New York State Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo has blamed the upstate weather and Global Warming for the reason people have been fleeing his state NOT taxes. This comes as no surprise, for Democrats are closet Marxists and love more taxes and assume the people love to be taxed and always ask for more. Like the Global Warming people who ignore all history before 1850, Cuomo prefers to ignore the fact that the American Revolution slogan was:

“No Taxation Without Representation” 

The stunning thing is how politicians always play with fire and never learn from the past. Since 1500, there have been 354 tax rebellions in the world. Bac in 2014, French vegetable farmers set a tax office and a building on fire in protest. I don’t think that had to do with weather. In fact, there is an average of 1.46 years for a tax rebellion somewhere in the world. I moved to Florida to get closer to Global Warming – TRUE. But my lawyer also told me if I died, to tell my family to drag my body across the river before they told the State of New Jersey. Then, even if we held a conference in Hong Kong, we had to pay almost 10% to the State of New Jersey just for the privilege of being given parking ticket in front of Starbucks in a private parking lot.

Under Cuomo’s logic, it sounds like New York State should join Canada and slap a $1,000+ tax on every house, condo, or apartment to stop Global Warming. While he’s at it since we are the problem with creating Global Warming like the cows in Europe, they should just tax sex to reduce the population and I am sure they can authorize surveillance camera in everybody’s abode to enforce the tax. Politicians will not listen, which is why there should be no career politicians. You are asking for them to reform and they will NEVER act other than their own self-interest as long as they can get away with it. We can ONLY have a county of the people and for the people when the people are actually running the joint! Once you allow career politicians, they act in their own self-interest and that is ALWAYS against the self-interest of the people

COMMENT: Mr. Armstrong; As a Canuck, I enjoyed your piece on the window and step tax for I fear Trudeau may start reading your blog for ideas. You have come up with a program that blocks politicians. I love how they call Trump a racist down there showing they are real idiots for they do not know the definition of race. Trump is no keener and that’s why they hate him. I thought I would share with you that here in Canada, during 1885, we did impose a racist tax. Canada created the Chinese Head Tax, which taxed the entry of Chinese immigrants. What would they call that today?

SF

ANSWER: True, Trump is not keener (ass-kisser) but at least you know what he thinks whereas the career boys just smile and lie to your face so you never know. Yes, politicians do seem to get ideas from each other. The US had this civil asset forfeiture and now everyone is confiscating money because that’s what the Americans do. Today, civil asset forfeiture is an outright crime against the people for it is not even a tax – just an illegal taking of innocent people’s money.

When it comes to money, there have been some really crazy taxes and hypocrisy behind it. I would have been discriminated against by Peter I, the Great in Russia. Back in 1705, he imposed a tax on men who did not shave. They had to pay a tax so they did not have to shave. The police were authorized to shave any man on the spot. If you paid the tax, you were given a supply of tokens to give to the police so they did not shave you on the spot. I suspect there was no shaving cream applied, but the brute force with a knife. Here is one of those tokens that were issued to men who paid a tax to be allowed to wear facial hair. I suppose race did not matter, so it was just tyranny. Peter the Great was supposedly trying to modernize Russia demanding that men should be clean-shaven. Nevertheless, Peter the Great was painted wearing a mustache.

Yet Peter the Great may not have actually stolen the idea of a beard tax from King Henry VIII of England. In that case, Henry VIII was notoriously in financial trouble and he debased his coinage because he was broke. During 1535, Henry levied a tax on all men who had beards thereby inventing the beard tax. What was interesting, Henry VIII discovered that imposing a tax on beards turned them into a status symbol. Beards became reserved for the affluent and revered by the impoverished who could not pay the tax. Henry VIII’s greed made beards the symbol of resistance. Henry VIII, himself, wore a beard during his reign.

What politicians always do is the constantly create more and more schemes to invent new taxes rather than raising taxes, which is too obvious. Roosevelt imposed all sorts of taxes including the Marihuana Tax in 1937. He put a tax on silver and even potatoes.

You will find all sorts of taxes imposed on some really crazy things throughout history. So get ready. When the Democrats come back, it will be with a vengeance like nothing before. There have even been people who suggested that there should be a tax on emails because it is competing with the Post Office.

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; I believe the next migration out of California is now also impacting Silicon Valley. Do you see elements of this moving to Austin Texas as the rumors are here in California?

HY

ANSWER: Yes, the rumors are correct. Silicon Vally if you ranked it as its own nation, it would be in the top 20 in the world even exceeding Switzerland and Saudi Arabia. Most people have no clue the economic significance of Silicon Valley. The real crisis for California is that the net migration has also manifested in Silicon Valley. There were more people leaving Silicon Valley and moving out of state than there were people arriving. In fact, polls taken in the region say that 46% of the people intend to leave which is up from 34% back in 2016. There are now more start-ups beginning to form outside of Silicon Valley. The costs of just setting things up are estimated to be between 4 to 5 times than of places like Austin Texas. The taxes are insane and the State has relied upon the high taxation from this area to support its grand plans elsewhere. It is just too expensive for innovation to take place in this area anymore.

The Pension Crisis is starting to be noticed in Europe. The German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz is arguing that the federal government has to guarantee the pension level until 2040. He is arguing that the government MUST come up with a plausible financing model which seems actually impossible. The increase in taxes to cover pension that far out would devastate the younger generations. So far, this Grand Coalition in Germany has agreed on stabilization plan by 2025.  We may see the pension issue become a major factor in the next election. There is no solution as long as Germany continues to adhere to austerity. The only way the pension crisis can be addressed is to inflate out so you pay people with a cheaper currency.

The collapse of Socialism is underway because the people rightly expected all governments to do everything they could to live safely and satisfy their promises of bliss for retirement. They are already witnessing that saving for retirement has not worked when central banks use interest rates to manipulate the economy and in Germany, they have had negative interest rates thanks to Draghi and the ECB. Indeed, in Germany, this policy of austerity is in direct conflict with Socialism. The only way the system has held together this long is because of inflation.

The Pension Crisis is one element behind the rise of political unrest, particularly in Italy. In Germany, the Pension Crisis is starting to fuel the AfD and the nationalist populists in their movement. Scholz has warned that without resolving this issue, Germany will see its own version of Donald Trump take command. Political change is coming and the current crop of politicians have no real answers.

The German magazine, Spiegel, reported that according to estimates by the German Pension Fund, the so-called sustainability reserve will reach around €37.3 billion euros by the end of December 2018. The reserve has been increasing of late 4.4% (year/year) because of the strong employment situation in Germany under its export model. Nevertheless, the pension insurance assumes that by 2023, the contribution rate of 18.6% of gross wages must be increased yet again. This is already a hefty percentage of gross income and it is not going to be enough

Erdogan has his boys dressed in suits burning only a handful of US ONE DOLLAR bills as a nice propaganda piece. In truth, the Turkish people have been hoarding Dollars and Euros because they have lost all faith in their own currency. It is nice that Erdogan has a few people burning less than $100 for a video. All it shows is in fact that Erdogan is belligerent and he will put himself before the good of his own people.  He can pretend the people are burning dollars, but they are not cashing them in for lira. He is running around asking for help from France, Germany, Qatar, and anyone else with spare change