Patrick McKnight
The Fed (and Central Planning) Are Fueling ...

By Doug French

Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, included ten planks required to create a socialist dictatorship. Number five on the list is “Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.” America’s Federal Reserve satisfies this requirement, especially the modern version, which grows exponentially in size, scope, and power, engineering financial repression “for governments to increase tax income and domestically-held debt.”1

While socialism continues to creep from university classrooms to replace once-upon-a-time laissez-faire in everyday America, opioid use has grown to be termed an epidemic.

The Fed (and Central Planning) Are Fueling Substance Abuse
Patrick McKnight
Why You Need F-You Money

By J.L. Collins

Those who live paycheck to paycheck are slaves. Those who carry debt are slaves with even stouter shackles. Don’t think for the moment their masters don’t know it.

Why You Need F-You Money
Patrick McKnight
Teachers Unions Are Bad for Teachers. Here’s Why

Rigid pay scales, high dues, lousy pension system: Membership has its privileges.

The New Jersey Education Association, the state chapter of the largest teachers union in the country, boasted more than 200,000 members and $154 million in revenue last year. You might think it focuses on helping teachers become more effective and making the public schools better—especially now, with more than 80% of the state’s districts still not offering full-time in-person instruction 13 months after the pandemic began.

Teachers Unions Are Bad for Teachers. Here’s Why
Patrick McKnight
Value Is Subjective: Neither Gold Nor Crypto ...

By Connor Mortell

A major hurdle to the adoption of bitcoin is that while the average person may be at least open to the idea that fiat money is not the ideal, they still struggle to see a difference between fiat money and cryptocurrency. And this lumping together is not just held to the average adopter but includes many brilliant household names such as Peter Schiff and Elon Musk. This widespread conflation of cryptocurrency and fiat currency comes from two vital misunderstandings: a lack of an understanding of what exactly fiat is and a lack of understanding of value’s subjectivity.

Value Is Subjective: Neither Gold Nor Crypto Have "Real Value"
Patrick McKnight
Understanding the Fed's Balance Sheet

By Robert Aro

The Fed’s balance sheet could easily be replaced with the phrase abracadabra; truly, there is little else in the world which works as magically as it does. Often cited, seldom understood, few seem to realize that as the balance sheet expands, so too does the power of this central bank at the expense of the entire nation.

Understanding the Fed's Balance Sheet

national debt

A Black Swan With Teeth

A Black Swan With Teeth

By Peter Schiff

For years I have been warning that during the age of permanent stimulus (which began in earnest with the Federal Reserve’s reaction to the dotcom crash of 2000), each successive economic contraction would have to be met with ever larger, increasingly ineffective, doses of monetary and fiscal stimulus to keep the economy from spiraling into depression. I have also said that the enormity of the asset price gains over the last 10 years had increased the danger because reflating the bloated stock, real estate, and public and private debt markets would bring on doses of stimulus that could prove lethal for the economy. But even though I expected that the next financial crisis would be catastrophic, I thought that it would come into the world in the usual way, as a credit crisis triggered by over leverage. But the Coronavirus ripped up those stage notes, and instead ushered in a threat that is faster and deeper than I imagined, and I imagined a lot. It’s a perfect storm, a black swan with teeth.

The Astronomical Price of America’s Undeclared Wars

By Michael Maharrey

According to a study by the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, since 2001, America’s wars have cost $5.6 trillion. That equates to $23,000 per taxpayer. This is more than three times the Pentagon estimate – which still comes in at a staggeringly high $1.5 trillion.

Study author, Neta Crawford said the Pentagon’s failure to account for much of the cost of waging war accounts for the discrepancy between official numbers and the study.

“War costs are more than what we spend in any one year on what’s called the pointy end of the spear,” she told the Wall Street Journal. “There are all these other costs behind the spear, and there are consequences of using it, that we need to include.”

According to Newsweek, the study includes costs for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, along with support for allies in the battle against extremist groups, mostly eastern European countries such as Croatia, Georgia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. It also factors in a trillion dollars for the care of veterans who may have received injuries in the conflicts. But the study did not account for U.S. military assistance outside of these countries against ISIS, such as Tunisia, the Philippines or Egypt.

So, war has cost you even more than $23,000 over the last two decades.

I wonder how many people would support these military interventions if they had actually had to write a $1352.94 check every year for the last 17 years?

War is not only costly in financial terms. As James Madison put it, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.”

“War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

Read the rest at tenthamendmentcenter.com and thelibertarianinstitute.org.

Originally published August 27, 2018.

Michael Maharrey is the communications director for the Tenth Amendment Center. He also runs GodArchy.org, a site exploring the intersection of Christianity and politics. Michael is the author of the book, Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty. You can visit his personal website at MichaelMaharrey.com, like him on Facebook HERE and follow him on Twitter @MMaharrey10th.