Boston Bombing

In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing we should all hug our kids a little tighter and thank God we live in the greatest country in the world. Not only did law enforcement quickly find and capture the perpetrators but the public at large did their part to identify these criminals and help law enforcement run them to ground. We will not be terrorized by these animals. Islamic Jihadists are criminals first and their mad version of their so-called religion is so far from main stream religious faith as to be unrecognizable. There is no true religious faith that believes that anyone not of the faith should be killed. To call this ideology a religion is such an affront to religious people that I am truly surprised that more Muslims don't stand up and loudly proclaim that this is NOT what their faith is about. Sadly, they either do belive that the infidels should be killed or they are so afraid of the radical Islamists that they keep quiet out of fear.
    Now the gun control nuts are wondering why these criminal terrorists didn't have gun permits. After all Massechusets has gun control laws. These guys should have applied for a permit to have the guns they used to shoot it out with the police. I am sure they would have put on the application under "Why do you want/need a gun" "To shoot it out with police". And for the background check they would have entered. "I am a Chechnian Muslim Extremist, please call my mosque's radical immam for a reference"
    We live in the most free nation in the world. As such, people are free to be extreme in their speech, their religion and their personal behavior. However, with freedom comes responsibility and your freedom does not mean you can deny my freedom. Therfore freedom of speech and religion means you have a responsibility to make this a better place, not degenerate to a place that you think it should be.

Marcellus Development

The development of the Marcellus Shale and now Utica Shale underneath has resulted in an unexpected economic benefit for the people in the Philadelphia area.  Schramm Inc of West Chester County south of Philly got it's 15 minutes of fame when it's drilling rig rescued the miners in Chile in 2010. Schramm is in the process of delivering it's first Marcellus Horizontal Drill Rig. This $7.6 Million dollar, 102 foot high, walking rig is being delivered to Ohio as we speak. Schramm hired 50 new employees last year to reach 235 employees making drilling rigs. This is just one of a number of companies hiring employees in the area. A Lorain, OH steel mill is making pipe, countless pipeline companies are laying downstream infrastructure to get the gas from the wellhead to the processors. Compressor stations have to be built to move the gas downstream. Fractionating plants are built to separate the Natural Gas Liquids from the "wet " gas. In addition, there are proposals for "cracker" plants that further process the NGL and produce raw materials for other industries. Fabricators are building metering sleds, pig launchers and receivers, buying valves and pipe and steel. Trucking companies are moving everything from bulldozers and excavators to rigs to pipe to housing. Water trucks are hauling fresh water for fracking and produced water for disposal. Chemical companies are producing various chemicals for fracking and sand producers are supplying sand for fracking. Numerous yards are springing up for transferring sand from railcars to trucks, to store pipeline equipment and to provide housing for the employees as they move from site to site.
   The basic drilling operation requires crews for construction. Site clearing and right of way clearing, pad construction which usually requires lining pad with plastic to contain any spill, covering liner with felt to prevent rock base from compromising the liner and building access roads. Once the rig arrives it consists of 6-8 truckloads of equipment including power, control room and the physical rig itself with a 102 foot boom and the equipment necessary to lift 250 tons of pipe and drill more than 15,000 feet deep. Before the drill rig is set and the BOP (Blow Out Preventer) stack is in place the "Rat Hole" crew must drill a large bore pipe down below the water table and cement in place to prevent any contamination of the local water table. Once the top casing is set and cemented the drill rig can move on site and commense drilling.
     As you might imagine, all this requires billions of dollars of investment. Drilling leases on the property mineral rights, capital equipment, supplies and payroll all have to be paid before before the first piece of drill pipe begins to turn. The average well takes about 30 days to finish drilling and another 30 days to frack. Drilling crews, cementing crews and fracking crews all work 24/7 to finish the process which requires relief crews at every level.
    This is no small impact on our region. We must do everything we can do to support this business and the resulting jobs it creates.
   

Manufacturing: Making Stuff

Manufacturing in America is all about making stuff. We make stuff all the time and the more we make the better our economy is, the better our lifestyle is, the more jobs there are and the easier it is to find a job.
    In this new economy we are making things smarter, smaller, stronger and cleaner. Two thirds of all the research and development money is spent by manufacturing companies.

Boston Consulting Group has recently published an article about the resurgence of manufacturing in America. Rising wages and currency rates, among other factors, have dramatically narrowed the gap between manufacturing costs in China and the United States, with the result that several US companies are now bringing manufacturing jobs home to America. In The US Manufacturing Renaissance: How Shifting Global Economics Are Creating an American Comeback, authors Harold L. Sirkin, Justin Rose, and Michael Zinser provide historical perspective on why the death of US manufacturing has often been predicted—but failed each time. And why the present will be no different.

The impact of the changing math of manufacturing will be felt the most in seven industry sectors that our analysis predicted would reach a tipping point in around five years, when the rising costs of producing in China will make it more economical to shift the manufacture of goods consumed in the U.S. to the U.S. These sectors are;
1) Computers and Electronics computers, wireless phones, and televisions
2) Appliances and Electrical Equipment. Small appliances such as fans, vacuum cleaners, and microwave ovens and big appliances like refrigerators, freezers, and dishwashers
3) Machinery. Leading Chinese exports in this broad category include air conditioners, heaters, pumping equipment, office machinery, power tools, optical products, photocopiers, and farm equipment.
4) Furniture
5) Fabricated Metals plumbing fixtures, hardware, hand tools, cutlery, and pots and pans
6) Plastics and Rubber   tires, floor coverings, and bottles
7) Transportation Goods car and truck components, motorbikes, bicycles, and aircraft parts.

Our manufacturing sector will continue to change and adapt to the new world order. We will continue to be on the leading edge of innovation, productivity advances, automation and new products.

Manufacturing: Made in America

Why the optimism toward a manufacturing comeback? Here are five reasons:
1) Cheap U.S. natural gas and other increased energy production are helping to power U.S. factories more efficiently, with gas especially providing inexpensive raw materials for U.S. manufacturers of plastics, tires, certain pharmaceuticals and other petrochemical products.
2) Higher wages in China and other foreign export markets are making outsourcing less profitable to U.S. firms.
3) Congressional approval in 2011 of trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama and other agreements being negotiated now with Asia and Europe are promising to open more foreign markets to U.S. products.
4) Major technology advances have steadily boosted factory efficiency and worker productivity.
5) High U.S. unemployment is relieving pressure on factory owners to increase wages, helping to make U.S. labor costs more globally competitive.
    Yet, while many industries are doing more with fewer workers, more than half a million new manufacturing jobs have been added in just the past few years. Now we just need to get our educational system in line with the manufacturing jobs being created.
    U.S. manufacturing companies have as many as 600,000 jobs that they cannot find workers with the proper skills to fill, according to a survey by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute.
The survey found 5 percent of current manufacturing jobs are unfilled due to lack of qualified candidates, 67 percent of manufacturers have a moderate to severe shortage of qualified workers, and 56 percent expect the shortage to increase in the next three to five years.
   "These unfilled jobs are mainly in the skilled production category — positions such as machinists, operators, craft workers, distributors and technicians," said Emily DeRocco, president of the Manufacturing Institute, part of the National Association of Manufacturers in Washington.
"Unfortunately, these jobs require the most training and are traditionally among the hardest manufacturing jobs to find existing talent to fill."
    Getting the workforce educated in key skills will be the catalyst that we need to really get manufacturing growing at a rate that we need to grow and sustain the economy.

Manufacturing Redux III

The United States produces 18% of what the entire world consumes. We are a manufacturing powerhouse in spite of what you hear on the news or read in the papers (if you read papers anymore).
     Many believe labor costs are a large part of the total cost of production of most manufacturing industries and that the wage differential is too large for virtually any manufacturing to be done competitively in the United States as opposed to China, Vietnam, and other parts of developing Asia. This is in fact not the case. Consider that countries like Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and Japan have wage and benefit costs far higher than those in the United States yet they maintain manufacturing sectors twice as large as a percent of GDP as the United States.
    In industries like semiconductors, machine tools, specialty machinery, pharmaceuticals, autos, nano technology, optical fiber, and many many more labor cost is a small part of the total cost and can easily be offset by economies of scale, transport cost, superior quality, special design, superior customer service, and lower risk and capital costs.
    Most of the value in the Apple iPad for example is in parts that are not made in China. Only about $7 worth of assembly occurs in China.
    We must overcome the notion that manufacturing cannot be done profitably in this country. Many people see a manufacturing career or starting a manufacturing business as a dead end as all manufacturing will ultimately be done in low wage countries. That could not be further from the truth or reality. We do manufacture here and there are thousands if not millions of good jobs in the manufacturing sector. Skills are critical, technology is critical, capital is critical to the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing jobs will not be replaced like agricultural jobs were replaced in the last century. Manufacturing jobs are here and will continue to be some of the best paying jobs in the economy.
     We still make paint and cement blocks and motorcycles. We still make mining equipment and aluminum. We make the silicon for solar panels and the copper for wire. We make shingles and lumber, wallboard (from recycled stack gases at power plants) and furniture. We make missles, tanks and submarines. We make bombs and rockets. We make wooden pallets to ship stuff on. We make ice cream and sour cream. We make gasoline and kerosene, diesel fuel and cooking fuel and charcoal.
We make medical devices and semiconductors. We make  actuators (motors for moving or controlling a mechanism or system); aviation restraints; fire hose nozzles; friction modifiers (additives used in lubricants to reduce the surface friction of lubricated parts); industrial band saw blades; medical cabinets; surgical face mask filters; and vinyl siding. We make air filters; airless paint sprayers; cutting tools; hard hats; lipstick; microwave containers; security access devices; and solar window coverings. We make compression latches; dental chairs; drilling rigs; electric motors; elevators; pneumatic valves and spectrophotometers.
     Look around you and the next time someone says we don't make anything in America anymore you can politely contradict them.

Manufacturing Redux II

    Manufacturing is important to this country. It is the engine that builds wealth and creates prosperity. It is the process of taking raw materials and adding value to them through intelligence, technology and capital to create something of more value thus creating wealth. Farmers are manufacturers as they take raw materials, land, equipment, seed and fertilizer and create a crop to sell. Food companies manufacture the food we eat. Either they grow it, or process it or manufacture a product for sale from it.
    Too often we look at manufacturing as a big smokestack on the edge of town. Manufacturers are everywhere we look and are necessary for the health and wealth of our society. Whether they are manufacturing chocolate candy or needlepoint kits or toys or hot salsa, the people who take raw materials and turn them into products are to be commended for driving our economy. Since the industrial revolution we have come a long way from the farm.
    We make glue and hockey pucks, tires and potato chips. We make beer and wine and whiskey. We make cars and trucks and buses. We make shoe and boots, locks and toilet seats. We make plastic parts, metal parts, automotive parts and toy parts. We make guns and dog food, cookware and flashlights and shower heads. We make crayons and chain saws, vacuum cleaners and coffeemakers, stoves and refrigerators, lawn mowers and paint brushes, Airstream trailers and Gibson guitars. We make flags and wooden bats and NFL footballs. We make Steinway pianos and Sharpie markers.
    Look for and support the manufacturers in your community. In addition, don't forget that all the money in a foreign made item does not necessarily go to the country of origin. A $70 pair of Nike sneakers has as much as $50 in domestic costs. Costs for transportation, distribution and sales are employing people here in this country. Truck drivers, warehouse personel, retail sales people owe their jobs to the consumer no matter where the product originated.
    Manufacturing is coming back. Energy prices are moderating. Our economy is coming back to life. We have much to be thankful for. 

Manufacturing Redux

    To hear the talking heads in the media, the manufacturing in the USA is all but done. Jobs have gone to China. There is no manufacturing left in the US. Manufacturing jobs are gone forever. Nothing could be further from the truth. While the US did lose it's top spot as the largest manufacturer in the world to China in 2011 we are still the most productive manufacturer in the world and seconf only to China in total manufacturing production. We still make stuff here.
    The discrepancy between wages in China and the US is closing fast. Wages in China a five times what they were in 2000 and are expected to continue to rise about 18% per year. Add to that the energy costs, gas averages $3.30/mbtu in the US while in Asia it is 4 times as high. In addition, inventory costs, transportation costs and logistics combines to drive the costs of manufacturing overseas upwards while lower energy costs, automation and productivity increases continue to drive our manufacturing costs down. That is not to say that that is good news for job seekers. Continued automation, while driving costs down also reduces ot eliminates the need for low skilled workers.
    What this means is this 1) low skilled workers who have a job MUST upgrade their skills either through their employer with OTJ training and tuition support or 2) off duty education that improves skill levels to either get promoted to a better paying position with the present employer or find a better job elsewhere. Low skilled jobs will eventually go away. Walmart cannot charge enough for produce to pay a greeter $20/hour. Prospective employees MUST upgrade their skills and prospective employers MUST help.
   Manufacturing supports an estimated 17.2 million jobs in the United States—about one in six private-sector jobs. Nearly 12 million Americans (or 9 percent of the workforce) are employed directly in manufacturing.
     Manufacturing in the United States produces $1.8 trillion of value each year, or 12.2 percent of U.S. GDP. For every $1.00 spent in manufacturing, another $1.48 is added to the economy, the highest multiplier effect of any economic sector.
 In 2011, the average manufacturing worker in the United States earned $77,060 annually, including pay and benefits. The average worker in all industries earned $60,168.
    Having said all that there are lots of manufacturers in the US. We make everything from electric motors to airplanes and rubber rafts to microprocessors. We make drugs (pharmaceuticals) and we make windows, we make steel and plastic, we make wire and rope and farm equipment, we make chemicals and soap, we make clothes and carpet and locomotives. We make wind turbines and solar panels and steam boilers and jet engines.  Manufacturing is important to this country.
To be continued...
  In dollars, wages in China are some five times what they were in 2000—and they are expected to keep rising 18 percent a yea ​​In dollars, wages in China are some five times what they were in 2000—and they are expected to keep rising 18 percent a year  In dollars, wages in China are some five times what they were in 2000—and they are expected to keep rising 18 percent a yearIn dollars, wages in China are some five times what they were in 2000—and they are expected to keep rising 18 percent a year
   

Minimum Wage

    The minimum wage not only discriminates against low-skilled workers but also is one of the most effective tools of racists everywhere. Our nation's first minimum wage came in the form of the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931. The goal was to protect white construction workers from the north from black construction workers from the south. Davis Bacon continues to be a way to dicriminate in favor of unions and against lower paid non-union workers.
    Minimum wage laws generally discriminate against low-skilled workers and entry level workers in all industries. In an aricle today Walter Williams writes;
"Let's work through an example. Suppose 100 yards of fence could be built using one of two techniques. You could hire three low-skilled workers for $15 each, or you could hire one high-skilled worker for $40. Either way, you get the same 100 yards of fence built. If you sought maximum profits, which production technique would you employ? I'm guessing that you'd hire one high-skilled worker and pay him $40 rather than hire three low-skilled workers for $15 each. Your labor costs would be $40 rather than $45.
Suppose the high-skilled worker came into your office and demanded $55 a day. What would be your response? You'd probably tell him to go play in the traffic and hire the three low-skilled workers. After all, hiring the three low-skilled workers for $45, to get the same 100 yards of fence, would be cheaper than the $55 a day now demanded by the high-skilled worker."
    It is easy to see in this simple example how a rise in minimum wage will affect low skilled workers. As entry level or low skilled workers get a 24% pay raise as president Obama wants then higher level employees must also get a raise thus ratcheting up all wages. An emplyer can only stand a certain level of increased costs before he must 1) raise his prices (not always possible) or 2) lay off workers and expect higher productivity from those workers left. if he can't raise prices and can't increase productivity the options are 1) go out of business 2) go out of business.
     Whether support for minimum wages is motivated by good or by evil, its effect is to cut off the bottom rungs of the economic ladder for the most disadvantaged worker and lower the cost of discrimination. President Obama has no understanding of basic economics and thus has no idea what his minimum wage proposal can mean.

Sequester: Here Come the Clowns II

The administration, Obama and his minions have made a full court press exclaiming about all the doom and gloom that will befall us if we DARE to allow any sequester cuts to take place.
Obama stands before first responders, firemen and policemen and tells his audience we will not be as safe after Mar 1 as we once were never mind the fact that most first responders are paid by local governments. He stands before an audience and claims that 100s of kids will not be eligible for Head Start and 1000s will not have schools lunches and hundreds of thousands will not have day care. He even threatened that health care providers will not be able to provide immunizations or flu shots in spite of the fact that these are reimbusable expenses through Medicare and Medicaid and MUST be paid for. Then he trotted out all his Cabinet Secretaries to increase the gloom and doom. Defense would not be able to buy ammunition or deploy aircraft carriers. Transportation would be forced to lay off Air Traffic Controllers, Homeland Security would lay off border security, Justice of course would lay off FBI agents and Federal prosecutors. On and on it went, fear mongering, demigogury, scare tactics all in an effort to pressure the Republicans to back down on their pledge to let the sequester cuts be enforced. Make no mistake, this was simply a ploy to pressure the opposition to back down. The cuts represent less than 2% of the overall budget and the federal spending for 2013 will still be higher than 2012.
     Now in the final hours before the cuts will take affect Mar 1 President Obama is singing a different tune. Now that it is inevitable that the cuts will take place the President says we may not notice the cuts for a week or a month. His greatest fear is that we won't notice AT ALL.

Sequester: Here Come the Clowns

Most of the news these days revolves around the "SEQUESTER" a form of budget cutting that requires across the board cuts when the various Congressional players and the President cannot agree on specific cuts. Designed to be "drastic" and "so egregious" as to encourage the Congress to actually CUT the budget. The result of this is the circus we see playing out in the media on a daily basis.
    The President, in an effort to avoid any cuts at all has revved up the scare tactics. "Our National Security is at risk, FBI agents will get laid off, US Attorneys will have to let criminals go and not prosecute, no air traffic controllers, no border security, no day care, no funding for disabled children or school lunches. No money bullets for soldiers in harms way. No money for training for troops deploying to Afghanistan." I was born at night but I wasn't born last night.
    The Federal Budget has increased an average of 6% since the 1986 Budget Control Act defined "baseline budgeting" which allows the government to grow at approximately 6% from the previous years "base" Add to that the fact that somehow Obama's Stimulus has been added to the baseline.
The long and the short of this is that government continues to grow. Even after the sequestration the government will spend more money in 2013 than it did in 2012 and is projected to spend more money in each successive year than the previous. We are barely slowing down the rate of growth much less actually cutting government spending.
    The President already has tranfer authority and could decide that it is more cost effective to cut the economists at the Labor Department rather than Air Traffic Controllers or cut conferences at GSA rather than school lunches. However, this President is a political animal and any admission that we have spending that we can cut is an admission that is agenda may be wrong for the economy.
  At this point it looks like the sequester will happen inspite of all the rhetoric and demagogury. The Democrats and the Presidents worst fear is that no one will notice. 

High Prices Cure High Prices

Being from an area not particularly impacted by the drought of 2012 I am sympathetic to farmers and ranchers who are impacted. While it is part of farming, it is never fun to see crops you have worked so hard for wither in the field. Likewise ranchers with their animals struggling to find something to eat and drink when normally they would be on their own for the summer. As we go into the fall, unfortunately the damage is done. Cattle and pigs are headed for slaughter because at $8.00/ bushel it is just too costly to feed them corn to fatten them up. This will impact the food chain across the board and not for the good. The good part of this scenario is that with high prices in the Spring many farmers planted way more than a typical normal year. This additional acreage in production may somewhat offset the looses in the drought areas. We will have to see what happens at harvest. One thing is sure. This entire system gives us a lesson in Economics 101. As supply drops and demand remains the same the price will increase. Prices will continue to increase until one of two things happen. Either the price gets so high that people stop buying which reduces demand or the high price brings on additional supply from foreign sources which will mitigate further increases. Either way the market will act in a way that both rations supply and increases supply on the one hand or reduces demand as buyers find alternatives that are cheaper on the other.
This process works in virtually any market. In my area the gasoline price is approaching $4.00/gal. Up to that point, I have noticed that people continue to fill up and while they bitch, they don't change their behavior. At $4.00, something happens. People begin to change their habits. They no longer fill up, rather get $20 or $40 and hope the price goes down. If and when the price drops $.15 or $.20 they swarm to the station to fill up. I do it too. If I think the price will continue up I fill up. If I think it has peaked and likely will come down, I get $20. My own form of rationing. High prices cure high prices.

Manufacturing in America

Mary Andringa, president and CEO of Iowa manufacturer Vermeer Corporation and then-board chair at the National Association of Manufacturers recently said in an NBC interview.
"What’s really outstanding is the fact that in 2010, the U.S. had an output of $4.8 trillion of manufactured goods. That was up from $4.1 (trillion) in 2000 — and we’ve been through two recessions in the past decade.
Five million manufacturing jobs were lost in the U.S. in the last decade. But new jobs have been created too, and believe it or not, many manufacturers in the U.S. are looking for help.
As economist and George Mason University Professor Walter Williams pointed out in a 2011 column:

(In) 1900 … about 41 percent of our labor force was employed in agriculture. By 2008, fewer than 3 percent of Americans were employed in agriculture. … [O]ur farmers are the world’s most productive. As a result, Americans are better off.
In 1970, the telecommunications industry employed 421,000 workers as switchboard operators, annually handling 9.8 billion long-distance calls. Today the telecommunications industry employs only 78,000 operators … (processing) more than 100 billion long-distance calls a year.
Fifty years ago, a typical textile worker operated five machines capable of running thread through a loom 100 times a minute. Today machines run six times as fast, and one worker can oversee 100 of them.
You say, “Williams, certain jobs are destroyed by technology.” You’re right, but many more are created.
 

 With all due respect to Professor Williams above, he would be right about enough replacement jobs being created if we were living in a genuine free-market economy. Unfortunately, that’s not where we are in this nation. Virtually all of the reasons why sufficient job growth isn’t occurring can be traced to the Obama administration’s market-hostile economic policies and postures.
Here are some of the administrations policies that limit the economic growth in the economy.

The war on fossil fuels, which has limited job growth in energy-related industries and caused prices to be higher than they should be for everyone else.

Cronyism on steroids.

Trillion-dollar deficit spending.

New bureaucracies like Dodd-Frank’s Consumer Financial Bureau, which Congress can’t legally touch.

Unemployment and other government benefits which make remaining unemployed relatively attractive, or a least a more tolerable circumstance than it should be, and for a longer period of time than should be necessary.

Onerous labor laws and regulations.

Federal, state, and local tax increases.

Last but certainly not least, Obamacare

Until recently when we were overtaken by China the USA was the largest manufacturer in the world and we are still the most productive, exceeding #2 China by 40%.
Manufacturing is not dead in America, yet.

 

Debt Ceiling Debate

    I get really sick of politicians including the POTUS spouting about how if we don't raise the debt ceiling that SS checks won't go out, our military won't get paid and we will default on our debt. BALONEY. I call BS on all of it and resent the insult to my intelligence.
    First of all. Our debt is denominated in dollars and we can print money so if we needed to we could print money to pay our debtors/bond holders. Default therefore is technically off the table. However, it is more complicated than that. Consider the following.
1) The President and the Treasury Department decide what bills get paid. The Treasury Secy works at the will and pleasure of the President and has the responsibility to manage the countries finances. If the borrowing power is limited the Treasury Department would have to decide which bills to pay and in what priority. If the President said "Pay the troops, the SS checks and interest on the debt" then that would be what he would do.
2) In aggregate interest on the debt is 6% of the total budget, SS is 20% and Department of Defense payroll is 22%. So if push came to shove since we have only $.60 cash from receipts (we borrow the rest) we could easily pay these major obligations.
    Based on this basic information, even if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling during the negotiations the government could pay the basic obligations of interest, SS and soldiers. To say otherwise is scare tactics plain and simple and is unbecoming of a President of the United States.
   

Socialism is Evil

The main risk facing the world is obviously socialism.
Webster’s defines Freedom as:
1: the quality or state of being free: as
a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action
b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independence
c : the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous .

All evil arises from people and governments opposing Freedom and imposing their will on others. That includes murder, robbery, rape, all crimes, and all wars. All of America’s real wars were fought to achieve or defend Freedom. Therefore, evil can be defined as some degree of slavery, or as interference with anyone’s Freedom beyond that required to protect oneself or others.

From Wikipedia - "Socialism":

"Democratic socialism seeks to establish socialism through democratic processes and propagate its ideals within the context of a democratic political system."

"Modern socialism originated from an 18th-century intellectual and working class political movement that criticised the effects of industrialisation and private property on society. In the early 19th-century, "socialism" referred to any concern for the social problems of capitalism irrespective of the solutions to those problems. However, by the late 19th-century, "socialism" had come to signify opposition to capitalism and advocacy for an alternative system based on some form of social ownership. Marxists expanded further on this, attributing scientific assessment and democratic planning as critical elements of socialism.
Laissez-faire Free Market Capitalism was described exactly by Jefferson and Franklin and our original Constitution - that is, the role of government is to protect individual rights of Freedom (including the right to Private Property), common interests (which includes welfare), and to provide for the common services (to manage infrastructure that is actually provided by private businesses). Socialism is government interference with the free market system beyond its duty to protect individual rights and the common interests. That interference includes regulation and spending. Any spending beyond that required also qualifies as socialism because it takes money from the tax base, or worse, borrows it, and directs it to others of the government's choice, i.e. it is wealth redistribution. Under those definitions, insuring the banks (FDIC) is socialism. That and the Federal Reserve Act and paper money caused the continuing economic collapse, because of allowed incompetence and unlimited public debt and borrowing, and explains the requirement for the separation of business and government and the balanced budget amendments, the obvious solutions. Taxing income and property is socialism because it confiscates private property through treasonous judicial rulings, rather than protecting it as still required by our Constitution. If our time and labor and their proceeds are not private property as they were originally, and as they were intended to be forever, as an inalienable right explicitly stated in Article V, then we are slaves to those who own or confiscate them.  True free market capitalism naturally maximizes responsibility, growth, advancement, employment and obviously Freedom because it is the same thing, and it does not tax income, labor, or other private property. In a free market system, inefficient or incompetent or irresponsible businesses naturally fail and are replaced by better, more efficient, and more responsible ones all the time, with absolutely no danger to the system - actually the opposite – BUSINESSES FAIL AND ARE REPLACED IN A FREE MARKET SYSTEM WITH THE GREATEST POSSIBLE BENEFIT TO THE ENTIRE SYSTEM, MAXIMIZING GROWTH, RESPONSIBILITY, EMPLOYMENT, PROSPERITY, ADVANCEMENT, AND THE LEVEL OF SERVICES THAT SOCIETY CAN PROVIDE.
So, evil can be defined as interference with anyone’s Freedom beyond that required to protect yourself or others. Socialism can be defined as government interference with the Freedom of citizens or businesses, including all regulation and spending beyond its duty to protect individual rights of Freedom and Private Property and the public interests and to provide the common services. Arguments regarding the definition of common services are not really issues of socialism, as long as they are available to all and only managed by government and provided by the private sector, and as long as society and its level of advancement can responsibly afford to provide them.

The conclusion is obvious. If a=b and b=c, then a=c. I.e., if socialism=interference opposing Freedom beyond that necessary to protect others, and evil=interference opposing Freedom beyond that necessary to protect others, then SOCIALISM=EVIL (= slavery). And where it exists, evil is always the real problem (just in case that isn’t obvious to anyone).

Socialists argue that the government should provide for the people beyond public welfare programs or that some people have a right to the income of some other people, and that the above conclusion that socialism is evil is not true, because the benefit to those receiving it is greater than the detriment of the slavery (confiscation of private property) of others. Socialists often argue that this is necessary in order to resolve the “income inequality” that they claim results from free market capitalism. In true free market capitalism and in the absence of corruption, income inequality is in exact accordance with the inequality of the market value of skills and talent. Income inequality is rising today because of the continuing financial collapse from corruption and irresponsibility due to socialism, and the suffering of the middle class and the falling percentage of skilled and valuable professionals in the population. Socialist arguments are almost always based on misperceptions that free market capitalism (which maximizes growth and responsibility) has caused problems that are actually the result of socialism, as almost all of our current economic and political problems are. When implemented, socialist ideas feed on themselves and grow until the economy is collapsed and reduced to a permanently degraded state.

Debt and Deficit

Today I am pondering why the populace has such a hard time with debt and deficit explanations from our leaders. They seem to use the terms interchangeably and confuse the two. If I borrow money to buy a house I am in debt but as long as I can afford the debt service it is not a bad thing. People get into debt all the time. people get out of debt all the time. The classic debt situation is unsecured debt from a credit card which you then spend on things you don't need and can't afford. The credit card bill comes due and you can't pay for your extravagance so you just pay the interest or the minimum payment. You have just done deficit spending. Many people got into this situation during the days of easy credit. With a good credit history it was easy to obtain credit lines that were more than you could afford. As long as you paid the bill you were OK but it was tempting to buy that extra bauble or eat out that one extra time and incur the extra debt. As the spending got out of hand you got deeper in debt (by the deficit spending) and now you are only able to pay the minimums. For awhile you are able to get a newer credit card at a lower interest rate and stay ahead of the debt. Then you tap the equity in your house for additional credit to stay ahead of the spending and keep the bills paid. The equity line is tapped out, your credit cards are maxxed, what do you do? Any financial advisor will tell you to STOP THE SPENDING, make a budget for spending what you make, pay off the highest interest rate card first and then pay down all the credit cards until you are out of debt. What you don't do is go to the bank and ask them to increase your credit limit and they wouldn't do it anyway since you have been so irresponsible with you deficit spending.
Yesterday, that is exactly what President Obama did. He told the bankers (us and our representatives in Congress) that we MUST increase the credit line of our credit cards because we spent too much and oh by the way we can't stop our spending because it would be too hard. he has singlehandedly increased the debt by $6Trillion dollars but we can't stop spending. We can't even slow the growth of spending. using budget gimmicks he tries to tell us that he really did try to cut spending but those mean ole republicans blocked his every move and wouldn't let him.
I am calling BS on this one. The debt is $16T because we spent TOO MUCH. The only way we increase the credit card limit is if he can convince us that he is serious about controlling spending. Until then default. And none of this crap about SS checks being late and not paying the military. If we stop cutting checks due to default the first ones cut should be the White House staff including the President, then the Cabinet and their staffs, then the Congress and their staffs.
Remember it is our money he is spending.

What Made America Great?

As I sit here pondering the New Year I have paused to wonder. What Made America Great? Was it the freedon we fought for from the English oppressors? Was it the industrialisation from the late 1800s to the present? Was it the Representative Republic form of government? Was it our Constritution? Was it our belief in Capitalism and free markets? Was it our immigration policy, "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free"?
I guess I would say "all of the above" however we are in danger of losing our greatness. The world no longer looks at the US as the saviour of the world and rarely looks at us as their protector either. We have lost the moral high ground by our stance supporting oppresiver dictators and arming factions of rebels that may not have had our interests at heart. We have allowed companies and banks to become "too big to fail" and as a result the fear of failure driving business decisions has been lost. We have eroded our currency by allowing the Federal Reserve to print money and we have skewed the banking business with money too cheap and regulations too much. We have allowed our politicians to become permanent "carreer" bureaucrats instead of the citizen legislators that the founders envisioned. We have allowed a class of low-information voters to skew our recent elections in the direction of an entitlement society instead of the free society we started with.
   I believe that the tide has turned though. With the re-election of Barack Obama we have seen the direction toward a socialist state ever closer and we will begin to turn the tide. We have seen recently that with fewer and fewer people pulling the wagon and more and more people riding in the wagon that the direction we are going in is unsustainable.
   As we move into a new era of government let us see that the people we elect to do the peoples business actually DO the peoples business and not the moochers business and not the cronies business. Let us return to the free markets and capitalism that gave everyone an equal chance and not an equal result. An economy where there is inequality but where everyone thought that they had a chance to be on the top of that graph. Where politicians worked part time and returned to their lives at home and where taxes were fair and low.
    We still have the largest economy in the world by far. We are still the largest manufacturer in the world and we still produce the lions share of the world's food. Let's not forget that.