Armstrong Economics Blog/The Hunt for Taxes Re-Posted Jun 15, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

In Germany during December 1922, the last straw that broke the back of the German economy was a forced loan of 10% of all your assets. This destroyed the confidence that remained in the Weimar Republic and thereafter people withdrew the money from banks and started to convert to other currencies and to buy whatever tangible assets they could. Hyperinflation took off in 1923.

History repeats BECAUSE human nature remains the same. In an interview with The Hill, of course, it was a Democrat from New York Thomas Suozzi who said he’s in the early stages of looking at what he called a “patriot tax” which is really a WEALTH TAX that he is proposing to impose as a one-time surcharge of 2.5% on wealth between $50 million and $100 million and a 5% on wealth above $100 million.

This is NOT income – this is on assets. It will require full disclosure of all assets held globally with penalties of imprisonment and confiscation of assets if you lie. Note this is how they introduced the income tax in 1913. They always put the initial level above the average person. In 1913, the average annual wage was about $1,500. Making the income tax starting at $3,000 was to ensure the people would not worry about the rich.

They are doing this once again. True, I would not care if Bill Gates or George Soros had to pay 5% of their gross worth. But they throw that into their foundations which will not be taxed. My real concern is once they push this through, then it is one small step for the government to lower that to $1 million or $500,000. Even if you own a home that is $1 million and you have an $800,000 mortgage, you are taxed on the $1 million – not the net.

Still, many people will say anyone with $1 million can afford to pay 5%. But that includes all assets – the value of your home or business. He says they will give them 5 years to pay it. Why? Because this is on all gross assets that they will then appraise. They can say your home is now worth $1 million despite the fact you paid $250,000 so you have to pay 5% of that $1 million gross as well. We are talking about assets that not LIQUID meaning you then must sell things to pay the tax. This is how they destroy farmers. The inheritance tax forced the sale of land to pay the tax ultimately leading to big corporate farming.

So you wanted to know how to destroy an economy as fast as possible? All you have to do is impose a WEALTH TAX and watch what happens! You can double your money in the stock market, they want 5% to the total gross value. They could easily tax you on the maximum value of Bitcoin holdings during a given period. Do not count on any federal judge ruling in your favor. That will NEVER happen!

So this is just another nail in the coffin of the West and why China will emerge as the #1 world economy. The LEFT will destroy everything – it always ends up that way. That is neither my opinion nor a conspiracy theory. It is just history. The policies of the LEFT are prohibited by the Ten Commandments. Not only does this violate the freedom of religion, the same prohibition appears in other legal codes from ancient times proving that it was prohibited for good reason.

Armstrong Economics Blog/Forecasts RE-Posted Jun 15, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Are you familiar with that studies of pundits have shown that their forecasts are no better than chance. You seem to be in the category of what those studies at Penn University by Philip Tetlock called “superforecasters”. Would you care to comment on how you are right so often when others never are?

UT

ANSWER: I am not familiar with those studies on forecasting but it makes sense. The vast majority of forecasting is nothing more than opinion. That is why they are rarely correct. Even Barron’s took a shot at me because in 2010, the forecast was that we were entering a bull market with new highs on the horizon following the crash of 2007-2009. Of course, Barron’s never wrote another piece to say the forecast was correct. Barron’s acknowledged I had forecast the 1987 Crash. But they never reviewed everything.

The press likes pundits to talk opinion. They are not really interested in forecasting. If they were, they would do a serious article on all our forecasts concerning the methodology that has been correct for a single reason — history repeats. Socrates puts the entire world together and maps out the capital flows. Just follow the money — that will mean you will be far more correct than sticking your finger in the air to judge the direction of the wind.

History repeats because human nature never changes throughout the millennium. We are a species that will never change because human nature remains the same since the dawn of time. There are Stone Age graves with people buried with dignity. The most amazing find so far of a Stone Age grave was of a female and two children hugging each other. They were carefully arranged in this position. This strongly indicated they had spiritual beliefs and cared for their dead, but most of all, it showed love.

Throughout millennia, people before recorded history showed how that they cared for one another. They also showed a consistent belief in the hereafter. There are even dozens of burials in the southwestern Siberian village of Staryi Tartas, where human remains were positioned in pairs facing each other. The rare couple burials are among 600 graves dating to between the 17th and 14th centuries BC from the Bronze Age Andronovo culture. Even in the Stone Age, there was respect for the dead shows love existed then as it does today among our species.

This respect has been a tradition in human communities that appears from the very beginning. But Socrates cannot answer that question. It can show the correlations with religions and demonstrate the similarities of cultures around a central belief system. It cannot confirm or deny the existence of an afterlife. That becomes opinion.

Human nature endures. We travel through time, and technology progresses with our knowledge. However, emotionally we remain very much the same. Society MUST move through these crash and burn periods. It is how we progress through history. We learn only through our mistakes — never our victories.

Therefore, the correct forecasts are not because of my personal opinion or some guess. Everything is based upon history and what that reveals is straightforward. Given the same circumstance, human nature will ALWAYS respond in the same manner, like an animal cornered will stand and fight even if it is a possum that normally plays dead. The future becomes understandable ONLY when you understand the past.