QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; So if I am correct, you have no problem with the inequality of wealth because you have it. Correct?

JS

ANSWER: Let us look seriously at this issue. All of these people who talk about the disparity or inequality of wealth, claiming it is evil, completely fail to even understand the subject. The wealth of someone like Bill Gates and others who created companies like Henry Ford have been looked at or regarded as the super rich and thus evil. The problem boils down to assets v income. Pretend you bought a house in a modest area, say Atlantic City, and then the state passed a law that allowed casinos. Suddenly, your house goes from $100,000 to millions. So you are now “rich.” Since the land value rose, does that mean you should now pay more income taxes every year that may exceed your salary since you own a house that is worth more than average?

Those who talk about the “rich” look at their total asset values and not actual income. The value of someone is based upon their stock holding in a company they created. That is NOT cash. So should they be compelled to surrender that holding? If so, to whom? The government? So now Microsoft is seized by the government. If they sell it in small packages to the average person, the company will not be worth what it once was when the creator is driven out. Apple had to bring back Steve Jobs.

The “super rich” will pay taxes on their income every year but not on their assets, which fluctuate up and down. You may be surprised that most billionaires do not even have $1 million in a checking account. If we tax assets, then you will wipe out all small business that creates 70% of employment. How many farmers died and their heir had to sell off chunks of land to pay death taxes instead of continuing the family business?

You will hear about some billionaire who paid little taxes. That is simply the difference between asset values they did not sell and income. If you bought IBM in 2009, should you be taxed every year on its value that you held but did not sell? So you paid taxes one year when the market peaked, and the next year it is down 50%. You could have paid more in taxes in a bull market than the stock is worth when you sell it. That is the problem with real estate. Add up all the taxes and interest you pay and see if you really made any money bottom line. Most people lose in purchasing power terms.

QUESTION: RE: ….& Coming Barter System.
So, are you suggesting that we may see a shift to Silver by private individuals as the only way to sidestep Government stupidity, or will it be even worse, like trading whiskey for toilet paper??

TWE

ANSWER: Assuming government attempts to follow the IMF’s advice and create cryptocurrencies to replace paper money, then the only alternative will be the barter system. To make this clear, the likelihood of the USA following this route is a last resort. It will NOT be the first, but the last. We will see this in Europe before we will ever see it in the USA.

This cannot be a question that is answered based upon OPINION, for we all have one. The only rational way to approach that question is to look at history and see how people responded to similar but not identical positions. What comes to mind in Japan. Each new emperor devalued the money issued his own coins worth 10x that of the coins of the previous emperor. People resorted to bags of rice and they used the coins of China. Everyone refused to use Japanese coins. The result was that Japan LOST the right to issue coins at all for 600 years.

Moving to a cryptocurrency to stop the underground economy from using paper money will simply switch it to foreign currency (dollars in Europe) or something commodity based. In federal prisons, when they banned smoking back in 2004, packs of mackerel industry became the prison currency. Everyone operated an internal economy. They used cigarettes as their currency of choice to purchase anything from food and home-brewed prison hooch. They also used books of stamps. Prisoners could ship books of stamps out and they could resell them at a discount. Mackerel became the small change at about $1 a pack. There are fully developed economies within prisons. Someone skilled at drawing would make cards for holidays, while others were good at a trades tailoring to fix your clothing. Others would take a scarf and turn it into a warm knitted hat.

Once you eliminate the freedom that paper money provides, the government may believe it will get 100% of every tax it ever dreamed of but the underground economy will flip to barter. As far as silver is concerned, I would prefer silver coins that are recognizable to the average person. Offering bars of silver would be at a discount, for it will require knowledge and testing.

The total mismanagement and incompetence of government is just beyond description. The new California Governor Gavin Newsom presented his first state budget during a news conference, last week on January 10th, 2019. While he won bashing Trump over the illegal aliens because he care so much for families, he could care less about how much of a burden the state imposes upon families. His new proposal to tax drinking water will impact everyone – not the rich they always point to. He is claiming to tax water to help the poor afford water. His the newly-released budge calls for the creation of a “safe and affordable drinking water fund” that would “enable the State Water Resources Control Board to assist communities, particularly disadvantaged communities, in paying for the short-term and long-term costs of obtaining access to safe and affordable drinking water.”

It’s like labeling the most abusive taking of our rights the “Patriot Act” whenever you need to hide the real abuse. He is calling the tax as suddenly necessary to ensure “safe” water. They paid for a study to show that 6 million Californians rely on water providers that  violated state standards at some point in the last six years. The area impacted was Southern San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. Hey, that’s a great excuse to tax the entire state.

Sources behind the curtain have states deeply concerned because they can see we are headed into a recession. This leg down should be harder moving into 2020. The whispers behind the curtain fear that revenues will decline sharply as costs will rise further with pensions for state employees. Nobody is yet willing to step up and say this system is collapsing and it is unsustainable long-term. They are only interested in raising taxes just to get by for the year. Newsom is concerned that revenue could drop $25 billion in 2019-2020. They are simply looking for other excuses to raise taxes.

Ironically, California is the fourth-largest oil producing state. Before he left office, former Governor Jerry Brown signed a mandate that the state obtain all of its electricity from zero-carbon sources by 2045. That in itself was a very, very big deal. However, Brown also issued an executive order calling for the entire California economy to become carbon-neutral by 2045. The sheer cost of that where California is already the highest taxed state will most likely push its taxes perhaps even beyond France. This will become a major test for those cheering to stop Climate Change. It was precisely the Global Warming taxes that began the French protests of the Yellow Vests.

Those in government NEVER look at what they are doing to society. They believe they possess the Divine Right of Kings to do whatever they please without regard for the people.