a surprise to most people, who think that if they pay their credit card bills on time and don’t take out loans, they aren’t paying interest. This, says Dr. Kennedy, is not true.

Tradesmen, suppliers, wholesalers and retailers all along the chain of production rely on credit to pay their bills. They must pay for labor and materials before they have a product to sell, and before the end-buyer pays for the product 90 days later. Each supplier in the chain adds interest to its production costs, which are passed on to the ultimate consumer. Dr. Kennedy cites interest charges ranging from 12 percent for garbage collection, to 38 percent for drinking water, to 77 percent for rent in public housing in her native Germany.

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Brandon Smith ~ The Socialization Of America Is Economically Impossible

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Alt Market| Thursday, July 5, 2012

I understand the dream of the common socialist. I was, after all, once a Democrat. I understand the disparity created in our society by corporatism (not capitalism, though some foolish socialists see them as exactly the same). I understand the drive and the desire to help other human beings, especially those in dire need, and the tendency to see government as the ultimate solution to all our problems. That said, let’s be honest; government is in the end just a tool used by one group or another to implement a particular methodology or set of principles. Unfortunately, what most socialists today don’t seem to understand is that no matter what strategies they devise, they will NEVER have control. And, those they wish to help will be led to suffer, because the establishment does not care about them, or you. The establishment does not think of what it can give, it thinks about what it can take. Socialism, in the minds of the elites, is a con-game which allows them to quarry the favor of the serfs, and nothing more.

There are other powers at work in this world; powers that have the ability to play both sides of the political spectrum. The money elite have been wielding the false left/right paradigm for centuries, and to great effect. Whether socialism or corporatism prevails, they are the final victors, and the game continues onward…

Knowing this fact, I find that my reactions to the entire Obamacare debate rather muddled. Really, I see the whole event as a kind of circus, a mirage, a distraction. Perhaps it is because I am first and foremost an economic analyst, and when looking at Obamacare and socialization in general, I see no tangibility. I see no threat beyond what we as Americans already face. Let me explain…

Socialism Is Failure

A country that feels the need to socialize has, in my view, already failed culturally. It is an open admission by the public that they are unwilling or unable to take responsibility for their own prosperity. If a society is not able to function in a healthy economic manner without the force of government (an abstract entity often manipulated by corrupt ideals) resulting in the creation of artificial and precarious balance using fiat stimulus and overt taxation, then the people of that country are not remotely independent and self sufficient. That is to say, only a nation filled with pathetic overgrown children would actually need government to enforce mandatory “charity”, welfare, healthcare, etc. A truly healthy society supported by strong and self sustainable individuals would not beg to be parented by government. If a country is so unbalanced as to stoop to socialism, then its ailments already extend far beyond anything government (even good government) could ever hope to cure.

Obamacare, its tentative application, and those who blindly support its introduction in the U.S., are an example of a weak people groveling for handouts they do not work for nor deserve. Socialism is defeat. It is a waving of the white flag by a society and the trading of that culture’s liberty for the illusion of fiscal security. It is the act of an adolescent and naïve populace groveling for an allowance from their “motherland”.

If one wants to consider what a socialized America would actually be like, why not examine the track record of the EU, a group of nations which have dabbled extensively in the principles of collective centralization and various levels of socialism, including the extremes of communism and fascism (and yes folks, both are derived from a socialist/collectivist foundation, despite what pseudo-intellectuals and propagandized academics will try and tell you).

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