Virtues & Vices of Social Security (pt.1)

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PART I

VIRTUES (Teleology) and VICES (deontology) of

PART I assesses economic value provided by Social Security (SS) since its inception in 1935 and paradoxical political values of opposition. This politics is not uniquely American. Rather, it is indigenous to debate waged in ancient Greece between the Sophists and Socrates, which was about physis and nomos as maybe first defined by Hesiod in the 700's BC: Affirming empirical materialist nomos, classical Sophists chose to ignore logical antecedents of deliberate reasoning as represented in the accounts and works of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle: Classical conservative values are those of the Sophists’ empirical mechanist material sides of life: they are stuck in an ideal orthodox nomos-based causal mechanism. Strangely, however, these conservatives called themselves classical liberals. The distinction between conservative and liberal was thereby confused. At least until subtle paradoxical meanings of mechanists deontology is appreciated. This anthology, section 250.1, represents THE CONCLUDED PURPOSE, PART 1, of DeYoung’s research document: Our Federal Savings Plan. by M. H. DeYoung All rights reserved.

TOPICAL GUIDE: PART 1 FOREWORD PREFACE Desiderata The Federalist Agenda Tautology (revisiting truth and reason’s veracity test) ‘social usage,’ ‘mercantilism’ Corporate mechanisms and the Whig scheme

3 5 5 10 12 14 17 21 Legal positivism 22 The ‘real’ cultural war is only partly economic 30 Liar paradox 32 Economic Paradox 34 tautological applications 36 ‘Rational Empiricism’ 38 inflation’s main cause 40 Categorical Imperative 43 economic incentives are important and necessary 44 254 Politics of Social Security 48 SS insurance comes of age 56 Inflation’s cost, put onto SS, must be recompensed 59 public apathy prevails 60 255 ’teflon-coated mechanist lies’ (‘Duty sans Purpose’) 76 256 Preserving mechanist Economic Baby 88 Capitalism’s propensities for growth 92 in a static economy there is no place for profit! 93 question of where profits come from. 93 257 Sweet Business Deals: Government’s contracted mechanisms 100 the state lives at the expense of every one. 103-4 questions raised by Bastiat remained unanswered. 104 Henry George’s basic criticism is moral, not mechanistic 106 The problem is of all unearned income 106 258 Population Changes 120 260 SS’s Economic Value 126 252 Comparative SS Applications 134 253 Pensions 181


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Only principle founded on logical necessity is temporally pure natural truth:1

necessary 3. Logic. a. that cannot be denied because denial would entail contradiction of what already has been established: a necessary truth. b. that cannot be avoided or escaped because based on a premise known to be true: a necessary inference. Definition requires that ‘necessary’ principle has logically coherent ‘trueness’ with all other truth. Sans logical ‘coherence,’ asserted or affirmed principles are of ‘fallacious predicate value’ and are, therefore, ‘false.’ Despite popular orthodox dogmatic belief, as in ‘Positivism’, ‘nihilism,’ ‘mechanism,’ or unitary materialism, for instance, are invariably, partly at least, pernicious forms of deceit, and lying. It follows, therefore, that mechanism’s determinism (unitary materialist belief that the universe behaves like a big machine), fails as logically necessary principle: cannot be a ‘true’ principle! Logically, mechanism is an example of Martin Heidegger’s irrationalism.2

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nomos. As, for instance, irrationally mechanized political duties mask pernicious economic endemism, which inflation phenomena, G. P. Brockway observed, was primarily caused by government’s mechanism-based economic license, he called the Bankers’ COLA, which despite irrationalism, government must ensure since political economy was officially asserted as a principle: states grant licenses to banks to charge interest on loans they make. This legally affirmed Bankers’ COLA is the consumer-cost of borrowed money, which is largely made possible from bank deposits. Added to this consumer-cost is the banks’ cost of using fiat money, which government created to serve the economic utility of commerce.*

Here begins the contest between “rationalism and irrationalism” that has been in progress to this day in every conceivable disguise and under the most contradictory titles. Irrationalism is only the weakness and failure of rationalism and hence itself a kind of rationalism. Irrationalism is a way out of rationalism, an escape which does not lead into the open but merely entangles us more in rationalism, because it gives rise to the opinion that we can overcome rationalism by merely saying no to it, whereas this makes its machinations the more dangerous by hiding them from view. [depicting endemism]

* Parrington observed that this deontological grant of license has resulted in government’s irrational giving to ‘Peter’ by taking from ‘Paul.’ Also, state government grants private businesses’ license to similarly mechanistically profit from economic exploitation to the extent that political economy will allow. Myriad personal misfortunes, which competitive economic mechanism deterministically has caused, entrap equally deserving economic losers: government’s paternalism, of mechanistic rewards to those who personally gain from economic exploits, unconstitutionally denied to the losers equal shares in the economic growth. 3 However, government’s growing public debt is officially excused, or ignored, because the cost of mechanized growth ultimately and inevitably, as was mechanistically designed, sifts downward onto wages-earned: onto society’s ‘Pauls,’ of Parrington’s above observation. Mechanistically, constitutional equal rights are irrationally compromised by government’s paternalistic licensing and grants [which economically are given precedence to citizenship].

Deontology often is irrationalism-based (is of temporal ideological nomos) while teleology is naturally rational (is logical ideology, of physis). Nomosbased duties and physis-based purposes, respectively, are (1) human affirmed ideological deontology that is paradoxical, or (2) logically of natural teleology that whether of physis or nomos is ideologically without paradox. Deontological duties, like taxes, often are materialist irrationalism-based, where paradoxical political interests constantly embroil the ideological

Government creates ubiquitous fiat money for the exchange of goods and services (a holistic teleological purpose). And it regulates political economy, setting rules of conduct (deontological duties). Government, therefore, ultimately, directly is responsible for causing inflation’s economic endemism. When fairly used, money is the nation’s utility for exchanging and distributing goods and services (which Adam Smith had defined as a nation’s wealth). But when unfairly misused, it fundamentally,


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mechanistically causes inflationary endemism: when the intended utility of money fallaciously is deemed as nomos-defined personal property (TREASURE rather than the NATION’S WEALTH), political economy’s results as fallaciously, mechanistically (unnaturally) fit Parrington’s ‘PeterPaul’ paradox. Unitary materialist Political Economy, which deliberately conflates the human essence reality, is a nomos-based ‘consequent,’ that classically, fallaciously became affirmed as the nation’s antecedent economic principle: judiciously it was legalized to serve mechanized, deontological ‘duties’ rather than teleological ‘purposes.’ Political Economy’s privatized paradoxical nomos-based mechanisms, of the official legal irrationalism, consider that the Social Security system’s teleology threatens their paternal mechanist grants. But, paradoxical incoherences, as inflation, display mechanism’s irrationalism. Natural consequents irrationally asserted as necessary principles became government’s vices that, politically were also made SS’s vices. PREFACE When colonials demanded the Bill of Rights, they intended to curb the clasical mercantilisms deprivations: tyrannous mechanistic duties that had Desiderius effects, and to leave behind them, they immigrated to America. Colonials rejected the proposed Constitution’s discreet political intent to return American culture to conditions they had left. Desiderata, is prose found where its unknown author had put it, in an old church of Fifteenth Century America.

Desiderata Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you

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compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy. Still, in less than a century, Whigs culturally returned America to seventeenth century conservatism. They classically, covertly, affirmed myriad irrational tenets as the antecedent principles of privatized economic mechanisms that transgressed natural human rights. Coeval of organic Constitutions, edicts and law, human rights were only influential so far as they supported the economic mechanisms. About mechanist philosophy, G. P. Brockway wrote:4

We find mankind liberated from spooks and spirits, from lords and priests, by becoming mechanized. Once the universe was running like


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a clock, there was nothing for it but to fit us to a wheel in the works -perhaps a greater thing than a cog, but mechanical nevertheless. For us to be fit for this function, psychology had to subject us to mechanical controls. Or, as J. W. Miller said, we had first to lose our souls, then our minds; and finally, with the behaviorists, consciousness. Economic man is a prime example of this remarkable servomechanism. The covert fallacious official policies are thereby politically applied to nomos-defined personal property of Brahmans’ [mechanisms, capital, machinery, labor (slavery), . . . ], and they deliberately intended to transpose constitutional teleological necessary purposes into nomos-based duties, causing myriad Desiderius to adversely effect natural human sovereignties and rights. Henry Clay had the economic mechanist vision, but men like John C. Calhoun rhetorically (ideologically) provided irrational dogmatic affirmations that appealed to society: Whigs designed the organic American political economy to paternalistically, in legal accounting deontologies of economy’s accumulation function, cater to business and corporate property interests. Calhoun rationalized to affirm that US democracy was patterned on Greek democracy, which justified slavery: considering wage-earners the slaves of the American mechanized political economy. Parrington gave this sample of Calhoun’s prolific and effective orations. 5

The true origin of government, he asserted in common with John Adams, is to be found in practical necessity . . . It has always been found necessary to lodge coercive powers in certain hands as a social protection against individual aggression; and since all men are impelled by self interest, political systems are determined in form and scope by this universal instinct. Without government there is anarchy; with government there is potential tyranny. [Reactive terrorism must now be evaluated in the light of government-sponsored tyranny.] Speaking of Jefferson Davis, who to northern conservatives was a terrorist, Parrington, bares the underbelly of northern US irrationalism:6

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The president of the Confederacy may have been an unfortunate civil leader, but the slanders that so long clung to his name are only worthy of the gutter. The sin that he was led into was not counted a sin in his southern decalogue; it was the sin, not of secession, but of imperialism--a sin common to all America in those drunken times when the great West invited exploitation. --Is American society still afflicted by division caused by private economic interests in gold’s glitter, timber, grazing, recreation and such on lands whose proprietor is the commonwealth, i.e., by the special interests of private sector businesses to exploit the commonwealth’s resources? --What is the holistic commonweal interest?

In the year 1825 three streams of tendency were flowing through the [American mind], rising from different sources, incompatible in spirt and purpose, strong in their diverse appeals; and in the end the major current was certain to engulf the lesser. The humanitarianism of Virginia, the individualism of the new West, and the imperialism of the Black Belt might seem to mingle their waters for a time, but there would be confusions of thought and diversity of counsels until one or another had worn a deeper channel through which the dominant opinion might run. There could be no more fascinating study in the economics of political theory than the changing mind of the South during the critical decades from 1825 to 1850, as it followed the course determined by its peculiar institution. . . . It is unintelligent to charge upon southern politicians a lack of consistency---to point out that after 1820 Calhoun reversed himself on every major political principle. It was true of Calhoun, as it was true of Webster and true of Clay. In a rapidly changing America, with economics in a state of flux, men were no longer free political agents, guiding themselves by the fixed stars of accepted theory: they were borne like corks on the current of the times, and their inconsistency is the surest evidence that


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they spoke for their constituents. The North and the South were at the parting of the ways, and if southern imperialism created for its needs a philosophy of particularism, it was met by a counter philosophy of nationalism created for its needs by northern capitalism, which likewise was following the path of its manifest destiny. R. L. Heilbroner wrote about economic fallacies with this comment: 7

. . . The notions of the great economists were world-shaking and their mistakes nothing short of calamitous. ---Are policies less calamitous when officially made by the irrationalism of government authorities as prompted by economists? ---Do issues confront America in 1996 (or now in 2002) that resulted from errant American politics that influenced the official policies of Imperialism and Manifest Destiny? ---Are these politics perpetuated as our nation’s Foreign Policy? --Is the policy of Preemtive action (war) related to Imperialism and Manifest Destiny? The political debate about a patient’s right to sue, for instance, boils down to whether this or that economic entity is given official immunity from law suits (‘legal immunity’ as affirmed by federalist classical Justice is, therefore, exposed as fallacious irrationalism): unequal sovereignties and rights in this organic debate, are routinely politically nomosly decided? As similarly, in affirmed mercantilism, the economic (accumulation) function of business is granted license to exploit consumption, management to exploit labor, bankers (insurers) to the exploit money’s (goods and services) utility, . . .: Irrational fallacies! , All. By what right or sovereignty are fallaciously affirmed vices of dogmatic biases justified? For instance, by what equality of right or sovereignty can capitalists claim profits produced by labor? (Schumpeter’s economic ‘circular flow’ analysis, provided later, is about this.) The answer is this: politically irrational inequalities are legally affirmed by a Federalist Supreme Court, fallaciously supplanting rationally ‘antecedent’ principles (which by affirming logical ‘consequents’ to replace the ‘antecedent’ principles) make irrationalism (fallacious consequents) the

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principle of common law. Politically, what apes and is inculcated as science (i.e., is Supposed to be Devoid of ideology), and legally then justifies the ideology, is devoid of natural logical antecedence, robbing systemic necessity and coherence. It cannot be ‘true!’: maybe art, not science.8 The Federalist Agenda, as Parrington noted, provides an example of irrational sophistry, which St. John had said was a form of lying. Logical tautology is commonly officially denied. Particularly, Federalist Justice dogmatically fails to test for logical tautology: as only briefly mentioned in dictionaries and encyclopedias. Federalists and Whigs, particularly, might not have understood tautology’s veracity test of truth and reason: which logically came afterward? And had research not made mathematics language applicable, tautological veracity testing still could not now be understood. If interested in truth, whenever paradoxes are confronted, tautological testing is critically important. " Belief-based opinions, sans tautological testing, represent sophistries of lying and politics thrives on sophistry.9

[Hamilton’s] notorious comment -- which the American democrat has never forgiven him, “the people! -- the people is a great beast!” -- was characteristically frank. . . . He was at pains, therefore, as a practical statesman, to dress his views in a garb more seemly to plebeian prejudices [irrationally, Hamilton affirmed consequents that politically fit with dogmatic plebeian biases], and like earlier Tories he paraded an ethical justification for his Toryism. The current Federalist dogma of the divine right of justice -- ‘vox justiciae vox dei’ -- was at hand to serve his purpose and he made free use of it. . . .

"

The study of mathematics is the study of clear logical reasoning. H. W. Turnbull gave this account of the logical test for solving paradoxes: “How to face these paradoxes is an urgent problem,” he wrote. “[Brouwer traced] the presence of paradoxes to the use of indirect proofs, or more precisely to what is called in logic the law of the excluded middle.” And, he concluded, that which is fallacious is false because it is illogically irrational.


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He was frankly a monarchist, and he urged the [fallacious] monarchical principle with Hobbesian logic. “The principle chiefly intended to be established is this -- that there must be a permanent ‘will’.” “There ought to be a principle in government capable of resisting the popular current.” [In ‘Works, Vol. II, p 415] The only effective way of keeping democratic factionalism within bounds, Hamilton was convinced, lay in the erection of a powerful chief magistrate, who “ought to be hereditary, and have so much power, . . .. “ He devoted himself to the business of providing all possible checks upon the power of the democracy.” This Federalist agenda, as Parrington noted, provides an example of this sophistry that continues fallaciously to influence the U. S. Judiciary: St. John called this sophist proclivity a form of lying. Parrington cited the Federalist-Whig proclivity to irrationally, fallaciously ‘deny antecedents’ and ‘affirm consequents’:10

Massachusetts . . . property interests were as secure as any old Federalist could have wished. Gentlemen of principle and property were still in control of the state; and if less emphasis was laid on principle [physis] and more on property [nomos] -- if less regard seemed to be paid to gentlemen of breeding and manners, and more to assertive self-seeking -- business was no less secure than in the good old days, and its profits were greater. . . . Provided of course that the Constitution should follow population and safeguard business interests against . . .the menace of particularism [Agrarian

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the lineal heir of the old Federalism, but it denied its philosophical patrimony. It substituted expediency for the old economic realism, and began and ended intellectually bankrupt.. . . aside from petty antagonism to Jackson -- was the vague assumption that the wellbeing of the American people was dependent on governmental patronage; the belief that each economic group and section must receive its special favor, and that through tariffs and bonuses and internal improvements the country as a whole must prosper. Of this principle of special favors -- a return to the seventeenth century from which eighteenth century liberalism was a reaction -- the American System of Henry Clay was the chief expression, and it remains the most significant bequest of the Whig party to our political history. Tautology 11

By a tautology we mean a statement, which has the truth value ‘true’ for all possible truth values of its components. . . . Compound statements with all truth values ‘true’ are called tautologies and represent valid argument forms. The implication formed by the conjunction of all the premises as the antecedent and the conclusion as the consequent that form a valid argument form, will always result in a tautology. Testing compound statements to see whether they are tautologies is thus equivalent to testing an argument for validity.

political democratic particularism politically opposed the nomos based Whig affirmed ‘business interests’ legal principle, which applied holistically as the ‘national interest’(which led to national policy that protects business interests anywhere); this political particularism was called antinomy, i.e., anti nomos]. . .

John N. Fujii gave three classical valid arguments (a, b, and c) and two invalid arguments (d, and e) in which P = compound premises, Q =

. In the hour of peril, principles go by the board. The Whig party was

consequent, - = denial, = therefore.


PREFACE (a) Modus ponens P6Q P

Q

(b) modus tollens

P

(c) hypothetical syllogism

P6Q -Q

P6Q Q6R

- P

(d): invalid classical argument that ‘affirms the consequent.’ P6Q Q

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P6R (e): invalid classical argument that ‘denies the antecedent.’ P6Q

-P -Q

(d) Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent, and (e) Fallacy of Denying the Antecedent, Fujii warned, are irrational argument forms. With all forms of ‘hypothesizing a tautological argument,’ irrational argument form (d), Affirming Consequents, is the most common form of fallacy. And, ‘Affirming natural Consequents,’ is a pseudo philosophic proclivity that sophistry has made intrinsic of nomos-based dogmatic belief. By definition, each P and Q is a statement that when written in the ‘if,’ ‘then,’ compound statement format, the ‘if’ statement is the antecedent, and the ‘then’ statement is the consequent. ‘Divine right’ dogma was imported with the colonization of America. Along with it by fallacious irrationalism came a form of nihilism that Auguste Comte had dubbed positivism that was then preached religiously as ‘the gospel of reason.’ Particularly, Calvinist minds were closed to reasoned thoughts about metaphysical noumena, and the supreme noumenon (intelligence), the natural antecedent to all that is. This natural God, which religiously the positivist ‘gospel of reason’ denies, therefore, became the nomos denied natural supreme necessary principle of all that is.

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When scripture recorded that God was a jealous God and would have no other before him, scripture correctly warned of the irrationalism of asserting natural consequents in replacement of the supreme and necessary noumenal principle: for humans’ ‘good,’ God is inalterably jealous as the ultimate logical noumenal principle. . social usage While officially the Constitutional Convention neither adopted nor rejected nomos-based irrationalism, dogmatic deterministic unitary mechanist materialism eventually was returned as the nation’s dominant influence of legislation and administration: the nation’s Operating Plan: that Whigs dubbed The American System of Political Economy. And, while our Operating Plan is irrationally based on dogma, i.e., it is nomos-based, the American political flux is dynamic and flexible, to at times polarize around the physis-based human sovereignty, of ‘we the people.’ (Constitutional suffrage is physis-based while gerrymandering and orchestrated initiative and recall, as irrationally based on expedient legalities, as ‘property is a dimension of free speech,’ for instance, are nomos-based.) The physis-based will of temporal human nature is complex, if not erratic: capable to affirm dogmatic doctrine and mechanism as based on unitary materialism, which is determinism based, but can also reason to mitigate effects by ‘social usage,’ as Roger Williams had observed. Parrington wrote this:12

The state, then, is society working consciously through experience and reason, to secure for the individual citizen the largest measure of freedom and well-being. . . . But if sovereignty inheres in the majority will, what securities remain for individual and minority rights? What fields lie apart from the inquisition of the majority, and by what agencies shall the engrossing of power be thwarted? The replies to such questions, so fundamental to every democratic program, he discovers in a variety of principles; to the former in an adaptation of the spirit of medieval society that restricted political functions by social usage, and to the latter by the application of local home rule,


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the initiative and the referendum, and the recall. " His creative conception was an adaptation of . . . corporation, of a group of persons voluntarily joining for specific purposes under the law. Mutual Insurance is a form of Williams’ ‘social usage.’ It is uniquely American and it is democratic, i.e., is physis-based. Social Security is a form of Mutual Insurance and is, therefore, also ‘social usage.’ The U. S. Operating Plan is politics about economics, which fundamentally is about life’s substantial needs (the positivist argument is particularly convincing as regards’ life’s substantial needs, if only it would recognize the natural equality of human rights). It embroils the paradoxical influences of mind with emotion, values with passions, will with substance . . .. Irrationizing human reasoning, is temporally inevitable and Aristotle’s spectrum of virtue applies to the resulting paradoxical effects: virtue is where reasoned principle (axiomatic temporal truth is found). * * Aristotle defined Virtue as the middle ground between the vices: i.e., the mean of excess and deficiency. At the extreme of excess, controlling by commanding materialities and their deterministic values is the inevitable irrational cause of collective and collusive economic rationalization that Adam Smith warned posed the greatest threat to universal benefits of the nature-based, i.e., atomistic and independently constituted ‘market system,’ he carefully explicated as the foundation of the evolving natural economic revolution. While Smith’s observations are universally evident, our Whig ‘conservatives’ (‘White Rabbits’ of our wonderland) have not subscribed to his warning about concentration and monopoly. Economic Determinism, as based on Hobbesian deductive reasoning, fallaciously affirms ‘mechanism’ as its antecedent causal principle. This empiricist mechanist view of causality, as fallaciously affirmed, surely has caused economic monopoly and concentration. And it also poses the ultimate cause of systemic economic

"

What irrationalism has done to democratic philosophy, it has also subverted the purpose of initiative and recall.

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failure. This deductive reasoning from fallacious principles that tautologically are ‘false’ is undoubtedly a form of amorality (Heidegger’s irrationalism) as those who rationalize to engage it neither know truth (about faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty toward God and humanity) nor virtue of ‘true’ mitigating axiomatic principle. While the U.S. Strategic Plan is based on the categorical imperative of teleological ethics (giving of self in the sense of acting together to secure common values and purposes), the Operating Plan is based on individually taking and securing what we all want as our own property. The difference between giving and taking is, of course, diabolical and paradoxical. While strategy is each individual’s responsibility, about preserving every individual’s self evident inalienable rights, operationally speaking, we expect selfishness and we want ‘absolutism’ with ownership, contracts, and such. Often we confuse inalienable strategic rights with our absolute wants involving property ownership. In this, our wants often qualify as extreme vices on the spectrum of virtue: they intend to legally nullify others’ physisbased sovereignty. In this, our wants often abuse Natural Law while they violate no manmade law of the land. Therefore, we need to be clear about definition and purpose. Christ may have said it best: man doth not live by bread only. About political economy, we especially need clear and balanced reason when enacting laws that define the constitutional administrations of government, with its licensed agents (which includes all individuals and organizations), codifications and regulations. Particularly, as we officially consider adopting or licensing forms of mercantilism, for instance, we should consider the nature of our ‘fictitious legal person’ corporations, that official agencies of state government licensed to act as humans. Nature’s God neither authorized nor created them and according to Nature’s Law, they have no inalienable rights, as right to free speech, which they often buy. E. K. Hunt wrote about Veblen’s property rights,13

Private property had its origins in brute coercive force and was perpetuated both by force and by institutional and ideological legitimization. [irrationalism is never ‘true’ antecedent principle.]


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Hunt, concluded the results of ‘internal improvement’ policies, 14

The passage of the Sherman Act and the establishment of various government regulatory agencies were ostensibly aimed at controlling these giant corporations. In practice, however, government tended to aid these giants in consolidating and stabilizing their massive empires. With the lawful impunity of states’ rights, corporations engage in competitive and collusive forms of neo-mercantilism. We should not only recognize this, we should be concerned that large multinational corporations are today, larger than our nation was and that as ‘fictitious legal individuals,’ they represent the greatest threat to nullifying individual sovereignty. They represent Leviathan entities, nations that make their own rules, we might say, with which human entities individually cannot compete. The following describes mercantilism:15

Mercantilism was an economic policy pursued by almost all of the trading nations in the late sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries, which aimed at increasing a nation’s wealth and power by encouraging the export of goods in return for gold. [gold and wealth are not identical values]

As part of the mercantilist program, individual governments promoted large investments in export industries; built high tariff walls to restrict imports, which could be produced domestically; restricted exports of domestic raw materials, which could be used by the domestic industry; interfered with the emigration of skilled workers; encouraged immigration of skilled workers; and, in several cases, prohibited sales of precious metals to foreigners. . . . Adam Smith accused mercantilists of not being able to distinguish between ‘wealth’ and what they called ‘treasure,’ pointing out that the accumulation of ‘treasure’ is merely instrumental to the acquisition of ‘wealth.’ [in Smith’s view, wealth was consumable and usable goods] Not only, should licensing corporate involvement in ‘mercantilism’ concern

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us, we should also be concerned about their organic political involvement, speech, political contributions, and covert authorities. * * Whether from foreign countries where they conduct corporate business or in the sense that they represent something foreign to human sovereignty, corporations’ political contributions to political parties are foreign, if not alien (This reasoned sentiment applies to all organic entities, particularly Political Action Committees and organic religion). Exposing more about corporations, the following about human-like rights licensed to them by mechanist paternalistic laws, are recalled: 16

Following the Civil war, Congress passed the first Civil Rights Act. The States then ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The sponsoring political flux of this action overtly appealed to confer citizenship and equal rights on American blacks. This Amendment also included the famous due process clause, which prohibited any state government from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The covert appeal favored corporate entities; despite the Amendment, American blacks were thrust into situations worse than slavery. Most court decisions based on the Amendment involved corporations instead of American blacks. Corporations were persons, the courts ruled. As persons, corporations were protected under the due process clause. The reality of the covert appeal was as follows: each time a state government attempted to curb the extravagant excesses of corporations by passing regulatory legislation, the federal courts would invalidate the legislation because it violated the due process clause. State governments became powerless before the growing strength of large corporations. Knowing that they could go to almost any length in pursuit of profits without fear of state government controls, corporations thrived.


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There is overt appeal and covert appeal in all legislation which enables Economic Determinism. Government paternalism, in sophistries, placates human needs but mostly favors the covert corporate appeals. ---Do laws, which enable corporate Economic Determinism, sponsor economic justice or injustice? Attempts to find answers conceived such as these results: 17

Professor Edwin H. Sutherland, once known as the dean of American criminologists and former president of the American Sociological Association, conducted a thorough and scholarly investigation of the extent to which corporate executives were involved in criminal behavior. He took the 70 largest nonfinancial corporations, with only a few additions and deletions (due to special circumstances), and traced their criminal histories through official histories and official records. One corporation had 50 decisions against it, and the average per corporation was 14. Sixty of the corporations had been found guilty of restraining trade, 53 of infringements, 44 of unfair labor practices, 28 of misrepresentation in advertising, 26 of giving illegal rebates, and 43 of a variety of other offences. There were a total of 307 individual cases of illegal restraint of trade, 97 of illegal misrepresentation, 22 of infringement, 158 of unfair labor practices, 66 of illegal rebates, and 130 of other offenses (Lundberg, pp. 131132). A U. S. Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce, under the chairmanship of Senator Estes Kefauver, probed the connections of business and organized crime. Senator Kefauver, . . . later wrote a book based on those hearings. Although he emphasized that there was no evidence to link most big corporations with organized crime, he was nevertheless greatly alarmed at the extent of such connections. [Kefauver wrote] “I cannot

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overemphasize the danger that can lie in the muscling into legitimate fields by hoodlums . . . There was too much evidence before us of unreformed hoodlums gaining control of a legitimate business; then utilizing all his old mob tricks . . .” In 1960 Robert Kennedy . . . published “The Enemy Within”. He wrote: “We found that with the present-day emphasis on money and material goods many businessmen were willing to make corrupt ‘deals’ with dishonest union officials in order to gain competitive advantage or to make a few extra dollars . . . We came across more than fifty companies and corporations that had acted improperly -and in many cased illegally -- in dealings with labor unions . . .” Disturbing as it may sound, more often the business people with whom we come in contact -- and this includes some representatives of our largest corporations -- were uncooperative. (Kennedy, p. 216) Ferdinand Lundberg has described the extent to which corporate leaders and management receive either very light punishment or no punishment at all when they become involved in improprieties or illegalities. Among the many cases he cites is that of “the bribe of $750,000 by four insurance companies that sent Boss Pendergast of Missouri to jail, later to be pardoned by President Truman . . . It was almost ten years before the insurance executives went to jail. There was, too, the case of Martin Manton who was convicted of accepting a bribe of $250,000 from agents of the defendant when he presided over a case charging exorbitant salaries were improperly paid to officers of the American Tobacco Company. While the attorney for the company was disbarred from federal courts, the assistant to the company president (who made the arrangements) was soon thereafter promoted to vice president: a good boy [sereving well his corporate deontolotical duties] .” (Lundberg, p. 135) Empirical evidence fails to justify claims that corporations (acting as legal


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persons) are ethical or moral. This evidence justifies Parrington’s analysis, however, that the ultimate utility of accumulating corporate capital is the privatization of hoards of capital converted into privately owned money hoards. Corporate mechanisms and the Whig scheme: Parrington called it “an ingenious scheme to ‘milk the cow’ and distribute the ‘milk’ to those who superintended the ‘milking.’” Kurt Vonnegut observed the same but in these words: 18

What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without senses of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations, and made it all their own?

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testifying to ‘tell the truth.’ Then, in this context, consider the amoral corporate duty-based influence on, for instance the assistant to the company president cited above. Prosecuting corporations for crime is impractical if possible; the strictest penalty, which seems never to happen, is disbandment. This tautologically ‘false,’ court determined legal creation, however, which maybe is nihilistically ‘true,’ is ‘positively’ paradoxical: 20

Corporations were persons, the courts ruled. As persons, corporations were protected under the due process clause. About conservative dogmatic belief in positivism, however, this legal fiction has no ‘positive’ reality: its essence or gist (sum) having only legal justification. And, Parrington’s analysis is again on point: 21

A perpetual existence maybe affords to ‘fictitious person’ corporate entities and with commensurate debts to society the greatest economic paternalism: the usurpation of natural birthrights and sovereignties.

The Whig party was the lineal heir of the old Federalism, but it denied its philosophical patrimony. It substituted expediency for the old economic realism, and began and ended intellectually bankrupt.

Ultimately, our troubles are due to dogma and deduction; we find no new truth because we take some venerable but questionable proposition as the indubitable starting point, and never think about putting this assumption itself to a test of observation or experiment.

‘Legal positivism’ confirms the Whig’ applied dogmatic ‘Positivism’ to mechanist acquisitiveness, as it expediently served mechanist ideology:22

Will Durant In our politically economic world, of modernized Hobbesian Leviathan design, economic security depends on the human mass, for wages earned, selling their services to fictitious person corporations. Increasingly, for the average worker, corporate life is more tenuous and insecure. Orthodox truth is dogma-based ‘positive’ empiricism (experience-based rationalization befitting acquisitive wage-based duties, as assigned, i.e., mechanist ‘contingent’ acquisitive values in logos), which Plato’s Opinion Form depicted: believed orthodoxy rather than antecedently rational necessity, Corporate organs are legally created 19 to accumulate property, make contracts and file law suits as legally acting fictitious persons, sans natural human faculties, corporations often sponsor, and law has sanctioned, erosions of truth, justice, and morality. For instance, about suborning perjury, consider the impossibility of a corporation, sans human representation,

Legal positivism, intending to oppose natural law theory, denies any ‘necessary connection between law and morality’. Central theses among a loose cluster: (1) law is definable and explainable without evaluative predicates or presuppositions; (2) the law (e.g. of England now) is identifiable from exclusively factual sources (e.g. legislation, judicial precedents). Some versions deny that there is knowable moral truth. Most understand positive law as products of will, some as imperatives. John Finnis Irrational value predicate transmutations in Congressperson’s logos, aggregated, had preceded an authoritative transmutation away from moral values of government’s constitutional logos : when their official actions accorded with ‘positive laws,’ the official practice of ‘positivism’ (Western form of nihilism) resulted. Their Ethics and morality were standards expected, but for self were the simple nihilist nothingness of self denial. Results, positively lacked the predicate truth value, ‘true.’ Morality and


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patriotism were feigned. But, as pawns of deliberate positive rationalization called ad hominem, they quite unconsciously discounted their own temporal human proclivities, which for reasons intrinsic of temporal humanity’s nature, all humans invariably can never satisfy the expected ‘positivist’ morality, as the oft repeated evidence of orthodox prideful actions show. Still, corporations are granted legal rights to own property, execute business contracts, influence legislation, infringe upon natural human consented sovereignty. And because corporations are legally granted a perpetual existence, they are destined mechanistically eventually to literally ‘own’ the world: but only in the fallacious sense that ‘owning’ property necessarily hinges on legality and not on human’s natural rights. And, therefore, corporate ownership is not coeval of nature, it is only contingent temporal legality. With the legal imposition of the conflated materialist unitary duality (as Hegel’s dialectical materialism) onto democraticsovereignty, Courts have imposed on society by legal affirmations of the mechanist paradoxical confusion, conflict, and tyranny. By essential sum’s characteristics, intangible responsibility (metaphysical and eternal) denied as unitary material acquisitiveness (tangible, or real, and temporal) was made legal, the conflated duality, as legally imposed, might be distinguished, as physis denied, and nomos emphasized: Humans naturally endowed with this duality are frustrated. And, while fictional corporate entities are legally designed, with only nomosbased characteristics, it was patent legal fallacy, which granted physis-based human rights to the legal fiction. " And this corporate legal advantage is both recognized and abused: corporations are legally accountable only for tangible characteristics. When the courts consider that corporations are persons, and as persons they are protected under the due process clause, all aspect of sum, as ethics and morality, are compromised and thereby confusion, conflict, and strife among humans are made inevitable. By legalized due

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Also naturally diabolical, however, is that human life has an inevitable natural end while a corporate life is licensed to be perpetual.

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process, corporations are mechanistically irrationally licensed to dominate the intangible aspects and property of employed human’s. And then we pause to wonder: why humans, with natural aping proclivities, then act so irresponsibly in life with others? C o n s i d e r , f o r i n s t a nc e , t h e institution of marriage. Vows taken in pure love are physis-based, the responsible aspects of which, to each other and those procreated, are supposed to be understood, but mostly because of diversities in age, maturity, communication, education, and legality cannot be understood beyond a constant Desiderius (fictions have no such natural feelings). The tangible realities and laws of marriage are nomos-based and the temporal edicts and legalities must be kept. When society formally legally acts to standardize the fused rights in marriage by the conflated duality of legal practice -- as to liberties, license, powers, prerogatives and privileges -humans inevitably must discriminate. However argued and despite honorable and ethical intents, society appears to violate the individual sovereignty of some with favor to others. When society sanctions marriage expressly to foster physis-based vows and responsibilities, particularly involving procreation (which is the primary physis-based natural responsibility laden purpose of marriage), then singles of the same sex cannot naturally qualify for society’s sanction. However clearly responsibilities inherent of procreation are defined to avoid all nomos-based favoritism that embroils the argument for same sex unions,’ there can be no valid analogy to the marriage vow’s procreation. One might note that the partnership inherent of physis-based marriage involves three principal entities: (1) a particular male, (2) a particular female, and (3) the whole of society. Each natural entity has implied natural antecedent principle interests and responsibilities, particularly as regards each new sovereign entity of procreation. With these naturally implied responsibilities understood, and society’s sanction of the natural antecedent principles, human entities become recognized for being categorical imperatively love-based, rather than as prejudice or favoritismbased, which capitalism sponsors. In democracy, favoritism and prejudice sans natural love-based responsibility is unwarranted: paradoxical, it


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damages leveled-sovereignty. Favoritism is unworthy of democracy. LOVE is emotional discriminating preference for objects of one’s affection: When preference is passion and the object a person, a natural exchange of visceral emotion entails. But a child’s love for its parent is more pure. Pure since neither reason nor opinion, has affected it. In this purer sense of naturally inherent cosmic noumenon , love is the natural catalyst of human emotion and cogito: where falsehoods are of truth, as hate is of love. While, love commonly discriminates emotionally (is not rational), pure love is a consistent, ‘necessary’ Sinderesis 23 aspect of the supreme LOGOS, therefore, an integral of pure truth’s nature : in this pureness, love is rational and probity describes it. Pure Truth (about Plato’s Divided Line, which C. H. Monson, Jr. suggests is ‘intelligible reality’24 ) is found in the cognitive realms of reason. Politics, however, is found in Plato’s material-related ‘visible’ realms of emotion. Love, therefore, embraces all Plato’s reality forms. However, Monson reminds that to Plato, ‘intelligible reality’ was most important. The prose, Desiderata, portrays nicely emotion’s spectrum in the temporal state of life. And fiction has no part in the reality of it. The contemporary concern with same sex marriage clearly results from paradoxes of nomos-based mechanist laws that reward some by compromising others. Still, natural responsibilities mitigate the sanctioning of rights and privileges of marriages that procreate! Anyway, marriages do not always get the advantages: tax laws often discriminate with favor to single individuals. And, society has no specially implied responsibilities in same sex unions. Still, we might ponder answers to the question: ---- without procreation, what natural value does marriage provide to society? If marriage is become temporally conveniently based in a conflated unitary materialist form, making it essentially a contractual arrangement without natural responsibilities, same-sex-unions are then its equivalent. As Pogo observed while seeing himself in the mirror, “I have seen the enemy, it is me!”

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To the extent that births are occurring outside of marriage, then society’s natural responsibilities are shifted onto only two natural entities: mothers and society. Constitutional exemptions specified in the Bill of Rights intend to guarantee that human individuals have an equal sovereign importance and influence in their individual situations and circumstances. ---To what extent should the Bill of Rights apply to ‘fictitious legal person’ corporate entities? To organizations generally? ---To what extent should goals of an Operating Plan nullify purposes of a necessary Strategic Plan? ---Do political economy’s privately owned mechanisms’ organically set by affirmation, the deontological ‘duties’ of their employees in compromise to the strategic antecedent principles of constitutional society, thereby, aborting strategic constitutionally specified purposes? By exercising free speech, assembly and suffrage, all mature humans in citizenship constitutionally have equal rights to actualize the commonwealth’s sovereign intent for government and the law in all its mechanisms. Still, in matters embroiling the duality of sovereignty, where mechanist materialism reigns supreme, nomos-based laws, i.e., laws that representatives base in classical custom or tradition, as sponsored by those of ‘treasure’ and dogmatic positivism or determinism, rather than what is ‘good,’ ‘natural’ or ‘right,’ must inevitably discriminate and thereby violate the Constitution’s intent. For instance, ‘property’ ownership, without mutual consent of all owners, a multiple ownership contract is difficult if possible, and those, to whom laws governing contracts deny ownership, will always desire another’s property. And, those of ‘treasure’ will always desire the prime parcels. Public held corporations bridge the contractual multiple ownership’ legal problems by nullifying constitutional human rights. ---However, should fictitious legal person corporate entities that are perpetual and allowed greater access to capitalization from the nation’s central banking system, be allowed to control society by controlling property? ---What government’s constitutional paternalism rationally can


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license corporate property to legal forms of free speech? Did the Supreme Court rationally consider corporations’ legally granted advantages when they decided that propertied corporate treasure spent to deliver a message or influence an action represents a form of constitutional free speech? Was the Supreme Court’s award of legal human status to corporations irrational as necessarily regards natural responsibilities and Law? In his most recent book, Carl Sagan referred to the meta-mind -- undoubtedly referring to the cosmic side of man’s spiritual origin. Is there a meta-ego side to corporate origins? Churches and public works, required land and facilities when a noumenal ‘corporate soul’ provided the legal means for not-for profit organs to own property in the name of the ‘corporate soul.’ Roger Williams spoke about ‘social usage’ with this medieval corporate notion in mind. Eventually on this legal basis, nomos-based organic enterprise, at the state level of government, gained licencing of private ‘for-profit’ corporate enterprise: the public ‘good’ was affirmed as the complement of corporate profits: noumenon was legally conflated! The concern about preserving democratic-sovereignty is a constant concern, the physis-based answers to which empirically are always naturally founded in the temporal phenomena of life " , as the natural span of human life, for instance, that begins and ends with human individuals independently breathing. Rights and justice of future generations depend on temporal life’s ‘necessary’ aspects: ‘true’ knowledge and temporally usufruct material opportunities. Dogmatic ‘positivist’ fallacious affirmations that yield consequent-based laws logically abort ‘principle necessities,’ as usufruct and sovereignty.

What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Mt. 16: 26

"

The spiritual part of which is of natural noumenon: with no beginning or end.

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---Do corporations, legally granted perpetuity, pose the greatest threat to human unalienable rights and justice, which sovereign are the US constitutional reparation of future generations? 25

Locke deliberately employs the idea of the 'state of Nature' rather than the 'law of Nature.' He insists not upon uncovering any 'laws' of nature (i.e., human nature) but rather upon the capacity of human 'reason' to [logically] promulgate a code of civil law that is the 'constitution' of a just political society. . . . Human reason alone was 'universal' among human beings, and by its application would men be able to develop a concept of equivalence linked to necessary justice . . . The 'State of Nature' is that which is governed by a 'natural' law or 'right Rule of Reason' (i.e., the admission of the equivalence of others). [While] not out to prove the existence of any law of nature . . . ' [Locke radically] assert[s categorically imperative natural law] in the contemporary,' to 'claim' that it is true by the admission of any individual that his or her requirements of liberty and freedom must be admitted to others, 'unless' the form of political society under which they live is unjust. Craig Thomas Thomas then commented to explain Locke’s reasoning: 26

The right to property is defined as an essential or basic right for the purpose of defining the sovereignty of the individual and the necessity to guarantee his rights and property 'against' others, 'not' so as to allow him to acquire, to control, to achieve domination through [accumulated treasures of] landed property. Every Man has a 'Property' in his own 'Person.' Men living together 'according to reason' are properly in the 'State of Nature.' No individual has a right or power over the life of another. . . . Force without Right, upon a man's person,


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makes a State of War. . . . It is a 'right,' a possession of each individual which must be protected together with his other freedoms, protected from others who are in a 'State of War' against the individual . . . He that in the State of Nature, 'would take away the Freedom,' that belongs to anyone in that State, must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take away everything else, that 'Freedom' being the foundation of all the rest. V. L. Parrington called Locke’s philosophy of individual sovereignty ‘The Glorious Revolution.’ Locke’s philosophy influenced Adam Smith’s postulations for economy in time that antedated its definition:27

One would think that in a world torn by economic problems, a world that constantly worries about economic affairs and talks of economic issues, the great economists would be as familiar as the great philosophers or statesmen. Instead they are only shadowy figures of the past, and the matters they so passionately debated are regarded with a kind of distant awe. Economics, it is said, is undeniably important, but it is cold and difficult, and best left to those who are at home in abstruse realms of thought. . . . The notions of the great economists were worldshaking and their mistakes nothing short of calamitous. More important, Locke’s philosophy influenced the individual sovereignty endowed by the American Constitution. Locke’s philosophy founded the Declaration of Independence and it united Colonial Americans to demand their independence from England. ‘Classical (meaning traditional or orthodox) Liberals’ (Who were ‘economic conservatives’) believed both Locke and Adam Smith. With this paradox, the tranquility called for in the Constitution’s Preamble can only be found in a balance of reason in which Roger William’s thoughts are deliberately considered: 28

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The state, then, is society working consciously through experience and reason, to secure for the individual citizen the largest measure of freedom and well-being. . . . But if sovereignty inheres in the majority will, what securities remain for individual and minority rights? What fields lie apart from the inquisition of the majority, and by what agencies shall the engrossing of power be thwarted? The replies to such questions, so fundamental to every democratic program, he discovers in a variety of principles; to the former in an adaptation of the spirit of medieval society that restricted political functions by social usage, and to the latter by the application of local home rule, the initiative and the referendum, and the recall. His creative conception was an adaptation of . . . corporation, of a group of persons voluntarily joining for specific purposes under the law. And we should avert rushes to throw out the ‘the American economic baby’ along with its fallacious economic ‘bath water.’ The ‘real’ cultural war is only partly economic. Because it exclusively is about prescriptive values. And philosophic ‘Rational Empiricism’ provides the only available forum to elevate human nature’s noumenal spiritual part, to balance with temporal life’s substantial part. Temporal life’s paradoxical situation has economic parallels. And, as well, was recognized in most philosophies about truth, Confucius (550-479 B.C.), for instance, gave us this maxim:29

What is God given is what we call human nature. To fulfill the law of our human nature is what we call the moral law. The cultivation of the moral law is what we call culture. The moral law is a law from whose operation we cannot for one instant in our existence escape. A law from which we may escape [simply by nihilistically saying no to it] is not the moral law. Wherefore it is that the moral man (or the superior man) watches diligently over what his eyes cannot see and is in fear and awe of


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what his ears cannot hear. There is nothing more evident than that which cannot be seen by the eyes and nothing more palpable than that which cannot be perceived by the senses. Wherefore the moral man watches diligently over his secret thoughts. When passions, such as joy, anger, grief, and pleasure [concupiscence] have not awakened, that is our ‘central self’, or moral being. When these passions awaken and each and all attain due measure and degree, that is ‘harmony’, or the moral order. Our central self or moral being is the great basis of existence, and ‘harmony’, or moral order is the universal law in the world. . . . ‘Truth does not depart from human nature, if what is regarded as truth departs from human nature, it may not be regarded as truth. . . . Humans cannot fulfill the law of our human nature by affirming as principle ‘positively,’ as mechanist politics has done with unitary materiality, or denying by such conflation the human spirituality. Human’s must contemplate rationally to find temporal harmony and truth. Asserting that material objects’ represent truth is like saying ‘fact is truth,’ that without cognizance, is impossible. And, adjudging which of ‘contingent’ truth’s paradoxical opposites is ‘true’ (neither purely are) defines the irrational political quandary for society to solve or abide. Orthodox untruth of dogmatically conflated ‘unitary materialism, is a greater ‘social ill. 30

If we imagine a world of mere matter, there would be no room for falsehood in such a world, and although it would contain what may be called ‘facts,’ it would not contain any truths, in the sense in which truths are things of the same kind as falsehoods. In fact, truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs and statements; hence a world of mere matter, since it would contain no beliefs or

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statements, would also contain no truth or falsehood. Bertrand Russell

By logical definition, each P and Q is a statement that when written in the ‘if,’ ‘then,’ compound statement format, the ‘if statement’ is the antecedent, and the ‘then statement’ is the consequent. The validity of truth depends on whether, or not, truth’s predicate value is ‘true.’ ‘Pure Truth’ is a reality-something, only found in logically reasoned truth, the antecedent predicate value of which necessarily is always ‘true.’ Deciding tautological validity requires careful analysis of truth’s antecedent and its consequent to independently determine the predicate value is ‘true’: if truth’s antecedent is ‘true’ and its predicate value corresponds (correlates) with nature’s necessary predicate value, the antecedent truth value is then rationally ‘true.’ A similar analysis must be made of the consequent. When comparatively the predicate value is not ‘true’, the facts prescribed are cause of ‘social paradox.’ The problematic Liar paradox includes all truth forms in which the predicate values diverge from those of nature. ‘Telling a lie’ (for liars) is as easy as ‘telling the truth,’ and knowingly reasoning deductively from unproved dogma is akin to lying: The crafty nihilist Brahminist conscience that rationalizes from diabolic values to gain an advantage is as clear in nefarious intent as those who intend to gain from ‘telling lies’: The ‘liar paradox’ is clearly about values in human logos which diverge from those of nature.31

Liar paradox. Semantic paradox, known in antiquity, focus of much recent work. Jack says ‘I am now speaking falsely’, referring to the words he is then uttering. If Jack speaks truly when he says he is speaking falsely, he is speaking falsely. If he is speaking falsely when this is what he says is going on, he is speaking truly. So what he says is true if, and only if, it is false: which seems absurd. One response claims that Jack says nothing true and nothing false. But a variant makes trouble: Jill says ‘I am now not


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speaking truly’. If Jill is not speaking truly when this is what she says she is up to, she is speaking truly. If she is speaking truly, then she must be doing what she says, that is, not speaking truly. So, it seems, what she says is true if, and only if, it is not true. M. Sainsbury Cicero, in 51 B. C., declared his maxim of true law:32

True law is right reason in accord with nature; it is of universal application, unchanged and everlasting. "" ‘The song of Moses’ is about pure metaphysical truth, i.e., noumena, as inferred by myriad phenomenal evidence, which is available to all who critically deliberate inferentially.33

Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass: Because I will publish the name of the Lord, ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the Rock, his work is perfect: For all his ways are judgement: A God of truth and without iniquity, Just and right is he. Truth, morality, justice, . . . , is exclusively spiritual, i.e., of human noumena rather than phenomena. And ‘true’ antecedent principle is exclusively, naturally noumenal. Dogma deduced from phenomena, however popular, appears to cause a paradox. And humans can mitigate paradoxical effects by implementing measures of justice, which

"" The simplicity of Cicero’s statement is particularly strong when considering the necessary aspects of definitions intrinsic of reason and natural.

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universally accords with reasoned necessary Categorical Imperative. Economic Paradox: supply v.s. demand. Extremes of the price spectrum, of the mechanist economic paradigm, are paradoxical: Price is low when supply exceeds demand (suppliers then need price supports of one sort or another). However, when demand exceeds supply, consumer-subsidies are then required. Smith’s competition paradigm intends that competition will regulate this paradox. When the paradigm fails, the extremes of price embroil distribution disputes that are paradigm-related more than competition related. J. S. Mill undoubtedly reasoned from this paradox to state this economic axiom about the distribution of privately owned goods and services.34

Even what a person has produced by his individual toil, unaided by anyone, he cannot keep, unless by the permission of society. Not only can society take it from him, but individuals could and would take it from him, if society . . . did not . . . employ and pay people for the purpose of preventing him from being disturbed in [his] possession. The distribution of wealth [goods and services], therefore, depends on the laws and customs of society. [What is noteworthy is that Mill deliberately reasoned this conclusion based on natural antecedences instead of the popularly conflated mechanist (‘unitary materialists) ‘property’ definition] When prices artificially, mechanistically, rose for electricity in California (Governor Davis’s deficit problem) and gasoline prices arose nationwide, ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ issues politically divided the state? (And politics is ideological, i.e., sans logical necessity) Mechanism based political issues, which embroiled the price paradox had failed to mitigate the fundamental issues of Smith’s competition paradigm?35

And now comes (Adolph) Lowe’s most serious contention, if modern, ‘organized’ capitalism cannot any longer depend on spontaneous forces of the market to assure its orderly operation,


Economic Paradox: supply v.s. demand.

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economics itself also changes its relationship to society. As long as the laws of behavior could be discerned at work within the system, economics could be a passive pursuit, a detached contemplation of the workings of society. . . .. But the change in the social setting of modern capitalism [now] rules out [Smith’s competition paradigm]. To be effective, economics is now forced to become an instrument of active interference with the course of things. Its function is no longer to predict or prognosticate, ‘because that is no longer possible.’ The new function of economics--the only function left open to it by the increasing indeterminacy of behavior--is to control the economy. Lowe does not mean authoritarian central planning. Rather, he sees the task of economic control as guiding the system to a socially desired goal through appropriate market behavior. Behavior may be made appropriate by very mild policies, such as tax inducements, or it may be steered by bolder government actions that directly affect supply and demand. Mild policies or not, the task of economics can no longer be what it once was. The old economics was, so to speak, philosophical economics. The new economics will have to be ‘political economics’ -- discipline that must discover the economic means to achieve politically chosen ends. Setting utility standards is a constitutional function that requires centralized regulation. Unfortunately, Congress has failed its constitutional duty [as specified in Section 8 (3) & (5)]. ‘to regulate commerce and fix the value of money, and standards.’ Roger Sherman influenced this constitutional provision: Congressional inaction disappointed him.36 With the Whig-installed American System of Political Economy the given reality, Lowe’s guiding ‘political economics’ confronts materialism-based politics that granted deterministic controlling advantages to fictitious corporate entities, thereby, supplanting

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constitutional purposes. And the legal perpetual corporate existence gave license to corporate leviathan combines that now control the utilities they serve. They can charge whatever the utility publics can pay and otherwise can deny the utility. This question remains: Will ‘ballot initiatives’ spur Congress to do their constitutional duty? tautological applications English Professor, Historian, V. L. Parrington’s Main Currents in American thought, which won a Pulitzer prize in history, provides a great historical perspective of what is now critically important in America, and the world. Of Jefferson Davis that northern Whigs vilified, in what we now call ‘terrorism,’ Parrington exposes the mechanist political irrationality roots of our politics today:37

The president of the Confederacy may have been an unfortunate civil leader, but the slanders that so long clung to his name are only worthy of the gutter. The sin that he was led into was not counted a sin in his southern decalogue; it was the sin, not of secession, but of imperialism--a sin common to all America in those drunken times when the great West invited exploitation. --Is American society still afflicted by despoilment, the root cause of which are private exploits of gold, oil, timber, grazing, recreation and such on lands whose proprietor is the commonwealth, i.e., by paternalism granted to private sector exploitations of the commonwealth and the world’s natural resources? --Parrington explained the diverse commonweal interest trends? 38 In the year 1825 three streams of tendency were flowing through the [American mind], rising from different sources, incompatible in spirt and purpose, strong in their diverse appeals; and in the end the major current was certain to engulf the lesser. The humanitarianism of Virginia, the individualism of the new West, and the imperialism of the Black Belt might seem to mingle their waters for a time, but there would be


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confusions of thought and diversity of counsels until one or another had worn a deeper channel through which the dominant opinion might run. There could be no more fascinating study in the economics of political theory than the changing mind of the South during the critical decades from 1825 to 1850, as it followed the course determined by its peculiar institution. . . . It is unintelligent to charge upon southern politicians a lack of consistency---to point out that after 1820 Calhoun reversed himself on every major political principle. It was true of Calhoun, as it was true of Webster and true of Clay. In a rapidly changing America, with economics in a state of flux, men were no longer free political agents, guiding themselves by the fixed stars of accepted theory: they were borne like corks on the current of the times, and their inconsistency is the surest evidence that they spoke for their constituents. The North and the South were at the parting of the ways, and if southern imperialism created for its needs a philosophy of particularism, it was met by a counter philosophy of nationalism created for its needs by northern capitalism, which likewise was following the path of its manifest destiny. [ N o a m C h o ms k y ’ s HEGEMONY or SURVIVAL, documents the contemporary political thoughts and trends, of the American mechanist political doctrine.] ---Do issues confront America in 1996 (now in 2006) that resulted from irrational politics that influenced official policy as Imperialism and Manifest Destiny? Is our foreign policy, therefore, irrational? --Do we still tolerate irrational politics, as the foundation of our nation’s Foreign Policy? Is the nation’s policy of Preemptive Action (war) akin to policies of Imperialism and Manifest Destiny? In this conflated unitary-materialism-based national policy scenario, is political irrationalism practiced more than rationalism? --Which political part of philosophical democracy, spiritual essence or materiality, represents irrationalism as the controlling official political influence? Does the social conflation of essence by materiality have to do with this sad scenario? Absent civility, the sponsor of which is human essence, as

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effectively, if not absolutely, dispensed by effects of conflation, by a pervasive dogmatic belief-based ‘positivism’," is it no longer appropriate, therefore, to call our nation democratic? And because of this politically conflated unitary materialism, is our philosophical democracy’s ‘materialism,’ therefore by practicing political irrationalim, as made compatibly with the ‘unitary materialism’ of communism and fascism? The human temporal state under democracy, however, requires a healthy balanced natural embrace of materialism with essence. However, when Rational Empiricism’s essence is politically conflated to being consequential to dogmatic materialist belief, when all that is allowed is materialism-based determinism, democracy’s rationality is harnessed. 39

‘Rational Empiricism,’ the philosophic basis of democracy, believes that the world is both material and spiritual. It holds that change and progress occur by applying reason to experience, and human nature can be changed and improved by experience. On the basis of these principles, democracy stresses discussion and the use of reason as a way of arriving at conclusions. It emphasizes the importance of tolerance and freedom in developing intelligent, loyal citizens. Regarding truth, which is of human essence, we should respect the material part of democracy (‘Rational Empiricism’) for naturally imposed limitations: didn’t B. Russell logically prove that matter and truth are incompatible? 40

If we imagine a world of mere matter, there would be no room for falsehood in such a world, and although it would contain what may be called ‘facts,’ it would not contain any truths, in the sense in which truths are things of the same kind as falsehoods. In fact,

"

Our ‘American System,‘ political economy, as legally upheld by Federalism’s belief-based materialism, and legally practiced by our Supreme Court.


tautological applications

39

truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs and statements; hence a world of mere matter, since it would contain no beliefs or statements, would also contain no truth or falsehood. Bertrand Russell Considering the necessary poles of democracy (essence and materiality), which 20th century American Presidents made the greatest achievements? J. T., Middlebury, Vt, gave this analysis:41 (1) T. Roosevelt (national parks system), (2) W. Wilson (Women’s suffrage), (3) F. D. Roosevelt (World War II), (4) H. Truman (Marshall Plan), (5) D. Eisenhower (interstate highway system), (6) J. Kennedy (Cuban Missile Crisis), (7) L. Johnson (civil rights laws), (8) R. Nixon (relations with China), (9) R. Regan (winning the Cold War), And (10) W. Clinton (budget surplus). T. Roosevelt was the century’s Progressive Republican President [antitrust laws, food and drug administration, railroad fares regulation (rebates favoring some shippers had caused business failure), and he had labor’s vote]. George Will’s conservative commentary has often cited W. Wilson’s liberal policies as core Democratic politics (anti-mercantilism, free-trade advocacy), Wilson reorganized banking and currency, and installed the Federal Reserve Banking system (that in 1935 F. D. R. improved and provided FDIC insurance to secure bank deposits), and he reduced tariffs. Maybe ironic, Wilson was elected because Republicans were divided between candidates for president. However, F. D. Roosevelt’s Social Security Act of 1935 (SS) is the most distinguishing legislation, which directly embraces democracy’s philosophical spiritual essence. This act particularly distinguished the Democratic Party’s politics for its sponsorship of human essence in balance with its physicality (and the mechanist Whig opposition, of GOP politics, dubbed this liberal influence ‘the politics of bleeding hearts’). SS introduced the main issue of political contention between the conservative ‘right’s’ unitary materialism and the liberal ‘left’s’ reactive emphasis on essence: rational politics recognizes, however, that the reactive ‘left’ is not only

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about human essence (human material needs are also necessarily critical). Essence is conflated by absolute dogmatic belief in unitary materialism, and because it fails to recognize the conflation, it is therefore irrational. Again, didn’t Russell prove that unitary belief in matter decimates truth by conflating the essence of thought so to conform to materiality? 42

If we imagine a world of mere matter, there would be no room for falsehood in such a world, and although it would contain what may be called ‘facts,’ it would not contain any truths, in the sense in which truths are things of the same kind as falsehoods. In fact, truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs and statements; hence a world of mere matter, since it would contain no beliefs or statements, would also contain no truth or falsehood. Bertrand Russell Inflation is economic endemism caused by government grants to private sector businesses: legal entitlements to economic advantages (which necessarily derive from the economic taking from others). Inflation’s endemism is the natural result of taking profits from the static economic flow, which Adam Smith’s economic paradigm had defined. Inflation’s effects, over time, are measured by the unnaturally necessary increased prices for consumer purchases. Systemically, mechanistically legal profit taking has made low end wage-earners the economic slaves because natural human material requirements force them to expend their meager earnings to subsist. This natural fact when fitted to the economic mechanism leaves wage-earners without means to benefit from the economic effects of inflation. G. P. Brockway indicts the banker’s COLA as inflation’s main cause, J. Schumperter’s static circular flow model pinpoints non entrepreneurial profit taking as inflation’s main source. And while, public projects paid for by public debt that taxpayers repay, over time, is also inflation’s causal culprit. However, Inflation has taken a new twist in the aftermath of our 2003 War with Iraq. We have unemployment while the rate of inflation has been managed to remain low: we seem to have learned how to manage vastly increasing federal


tautological applications

41

deficits while containing the appearance of inflation? Chris Matthews asked: “By pumping up the supply of fiat money, have we monetized our war debt?” What is the long term effects of containing appearances of inflation by monetizing debt? Time will tell! (Now years later, as 2008 ended, US economy confronted eminent failure: was this the sort of failure that Ricardo, Mill, and Marx had fore told?) Although the mechanist unitary material valued capitalist system exploits wage-earning humans, its logical antecedent clearly is labor created production, i.e., this labor is the mechanist systemic slave of the capitalist owners as the Whig Senator J. C. Calhoun had rationalized (Schumperter’s entrepreneurs included). So, what natural principles relate to high end (owners) and low end (wage-earners) economic value? The unitary materialism-based capitalism, fallaciously has affirmed as its antecedent principle of political economy, the sole ownership of ‘profits’ as mechanistically prescribed and delivered: i.e., only to the mechanisms’ superintendents. Earned and unearned incomes cannot escape the fact that labor (including entrepreneurial organic accomplishments) is the ‘true’ capitalistic antecedent principle value. How capitalists have seemingly escaped the mechanist determined plights of their idealized creation, of the ‘iron cage,’ which wage-earners must endure, Parrington called “an ingenious scheme to milk the cow and distribute the ‘milk’ to those who superintended the milking.” And, while wage-earners provide the static antecedent economic value to capitalists, they naturally must spend their earned income simply to subsist. The systemic paradox unnaturally caused by systemic granting of profit, as laden with inflation which is consumed, exclusively to capitalists, also allow capitalists to own most inflation sensitive property, which mechanistically heap additional unearned rewards of endemically determined inflation: unearned economic rewards that endemically, and immorally, covertly is worse than all overt stealing? Keynes wrote this:43

By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their

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citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose. Keynes Businesses are licensed to acquit themselves by cost accounting for inflation (by LIFO or FIFO codifications) to the goods and services, which consumers buy. Deliberate or just convenient, inflation’s causes and costs remain covertly accounted for consumers never to see: only identifiable, after the fact, as ‘inflation’s endemism’: measurable only by monitoring price changes of selected goods and services: of the CPI. Causes of inflation’s endemism include tax-based costs intrinsic of bonds and insurance paid over time, Real Estate Commissions with purchasing or selling mortgaged properties, mortgage points, agency commissions bundled in insurance premiums, premium taxes paid by insurance companies to states, bonded amortization for debts incurred to pay for public real property improvements, . . .. And, they include perks and profit sharing for superintending private business (so called and legally fictionally justified by dogma: the king can do no wrong). All are political economy’s entitlements that stealthily, unapparently cause inflation. Then add the illegal side of economy to inflation’s woe: counterfeiting, money laundering, fraud and theft. The total is staggering.44 And all of it ‘trickles down’ mechanistically, accounting wise, to finally rest on the prices that wage-earning consumers must pay. Because low end consumer wage-earners have no means to profitbased benefits from either wages or inflation, they bear the full brunt of political economies unapparent cost; yielding such sentiments as Henry Ward Beecher’s “you cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.” When inflation is considered, the rich, whose income is mostly unearned, in any sense of principle wageearned economic value, morally owe a great economic debt to the ‘poor.’ High end incomes, should systemically provide aid to the poor: therefore,


tautological applications

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my thoughts about the essential mitigating need of Roger Williams ‘social usage’ insurance included applications to all above political economy’s inflation effects. About which President did more to ‘level sovereignty,’ which Jefferson ‘truly’ and ‘categorically’ concluded was democracy’s essence, and to soften political economy’s bite, on the ‘poor,’ the Clinton administration was the first post American System of Political Economy administration to achieve the lowering poverty to 16 percent of the population. For this, Clinton is also first among presidents to address Jefferson’s democratic essence. And for withstanding the aggressive irrational politics that similarly deliberately was visited upon Jefferson. To discredit and impeach him, Clinton is second only to Thomas Jefferson, his name sake, for ‘leveling’ cardinal sovereignty’s suffrage, thereby preserving democracy. In all parts of the world, reason has concluded what Emmanuel Kant called Categorical Imperative. Democratic reason has called this imperative ‘equal rights-based distributive justice,’ others’ concluded this imperative as Christ’s Golden Rule, or Kant’s ‘do as you would expect other’s to do in similar circumstances,’ or Lao Tse’s ‘Sinderesis’ (to the unjust we must be just as we expect others to be just . . .). The recent argument for returning revenue taxes paid (to those who paid then), for to stimulate the economy, denied this paternalism to those that had not earned enough ‘to pay taxes’: irrationally inferring that low income earners do not consume, from which earned income and unearned profits ultimately derive. This inferred argument is as irrational (thoughtless), as the justifying of unearned income as a rationally deserved economic fact: is surely irrational until Adam Smith’s postulate that labor is the ‘true’ antecedent of economic value, is disproved (or that inflation is proved as an antecedent to economic value, for instance). And, because, when identifying inflation’s causes will also identify the great cause of divide between incomes resulting from government’s paternalistic grants, entitlements and privileges, and earned wages of labor in productions of goods and services, Brahmanist classical economists

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decided that the income analysis of each side of this divide was so different that ‘Standard of Living’ became the basis used for wagesearned: that income unequalness of the sides is never justified. Because, economic incentives are critically important and, therefore, possess ‘a great necessity’, government’s paternalism is not faulted for being unnecessary! What is faulted is political ‘positivism,’ which denies the categorical imperative of brotherhood as a constitutional tenet: or where is found the logical equality coherence in capitalist orthodoxy that embraces categorical imperatives (mutual respect, love, and charity) to paternally redress the pernicious economic needs of poverty, which absolutely cannot logically be faulted simply because of the political bias of those claiming their unearned income is equally deserved, politically inferring that the impoverished are lazy and deserve their unequal holistic status. The politically successful but irrational contemporary argument, for returning taxes ‘to those that paid them,’ is categorically imperatively indicted for being unconstitutional! Society is now stuck with arguing for and against natural rights of all patrons of suffrage. Paine and Burke’s debate might never be settled. And, only in freedom, will this debate surely be revisited by all generations. And the political contest must protect equally inalienable human rights, which naturally enjoy the logical status of antecedence (‘principle’): ‘positivism’ threatens to conflate to unitary materialism this spiritual necessity of democracy. When government is paternalist (as the politics asserts), then constitutionally government is obligated to tax unequally for to economically mitigate the unequal results: constitutionally, it must preserve rational categorical imperatives. The veracity test of truth is as well the veracity test of reason. And truth, which lacks fiducial anchors to natural noumenal principles, inevitably fuels controversy as whose subjective perception coheres with this noumenal reality (has coherent ‘is true’ predicate values with nature’s predicate values)? And in situations of paradox, logical tautology provides this veracity test. Tautological fallacies always show as


tautological applications

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irrationalism, in which truth’s predicate values are ‘false.’ Maybe, because of dogmatic ‘positivism,’ logical tautology is commonly officially rejected. The mention of tautology is brief in dictionaries and encyclopedias.’ Therefore, maybe the willful dogmatic denial of reason by Federalists and Whigs has made it difficult if not impossible to understand the truth and reason’s for this veracity test. Had mathematical research not persisted to make science language applicable, tautological veracity testing wouldn’t now be available: 45 By a tautology we mean a statement, which has the truth value ‘true’ for all possible truth values of its components. . . . Compound statements with all truth values ‘true’ are called tautologies and represent valid argument forms. The implication formed by the conjunction of all the premises as the antecedent and the conclusion as the consequent that form a valid argument form, will always result in a tautology. Testing compound statements to see whether they are tautologies is thus equivalent to testing an argument for validity.

By definition, each of P and Q is a statement that when written in the ‘if,’ ‘then,’ compound statement format, the ‘if’ statement is the antecedent, and the ‘then’ statement the consequent. John Fujii gave three classical valid arguments in which P = premises, Q = consequent, - = denial, = therefore. They are: (a) Modus ponens (b) Modus tollens (c) Hypothetical syllogism P6 Q P

Q

P6 Q

P6 Q

-Q

Q6R

- P

P6 R

(d) and (e) are the logical fallacies:

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(d) ‘Affirming the Consequent,’ and (e) ‘Denying the Antecedent.’ P6 Q

P6 Q

Q

-P

P

-Q

(d) Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent, and (e) Fallacy of Denying the Antecedent, Fujii warned, are invalid argument forms. With all forms of ‘hypothesizing a tautological argument,’ the invalid argument form (d) Affirming the Consequent is mostly applied. Fallacies of ‘Affirming Consequents’ of nomos, is a particular Sophist pseudo philosophic proclivity intrinsic of nomos-based dogmatic belief. The Federalist Agenda, as Parrington noted provides an example of this sophistry, 46 which St. John said was a form of lying.

[Hamilton’s] notorious comment -- which the American democrat has never forgiven him, “the people! -- the people is a great beast! -- was characteristically frank. . . . He was at pains, therefore, as a practical statesman, to dress his views in a garb more seemly to plebeian prejudices, and like earlier Tories he paraded an ethical justification for his Toryism. The current Federalist dogma of the divine right of justice -- ‘vox justiciae vox dei’ -- was at hand to serve his purpose and he made free use of it. . . . He was frankly a monarchist, and he urged the [fallacious] monarchical principle with Hobbesian logic. “The principle chiefly intended to be established is this -- [the fascist notion] that there must be a permanent ‘will.” “There ought to be a principle in government capable of resisting the popular current.” [In ‘Works, Vol. II, p 415] The only effective way of keeping democratic factionalism within bounds, Hamilton was convinced, lay in the erection of a powerful chief magistrate, who “ought to be hereditary, and have so much power, ..


tautological applications

47

“ He devoted himself to the business of providing all possible checks upon the power of the democracy.” This Federalist agenda continues. Parrington also cited the FederalistWhig proclivity to ‘deny antecedents’ and ‘affirm consequents’:47

Massachusetts . . . property interests were as secure as any old Federalist could have wished. Gentlemen of principle and property were still in control of the state; and if less emphasis was laid on principle [physis] and more on property [nomos] -- if less regard seemed to be paid to gentlemen of breeding and manners, and more to assertive self-seeking -- business was no less secure than in the good old days, and its profits were greater. . . . Provided of course that the Constitution should follow population and safeguard business interests against . . .the menace of particularism [i.e., antinomy, i.e., Greek anti + nomos]. . . . In the hour of peril, principles go by the board. The Whig party was the lineal heir of the old Federalism, but it denied its philosophical patrimony. It substituted expediency for the old economic realism, and began and ended intellectually bankrupt.. . . aside from petty antagonism to Jackson -- was the vague assumption that the well-being of the American people was dependent on governmental patronage; the belief that each economic group and section must receive its special favor, and that through tariffs and bonuses and internal improvements the country as a whole must prosper. Of this principle of special favors -- a return to the seventeenth century from which eighteenth century liberalism was a reaction -- the American System (economy) of Henry Clay was the chief expression, and it remains the most significant bequest of the Whig party to our political history. Classical mechanist unitary materialist dogma clearly usurps rational sovereignty (which is human essence, i.e., spiritual rather than material

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quality). The renewal of unitary materialist mechanist dogma has not only tweaked economic American democratic Categorical Imperative so to appear as fascist, the privatized unitary materialist capitalism’s politics as a fundamental aspect of the U.S. government administered democracy, threatens to make fascism dominate democracy. And the unitary materialist dogma-based, economy has similarly affected Islam’s Categorical Imperative, and globally other societies as well. To remain the world’s democratic leader, our nation must be first redressed of ill effects from its own fundamental irrationalism: what Noam Chomsky has documented as our Imperial Grand Strategy. 48 Mitigating effects of US rationalism is the only answer and SS provides an example of this mitigating ‘social-usage-based’ redress. For this purpose, political economy’s mechanism-based profit motive holistically represents the greatest irrational culprit, which parcel’s democracy by granting mechanism-based economic paternalism to ‘Peter,’ which holistically must be taken from ‘Paul’: this economic disparity must be redressed for to achieve our constitutionally rational holistic national purposes. 254

Politics of Social Security

More controversial than the SS contribution-tax issue, is the politics of SS. About which, Herman B. Leonard wrote this: 49

Social security is the subject of one of the longest-running and hottest debates in modern American politics. As the centerpiece of the New Deal legislation, and as the prime surviving New Deal enterprise, it has been under nearly constant attack from those for whom the New Deal represents taking the wrong fork in the road to progress. And because of its extraordinary growth and scale, few debates about the federal budget can ignore it. [SS, the New Deal, introduced some economic fairness.] Henry Clay’s Whig-based mechanist deontological mechanism, like a big machine, delivers the economic preemptions and exploitations.


254

Politics of Social Security

49

For things that naturally are holistic, as economy for instance, mechanist special privilege to some, necessarily implicates the taking from others. Henry Clay’s mentors have a long list which includes unitary materialist views of Hobbes, Burke, and Hamilton. 50 Clay’s attributes are these:51

He became a leader of the National Republican party, later called the Whig party. . . . With John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster, he formed a ‘great triumvirate’ of United States Senators. Their opinions largely controlled Congress during the second quarter of the 1800's. . . . Clay returned to the House in 1815, where he sponsored a program for national economic development known as the ‘American System.’ Parrington, bared the underbelly of this American irrationality:52

. . . point[ing] out that after 1820 Calhoun reversed himself on every major political principle. It was true of Calhoun, as it was true of Webster and true of Clay. In a rapidly changing America, with economics in a state of flux, men were no longer free political agents, guiding themselves by the fixed stars of accepted theory: they were borne like corks on the current of the times, and their inconsistency is the surest evidence that they spoke for their constituents. [Doesn’t this now in 2009 describe the position of republicans in the Obama administration?] In acquisitive aggrandizements humans subscribe irrationalism as in the glorious Epicurean Paradox: ‘give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries.’ Oliver Wendell Holmes Befitting the Epicurean Paradox, Whig irrationalism increases relatively with inflation. Issuing from Political Economy’s license and privilege, the economic owner class, commonly called the ‘haves of society,’ was created. And, most in society now aspire to take equal parts in it. * * Henry Clay’s full blown American System was installed by the GOP

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following the death of Abraham Lincoln. The deontology of this private unitary materialist mechanist system is to politically grant federal assets to influential productive entities with faith that all in society will benefit economically. And this fallacy, fundamental to mercantilism, Clay sponsored and his Whig following affirmed it as the pseudo principle of the American System of Political Economy: Determinism of mercantilism contends many things that subliminally are orthodox dogma: for instance, money, which utility is as an exchange medium, is now considered as owned wealth, and as Adam Smith observed, 53 ‘in the mercantile system, the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer.’ Irrational fallaciousness, as systemic incoherences (Desiderius) perpetrated on the inviolate human free will, only appears covertly. And, as J. Schumpeter said, it bubbles forth as complaints, or worse, as terrorism. Most class actions are about constitutional human rights that political economy licenses mechanisms to compromise. In this sense, our American System of political economy is anti Constitution: At least as regards Bill of Rights equality. More fundamental, natural reality decrees holistic consequences to unequal aberrations of the parts. Population, by age groups, demonstrates this holistic natural reality. Percentages and indices often mislead common perspectives, my employer, an actuary of note, infrequently would reminded us: “Which would you rather have,” he would ask, “1 percent of a million dollars or 5 percent of a hundred thousand dollars?” When common perceptions are led to consider trends of inordinate growth, in the 65-4 population for instance, and assumes that the ‘trend’ suggested in the retired population is independent of the total population, both perception and suggestion are fallacious: unfortunately, this fallacy officially occurred in the 1980's when a trend based conclusion became published, stating as fact that the ratio (workers to retirees) would, in 2025, have two workers per retiree.54 Also, this 1978 research projected group populations for the ages’


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51

18-64, for years 1985 and later, including estimated births occurring following 1976: therefore, the research was not based on population facts! ESTIMATED AND PROJECTED POPULATIONS (millions) YEAR AGES: 18 TO 64 1950 92.6

65-4 12.4

RESPECTIVE INDICES --- base = 1.00 ---

1960 1985*

99.5 123.7

16.7 27.3

1.07 1.34

1.34 2.2

2000* 2025*

159.6 154.5

31.8 48.6

1.72 1.67

2.56 3.92

4 : to life's end ( that estimated trends are not facts is critically important.) * these projections made in the late 1970's were only anticipated trends. What is critically important, however, is that BabyBoom’s births were all factual: only mortality is estimated, like life insurance science estimates, to conservatively project the size of each retiring age group 65-4. And with SS eligibility shifted to age 67, upwards of seven million persons are delayed from entering eligible retirement. The population of eligible retired, over age 67, will peak, for a short period, at about 42 million. For comparison, the 1990 Census counted 31 million seniors of age 65-4 55 and 35 million in 2000. 56 The following published caption erroneously led to the common perceptive fallacy that more than 80 million octogenarians will exist when the BabyBoom retires (I personally attended seminars in Las Vegas, about ‘long term care insurance,’ where this fallacy was stated as a firm prospective fact). Afterward, I found this caption published in The 1993 Information Please Almanac, on page 455: Almost seventy million Americans are 80 or over: [And this will not be so!] In fact, in 1990, the census had counted 3.9 million Americans 80 or over. Was the published error because a researcher or publisher had simply

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‘slipped a digit?’ My analysis of actual birth facts (the actual counts for the BabyBoom included) suggest that total count of retirees, during the years of the BabyBoom’s retirement, can not exceed 55 million (35 million were census counted in 2000). Because those aged eighty and over factually dwindle to one percent of total: the expected census count of retired BabyBoom octogenarians is less than 6 million, instead of 80 million. An important aspect of the 1978 demographic research is that the median age of birth dynamics was theorized to stabilize in what then was called ‘zero growth population’: median ages in this theoretical scenario are: 30.2 in 1950, 29 in 1976, 38.4 in 2025, and 38.9 in 2050. But, ‘zero growth’ fertility never happened! And while fertility remains high, ‘zero growth’ will not occur! And the population of workers, ages 18-64, ensure that the median age will remain lower than the ‘zero growth’ projection of 38.4 in 2025 (it was 35.3 in 2000 57). Fertility, as reality now proves, debunks the ‘zero growth-based’ notion that in 2025 there will be two individuals of working age for each retired individual over age 65. Far more important. The ‘78 study shows how population age groups relate to the total (holistically, when a group’s population changes, an offsetting holistic change also occurs). ‘78 study Population age groups as a percentage of the Total: Yr 0-4 5-17 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-64 65-4 1950 10.8 20.2 10.6 15.8 14.2 20.3 8.1 1976 7.1 23.2 13.1 14.9 10.7 20.3 10.7 2050 6.5 16.9 9 12.7 12.5 23.4 19 In 1950, four earliest birth years of the BabyBoom were in the 0-4 age range. In 1976, the BabyBoom’s births had shifted into the other ages. Its peak (4.26 million births of ‘57) was in the 18-24 range. And in 2050, all survivors of the BabyBoom are in the 65-4 range, the youngest age group of which is 85 years old (less than I percent of range total). Mortality will have claimed most all of them. Percent of population is like percent of economy: a greater percentage in one age range determines an offset in the others. Mortality creeps most greatly in the 65-4 range. With ‘zero growth’ results in mind, the percentages are rearranged to represent children (0-17), workers (18-64), and retirees (65-4).


254 Yr 1950 1976 2050

Politics of Social Security

53

0-17 18-64 65-4 Total Population (All in millions) 31 60.9 8.1 152.3 30.3 59 10.7 215.1 23.4 57.6 19 269.4 However, official projections for total population in 2050 exceed 380 million. ‘On August 1, 1999, the official estimate was 273 million and in 1990, 249 million.’58 In 1990, the Census Bureau’s natural born population distribution was this: Yr 0-17 18-64 65-4 Total Population 1990 25.8 62.1 12.1 238.6 And my more recent model’s refined estimate suggests this: Yr 0-17 18-64 65-4 Total Population 2050 25.2 63.1 11.6 299.7 (The worker to retiree ratio in 2050 is 5.4 to 1) And with the shift in retirement to age 67: Yr 0-17 18-64 65-4 Total Population 2050 25.2 65.1 8.1 299.7 (The worker to retiree ratio is 8 to1) And while this refined estimate of future reality might be more accurate, 2050's total population, as most recently officially projected, will swell by 80 million more: and while emigres might affect this analysis, fertility still depends more on the relative population of child bearing adult females than on any empirical measures of total population? This income distribution far more shows’ government’s uneven pattern of political economy’s granted privileges and rights than it shows worker productivity, dedication, talent, or education qualifications. Economy’s mechanism-based determinism shows most prominently in the extreme quintiles: graphically showing offsetting holistic determinism. The most stable middle quintile is mechanism’s economic fulcrum. It commands 15 percent of total income instead of an equal fifth share of the total. Combined, the lowest two quintiles of income do not equal the middle quintile income. Therefore, from 1968 through 1996 more than 70 percent of the total went to the top two quintiles: in 1996, the

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increase at the top was twice the total bottom quintiles income.

Increases in the highest quintile are mostly offset (taken mechanistically) by decreases in the lowest quintile where impoverished individuals’ command of property-based political significance, or a lack of socialpolitical standing, fails to command a more equal share of the total. And, because this distribution is wage-earned, income, unearned income, which mechanistically legally enures to the capital side of accountings, representing business ownership; is not included in this graph? Only part of the economic picture shows up here. E. K. Hunt said this about all capitalist society’s classes: 59

The destitute class must depend on the somewhat “less than respectable” sources of income, such as welfare, charity, or the fruits of quasi legal or illegal activities in order to get by. The stigma that attaches to members of this class motivates all propertyless individuals to try very hard to secure employment even if working conditions and wages are poor. [Capitalists are mechanist deontologists, whose ideology while in


254

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55

command of government, affirmed this top end mechanist growth scenario in dogmatic belief that unitary materialist causality was economic necessity] Resulting incarcerations and class actions are destined, but, not likely from members of the destitute economic class. Class actions probably will arise in the middle and fourth quintile where democratic expectations of rights and privileges’ have more substantiation. Hunt also wrote this:

The working class has no significant access to or ownership of productive resources. Individuals in this class must sell control of their power to labor (i.e., get a job) as their only means to escape sinking to the destitute class. . . . [T. R. Malthus and Max Weber observed the mechanist ‘iron cage of wages,’ as befitting this determined caste of capitalism]

Income from ownership and the wages of workers are considered to be the only socially respectable sources of income. [The U.S. Political Economy considers income from ownership as a separate economy, apart from economy of wageearning. Some years ago, corporate owners decided that awarding substantial ownership shares to corporate executives were in their interest: thereby awarding substantial owner-based unearned income, as well as wage-earned income, to these executives, which resulted in unbelievable incomes: increasingly exceeding 500 times lowest quintile incomes.] Class actions will happen unless, ---(a) government’s granted rights and privileges’ are more evenly distributed holistically across the population, which, because of economic mechanisms, will require social usage-based redress actions, as SS, to counter the economic mechanist determinism, or, ---(b) political economy officially denies rights to sue (as President G. W. Bush called for when signing the Patients’ Bill of Rights). [Under the above scenario (b), Hesiod’s ‘tyrannies of nomos’ will surely increase and in reaction to government’s economic tyrannies, domestic terrorism will increase also.] ---(c) ‘social usage’-based insurance as Social Security, is applied universally to mitigate the capitalist sponsored political economic system’s determined impoverishment. In which case SS will no longer be needed.

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Most in society need SS in retirement, but persuasive mechanist rhetoric, rather than rational arguments, as ‘the system will not deliver benefits when the time for retirement arrives’ are prominent among each new generation’s popular orthodoxies. These, substitutes for reason constantly need thorough inspection and critical examination. Cogent factual explanations are an ongoing necessity. And, maybe the most significant economic consideration for most individuals is a secure Retirement: which for one reason or another, in the capitalist system, too often suddenly is imposed prematurely. Rationally and responsibly, the lowest quintile of society requires society to develop an education curriculum that neutralizes the effects of capitalistic acquisitive politics’ opposition to ‘social usage’ programs, as SS. Philosophically, rational empiricism (democracy) supports rational economic incentives but disdains rhetorical rationalizations such as the unnecessary negative incentives, which mechanistically determine impoverishment. The rhetoric of Hesiod’s nomos, Heidegger’s irrationalism, . . . as distinguished by Plato’s vision of good and reason, which Kant’s rational dilemma is about, should be mandatory education specifics? After all, understanding and enjoyments as based on exercised reason rather than an orthodoxy of asserted opinions as dogmatically believed, is temporal life’s natural teleological purpose, is it not? SS insurance comes of age It was revealing and appalling to listen to the 1988 presidential candidates in debate. Only one seemed to understand SS. Most didn’t know how SS fit with the government, were unconcerned, or they wouldn’t talk about it. And, maybe this isn’t surprising since few are aware or interested in the details. But before we can reasonably take part in improving SS, commonly accurate understanding is essential. Published U.S. GNP, revenues, expenses, and SS surplus


SS comes of age

57

($ in the common denominations accounted ) GNP

Rev.

Exp

Exp/GNP

SS Tax

SS Exp

SS Surp.

‘80

2632

520

580

0.22

‘84

3663

666

842

0.229

‘92

5962

1092

1382

0.232

385

281

104

‘97

8103

1453

1560

0.193

539

393

146

‘98

8511

1721

1652

0.194

572

408

164

The SS Trust Funds shown as SS Surp. represents funds that only one presidential candidate acknowledged an awareness of: ‘It’s an IOU situation’ this candidate correctly said but then did not elaborate. It is not a secret that SS surplus tax collection is routinely spent as government’s general revenue. SS contributions spent as the government’s general revenue, maybe spuriously, has been accounted as a loan from the SS Trust to the government, i.e., by default of having been spent, became accounted as an IOU to the SS Trust, as an investment in the federal deficit. SS contributions’ tax revenue, which included SS surplus, has remained an ‘on budget’ government account. The 1984 SS Tax law stipulated that SS benefit expenditures would be taken ‘off budget’: SS surplus in Federal deficits accounting, therefore, is not independently apparent by the government’s revenue accounts (for instance, in 1997 the (539) SS tax, as highlighted in the table above, was accounted as government’s revenue, while SS benefits paid were from ‘off budget’ accounting: (393) highlighted in the table.* * For years I wondered what part of SS surplus had politically been buried in the confused government accounting. Then the 2002 Almanac finally disclosed that in 1996 a $575,096 million adjustment had been made to the SS Trust fund Surprised, but I still could not factually reconcile from the published government’s on budget, and off budget, accounting. Revenues and outlays of government, as shown in the table, were graphically displayed as a percent of GNP in the graph. For government’s

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budgetary teleology to exist, missing strategic economic essentials require disclosure for to fit with government’s necessary constitutional purposes for achieving and maintaining economic integrity between government’s revenues and its outlays. Anyway, as of 2001, IOUs existed but no funded government SS surplus existed: reductions of the huge federal deficit did not occur, because transferred debt to SS Trust, was accounted. In 1998 government’s receipts exceeded its outlays, which fiscal responsibility had not been achieved in three previous decades. Then in 2001 government was returned to the faith-based mechanist exploitative deontology (excusing rising deficits because as a percentage of GNP, the def icit wa s decreasing) as the explained rational for cutting high end revenue t a x es sa ns budgeting of tax revenues f o r government’s expenditures. T he t hr ee trillion federal def ic it h a d o n ce a ga in been put on government’s deficit’s pace, as set in the 1980's: As the new century’s early years show, the increasing deficit has in 2006 reached past $ six trillion! * * This managed economics has some new wrinkles. Inflation, as creatively unmeasured, is said to be low while unemployment, also clearly deficient of accuracy, is based on the 1970's near 6% unemployment, as the full employment definition. Interest rates are lower and utility rates are higher than remembered. Surely, the economic indicators are being creatively


Inflation’s cost, put onto SS, must be recompensed

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managed! In early September 2003, Chris Matthews, on his daily TV show, Hardball, questioned the high deficits that had produced low inflation: --How did the Bush administration manage this, he asked? , Then before his guest could respond, as his inclination is, he prognosticated this answer: The supply of fiat money was pumped up. So, did we ‘monetize’ 60 our war debt (as indicated in the above footnote reference, in the same sense that, when on the gold standard, we monetized gold at a fixed value set by law) and with creative internal government accounting effectively to purchase the war debt? Didn’t Lincoln do this when during the Civil War, he printed Greenbacks? And, who wonders about the ‘true’ inflation, particularly in light of the reported truck loads of US money (as reported to be $ trillions’, in value) confiscated at Iraqi borders? Anyway, inflation is an endemic economic problem in all capitalist market system economies, which accountings wise gets passed into consumption, where, whenever goods and services are sold: where wages-earned, of economic necessity, primarily constitute ‘the consuming’, which represents about 70 percent of total economy? Inflation’s cost, is artfully shown, over time, only by selected items’ price monitoring, that is called the CPI index. Inflation’s cost, put onto SS, must be recompensed The national debt’s cumulative interest credited as paid to SS Trust funds is $67.2 million for the years ‘37-‘84. Interest credited for ‘92 alone is 22.6 million.61 SS reported that the accumulated SS Trust Fund (mostly government’s IOUs) would reach $110 billion in ‘88. In ‘92 the Trust Fund was reported at $306.3 billion. And without explanation, in 1996, an unusual $575,096 million was added to the Trust Fund. * * Was this adjustment shown in the 2002 Almanac, and not in the 2000 Almanac, a politically mandated adjustment to show unaccounted SS surplus contributions, in government’s budget, spent as government’s revenue, which only following political pressure, was acknowledged as government’s IOU to SS? Because I have long suspected that expended SS surplus contributions were buried in budget details, this adjustment gratified me!

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However, the $589,121 million fund, at 1996 year end, raised concern regarding, for instance, the $300 million SS surplus reported in 1992? 62 Anyway, total SS Trust Fund at fiscal year end 2000, was $930,986 million. And, since SS is not (cannot be) a cause of inflation, any tax put onto the SS contributions by periodic law, which effectively indexes SS contributions’ tax rates in order to offset the inflation intensive benefits paid by SS, the CPI-based benefits’ cost also must be separated from SS’s contributions taxation. Inflation’s cost put onto SS, in total, should be reimbursed from general tax revenues levied on unearned incomes, which causally are implicated in inflation -based income: high end, which when beyond the SS taxation caps, and owner-based incomes, not only do not pay for the inflation, which they cause, as an economic class, they are implicated as inflation’s main cause. And economically, inflation particularly benefits them: Graduated general revenue taxation should completely pay for all inflation effects in the SS benefits that are paid by SS. public apathy prevails Public apathy shuns responsibility as regards’ rights and purposes. Political interests, however, with far greater dispatch, affirm deontological duties with mechanist ideology to maximize government’s economic grants to exploit, simply because mechanist orthodoxy prevails: while the public demurs, special interests will always misuse the SS accounted surplus that has accumulated in offset to the nation’s debt. Franklin wrote this:63

Manufactures are founded in poverty. It is the number of poor without land in a country, and who must work for others at low wages or starve, that enables undertakers to carry on a manufacture, and afford it cheap enough to prevent the importation of the same kind from abroad, and to bear the expense of its own exportation. . . . In 1769, in his Positions to be Examined concerning National Wealth, Franklin also wrote this:

There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbors. This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest way,


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61

wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favor. Parrington’s comments on Franklin continued:

“As a colonial, long familiar with the injustice of Navigation Laws, Boards of Trade, and other restrictions in favor of British tradesmen, Franklin agreed with Adam Smith on the principle of free trade; but with later developments of the laissez-faire school -- its fetish of the economic man and its iron law of wages 64 -- he would not have agreed. . . . In his later speculations he was rather the social philosopher than the economist, puzzled at the irrationality of society that chooses to make a pigsty of the world, instead of the garden that it might be if men would but use the sense that God has given them. ‘The happiness of individuals is evidently the ultimate end of political society,’ he believed, and a starvation wage-system was the surest way of destroying that happiness. In one of the most delightful letters he ever wrote, Franklin commented on the ways of men thus: ”It is wonderful how preposterously the affairs of the world are managed. Naturally one would imagine, that the interests of a few individuals should give way to general interest; but individuals manage their affairs with so much more application, industry, and address, than the public do theirs, that general interest most commonly gives way to particular. We assemble parliaments and councils, to have the benefit of their collected wisdom; but we necessarily have, at the same time, the inconvenience of their collected passions, prejudices, and private interests. By the help of these, artful men over power their wisdom and dupe its possessors; and if we may judge by the acts, arrets, and edicts, all the world over, for regulating commerce, an assembly of great men is the greatest fool upon earth?“ Parrington also wrote this:65

The final test of every government Paine found in its concern for the public affairs or the public good; any government that does not make [these] its whole and sole object, is not a good government. . . . It is

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the injustice of government that creates armies to defend the earnings of injustice. But every wise government will respect its limitations. As a child of the eighteenth century, Paine hated [Hobbes’] leviathan state as a monster created by a minority to serve the ends of tyranny. The political state he accepted as a present necessity, but he would not have its prestige magnified and the temptation to tyranny increased by the cult of nationalism. . . . The maturest elaboration of Pain’s political philosophy is found in “The Rights of Man.” This extraordinary work, the most influential English contribution to the revolutionary movement, was an examination of the English constitution in the light of what Paine held were the true source and ends of government. It is a brilliant reply to [Edmund] Burke, who rested his interpretation of the English constitution on the legal ground of the common law of contract. Following the revolution in 1688, Burke had argued, the English people through their legal representatives, entered into a solemn contract, binding “themselves, their heirs, and posterities forever,” to certain express terms; and neither in law nor in equity were they, of whatever generation, free to change those terms except by the consent of both parties to the contract. This was an elaboration of the theory of the Old Whigs, which derived government from a perpetual civil contract as opposed the radical doctrine of a revocable social contract; and in attacking it Paine allied himself with such thinkers as Price, Priestley, Franklin and Rousseau. He pointed out the absurdity of carrying over the law of private property into the high realm of political principle--to seek to impose the dead past upon the living sovereignty. If sovereignty inhered in the English people in 1688, it must inhere in the English people in 1793, unless it had been violently wrested from them; no parchment terms of another age can bind that sovereignty other than voluntarily. Over against Burke’s theory of a single, static contract, Paine set the doctrine of the reaffirmation of natural rights. Any generation--as the generation of 1866--is competent to deal with its affairs as it sees fit, but it cannot


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63

barter away the rights of those unborn; such a contract on the face of it is null and void. . . . Burke’s defense fares even worse when the argument is examined in the light of expediency. Illogical as the English system must appear to the political philosopher, can it plead the justification that it works; that it does well the things it is paid to do; that it makes the [public affairs or the public good, holistically] its main concern? The reply to such questions Paine believed, should be sought in the condition of the national economy; more particularly by an examination of the account books of the exchequer [i.e., the treasury of the nation]. The English people paid annually seventeen millions sterling for the maintenance of government, and what did they get in return? Nine millions of the total went to pay interest on old wars, which in the budget was known as the funded debt; of the remaining eight millions the larger part was spent in new wars and sinecure pensions; whereas the real needs of England--the true [public affairs or public good]--were shamelessly neglected. The English people got little for their money except new debt to justify new taxes. The poor were even taxed for the benefit of the great. " Thus my Lord Onslow, who was particularly zealous in the business of proscribing Paine as “the common enemy of us all,” drew four thousand pounds from the royal chest in sinecures, which made him “the principal pauper of the neighborhood, and occasioning a greater expense than the poor, the aged, and the infirm, for ten miles around.” Government on the hereditary principle of Burke did not appear to advantage in the light of such facts. Orthodoxy is a recidivist in that economic duty relapses, preserving orthodoxy! This deontology, fallaciously affirmed as principle, deliberately blames the SS system on the basis of its perceived budgetary necessity, in which inflation’s endemism, mechanized as a tax, determines

"

This same politics, in the U.S., has done this: inflation’s cost is put onto consumption, which returns to business capital, including inflations cost as its exclusive reward.

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to starve SS. Does this fallacy, affirmed as political principle, represent a “right wing” conspiracy: even as Parrington had cited a Federalist-Whig proclivity to either fallaciously ‘deny antecedents’ or ‘affirm consequents’:66

Massachusetts . . . property interests were as secure as any old Federalist could have wished. Gentlemen of principle and property were still in control of the state; and if less emphasis was laid on principle [physis] and more on property [nomos] -- if less regard seemed to be paid to gentlemen of breeding and manners, and more to assertive self-seeking -- business was no less secure than in the good old days, and its profits were greater. . . . Provided of course that the Constitution should follow population and safeguard business interests against . . .the menace of particularism. In the hour of peril, principles go by the board. The Whig party was the lineal heir of the old Federalism, but it denied its philosophical patrimony. It substituted expediency for the old economic realism, and began and ended intellectually bankrupt.. . . aside from petty antagonism to [democratic principles] of Jackson -- was the vague assumption that the well-being of the American people was dependent on governmental patronage; the belief that each economic group and section must receive its special favor, and that through tariffs and bonuses and internal improvements the country as a whole must prosper. Of this principle of special favors -- a return to the seventeenth century from which eighteenth century liberalism was a reaction -- the American System of Henry Clay was the chief expression, and it remains the most significant bequest of the Whig party to our political history. Expecting politics of mechanists to be rational is akin to expecting belief that eggs are the natural antecedents of chickens (where each temporal reality paradoxically is the antecedent of the other: that the logically ‘true’ antecedent to both natural consequents, which has principle necessity, is dogmatically illogically denied by mechanist orthodox unitary materialist belief?) Mechanist orthodoxy is dogmatic and hedonistic, particularly as regards ‘true’ necessary antecedence: And when in administrative control of


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65

government, is an irrational cause of cultural havoc and devastation! Cultural change from orthodoxy is reactive and therefore ‘radical’, despite irrationally affirmed principle antecedences, that is paradoxical. G. P. Brockway points to the orthodox affirmed antecedent notion of rights, as illogically mechanistically applying unequally to wage-earned labor. And to this, he declares: there is no right that capitalists claim, that cannot equally be claimed by labor. Labor’s unequal rights, is the economic result of capitalist orthodoxy, which officially affirmed economic advantage to the capitalists’ as their exclusive right, for to serve the orthodox ‘cultural good’: one example is wage-earned pay delayed until each wage-earned work period is completed (capitalists thereby are officially granted capital free loans from wage-earners that allow a continual business advantage to capitalists [This continuing ‘free capital,’ can be put into product advertizing and lobbying (official free-speech-based awards), that prospers business while workers, denied their earned pay, are disadvantaged]: mechanist orthodoxy asserts that capital accumulation’s is the exclusively owned ‘business equity’ of capitalists. Orthodoxy, like Hesiod’s nomos are deontological ‘duty’ rather than teleological ‘purpose.’ Teleology’s beneficial purpose is distinctly necessary. Crises caused by duty-based deontology, can and eventually energize a politics of beneficial purpose (teleology), and a huge duty-based economic crisis has been building for years: the crisis embroiling consumers’ debt, for instance. Another, involving SS surplus taxes, gave the illusion of budget surpluses that orthodox mechanists’ politically, by rhetorical fallacy, affirmed that the accumulating government surplus was their property since they had paid the highest revenue taxes ($2 Trillion in reduced taxes over a ten-year period was assured by the law). The 2001 tax Bill effectively returned $1.3 billion (SS surplus taxes) that government had routinely spent as general revenue: SS contributions had been legally allowed under revenue taxation authorities of government, and mechanist government administration had determined to return the projected surplus, (which surplus was only because SS contribution’s taxes had determined the projection) to those that paid the highest revenue taxes, (to prime the economy). Little if any was returned to wage-earners who mostly had paid the surplus contribution taxes. This converging politics

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eventually will erupt in change.67

New York -- The bills are coming due for the shopping spree of the 1990s, and Americans are having trouble paying. " Personal debt is at an all-time high, and the amount of income Americans are dedicating to making payment is at levels unseen in 15 years. Mortgage delinquencies and write-offs by credit card companies are rising, and personal bankruptcy filings could hit a record. That translates to serious financial pain for families that are overextended at a time when unemployment is rising, experts say. It also means that just when the cooling U.S. economy needs spending by consumers to sustain growth, they’re hard-pressed to do so. . . . Conservative mechanist orthodoxy has persuaded that profits from debtbased-consumer-spending during the 90s were exclusively capital ‘owned’ by business while the debt was exclusively accountable to individual consumers. Orthodoxy holds that capitalist owners are not culpable for this problem: which denial has no overlapping responsibility when consumerwage-earners are laid off and have no means of repaying the debt (Aren’t personal bankruptcies always legally laid onto the individual?). As in this instance, mechanist politics privatizes profit and leaves individuals to survive in tyrannously turbulent debt. (George Will has often observed this: We privatize profit and socialize debt.) Mechanist determinist deontological ‘duty’ propels society into dire conditions from which the SS social usage insurance system was born. Such radical teleological solutions, as SS, occur, at times, to mitigate the deontological causes of tyranny: so when will we redress problems as personal debt, health care, inflation? During the mid 1980s, the SS surplus accumulation and the national debt each was projected to reach $12 trillion. Accounts fail to track with these projections, but still the SS accumulation is huge, and the federal

"

Federal Chairman Greenspan’s actions to lower interest rates have acted positively to address the personal debt problem. It has allowed homeowners to increase mortgaged debt to pay off personal debt.


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deficit is also large. Leonard’s advice is timely: 68 Because of [Social Security’s] extraordinary growth and scale, few

debates about the federal budget can ignore it. The World Almanac reported these added Trust accounts and balances, at end of 1998: Disability Insurance Trust Fund, $77,087 million, Supplementary Medical Insurance, $40,889 million, and Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, $117,113 million, Total Trust Fund balance, $888,197 million. The following table of SS Contributions taxes and interest paid in, less Benefits paid from the Old-Age and Survivors Trust Fund, yielded these peeriodic factual Fund balances: 1940-98 (in millions) year

SS taxes

Net Int.

Benefits paid

Fund balance

1940

$550

$42

$16

$1745

1950

2106

257

727

12893

1960

9843

517

10270

20829

1970

29955

1350

26268

32616

1980

97608

1886

100626

24566

1990

261506

14143

218948

203445

1995

289529

31417

288607

447946

1996

317157

34026

299968

499479

1997

342312

37689

312862

567395

1998 364871 42198 324256 653108 Facts and reason-based knowledge is an effective armament against orthodox political deontology that will, because of dogmatic mechanist ideology, if allowed, misuses the SS’s Funds. Reasoned knowledge is the only teleological foundation for knowledge-based understanding of beneficent purposes intended officially to be applied, which improve, i.e., offset specific mechanist influenced deficiencies in the mechanist delivered

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SS System. This physis-based reality must become commonly understood in order for knowledge to politically coexist within the mechanist ideology’s political intent, which dogmatically, legally has considered SS surplus contributions as the government’s revenue, to be used as government wills. An orthodox irrationalism employs demagoguery to skew statistical projections which generally are based on consequential realities affirmed as principle: yielding ideal projections affirmed as ‘intended reality,’ in which paradoxical mechanist ‘duty’ rather than teleological ‘purpose’ prevails:69

post hoc, ergo propter hoc. ‘After this, therefore because of this.’ Strictly, the fallacy of inferring that one event is caused by another merely because it comes after it. More loosely, the fallacy (characteristic of superstitious beliefs) of assuming too readily that an event that follows another is caused by it without considering factors such as counter-evidence or the possibility of a common cause. (Causality.) The name appears to derive from Aristotle’s Rhetoric (1401 29-34). Dr Penelope Mackie ‘Necessary’ realities of SS cannot logically be concluded from demagoged idealized projections and trends. For instance, mechanist officials constantly assert fallacies, as the following, as fact: ‘When the BabyBoom retires, there will not be enough workers to support them in retirement.’ [mechanist opposition to SS, sing as a chorus, this ‘false’ conclusion, which only has opinion-based proof ] SS’s political opposition asserted this fallacy when SS was first adopted, reasserted it during the 1980s, and now, often reasserts it despite factual evidences that categorically, it is false. And, in 1983-84, this fallacious assertion embroiled the official retirement discussion, which involved a mini demographic birth boom: the “notch babies.” This aberrant evidence certifies this political fallacy. * * SS had reached maturity coincidently with the problem of retiring a higher than usual population (the notch babies born between 1918-1926), which fact had put a heavier than ususal cost burden on the pay-as-you-go SS


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system. " The mechanist persuaded Congress had changed the fiscal year, adding months of SS expenses, without adding months of contribution tax revenues to the fiscal 1984 accounting period: with the federal government fiscally running huge yearly deficits, this mechanist politics shifted blame onto the SS system for facing eminent Bankruptcy. Then, upon this mechanist scenario, the SS contribution taxes were revised to also collect SS surpluses (with expressed intent to convert SS to a payfor-yourself system. However, none of this collected SS surplus (first collected in 1984) became distributed to pay equal SS benefits to the ‘notch babies’. And, on this mechanist conservative result, the above mentioned infamous assertion was made: in 2030, only two workers per beneficiary will exist to support surviving beneficiaries of the BabyBooms’ 77 million persons.70 The mollifying facts and circumstances are these: --First, this about the Census Bureau’s infamous 1983 projection: 71

The ratio of the working age population . . . to the retirement age population will begin an unprecedented decline. The nation had 5.3 people of working age in 1982 for every person 65 or older. The ratio is projected to drop to 4.7 in 2000 and to 2.4 in 2080. The only fact of this hypothesized statistical scenario is this: ‘The nation had 5.3 people of working age in 1982 for every person 65 or older.’ All else is believed and asserted fiction based demagoguery of a trend that had just ended with the SS system’s maturity: in fact, however, the SS system’s worker to retiree ratio had settled due to the SS system’s maturity. With the now mature SS system, facts show clearly that the ratio did not drop in 2000. Instead, it improved! And by shifting retirement eligibility to age sixty-seven, keeps the ratio at or above 4.39:1, close to (5.3:1), the factual ratio recorded in 1982. --Second, examining the ‘whys’ of the trend’s projected failure revealed ‘true’ reasons and coherence of the now mature SS System. SS did not reach its relative maturity until the late ‘70s. It began

"

But it was the notch babies that drew the mechanist political short straw of this scenario: their SS benefits were lower than usual and corrective action never occurred.

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in 1935, and gradually matured as an increasing count of beneficiaries reached age 65: until a full beneficiary complement became qualified for retirement benefits, the system was not mature. Workers qualifying for SS benefits in 1940 were born sixty five years earlier. With each passing year, a fresh complement of qualified beneficiaries came on line and the SS system approached maturity (With a full complement of eligible retirees) in the late1970s coincident with the mini-boom reality of ‘notch babies’ eligible to retire. Before 1980, statistics are not and cannot be made typical of the mature SS system, i.e., systemic coherence, fails as necessary systemic reality. For instance, back when the average age of mortality was 50, the number of workers, when compared to those 65 and older, was large (And as our young nation began, the ratio probably could have exceeded 200:1), but this declining trend has no logical nexus to SS in the twenty first century. To assume or assert that requirements for SS now has to do with comparative demographics in 1945 (42 workers existed for every qualified retiree) or any year since, also has no relative significance to the now mature SS system. And while the ratio in 1982 (5.3:1), might, for various reasons, be a little high, in reality, it is a benchmark (a standard) of the now mature SS system. Recent demographic facts prove the ratio did not drop in 2000 as, in ‘82, was officially and fallaciously projected. Then, with the shift to age 67 (other circumstances of change were not considered), it remains above 4.39. My model, shows these ratios: Year Ages

1990

2000

2010

2015

2025

2050

18-64

5.15

5.88

6.06

5.29

4.22

5.43

18-66 5.23 6.13 6.29 5.49 4.39 5.59 (the shaded ratios apply and the applicable ratio for 2015 is between 5.29 and 5.49 depending the system’s conversion to age 67) --Thirdly, to infer a standard of circumstantial mortality, the following graph of mortality rates for 1992 (with the CSO table for ages beyond age 80) is as close to future reality as was then possible. And on this basis, the retired population standard, of my model, is based on empirical 1990's census mortality demographics. The U.S. Department of Commerce furnished the information about


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the 1990's population, ages 65 years and older:72 They distributed 31,078,895 individual by age, as shown by the graph (the age range, of this population, is greater than the BabyBoom’s twenty year age range).

For those truly interested in the SS System’s viability, this empirical-factual information provides a critical benchmark: those, who in 1990 were sixty five years and older, were born before 1926. The graph’s retired birth complement in 1990, spans the birth years’ 1890 (100 years old) to 1925 (65years old): Thirty five birth years, compared to the BabyBoom’s 20 year age span, will only slightly increase the count of living over age sixty five population during the retirement years of the BabyBoom: maybe the reality of adding ten years to both the front and back end of the BabyBoom, represents comparability to inferring the BabyBoom’s special financial retirement needs: comparatively then, the BabyBoom is like 1990's retirements. From this empirical information, a theoretical standard for counting retirees in 2025, say, should be close to the modified ratio, Baby Boom: John-Mary’s twenty year population, i.e, (77:55) times 31.08 million (factual retirees in 1990), or, 43.5 million retirees in the peak year of the

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BabyBoom’s retirement (without considering the reduction due to shifting eligibility to age 67): peak retirement load is of short duration. About mortality tables, which statistically are stable, we can say that in 1990, mortality claimed 21.8 % of the population born 65 years earlier. We can also say that as worker longevity increases, the natural pattern of mortality will shift but not change materially. And we can say that, in 1990, life’s mean duration following age 65 was a little more than ten years. Also, if, the average duration of wage-earning years (paying SS contributions taxes) was 40 years, then by deduction, one worker’s contributions during those 40 years, apportions to nearly 4 SS beneficiaries [However, not all those over age 65 qualify to receive SS benefits (mid-1960's, about 62 million persons held jobs covered by Social Security on an average day. They worked for about 4.3 million employers. More than 19 million persons were receiving monthly benefits. Retired workers totaled 10.3 million 73 ) Effectively, then, the ratio of workers to retirees in 1982 was not the one on one situation, which had yielded the ratio 5.3:1, as asserted, but, instead, the real ratio was closer to 20:1. And with the shift in retirement eligibility from age 65 to 67, this age shift will offset some of the natural shift occurring in longevities. Probably, therefore, another age shift will not be needed during the BabyBooms’ retirement. The workers to retirement ratios are sure to improve due to the shift in age eligibility to age 67. --Fourthly, the system’s maturity, regarding expanding benefits’ eligibility, must be evaluated. In 1990, retirees comprised those born between 1925 (age 65) and 1890 (100). Only one spouse, generally qualified for full SS benefits. More women now, are working, making them also eligible for retirement benefits? SS continues to mature. The mid 1960's account described the thirty-yearold SS System. Often, and appropriately, we call SS a ‘revenue machine.’ SS began in 1935 and old age security (OAS) payments began in 1940:74

By the mid-1960's, about 62 million persons held jobs covered by Social Security on an average day. They worked for about 4.3 million employers. More than 19 million persons were receiving monthly benefits. Retired workers totaled 10.3 million and had three million eligible dependents receiving benefits. Disability beneficiaries totaled


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820,000 and had 620,000 eligible dependents. Survivor beneficiaries totaled 4.3 million including 2.0 million aged widows, 1.8 million orphaned children, and 460,000 mothers of such children. Benefit payments for 1963 totaled $15.4 billion and total contributions amounted to $15.6 billion. Assets of the trust fund amounted to $20.7 billion. [Retired workers (10.3 million) ÷ (total population over age

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recorded. We know quite accurately what they are. And we have good reason to rely on mortality. Seventy seven-million births of the BabyBoom are spread over twenty years. And the peak ten birth years, aged to SS retirement benefits’ eligibility, represent a fertility aberration that the aftermath of war and depression had caused.

65), represents a measure of SS’s maturity] Note the ratio: 62 million potential worker-contributors to 19 million beneficiaries; one on one, 3.26 workers existed per beneficiary (and the lower SS contribution tax rates in ‘65 were adequate to pay SS benefits to the 19 million beneficiaries. The total population, 65 and over (which included some spouses, which had survived expired wage-earners), was in 1962 less than 18 million. The proliferation of nonworker SS beneficiaries is a great social problem that, equitably, should receive broader financial support than the SS contribution taxes. And for this politics had made SS an integral part of welfare. However, when the welfare programs were changed, politics failed to redress the welfare portions of SS. ---With the welfare reforms of the ‘90s, was the welfare put onto SS redressed? (However, welfare put onto SS, is not related to the fallacy, which expects 80 million octogenarians to receive SS checks in 2025! ; this fallacious expectation simply resulted from a published error!) 75 After operating thirty years and considering that the count of retired worker-beneficiaries was 10.3 million (while the total retired population was about 18 million), the system’s maturity had reached only .57. By 1978, SS had realized its reasonable maturity plateau. And while maturation of the SS system was expected, explaining to workers that contribution taxes had to be increased to pay the increasing benefits of system’s maturity was maybe impossible. Political opposition -- conservative political flux that had caused the system to be pay-as you-go (no accumulation of reserves) -- now rationalized to indict systemic failure. And this active orthodox flux can be suspected of complicities embroiling the SS Law of 1983. While it is true that eligibility expansions (particularly the increase in working women) might push the count of SS eligible retirees upwards, 80 million simply is factually impossible. The BabyBoom’s birth counts are

Between 2022 and 2025 the greatest benefits’ drain on SS funds will confront SS: workers per retiree ratios, however, remains comparable to the mature standard cited for 1982. So, mortality will have claimed one of each five births, at age 65 (The mortality effect on BabyBoom’s seventyseven million birth count will at least be reduced to sixty million, as if all were born in the same year, which they were not). If at age 70, fiftytwo million; age 80, twenty-two million and 85, less than three million. We can say, therefore, that the BirthBoom will essentially pass from temporal reality within twenty years of retirement. Say, the mean occurs within ten years of retirement. Therefore, the mortality mean, at age seventy five, reduces the BabyBoom’s SS retirement benefit effects, to a population of about forty million. In the five years’ following age sixty five, mortality claims more than 10 percent of remaining population. Research shows that


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shifting to age sixty-seven will reduce the retirement population by nearly six million. At most, therefore, the retirement population during the BabyBoom’s retirement years might not exceed thirty-five million. 1990's census count of thirty-one million is close. --And ultimately, while my analysis anteceded the general revenue Tax Bill of 2001, my reaction to it is now added: The Tax Bill of 2001 was a general revenue tax reduction act that returned $1.3 trillion, as President Bush said, ‘to those that paid the revenue taxes’ (only upper income tax payers got tax repayment checks)." Nothing was done to redress SS surplus contribution taxes. And, therefore, additional tax adjustments are required to provide equity to low income wage-earners that since 1984 contributed more than $3 trillion to fund government’s operations. As of 2000, $2 trillion is inflation’s cost that mechanist politics assigned to SS contribution taxes (This politics infers that SS caused inflation): besides the $1 trillion in SS surplus contributions that government spent as general revenue (SS contribution tax is an “on budget” item), Congress has routinely, fallaciously adjusted the SS tax rates to include inflation’s anticipated benefits’ cost. Wage-earners contributed to SS surplus, which government routinely spends. And they got nothing from the 2001-08 tax rebates. This mechanist deontological political idealism first began with the presidential election of 1980: Supply Side politics (voodoo economics) achieved high end tax rate reductions, which government granted in 1981 The Clinton Administration reversed this action in 1993). Then, again in 2001 $1.3 trillion of anticipated surplus (there was no actual revenue surplus) was ‘returned’ to the high end taxpayers. Since 2001, the reduced tax rates were again applied to the select group (mechanist ideology, even in the face of high annual deficits continued to assert that reduced high end taxes are proper’). And, Congress continued to routinely spend, as government’s revenue, the SS contribution surplus. Tax law made these high end tax reductions apply through 2010.

"

incomes that effectively were either above the cap for SS contributions or were from sources other than wages, and therefore, did not contribute to the SS contribution taxes surpluses

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255 ’Teflon-coated mechanist lies’ (deontological ‘Duty sans Purpose’) [Ideology (mechanist duties), sans teleology (principle-based purposes), i.e., myriad consequential organic paradoxes] Ideology-based explanations, i.e., pernicious untruths about unprecedented federal deficits, Social Security’s causal culpability, and supply side economics, were endemic to political exploits conducted from the US President’s office. I wondered, was a ‘smoking gun’ of deception lurking in the obtrusive political rhetoric? My research asked this: “what economic causal problems lie ahead?” : this answer became factually confirmed when in 1987 David Stockman, President Reagan’s budget director, wrote this of a time shortly following the huge high end Reagan tax cut of 1981:76

So there we sat looking at a fiscal shambles, heading for a monstrous deficit in excess of $300 billion by the middle of the decade. And in marched Donald T. Regan, Paul Craig Roberts, Jack Kemp, Jude Wanniski, Art Laffer, and Irving Kristol [“gurus” of Supply-side Economics], saying, “We're still not wrong. Stand pat. It will go away.” Mechanists’ supply-side Economics and the Laffer Curve were extolled with promises to improve the nation’s economy, as had happened in the early ‘60s under President Kennedy. Conservatives, notably George Bush (Senior), Reagan’s vice president, had called the unproved supply side theory ‘Voodoo Economics.’ But, then pressing economic concerns, as burdened by unprecedented inflation, pressed for political expedience? Hyping the new economic theory became sophistry of the expedience required to sustain public support for 1981's grand general-revenue-tax-cut (and dismal failure did not daunt this mechanist dogmatic theoretical sophistry, as repeated in 2001 and on, until it is repealed, maybe sometime during the Obama administration). Time was then needed to allow the 1981 tax-cut to work its ‘Laffer Curve’ magic. Instead of magic, however, mounting federal deficits began to accumulate (tripling Reagan’s inherited deficit, to $3 trillion in 1988). Politically, an offsetting grand revenue tax increase became law in 1984: the SS Contributions Tax Law that political rhetoric had emphatically denied was a revenue tax increase, became tax law. Reagan’s administration


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suppressed appurtenant information about this SS surplus revenue tax. By this deliberate ‘act of omission,’ had Reagan lied? : the wage-earning public was never informed that the surplus SS Contribution Taxes were designed to fill a federal revenues budgetary deficiency. And, nothing in President Reagan’s campaigning for president aligned him as SS’s friend. His interest was political, which also led to the unenlightened public strategy. That SS surplus tax contributions, used as general revenue, were crucially needed to replace general revenues lost by the income tax cut of 1981, was never officially acknowledged. But instead, public disclosures focused on fateful forecasts of the SS system’s financial crises. " And this sophistry diverted public attention, from the federal deficits, to the frivolous concern of SS’s eminent failure, even bankruptcy. This asserted authoritative pseudo fact, has persisted as detrimental paradoxical politics, from the early '80s, now reaching beyond 2006. Ironically, neo con. political assertions also distorted factual truth: i.e., sans concern for individual constitutional rights, as evident in the indicting and impeachment of President Clinton over a personal consensual affair: The Bill of Rights clearly had amended the Constitution to protect individuals from such abusive prosecution by government (as if John Adams hadn’t reasoned, human rights as coeval of laws and government): only human rights (sovereignty), properly consented, are the antecedent principle of Constitutions and governments. Despite the plethora of pseudo laws, edicts, and authorities (particularly legal), acting contrarily, without administrative compliance to the constitutionally antecedent principle of public consent, all organic coercion is unjust. As contemporary neo cons’ did, Whigs had also ignored Jefferson and Lincoln’s principle-based admonitions, however, now logical tautology is available to reasonable persons’ truth testing of paradoxical matters. No longer is there a logical excuse for dogmatically denying the only constitutionally antecedent principle of our nation’s democracy, or to affirm expedient consequents, however legal the ideological authoritative assertion may be: only, political adherents of Jeffersonian philosophy-based democracy (as Lincoln, a staunch free soil

"

Shortfalls in SS were more directly related to Congress’ administrative shift in the fiscal accounting year for Social Security operations.

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democrat *) have preserved this constitutional antecedent principle of government which clearly makes the human spiritual faculties of reason the logical antecedent axiom to all human materialities. This axiomatic principle must be respected organically for to represent ‘true’ distributive justice sans paradox. * In a letter to H. L. Prince, Lincoln cited Jefferson’s logical fidelity, his dedication to naturally antecedent first principles.77 “Remembering . . . that the Jefferson party was formed upon its

supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior . . . it will be . . . interesting to note how completely the two [parties] have changed hands as to the principles upon which they were originally supposed to be divided. The Democracy of today hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another’s right to property [as Democrats’ politics of slavery had done]; Republicans on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar [is Lincoln’s ‘true’ appraisal of Jeffersonian democracy]. . . . But, soberly, it is now no child’s play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation. . . . The principles of Jefferson are the principles and axioms of free society and yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them ‘glittering generalities.’ Another bluntly calls them ‘self-evident lies!’ And others insidiously argue that they apply to ‘superior races.’ These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect -- the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. . . . They are the vanguard, the miners and sappers of returning despotism. We must repulse them or they will subjugate us.” [By returning our nation to Sixteenth century dogmatism] ---- ‘What the King says, or does, is just!’ This dogmatic authoritative fallacy represents what Historian Will Durant wrote this about:


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Ultimately, our troubles are due to dogma and deduction; we find no new truth because we take some venerable but questionable proposition as the indubitable starting point (the affirmed principle), and never think about putting this assumption itself to a test of observation or experiment. Will Durant Critically reasoned principles of liberty and justice were fallaciously supplanted by dogma as, for instance, “the divine right of justice -- ‘vox justiciae vox dei’”-- that Tory-Federalist-Whigs sponsored for importation to America. Neither is this dogmatic belief-based justice, based on truth fitted for knowledge and morality, nor for democracy. Pure beneficent justice rests as a Desiderius of those tyrannized by the Tory-Federalist-Whig dogmatic retributive justice practiced in the U.S. (This does not mean that U.S. justice is bad when compared to all others, but it can and must become better, with implementations of distributive justice.’) However, when justice comports to dogma-based ‘positive’ laws, the tenets of dogmas are made the master of reasoned principles. With justice not reasonable, the stress of great frustration and paradoxical mechanist tyrannies are authoritatively spread onto humanity. When rationalization is the basis of laws, forms of ‘divine right,’ which conflates reason to forms of unitary materialism, quiets (conflates) the natural principles of reason. Injustice describes the result! And, in cultures of dogma-based mind conditioning, for instance, culture restrains the inculcation of reason-based understanding of truth, and morality. Wasn’t Christ martyred because of this cultural condition? Pseudo truths sans systemic coherent ‘trueness’ are endemic of politically asserted ideological prescriptions: particularly, this criticism applies to the political prescriptions that deliberately misled public perceptions to believe that SS’s failure was eminent. What was ‘true,’ however, was that the Humphrey-Hawkins law had failed under Carter and was summarily ignored under Reagan: inflation pillages SS similarly, but doubly, as it pillages all economic consumption under the paternalistic mechanisms of political economy as licensed by the states of the federal government. And, those systemically granted unequal political economy privileges, are the pillagers that inflation covertly rewards. Government’s greatest fault under President

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Carter was having failed to solve the systemic mechanist inflation problem. President Reagan’s deontological neo con theory-based Administration fallaciously affirmed inflation’s endemism as a rightful propertied advantage of affluence, while doubly rewarding high end taxpayers with revenue tax relief. Anyway, truthfully, SS cannot be blamed for causing inflation! General revenues, as collected from those that gain financially from inflation’s endemism, as licensed by government, should be made to repay the inflation costs that irrationally were put onto the SS contribution taxes. The following statement, as quoted farther on, quantifies inflations devastating effect: The CPI shows that the cost of goods and services rose from .539 in 1945 to 5.291 in 2001 (about ten fold). By 1985, the first full year of SS ‘surplus’ contribution tax revenue, taxes flowing to the federal government had equaled the revenue flow in 1980, erasing the shortfall caused by 1981 tax cuts. Revenue shortfalls of this tax cut were offset and eventually would be reversed by the contributions’ tax revenue surpluses, paid by wage-earners. But expenditures for armaments had sharply increased: making the 1980's deficits largely if not primarily caused by the armaments buildup (political spin then claimed this huge contingent government expenditure had won the Cold War; more candidly, however, David Stockman, allowed that the USSR had, as irrationally, reached financial ruin before the U.S. did). A research tax foundation showed that SS contribution tax surplus since 1984, in 1985 completely offset revenue lost by the 1981 tax cut: first-dollar SS wageearned income taxation had completely offset revenue lost by the 1981 high end revenue tax reductions: taxes collected in 1985 equaled taxes collected in 1980: political sophistries irrationally, emphatically had distinguished SS contribution taxes from general-revenue taxes." Tax Freedom Day 1980 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1984 xxxxxxxxxx 1985 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx All tax revenues are collected by the US treasury and noted by their source.

"

By this sophistry, politics succeeded in escaping perceptions of the huge tax increase put onto wages earned while high incomes received great tax relief.


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In 1993, SS was taken ‘Off Budget,’ however, SS contribution taxes continued as federal budget’ revenue. SS ‘Off Budget’ distinction came in response to intents of the ‘84 SS law, ordering that SS expenditures were to be taken ‘Off Budget.’ In 1993, SS became a separate independently accounted department of government with surplus contribution tax revenue continuing as budgeted revenue. Neo con. politics had instilled, as public ‘expectation,’ that the SS surplus contribution-taxes were not a form of general-revenue taxes (however, when SS was legally ratified as a form of government’s taxation authority, the Supreme Court had decided that SS taxation was legal, only as a generalrevenue tax). Cut the economic dogma, and the class privileges, which are based on the dogma, and the 1984 SS contribution-tax law is the greatest general revenue tax increase ever made: this most regressive, first dollar, taxation system ever devised, applies only to low end wageearners. And thereby, government conscripts wage-earners to pay doubly for inflation that government has failed to control. Wage-earners pay for inflation when they consume to subsist, and again when paying SS contribution taxes to cover inflation affected SS retirement benefits. What causes Inflation? The CPI shows that the cost of goods and services rose from .539 in 1945 to 5.291 in 2001: 78 " for every dollar contributed to SS in 1945, $9.82 is required in 2002. Productive efficiencies that affected wages earned, resulted in profits to capitalists while inflation (the insidious and pernicious economic effect that causally was effected by rich mens political economy’s paternalism of granted rights and privileges), is dogmatically an endemic economic disease for which the poor economic class mechanistically is dupe, made to suffer. SS taxation of first dollar wages is mostly now a tax on inflation over which wage-earners neither caused nor have control: and, therefore, logically shouldn’t be made to pay. Those who are the cause of inflation should be made to pay for it! And government should fulfill the Humphrey-Hawkins law’s requirements: as the Constitution instructs,

"

(1967 = 1.00), what cost $ .41 in 1935, cost $ 5.29 in 2001, i.e., what cost $1.00 in 1935, cost $12.90 in 2001.

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Congress ‘to set the standards of trade.’ Whatever causes prices to increase inordinately in the static ‘circular flow’ of wages and profits, goods and services, causes inflation. Adam Smith indicted business monopoly of any sort as a prime source. President Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex. Forbes’ list of the nation’s richest, points to a select few whose primary income is not from wages earned and therefore pay nothing to offset inflation’s endemic taxation that fallaciously government put onto wages earned, while income that is non earned benefits directly from inflation. Surely President Bush and Vice President Cheney are not listed on Forbes’ list of the rich and powerful, however, their 2003 assets were declared at $21 and $38 million respectively. Therefore, they also represent inflation’s prime causal source: corporate stock, when initiated is nominally priced, then as publicly traded mysticly grows to the level as set by willing buyers. Fiat money is printed to serve the utility of exchanging goods and services. But when investment bankers misuse their license to loan fiat money to effect leveraged buy-outs of corporations, they misuse their license and as well money that is the economy’s utility, which also is the nation’s economic utility: the corporate buy-out process achieves to convert accumulated corporate capital into private money hoards of far greater value equivalence than the fiat money borrowed to effect the buy-outs, the new stock owners thereby reap great profits after paying off their short term borrowing: this ideological use of legalized economic causal mechanism greatly feeds inflation. Illegal money laundering and counterfeiting also are great causes of inflation.79

By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose. Keynes Politically, wage-earners must assert their constitutional rights to fair


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taxation: inflation must be paid for by those who profit from it. The inflation cost put onto SS is easily calculated by the CPI. In 2001, for instance, the CPI was at 9.82: meaning that goods that once cost $1.00 (in 1935) now (in 2001) cost $9.82. The proportion of wage earners contributions’ cost, caused by inflation’s endemism, can be calculated by the ratio 1 to 9.82, meaning that for each dollar of “true” SS systemic cost, $9.82 is inflation’s endemism related that not causally but expediently and assertively was put onto SS. All inflation’s endemism belongs to general revenue taxation and not to SS contribution taxes. For 1980, the inflation’s endemism ratio was 1 to 4.62, 1985, 1 to 5.98, 1990, 1 to 7.26, 1995, 1 to 8.47. OAS Contributions (in millions) 80 YEAR

CONTRIB

RATIO

INFLATION

1970

$30,256

est.

$22,692

1980

103,456

1: 4.62

80,903

1990

267,530

1: 7.26

230,680

1996

321,557

1: 8.47

283,863

1997

349,946

est.

308,360

1998

371,207

est.

327,381

1999

396,352

est.

349,558

2000

421,391

1: 9.82

378,480

SS contribution taxes due to inflation constitute the greatest portion of the SS cost that is irrationally put onto wage-earners’ SS contribution taxes. The government’s total debt to SS, for failing to control inflation, exceeds $1.5 trillion for the decade of the ‘80s, $3 trillion for the decade of the ‘90s

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and will far exceed $4 trillion for the first decade of the Twenty First century. When added to the accumulating surplus, which will not be needed for reasonable purposes of SS, that if a property of those that paid, then is owed to wage-earners, government’s total debt owed by 2010 will exceed $10 trillion. Paying for this erroneous tax burden belongs exclusively to those that benefitted from inflation: those to whom the tax returns of 1981, 2001 through 2006 and beyond, were irrationally returned. The Reagan administration emphatically, dogmatically held to the opinion that SS contribution-taxes were completely separate from revenue taxes: all accounts of discussions of the general tax cuts in 1981 and 1985 were emphatically distinct from the 1984 increase in SS contribution-taxes. In stark contrast, while campaigning for the presidency, a deontological political priority had focused on cutting Entitlements (meaning SS an Medicare). Reagan campaigned hard for this. But, when faced with insufficient money in the federal till, he reversed his politics and vowed to preserve the SS System. If this was not a political flip flop from ‘cutting entitlements’ -- and with impending legacies of unprecedented federal deficits -- it surely is an example of the irrationalism, which Immanuel Kant exposed regarding popular ideologically dogmatic mechanist determinism: because determinism was contingent upon experience, therefore, is not naturally necessary (principle), it ideologically is irrationally asserted as necessary reality. Kant called this, synthetic a priori: an irrationalism based on experience that happened before any possible human experience. Kierkegard would say it is irrationalism that never gets beyond dogmatic faith. Anyway, no official orthodoxy has considered reducing SS contributions-tax rates. And this shows that deontological ethics is akin to determinism, which is ‘duty’ bound without teleological ‘probity’ of ‘purpose.’ Excepting orthodox political sophistry’s duplicity that at once contends that SS contributions are not a tax, while also contending that surplus SS contributions are required to cover government’s expenditures, no reasonable connection between SS and the federal Budget exists! " And "

And similar sophist duplicity contends that inflation’s cost, the causality of which relates to licenses granted by government as


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as Medicare’s tax is piggybacked onto the SS contribution’s tax, the same disconnect applies. However, general revenue supports Medicaid, Part B of Medicare, and possibly “welfare” that was added to the SS System (The welfare additions to SS presented fundamental deontological flaws to the teleological SS system and therefore diminish SS’s rationally quintessential brilliance). As 1998 ended, SS disclosed these facts: (1) 48 million benefit checks are paid each month, and (2) 145 million wage-earners pay contribution taxes. Population facts for 1998 show 26 million natural born, of ages 65-93, eligible to receive ‘full’ benefits. Therefore, checks paid to another 22 million must be for early retirees (those of ages 62-64), spouses or minors, or disabled dependents, or to immigrants that participated. The systemic problems for SS reach far beyond preparing for the demographics of the BabyBoom. The political question of factual pertinence is this: should ‘welfare’ costs be put onto the broader base of general revenue taxes instead of as at present only onto SS contribution taxes? All questions about welfare and ancillary SS insurance should be separated from the retirementbenefit consideration: if they cannot be removed or shifted to other more compatibly management forums in which the public’s need for clear and concise information is less critical, reasonably, they each should be considered separately, on their own merits, and publicly disclosed. Substantial and blatantly sophists’ political doubletalk embroils the SS issues. The public must be aware of and concerned with the political ideological sophistries’ irrationalism. Unless, of course, contribution-tax paying wage-earner-consumers remain acquiescent: stand apart from the issues, to allow the SS System again to be the acquisitive hunter’s political ‘pigeon,’ of deontological and exploitative politics. As, after all, the legislation for the Social Security contribution-tax increases, initiated and rejected during Carter's administration, had become conveniently, supposedly neutral of partisan politics, society should, therefore, not

influenced by political economy, and the settlement of which is born by wage-earned production and consumption, must not be settled by taxing the causal sources. After all, this would subordinate the irrational licenses.

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hang blame for this sophistry only onto Reagan-neo conservatives. D. A. Stockman wrote about President Reagan and prominent Congressmen:

Social Security, the centerpiece of the American welfare state, was overwhelmingly affirmed in the white heat of political confrontation. Claude Pepper: Eighty year-old folk hero of the radical senior activist groups. Bob Michel: He tried to keep the Republicans on board but couldn’t. Tip O’Neil: He helped the intimidated politicians stop the Reagan Revolution dead in its tracks. Senator Moynihan: My former rabbi led the charge in defense of SS status quo. This was truly the triumph of politics. And about Stockman leaving Reagan’s Administration,

When I finally left the White House, in August 1985, the President had accepted but never understood the revolution I had brought to him on the eve of his election. And he had no idea of the failure I was leaving behind. Reagan’s Vice President, Bush (senior) called this revolution voodoo economics. Its first ‘chapter,’ accomplished in 1981, the deficit projection ($1.9 trillion through 1990 81) was discerned.82 To convince it really was as bad as I was saying, I invented a multiple-choice budget quiz. The regular briefings weren’t doing the job. . . . The quiz allowed him systematically to look at the whole $900 billion budget, to see it brick-by brick. . . . He sat there day after day with his pencil. . . . After making all his cuts, the deficit remained . . . staggering . . .. [At a following meeting] When the discussion turned to taxes, his fist came squarely on the table. “I don’t want to hear any more talk about taxes,” he insisted. “The problem is ‘deficit spending!” It is difficult politely to correct the President of the United States when he has blatantly contradicted himself. The . . . deficits were the result of the spending he didn’t want to cut. . . . The spending bar was at 24.5 percent of GNP and the revenue bar with existing taxes was at 18.9 percent of GNP. The deficit bar for 1986 absorbed 72 percent of net private savings, ‘crowding out investment and


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economic growth.’ With the political change in 1992, the teleological applications are evident in the more consistent level of government’s expenditures. Reagan and Bush’s deontology went only so far as their dogmatically fantasist faith. In this faith, their dogma had fallaciously supplanted necessary economic principle, while bereft of constitutionally teleological purposes to the whole of society. The faith-based political deontology was burdened with conflated unitary materialist, mechanist bias, therefore, was fallacy, the truth value of which was firmly ‘false.’ Their policies were, as Christ suggested, in darkness and lying. Clinton reintroduced fiscal teleology that had the end purpose of holding expenses in line with revenues, to allow economic growth to wipe out the deficits. President George W. Bush has returned us to the materialist Faithbased deontology: dutifully asserting private systemic affluence as the fallacious antecedent principle of funding government’s end purposes: cutting tax-based revenue from society’s affluent without concern for natural teleology requiring strict balance between government’s revenues and expenses. Again, huge deficits are accumulating for as long as the mechanist deontological politics prevails.

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During the ‘80's, the bogie of the ‘Cold War,’ then became the bogie of terrorism, then as the bogie of preemptive war with Iraq, has politically distracted society’s attention away from teleology. This political bogie continues to make fear more politically popular than any reality of threat of danger to Americans’ lives.. 256 Preserving Economic Baby (Coping with political mechanisms’ economic paradoxes)

To mitigate the legally licensed mechanist exploitative deontological result of government’s fiction-based American System mechanisms,’ social usage programs are required. However, infusing mitigating teleologies is always vigorously met with mechanist politics of those directly benefitting from the mechanist deontology, which is ‘in the graph’s pudding.’ The reality is, however, that this deontology has a foundation that while temporal, is real and pertinent to the temporal state of life. And this foundation must be preserved, not destroyed! Materiality has an equal logical place in this temporal setting. We have deontological workers’ compensation, pensions, insurance, and teleological Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. We have a Constitution which specifies a Bill of Rights and equal protection under law.


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However, we lack common philosophical opinions (politics is often irrational) to support the original American teleology of ‘equal protection’ under law (as Categorical Imperative that it is supposed to be). And, to be effective, is an essential for democratic teleology. But, while casting out the dirty bath water (irrational materialist-mechanist dogma endemic of the fallacious belief that axiomatically was supplanted for constitutional teleology, with the effect that it was then made the antecedent of teleology), we must still preserve this materialist deontological ‘economic baby’: The American System of Political Economy. And this is why centrist politics, with rationally antecedent principles instilled, are of necessity to temporal philosophical democracy: only democracy offers rationally balanced philosophy that regards the spiritual and the material aspects of human life. Irrationally, socialism, fascism and capitalism aggrandize unitary materialism, which conflates life’s sum (spiritual essence), thereby denying, belittling, or equivocating it. Look again at the income distribution graph above. Particularly look at the 1996 results. The highest quintile’s increase was almost equal to the 2nd quintile’s total share. Holistically, increases in this highest quintile must result from offsetting decreases in the other quintiles: systemically, suppressing low end salaries and wages resulted in increases freely given at the top. This phenomenon shows top salaries increased greatly during the decade ending in 1996 (In 2002 Congress gave to themselves a 5 percent increase while the SS benefits COLA was held to 1.2 percent). The grand 1981 tax rate reduction allowed the higher quintiles to keep far more of their grand income shares. Higher end incomes not only benefitted from tax rate reductions, they had income increases that nearly equaled the second quintiles total income. The 1984 SS contribution tax increase, reclaimed the government’s revenue lost by the ‘81 tax rate reduction. In 2001 tax relief was again given to top end income without concern for the holistic effect of it. Our systemic culprits are deontological in nature. And solutions must give way to teleological balancing purposes. Still, in the way, vastly increased expenditures for armaments are the federal deficit’s main culprits. And with the 2001 (and again in 2003-2007-?) deontological rationalized irrationalism of refunded taxes to high end incomes: refunded only to those in the middle to highest income quintiles, represents a grand political heist

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from economy that only SS surpluses had sustained. Should SS‘s regressive taxation now apply to all income? And, if so, with inflation’s cost mechanistically put onto SS benefits then paid by general revenue taxes, a much lower SS contributions tax rate would be required! The contributions’ tax bite on wages could be cut by more than 80 percent. And this reduced SS system’s true cost then isolates the inflation endemism, which mechanistically is put onto consumption and thereby effects SS benefits’ cost, while also rewarding capital returns to unearned income. With this economic justice accomplished, retiring the BabyBoom is then a ‘cake walk.’ When compared with the 77 million youngsters in the birth-boom, 55 million youngsters, who lived 45 years earlier, surprised me. Somehow, I imagined that fewer individuals existed then. The greater perceptive difference, however, is the mechanized industrial shift to life’s dependence on wages earned and the urbanization, which has resulted from this economic transformation: three of every four in the BabyBoom lived in urban-suburban environs. The population at the turn of the century was growing at rates exceeding 1.5% annually. Such annual growth, about the five year intervals that I reviewed, resulted in a five year 7.5% rate of growth. John-Mary's group of 55 million individuals, when conservatively projected (mapping 1 percent annual population increase instead of the experience-based indication of 1.5 percent) to the mid point of the birth-boom yields an expectation in 1957 of 86 million youngsters. In fact, 77 million natural births are not abnormal at all. Instead, the low birth rates, as depressed by the effects of depression and war, are what is abnormal! Only depression and war caused the birth abnormalities that made 77 million births appear as a babyBoom. Why should a rational society then reassign responsibility for the fertility effects to depression and war? Surely, human nature cannot be blamed. And mechanistically making the SS System responsible represents an irrational political deontological economic affirmation that, just as irrationally, then infers that SS had caused the Great Depression and World War II. Deontological unitary material acquisitiveness, which irrationally politically affirmed this blame to SS, also are predominant accomplices in Wars and Depression.


91 Why then, should wage-earners mechanistically bear inflation endemism’s costs, particularly as related to SS benefits paid to the BabyBoom in retirement? The reasoned answer is, they should not. Why then, should wage-earners mechanistically bear inflation endemism’s costs, particularly as related to SS benefits paid to the BabyBoom in retirement? The reasoned answer is, they should not.

Tax rebates in 2001-- 2006 (?) were not given to lower income tax payers (particularly was not related to SS contribution taxes). Yet, SS surplus contribution taxes are routinely spent to support economy: giving an appearance to a coming Budget surplus. Clearly, the political mechanist deontology either consistently blames SS for war and depression or it conveniently denies any responsibility concerning these events. Teleologically, however, those that benefit most from the mechanist economy, as sustained by SS contribution’s surpluses, should now reciprocate by contributing fairly to the SS cost (a half century of back taxes related to inflation endemism’s cost put onto the SS contributions tax in addition to $ trillions of SS contributions surplus that government routinely spent is now primarily owed and repayable by those of unearned income that

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benefitted from the mechanist deontology). This repayment is huge! Capitalism’s propensities for growth 83

‘The Theory of Economic Development’ sounds like an analysis of what we have come to call the underdeveloped world. But in 1912 the special economic status and problems of that “world” had not yet come into existence -- this was still the unabashed colonialism [Whigs in charge of the government’s Gilded Age officially had installed the American System of Political economy’s administrations along with its pork barrel of ‘internal improvement’ paternalism]. Schumperter’s book was about another kind of development -- the way in which capitalism develops its propensities for growth. Scholarly in tone and tedious in style (a lite from time to time with lightning flashes), the book would not strike the casual reader as being of much political importance. Yet this academic treatise was destined to become the basis for one of the most influential interpretations of capitalism ever written. The exposition begins in Schumpeter’s contradictory way. It is a book about capitalist growth and dynamics, but it opens with a depiction of a capitalist economy in which growth is totally absent. Schumpeter’s initial portrait describes a capitalism that lacks the very ingredient that brought growth into the worlds of Smith and Mill and Marx and Keynes -- namely, the accumulation of capital. Schumpeter describes instead a capitalism sans accumulation -- a capitalism whose flow of production is perfectly static and changeless, reproducing itself in a “circular flow” that never alters or expands its creation of wealth. The model resembles the stationary state envisaged by Ricardo and Mill, with the difference that the stationary state seemed the end of capitalism to the earlier writers, whereas for Schumpeter it was the beginning of capitalism. Therefore we must examine the characteristics of the circular flow a little more carefully. Because


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the system has no momentum, inertia is the rule of its economic life: “All knowledge and habit, once acquired,” writes Schumpeter, “becomes as firmly rooted in ourselves as a railway embankment in the earth.” Thus having found by trial and error the economic course that is most advantageous for ourselves, we repeat it by routine. Economic life may have originally been a challenge; it becomes a habit. More important, in this changeless flow competition will have removed all earnings that exceed the value of anyone’s contribution to output. This means that competition among employers will force them to pay their workers the full value of the product they create, and that owners of land or other natural wealth will likewise receive as rents whatever value their resources contribute. So workers and landowners will get their shares in the circular flow. And capitalists? Another surprise. Capitalists will receive nothing, except their wages as management. That is because any contribution to the value of output that was derived from capital goods they owned would be entirely absorbed by the value of labor that went into making those goods plus the value of resources they contained. Thus, exactly as Ricardo or Mill foresaw, ‘in a static economy there is no place for profit! Why does Schumpeter present us with such a strange -- not to say strained -- image of the system? Perhaps we have already divined the purpose behind his method: the model of a static capitalism is an attempt to answer the question of where profits come from. The source of profits is a question that has been gingerly handled by most economists. Smith wavered between viewing profit as a deduction from the value created by labor and as a kind of independent return located in capital itself. If profits were a deduction, of course, the explanation implied that labor was shortchanged; and if they were a contribution of capital, one would have to explain why the profits went to the owner of the machine, not to its inventor or user. Mill suggested that profits were the reward for

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the “abstinence” of capitalists, but he did not explain why capitalists were entitled to a reward for an activity that was clearly in their own interest. Still other economists described profits as the earnings of “capital,” speaking as if the shovel itself were paid for its contribution to output. Marx, of course, said that Smith was right in the first place though he didn’t know it -- that profits were a deduction from the actual value created by the working man. But that was part of the labor theory of value which everyone knew to be wrong and therefore did not have to be reckoned with. Schumpeter now came forward with a brilliant answer to this vexing question. Profits he said, did not arise from exploitation of labor or from the earnings of capital. They were the result of quite another process. ‘Profits appeared in a static economy when the circular flow failed to follow its routinized course.’ [And profits routinely taken, despite entrepreneurial activity, as now is commonly a classical political economy sanctioned business rightful paternalism, causes the static circular flow fail to respect labor’s contribution.] Now we can see why the wildly unrealistic circular flow is so brilliant a starting point. For all the forces leading to disruptions in routine, one stands out. This is the introduction of technological or organizational innovations into the circular flow -- new or cheaper ways of making things, or ways of making wholly new things. ‘As a result of these innovations a flow of income arises that cannot be traced either to the contribution of labor or of resource owners.’ A new process enables an innovating capitalist to produce the same goods as his competitors, but at a cheaper cost, exactly as a favorably located piece of land enables its owner to produce crops more cheaply than less well situated fellow landlords. Again, exactly like the fortunate landlord, the innovating capitalist now receives a “rent” from the differential in his cost. But this rent is not derived from Godgiven advantages in location or fertility. It springs from the will and intelligence of the innovator, and it will disappear as soon as other capitalists learn the tricks of the pioneer. The new flow is not


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therefore a more or less permanent rent. It is a wholly transient profit. An innovation implies an innovator -- someone who is responsible for combining the factors of production in new ways. This is obviously not a “normal” businessman, following established routines. The person who introduces change into economic life is a representative of another class -- or more accurately, another group, because innovators do not necessarily come from any social class. Schumpeter took an old word from the economic lexicon and used it to describe these revolutionists of production. He called them ‘entrepreneurs.’ Entrepreneurs and their innovating activity were thus the source of profit in the capitalist system. [Sans entrepreneurial activity, inflations’ endemism is introduced, as paradoxically also is ‘the iron cage of wages.’] About, where profits come from, this cartoon portrays corporate perspectives as compared to workers without “golden parachutes.”

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R. L. Heibroner’s comment about the nature of Smiths market system is now better understood as a static circular flowing system. And Heilbroner’s analysis of Adam Smith’s economic system applies also to natural classical conservative tenets (mechanist propensities were not included): 84

In a sense his system presupposes that eighteenth-century England will remain unchanged forever. Only in quantity will it grow: more people, more goods, more wealth; its quality will remain unchanged. His are the dynamics of a static community; it grows but it never matures. Schumpeter’s Static economic circular flow presents the core holistic view of economy. And, important is that to take profits from the static flowing system, will cause trade offs, of taking from other parts of the system. Parrington had noted this as taking from Paul to give to Peter: which is the fly in Whig honey. Parrington also described how political philosophy was adapted to sponsor business interests. As Hoffer observed, making politics into a profitable enterprise:85

Citizens had saved the government in the trying days that were past; it was only fair in return that government should aid the patriotic citizen in the necessary work of developing national resources. It was paternalism as understood by speculators and subsidy-hunters, but was it not a part of the great American System that was to make the country rich and self-sufficient? The American System had been talked of for forty years; it had slowly got on its feet in pre-war days despite the stubborn planter opposition; now at last it had fairly come into it own. The time was ripe for the Republican party to become a fairy godmother to the millions of Beriah Sellerses throughout the North and the West. [Whigs’ political pork barrel was installed] Despite the evolution which gave our nation deterministic paternalism via ‘The American System of Economy,’ ideological truth about ‘shadows instead of reality’ remain, as Parrington reported:

However attractive the disguises it may assume, it is in essence the


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logical creed of the profit philosophy. " It is the expression in politics of the acquisitive instinct and it assumes as the greatest good the shaping of public policy to promote private interests. It asserts that it is a duty of the state to help its citizens to make money, and it conceives of the political state as a useful instrument for effective exploitation. How otherwise? The public good cannot be served apart from business interests for business interests are the public good and in serving business the state is serving society. Every bodies’ eggs are in the basket and they must not be broken. For a capitalistic society Whiggery is the only rational [but, in fact, is irrational] politics, for it exalts the profit-motive as the sole object of parliamentary concern. Government has only to wave its wand and fairy gifts descend upon business like the golden sands of Pactolus. It graciously bestows its tariffs and subsidies, and streams of wealth flow into private wells. [To introduce this thought, Parrington wrote: Whiggery springs up as naturally as pigweed in a garden.] [a fly in the Whig honey] But unhappily there is a fly in the Whig honey. In a competitive order, government is forced to make its choices. It cannot serve both Peter and Paul. If it gives with one hand it must take away with the other. And so the persuasive ideal of paternalism in the common interest degenerates in practice into legalized favoritism. Governmental gifts go to the largest investments. Lesser interests are sacrificed to greater interests and Whiggery comes finally to serve the lords of the earth without whose good will the wheels of business will not turn. To him that hath shall be given. If the few do not prosper the many will starve, and if the many have

"

However, if Schumpeter’s analysis is ‘true’ (others, as Ricardo and Malthus verified that it is) taking profits without providing valued entrepreneurial advantages that directly justify the profits, irrationally robs value from the production of goods and services.

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bread who would begrudge the few their abundance? In Whiggery [now only in its origins is now on the GOP side of politics] is the fulfillment of the Scriptures. [In what Chomsski documented 86 as U. S. Hegemony, or is it an Armageddon?] Schumpeter’s ‘static circular flow’ analysis was made to answer economic concerns about profit: He showed that neither profit nor inflation was statically endemic to mechanisms of economy. After describing the new rented value that entrepreneurs gave to ‘circular flow,’ his conclusion was emphatic: The new flow is not therefore a more or less permanent rent. It is a wholly transient profit. So, when profits are taken regularly, without adding entrepreneurial value, the profit takers surely benefit. However, without adding entrepreneurial rented value to the ‘circular flow,’ profit-taking acts like Brockway’s ‘bankers’ COLA,’granting economic benefits to ‘Peter that holistically are taken from Paul.’ Regularly taking profits without adding directly compensatory entrepreneurial activity causes paradoxical phenomenal endemic companions,’ as inflation, to oppositely holistically balance the economic ‘circular flow.’ And, despite official legalities that grant rights and privileges to those who superintend political economy’s privatized mechanisms, uncannily those who directly benefit from the paradoxical phenomenal‘inflation endemism’ and the ‘profit taking,’ as legally granted, still are causally responsible for the economic determinism that mechanistically endemically rapes and pillages wageearners. Critical economic observers -- notably Franklin, Ricardo, Malthus, Weber -- have called this economic determinism ‘the iron cage of wages.’ Causally, therefore, graduated general revenue taxation is both justified and necessary. Putting inflation’s cost onto general revenue taxes is the only rational causal place from which to recover the economic endemism that mechanistically benefit only the superintendents of privatized mechanist economy. And, ethically as well rationally, this should be done forthwith. And, by taking inflation’s cost out of SS contribution taxes, vastly reduced contribution rates (as much as 95 percent), would then satisfy SS’s benefits ‘social usage’ requirements. SS’s systemic regressiveness would then be mitigated. And if applied to all income, SS benefits, when appropriate, could then increase.


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Another aspect on Shumperter’s ‘static circular flow’ analysis shows that our mechanist materialist economy, because of profit-taking, is deontological and not teleological. Profit-taking is not a valid economic principle. And affirming it as principle, as federalist-Whigs have done, is fallacious still. Shumperter, also confirms that the SS system, as mutual insurance generally, is teleological, even while materialist economic mechanisms are deontological. Mitigating the paradoxical phenomena of our mechanist political economy, by ‘social usage’ (mutual insurance forms) is not only rational, it is necessary to achieve equality. Anyway, teleological analysis is convincing. The birth counts of any large existing group do not pose a threatening problem for the SS System. Instead, the threat to SS is from fallacious sophistries of mechanist deontological politics: of The American System of Political Economy that fail to follow Adam Smith’s ethical creed regarding wage-earned production. The political, mechanist deontology design is to entrap consumers into paying the full cost of economic endemism (political economy’s inflation endemism, for instance). This deontological duty was systemically and covertly accomplished, as, John Maynard Keynes had portrayed:87

By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose. Keynes Parrington documented Federalist designs ‘to devise legal springs’ (legal entrapments) of (constitutional teleologies).88

Principles must not stand in the way of success Through the fierce scramble of rival politicians moved a scholarly figure who preserved to the last dignity and distinction of an earlier age. James Kent, whose long life and ripe legal learning were devoted to upholding what he conceived to be the ultimate principles of law and politics, was the chief political thinker of the transition

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days of New York. A disciple of Locke and Blackstone, remodeling seventeenth-century liberalism into eighteenth-century conservatism, he was concerned to erect the barriers of the Common Law about the unsurveyed frontiers of the American experiment, assigning exact metes and bounds beyond which it should not go. Like John Marshall and Joseph Story he was expert in devising legal springs to catch unwary democrats, and while the Jeffersonians were shouting over their victories at the polls, he was engaged in the strategic work of placing the Constitution under the narrow custodianship of the English law. An ardent Federalist and later an equally ardent Whig, he reveals in his precise thinking the intimate relations that everywhere exist between economics, politics, and [affirmed] legal principles. [Irrationalism fallaciously affirmed as principles should be identified, untied and separated, mechanistically] 257 Sweet Business Deals:Government’s contracted mechanisms As Benjamin Franklin demonstrated, interest on capital investments, when compounded, magically grows: interest, like profit-taking, is endemism, which government’s contracted mechanisms are licensed to capitalize on. Shumperter’s analysis of a ‘static circular flowing’ economy, found profit-taking, whether directly from licensed privately owned production or as invested private capital, Adam Smith did not hypothesize. In the sense Smith had conceived what was natural, endemism, as profit, interest, and the like, was not natural (His comments on corporations and banks were scant if not dismal) therefore, economic endemism was conceptually mechanist added and Whig perfected. Interest and profit found definition in classical mechanist capitalism, which designed property ownership, all of which were covertly added-onto Smith’s economic ‘circular flowing’ concept. This excerpt is form section 205. Robert Heilbroner’s economic research about an underworld, which in America featured Henry George (1839-1897): Heilbroner wrote this:


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The [underworld’s] newcomer was Henry George. . . . George began to write about matters of more than routine interest: about the Chinese coolies and their indenture, and about the land grabbing of the railroads, and the machinations of the local trusts. He wrote a long letter to J. S. Mill in France on the immigration question and was graced with a long affirmative reply. Robert Heilbroner’s underworld exposed what custodians of political economy must recognize when society acts directly to impose this recognition by installing necessary macro economic reforms. Heilbroner documented the following from the underworld of economics: from Mandeville to Bastiat, then the incisive American, Henry George.: 89

The irrepressible Mandeville shocked the eighteenth century with a witty demonstration that virtue was vice and vice virtue. Mandeville merely pointed out that the profligate expenditure of the sinful rich gave work to the poor, while the stingy rectitude of the virtuous penny pincher did not; hence, said Mandeville, private immorality may redound to the public welfare, whereas private uprightness may be a social burden. The sophisticated lesson of his "Fable of the Bees" was too much for the eighteenth century to swallow; Mandeville's book was convicted as a public nuisance by a grand jury in Middlesex in 1723, and Mandeville himself was roundly castigated by Adam Smith and everyone else. But whereas the earlier eccentrics and charlatans were largely banished by the opinions of sturdy thinkers like Smith and Ricardo, now the underworld claimed its recruits for another reason. There was simply no longer any room in the official world of economics for those who wanted to take the whole gamut of human behavior for their forum, and there was little tolerance in the stuffy world of Victorian correctness for those whose diagnosis of society left room for moral doubtings or seemed to indicate the need for radical reform. .. It was a far more interesting place, this underworld, than the

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serene realms above. It abounded with wonderful personalities, and in it sprouted a weird and luxuriant tangle of ideas. There was, for example, a man who has been almost forgotten in the march of economic ideas. He is Frederic Bastiat, an eccentric Frenchman, who lived from 1801 to 1850, and who in that short space of time and an even shorter space of literary life -- six years -- brought to bear on economics that most devastating of all weapons, ridicule. Look at this madhouse of a world, says Bastiat. It goes to enormous efforts to tunnel underneath a mountain in order to connect two countries. And then what does it do? Having labored mightily to facilitate the interchange of goods, it sets up customs guards on both sides of the mountain and makes it as difficult as possible for merchandise to travel through the tunnel! Bastiat had a gift for pointing out our absurdities; his little book "Economic Sophisms" is as close to humor as economics has ever come. When, for example, the Paris-Madrid railroad was being debated in the French assembly, one M. Simiot argued that it should have a gap at Bordeaux, because a break in the line there would redound greatly to the wealth of the Bordeaux porters, commissionaires, hotel-keepers, bargemen, and the like, and thus, by enriching Bordeaux, would enrich France. Bestiat seized on the idea with avidity. Fine, he said, but let's not stop at Bordeaux alone. "If Bordeaux has a right to profit by a gap . . . then Angouleme, Poitiers, Tours, Orleans . . . should also demand gaps as being for the general interest. . . In this way we shall succeed in having a railway composed of successive gaps, and which may be denominated a "Negative Railway." . . . When the Chamber of Deputies in the 1840s legislated higher duties on all foreign goods in order to benefit French industry, Bastiat turned out this masterpiece of economic satire: PETITION OF THE MANUFACTURERS OF CANDLES, WAXLIGHTS, LAMPS, CANDLESTICKS, STREET LAMPS, SNUFFERS, EXTINGUISHERS, AND OF THE PRODUCERS OF OIL, TALLOW,


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RESIN, ALCOHOL, AND GENERALLY EVERY-THING CONNECTED WITH LIGHTING

To Messieurs The Members of the Chamber of Deputies Gentlemen, We are suffering from the intolerable competition of a foreign rival, placed, it would seem, in a condition so far superior to our own for the production of light, that he absolutely inundates our national market with it at a price fabulously reduced. . . . This rival . . . is no other than the sun. What we pray for, is, that it may please you to pass a law ordering the shutting up of all windows, skylights, dormer-windows, outside and inside shutters, curtains, blinds, bull's-eyes; in a word of all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures. . . . If you shut up as much as possible all access to natural light and create a demand for artificial light, which of our French manufacturers will not benefit by it? . . . If more tallow is consumed, then there must be more oxen and sheep . . . if more oil is consumed, then we shall have extended cultivation of the poppy, of the olive . . . our heaths will be covered with resinous trees. Make your choice, but be logical; for as long as you exclude, as you do, iron, corn, foreign fabrics, in proportion as their prices approximate to zero, what inconsistency it would be to admit the light of the sun, the price of which is already zero during the entire day! A more dramatic -- if fantastic -- defense of free trade has never been written. But it was not only against protective tariffs that Bastiat protested: this man laughed at every form of economic doublethinking. In 1848, when the Socialists began to propound their ideas for the salvation for society with more regard for passion than practicability, Bastiat turned against them the same weapons that he had used against the "ancien regime." "Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state," he wrote. "They forget that the state lives at

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the expense of every one.". . How he loved to demolish the specious thinking that argued for barriers to trade under the guise of liberal economics. . . His function, it seems, was to prick the pomposities of his time; but beneath the raillery and the wit lies the more disturbing question: does the system always make sense? Are there paradoxes where the public and private weals collide? Can we trust the automatic mechanism of private interest when it is perverted at every turn by the far from automatic mechanism of the political structure it erects? And the questions raised by Bastiat remained unanswered. The underworld continued to prosper. In 1879 it gained an American recruit, a bearded, gentle, fiercely self-sure man, who said that "Political Economy . . . as currently taught is hopeless and despairing. But this is because she has been degraded and shackled; her truths dislocated; her harmonies ignored; the word she would utter gagged in her mouth, and her protest against wrong turned into an indorsement of injustice." And that was not all. For this heretic maintained not only that economics had failed to see the answer to the riddle of poverty although it was clearly laid out before her eyes, but that with his remedy, a new world stood ready to unfold. . . . The newcomer was Henry George . . . George began to write about matters of more than routine interest: about the Chinese coolies and their indenture, and about the land grabbing of the railroads, and the machinations of the local trusts. He wrote a long letter to J. S. Mill in France on the immigration question and was graced with a long affirmative reply. . . When the University of California established a chair of political economy, he was widely considered as a strong candidate for the post. But to qualify he had to deliver a lecture before faculty and students, and George was rash enough to voice such sentiments


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as this: "The name of political economy has been constantly invoked against every effort of the working classes to increase their wages." And then to compound the shock he added: "For the study of political economy, you need no special knowledge, no extensive library, no costly laboratory. You do not even need textbooks nor teachers, if you will but think for yourselves." That was the beginning and the end of his academic career. With his passion mixed with little professional circumspection, George went on to write Progress and Poverty, about which Heilbroner wrote:

no wonder the guardians of economics could not seriously consider an argument that was couched in such a style as this: Take now . . . some hard-headed business man, who has no theories, but knows how to make money. Say to him: "Here is a little village; in ten years it will be a great city -- in ten years the railroad will have taken the place of the stage coach, the electric light of the candle; it will abound with all the machinery and improvements that so enormously multiply the effective power of labor. Will, in ten years, interest be any higher?" He will tell you, "NO!" "Will the wages of common labor be any higher?" He will tell you, "No, the wages of common labor will not be any higher. .." "What then will be higher?" "Rent, the value of land. Go, get yourself a piece of ground, and hold possession." Heilbroner then extracted this rational conclusion that bothered not only Henry George but most mechanized lifestyles, of hard-pressed productive wage earners, which The American System of Political Economy’s mechanism-based treadmill puts them on:

We need not spell out the emotionally charged argument. . . Henry George is outraged at the spectacle of men whose incomes -- some

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times fabulous incomes -- derive not from the services they have rendered to the community, but merely from the fact that they have had the good fortune to hold advantageously situated soil. . . When we come to the central body of the thesis we must pause. . . His basic criticism of society is moral and not a mechanistic one.

Why should a man benefit merely from the fact of ownership, when he may render no services to the community in exchange? We may justify the rewards of an industrialist by describing his profits as the prize for his foresight and ingenuity, but where is the foresight of a man whose grandfather owned a pasture on which, two generations later, society saw fit to erect a skyscraper? . . . The problem is not just one of land rents, but of all unearned income; and . . . is a serious problem that cannot be adequately approached through land ownership alone. Now, how has orthodox economics reacted to these realities that bear so heavily on the underclass? The answer seems always to rest in meanings that have become described as conservative mechanist politics: as for instance, in the sense of the following Robert Hughes’ observation:90

In the '80s, one of the features of the electoral scene was a public recoil from formal politics, from the active reasoned exercise of citizenship. This trend is no longer affordable. It came because Americans didn't trust anyone. It was part of the cafard [overwhelming fatigue and indifference to duties and surroundings] the 80s induced. In effect, the Republican and Democratic Parties since 1968 have practiced two forms of conservative policy, one episodically liberal and the other aggressively not. [ And, is n’t t his wha t N oa m Chomsky documented in his recent book, Hegemony or Survival? : the more aggressive, conservative mechanist, we consider as orthodox, stable, the national security protector; the non aggressor, the liberal, we distrust for being contemplative, therefore, incapable to protect national security]


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Now in late 2007, the U.S. political situation is analogous to our war in Iraq: regardless of why, we are where we are: neither form of mechanist politics can be expected to change. Therefore, while the non mechanist politics has sovereign endorsement, it should prioritize the most urgent social usage-based insurance for adjusting the mechanism-based economy with intent to grant distributive justice to those who have only political economy’s treadmill to depend on for employment and subsistence. The argument, which Henry George made should convince all who reason that unearned income (all that is not wage-earned) is government’s paternal gift which unconstitutionally was granted by mechanist political economy without requiring services to the community in exchange (this income should be taxable to any extent). Robert Hughes’ observation continues: Both are parties of upper-middle-class interests . . . The whole apparatus of influence in Washington is geared to lobbying by big business, not to input from small citizen groups. As E. J. Dione eloquently argued in his book "Why Americans Hate Politics," there is no bloc in Congress or the Senate that truly represents the needs or opinions of people in the enormous central band of American life where workers and the middle class overlap. Because we are more interested in profit than ethics, our Political Economy is bereft of ethical morality. We do this without intent. We do it anyway. These utterances of Cicero and Confucius make the point:91

He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason. Cicero

Our headstrong passions shut the door of our souls against God [the source of ethical morality]. Confucius Passionate influences of wealth are the driving force behind “American System” politics. Our headstrong passions to gain wealth (measured in hoards of money) shut the door of ethical morality. Without conscience or probity, political economy is now primarily a matter of whose “ox gets gored.” Orthodox economists are partly to blame as they chose to focus on

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accumulation where the passions of wealth are most active and the forces of politics are extreme. With too little regard for the wage-earners’ role with “spending” on the side of consumption, they have compromised the economic equation. In this they rationalized the character of “man” as Adam Smith, with Thomas Hobbes and many others, had done (However, Smith’s uncompromising view about the need for probity, in the administrations of economy, distinguishes Smith from the orthodoxy of his economics following). While the rationalization of “man’s” character demeans “man’s” infinite sophistication in matters of ethics and morality, The American System of Political Economy authenticates the base qualities that in cultural settings are considered as vain and immoral. This authentication legitimizes “man’s” passion-based qualities and it makes their acts appropriate. Franklin’s view of “cheating” became acceptable during weekdays and therefore compatible with Sunday’s preaching. In this, The American System of Political Economy outfits the passionate politics of selfinterest with legitimacy -- a sort of “economic sainthood” -- even while it “shuts the door” to increasing systemic devastation to the economic function of consumption! The passions of self-interest always tear at the values and morality in all of us and at the extremes -- now aided systemically by political economy -- leaves some desperately forlorn. Then as Cicero prophetically warned: with no avenues or room for reason, ugly passions arise and a predictable result is increasing instances of mayhem. William Wordsworth may have had this in mind when he wrote Sonnet:

Sonnet “The World is too Much With Us” The World is too much with us; late and soon, Gettting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.---Great God! I’d rather be


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A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. William Wordsworth 1770-1850 Heilbroner noted Henry George's reasoned contributions to the unpopular, unorthodox underworld of economy. In light of political disaster produced by conservative mechanists, this underworld’s truth springs forth: 92

"Progress and Poverty" sold more copies than all the economic texts previously published in the country; in England his name became a household word. Not only that, but the import of his ideas -- albeit usually in watered form -- became part of the heritage of men like Woodrow Wilson, John Dewey, Louis Brandeis. Indeed there is a devoted following of Henry George still active Before leaving this thought, it is religiously pertinent to review St. John’s First Epistle: mechanist temporal concupiscence is St John’s central concern, which preceded his final revelation and predicted Armageddon. (end of excerpt from section 205) Endemism is paradoxical and contradicting to constitutional teleology, which Roger Sherman had argued for:93

So long as we part with our most valuable Commodities for such Bills of Credit as are no Profit; but rather a Cheat, Vexation and Snare to us, and become a Medium whereby we are continually cheating and wronging one another in our Dealings and Commerce, and so long as we import so much more foreign Goods than are necessary, and keep so many Merchants and Traders employed to procure and deal them out to us . . . I say so long as these Things are so we shall spend great Part of our labour and Substance for that which will not profit us. Whereas if these Things were reformed, the Provisions and other Commodities which we might have to export yearly, and which other Governments are dependant [sic] upon us for, would procure us Gold

110

250-260

SS: VIRTUES and VICES

and Silver abundantly sufficient for a Medium of Trade. And we might be as independent, flourishing and happy a Colony as any in the British Dominions. Sherman achieved ‘an exquisitely simple piece of legislative machinery’: the Constitution’s Article I Section 8. And he was greatly disappointed that Congress failed to act, as this had empowered Congress with authority, power, and responsibility, . . . to coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the standards of weights and measures. Congress was given this constitutional assignment to forestall Bills of Credit devaluating specie, and to forestall money’s devaluation (Today’s dollar is now worth pennies of years past): this endemic currency devaluation, is called inflation. And if alive, Sherman would add ‘fluctuating mediums of exchange’ to his indictments of endemic inflation. Irrationally, monarchical politics, which is mechanist, dogmatically asserts ‘the king can do no wrong.’ And because this asserted antecedent dogma is deemed as principle, consistently Sherman’s ‘standards.’ have been ignored. Dogmatic ‘divine-right-based’ politics has also deductively asserted that ‘law’ is the ‘American king.’ Parrington credited Hamilton for the errant belief: 94

It is sufficiently clear that in tastes and convictions Hamilton was a high Tory. The past to which he appealed was a Tory past, the psychology which he accepted was a Tory psychology, the law and order which he desired was a Tory law and order. His philosophy was not liked by republican America, and he knew that it was not liked. Practical business men accepted both his premises and conclusions, but republicans under the spell of revolutionary idealism, and agrarians suffering in their pocketbooks, would oppose them vigorously. He was at pains, therefore, as a practical statesman, to dress his views in a garb more seemly to plebeian prejudices, and like earlier Tories he paraded an ethical justification for his Toryism. The current Federalist dogma of the ‘divine right’ of justice -- ‘vox justiciae vox dei’ -- was at hand to serve his purpose and he made free use of it. But no ethical gilding could quite conceal a certain ruthlessness of purpose; in practice justice became synonymous with


257

Sweet Business Deals

111

expediency, and expediency was curiously like sheer Tory will to power. In certain of his principles Hamilton was a follower of Hobbes. His philosophy conducted logically to the leviathan state, highly centralized, coercive, efficient. But he was no idealist to exalt the state as the divine repository of authority, an enduring entity apart from the individual citizen and above him. He regarded the state as a highly useful instrument, which in the name of law and order would serve the interests of the powerful, and restrain the turbulence of the disinherited. For in every government founded on coercion rather than good will, the perennial unrest of those who are coerced is a grave menace; in the end the exploited will turn fiercely upon the exploiters. In such governments, therefore, self interest requires that social unrest shall be covered with approbium and put down by the police power; and the sufficient test of a strong state lies in its ability to protect the privileges of the minority against the anarchy of the majority. . . . In his plan of government presented to the Convention, the principle of centralized power was carried further than most would go, and his supporting speeches expressed doctrines that startled certain of his hearers. He was frankly a monarchist, and he urged the monarchical principle of Hobbesian logic. “The principle chiefly intended to be established is this -- that there must be a permanent ‘will’.” “There ought to be a principle in government capable of resisting the popular current.” The predicate, those who may so easily be characterized as radical only in religion, and religious in their opinions of the sublunary sphere of government, 95 represent the dogma-based, self-serving philosophical nature of the conventional predicate values common to classical Hobbesian mechanist oligarchical logos: Visceral values in logos that would change religious tenets -- to perpetuate feudalism, hierarchy and enslavement on the one hand and aggrandizement of property on the other -- while feigning religion in matters of government abides as covertly predicated value that is endemic of the dogmatic prejudice, expressed by these

112

250-260

SS: VIRTUES and VICES

adjectives: ‘classical,’ ‘orthodox,’ ‘conservative.’ Capitalism and mercantilism were imported to America by the politics of ‘classical,’ Federalism. Tagging on Federalism’s political coattails, Whigs gave us ‘fictitious person’ corporations along with fluctuating stock, bond and money markets, which are mediums of exchange. Inflation’s endemism, the veiled paradoxical value, as Roger Sherman recognized in ‘Bills of Credit’, became codified, without accounting specification, so to serve affluence only. " While fluctuating value mediums are supposed to work their ‘positive’ magic, i.e, contractually distribute ‘positive’ endemic monetary value, as distributed by ownership promises (stocks, accounts, etc.) which in fact share in the risk of fluctuation, as legally has enured.""" Selling shares of stock provided rewards for inflation’s endemism promised by licensed corporate charter to accumulate as the corporate capital of the privatized political economy corporate mechanisms. However, also important, hyped portrayals of business gains, which under emphasized the negative paradoxical nature of corporate business. And while these negatives were shared by holders of stock, regulating this monarchical-based hierarchical organic deontology was similarly abstract, maybe as abstract, as regulating inflation’s endemism is: which is regulated by artificially adjusting rates of interest to slow economic demand and unfortunately, has the mechanistic effect of increasing unemployment. Parrington wrote this:

For in every government founded on coercion rather than good will, the perennial unrest of those who are coerced is a grave menace; in the end the exploited will turn fiercely upon the exploiters. In such governments, therefore, self interest requires that social unrest shall be covered with approbium """" and put down by the police power; and the sufficient test of a strong state lies in its ability to protect the

"

‘Positive’ value added to affluence, ‘negatively’ taken from non affluence.

"""

" " ""

The originating source of meaning ‘to enure’ is found in law.

Approbium is not listed in the dictionary. The context, ‘covered by approbium,’ might imply ideology, i.e., seeming appropriateness?’


257

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113

[paternal] privileges of the [business] minority against the [terrorism inclined] anarchy of the majority. The mechanist deontology of the 2001 Revenue Tax Bill is related. It is compatible with the mechanist deontology about inflation’s endemism: in the end, the least influential proletariat is mechanistically determined to bear, at points of natural consuming necessity, inflation endemism’s cost, they are scapegoats of the official mechanist adjustments to counter inflation’s endemism: to cure inflation’s endemism, the mechanist economic paradox effects, by raising rates of interest, which raised investment returns, make the GNP rise, falsely indicating a healthy holistic economy," while the determined ‘negative’ economic effects, related to the ‘iron cage of wages’ mechanistically puts wage-earners who, more frequently now, are unemployed: like inflation’s ‘negative’ endemism, unemployment was covertly made a principle necessity.* * Individual proletariat wages (income ranging from $300 to $1,800, which comprised 22 percent of wages earned in 1944 96 , when considering Inflation’s endemism should have caused this earnings range to rise ten fold, i.e., the income range $3,000 to $18,000 should be expected in 2000. And, while the median wage for white males in 1998 was $37,000 97, it is also a fact that the American System’s ‘iron cage of wages’ has mechanistically locked 16-20 percent (35-50 million of the population) into poverty. This paradoxically determined mechanist fact, of American System’s political economy’s myriad economic grants and privileges, which caused inflation’s endemism, and the artful ‘positive’ accounting of "" GDP, also determined that high end incomes now far exceed 500 times’ what low incomes are.

"

As reported in the September 28, 2003 news, the economy was growing at greater than 3 percent, as fueled by unprecedented auto and home sales (due to Fed managed low interest rates) and government’s deficit fueled expenditures due to war in Iraq. Unemployment devastation is not accounted: three years of jobs lost without replacement represent Parrington’s appraisal: law and order, [that serve] the interests of the powerful, and [restrains] the turbulence of the disinherited.

""

Neither inflation’s endemism nor unemployment is accounted.

114

250-260

SS: VIRTUES and VICES

And, mechanistically, the economically disfranchised are still locked out! In all acquisitive legal aggrandizements of grants and privileges, officially we irrationally and organically subscribe that glorious Epicurean Paradox: ‘give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries.’ Oliver Wendell Holmes How often are these sentiments expressed? : --“I earned. all that I get.” --“The poor deserve the poverty they themselves have caused; they are lazy!” Both are irrational sentiments, mostly expressed by those with high end incomes? And both sentiments have dispensed life’s logical categorically imperative necessities: at first dispensing subjective necessity, then dispensing objective necessity. And both illogical deductions resulted from asserting logical consequents in replacement of the logical antecedent principles, which exist naturally? , Durant observed this:

Ultimately, our troubles are due to dogma and deduction; we find no new truth because we take some venerable but questionable proposition as the indubitable starting point (the affirmed principle), and never think about putting this assumption itself to a test of observation or experiment. Will Durant The mechanist sentiment, ‘compounding interest’ on scheduled savings makes pension benefits better than SS benefits’, is frequently alleged. However, this sentiment is untrue, as this fact shows. --A recent survey shows: individually paid SS benefits are twice the amount that private pensions individually paid! Typical mechanist economy’s private enterprise, of paternalistic advantages, as taking profits and its complementary ‘iron cage of wages,’ consistently legally has denied inflation effected cost of living adjustments (COLA’s) to wage-earned pension benefits. Contrarily, SS, ‘social usage’ insurance, has provided inflation COLA’s to offset political economy’s inflation endemism, which most severely effects subsistence in retirement. About this economic paradoxical quandary, Oliver’s drama was on point: when Fagan expressed: I think I must think it out again! But like orthodox


257

Sweet Business Deals

115

human concupiscence driven irrationalism, which sentiments of high end income sycophants can and will perpetuate the irrational mechanist ideology, rather than transcend to rationalism. Having personally served managerial responsibility for collecting and disbursing the SS OASDHI payroll tax, I gleaned enough knowledge to dangerously mislead but also enough to raise important concerns. Payroll systems are now automated; they deduct and deposit SS contribution-taxes into special accounts maintained by agencies, appointed by the government’s treasury department. Mostly these agencies are banks, which quarterly send electronic pay-outs on to the U.S. Treasury, to clear their contribution-tax accounts. However, the business contract made between collection agencies and the U.S. Treasury provide for sweet-agency-rewards: in the interim of collecting contribution-taxes and sending them on to the federal government, these agencies are allowed to invest the tax collections in Fed-funds, in which the Federal Reserve requires banks to maintain their mandatory reserves. The Fed pays daily compounded interest on these invested funds. While the interest rate is generally lower than the Fed ‘discount interest rate,’ the amount of interest paid to SS tax collection agencies, to reward them, is substantial. * * Remember Billy Sol Estas? A recent fraud involving SS contribution taxes, implicated another Texan that in 1991 had money of no apparent source. As a big contributor to political campaigns, he was well liked and patronized. As it turned out, however, this Texan controlled several SS contribution collection agencies and routinely filed deferrals before paying out his accounts. While the economy was expanding, contribution-tax collections covered his borrowing and spending as his own funds from these accounts. An economic downturn then revealed his fraud. The amount in the pipeline between collection and quarterly payout to the U.S. Treasury, can be quantified: for instance, the OASDHI receipts for 1984 were $226 billion. The quarterly amount, therefore, was $56 billion. The midpoint of this quarterly amount is a fair estimate of ‘in the pipeline’ funds that collection agencies had legally invested as their own in Fed Funds and received daily paid interest, as their legal reward. Quarterly, therefore, collection agencies, for their reward, received Fed Funds’ interest

116

250-260

SS: VIRTUES and VICES

paid on $28 billion, which the Fed then routinely loaned to banks at discount interest rates. The net maximized estimate that collection agent banks share in Fed paid interest returns, on the $28 billion SS collections of tax contributions,’ quarterly in 1984, is maybe more than $840 million. " When compared to the government’s two percent administrative cost to account and distribute $303 billion in SS benefits, in 1986, was $1.8 billion: private banking sector SS collection agents’ reward is greater than the government’s cost to distribute SS’s benefits? Private businesses can directly withhold and pay quarterly the accumulated SS contribution taxes to government. However, penalties for late payment and the added accounting responsibility makes direct payment, a risky proposition. SS ‘deposit centers’ are mostly Banks. In the interim of quarterly payout, banks are not allowed to directly loan any SS contribution deposits, but they are allowed to invest them, alongside their mandatory reserves, in Fed funds. Then banks borrow from the Fed at discount interest rates for making loans to consumers. And many will correctly observe that the costs of collecting and transferring SS contribution taxes to government are not at all related to government’s SS benefits distribution cost. Still, this comparison might be interesting although maybe unworthy of consideration. Comparatively, government’s cost administration is more efficient than are the privatized agency costs involving banking like administrations’ of SS contribution taxes. This cost difference relates more to government’s legal paternal grants to banks, which legalized the ‘COLA’ like charges put on loaned funds, which funds are available from customer deposits and Fed funds that for a small cost are available. This government’s grant to each bank, (‘COLA’), is regulated only by competition and rules of fair trade. And while the banks’ income from ‘COLA-based’ endemism is more direct than is profit taking from corporate business productions, the economic effect is similar: both are related in the covert sense of economic endemism, which

"

And banks also routinely invest customers’ money in accounts with them, in Fed Funds, including checking accounts’ funds until ‘the float’ of personal check collections are cleared. And banks collect daily interest on this routine circular flowing Fed Funds investment.


257

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is unaccounted but magically appears at the completion of trade (consumption) as business owned capital. Besides banks’ administration charges that generally don’t benefit wage-earners, which to subsist must consume at endemism inflated prices, wage-earners, who are bare of government granted mechanists’ paternalistic systemic advantages, also are conscripted to pay inflation indexed SS contribution-taxes. " This is very important since inflation endemism’s hidden cost effect effectively was doubled for wage-earners to pay: first to subsist and then also to contribute to the subsistence of SS retired persons. And, as Brockway concluded, inflation endemism’s cost effect is primarily government’s paternalism caused, i.e., the bankers’ COLA grant. Anyway, no reasonable justification for assigning inflation’s cost to SS contribution taxes exists. Sure, the cost must be born somehow economically. However, wage-earners, whose income has no nexus to inflation’s endemism sources, surely should not doubly be charged for it. And, if efficiency with collecting the SS taxes is improved by more frequent and direct transfers to government’s Treasury Department are made, which proposal is politically impossible since private enterprise’ politics astutely realizes, quite selfishly, that substantial privatized monetary benefits are derived from investing SS contributions taxes in Fed Funds in the interim ‘pipeline’ of transfer to the government. * * In private industry, however, economic paradox, fueled by digital technology, has resulted in entrepreneurial attacks on banking profits from checking account funds invested in the interim of checking collections. When you mail your check to pay a credit card charge, for instance, your credit company no longer needs to present your check to your bank to effect collection (they still return your paid check after the fact of the collection). Electronics now allows a payee to collect from your bank immediately upon receiving your check, or preauthorization for auto-pay collection directly from your bank. And this electronics convenience also allowed identity fraud to proliferate: $ five billion a year now and rising. (Which proves that private checking accounts are insecure because they fail to secure

"

While the COLA does not directly apply to the SS tax, it does correspond to benefit payments on which the COLA does apply.

118

250-260

SS: VIRTUES and VICES

personal confidential identity information!) And when Fed funds interest slippage on hundreds of billions of SS tax collections is contemplated, delays with clearing checks is not the only source of another’s funds, which banks invest and profit from. The amount of Fed funds interest paid to private SS collection agents, through the 1980s, amounted to more than $20 billion annually. And when the SS contributions in the circular flowing pipeline from banks into Fed Funds, then back to banks for making private loans is considered, the general economies funds availability is made greater, on average, by about 12 percent of total annual SS contribution taxes ($ 167.061 billion in 1984), which are then available to fund general interest-bearing consumer loans. This covert aspect of political economy, which provides bank’s profit should annually be publicly disclosed, since inflation endemism’s greatest cause, as G. P. Brockway had reasoned, is the bankers’ COLA, which banks’ legally are allowed to charge. And paradoxically, this silent mechanistically determined inflation endemism, which legally becomes enured capital that returns only to the capital side of business accounting, legally derives from those wage-earners who are least capable to pay for their own naturally required subsistence consumption: mechanized inflation is made into a social affliction, which legally grants economic endemism laden profit to capitalists. Pursuing this a little further, in order for SS to issue benefit checks each month, the federal government must hold in reserve a full quarter of contribution-tax revenue; therefore, the average continuously invested SS funds with the federal government in 1984, $67 billion of Fund assets invested in the federal deficit, plus the mid point of one quarter's tax collections invested in Fed Funds, in total exceed $90 billion. On this fundamental SS Funds assumption held by the federal government’s Treasury, as measured by the accounted government paid interest, pays a rate of interest on SS funds that must have been lower than the rate the Fed paid to banks investing SS collections in Fed Funds. And, why don’t SS Funds, routinely invested in the federal deficit, get interest paid that is comparable to interest that is paid on Treasury Notes? Considering interest compounded at 3.5 percent on the accumulation of equal annual payments (rents) since SS began, this accumulation is to 2.47 times the sum of the equal annual rents. However, SS contribution tax


257

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revenues do not accumulate. They cannot accumulate since SS benefits are paid from current contribution taxes. An accumulation of annual rents, legal reserves, or liability, as required for private investments (and insurances) does not exist. Anyway, such mandatory reserves, which would be prospectively necessary for any calculated future benefit disbursements simply are beyond any private economic capability: safe investment capability for such onerous fanciful accumulation of contribution taxes quite simply does not exist." However, the 1984 SS Tax law, which required substantial surplus contribution tax funds to accumulate, on which government’s accumulating IOUs to SS, should pay compounding interest on, however, the interest paid on this accumulating SS surplus has failed to equal what government pays to private investors in its deficit. I surely would like to be proved wrong on this? Politics for investing this SS surplus accumulation in the private sector’s open markets, which fluctuate in value, is popular mechanist ideology, however, poses great administrative problems and greater onerous responsibility for which our political government is philosophically neither equipt nor capable. Current SS contribution taxes, which are necessary for paying current benefits are now invested in the only viable short term vehicle: i.e., the federal deficit. And, while the administrative cost to collect and channel the SS tax collections to the Treasury, the Banks’ cost is justifiable if not reasonable. However, entrusting SS accumulating surplus taxes to acquisitive politics is like trusting foxes to care for chickens. Although SS surplus Fund assets are routinely deposited with the US Treasury Department, which also offers government’s debt instruments for private investing, the politics embroiling government’s budgets and expenditures have yet to prove a high impartial standard of fiducial credibility: Trust Me, this irrational politics says! (And still, since 9\11, a safer place for investing than the federal government’s debt instruments, just doesn’t exist?) SS accumulations’ slippage, however, amounts to many billions of dollars. And must be considered as sweet business deals that, as inflation’s endemism, intrinsically is an inflation causing administrative expense to the SS administration?

120

Private pension plans are required to provide for and maintain adequate reserves. The great contemporary fiducial problem, however, is that these reserves in private plans are routinely, deliberately underfunded.

SS: VIRTUES and VICES

Has the time come for SS to be considered a partner of government rather than its step child? Should its status be raised to the level of the quasi government operation of banking, for instance? Should it operate competitively with banking and insurance rather than as the common dupe of them? The anticipated response from banking and insurance to this proposal is quite certain. Still, inherently of this response, rest myriad fundamental objections to investing SS surplus contributions in the fluctuating private sector markets. For now, until the Feds quasi independence is equally given to SS, allowing SS to independently collect its taxes and disburse its funds without government budgetary involvement, the monitoring of fiducial responsibilities and accounting accuracy is constantly in order. Fiducial, however, population changes are maybe the more critically important aspect. POPULATION CHANGES, 20 - 65 AGE GROUP " (millions of potential wage-earners) YEAR

" "

250-260

ENTER (Age 18)

EXIT (Age 65)

NET CHNG.

TOT. (18-64)

TOT. (65-?)

1965 1966 1967 1968 1969

3.65 3.59 3.60 3.58 3.77

(1) 1.49 1.49 1.56 1.64 1.72

2.16 2.10 2.04 1.94 2.05

(1)

?

?

1970 1971 1972 1973 1974

3.86 3.91 4.02 4.05 4.16

1.80 1.88 . . 1.96 2.03 2.17

2.06 2.04 2.07 2.02 2.00

(2) 115.1

(2) 20.1

Factors of Mortality applied to reduce the birth counts were: 0.9869 for age 18, 0.7822 for age 65 and 0.7451 for age 67. These factors are from the Table of Mortality furnished by the Census Bureau for 1990. Numbers in parentheses relate to notes that follow the Table.


258 YEAR

Population Changes

ENTER (Age 18)

EXIT (Age 65)

1975 1976 1977 1978 1979

4.25 4.20 4.24 4.20 4.21

2.20 2.23 2.26 2.29 2.32

1980 1981 1982 1983 1984

4.11 4.04 3.97 3.71 3.56

1985 1986 1987 1988 1989

NET CHNG.

121 TOT. (18-64)

TOT. (65-?)

2.05 1.97 1.98 1.91 1.89

125.3 (2) 124.9

(2) 22.41

2.32 2.31 2.31 2.31 2.31

1.80 1.73 1.66 1.40 1.25

134.8

3.47 3.46 3.55 3.68 3.51

2.30 2.29 2.29 2.28 2.28

1.17 1.16 1.26 1.40 1.23

142.0

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

3.22 3.10 3.12 3.10 3.13

2.23 2.18 2.14 2.09 2.05

.99 .91 .98 1.01 1.08

148.1 (4) 147.0

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999

3.28 3.29 3.45 3.56 3.60

2.01 1.97 1.93 1.90 1.86

1.27 1.32 1.51 1.67 1.74

153.3

2000

3.63

1.89

1.75

161.3

2005

3.78

1.97

1.81

169.9

2010

4.03

2.57

1.45

178.5

2015

(5) 3.75

2.99

.76

183.3

(3)

122

250-260 YEAR

SS: VIRTUES and VICES

ENTER (Age 18)

EXIT (Age 65)

NET CHNG.

TOT. (18-64)

2020

(5) 3.75

(6) 3.30

.45

186.2

2025

(5) 3.75

(6) 3.34

.41

188.2

2030

(5) 3.75

(6) 2.82

0.93

191.6

2035

(5) 3.75

2.78

.97

196.3

2040

(5) 3.75

2.48

1.27

202.7

2045

(5) 3.75

2.85

.90

207.8

2050

(5) 3.75

2.92

.83

212.1

TOT. (65-?)

(1) Birth counts for years before 1910 are unavailable because of this: 98

(4) 31.1

The rates of mortality among the general population in the United States have been calculated and published after each decennial census since 1890. However, the earlier tables did not represent national mortality since they were based only upon data from states which require statewide registration of births and deaths. By 1940, all the states were in this category, so that the mortality rates of the tables published thereafter do reflect nationwide experience. (2) Census Bureau’s estimates.99 (3) This year’s net change represents the lightest level of competition for jobs. A reasonable expectation is unemployment rates will abate. (4) My population model reliably tracks through 1990 the Census Bureau’s most recent projection in the 1986 World Almanac.100 (5) Counts are estimated as published empirical counts beyond 1993 were unavailable. 101 (6) Mortality adjusted highest birth counts of the BabyBoom. This analysis estimates the naturally determined annual change in the work force. Early BabyBoomers in 1966 began entering the work force. All were included in 1985. ‘Net change,’ between entering and exiting work force populations, shows unemployment is more severe when the ‘population change’


258

Population Changes

123

numbers are high. The ‘70s and ‘80s were particularly afflicted with unemployment, as two million plus new candidates annually entered the work force, and confronted a scarcity of jobs. The situation in 2003-10 is as bad. Social Security / worker (wrkr) analysis (Populations Millions, $ billions) $ Cntrb""""

$ Paid

86.5

103.996

105.082

108.4

86.6

123.301

123.084

112.7

87.9

124.354

138.806

143.878

149.215

Yr

Wrkrs

‘80

106.9

‘81 ‘82

"

Wrkrs""

‘83

Funds"""

35.7

‘84 36.1 167.061 157.847 If Congress had taken seriously their Humphrey-Hawkins’ assignment and achieved to control inflation, SS tax collections would have been higher and SS funds would then have been adequate. This failure clearly was caused by the inflation effects on economy, in which the solution to increase interest rates resulted in workers being terminated. Had government’s administration been rational, i.e., had put inflation’s economic burden onto ‘general revenue taxes’ rather than hiding unemployment endemism caused by the Feds rising rates of interest, therefore, on government caused increased unemployment and short falls in contribution taxes paid to the SS trust funds, short falls would not have happened. These shortfalls were, therefore, largely

"

The World Almanac (Newspaper Interprise, 1986) 71 (Total Labor Force)

""

Almanac, 71 (Estimated OASDHI Labor)

"""

""""

Almanac, 69 (beneficiaries) Almanac, 72 (OASI Trust Funds)

124

250-260

SS: VIRTUES and VICES

government-policy caused. The evidence is as the above tables show. Go back to natural changes to the workers’ population. For the years 1980-’84, the population between ages 18 and 65 rose by 6.6 million individuals. The record furnished by the 1986 Almanac shows a similar increase in the total labor force between ‘80 and ‘82. But in contributors to SS, it shows only an increase of 1.4 million individuals (More than 5 million are either non working wives or they are unemployed). And look at the increases in payments to SS beneficiaries. Since contribution rates did not change, the increases are due to COLA’s reflecting inflation. The politics of Whig deontology will push to ignore inflation by eliminating the COLAs while the politics of teleology will push to either eliminate inflation at its sources or reimburse for it from the government’s general revenue taxes. Whig deontological politics, of the GOP, administered government policy from ‘80 through ‘92. And this politics negatively effected the contributions to the trust funds of SS. Because the natural economic factors (necessary principles) were ignored and must be recompensed, a far more accurate indebtedness to SS must be calculated. The following table was constructed to establish an estimate of this indebtedness. The natural facts are these: 86.5 million workers existed in 1980 and contributed to SS. Inflation is caused by systemic endemism as the bankers’ COLA (Brockway’s thesis), fluctuating mediums of exchange (Roger Sherman’s thesis), public projects, which cost is paid for at project completion by borrowed funding that is repaid over time (my thesis), and fraudulent uses of money (money obtained fraudulently and passed back into legitimate economy by banks, casinos, and such. And this irrationalism as officially administrated quite imperatively concluded that the COLA-based correction for inflation must be put upon wage-earners’ contributions’ tax : 5.5% (SOCIAL SECURITY TAX RATES for 1984). (All SS contributions’ rate changes, in 1984, were fallaciously set in accordance with compounding the annual inflation increases): (Pop. Millions, $Billions)


258

Population Changes

125

126

250-260

SS: VIRTUES and VICES

Yr

wage" ($1000s)

Wrk (Pop.)

.Cntrbtn ($ Pd in)

Bnft ($ Pd out)

Dbt $ to SS

Yr

wage" $1000

Wrk Pop

Cntrbtn $ Pd in

Bnft $ Pd out

Dbt $ to SS

‘80

9.92

86.5

103.996

105.882

-1.92

‘96

28.8

105.7

398.46

129.346

269.1

‘81

10.7

88.2

114.377

107.963

6.68

‘97

30.1

107.2

422.356

131.549

290.8

‘82

11.5

89.8

116.034

109.921

6.13

‘98

31.6

108.9

450.435

132.878

317.6

‘83

12.3

91.2

117.272

111.635

5.64

‘99

33.2

110.6

480.629

134.952

346.7

‘84

13.1

92.4

118.312

113.104

5.21

‘00

‘85

13.9

93.5""

132.723

114.45

18.3

‘86

14.8

94.4"""

152.664

115.552

37.1

rationally, SS is not responsible for the inflation. The above

‘87

15.7

95.6

187.028

117.021

70.01

‘88

16.7

97

201.85

118.735

83.12

‘89

17.6

98.2

226.3

120.204

106.1

‘90

18.5

99.1

240.05

121.306

118.7

‘91

19.1

100

250.01

122.408

127.7

‘92

20.8

101

274.98

123.595

151.4

‘93

21.8

102

291.05

124.818

166.2

‘94

24.1

103.1

325.23

126.164

199.1

‘95

26.5

104.4

362.13

127.755

234.4

tables’ focus was on political answers to this inflation question: i.e., on how politics addressed these responsibility issues, however, also determined how much the government owes to SS, because wage-earners contributed the inflation loaded contribution tax surplus to government, which was then routinely spent as government’s general revenue. If politics contends that SS is responsible for inflation, as is inferred by government’s action, then we must also consider how COLAs on pay to federal employees’ are considered, accounted, and paid. Why is inflation the nation’s problem accept when it is politically, legally, put onto SS, medical insurance and such? The reasoned answers are these: SS, medical insurance and such, is not to blame for inflation! : therefore, the nation’s debt to SS contribution funds includes all inflation that was inappropriately loaded onto SS benefit payments. On this basis, the nation’s debt to SS Trust Funds in 2000 is more than $3 trillion. And the national debt since then increases by nearly $500 billion annually.

34.8 112.3 511.535 137.026 374.5 Is the Social Security System responsible for inflation’s endemism (the COLA adjustments) on benefits paid to SS beneficiaries? Ethically,

260 "

SS’s ECONOMIC VALUE

Per Capita Income, Information Please Almanac, 1996, 53

""

"""

New rates for 1984 apply. The rate was increased 4.48%. .07% inc. in ’85, .14% in’86, and 5.03% in ‘88.

"

Per Capita Income, Information Please Almanac, 1996, 53


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In previous sections, the Politics and the value of Social Security assets was addressed. Now society's economic values are confronted. Factual Socioeconomic Realities On April 20, 1983, President Reagan signed a compromise bipartisan bill to save Social Security from bankruptcy. 102 [In fact, the inflation burdened SS benefits had risen abnormally, exceeding SS contribution tax revenues] In 1984, Congress changed government’s fiscal accounting, to end in September. This three-month extension’s resulted in the deficiency of available SS reserves to cover SS expenditures for the added months. The problem was immediately solved by borrowing from another SS trust fund (And in fact, Budget Director Stockman had reported that the federal government was running dangerously deficient of revenues). President Carter’s 1978 SS commission’s analysis had reported that SS tax rates were adequate until the year 2000: And Humphrey-Hawkins full employment law put the onus squarely on Congress to solve the inflation problem. Was it because added tax revenue were needed that Reagan’s administration responded to Director Stockman’s report by asserting that SS was bankrupted, while the federal government was running huge deficits? : was this misstated assertion similar to President George W Bush’s misstated assertion, from which he justified war with Iraq? : ‘the Bogeymen are coming’ was usual Cold War political hype, which was the norm during the 1980's. In hyped ‘fear,’ government’s economic expedience seemed to rule? During the middle 1980s, the government had at times, although for short periods, operated solely on the surplus SS contribution-tax revenues. And, without the SS surplus taxes, the annual federal deficits would have been a far greater socioeconomic problem. Therefore, for economic prudence, SS revenues should be separated from government’s budget processes and thereby from any possibility of administrative political short-circuiting of the SS law’s intent for surplus revenue taxes: the mechanists’ politically have persisted to contend that SS contribution taxes are legally a form of government’s taxation and are expendable in any way by government! Also, because inflation is a hidden economic problem for Congress to settle, inflation’s effects put onto SS benefits are a related responsibility for Congress to resolve: inflation affecting SS benefits, should be a cost burden for government’s general revenues and not a burden for SS taxes: government’s

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budgeted inflation cost effects on SS benefits must retroactively be reimbursed. About SS’s added value to the general US economy, conventional, mechanist orthodox economists have said nothing, which credits the circular economic SS benefit’s flow as having moderated the economic devastation of Black Monday, Oct. 19, 1987, when the stock market crashed similarly as it did in 1929? (And the crash of 2002 can now be added; without SS benefits, these modern economic crashes would have more severely impacted the economy.). The economic cash flow of SS benefits is undoubtedly the greatest economic difference, as compared with economy in 1929. Therefore, the economic swings reviewed on line graphs before and after the installation of Social Security, undoubtedly showed that the highs and lows were substantially moderated. The New Deal policies, if not Social Security benefits, surely provided the greatest factor of moderation. So, before allowing mechanists Whig-based ideology, which is unitary-materialism-deontology-based, which is designed to abuse (exploit) economy for materialist gain, to politically include SS revenues investment in private mechanist economy, with intent eventually to scrap the SS System, let's at least first recognize SS for its socioeconomic value? An estimate of the socioeconomic value is logically justified by an accounting of benefits disbursed since SS’s inception. This economic value, which can easily be tabulated, and normalized to current dollar values, was mostly spent directly by the SS beneficiaries, therefore, this amount has circulated over and over in the general economic flow (And, these SS benefits infusions represent a separate form of Professor Schunperter’s static circular flowing economic model). SS has surely furnished a huge economic stimulus to underpin our economic growth since SS began in 1936. But, this is not the only SS socioeconomic benefit to general economy. Another great economic benefit derives from the economic stimulus that SS contributions tax collections, before paid to the US Treasury, is first on deposit in private-appointed collection centers, which invest these funds with the Fed. This substantial economic benefit disproportionately has benefitted banking (even the investment banking consortiums, which recently (1980s) are engaged in corporation buy outs). To this socioeconomic value so quantified, add $ billions for the value of interest slippage, as is examined in my section 255, which bolstered banks during their most recent times of extreme fragility. Add a few trillion for


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revenue taxes not lost to economic depression, as in the aftermath of the Oct. 19, 1987 stock crash and again during the recessions of '90, '91, and 2001. These recent economic crashes went by almost unnoticed by the overall economy, partly, if not mostly, because of the SS circular cash flow (more than $200 billion in 1987 alone): that fed directly retiree subsistence Consumption, which consumption function, in total, represents two thirds of the US economy (The surreal economy of fluctuating futures and stock markets largely operates separately from goods and services economy, as related to subsistence consumption). This SS ‘revenue machine’ truly acted on the economy similarly to accumulations of personal savings would act in times of crisis and this fact should be conceded by politics that has opposed SS, from its beginning: 103

When the recession in 1937 occurred, many observers concluded that the accumulation of the Social Security surplus (taking capital from the economy) was the cause. Initially, this political opinion posed validity as money saved in bank Accounts diminished, but as SS contributions began circulating, coincidently of the ‘circular SS flow,’ as Schumpeter’s static economic model represented, most was spent, increasing economic subsistence consumption. Therefore, SS has acted primarily positively on our consumption driven real economy (consumption which drives two thirds of our total economy; the Fed, however, particularly since the fluctuating markets’ crash following 9/ 11/’01, seems preoccupied with only the surreal one third’s fluctuating markets’ economy *). * Greenspan: Big deficits may harm economy 104

Washington -- While the Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned “substantial and excessive deficits” could harm the economy, President Bush heard more encouraging words from hand picked economists. Bush invited private economists to ensure him, to try to persuade the country that the deep tax cuts he engineered are helping create jobs at a time when the unemployment rate is at a nine-year high of 6.4 percent. . . . The economists summoned to the White House said they saw no short-term harm in the deficits, which the administration projects will soar to a record $455 billion this year and $475 billion next year. . . . Concerning issues of a sound economy, economists are not logically disposed, as the nations’ politics is also is similarly divided. What fundamentally divides

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politics is the divided economic definition. President G. W. Bush’s ideal mechanist view of fluctuating markets is considered to provide the antecedent economic value, with the Consumption-based economy providing a consequential effect: this ideological view represents the unitary materialist antecedent political value, which economic value derives from investments more than from consumption of produced goods and services. Great dogma related paradoxes are at play in this mechanism-based political ideal, and always eventually become problematic. The political contest for a cardinal antecedence is not new: ‘Antinomy’ (the conjunct of anti and nomos) has since the beginning of time been similarly politically active: 105

Like Western philosophy in general, philosophy of law in particular first emerged in ancient Greece. In the 5th century BC the Sophists and Socrates, along with his followers, took up the question of the nature of law. Both recognized a distinction between things that exist by nature (physis) and those that exist by human-made convention (nomos). The Sophists, however, tended to place law in the latter category, whereas Socrates put it in the former, as did Plato and Aristotle. Sophist republicans of the GOP routinely ‘assert’ that their nomos-based natural ‘consequents’ are the preferred principles of their ‘positivist’ assertive politics. Consistently, political sophists ignore, say no to, or deny the naturally ‘antecedent’ principles: in this, they ignore rationally natural ‘antecedence’: 106

antecedent 4. ‘Logic’ the part of a conditional proposition which states the condition and upon which the other part (the consequent) logically depends. Affirming unitary materialist nomos, classical Sophists ignored the logical antecedents of deliberate reasoning as represented in the accounts and works of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle . . .. And, classical mechanist conservative values were persuaded by the Sophists’ unitary material side of life: they also are stuck in the favor of nomos in the dogmatic ideal of mechanism:

everything that exists now is the result of factors and conditions that existed before. [This mechanism-based determinism (of unitary materialist belief) concludes that the universe behaves like a big machine] It might also be recalled that the general tax reforms of 1981 and 1984 were intended to generate personal savings which savings by a select few surely


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happened but did not improve the economy of those below them (7 percent of income was saved in 1979, only about 2 percent was saved in 1987). The value of SS to the economy during the economic perils of the 1980's cannot be overstated and, rather than the SS beneficiaries, the wage-earners and businesses benefitted the greatest from the nation's economic stability as provided by the benefit payments of SS and spent to bolster the consumer driven economy. But this acknowledgment should not overlook the inefficiencies of SS as government’s welfare dispensing agent, still, its efficiencies in dispensing retirement benefits also should not be overlooked. Still, critical analysis, debate, and actions that improve SS are surely needed. The following comments are taken from Civitas, i.e., research appended to section 205, which I wrote to address the essence and political issues affecting SS. These comments address a critical necessity for money to constantly circulate broadly for our economy holistically to be healthy. 107

As in a poker game where the chips are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit [runs] out, the game [stops]. Fed Chairman, Marriner Eccles expressed this thought to explain a cause of the Great Depression. Eccles, a conservative banker, supported solutions to the economy that Keynes had proposed. Eccles proposed this to senators: 108

We will either adopt a plan which will meet the problem of unemployment under capitalism, or a plan will be adopted for us which will operate without capitalism. Eccles' assessment did not overstate the critical economic situation and it is as accurate today. Now, as then, this assessment deserves urgent actions.

The new economic principles that Marriner Eccles happened upon in his earnest research would be enshrined later as "Keynesian economics," the doctrine that reigned over government management of the economy for nearly fifty years. Eccles articulated these new ideas at least three years before John Maynard Keynes would publish his "General Theory."109 . . . The only way we could get out of depression was through government action in placing purchasing power in the hands of people who were in need of it. 110 Revealing Marriner Eccles, William Greider wrote this: 111

The fundamental weakness of the 1920s prosperity was not that Americans

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were profligate, spending too much and saving too little, but the opposite. "We did not as a nation consume more than we produced--far from it," Eccles declared. "We were excessively thrifty." The mal distribution of incomes guaranteed that millions of potential consumers--workers, farmers, everyone who did not earn enough to join the ranks of accumulating wealth--would eventually exhaust their purchasing power. "While the national income rose to high levels," Eccles explained, "it was so distributed that the incomes of the majority were entirely inadequate and business activity was sustained only by a rapid and unsound increase in the private debt structure, including ever-increasing installment buying of consumption goods." When the consumers' chips were gone, when they could no longer borrow or buy things, the producers would naturally curtail their production of goods too. More factories were closed; more people lost their incomes. The game was over. For Eccles, it did not matter greatly who owned wealth or how much they owned. Money itself was neutral as an economic force-positive if it was put into transactions and investment, harmful if it was hoarded in idle savings. What mattered was that people kept their money moving. Eccles observation -- it does not greatly matter who owns wealth, or how much they own -- bears more on money hoards which are mechanistically determined to grow and concentrate: most high incomes are put into transactions that will not result in the circulation of money in the lowest estate of capitalism (Theirs is invested in a casino like economy in which the highest returns are the stimuli for investing). Inflation is caused by the Bankers’ COLA, G. P. Brockway concluded. If true, and I expect that it is, capital invested in production and jobs that circulate money with wage-earners, is far more effective, critically, while not as attractive to investments of society’s affluence, which grow inordinately, as greatly enhanced by inflation, which magically legally enures as a capital return. If irrational ideological political economy ever achieves to sponsor the investment of SS contributions in fluctuating markets, then workers’ surplus contributions (savings for retirement), will become a subject cause of greater inflation: will become an accomplice of mechanisms’ endemism that magically


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shows up at points of consumption as inflation? , Which legally enures as capital that returns to feed the capitalist interests of economy. The far better teleology for workers that mechanistically pay the full bill for inflation is for Congress to fulfill its constitutional charge: reduce inflation by consistently restricting the Bankers’ COLA. I suspect the ‘golden ratio,’ named Phi (N), that the Greeks found, have natural application to our capitalist democratic economy: to near rid it of systemic inflation. Mathematically, ‘the golden rule of consumption,’112 in which growth in economy equals growth in population (and consumption is maximized), is nearly in balance when the ‘golden ratio’ applies to economic growth. An irrational number like B, N approximately has the decimal value of 1.618. 113 If Congress accepted its constitutional teleological charge and controlled inflation, investments in production and wage-earning would shift away from the casino economy of fluctuating markets into real economy. And a dollar earned would retain its value. Roger Sherman’s ‘A Caveat Against Injustice’ is on my desk to remind of the evils of fluctuating values of our Mediums of Exchange. Sherman thought he had secured the constitutional provision for non fluctuating value standards. The Constitution’s instruction to Congress is Article I Section 8.

. . . to coin money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the standards of weights and measures. Sherman vs Battle must be revisited with Real economy, of wages earned, vs Surreal economy, of the non earned accumulations, the argument. Inflation is of economic value only realized in a particular sector of economy by debt instruments that over time are amortized. Inflation might be considered as value realized immediately by some but not yet paid for by others. Similar but oppositely oriented are stock, futures and money markets. In these mechanisms the public bids for positions of profits expected to be realized in the future (IPOs, for instance allows corporations to set a nominal value on new stock issues that the market will offer to the public in a bidding process; when all shares are subscribed, a higher market value generally results to instantaneously enrich the value of the nominal stock). Heilbroner tells this story that I have taken liberty to condense somewhat:114

Under a contractual but verbal arrangement, Rockefeller issued an unfunded check for the full amount of purchase with explicit agreement

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with the seller that for a specified time he would not deposit the check for collection. Rockefeller then made a public offering of stock for an amount nearly double the purchase. From the proceeds from the sale of stock, Rockefeller deposited to cover the check and accounted the remainder as profit. In other words, without using a penney of their own money, William Rockefeller and Henry Rogers purchased the assets and the business organization of Anaconda Copper Company: and they put a huge profit into their private accounts. Such private enrichment by magically effecting an ownership position by manipulating a bank license and ownership of corporate stock, in an agreed time delay between the issuance of a check and its collection, surely is illegal and considering the resulting business gain, grandly inflationary. However, banking consortiums have for twenty years, or more, similarly effected corporate ‘buyouts’ while not being busted for engaging the common banking chicanery. The investment banking consortiums arranged to buy back all the stock, then issued to the consortium members new nominal stock positions and with new IPO’s magically accomplished what Rockefeller and Rogers had done, enriching them personally without affecting the corporate productions: while they were not busted for violating the law, general inflation’s endemism as caused by these investment banking schemes became far more extreme while the investment bankers enriched themselves. To these concupiscent bankers, this has become their touted ‘American Dream.’ Section 252, Comparative Applications of Social Security, evaluates and compares facts and tables of sequential twenty year groups of wage-earners: OASDHI contribution-taxes paid, or anticipated will be paid, in constant dollar utils, is the basis of comparison. 252

Comparative SS applications as related to homogeneous groups of young adults Let's not tax you and don't tax me. Let's tax those guys who are to be.


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The 1984 SS tax law changed the philosophical basis of Social Security and, for the first time, dedicated contribution-tax revenues to a specific future equity. (The law also specifically provided to eventually make the contribution-tax collections an off-budget consideration.) The system was changed by this law to over time, shift from its traditional pay-as-you-go to a pay-for-yourself insurance basis. H. B. Leonard wrote this about the ideological politics for this change, which has existed since the SS System’s inception: 115

The Perkins committee had flirted briefly with pay-as-you-go financing. Morgenthau's amendment, adopted with the original legislation, called for essentially full funding. The Supreme Court ignored the full-funding characteristic and treated the system as if it were financed on a pay-asyou-go basis. Many observers were concerned about the potential accumulation of the vast reserve fund implied by full funding. This issue had been raised in the 1935 debate, and the administration had promised to study the issue of reserves further. Senate conservatives, who might have been expected to insist on full funding, soon became more worried about huge reserves in the hands of federal officials. Would they buy up the private sector? Senator Arthur Vandenberg opined in 1937 that "it is scarcely conceivable that rational men should propose such an unmanageable accumulation of funds in one place in a democracy. Pay-for-yourself SS represents a fundamental change that, for custody and eventual disbursement of the huge SS surplus (the government’s only accounting reality is made in IOUs), pits each productive worker population in a political struggle with its complementary dependent retired population. " Unfortunately,

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in the mix of this politics, all participants of SS (present, and future) stand to lose the promised SS surplus contributions to mechanist political deontology, which emanates from the affluent money hoarding accumulation side of our surreal economy: Deontological mechanist politics threatens the SS surplus, which is accounted in IOUs. Politics in 1984 achieved to change the SS System from pay-as-you-go by adding a confused IOU accumulation that intends to end in a privatized pay-for-yourself insurance system. The 2001 mechanist politics, which returned $1.135 trillion “only to those that paid general revenue taxes” confirm the real intent of this political threat, which, whether spent or not, affects all SS surplus contributions. Should an overt battle not occur sooner, for reasons of inequity, a political battle for the SS surplus is destined to occur between Sean-Michelle's group and Harry-Kari's group, with Slite-Hope's group biased to favor HarryKari's group position. ‘John-Mary,’ represent the young productive adults of 1940, ‘Tom-Sue’ the group of 1965, ‘Sean-Michelle’ the group of 1987 (the Baby Boom), ‘HarryKari’ the group of 2005, and ‘Slite-Hope’ the young adults of 2025. Comparative applications to these homogeneous twenty year age groups are presented here. The Population of each group spans twenty years. The natural birth counts, populations, are respectively: 55, 50, 77 (births of ‘Harry-Kari’ and ‘Slite-Hope’ are each estimated at) 69 million. That SS cannot survive without the cohesive philosophical basis of its origin is imperative: And this philosophical basis was changed with the 1984 SS Tax law. For the politics mechanist conservatives idealistically expressed when reacting to Morgenthau's amendment, private sector politics will never allow the federal government to operate the SS system as an insurance company or a ‘financial services’ company: with (privatized) fund accumulations, reserves, and such. SS surpluses are too extensive and threatening, in any competitive sense,

"

SS contribution taxes, spent by government as general revenue, where real SS surplus contributions were accounted in fictional accounting entries, represent a full circle from the Greeks’ experience when developing the number system: Fictional notions began to arouse ‘positive’ thoughts among the early Greek mathematicians when the inferred significance of negative numbers was mathematically considered. Similarly, positivist minded Whigs conceived of fictional corporate organizations to accumulate wage-earner produced capital to eventually reward them with privatized profit. Which

reminds one of lending money that the borrower never repays and when confronted, his retort is this: I’d rather owe it to you than cheat you out of it! Rational people must be aware that political positivist politics, is aware that SS was originally considered as legal under revenue tax laws: and this political positivism considers SS contribution taxes as government’s to use as politics wills it be used.


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to be invested with the private enterprise economy (The U.S. Treasury Secretary, June 2001, put the inflated unfunded liabilities of SS at $10 trillion): which calculation represents inflation feeding inflation? An accumulation of $12 trillion (anticipated in the late 80's) is consistent with the Treasury Secretary’s calculation and the amount simply overwhelms the private sector economy. For instance, assuming the amount actually existed as reserve funding and was invested, the annual Bankers COLA, alone, represents an annual $360 billion inflation endemism cost to taxpayers (and the evidence now shows clearly which functional side of the real political economy’s equation, is made to pay for inflation): That return on inflation amount essentially equals the average annual surplus of contributions paid into SS during the 1990's. Does this result of irrationality indicate where deontological inflation-based assumptions are taking us? One might ask, and they should, why the Dow Jones Average is stuck at levels that are half what it once was. Investors now have personal computerized capability, to move into and out of the market. This new reality limits the stock market’s ‘exuberance,’ which might never perform again, as it has in the past? SS is ‘social usage insurance.’ It is not a pension plan with liabilities, which mechanist idealism asserts that it has. But, it continuously requires unique fiducial administrative responsibilities and funding that disallows any investment of it in p r iva t e eco nomic instruments: It surely would enhance the DOW index, but would provide no opportunity or advantage to the individual wage-earner’s, as regards privatized profits, which private investors have always enjoyed: SS funds investment would be as the dove is to the hunter

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and this scenario undoubtedly is behind the mechanist politics that championed this privatized investment notion.116 " " In 1987, Mary [Of the population pseudonym for all persons born in the first 20-year period of this review (Mary conceptually was born in 1906)] is alone since husband, John, departed life a few years ago. Mary has in’87 passed 80 years of age and she receives Social Security benefits that are about 80% of the benefit, that is paid to the next twenty-year group, Tom-Sue: and even a smaller amount than the benefit scheduled to be paid to individuals of following groups. But you should also note that the amount of John-Mary's contributiontaxes, which were adequate to pay for SS benefits, as provided to the earliest SS retirees, were also much lower. And you may recall the comment about the maturity level of the SS System, which is here repeated: The ratio of 19 million beneficiaries to the 62 million worker-contributors in the group [in the mid '60s] represents the maturity level that the Social Security system had reached. After thirty years of collecting contribution-taxes and paying out benefits, the SS system’s maturity level had reached only 0.31. Twenty years later, in 1988, the maturity level had reached 0.92. The maturation of the SS System, while expected, was impossible to explain to those paying the contributions: tax increases as required to pay benefits to the higher percentage of beneficiaries whose benefits were inflated to pay increased subsistence costs, are like trying to convince wage-earners that swallowing whole watermelons was a necessity. However, those that got the shortest political shaft are the ‘Notch Babies’ (those born between 1917 and 1926). They were the 29 million birthcrest of pre depression and war years (many were the children of emigres). Their numbers were systemically burdensome at the wrong political time (When in 1984 the SS funds did not cover benefits, for instance). With contribution surpluses necessarily being used as general revenue (This unfortunate politics has not improved over the years). With the Tax Bill of 2001 changing all that happened in 1984, Senator Reid (D, NV) reportedly was preparing to reintroduce

""

The federal government, as sovereign, acts as a constitutional compact and not as mechanist-affirmed contract. What such contract would ever be legally binding on a future generation or on a now dead one? Mechanists do take advantage of this fact, whenever in administrative charge of government, deficits are rationalized.


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a Bill to equalize benefits paid to the Notch Babies that, then beyond age 75, were still alive (Ken Bouton reported that mortality was claiming 12 thousand of these lives each month). If one wants to monitor how mortality has its natural way, the statistics on this smaller birth crest should enlighten about longevities that BabyBoomers (indeed all of us) can reasonably expect. The unnatural expansions to SS have rushed the system’s maturity level somewhat: SS began in 1936 with (OAI) retirement Insurance. Survivors Insurance (SI) was added in 1940 and Disability Insurance (DI) in 1956. The expansion to include Medicare in the SS revenue collection process does not contribute to the SS system’s maturity (relative density of benefit outlays) but it does have an impact on the contribution-taxes that are paid. To say that a political social agenda has burdened SS benefits adversely is to understate the political fact. SS was abused by mechanist politics that is intransigent and remains to require legislative redress action. The wage-earner base of SS contributions funding in fact had expediently provided an acceptable solution to resolve this mechanist political intransigence: SS surplus contributions’ taxes were expedient to offset government’s revenue shortfalls. Comparative constant dollar utiles of ‘Per Family’ contributions to SS surplus with the corresponding total OASDI contributions, were analyzed. These utile values are nothing more than a means of comparison, and no more is intended. What is compared is each normalized group with each other group. Harry-Kari and Slite-Hope are pseudonyms of then unborn generations that represent the unsuspecting groups that are destined to pay most for the 1984 SS surplus fix. Look closely at Sean-Michelle’s utile value. Each family in their group will have contributed $126.2 utiles of which only $18 utiles represents SS surplus that ostensibly will be repaid to them in retirement benefits. Will any contributed surplus funds be there?

GROUP John-Mary Tom-Sue

GROUP VALUES PER FAMILY SIZE 0ASDI SURPLUS millions value value 55 $40.3 $0 50 74.5 1.8

GROUP UTILES * 0ASDI SURPLUS utiles utiles 1108 0 1862 45

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PER FAMILY GROUP UTILES * GROUP SIZE 0ASDI SURPLUS 0ASDI SURPLUS Sean-Michelle 77 126.2 18.0 4859 693 Harry-Kari** 69+ 143.4 28.6 4947 987 Slite-Hope** 69+ 143.4 9.2 4947 317 * (½ group population) X (family value) = group utiles ** These estimates, values and utiles, are based on the grossly understated population projections of the early ‘80s: the US Census Bureau’s population estimate, of 19 years and younger, on July 1, 2001 totaled 80,265,000 and by adding the one year average to estimate a twenty year comparison to the BabyBoom’s 77 million population, this twenty years population is 84.5 million.117 Which shows that my analysis is indeed conservative.

The ‘84 SS contribution tax surplus is unfairly oppressive and should be greatly reduced, particularly to reassign inflation costs to government’s general revenue. George Will was right in the late ‘80s when he said, “for ethical reasons, the SS Contribution Tax should be cut.” GROUP 0ASDI SURPLUS REPRESENTATIVE VALUE VALUE John-Mary $40.3 0 Tom- Sue $74.5 $1.8 Sean-Michelle $126.2 $18.0 Harry-Kari $143.4 $28.6 Slite-Hope $143.4* $9.2* * If the SS tax is not reduced, Slite-Hope will contribute to SS surplus very nearly the same as Harry-Kari. But the part not shown will go to Harry-Kari’s and their own retirement (Since, by then mortality will have reduced the lives of Sean-Michelle, it will no longer contribute to retiring the ‘BabyBoom’). Also, now to consider that the Census Bureau, late in 1992, revised their population projection for 2050: to 380 million instead of 250 million which previously they had projected and I had used in my analysis. The utile values as indicated for Harry-Kari and Slite-Hope are, therefore, far understated. Their


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SS contributions’ taxation is irrationally oppressive and unethical. For this inevitable holistic result, surplus funding for the SS retirement of Sean-Michelle (the ‘BabyBoom’) should never have happened. This political result was sealed in April 2001, when this final paragraph was necessarily inserted: SS surplus never accumulated. Instead, Congress spent it as if it were the general revenue of government. Therefore, Government owes a debt to SS Funds that reaches far past $3 trillion as the new millennium approaches. Mostly, the surplus contributions’ tax was paid by Sean-Michelle. And it should end there. Surplus provisions of SS Tax law must be reversed. As the table of per family Group utiles shows, Sean-Michelle's contributions to Social Security surplus are less than the contributions provided by the groups following the BabyBoom. By design of the 1984 SS Tax Law, these following groups also were conscripted to pay contributions surplus for to pay retirement benefits to Sean-Michelle: The political intent of the1984 SS Tax law is not as was later rationalized, i.e., was never a mechanism to convert to ‘pay for your self’ SS insurance. But, if Sean-Michelle's group, in fact, is the larger group the adjusted comparative value must, of course, also consider each groups’ size (the adjustment of the early ‘90s population projection, makes Sean-Michelle's group size comparison more ordinary). Still, the value of Sean-Michelle's total contribution was adjusted: Instead of $126.2, the refined utiles value is $73.2. Harry-Kari and SliteHope’s surplus contributions make up the difference. This shows that SeanMichell’s contributions’ taxation is level with Tom-Sue’s, with the surplus tax burden shifted onto Harry-Kari and Slight Hope. [Since, they were not yet born when the SS law to collect surplus contributions became effective, under what rational contractual legality is there for having done this?]

The mechanist ‘conservatism’ of England and America (which also based its philosophy on Comte’s positivism) illogically denied Locke to affirm Hobbes. And hate was not the only mutuality between capitalism and communism: dogmatic values of unitary materialism, including nihilism, positivism, and Nietzschean ‘blond brutes’ are also common. All represent illogically fallacious (‘irrational’) values which function prescriptively in the logos of dogmatic mechanist believers. And when natural values of noumenon are denied or suppressed, an economy based on unitary materialism is destined to produce corresponding tyrannous results.118

Who (or mechanistically what) is responsible for World War II and depression?

What in the nihilistic prejudice of the ‘Absolute materialism’ of communism is different from the ‘Absolute materialism’ of capitalists? Are the economic destinies the same? Or, does the outcome of our American economic experiment (The American System of Political Economy as supposedly imbued with philosophic democracy), depend on if and how the natural noumenal dialectics end up being governed? : on the philosophic ‘Rational empiricism,’ that must find teleological principle as the fiducial regulator, the mechanist ‘Absolute

This critical question abides unresolved: hotly debated as our nation’s government was formed, as represented by Burke and Paine, continues without resolution. This excerpt from section 109 attests to this fact:

Proudhon’s answer to Marx is so profoundly moving and prescient that it is worth quoting [again]: Let us together seek, if you wish, the laws of society, the manner in which these laws are reached, the process by which we shall succeed in discovering them; but, for God’s sake, after having demolished all the ‘a priori’ dogmatisms, do not let us in our turn dream of indoctrinating the people. . . . I applaud with all my heart your thought of inviting all shades of opinion; let us carry on a good and loyal polemic, let us give the world the example of an informed and farsighted tolerance, but let us not -- simply because we are at the head of a movement -- make ourselves into the leaders of a new intolerance, let us not pose as the apostles of a new religion, even if it be the religion of logic, the religion of reason. Let us gather and encourage all dissent, let us outlaw all exclusiveness, all mysticism, let us never regard a question as exhausted, and when we have used one last argument, let us if necessary begin again -- with eloquence and irony. On these conditions, I will gladly enter into your association. Otherwise, no!


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idealism’ of capitalism? Unitary materialistic values which tout democracy while practicing the unitary materialistic values of ‘Absolute idealism,’ are exposed by the ‘Positive’ laws approved by our dogma-jaded judiciary: 119

stress[ing] the existence of one ‘absolute reality,’ a being or element that is complete in itself and does not depend on anything outside itself. It asserts that there is a principle of authority expressing the will of the absolute. As a political philosophy, ‘Absolute idealism’ considers the ‘state,’ or the national government, as the absolute, according to this philosophy, everything in society is a part of the state and subservient to it. From these doctrines follow dictatorship by an absolute ruler, rejection of parliamentary procedures, and submission of the individual to the state. Mechanist dogmatic belief disqualifies them in fiducial matters of natural noumenal dialectics, which must be reserved for those who fully subscribe the values of ‘Rational empiricism’ and respect the democratic sovereignty that underpins the American democratic ‘state’: fiducial representation of the democratic sovereignty can fill the ‘necessary role’ of this natural human dialectic, and the powers of ‘state’ must never be raised in power and authority above the collective sovereignty of rational human beings which comprise it. Belief that all action, thought, and feeling can be explained by movements and changes of matter, i.e., ‘materialism,’ is fallacious dogma that is easily exposed by tautological testing. This logically fallacious belief dominates ‘Dialectical materialism’ and ‘Absolute idealism’ forms of ‘state’ and, untoward, also threatens constantly to render the principles of ‘Rational Empiricism’ ineffective. An ontological dominance of ‘materialism’ invariably establishes a caste of believers in the ‘determinism’ of natural forces (Which, as Hamilton argued: should be marshaled by the exclusive sovereignty of the owners of property? Unfortunately, materialism-based forms of ‘states’ dehumanizes the individuals that by choice, prejudice, a lack of financial standing, . . ., is excluded or expelled from governance (this situation happened in the U.S. with the Presidential Election of 2000). Whigs designed The American System of Political Economy to effect this sovereignty of caste: Parrington called it “an ingenious scheme to ‘milk the cow’ and distribute the

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‘milk’ to those who superintended the ‘milking.” " The propertied caste that controls the sovereignty of our political economy thereby expects a ‘Brahmanist’ type of perpetuity. Unfortunately, however, a natural categorical imperative of collective sovereignty is that the controlling intelligentsia is noumenon-persuaded (as Plato said, let the philosophers rule): Those who rule by force or dogma-based opinions are surely not noumenon-persuaded. They can be expected to blame nature rather than their dogma for happenings, as for instance, Proudhon reasoned argument: ‘What is Property?’ Maybe, John Locke's reasoning of ‘self’ had influenced Proudhon: each man's own and exclusive ‘property,’ as this philosophic principle always applies in sovereignty’s debate about :"" What Parrington observed as returning to the seventeenth century (Hobbes) from which the eighteenth (Locke) had reacted. In dogma that evolved, traditional sovereignty of a ‘collective’ (a community, a state or nation) was philosophically based on power and force. Hobbes’ interpretation (when history is restricted to an ontology of ‘positive’ reality, i.e., based on Plato’s Visible Realm of truth only) suggests the values of centralized logos which supports the collective’s sovereignty of ‘armed force’ must not be shunted by philosophic (noumenon-based) values of democracy (without common consent, never an aggressor). Locke was not alone in the philosophic development of democracy. Credit for this development finds ‘the levelers’ of sovereignty. Particularly, as C. Thomas mentioned, John Lilburne:120

Lilburne’s title, ‘The Freeman’s Freedom Vindicated,’ of 1646, where, after acknowledging ‘God, the absolute sovereign Lord and King of all things in heaven and earth,’ he speaks of ‘individual man and woman’ as

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The greatest economic paternalism to ‘fictitious person’ corporate entities, and increasing debt to society, is legalized ‘perpetual existence.’

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Particularly, dogma about ‘leveled’ sovereignty which had rationalized that only our souls [are] equal, which doctrine represented the effective reversal of humanism's divorce of the secular from the theological.


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always having been and remaining ‘equal and alike in power, dignity, authority and majesty, none of them by nature having any authority, dominion, or magisterial power one over or above another; neither have they, nor can they exercise any, but merely by institution or donation, that is to say, by mutual agreement or consent and agreement, for the good benefit or comfort of each other . . ..’ The naked power of such an assertion has long since departed, and the novelty has long since been suppressed by cliche [belief in dogma?]. . . . In the midst of civil strife that may be variously termed a revolution, a rebellion, or a war, John Lilburne, one of the nation’s greatest unsung heroes, was able to speak authoritatively and calmly concerning political principle. And this quotation aptly begins any examination of their cause -- their cry in the wilderness, even in 1646, before their defeat by Ireton and Cromwell in the debates at Putney and Whitehall (Which to remark in Cromwell’s favor were perhaps the only two moments in history when an army putsch has paused to debate the nature of the ensuing constitution). . . . Lilburne continues that it is ‘. . . unnatural, irrational, sinful, wicked, unjust, devilish and tyrannical . . . for any man to appropriate and assume unto himself a power, authority and jurisdiction, to rule, govern or reign over any sort of men in the world ‘without their free consent . . ..’ The levelers found themselves confronted with that ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ [unnatural, i.e., manmade phenomenon] ‘sovereignty’ of Parliament. . . . Thomas Rainborough and John Wildman are mentioned as representing ‘the

levelers’ in the Putney Debates: “The Putney Debates (1647) are remarkable for the clash between two views of democracy, that of ‘the levelers,’ in which every man . . . has an equal stake or interest . . . in the constitution that would ensue, while Ireton on the other hand speaks for the Independent and Presbyterian [Calvinist] factions and of a ‘fixed interest in the country’ (i.e., landed property) which alone will qualify a man to have a voice in the state.” It is, I believe, in this philosophic values dilemma that we find the greatest resurgent intrusion of fundamental religion in American party-politics.

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Organized religion has always assumed a representative form of sovereignty under the guise of paternalistic interest in the welfare of its members, who, because of religious dogma (that claims, only our souls are free), can effectively argue that individuals lack standing to act for themselves. This is a sample of Wildman’s position:121

‘how governors shall derive a just power from the people but by an assent of the people, I understand not.’ They are the inheritors, whether entirely consciously in all cases, of the tradition of natural law theory, together with -- most importantly in the instance of those who may so easily be characterized as radical only in religion, and religious in all their opinions of the sublunary sphere of government -- humanism's divorce of the secular from the theological -- the rescue of natural law theory from its theological constraints, which allowed the perpetration of feudalism, of hierarchy and enslavement on the one hand and the aggrandizement of property on the other simply because’ Only our souls were equal.’ Excerpts from Thomas’ take on Locke’s Two Treatises are:

--The right to property is defined as an essential or basic right for the purpose of defining the sovereignty of the individual and the necessity to guarantee his rights and property 'against' others, 'not' so as to allow him to acquire, to control, to achieve domination through landed property. --Every Man has a 'Property' in his own 'Person.'. . . --Men living together 'according to reason' are properly in the State of Nature.' --No individual has a right or power over the life of another. --Force without Right, upon a man's person, makes a State of War. ... --It is a 'right,' a possession of each individual which must be protected together with his other freedoms, protected from others who are in a 'State of War' against the individual . . . --He that in the State of Nature, 'would take away the Freedom,'


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that belongs to anyone in that State, must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take away everything else, that 'Freedom' being the foundation of all the rest. . . .122 Locke deliberately employs the idea of the 'state of Nature' rather than the 'law of Nature.' He insists not upon uncovering any 'laws' of nature (i.e., human nature) but rather upon the capacity of human 'reason' to promulgate a code of civil law that is the 'constitution' of a just political society. . . . Human reason alone was 'universal' among human beings, and by its application would men be able to develop a concept of equivalence linked to necessary justice. . . . The 'State of Nature' is that which is governed by a 'natural' law or 'right Rule of Reason' (i.e., the admission of the equivalence of others). ... Locke is not out to prove the existence of any law of nature but to assert it ‘in defiance of the contemporary,’ to radically 'claim' that it is true by the admission of any individual that his or her requirements of liberty and freedom must be admitted to others, 'unless' the form of political society under which they live is unjust. 123 ‘The levelers’ and Locke refuted Calvinist dogma that effects philosophically that ‘only our souls are free.’ This nihilistic dogma, of Calvinist origin, intends to make noumenon passive. It is found in Edmund Burke’s arguments which founded English and American ‘conservatism:’ in the Federalist-Whig line of American politics. While ‘Dialectical materialism’ is vulnerable to economic determinism that without restraint eventually can evolve to despotic dictatorship, as the Russian experiment of Lenin showed, all forms of ‘Absolute idealism’ (including America’s Capitalism) are, by the intrinsic philosophic determinism of unitary materialism, vulnerable to despotic ‘absolute power’ that converts to despotic dictatorship, as Hitler showed. Only government that responds reasonably and deliberately to noumenal-based dialectics can avert this disaster. American ‘conservative’ philosophy is clearly persuaded by the tautologically fallacious philosophic principles of ‘Absolute idealism.’ And

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since the Constitution has been interpreted by administrative policies and legislation that supports the ‘conservative’ proposition, the ‘American state’ (as driven by the American System of Political Economy, while ‘fictitious,’ is presently ‘absolute.’ This ‘absolute authority’ of the ‘American political state’ is legally but fallaciously contending as based on a ‘fictitious,’ but ‘absolute legal contract.’ Law, in the ‘conservative’ view, therefore, is the supreme ‘American Monarch,’ which politically and fictionally is divinely endowed with a king’s alter ego and authorities. However, unlike the Russian experiment, which openly enforced ‘dialectical materialism’ doctrine, the emphatic ‘materialism-basis’ of legally licensed American Political economy is found in dogma that rules politically. And, unless reason-based dialectics prevail to subdue the ‘materialist dogma’ intrinsic of the ‘conservative’ view, the end of the American political economy is deterministically destined to failure, as Marx had predicted. And Joseph Schumperter’s more recent circular flow economic analysis is, therefore, comforting political economic analysis! The sides of this political debate were argued by Englishmen (Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine) and the argument was continued in America between Federalists (joined by Tories and Whigs) and democratic republicans (as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson). . . . Burke’s ‘positivism’ (dogmatic realness aspect of unitary materialism) shows up in his many debates. In his debate with Tom Paine, both philosophic seeds of American liberalism and conservatism are found (Remember, however, that both sides in this controversy have a ‘liberal’ origin: and both opposed Tories who dogmatically, unreasonably, served the despotic ‘Absolute idealism’ of the English Crown). American ‘conservatives,’ who followed Burke, assumed his ideological vanity which underpinned his ‘us’ versus ‘them’ caste (‘Us’ being an asserted divinely privileged Aristocracy). Paine superbly exposed Burke’s unitary materialist leaning in the long running debate about the political state. And, Paine’s distrust of government greatly influenced Jefferson. 124

It is the injustice of government that creates armies to defend the earnings of injustice. But every wise government will respect its limitations. As a child of the eighteenth century, Paine hated the Leviathan State as a monster created by a minority to serve the ends of


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tyranny. The political state he accepted as a present necessity, but he would not have its prestige magnified and the temptation to tyranny increased by the cult of nationalism. “Government is no farther necessary,” he believed, “than to supply the few cases to which society and civilization are not conveniently competent.” At best it is an artificial thing. [In “Rights of Man, Part II, p 407, 408, Paine wrote as follows ] Formal government makes but a small part of civilized life; and when even the best that human wisdom can devise is established, it is a thing more in name and idea than in fact. . . . The more perfect civilization is, the less occasion it has for government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs, and govern itself. . . . All the great laws of society are laws of nature. The maturest elaboration of Paine’s political philosophy is found in “The Rights of Man.” This extraordinary work, the most influential English contribution to the revolutionary movement, was an examination of the English constitution in the light of what Paine held were the true source and ends of government. It is a brilliant reply to Burke, who rested his interpretation of the English constitution on the legal ground of the common law of contract. Following the Revolution of 1688, Burke had argued, the English people through their legal representatives, entered into a solemn contract, binding “themselves, their heirs, and posterities forever,” to certain express terms; and neither in law nor in equity were they, of whatever generation, free to change those terms except by the consent of both parties to the contract. This was an elaboration of the theory of government tacitly held by the Old Whigs, which derived government from a perpetual civil contract as opposed to the radical doctrine of a revocable social contract; and in attacking it Paine allied himself with such thinkers as Price, Priestley, Franklin and Rousseau. [For an excellent discussion of this, see C. M. Walsh, “The Political Science of John Adams,” p 203-226] he pointed out the absurdity of carrying over the law of private property into the high realm of political

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principle -- to seek to impose the dead past upon the living sovereignty. If sovereignty inhered in the English people in 1688, it must inhere in the English people in 1793, unless it had been violently wrested from them; no parchment terms of another age can bind that sovereignty other than voluntarily. Over against Burke’s theory of a single, static contract, Paine set the doctrine of the reaffirmation of natural rights. Any generation - as the generation of 1688 - is competent to deal with its affairs as it sees fit, but it cannot barter away the rights of those unborn; such a contract [as the SS Tax law of 1984 which preemptively set rates to collect surplus contributions] on the face of it is null and void. Indisputable evidence shows that Whig unitary materialist influence installed our leviathan-based political economy, called ‘The American System of Political Economy.’ Broad political belief in unitary materialismbased dogma provided the political foundation to the myriad mechanist Whig doctrine, which finally, following Lincoln’s death, succeeded to dominate the American government and law. With ‘positive laws,’ which are based on Burke’s philosophy of ‘a fixed contract’ (to represent or supplant the state’s social compact), our leviathan political economy philosophically entitles the affluent factional entities of society to mechanism-based economic paternalism which is paid for by consumers and general taxation [inflation’s endemism caused by the ‘landed gentry’ is mechanistically paid for by wage-earner consumers]. As Parrington noted, this returned America’s political economy to the seventeenth century from which the eighteenth was a reaction, and Paine’s statement is as pertinent today as it was when he wrote it:

It is the injustice of government that creates armies to defend the earnings of injustice. Particularly, when Congress does not do what the Constitution, in Article I Section 8, authorized that it do, inflation-based earnings, which are not earned at all, are ‘earnings of injustice.’ Parrington wrote this about the Harvard trained lawyers of the fourth generation of John Quincy Adams: 125

The capitalist is ‘the most lawless’ of citizens. In his attitude towards the


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state he is essentially anarchistic; he evades or nullifies a law that he does not like, while clamorous for the enforcement of a law that works in his favor. From ‘The Theory of Social Revolution,’ Parrington inserted:

If the capitalist has bought some sovereign function, and wishes to abuse it for his own behoof, he regards the law which restrains him as a despotic invasion of his constitutional rights, because, with his specialized mind, he cannot grasp the relation of a sovereign function to the nation as a whole [his mind’s designs and intents are held captive by his acquisitive inward-turned thoughts]. He, therefore, looks upon the evasion of a law devised for public protection, but inimical to him, as innocent or even meritorious. This attitude of capital has had a profound effect upon shaping the American legal mind. The capitalist, as I infer, regards the constitutional form of government which exists in the United States, as a convenient method of obtaining his own way against a majority, but the lawyer has learned to worship it as a fetish. Nor is this astonishing, for, were written constitutions suppressed, he would lose most of his importance and much of his income. Quite honestly, therefore, the American lawyer has come to believe that a sheet of paper soiled with printers’ ink and interpreted by half-a-dozen elderly gentlemen snugly dozing in armchairs, has some inherent and marvelous virtue by which it can arrest the march of omnipotent Nature. And capital gladly accepts this view of American civilization, since hitherto capitalists have usually been able to select the magistrates who decide their causes. The skepticisms of the House of Adams came to their frankest expression in the writings of Brooks Adams. The passion for social justice had brought him at last to a philosophy of history that made him a trenchant critic of the American of his generation. He rejected alike the humanitarian optimism that, from Condorcet to Herbert Spencer, had inspired generous souls with hope for future progress - and that even

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Henry Adams clung to - and the economic optimism that from the beginnings of the westward movement had inspired acquisitive souls with the hope of continuous gain. Nothing perhaps marked him more as a rebel than his denial of the god worshiped by his fellows. The gospel of progress was for him no more than a fetish of the economic mind. In the ebb and flow of civilizations under the attraction of fear and greed, what justification was there for faith in a benevolent progress? His lot had been cast, unfortunately, in an age of capitalism, when the acquisitive mind was triumphing over the imaginative, the banker over the priest and craftsman and mystic; but he could see no reason in heaven or earth to brag of that fact, and he would have held himself a fool to apply the term progress to the spread of greed that was crowning the usurer as master of men. From Brooks Adams, ‘The Law of Civilization and Decay,’ p. 292

The aristocracy which wields this autocratic power is beyond attack, for it is defended by a wage-earning police, by the side of which the legions were a toy - a police so formidable that, for the first time in history, revolt is hopeless and is not attempted. The only question which preoccupies the ruling class is whether it is cheaper to coerce or bribe. Who pays the tax bill for this protection of capitalist property and wealth? : Taxation of wages earned was the mechanists’ solution to covering the rising cost of policing our capitalist leviathan government’s paternalism and lawfully fictitious mechanisms, which protect ‘property’ and wealth as owned by the ‘us’ economic caste while regulating the mass of wage-earning ‘them,’ who are the ‘iron caged’ economic slave class." Brooks Adams’ described fallaciously dogmatic values and politics of this conservatism, and the dogmatic values quite clearly infers why aristocratic conservative mechanists unreasonably eschew the values gained by graduating from Harvard.

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When the cost of protecting property and wealth is distributed unevenly, more than income, isn’t this a valid reason to collect taxes on a graduated scale? : what is rational about reducing high end taxation?


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In the dogmatic values of class prejudice, as the ‘us’ vs. ‘them,’ prejudice above described, and are made into a fixed value of belief: as religious belief for instance, class prejudice is then celebrated as virtue, and blasphemously then is believed as “God’s truth”: And this sort of prejudice has deep roots in the politics of the conservative ‘right-wing.’ And, its ‘believers,’ like the sycophantic disciples of ‘magnificent blond brutes,’ are indigenous to all aristocracies. The American political ‘right-wing’ is surely not an exception. Celebrating ‘brutish’ aspects of human being, Friedrich Nietzsche celebrated visceral values of ‘magnificent blond brutes.’ His philosophy decried reasoned authorities, and moral-values (all of which are found in the logically liberal democratic dualism, i.e., the spiritual noumenal self side as opposed to the material visceral side). So, where does the mechanist unitary materialism fit? Nietzsche disputed anti-Semitism, but sanctioned Nazi fascism: Hitler, Stalin, maybe Napoleon, and bin Laden, also qualifies as Nietzsche’s ‘blonde brute.’ (Who are the ‘blonde brute’ heros of capitalism? :are they any better? : is Categorical Imperative, the common mechanist hate?) 126

How right-wing religious ideology corresponds to philosophic nihilism (axiomatic denial of reason-based truths and values), revisits the puzzling dilemma which Kant confronted, and from which he concluded the natural divide of human being: noumenon and phenomenon. Answers to this dilemma are implicit of philosophic values, and both ‘nihilism’ and ‘religious orthodoxies’ are dogmatically based on unitary materialism which dogma results in the nihilistic conflation of noumenon and this antithesis of philosophic ‘rational empiricism’ spiritual side sponsors’ democratic imbalances: Right-wing conservatism is ‘agenda-based’ on the fictitious assumption axiomatically applied of the deified ‘absolute’ authority of ‘monarchy.’ Otherwise, it is a philosophic denial of human capability to reason. 127

Christianity is the religion of pity. Pity oppresses the noble passions which heighten our vitality. It has a depressing effect, depriving us of strength. As we multiply the instances of pity, we gradually lose our strength of nobility. Pity makes suffering contagious and under certain conditions it may cause a total loss of life and vitality out of all proportion to the magnitude of the cause. . . . Pity is the practice of nihilism.

Religious orthodoxy asserts deified authorities to effect ‘absolute’ answers and judgements: therefore ‘absolutely’ challenges unwanted deliberate reason as heresy (as the persistent debate, which pits belief-based Creationism against Evolution). Religious orthodoxy, as nihilism, contests Jefferson's reasoned description of the only axiomatic human ‘reality’ of our sovereign nation. 128

Notice the thought, ‘Pity is the practice of nihilism’: Nietzsche meant this! He called himself a nihilist. And he meant that pity should be put out of mind. When conservatives say, Liberals are bleeding hearts,’ they represent Nietzsche’s ‘brutish’ values! They axiomatically emulate Nietzsche’s philosophic nihilistic prejudice! And this nihilistic prejudice is similar to Comte’s ‘positivism!’ Both are philosophic forms of unitary materialism-based dogma that denies Immanuel Kant’s reason-based finding that ethical morality,’ ‘justice,’ . . ., which are of noumena, only achievable by deliberate reason in pursuit of ‘truth.’ The nothingness of ‘nihilism’ exists whenever human minds are closed to deliberate reasoning, and ‘belief’ in unitary materialism-based dogma is of Brahmanist design to do this.

Ultimately, our troubles are due to dogma and deduction; we find no new truth because we take some venerable but questionable proposition as the indubitable starting point, and never think of putting this assumption itself to a test of observation or experiment. W. Durant

But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans. We are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. While sustaining the popular philosophic error of its dogma, religious orthodoxy repeatedly demonstrates its failure to abide in enlightened deliberate reason: a ‘ditto head’ sycophantic class of believers rather than a class of common knowledge befits this believed religious orthodoxy. The philosophic base of this orthodoxy is, therefore, a self promoted upper caste of priests and intellectuals who, by designing dogma, control the minds and actions of the sycophantic under caste, as historically is patterned on Hinduism.


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Conservatism, the word’s meaning, obviously derived from conserve, i.e., to keep things as they are, apposed to innovation and change. And when such oppositions are innately centered, all persons of habit, are conservative. In fact, all humans are conservative and of habit! However, we also are blessed with innate capability to be reasonable. Mostly, however, natural conservatism tends to react in the manner of this philosophic quip: ‘if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.’ Only when the liberally persuaded plurality exceeds dogmatic convention, do the ‘rational’ then take the lead, i.e., are allowed to sponsor needed changes to orthodoxy. And for this manner of abuse to conservatism, orthodoxy has dubbed these sponsors of change ‘liberal radicals.’ In the frames of these fundamental meanings, R. L. Heilbroner’s analysis of Adam Smith’s liberal economic system also applies to conventional conservative notions: 129

In a sense his system presupposes that eighteenth-century England will remain unchanged forever. Only in quantity will it grow: more people, more goods, more wealth; its quality will remain unchanged. His are the dynamics of a static community; it grows but it never matures. [Static conservatism also never matures!] While conservatism enjoys natural status-quo political inertia, like camels with their heads buried in the sand, conservatism is ill equipped to either recognize or sponsor needed rational change. All progress involving matters of truth involve mature intelligent noumenon, therefore, liberals are always radical. Conservative, in the sense of a state’s form and depending on the established philosophic ideology, ‘Absolute idealism,’ involves far more subtle meanings. ‘Rational empiricism’ must always entreat the inertia of the status quo, and when successful and changes are achieved, liberal contributions become, part and parcel, of the subscribed conservatism. ‘Conservatives’ temporally naturally control politically and can be expected to either return to where things were or install dogmatic controls to thwart additional reason-based changes. The rational revolution never ends. Culturally, the U.S. form of government is a philosophical hybrid: a mixture of ‘Absolute idealism’ and ‘rational empiricism.’ Conservatives, which naturally practice the dogmatic mechanist fallacy, contend that ‘liberal’ values are the more philosophically related to communism’s values. This Conservative’ fallacy then deductively contends that ‘liberal’ values are the sponsor of

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economic socialism, to which they equate insurance-based social usage, which privately and for profit, they endorse and subscribe, particularly when it serves their privatized property-based ideology. But until ‘liberal’ values agree with conservatism that unitary materialism is the only ‘positive’ reality, this conservative opinion-based view is naturally dogmatic and fallacious, and therefore, is surely not reason-based."" Oppositely, truthfully, American ‘liberals,’ with very good reason, should be concerned that ‘conservatives,’ ‘communists,’and ‘socialists’ are in fact related philosophically by the common dogmatic belief-based practice of ‘unitary materialism,’ which has conflated their human spiritual capability to reason. Their ‘absolutist’ notions of political economy are dogma-based, and Fascism prone beliefs, i.e., are not of reason. The true liberal’ is represented in men as Theodore Parker, a Transcendental Minister. Parker’s view of the American constitution caught the amalgamation of conservative and liberal values as represented by republicanWhigs and agrarian landed democrats. 130

[Parker] had his own views of the American government, and majestic appeals to the Constitution left him cold. The Constitution, he asserted, ‘as a provisional compromise between the ideal political principles of the Declaration, and the actual selfishness of the people North and South. America was not a democracy. It had thrown off theocracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, only to set in their places ‘ the institution of money -- the master of all the rest.’ . . . He declined to be deceived by party cries and platforms, either Whig or Democratic; both parties served economics rather than justice. So there is a party organization about the dollar as its central nucleus and idea. The dollar is the germinal dot of the Whig party; its motive is pecuniary. . . . It sneers at the poor; at the many; has a contempt for the people. It legislates against the poor, and for the rich . . . the few who are born with the desire, the talent, and the conventional position to become rich. ‘Take care of the rich, and they will take care of the poor,’

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Plato in his Divided Line, defined opinion and reason, as used here.


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is its secret maxim. Everything must yield to money. . . . With this party there is no Absolute Right, no Absolute Wrong. . . . There is Expediency and Inexpediency. . . . Accordingly a millionaire is reckoned by this party as the highest production of Society. He is the Whig ideal; he alone has attained ‘the measure of the stature of a perfect man.’ The Democratic party appeals to the brute will of the majority, right or wrong; it knows no Higher Law. There is no vital difference between the Whig party and the Democratic party; no difference in moral principle. The Whig inaugurates the Money got; the Democrat inaururates the desire to get money. That is all the odds. . . . There is only a hand rail between the two, which breaks down if you lean on it, and the parties mix . . . a Democrat is but a Whig on time; a Whig is a Democrat arrived at maturity; his time has come. " A Democrat is a young Whig who will legislate for money as soon as he has got it; a Whig is an old Democrat who once hurrahed for the majority -- ‘Down with money! There is a despot! And up with the desire for it! Down with the rich, and up with the poor!’ The young man, poor, obscure, and covetous, in 1812 was a democrat, went a-privateering against England; rich, and accordingly ‘one of our eminent citizens,’ in 1851 he was a Whig, and went a-kidnapping against Ellen Crafts and Thomas Sims.131 America of Parker’s day was fast becoming middle class and Parker knew it. Like Lincoln he did not disapprove. One might recognize Parker’s view in the Presidential politics of 2003: in Liebermann and Kerry, politicians hugging the political middle, as challenged by Howard Dean’s democratic advocacy. The middle offered the only chance for a democratic victory in 2004, most believed? But, Dean’s appeal is amazing: If ‘independents,’ ‘green’ and Bill Maher’s ‘politically incorrect’ following join him, incumbent Republican Whigs, should beware of the impending political wreck that is brewing! Philosophic differences between the unitary materialism of ‘absolute idealists’

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Does this define the neocons of politics since 2000?

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and ‘communists’ are about economic ordering: market oriented private enterprise vs. ‘state owned’ and ‘state run’ enterprise. Despite the ordering, however, both affirm, as economic principle, ‘unitary materialism’ dogma that Bertrand Russell exposed as fallacy. 132

If we imagine a world of mere matter, there would be no room for falsehood in such a world, and although it would contain what may be called ‘facts,’ it would not contain any truths, in the sense in which truths are things of the same kind as falsehoods. In fact, truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs and statements; hence a world of mere matter, since it would contain no beliefs or statements, would also contain no truth or falsehood. Bertrand Russell [When overwhelmed by orthodox unitary materialism belief, i.e., the human noumenon-based capability to think is conflated, a denuded truth value results.] ‘Materialism’ incontrovertibly is a subject pursued by rational science. ‘Materialism,’ as deduced empirically, cannot truthfully be transposed to an antecedently reasoned principle. Irrationally, however, this happened when GOP-Whigs in administrative control, asserted that materialism-based causal mechanism "" was an antecedent principle of the American political economy. World Book provided this definition of mechanism causality: 133 Mechanism is one of the two great philosophical theories of cause and effect in the universe. Opposed to the theory of mechanism is the theory of teleology. Any thing that grows and develops can be explained in two ways. Mechanism

""

My reference here is to mechanism, as defined in this insert from my sect. 210: Natural essential causality, teleology, is literally switched to mechanismbased causality when unitary materialist belief conflates human essence, the economic effect of which is determinism: [Dictionary (1965) 1196]: Mechanism n. . . . 6. The theory that everything in the universe is produced and can be explained by mechanical or material forces: “the influence of mechanism and materialism in science (Science News). [The materialist believes in free-market economy, i.e., that mechanism-based causality frees entrepreneurial synergism to improve economy, however, unfortunately negates the human essence.]


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explains it from behind, in terms of its [temporal] origins. Teleology explains

it from the front, in terms of the goal it is seeking. [Temporal experience intrinsically implicates materiality that is paradoxical and, therefore, is inferior to pure reasoning, which Descartes had reasoned was life’s most critical purely intelligent essence distinguishing aspect.] Epicurus (about 300 BC), a materialist, believed the world and everything in it were chance combinations of atoms. 134 From this, Holmes’ evidence for his glorious Epicurean Paradox was observed:

‘give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries.’ Oliver Wendell Holmes Life’s noumenal necessaries are clearly denied, as life’s luxuries are enjoyed sans moral accountability: what politically is asserted orthodoxy in replacement of natural principle is naturally clearly fallacious. As, with unitary materialism’s philosophical denial of the human essence of thought, inflation’s endemism that is common to all political economic systems is also forgiven, which particularly include the American System of economy, fascism, and communism. Maybe most important, the spiritual LOGOS of God is conflated and by this denial: to this, St. John declares, if we say that we have

fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we speak falsely, and perform not the TRUTH. 135 Despite the clear evidence of this, American GOP Republicans dogmatically assert and, as irrationally, flaunt their religious political belief alongside their assertions of unitary materialism, which conflated their noumenal reasoning effects. Communism’s outright denial of religion, while maybe more unitary materialism imbued, is more rational. Unitary materialist dogma, when asserted as principle, is irrationally fallacious. ‘Pure Truth’ is ethereal spiritual reality that only is found in logical pursuits of truth, in which value predicates are necessarily consistently ‘true.’ ‘Conservative American Whigs,’ sponsored the politics of mercantilismbased capitalism and, thereby, fallaciously asserted politically mechanism-based deterministic unitary materialism-based dogma. E. K. Hunt wrote this about deontological mechanist capitalists ideology-based essentials: 136 Capitalism is defined by . . .[logically irrational] essential features that are

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always present in a capitalist economy. ---First is the ubiquity of monetary exchange. For the vast majority of people in capitalism, one can get the things one wants and needs only if one has money with which to buy these things in the market. ---Second, capitalism always has at least four clearly identifiable socioeconomic classes: the class of wealthy capitalists, the class of small businesspeople and independent professionals, the class of working people and the class of destitute persons who live by various welfare programs or by theft, prostitution, or whatever means are available. . . . The working class has no significant access to or ownership of productive resources. Individuals in this class must sell control of their power to labor (i.e., get a job) as their only means to escape sinking to the destitute class. . . . [T. R. Malthus and Max Weber observed ‘the iron cage of wages,’ as befitting these mechanist determined classes]

Income from ownership and the wages of workers are considered to be the only socially respectable sources of income. The destitute class must depend on the somewhat “less than respectable” sources of income, such as welfare, charity, or the fruits of quasi legal or illegal activities in order to get by. The stigma that attaches to members of this class motivates all propertyless individuals to try very hard to secure employment even if working conditions and wages are poor. Deductively, resulting from their mercantilist-capitalist value predicates, Federalist-Whigs sponsored the constitutional provision for the practical sovereignty of property. Then, by legally enforcing exclusively the mechanist mercantilist-unitary materialism, democratic sovereignty, the natural human sovereign essence was routinely, systemically compromised. Parrington recognized this clever economic fallacy and called it: “an ingenious scheme to ‘milk the cow’ and distribute the ‘milk’ to those who superintended the ‘milking.’” While Republican GOP Whig ‘conservatives,’ continue their conflated charade to hide, even deny, their irrational assertions, which supplant antecedent principles, which incidently also conflates God’s reality, and while their rhetoric shows their hate of communism, which also philosophically, irrationally is a form of unitary materialism, called dialectical materialism, as


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its irrational political principle antecedent. Their purer love and worship, i.e., materiality, which conflates God’s noumenon, is of Mammon. Politically, while in administrative control of government, Federalist-Whigs officially established the mechanism-based American System of Political Economy, which economic causality had shackled all US citizens, regardless of politics, to legally abide the mechanism-based ‘economic’ paradoxes, while routinely also rhetorically blaming liberals’ noumenal political essence for failing to rectify the nation’s economic problems: because shackled by causal mechanism, government’s economic administration fails to act logically, according to necessary principles. Parrington described the Mammon-based Whig political economy, as “an ingenious scheme to ‘milk the cow’ and distribute the ‘milk’ to those who superintended the ‘milking.’” Irrational political value predicates of Whig Republican’s challenge the natural logical principle values’ of Democrats.’ And, although politically both now contend for the common ground economic center, Lincoln’s sober words apply to the American political economic circumstance.137

‘But, soberly, it is now no child’s play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation. . . . The principles of Jefferson are the principles and axioms of free society and yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them ‘glittering generalities.’ Another bluntly calls then ‘self-evident lies!’ And others insidiously argue that they apply to ‘superior races.’ These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect -- the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. . . . They are the vanguard, the miners and sappers of returning despotism. We must repulse them or they will subjugate us.’ In prejudice made more irrational by a conflated unitary ‘materialism’ dogma, with its corollaries’ mechanism-based determinism and positivism, conservatives (Whigs particularly) routinely rhetorically with great confidence now indict the American brand of liberalism for being philosophically allied to their arch enemy Communism, which also as irrationally had clearly asserted unitary dialectical materialism as its asserted political economic principle. This conservative ‘unreason’ indicts logical ‘reason’ for the favor of it own dogmatic political opinion: materialism-based theory that dogmatically also subscribes

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‘positivism’ that dogmatically holds that only ‘objective facts’ are important. In this dogmatic prejudice, conservatives believe absolutely that to be liberal is, therefore, to be evil. All of which ends in nothing more than ‘sick rhetoric’ that fails either to cohere or correspond to the necessary principle fiducial gauges of truth: i.e., the concupiscence, which St. John had written his First Epistle about. The uniquely fundamental difference of democracy and communism is identical to the fundamental difference between democracy and fascism; the faculty of human reason is unique to the philosophic basis of democracy. And the God given faculties of human reason are the human noumenal fiducial identity connection with the intelligence of nature’s creation. Democracy’s sympathy with ‘materialism,’ which fundamentally underpins communism and fascism, is naturally consequential materialism, which temporally effects life.138

‘Rational Empiricism,’ the philosophic basis of democracy, believes that the world is both material and spiritual. It holds that change and progress occur by applying reason to experience, and human nature can be changed and improved by experience. On the basis of these principles, democracy stresses discussion and the use of reason as a way of arriving at conclusions. It emphasizes the importance of tolerance and freedom in developing intelligent, loyal citizens. Pure democracy, unaffected by human prejudices, is the only philosophic political definition that fosters fiducial parameters of truth: value-parameters of nature’s LOGOS as inferred by the phenomena of natural materialities. Truth’s natural fiducial parameters, of nature’s LOGOS, require human perceptions to ‘cohere’ with the value predicates of nature’s LOGOS. And truth’s fiducial parameters (natural phenomenal principles), requires of human perceptions to ‘correspond’ with the rational natural factual inferences. (Unfortunately, ‘facts’ created by human actions are often confused with natural phenomena; when perceptions correspond to manmade ‘facts,’ truth is commonly said to exist but often is paradoxical fallacy: Plato’s truth Forms recognized truth of ‘reason’ was the most pure; ‘illusion’ the least pure; and ‘belief’ was in between). -- End of section 109's research insert -Causally, catastrophic events (World War II and the Great Depression) acted sociologically to portend the low births of the 1930s and ‘40s, making the post World War II years appear as a ‘birth boom.’ Therefore, war and depression


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had a causal nexus with the BabyBoom. But surely, Harry-kari and Slight Hope, whose births did not begin until the mid 1990's, had no causal nexus to the sociological catastrophes of a half century earlier. This verse fits!

Let's not tax you and don't tax me. Let's tax those guys who are to be. Whenever conservative society acts to mortgage economic progress, as repaid by taxes, society then taxes those guys who are to be. And politically, this only can happen by interpreting our Constitution to accord with the classical Whig conservative doctrine of a ‘fixed contract,’which only considers reality in terms of unitary materialism. Edmund Burke gave definition to this dogmatic conservative doctrine. And Federalist-Whig politics, as deduced from the fixed contract doctrine. has fostered and persuaded American government to operate politically from this asserted irrationally transposed antecedent economic principle. Without evidence to support the suspicion that they were aware that conflated unitary materialism led to the irrational concept of state, which Craig Thomas observed and wrote about, one is still left to speculate that they were shrewdly aware of their deliberate irrational assertions: 139

. . . to be precise, not even Germany but prenational Prussia under Frederick the Great. Christian theology assumed a [unitary] merger with the divine after this life; Hegel posits such a merger here on earth -- with history and the collectivity he terms the state. Craig Thomas also wrote this about philosophers who influenced Hegel’s unitary materialist view (Although, Hegel said he wasn’t a materialist!):

The principal Idealists -- Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel -- sought, above all else, a unitary explanation of reality, some essence behind all appearance -- in Kant’s terminology, a ‘common’ and universal noumenon, and in the poet Hölderlin’s description, the ‘spirit that is in everything’ [ontologism]. They were [expedient idealist] systemizers, assuming that there could be discovered some essential explanation of all experience, knowledge, and reality, and it was largely on this basis that they objected, Fichte most immediately and systematically, to Kant’s division between self and the world, which [as irrationally, they contended] for Kant could be no more than a world of appearances. To achieve the healing of that dualism the Idealists posited, in Fichte’s theory

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most succinctly, the ego as the ‘ground of experience.’ It was not the rational ego of Kant [Plato and Descartes] nor the passive receptor of the empiricists but what Fichte describes as the ‘active ego,’ inextricably intermingled with reality, imposing itself upon the world of experience, to a degree ‘making’ the world of experience in its own image. " As Fichte claims in ‘The Vocation of Man’ of 1792, ‘Not to KNOW but to DO, is the vocation of Man.’ For Fichte (1762- 1814), there were only two possible responses to the world, that of the realist, or ‘dogmatist’ in his terminology, and that of the idealist. The philosopher’s response, more profound than that of the ordinary man, is idealist, while realism remains the province of non-philosophical response to an understanding of the world. . . . Thinking is no longer reflection, it is experience. Also, because of this, there can be no kind of reality that is distinct or separated from the ego that experiences it. Whereas empiricism posits, at least by implication, a ‘real’ world that is experienced, the Idealists assumed no distinction between the subject of the experiencing agent and the objective world being experienced. [Which came first, the egg or the chicken, is of no consequence to this unitary materialist conservative idealism that compounds the issue rather than finding answers to the question; the dogmatic focus is on the neatness of confusion.]

Further, Fichte and Schelling assumed that the ego was innately a moral agent, again contrary to Kant’s conception of the effort of moral duty for the rational being, the necessity to achieve the categorical imperative [of ‘do unto others . . .’] in making any moral decision or taking any moral action. Men are regarded by the Idealists as innately, though imperfectly, moral in their essential, nondualistic natures. This leads, as we shall see, to a strangely Hobbesian view of the State as possessing the right and duty to perfect the ego’s moral imperfection by the exercise of its authority. "

In this, the principle idealists conflated even God’s antecedence, to which Nietzche cried out, “we have killed God!”.


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[Note how irrationally dogmatic ‘Idealists‘ are blameworthy for the fallacious philosophical underpinning of conservatism’s materialist philosophy] Oppositely to this unitary materialist view, and particularly, Tom Paine cited unborn individuals’ rights that far transcends any unborn individual’s right to life and sovereignty. Paine’s transcendent view was realized in the SS surplus contributions’ taxation, which began in 1983, as SS law: --Should, will, Harry-kari and Slight Hope shoulder the extorted SS contributions’ tax that was politically, irrationally lawfully made a half century before they were born? And will classical doctrine deny culpability for the tax law’s extortion, for instance, shifting blame onto the SS system for the inflation that is an endemism of political economy? --How will domestic and foreign terrorism, which is causally related to economic extortion, affect Harry-kari and Slight Hope? Politically, will they act irrationally, perpetrating terrorism, or rationally, but radically, by declaring their natural sovereignty, as did our nation’s forefathers, oppressed by England’s capitalist mercantilism-based taxation? In 1983, because revenue shortfalls were caused by 1981's tax law, government desperately needed supplemental general revenue. -- section 240's research provided for this accounting -Fallacious dogmatic political value predicates are hidden in the SS tax law of 1983-84: this politics spun perceptions that SS had become bankrupted. By 1985, the first full year of SS surplus contribution tax revenue had made the total government’s revenues equal to its revenue collection in 1980: revenue lost from high end tax payers by the ‘81 tax cut had been reversed by the SS surplus contributions’ tax revenues. But, government’s orders for armaments were increased greatly and, therefore, government’s deficits were primarily caused by the armaments’ buildup (And, while political spin claimed, this huge expenditure had won the Cold War; more candidly, however, David Stockman, allowed that the USSR had reached financial ruin before the U.S. did; which if ‘true,’ wage-earners can rightfully claim that their SS surplus contribution taxes made the economic difference between winning and losing the ‘Cold War.’). By the increase in the SS contribution tax of ‘83-84, which then collected SS surplus contributions from wage-earned income, replaced the high end income tax relief that the ‘81' tax cut had forgiven: the increased taxation on low income had replaced revenue lost by 1981's high end income tax cut, essentially equaling the

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lost revenue. While wage increases lagged the economic effects of inflation on income, the total ‘85 revenue appeared comparable to the ‘80 revenue. A tax foundation illustrated this comparison. And, while the prescriptive political sophistry emphasized that SS contributions’ surplus were not general-revenue taxes, government expediently and conveniently routinely spent all SS surplus. Tax Freedom Day 1980 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1984 xxxxxxxxxx (This shortfall reflects tax relief for high income) 1985 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (While the ‘81 tax cut only benefitted high incomes, first-dollar wage-earned income, to which the added SS surplus contribution taxes applied, in ‘85, offset the revenue lost from the ‘81 tax cut.) The SS surplus contributions’ tax politically was rationalized to eventually benefit the Baby Boom (Sean-Michelle's birth group, when beginning in 2010 their oldest members would become eligible to retire), however, the benefit, in real terms, was directly related to forgiven taxes of high end incomes, all-thewhile that SS surplus tax-based revenues were routinely spent as government’s general revenue: So, if not available or needed for paying the SS benefits when the baby boom retires, what political excuse will then be given for the irrational tax relief given only to high end income taxpayers? Then in 2000, when accounting analysis of government’s revenue flow inferred a surplus, mostly since SS surplus contributions taxes were commingled with and routinely spent as government’s revenue, this projected surplus was again rationalized by the mechanist government to each year additionally refund $1.3 trillion of the general tax revenues to the affluent class of general revenue taxpayers who also benefitted most from inflation’s endemic economic effects? And this added tax reduction continues (now past 2006)? This politics is immoral. And redress surely must come and soon. Quarterly deposited in the US treasury, modest amounts of SS tax surplus began in 1984, $50 billion annually at first, and in 2000 reaching $400 billion: which oddly, was the amount legislated to fund the annual general revenue tax reduction act of 2003. Politically touted as necessary to create jobs to increase the SS contributions’ tax surplus to fund similar top end revenue siphoning, the $1.3 trillion tax reduction of 2001 and 2003's continual annual tax reductions


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substantially acts to siphon all SS contributions’ surplus to directly benefit the economic caste of affluent Americans: i.e., the ingenious irrational mercantilismbased American System of Political Economy, which Parrington cited a century ago as the Whigs’ bequeath to America, has gotten more irrationally ingenious. This analysis is excerpted from SS PART II (section 252): Had wages in 2001 kept pace with inflation, median wage-earned income would have been $89,852.00. The 2000 reported median income for white males (the highest cited income group) is far short of inflation’s pace: it was $29,696. For white females, it was more anemic: $16,190. And, relatively still worse for minority races as blacks, Hispanics and Asians. Wage-earners, after all was the Whig determined slave-like underclass of the American System’s economy: only the economic mechanist upper-caste, of owner-superintendents, was legally rewarded by the American System’s mechanism-based determinism: mechanismbased rewards, distinguishing what commonly is called ‘the American Dream.’

And this excerpt from SS PART III (section 253) defines the determinism: Inflation endemism, when consumed, returns from retail consumption as

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exclusively accounted business owners’ capital: i.e., endemic inflation’s economic effect, as consumed, legally enures: 140 Mechanistically and logically therefore, as regard’s inflations’ cost that also is endemic of SS benefits becomes business owners’ legally enured economic obligation. And, therefore, must be made government’s duty to collect from enured unearned business capital an appropriate tax to pay for the endemism in SS benefits. The CPI’s empirical inflations’ effects on consumer goods and services show that $ .54 in 1945 required $ 5.29 in2001 (i.e., $1.00 in 1945 required $9.80 in 2001) 141 When also considering that SS is not to blame for population changes, and because the population mix is very stable, as the above graph shows, the SS rates and caps should hold for a half century or more, particularly when inflations’ cost in SS benefits is reimbursed from general revenues. An adjustment to Sean-Michelle's surplus tax utiles arises from utiles as contributed by other twenty-year population group’s. So what beneficence for SS surplus taxation is served by surplus contributions taxation on wages earned during and after Sean-Michelle group has retired? The comparative adjusted total utiles’ value, for each individual family of Sean-Michelle's group is 73.2: approximately equivalent, but a little less than, Tom-Sue's contribution utiles’ value. And with the SS system being now mature, and considering that SS is not to blame for inflation, that irrationally politically has mechanistically been loaded onto the SS Contribution taxes, TomSue's SS contributions’ taxation is an appropriate benchmark for comparing inflation neutral SS rates of taxation. Only population facts are represented in the following graph (births that occurred after 1997 are conservatively estimated and have relatively little effect on the population in 2050; otherwise, mortality is the most likely error of this analysis that might change slightly from the Census Bureau’s 1990 factual experience). Changes to the population mix due to immigration is not considered, but should not adversely affect the natural births and mortality pattern. On this basis, my rational conclusion is this: The contribution-tax burden will not be as great as mechanist politics had recommended to the SS tax committee in 1983. The mix of working Americans, in proportion to the population of aged dependents, is very stable over time and, therefore, fails to threaten the SS system as the mechanist politics had postulated. But inflation, endemic of each worker’s paycheck, was a far greater cost problem than the SS benefit’ outlays of a maturing SS system had portended: anyway, inflation is solely government’s


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constitutional problem, therefore, SS should not, cannot be expected to resolve it! And because the Constitution specifically assigned inflation to Congress for resolving it equitably, Congress, therefore, is derelict in the accomplishing of this constitutional assignment. Inflations’ cost economically is endemic of the productions of goods and services, as consumed at the retail level. Therefore, inflation adversely affects each wage-earner-consumer’s subsistence cost. And when wage increases are less than inflation’s effects on subsistence cost, as the CPI index clearly indicates, and SS contributions’ taxation applies to the endemic inflationintensive first dollar wages, but not to wages above the SS cap, as systemically mechanistically is codified, then SS contributions’ taxation represents an irrational inflation-burdened tax, that is compounding, is at first onerous, then eventually impossible. " Since 1984, this impossibility applies to SS tax surplus, which Congress routinely spends as the government’s general revenue. So, looking back, no justification existed to levy the highest SS contribution-tax burden ever imposed? And, no rationally valid justification exists! * * Because higher incomes are mechanistically benefitted by inflation, even while not a primary cause of inflation, and when beyond the SS contributions’ cap, income is exempted from paying the SS tax (pays for neither inflation nor SS taxes). Such high end incomes had general revenue taxes returned without any reconciliation for inflation, and are, therefore, without justification: this unjustified result happened because of sheer politically asserted irrationalism by mechanists who were in administrative control of government. A sharp decline (about 8% each five years) in fertility rates followed the post-World War ll’s birth boom. The population’s birth boom in combination with a follow-on birth trough had and will effect extensive current and future economic consequences. The responsibility for both the birth-boom and the fertility decline surely is on the whole of society, rather than as politically, mechanistically put onto the wage-earners who by SS law pay SS contribution taxes. Rationally, wage-earners should not be the exclusive economic base

"

With others, as Malthus and Max Weber’s ‘iron law’ of wages attested, wages earned in capitalist mechanisms are causally suppressed. When considering wages in 1935 when SS began, a comparable wage adjusted for inflation in 2001 is far greater than $80,000.

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for insuring SS benefits. Still, effects of the birth-boom, as with all wave actions, will eventually settle. Even in a worst scenario, the Birth-Boom is a phenomenon that, in the long run, even under the theoretical scenario, of approaching zero population-based fertility, as published by the Census bureau and recommended to the Congressional panel reviewing SS taxation (suggesting 40 percent of the population would be older than age 65), which cannot apply so long as fertility rates remain high and the aged population, therefore, necessarily is a much smaller percentage of the total population. Nevertheless, to eliminate the potential for a political generational war, we must challenge the mechanist mind sets which had influenced Hobbes and Nietzschean conclusions as representing the innately predominant human nature: we must ‘grow-up,’ to expose, then abandon these unitary materialist opinions, to distinguish reality from believed illusion. To transcend these conservative fallacies, we must first transcend our irrational orthodox belief-based biases: traditions and personal mechanist convictions, which are themselves a prominent source of aggressions, and wars. 142

In the nature of man we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory. The first, maketh men invade for gain; the second for safety; and the third for reputation. Hobbes clearly did not consider the paradox, which embroiled his assumption. Nevertheless the hedonistic paradox does address this paradox:143

The apparent contradiction arising from the doctrine that pleasure [i.e.,


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competition, diffidence and glory] is the only thing worth seeking [is] the fact

that whenever one seeks pleasure, it is not found. Pleasure normally arises as an accompaniment of satisfaction of desire whenever one reaches one's goal. In an economic causal sense, orthodox mechanists illusion-based affirmations made the population groups, Harry-Kari and Slite-Hope, into those guys who are to be, i.e., dupes of the '84 SS Tax Law. Facts now expose the mechanist fallacious affirmations for prescribing an advocacy for the hedonistic paradox. In summary, the utiles value of John-Mary's contribution-tax is the lowest. They also received smaller SS benefits (as the notch babies did also). But, surprisingly, when considering SS surpluses, the adjusted value of SeanMichelle's tax is the next lowest, then comes Tom-Sue. Harry-Kari and Slite-Hope's taxes are not only great. They are extreme. In any sense of fairness, surplus contribution-taxes of the 1984 law are unjustifiable. And, as regards this irrational fallacy, the huge population count correction made by the Census Bureau at years end 1992 must sometime soon register in our collective rational consideration. Evident is that Harry-Kari and Slite-Hope represent the working populations conscripted to contribute most of the SS surplus, which in fact the federal government routinely spends, as if it were intended as general revenue, and otherwise has funded tax returns to the highest economic class that mostly caused and also benefitted from the nations’ inflation. Harry-Kari and SliteHope represent those guys behind the tree that law has destined to pay the most. Predictably as the mantle of sovereignty passes to them, Harry-Kari and SliteHope’s politics might either redress the contributions tax or radically dismantle SS. If SS is to be saved, our nation’s politics must adopt holistic teleology that redresses the inflation endemism that mechanistically is in SS contribution’s. This utiles’ analysis of the '84 SS contribution-tax law that perpetuated SS surplus to fill the government’s general revenue shortfalls, and gave politics an excuse not only to reduce high end general revenue taxation rates but to return general revenues, which did not exist, ‘to those that paid them,’ is tautologically fallacious. This political irrationalism must end. John-Mary’s income producing years were mostly before the '84 tax Law. And, they did not contribute to the SS Surplus. The surplus utiles analysis for Tom-Sue, Sean-Michelle, Harry-Kari, and Slight-Hope, shows that 20

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percent, or more, of SS contributions since ‘84 was accounted as SS Surplus, but, again, all SS surplus was expended on government’s outlays. Therefore, any rationale that SS surplus gave politics any rational basis to return general tax revenues to taxpayers or to reduce general revenue tax rates was completely fallacious fabrication. Of note, the years ‘84 - ‘87, when SS surplus was slight, was omitted from this analysis. This analysis was deliberately conservative to narrow differences between the groups.’ While (for 1988-1989) the result probably overstates Tom-Sue and SeanMichelle’s utile value, the deliberate conservatism, makes the value-comparison with the other groups more reliable. Comparison of each generation’s equities in surplus contributions’ is more important to the purposes here than is an accurately calculated accumulation of contribution-tax surplus. The following histories of comparative contribution values track with the order of each generation. Some will correctly observe that Sean-Michelle's group is the largest and therefore comparing individuals' utile values of contribution-taxes is not valid. However, Sean-Michelle's group nearly matches Harry-Kari and Slite-Hope. (In fact, the birth facts listed in more recent Almanacs show that Sean-Michelle's BabyBoom was not anomalous since later twenty year populations are, in fact, substantially larger.) JOHN-MARY COMPARATIVE VALUE of CONTRIBUTION TAXES IN CONSTANT DOLLARS (000 omitted) ----- VALUE -----YEARS INCOME (0ASDI) (HI) 1936 - 1954 $257.5 $7.7 $--1955 - 1959 84.0 3.4 --1960 - 1964 98.5 5.9 --1965 - 1969 115.0 8.3 --1970 26.4 2.2 0.3 1971 26.5 2.4 0.3 1972 26.6 2.4 0.3 1973 26.7 2.6 0.5 1974 26.8 2.7 0.5 1975 26.9 2.7 0.5 TOTAL VALUE for John-Mary 40.3

2.4


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TOM-SUE’s COMPARATIVE VALUE of CONTRIBUTION-TAXES IN CONSTANT DOLLARS (000 omitted) ----- VALUE -----YEARS INCOME (0ASDI) (HI) 1955 - 1959 $84.0 $3.4 $--1960 - 1964 98.5 5.9 --1965 - 1969 115.0 8.3 --1970 26.4 2.2 0.3 1971 - 1972 53.1 4.8 0.6 1973 - 1974 53.5 5.3 1.0 1975 - 1977 81.0 8.0 1.5 1978 27.3 2.8 0.5 1979 27.0 2.7 0.6 1980 26.7 2.7 0.6 1981 26.0 2.8 0.7 1982 25.3 2.7 0.6 1883 24.6 2.7 0.6 1984 - 1987 98.4 11.2 2.7 1988 - 1989 49.2 6.0* 1.4 1990 24.6 3.0* 0.7 * approximately 20% of these amounts are accounted as surplus. TOTAL VALUE for Tom-Sue

$74.5

$13.7

SEAN-MICHELLE’s COMPARATIVE VALUE of CONTRIBUTION-TAXES IN CONSTANT DOLLARS (000 omitted) ----- VALUE -----YEARS INCOME (0ASDI) (HI) 1975 - 1977 $ 81.0 $8.0 1.5 1978 27.3 2.8 0.5 1979 27.0 2.7 0.6 1980 26.7 2.7 0.6 1981 26.0 2.8 0.7 1982 25.3 2.7 0.6 1883 24.6 2.7 0.6 1984 - 1987 98.4 11.2 2.7 1988 - 1989 49.2 6.0* 1.4 1990 - 2020 762.6 94.6* 22.1 * approximately 20% of these amounts are accounted as surplus.

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Sean-Michelle’s TOTAL VALUE $126.2 $31.3 Plus Paid in surplus (to be returned in benefits paid to them) 18.0 COMPARABLE VALUE $144.2 Less surplus paid by other groups to subsidize Sean -Michelle's benefits: Tom-Sue (1.8) Harry-Kari (28.6) Slite-Hope (29.2) ADJUSTED utiles’ VALUE for Sean-Michelle 84.6

HARRY-KARI’s COMPARATIVE VALUE of CONTRIBUTION-TAXES IN CONSTANT DOLLARS (000 omitted) ----- VALUE -----YEARS INCOME (0ASDI) (HI) 1995 - 2042 $1,156.2 $143.4 * 33.5 * Approximately 20% of this amount will accumulate as surplus contributions ostensibly made to benefit Sean- Michelle's group.

SLITE-HOPE’s COMPARATIVE VALUE of CONTRIBUTION-TAXES IN CONSTANT DOLLARS (000 omitted) YEARS 2015 - 2030 2031 - 2062

INCOME $369.0 787.2

TOTAL PAID IN VALUE FOR SLITE-HOPE

----- VALUE -----(0ASDI) (HI) $45.8* $10.7 97.6* 22.8 $143.4

* Approximately 20% of this amount accumulates as surplus to benefit SeanMichelle's group. And, these calculations are probably low because the SSs’ wage cap’s raises were estimated.

HARRY-KARI and SLITE-HOPE clearly are the duped groups of the SS surplus taxation law of 1983-4. And, in fact, when considering the Census Bureaus disclosure that the population will grow by more than 100 million during the next 50 years, both Harry-Kari and Slite-Hope's group probably will be larger than Sean-Michelle. (The calendar range and contribution tax values


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were normalized, as explained at the outset of section 252, therefore these utiles’ comparisons are valid, if not entirely accurate.) Sean-Michelle’s normalized utiles’ value is comparable to the utiles’ value of Tom-Sue only when the subsidized utiles from follow on HARRY-KARI and SLITE-HOPE are included. The SS surplus contribution taxation of these following groups should be discontinued since the taxation is not only onerous but also inequitable. In 1984, the contribution-tax revenue needed to pay SS benefits is 11.8 times the tax revenues needed in the mid-sixties (When the expansions to Social Security are included, Medicare for instance, the total contribution’s revenue needed in 1984 is 14.5 times that needed in 1965). Wages earned were only five times greater, and the population had grown a mere 1.5 times. These fundamental facts frame the mechanist political irrationalism that had set the SS contribution-tax-rates, which included surplus contribution taxes: while the government needed supplemental revenues to offset top end tax returns, the essential justification for increasing the SS contribution rates implicated economic inflation endemism and the systemic maturation of SS. Intrinsic of the above analysis, the count of retirees receiving SS benefits had dwindled while total dependent SS beneficiaries had greatly increased. In other words, during the ‘Great Society’ years of the 1960's, the SS System, and the benefit pipelines from it, were politically assigned social welfare roles. In 1988, the SS Commissioner, Dorcas Hardy, commented about the OASDI benefit outlays: She reported that 60 percent went to retirees, 40 percent to spouses’ survivors (that lived on scanty wages and retirement income of those retired) and those on SS disability insurance.144 The population of those over 65 rose from 18 to 27 million, in line with the expansion of employment, while the aggregate of individual benefit payments to retirees rose on average to four times what they were in 1965, which is less than the increase in wages earned (this fact confirms the previous statement that John-Mary received benefit checks that in constant dollars are 80% of what the other groups would receive). In the ‘1980s, 93% of all people aged 65 and over were eligible for cash benefits.145 As for SS’s systemic maturity (with eligibility now including most women, as well as men), SS was surely reaching relative ‘maturity.’ This says only that the inordinate pressures on the contribution tax rates, set in ‘78 and ‘83, no longer included systemic eligibility growth, which I call ‘maturation,’ as the primary cause to increase SS tax rates. But the ‘70s and ‘80's gave us rampant inflation that would reach past 20 percent. And inflation endemism is

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more pernicious to SS than systemic maturation ever was. And SS has no causal nexus with this inflation. Therefore first dollar taxation, as based on the endemic inflation, as causally mis assigned, is grossly and patently unfair. In 1984, the contribution-tax collections totaled $226 billion. $184 billion went to the OASI Trust Fund, $16 billion to the DI Trust Fund, and $42 billion to the HI Trust Fund. Now, try to fit these collections with the Commissioner's disclosure: 40 percent of OASDI funds go to others than retired beneficiaries. With the total collection disbursed, $120 billion (or half of the total) went to retirees (93% of 27 million, or about 25 million retirees). Now, try to comprehend that 40-50 million -- 17-20% of the total population (all ages) -- exists in our society below the income level that defines poverty. These individuals are the economic products of our mechanist political capitalism and many aren't eligible for SS While others, who receive SS benefits, have no other income. E. K. Hunt provided Capitalism’s ideological mechanist essentials: 146

Capitalism is defined by . . .[logically irrational] essential features that are always present in a capitalist economy. ---First is the ubiquity of monetary exchange. For the vast majority of people in capitalism, one can get the things one wants and needs only if one has money with which to buy these things in the market. ---Second, capitalism always has at least four clearly identifiable socioeconomic classes: the class of wealthy capitalists, the class of small businesspeople and independent professionals, the class of working people and the class of destitute persons who live by various welfare programs or by theft, prostitution, or whatever means are available. . . The working class has no significant access to or ownership of productive resources. Individuals in this class must sell control of their power to labor (i.e., get a job) as their only means to escape sinking to the destitute class. . . . [T. R. Malthus and Max Weber observed ‘the iron cage of wages,’ as befitting this mechanist determined caste] Income from ownership and the wages of workers are considered to be the only socially respectable sources of income. The destitute class must depend on the somewhat “less than respectable” sources of income,


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such as welfare, charity, or the fruits of quasi legal or illegal activities in order to get by. The stigma that attaches to members of this class motivates all propertyless individuals to try very hard to secure employment even if working conditions and wages are poor. Clearly Hunt wrote about The American System of Political Economy’s Capitalism. American Whigs, contemporaries of Lincoln, achieved to establish the ideological deterministic mechanisms’ economic system. SS Benefits for 1963 (before the existence of HI) totaled $15.4 billion, and contributions amounted to $15.6 billion, adding $0.2 billion to the OASI trust funds as were recorded at $20.7 billion. Then, in 1984, government’s fiscal accounting year was shifted, adding a full quarter of cost without providing for added revenue funding. And the $27 billion OASI funds ran short. Typical of fallacious political rhetoric, this short fall was dubbed ‘the bankruptcy of SS,’ while the federal government was running annual deficits as never before. With increased contributions tax rates and wage caps of the 1983 SS law, surplus contributions began, reached $110 billion in 1988 and in 2000 (when the wage cap had increased to $86,000) $500 billion annually (Will general revenue tax returns and rate reductions, as in 2001 and ‘03, starve SS Trust funds intended to retire the BabyBoomers?). Research Institute of America, published this interesting report (only the cover is quoted): Bedrock of Executive Wealth.147

The Social Security System touches the lives of most people in this country. Yet how much do you actually know about the programs or amount of financial protection offered by the system? Most people tend to think of social security as just a pension plan for when they retire. However, it is also a system that replaces income lost by a disabled worker or the family of a deceased worker regardless of his or her age. Inside you'll see the case of a typical young executive who already has $454,480 worth of "life insurance" -- plus $605,040 in other insurance, for a grand total of $1,059,520 -- from the government's regular social security program. The fact is, social security offers big financial protection to people in every age group and every financial circumstance. For executives, it can be the bedrock and basis, the 'hard' foundation of every wealth

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accumulation plan. As one ponders these SS benefits and considers that with surplus contributions taxes, future benefits are based on paid-in-equities, one should conclude that the SS system has failed in at least two aspects: ---- 1) Poverty was not eliminated. And SS was not initially supposed to accomplish this. However, political enactments put many welfare burdens onto SS. ---- 2 Politics made SS a Ponzi Scheme in which SS contributions’ surplus funds became the political prize for returning high general revenue taxes (to those that paid them, and is the greater failure): With the 1984 SS rate ‘fix,’ which began to collect surplus contribution taxes, Tom-Sue is the last group of SS beneficiaries to enjoy politics’ free distributions of SS benefits. General Revenue Tax laws of 2001 and 2003 provide samples of special interest politics that has the SS surplus, as its exclusively entitled prize, in political focuses. With politics of SS contribution tax payers at odds with retired beneficiaries, together they are vulnerable to the vastly more powerful politics of general revenue tax payers: with income not subjected to the SS tax laws, those with income beyond the SS cap and otherwise from the capital side of economy (not considered wage-earned income), but causally is most responsible for the economy’s inflation-endemism, many general revenue taxpayers are excused from paying the SS contribution tax. However, inflation endemism most heavily burdens the SS contribution taxes. SS carries the load of inflation while general revenue tax payers benefit from it. And their mechanist politics gets the tax relief that contribution tax surplus justified: which clearly defines a politically controlled economic ponzi scheme, all right? The 1984 SS tax law changed the philosophical basis of Social Security and, for the first time, dedicated tax revenues to specific future equities. This fundamental change now pits the productive workers’ population against the dependent retired population in a political struggle for disbursements of the SS Surplus and mechanistically, in the end, politically both lose their equitable claim on SS surplus to the entitled ‘owner’ political demands for the surplus. Mechanist politics is the greatest threat to SS surplus. Should the battle not occur sooner, for reasons of inequity that will become apparent, a battle for the surplus is destined to occur between Sean-


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Michelle and Harry-Kari with Slite-Hope strongly favoring Harry-Kari's economic disadvantage. SS’s direct, simple cohesive philosophical purpose, cannot survive the mechanist acquisitive exploitative politics that has embroiled the SS surplus contributions issue. And, 1984 changes in the SS law badly damaged this cohesive original purpose. Particularly, SS surplus taxes that deliberately politically are commingled with government’s budget processes and then routinely spent as government’s revenue does not bode well as to fulfilling SS’s purposes, and therefore, SS, as the Fed and Banking, should be isolated from politics, i.e., administered independently as a vestige of government. Government’s obligation to SS regarding inflation’s endemic effects on SS benefits would then be more clearly defined as a routine expense of government to be budgeted. And periodically paid to the SS Trust. Politics of the federal government is not suited to operate the SS system as a private insurance company, with regulatory requirements as fund accumulations, reserves, and such. And the routine acquisitive political piracy by mechanist entitled ‘owners’ is not the only reason: SS insurance reserves required to fund future liabilities of such an ideological private system quite simply overwhelms the private enterprise economy. (In fact, unfunded reserves are a huge continuing problem, the inadequacies of which aptly apply to private pensions of all sorts – as if a private, municipal, state, -- and they go without administrative concern or adequate resolution when administered by mechanists.) This observation was attested recently (2009) by economists Thomas Philippon and Ariel Reshef’ in a paper, which economist Paul Krugman observed ‘could have been titled,’ “The rise and fall of Boring Banking” (it’s actually titled “Wages and Human Capital in the U.S. Financial Industry, 1909 -2006"). Krugman wrote this: 148 They show that banking in America has gone

through three eras over the past century. Before 1930 banking was an exciting industry featuring a number of larger-than life figures, who built giant financial empires (some of which later turned out to have been based on fraud). This highflying finance sector presided over a rapid increase in debt: Household debt as a percentage of GDP almost doubled between World War I and 1929. During this first era of high finance, bankers were, on average,

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paid much more than their counterparts in other industries. But finance lost its glamour when the banking system collapsed during the Great Depression. The banking industry that emerged from that collapse was tigthtly regulated, far less colorful than it had been before the depression, and far less lucrative for those who ran it. Banking became boring, partly because bankers were so conservative about lending. Household debt, which had fallen sharply as a percentage of GDP during the depression and World War II, stayed far below pre-1930s levels. Strange to say, this era of boring banking was also an era of spectacular economic progress for most Americans. After 1980, however, as the political winds shifted, many of the regulations on banks were lifted – and banks became exciting again. Debt began rising rapidly, eventually reaching just about the same level relative to GDP as in 1929. And the financial industry exploded in size. By the middle of this decade, it accounted for a third of corporate profits.” [And we now know about history repeated in 1987 and 2009!] So, returning to the SS political plight: ---Was the surplus provision in 1984 SS Tax Law necessary? Or, in the aftermath of the 1981 general revenue tax cut, was the mechanist political motivation: to recover needed revenue for the general operations of government? Political rhetoric has obscured the true answer to this basic question. It might never be answered. But the evidence, which shows that the SS benefit value politically designed to go to Sean-Michelle’s retiring group, is more than twice the value that Tom-Sue’s group enjoyed. Since this analysis considered constant dollar values, inflation’s effects while not eliminated, were neutralized. Conclusion. The political urgency for collecting SS surplus was not only overstated. It represents a political fraud. Political expedience involving government’s foreseen perpetual deficits posed the only real urgency for the SS surplus: and after spending the SS surplus, government’s deficits have continued as if the SS surplus had been designed exclusively for covering the political designed deficits. About this devastating deficit projection, President Reagan’s Budget Director, Stockman, wrote this:149


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To convince it really was as bad as I was saying, I invented a multiplechoice budget quiz. The regular briefings weren’t doing the job. . . . The quiz allowed [President Reagan] systematically to look at the whole $900 billion budget, to see it brick-by brick. . . . He sat there day after day with his pencil. . . . After making all his cuts, the deficit remained . . . staggering . . .. [At a following meeting] When the discussion turned to taxes,[the President’s] fist came squarely on the table. “I don’t want to hear any more talk about taxes,” he insisted. “The problem is ‘deficit spending!” It is difficult politely to correct the President of the United States when he has blatantly contradicted himself. The . . . deficits were the result of the spending he didn’t want to cut. . . . The spending bar was at 24.5 percent of GNP and the revenue bar with existing taxes was at 18.9 percent of GNP. The accumulated federal deficit became $1.9 trillion through 1990. 150 Sean-Michelle's real concern, should focus on assurances of an equitable pay back of the contribution-tax surplus that exists only as accountings of what is owed to SS. Now is too late for them to dwell on the amount they are paying in SS contribution-taxes. More important, if politically focused, they still can achieve the redress of SS Tax Law, the recompense for inflation, and return the already misspent SS surplus in greater insured worker benefits. If they focus on this teleological oriented political service role, HarryKari and Slite-Hope's groups might probably follow their political lead to strengthen SS rather than, as irrationally designed in 1984 by mechanist politics, destroy it. 253

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many pitfalls in private pensions are not found in SS. Yet, many published reviews portray private pensions as the better deal. And, these portrayals holds ‘true’ only so long as interest rates remain high and are compounding. Since the ‘70s through 9-11-2001, interest rates are excessive. Still SS outperformed private pensions in furnishing income to retired seniors: interest income from private pension reserves rewarded pension plans’ owners instead of enhancing pension benefits. Private pensions are not as pure or virtuous as they are represented. And, future pay outs must not be taken for granted. They are, at times, not there when retirement comes. Most important, in fragilities of economic competition, is that employers own the assets of defined benefit pension plans: the actuality of receiving even fully vested benefits depends upon the employer's financial outlook and ability when employee participants’ time for retirement arrives (In 1974, law made Government responsible for a meager $20,000 worth of each private pension’s benefits). And, contemporary business failures (as Enron) confirm that private pensions are sometimes not paid as promised. When a new company owner takes over, which occurs more frequently, new owners can legally rearrange pension plans. And owners have used pension plan reserves to effect changes of ownership." Anyway, pension plan assets are controlled by fiduciaries who usually are corporate officers or are accountable to the corporate officers who represent the corporate ownership of the plan. Defined contribution plans are not much better. Together, Peter Drucker estimated that private pension reserves would in 1985 own 50% of corporate stocks and public debt. In recent years the corporate officers have used pension plan assets ($3 trillion in the late ‘80s) to enhance leveraged power and control (Example: Teamsters’ Union controlled pension funds provided loans to build casinos in Las Vegas; The pension funds’ Controllers became the casino

PENSIONS "

Private pensions are not easily compared with Social Security: the differences must be clearly drawn for any valid comparison. Particularly, the SS contribution-tax is not equivalent to scheduled premiums paid to private pension plans. While benefits as scheduled upon the amount of pension funds contributed, are about the same as the employee's contribution-tax paid to SS,

Just as important, the Fred Meyer deal brought a crucial financial ally into KKR’s fold: the Oregon state pension fund. Some 40 percent of the money that KKR needed for the Fred Meyer buyout was provided by the Oregon fund, nearly 100 times the amount of money that Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts themselves invested in the deal. ... Over the next five years, pension funds in nearly a dozen other states followed Oregon’s example and agreed to help bankroll KKR’s deals. (G. Anders Merchants of Debt, p 43)


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owners.). Similarly, fiduciaries of pension plan assets have incestuously invested the assets in corporate stock, yielding greater individual leverage and corporate control: sometimes providing financial leverage in takeover bids. Result: private pension plans are often of more value to corporate raiders than to the individuals whose only legal right is a vested interest in the retirement benefits of a pension: When corporate raiders have gained owner-control, private pensions have often been stripped of assets and retired. Private pensions are not nearly as secure as SS and, at best, only as good as the economic well-being of the plan’s sponsor. About the private pension density factor, only few wage-earning employees qualify for full private pension benefits: from my own thirty-yearcareer in one industry, I gratefully collect a pension annuity. But of my thirty years of employment, only the last eleven years counted to define my benefit payment. My career was with four employers that touted: We offer unexcelled job security and fully funded pensions. No one disclosed that my second employer would be consolidated with three others (including my first employer), and that with reorganization would become a totally new employer: reorganization is a reality of corporate life in which employees, as myself, have no influence, or control over. The reorganization’s designers were not disclosed. In the new organization, only key employees were appointed to a position to begin with. Eventually, I was also assigned. But many were deliberately let go because new managers ‘could or would not fit them in.’ In my case, my old position had become a statistic of the deliberate reorganization and downsizing: a deliberately managed attrition. My new employer had changed everything: my old position, which reported directly to the former CEO vanished, as also did the old CEO. Frustrated? Yes! Disappointed that I came to New York City for that executive position? Yes! A survivor? Yes! Working for a highly pedigreed Actuary-CEO of a national insurance association is why I came to NYC. The reorganization’s CEO position was not assigned to him. And he was among the first to take a very suitable position elsewhere. Now, those of us who worked for him were without a sponsor in the new organization. We were on our own in the highly political circumstance of 35 executive positioned employees being placed among the thousands other employees of the four national associations being merged to form a super insurance services association: The Insurance Services Office (ISO). Stripped of office and title, my first

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interviewer was the new manager of ISO’s Property Underwriting Department: in an opening lament, he said to me, “I need more information about you to appoint you to a specific position.” He then assigned me, without position or title, to a research pool, which conducted assigned specific projects. I soon realized that most other employees of this pool had been treated similarly and, therefore, suspected it had been a deliberate tactic to achieve voluntary employment attrition. And, about to resign, a project was assigned to me that greatly held my personal interest: I would complete it, I decided, then consider leaving. I submitted my report, and only indirectly learned it had been well received. Then, another highly credentialed actuary, whose newly assigned title was manager of an Actuarial department, picked me to assist him. It was ‘deja vu all over again’: but now an ‘assistant manager’ on an employment rung of the new corporate ladder with far more rungs ahead: too many to provide any security comfort to me. Politics at every turn, was a new experience, and was anything but what had brought me to New York City. But with focuses singular to jobs at hand, as time passed slowly it seemed, my skills again became in demand. Then, equally as deliberately, as covertly as the knowledge of reorganization had been disclosed to me, and now in my mid forty’s, I resigned, to seek an employer of my choosing, in which I had faith and could dedicate my future and security to (And with urgent reminders from my wife how foolish I was to give up seventeen vested years in the consolidated pension plan of ISO.) * *Just before leaving, a memo from ISO’s president’s office had appointed me to a newly created position, described generally, as ‘actuarial liaison to the government’s FAIR Plans.’ This surely was a great honor. And, I would have enjoyed the position. But months earlier I had moved the family for the start of school, remaining and living out of a suitcase in New York until all the loose ends were settled: I left on what I contend was ‘best personal terms’ but still lost seventeen vested years in the pension plan. Maybe more important, the new organization provides position, pay and pensions to many others. But the deliberate processes and attrition, I will never forget. They were extreme. It disappointed me greatly that former employees had asked me to intercede on their behalf, but when no longer of position or status to be able to help: some found positions with insurance companies and maybe (doubtful) they improved their security.


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Some months following my deliberate resignation, I accepted an assignment to reorganize a service association of smaller insurers and committed ten years‘ employment to complete this assigned mission: to provide for alternative statistical-actuarial services to the smaller mutual companies that felt insignificant and unrepresented in the ISO organization. Then, with no one hired to replace me when my agreed mission was fulfilled, I remained until my eleventh year was completed. My reason for including this personal experience is this: Attrition of employment seems to proliferate, and it diminishes greatly the populations of eligible participation in private pension plans. And due to attrition, the low density (maturity) of these plans, makes them appear less expensive. This orthodox corporate view, as I interpret it, says this: The American Political Economy gives organizations the ‘right’ to change everything affecting employees personal lives while allowing former employees only the choice to either accept what they are offered or find employment elsewhere. Thankfully, such politically grounded retirement benefits do not apply to SS. But let SS become a privatized operation, orthodox mechanist politics will work to dominate and control it, to leverage SS similarly and mechanistically as private pensions are leveraged to serve primarily the base of property ownership. With private pension plans, class actions are inevitable and will happen as our nation's economic fragility becomes more extreme. (This thought occurred long before Enron and WorldCom had fulfilled this anticipation) Gratifying to me are the reports of successful law suits against companies that decided to relocate, leaving local economies bare. The issue has become politicized and local officials have become the litigants because they are interested to retain their elected positions (which reminds me of Shumperter’s analysis concluding that an underlying corporate culture, which had displaced Kings would eventually turn onto itself). And while such political response often is too little too late, it is appropriate. Too bad though, when just a lessor people problem, our ineffective deontological ethics, usually finds no Sponsors for such Law suits. And, since 1994's election, a political drive to change Liability Laws does not bode well for those hoping their pension rights are legally protected. What happened to me in 1970, unfortunately, has

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become an expected situation of business existence. My experience impressed me with government's necessary role, which particularly must assure the individual security of older Americans. * * This politics wants caps on liability and proclaims that trial lawyers are the cause of high liability settlements. The privileged rights allowed or bestowed by Political Economy now want their economic unequalness protected from penalties assigned by law suits.

Now retired, I receive an annuity from my fourth employer that is about 35 percent of the amount my total service years define. I receive nothing for my first seventeen years although pension plans were touted, when hired, for being fully funded. But I'm fortunate when compared to the many others receiving no private pension at all. Potentially worse, my employer purchased an annuity from the 18th largest life insurance company in the U.S., to satisfy and administer my pension payout, Then, only five years into retirement, I read the following news with great concern and dismay:

Newark, N.J. -- Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Co. suffered a blow Monday when a leading rater of insurance companies lowered its rating of the company's ability to pay claims. Mutual Benefit has more than $14 billion in assets and 400,000 policyholders nationwide.151 - - - Trenton, N.J. -- The nation's 18th largest health and life insurer is expected to ask state officials Monday to take control of the financially troubled firm, a source said Friday. "Mutual Benefit has had problems with its real estate portfolio," said the state official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.152 So for me, which surely is the situation of many others as well, even the small pension that is based on only 35 percent of my career in insurance, was in doubt. As economist Schumpeter opined, political economy might be an economic success but it fails sociologically. ** ** After destroying the moral authority of so many other institutions, in the end capitalism turns against it own (Schumperter). (Inflation’s systemic endemism shows substantial evidence of Shumperter’s keen


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analysis of capitalism’s pernicious endemic effects that rest hidden by the ubiquitousness of Capitalism’s money, which was created as an economic utility, however, ideologically was made into a commodity.)

And when I read the reports of economic growth, I wondered who had measuring what, when the 18th largest insurer lost economic stability because of the investments it made while bolstering the nation's growth. As also, the very purchase of my annuity had bolstered the appearances of this economic growth of the 1980s. (Rereading this reminded me that I had inserted some pages back, the observation attested recently (2009) by economists Thomas Philippon and Ariel Reshef’ in a paper, which economist Paul Krugman observed ‘could have been titled,’ “The rise and fall of Boring Banking” (it’s actually titled “Wages and Human Capital in the U.S. Financial Industry, 1909 -2006"). With some bias but more because the trend is for increased job mobility or less than full time employment with no employee benefits at all, most, I contend will never receive full private pension benefits. To compare SS to private pensions is to compare what is more firm and real with what is arbitrary, capricious, and often legally crafted to be illusionary: incomparable! Such comparisons must conclude in nothing but error. As disturbing as the escalating cost of SS is, the company-sponsored private pensions are not and particularly now should not be considered as alternatives. They are a gamble legally designed to appear as even handed but in reality favor the sponsoring business owners: The contractual language always is skewed to put ‘golden handcuffs’ on employees while giving the managers freedom to legally act with little to no impunity when employees are no longer needed. The percentages of ‘contingent workers’, so called, in the U.S. * 153 1980 1986 PERCENT. (in millions) INCREASE Part-timers 16.3 19.5 20% Temps .4 .7 75% Other** 3.3 4.8 45% total 28.5 34.2 20% * Those who by design or necessity pursue nontraditional,

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flexible employment careers. ** includes contract workers, consultants, etc. Fading Benefit 154

Divorce, Employer restructuring and failure involving both active and already retired employees, Job hopping, Mothers and necessary time out to attend to family raising. In ten to fifteen years people probably won't be able to retire at all declares Keith Kilty, Professor at Ohio State University, who has been researching retirement planning for the past eight years. In 1981, 45% of American workers were covered by private plans. In 1985, 43% were covered. In 1950, just 22% were covered. (figures furnished by Employee Benefit Research Institute) With pension reserves totaling more than $3 trillion, such questions (as who owns the retirement benefit?) are very important in divorce situations. And while this was addressed by Federal pension reform legislation in 1974, most are left out of this law's protection: ---‘Who owns’ a benefit provided to a worker by the employer who passes the benefit-cost onto the consumers of the businesses’ product-services? ---Who, in moral reality, paid for and, therefore, should own the benefit: the worker, the employer or the consumer?

There's only one person to look out for you, and that's you! Some years have passed since a draft of this section was completed and since, there has been no uplifting news to report. This excerpt from an article written by David Mastio confirms what I have written:155

WASHINGTON -- Citing a 50 percent drop in employer contributions to private pension plans during the 1980s, a widely respected economic group is recommending significant changes in pension laws to avert a “looming crisis” in America’s pensions. . . . In the 1980s, Congress approved legislation limiting the amount of money companies can contribute to pension plans. That policy resulted in the significant drop in employer contributions to these plans. . . . The report, “Who Will Pay for Your Retirement? The


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Looming Crisis,” cites a number of examples of regulations that, while intended to address such issues as retirement equity and security, made it harder for employers and employees to save fro retirement. According to the CED, the most “damaging” regulations were enacted in 1987 and limited the amount companies could put in tax-deferred accounts for their employees’ retirement. Previously, there was no limit on the amount companies could stash away in retirement plans for their employees in good years, according to the Employee Benefit research Institute. By often contributing more than was necessary, in order to limit tax liability, companies were often able to contribute little or nothing in bad years and still maintain strong pension plans. The result has been a significant underfunding of the actual benefits to be paid out. [Enron and Worldcomm confirm the tip of his economic iceberg.] A private pension can never duplicate the SS insurance coverage. A private pension’s benefits do not cover mishaps of the working years nor do they cover family members. Unless the coverages are analyzed carefully, comparing SS to private pensions is nothing but folly. And, for sure, do not overlook COLAs. Private pensions’ usually provide benefits of a ‘fixed contract’ nature, which ignores rising costs due to inflation.

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ENDNOTES

1 World Book Dictionary (1965) 1293 2 M. Heidegger, Metaphysics (Anchor, 1961) 149-150 3 V. L Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought, Vol II, 197-98 4 G. P. Brockway, The End of Economic Man (Cornelia & Michael Bessie Books, 1991), 4

5 Parrington, Vol. II, 78 6 Parrington, Vol. II, 66 7 R. L. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers (Touchstone, 1986) 14 8 Lawson and Appignanesi, editors, Dismantling Truth (St. Martin’s

[Science look-a-likes as] Humanists philosophers, theologians, historians, literary critics [and judicial officers particularly] -- have to worry about whether they are being scientific - whether they are entitled to think of their conclusions, no matter how carefully argued, as worthy of the term ‘true.’ Richard Rorty Press,1989),

6

:

9 Parrington, Vol. I, 300-301 10 Parrington, Volume Two, Winds . . ., 297 11 J. N. Fugii, Introduction to the elements of Mathematics (J. Wiley & Sons, 1961) 45

12 Parrington., Vol. I, 70 13 E. K. Hunt, PROPERTY AND PROPHETS (Harper and Row, 1990) 123

14 Hunt, 132


ENDNOTES

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192

ENDNOTES

15 Greenwald, Encyclopedia of Economics (McGraw Hill, 1982) 647

32 Law, Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia, 1993

16 Based on, E. K. Hunt, PROPERTY AND PROPHETS (Harper and Row,

33 Deut. 32:1-6 [text is taken from E. S. Bates, The BIBLE, (Simon &

1990) 100-101

Schuster, 1993) 149]

17 Hunt, 182-83

34 Heilbroner, 129

18 K. Vonnegut, A man without a country (Seven Stories Press, 2005) 88

35 Heilbroner, 319

19 World Book Encyclopedia (1965) Vol. 4, 851

36 R.Sherman, A Caveat against Injustice (Spencer Judd, 1982)

20 Hunt, 100-101

37 Parrington, Vol. II, 66

21 Parrington, Volume Two, Winds . . ., 297

38 Parrington, Vol. II, 67

22 T. Honderich (editor), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford,

39 Encyclopedia, Vol. 15, 348

1995), 476-77

40 Pojman, 152 23 Lao-tse (see C. H. Monson, Jr., Philosophy Religion and Science, 268) 41 In Parade, Las Vegas Review Journal, January 5, 2003 24 C. H. Monson, Jr., Philosophy Religion and Science (Chs. Scribner’s Sons, 1961), 161

42 Pojman, 152

25 C. Thomas, There to Here (Harper Perennial, 1991) 82-85

43 J. M. Keynes,‘The Economic Consequences of the Peace,’ 1920

26 Thomas, 89, 91

44 The movie ‘Catch me if you can,’ is a must see.

27 R. L. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers (Touchstone, 1986) 14

45 J. N. Fugii, Introduction to the elements of Mathematics (J. Wiley & Sons, 1961) 45

28 Parrington, Vol. I, 70 46 Parrington, Vol. I, 300-301 29 C. H. Monson Jr., 272 (from The Conduct of Life, translated by Ku Hung Ming. London: John Murray Co., 1906, sections 1-29)

47 Parrington, Vol. II, 298

30 L. P. Pojman, Philosophy, The Quest for Truth (Wadsworth, 1989) 152

48 N. Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival (Owl Books,2003)

31 T. Honderich, 483

49 H. B. Leonard, Checks Unbalanced (Basic Books Inc., 1986) 59


ENDNOTES

193

50 This excerpt from my research section 256 appertains to the mechanist philosophy: Mechanism, i.e., ‘the universe behaves like a big machine,’ is causal theory, which cannot be a logically rational necessary principle because it is an empirically deduced consequent without antecedent necessity? Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) asserted in his Leviathan (1651) that machine like determinism was natural causal principle. V. L. Parrington had referred to Hobbes’ asserted causality as orthodoxy when he observed America’s return to the sixteenth century from which the seventeenth had reacted. Myriad Paradoxes resulted! Not until recent scientific study, was determinism’s dragon shown as being orthodoxy akin to ‘flat earth’: Prof. R. C. Weatherford, Univ. of South Florida gave this philosophical account of determinism:

determinism. It is often taken as the very general thesis about the world that all events without exception are effects -- events necessitated by earlier events. Hence any event of any kind is an effect of a prior series of effects, a causal chain with every link solid. The thesis is fundamentally simple. The ideas which it contains, notably those of events and causal connection, are certainly open to definition. If the thesis cannot be expressed as some part of science or theory in it, some determinists say, the shortcoming is not in the thesis. If the thesis is true, future events are as fixed and unalterable as the past is fixed and unalterable. One graphic expression of determinism is in terms of what William James called ‘the iron block universe’: “those parts of the universe already laid down,” he wrote, “ appoint and decree what other parts shall be. The future has no ambiguous possibilities hidden in its womb: the part we call the present is compatible with only one totality. Any other future complement than the one fixed from eternity is impossible. The whole is in each and every unity, an iron block, in which there can be no equivocation or shadow of turning.” If this is what the way of the world is, then only what actually happens in it could possibly have happened.

194

ENDNOTES

There are no genuine alternatives to be realized. Philosophers and scientists have been concerned with the question of whether determinism conceived in this general and all-inclusive way is true. The problem is ancient in its origins. The Homeric Fates were enigmatically described as having power over the future. Early forms of atomism were more clearly deterministic, so disturbingly so that Epicures found it necessary to hypothesize an uncaused ‘swerve’ of the atoms as they fell through the void. Hobbes and Hume, and many great and not so great philosophers after them, have been determinists. But philosophers have been more concerned with what is to many of us the most compelling part of that general question: whether we ourselves, persons, are subject to the same sort of causal necessity. Philosophers have cared less about whether or not the rest of the universe is determined -what they have cared more about is whether or not our lives are determined. Indeed determinism has often been taken as the more limited thesis that all our choices, decisions, intentions, other mental events, and our actions are no more than effects of other equally necessitated events. The problem of determinism in this second sense is pretty well identical with the problem of freedom, or the free will problem. When philosophers have worried about this limited thesis in the past, they have typically focused on what it would mean for our concept of moral responsibility. But Strawson led us to see that more is at stake than that, including many human attitudes such as resentment [particularly resentment ending in terrorism?] and gratitude. Honderich has raised the stakes higher. Determinism puts in doubt all “life-hopes, personal feelings, knowledge, moral responsibility, the rightness of actions, and the moral standing of persons”. And van Inwagen has suggested that if determinism were known to


ENDNOTES

195

196

ENDNOTES

be true, no one could ever rationally deliberate about any type of action. Deliberation, it is said, makes sense only if genuine alternatives are available to us. If I deliberate about whether or not to raise my arm, my deliberation is rational only if I am able either to raise it or not to raise it. If determinism is true, only one course is genuinely open to me. So it is alleged, my deliberation is irrational. But, as remarked, the most important issue historically has been moral responsibility. And what can be said about it applies in a general way to the other implications of determinism. Typically we believe that agents are morally responsible only for those acts that are freely chosen and within the power of the agent to decide. We are guilty only if we could have done otherwise. But if determinism is true, then in some sense we never could have done otherwise. Thus many philosophers have concluded that determinism and holding people responsible are incompatible. Others have strongly disagreed. Recently, however, quantum mechanics and relativity theory have generally displaced Newtonian mechanics, and various proofs of them have been claimed. Many scientists and not a few philosophers believe that the dragon of determinism has been slain. . . .

deontological causal mechanism the official but fundamentally fallacious principle of The American System of Political Economy: World Book Encyclopedia stated this philosophy of deontology:

World Book Encyclopedia refers one to ‘mechanist’ as fundamental meaning to deontology in contrast with the meaning of teleology: because the cultist foundation of deontology is also a root meaning of causal mechanism, therefore, conservative orthodox mechanist culture, the philosophy of which is paradoxically both blessed and cursed with practicing deontology’s moral lac of goal or purposes. Philosophic mechanist underpinning of unitary materialist causality is dogma which mechanists’ politically asserted as deontological economic principle, and as orthodox political belief became installed as law following President Lincoln’s death, making

53 Brockway, 91 (from Smith, Wealth. 6)

MECHANIST is a person whose philosophy states that the universe behaves like a giant machine. Everything happens according to physical laws of cause and effect. He believes that no living thing has a choice in the way it behaves. The mechanist says that events of yesterday determine what happens today. Only the past and present can control the future. [Mechanists are clearly political conservatives, the secular politics of which in the U.S. eventually succeeded to install The American System of Political Economy] This fundamental question should be answered by all who claim to be Christians: If Christ’s philosophy is strictly teleological and to be a Christian teleological philosophy must be practiced, what justification is there for supplanting mechanist determinist deontology and then claiming that Christian philosophy is still at the base of this paradoxical practice? 51 Clay, Henry, Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia, 1993; World Book Encyclopedia, 1965

52 Parrington, Vol. II, 66

54 Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1978, 8 55 The World Almanac, 1994, 957-958 56 The World Almanac 2002 (New York Times) 385 57 The World Almanac 2002, 374 58 World Almanac 2000, 381


ENDNOTES

197

198

ENDNOTES

59 Hunt, 12

73 Social Security; World Book Encyclopedia, 1965

60 D. Greenwald, Encyclopedia of Economics (McGrawHill 1982) 219:

74 Social Security; World Book Encyclopedia, 1965

Today the term currency school is closely associated with monetarism. The school’s principle conclusions --- (1) that rules are preferable to discretion in the conduct of monetary policy. (2) that inflation is largely or solely produced by excessive monetary growth. (3) that monetary shocks are the primary source of economic disturbances. (4) that the entire stock of money and money substitutes can be governed via control of a narrowly defined base --- constitute the core of monetarist doctrine. T. M. Humphrey

75 In 1990, the Census counted 31 million older than age 65. And in 2025,

estimate of net interest)

the survivors of natural birth are similar natural facts, that when considering mortality, will nearly total 33.25 million older than age 67. I suspect, therefore, that the 80 million cited during the 2000 campaign for President, was a political assertion based on an almanac’s published error: that had stated 80 million, representing what clearly in context was shown as eight million: slipping digits is a common error. However, citing this error as a fact was a deliberate ideological irrationalism. About this simple unreality, I wrote this: “Has an over active political imagination retold 1983's projected ‘fish story’ of only two workers per retiree?”

62 World Almanac 2002, 739

76 D. A. Stockman, The Triumph of politics (Harper & Row) 397

63 Parrington, Vol. I, 171-175

77 Letter to H. L. Prince, April 6, 1859, in Works, Vol. V, pp. 125-126

64 Max Weber’s Iron Cage that Malthus had called the Iron Law?

78 World Almanac 2002, 103

65 Parrington, Vol. I, p. 333-35

79 J. M. Keynes,‘The Economic Consequences of the Peace,’ 1920

66 Parrington, Volume Two, Winds . . ., 297

80 World Almanac 2002, 739

67 E. A. Powell, Americans drowning in sea of debt as bankruptcies,

81 Stockman, 268

61 World Almanac, 1994, p 686 (footnote 4 indicates many considerations to the

defaults rise, Las Vegas Review Journal, June 20, 2001

82 Stockman, 357 68 Leonard, 59 83 R. L. Heilbroner, 293 69 Honderich, 707 84 Heilbroner, 72 70 Workers and Beneficiaries, World Almanac, 2000, 767 85 Parrington, Vol. III, 21 71 World Almanac 1986, 257 86 N. Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival (Owl Books, 2003) 72 World Almanac 1994, 958 87 J. M. Keynes,‘The Economic Consequences of the Peace,’ 1920


ENDNOTES

199

200

ENDNOTES

88 Parrington, Vol. II, 197-98

106 Dictionary, 84

89 Heilbroner, 187-189

107 W. Greider, Secrets of the Temple (Touchstone, 1987) 306-307.

90 Hughes, 32

108 Greider, 309

91 Edwards, 450

109 Greider, 308

92 Heilbroner, 191

110 Greider, 306

93 F. T. Saussy (R. Sherman), A Caveat against Injustice (Spencer Judd,

111 Greider, 307-308

1982) 23

112 D. Greenwald, Encyclopedia of Economics (McGraw Hill, 1982) 115 94 Parrington, Vol I, 300-301 113 Over the last century, average stock growth was 4%, inflation 3%: 95 C. Thomas, There to Here, (Harper Perennial, 1991) 69 96 Stastical Abstract of the U.S. (1949) 287

stock growth reflects non earned income (shares of corporate profits that enure to investors), inflation the growth in consumer cost. Stock growth enhances affluence while growth in consumer cost mostly impresses negatively on wages earned: systemic ‘giving to Peter by taking from Paul.’

97 The World Almanac 2000 (New York Times) 151 114 Heilbroner, 216 98 W. O. Menge & C. H. Fischer, Mortality Tables, The Mathematics of Life Insurance (Ulrich Books 1965) 7

115 H. B. Leonard, Checks Unbalanced (Basic Books Inc., 1986) 56

99 Statistical Abstract of the U.S. (1978) 8

116 See H. B. Leonard’s book

100 World Almanac 1996, 258

117 Encyclopedia Britannica Almanac 2004, p828

101 O. Johnson (Editor), 1996 Information Please Almanac, 840

118 Heilbroner, 153-54

102 US History: Almanac, 2000, 531

119 World Book Encyclopedia (Vol. 15) 348

103 H. Stein, The 'threat' of a Budget Surplus, Wall Street Journal, April

120 Thomas, 58

7, 1988

121 Thomas, 69 104 S. Lindlaw, AP, Las Vegas Review Journal, July 17, 2003 122 Thomas, 89, 91 105 Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia


ENDNOTES

201

123 Thomas, 82-85

202

ENDNOTES

142 Pojman, 391 (The Absolutist Answer: The Justification of the State Is The Security It Affords)

124 Parrington, Vol. I, 333-335 143 Pojman, 474 125 Parrington, Vol. III, 234-35 144 The Daily Spectrum, St. George, Utah, January 25, 1988 (Copley 126 Parrington, Vol. III, 385

news service report on a speech delivered by Dorcas Hardy; Are Social Security Benefits still secure for retirees?)

127 New Dictionary of Thoughts, 665 145 Encyclopedia of Economics, 1982, 866 (B. Clyman, S.S. Programs) 128 (First Inaugural Address) edited by Diane Ravitch, The American Reader WORDS THAT MOVED A NATION (Harper Collins, 1990) 42

146 E. K. Hunt, 12

129 Heilbroner, 72

147 The Bedrock of Executive Wealth, The Research Institute of America, Inc., 90 Fifth Ave., N.Y., N.Y. 10011

130 Parrington, Vol. II, 421-22 148 Salt Lake Tribune, April 11, 2009 131 T. Parker, ‘The Nebraska Question,’ Addnl. Speches, Vol. I, 331-335 149 Stockman, 357 132 Pojman, 152 150 Stockman, 268 133 World Book Dictionary (1965), 1202 151 Life Insurance firm rating lowered, Las Vegas Review Journal, July 134 Encyclopedia, Vol. 6, 263

9, 1991

135 I John 1: 6 (from the original Greek Diaglot)

152 Difficulties hit insurance group, The Daily Spectrum, July 13, 1991

136 E. K. Hunt, 12

153 The Conference Board, Managers Face Dilemma With 'Temps,’ Wall Street Journal, April 5, 1988.

137 Letter to H. L. Prince, April 6, 1859, in Works, Vol. V, pp. 125-126 138 Encyclopedia, Vol. 15, 348 139 Thomas, 264-265 140 World Book Dictionary, 658 141 The World Almanac, 2002, 103

154 The Wall Street Journal, August 26, 1987 155 , Shifts urged in America’s pension laws, David Mastio (Knight-Ridder Newspapers), Las Vegas Review Journal, May 5, 1995


100

200

CONTENTS of OUR FEDERAL SAVINGS PLAN and ETHEREAL-GOLD (the shaded titles) FOREWORD Quintessential Foundations (An Introduction) 101 Security: our Heritage 102 Insurance: our Heritage 103 Political Economy: the foundation of our Heritage (introduces 205) 104 Exercising Sovereignty: a responsibility of Heritage (introduces 208) 109 Truth’s Fiducial Gauges (introduces 209) Substantial Quintessence (Virtuous Knowledge) 201 Life’s enigma and the essential need for philosophy 202 Perceptions of reality and illusions 203 The requirements of self in finding truth 204 Politics for what it is 205 Political Economy 205 Appendix, Petitioning ‘Civitas’ 206 Liberal and Conservative 207 Our "Captains of Industry" 208 Sovereignty 209.1 Truth: The value predicate divisions of 209.2 Truth: The Fiducial Gauges of 210 Truth: Postscript about Organizations 211 Truth: Postscript about Emotion 212 Truth: Postscript about Faith 220 Truth: Postscript about Paradoxes 230 Truth: Postscript about Paradox and Mechanism 240 Truth: Postscript about Deontology sans Teleology 250.1 Virtues of Social Security and Vices of organization 250.2 Virtues of Social Security and Vices of organization

In 2000, wage-earners have a $2 trillion (+) stake in the Economy. Teleologically, this $2 trillion stake (with interest) should have been repaid before the top 20 percent of income earners (who did not contribute to SS) were given a revenue tax refund (top income earners got tax refunds, common wage-earners did not). ABOUT ETHEREAL-GOLD

“It is the uniqueness of individuals, as they are encouraged to develop responsibly, into which the beauties of nations bloom. The American heritage is ETHEREAL-GOLD. The unalienable qualities of individuals are not compatible with anything that we produce, particularly on production lines.” From Petitioning‘Civitas,’ the Appendix to 205 The American System of Political Economy is a mechanism that opposes teleology: It divides the economy and upsets the ethical flux in culture. Our Political Economy locks Americans of the REAL ECONOMY between Americans of the SURREAL ECONOMY and Americans of the NON ECONOMY. Tyrannous Determinism results to compromise the human rights bequeathed by the Constitution. --Are we losing our unique AMERICAN HERITAGE? --Do we allow Mechanism to gamble with Teleology? Increased in 1967 to provide for Medicare, Congress increased Social Security contribution-taxes again in 1984 to fund OUR FEDERAL SAVINGS PLAN for SS (Then spent the money) and (as reported in NEWSWEEK, May 13, 1991, p. 35) "the centrists [in Congress] say the deficit-ridden government needs the money." All attempts to cut SS taxes have failed. Political Economy, however, now calls for general tax reductions. The Administration of 2001 anointed this political objective.


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