Economics, greed and people who want to blame capitalists

Reagan called it "trickle down economics".  The rest of us call it "being pissed on".

The truth is that the world always has, and always will, run on capitalism and trade.  Even communist nations need to engage in capitalist trade with their neighbors.  No, it doesn't have to be that way, but, it is and it has since the first exchange of a pretty rock for sex began.

I was reading a really ridiculous book called "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" which was supposedly written by a man who was trained by the NSA to be an "Economic Hit Man" or an EHM.  Its a pretty stupid book for the most part, filled with ridiculous economic suggestions like:

"Imagine if the Nike Swoosh, MacDonalds Arches and Coca-Cola logo became symbols of companies whose primary goals were to clothe and feed the world's poor in environmentally beneficial ways."  (used under Fair Use)

This is typical stupidity from people who don't understand how corporations work.  Here is the basic rundown on how it actually works.

Some people come up with a product idea, running shoes, hamburgers, a soft drink.  They work with investors to fund a way to produce the product.  Sometimes the investor is a government.  Sometimes the investor is a private person or group of people.

The people form a company and hire a bunch of other people to do stuff.  The people hired spend their money on stuff like houses and food and shoes.

In other words, and anyone who has taken a business or economics class and not slept through it knows this, corporations are already clothing and feeding the world's poor by giving them jobs.

Now don't think I approve of Nike or the rest of those fu*ked up shoe manufacturers who are paying sh*t wages in third world countries to people who stand ankle deep in acid making running shoes.  I think Nike and Apple and a lot of other companies who employ people under crap working conditions in third world countries should be ashamed of themselves.

That said, the people do have jobs so they eat.  For a while anyway because the third world governments attract scummy companies by not having things like disability or OSHA or social security.

If the moron who wrote "Lies about the US", I mean "Confessions of an asshole", darn, I keep typing that wrong.  "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" had a clue he would be lobbying for the entire world to have OSHA like standards, Social Security Retirement, Disability, Workman's Comp, Health Care, etc.

Instead the idiot wants corporations to become public service organizations.

One of the other stupid things this author misses, because he didn't actually write most of this book, is that the United States changed to a Keynesian economic system in the 1930s when we went off the gold standard.  Private ownership of gold was made illegal in the States.

Around '69 or '70 the United States changed the way they printed money.  After 1933 and before about '69 the United States printed as much money as they had gold, kind of.  Its a little more complicated than that, but, that is close enough.  In '70 private ownership of gold was made legal and the price of gold jumped from $35 to over $800.  The United States printed more money.  The money is theoretically based on the stability of the United States Government, in reality the money is based on the value of government property, real and other.

The government has a little over 8 tons of gold stashed that is worth around 2.3 trillion depending on the value of gold.  The United States has about 10.5 trillion dollars in circulation.  The public debt is about 17 trillion dollars so we can pay about 12 cents on the dollar if the U.S. decided to pay off its debts in gold.

Of course the U.S. has other liquid assets besides gold.

The book misrepresents the liquidity of the United States economy and it misrepresents the actions of people in general.

In fact, the author seems to represent the United States government as some all powerful corporate entity.  It isn't.  Listen to Congress people on C-span sometime and you might be amazed at how stupid they are.  Senate, House of Representatives, Governors, Presidents, etc.  The people of the United States elects the best bull sh*t artists, not the best managers.

A "semi-conspiracy" like the one described in this book requires people smarter than the dork writing this book or the people I have seen in the U.S. government.

By focusing on the United States morons like this author miss the big picture, the thieves in their own nations who steal the people blind while they promise great things.  If I had to guess, I would think that more than one third world leader has faked his own death and run off with millions after robbing their people blind with false promises.

The truth is most people just believe what they are told so some idiot blames the United States and people grab the torches and attack the "monster" while the bad guy slips out the back door with the cash.