I am a big proponent of being future oriented.  It is unclear how much this can be taught versus how much is in your DNA.  But there is no question that it is something that can be taught to a certain degree.  Kids that grow up in an upper class or upper middle class household are more likely to be future oriented, particularly if the parents did not spoil them too much.

In fact, future orientation is really what determines your class.  It isn’t so much how much money you make or how much wealth you have accumulated; it is a matter of your outlook for the future.  This is why some lottery winners end up losing it all and end up being poor again.  These people were never in the upper class because their mentality stayed in the lower class.

I also really like the concept of compounding interest.  It is a great concept to teach to your kids, which really goes hand-in-hand with future orientation.  You shouldn’t just live for today.  You should plan for tomorrow.

With all of that said, I think some people get carried away with looking too far into the future at the expense of today.  Sure, in order to save money, we have to defer gratification to a certain degree.  But it also doesn’t mean you should be miserable.

In the present day, I say that, at least for Americans, we have never had it so good in some respects, yet life is actually harder than previous generations in other respects.  Communication and technology are far better than ever before.  But some basic living expenses such as medical care are more expensive than they were a couple of generations ago.

Middle class America is struggling to a large degree.  This is a reflection of taxation and regulation.  When the government at all levels consumes about 40% of our production, it makes it hard to get ahead.  Then they also pile on regulations, which makes our lives even costlier.  This is especially evident (or should be) in medical care and insurance for medical care.

I find that there is more anxiety today than there was in the past.  Maybe it is an illusion, but it is my perception.  I also see the statistics about the number of Americans on anti-depressants.  I don’t know if this is because doctors are just pushing drugs, or if it is because Americans are more depressed than ever before.  I suspect it is a combination of these two things.

We see statistics about how little wealth the average American has.  Perhaps more accurately stated, we see how little the median American has.  The rich people bring up and distort the average.

We hear various statistics such as: 57% of Americans have less than $1,000 in their savings account.  These statistics have to be taken with a grain of salt to a certain extent.  There are some people with considerable wealth who don’t have a traditional savings account.  They may have their wealth tied up in other things and figure they can always use their credit card if they need some extra money in a pinch.

I do believe that lack of money is a major stressor in people’s lives.  We hear the saying that money won’t buy you happiness.  This is true.  But a lack of money can cause you misery.

Americans are frequently told that the way to obtain wealth and eventually retire is to buy a house and contribute to a retirement plan, such as a 401k.  While this isn’t always bad advice, it can also steer people the wrong way, and it often makes people unnecessarily miserable.

Think about someone who has virtually all of their net worth tied up in housing and a 401k plan.  If you are still working for the employer that holds the 401k plan, then it is basically illiquid.  And your house is basically illiquid too, unless you plan to move.  But even there, most people just move into another house and use the equity from the last house to buy the new house.

While it may seem good for the future to have a couple of hundred thousand dollars in net worth on paper, it is important to ask yourself, “At what price?”

For many, the price is not having any liquid money in a checking or savings account.  Therefore, every little or not-so-little expense in life becomes a major stress point.

Now, it is true that some people are just bad with money.  They could rent an apartment and not contribute to a retirement account and they would still end up with no money after each year.  For these people, they probably are better off putting money into a house and a retirement plan rather than buying more junk that they don’t need.

However, there are many people disciplined enough that they could pay less for a mortgage (or rent) and contribute less to a retirement account (or none at all) and save some liquid money.

There is something to be said to have $25,000 just sitting in a checking account.  You can pick your own number.  Take your monthly living expenses and multiply it by at least four, if not six.  You should strive to have liquid funds in this amount.  If you spend $4,000 per month on average, try to get $24,000 in the bank.

Many people call this an emergency fund.  But really, it is just an anti-anxiety fund.  If your car needs a repair, then you don’t have to lose sleep over it.  If you need a new appliance in your home, then it becomes less of a big deal.

The key here is stress reduction.  It is great that you are planning for your retirement in 30 years, or whatever it may be for you.  But it shouldn’t be at the expense of your health.  You shouldn’t add significant stress to your life.

Even if you are retired and tight on money, is this stress weighing on you?  For me, I would rather go out and work part-time, even if it is just for a year, in order to build up a cushion.  I would rather be working than sitting at home and “relaxing” while stressing constantly about money.  If you are in this position, you can always find something relatively fun to do.

While I will continue to preach about saving and future orientation, I think more people should also work on stress reduction.  And one way to reduce stress for a lot of people is to have money that is freely available for when it is needed.

Your health should really be your number one investment, and stress reduction is a major part of maintaining good health.  You will always have little stresses in your life that are unavoidable.  But if you have a significant sum of money in the bank, it will help reduce your stress in a lot of situations.

Tax reform is in the news again, and while it will certainly have an impact on people, it is mostly tinkering around the edges as usual.  When the federal government is spending about $4 trillion per year, it almost becomes a moot point to argue about little changes in rates and tax brackets.  Either way, the federal government is going to continue to spend $4 trillion per year.

As a libertarian, I am generally opposed to taxation, at least in its current form.  I am not opposed to voluntary taxation, but some would argue that it would cease to be taxation at that point if it is all voluntary.  For the number of rich businessmen and Hollywood stars who promote big government, they could fund the federal government all by themselves if they so chose.  But that would require a substantially smaller federal government, and many of these people really just want to see other people forced to pay more.

Warren Buffett wants higher taxes, but when asked why he doesn’t contribute more voluntarily, he says that his money is better spent going to charity.  In other words, he thinks of himself as wise enough to donate money to the “right” charities, but he deems it necessary to force others to contribute to the charity that is government.

Given that we are a long way off from voluntary associations and voluntary taxation, there is a much better way for the federal government to collect taxes, at least for the general population.  To be sure, it wouldn’t be better for the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington DC who seek to control us.

I have, at times, been critical of the U.S. Constitution.  I think we would have been better off with the Articles of Confederation.  The Constitution was a centralization of power.  But with that said, it wasn’t exactly drafted overnight with little thought given.  There is some cleverness to the whole document, even somewhat in defense of liberty.

We have to remember that the United States was not originally considered to be one entity.  It was originally formed by the 13 colonies, which were really like their own countries.  But since the 13 colonies had similarities and wanted open trade, they formed a confederation.  Even though the Constitution centralized power, it was still largely respectful of the states as distinct and separate.

The United States was originally thought of as a plural term (as opposed to singular).  Today, you would say, “The United States is a great place to live.”  Back in the late 18th century, you would say, “The United States are a great place to live.”

In terms of taxation, the Constitution did not allow direct taxes.  There were excise taxes allowed.  There were tariffs allowed, which are taxes on imports.  In fact, the issue of tariffs was one of the major problems in the United States in the early days, with the other being slavery.  It was really these two issues which led to the improperly named Civil War.

Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution addresses taxation.  It actually gets more attention from its reference to slaves as three-fifths of a person.  But a lot of people who reference this do not fully understand that it was for purposes of the census, which dictated two things primarily: the amount of representation for each state, and a state’s share of taxes if there were any imposed.

Article 1, Section 2 states: “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined…”

In other words, if the U.S. government wanted to impose direct taxes on the people, it had to be done via the states.  The U.S. government could not impose an income tax (legally speaking), which is why it was necessary for the 16th Amendment in 1913.

It was up to each state to collect any taxes imposed.  If the government wants to spend $100 billion and New York has one-tenth of the total population of the states, then New York would pay its share of $10 billion.  But it would be up to the state legislature (or whatever is decided in that state) on how the $10 billion would be collected.  It could impose its own income tax or collect the money through some other method.

This not only was supposed to prevent direct taxation from the federal government, but it also was a mechanism in place that helped keep taxes down.  It shows what a joke it is today to hear politicians arguing about class warfare and how to best tax 325 million people.  If the original Constitution had stayed intact, then no such arguments would be necessary.  It would fall to the state level, if anywhere at all.

This ties into the whole idea of federalism.  It ties into the idea of independent states and the fact that each state had equal representation in one house (the Senate) and according to population in the other house (the House of Representatives).

The incredible brilliance of Article 1, Section 2 is that, within the same sentence, it says that representatives and direct taxes will be apportioned according to population.  They are offsetting to a large degree.  A state wants more representatives, but it also wants less taxation.  Therefore, there was less incentive for a state to lie about its census.  They wanted a higher population reported for representatives, but they wanted a lower population reported if they were going to be taxed based on it.

It makes it easier to see the difficulty in counting or not counting slaves in the census.  While people will say today that slaves only counted as three-fifths of a person, it was actually the northern states with little or no slavery that tended to prefer to not count slaves at all in the census.  It would have been the southern slave-holding states that tended to prefer that slaves count the same as any other person, especially if taxation remained low.  In other words, this could have been a difficult issue even for abolitionists back then.

While we can be thankful for change in many ways, particularly in the recognition of the immorality of slavery, it is unfortunate that some of the good parts of the Constitution have been changed or ignored.  One of those things is taxation.

The Constitution set up a good framework for tax collection.  It was far from perfect, but it would be much preferable to the disastrous tax code we have today.

This would actually be a good incremental step for libertarians to support in favor of smaller government and decentralization.  If the federal government wants to take our money, make them do so through each individual state.

The FOMC released its latest statement on monetary policy.  As expected, there were no major announcements.

The Fed will maintain the target of the federal funds rate between 1% and 1.25%.  It will achieve this by continuing to pay 1.25% on bank reserves.  It is nice work for the bankers that they can hold other people’s money and “earn” 1.25% interest from the Fed.

The Fed has finished up its first month of “balance sheet normalization”.  It is the first month of many, unless it abandons its plan entirely.  At its current pace and plan, the Fed won’t be back to its original levels of 2008 for about another decade.  In other words, it will never happen.

The Fed is allowing $10 billion per month to expire of maturing government debt.  That is only $120 billion per year.  If it eventually ramps it up to $50 billion per month as planned, that is still only $600 billion per year.  While that is a big sum in comparison to the $800 billion monetary base of 2008, consider that the Fed created well over $3 trillion from 2008 to 2014.  And chances are, the Fed will never get to the point of rolling off $50 billion per month.

The next FOMC meeting is in mid-December, where it is expected that the target for the federal funds rate will move up by another one quarter percent.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is getting ready to announce his appointment for the next Fed chair.  According to sources, it is going to be Jerome Powell.  By the time you read this, it will probably have been announced already.

The bottom line is that Powell is another establishment guy.  He may be marginally different from Janet Yellen or other considerations for the position.  But if the last year has told us anything, Trump is not draining the swamp.  He is merging with the swamp.  He has been taking some of the credit for the boom in stocks, which is stupid because then he is going to own the crash.  At this point though, there was no way that Trump was going to appoint someone outside of the mainstream.

The Fed chair is sort of like the president.  It is something of a figurehead position.  The Fed chair is expected to fall in line with establishment opinion.  Even Greenspan, who was supposed to be a disciple of Ayn Rand, mostly fell in line.

Looking back on Janet Yellen’s term, she has actually been one of the better Fed chairs, rhetoric aside.  There is no doubt she is a Keynesian and a shill for the establishment, but her actual policies as Fed chair have been tight by comparison.  Of course, this is similar to saying that government spending stayed relatively stagnant under Obama.  He was starting out just as the budget had exploded.

It is the same with Yellen.  The balance sheet had already exploded prior to her coming in.  Therefore, it wasn’t as challenging for her to keep a relatively tight monetary policy.  She oversaw the wind down of QE3, and it is has been a tight policy since October 2014.  To be sure, Yellen would have been quick to ramp up monetary inflation again if the economy had hit another recession.

Good luck to the next Fed chair.  The last major recession started almost a decade ago.  Since then, we have had unprecedented monetary inflation and government debt.  There are major asset bubbles, especially in stocks.  Surprisingly, even housing seems to be getting into bubble territory again, at least in some regions.

We have no idea when the next economic downturn will happen, but it looks like it will be a doozy when it does.  Stocks keep hitting new all-time highs.  The Dow has gone from a low of below 6,500 in March 2009 to its current level above 23,000.  What could possibly go wrong for the next Fed chair?

The federal government released many of the remaining files related to the Kennedy assassination on October 26, 2017.  This was based on legislation signed in 1992 requiring that the remaining documents be released unless blocked by the president.

The legislation was signed by then-president George H. W. Bush.  Where was Bush on the day that Kennedy was assassinated?  Does anyone really know this?

In the lead up to the release, Trump stated that he would allow the full release, but subject to the receipt of further information.  When he issued this statement (through Twitter, of course), it became apparent that not all of the files would be released.

Although some files have been withheld, Trump didn’t really lie because he gave himself that out.  He was purposely playing word games.

Still, I think he is lying for other reasons, namely that the remaining files are being held for national security reasons.

Here is the obvious question that you probably won’t hear from the establishment media.  If there was no conspiracy to kill JFK, what could possibly be in these documents that would risk national security?

The major players in the establishment have no problem making false accusations against Russia and slapping on sanctions, so there can’t be anything implicating the Russians.  The same would probably go for Cuba.

Since the assassination was not prevented, there wouldn’t be much to disclose in terms of the lead up to the assassination, unless there really was a conspiracy outside of Oswald himself.  And they can’t be worried about revealing any detective or spying techniques in trying to solve the case.  Would there really be any technology secrets from 1963?

The only logical conclusion is that the documents implicate certain people or a group within the government, which would most likely be the CIA.

I believe that it was the CIA, along with Lyndon Johnson, that took out Kennedy.  Kennedy had already stated that he wanted to rip up the CIA.  He dismissed the CIA director, Allen Dulles.  Not coincidentally, Johnson appointed Dulles to the commission to investigate the assassination.  In other words, the commission was set up by Johnson, and Dulles was appointed by Johnson, and these are the two most likely suspects of any kind of conspiracy.  And to be sure, both of these men were rotten to the core.

While most of the people involved in any conspiracy would now be likely dead, or at least close to it (George H. W. Bush), the CIA is still one of the most vicious government agencies.  It is responsible for secret coups and the instigation of wars and other conflicts.  It is the face of the deep state.

The assassination of JFK is still highly relevant to today’s world.  I don’t think many people understand this.  The assassination was a coup d’etat.  Kennedy tried to oppose the deep state.  He wasn’t going along with the CIA and other elements of the establishment.  Therefore, they had to get rid of him.

The problem is that our government is not much different today.  It is almost impossible to oppose the establishment, as was quickly learned by Donald Trump.

There are a lot of similarities between Trump and Kennedy.  I know the Kennedy fans hate to hear this.  The difference is that Trump has seemed to finally given in to the establishment.

Sure, Trump will still say inflammatory things and still oppose certain establishment things on the margin.  But for the most part, he has given in to the intelligence agencies and the spying agencies.  His blocking of the last remaining files on JFK are evidence of this.  He could have just said, “I want them all released.  I don’t care if you think it risks national security because I can’t imagine there would be anything that would do such a thing.”

You have to wonder if Trump actually knows what happened to Kennedy.  You have to wonder what the establishment, particularly the CIA and spy agencies, have put over his head.  Did someone go to Trump and hint to him that he better fall somewhat in line and not expose too much or else he risked the same fate as Kennedy?

If that is the case, what hope is there of ever dismantling the deep state?  Really, there is only one hope.  We can’t rely on one person to ride in and fix things and expose the truth.

The only way to dismantle the deep state is to get public opinion on our side.  This means opposing big government on everything.  It means tens of millions of people demanding that budgets be cut, or better, agencies abolished.  The only way to dismantle these agencies is to no longer grant them any power.

I know some will say that the CIA and FBI do some good things.  And I have no doubt that there are some decent people in these agencies who actually do solve actual crimes.  But when you give the power to do good, you are also giving the power to do bad.  And it becomes especially bad when you centralize power to this degree.

This is why the JFK assassination matters so much.  It symbolizes the deep state.  It symbolizes the fact that most of the top “leaders” in this country are criminals.  And it wasn’t just the group of leaders in 1963.  It is a continuous process where, as Hayek said, the worst get on top.  Political power attracts the worst elements of society.

We should not be surprised that not all of the files were released.  Even if they were, we should not expect any smoking guns.  If there were any smoking guns, the documents would have already been burned.  The best we can hope for is to piece together a few more things.

But until the American people are willing to withdraw their consent and to stop granting vast amounts of power to Washington DC, then not much is going to change.  The people enslave themselves.

The U.S. dollar price per bitcoin recently went over $6,000.  For anyone who invested in Bitcoin from the early stages, they have done very well.

Although the advocates of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will typically speak against the government fiat currencies, I think some of them fail to realize that Bitcoin itself is essentially a fiat currency.  Sure, it can’t be created out of thin air in unlimited quantity, but it is still backed by nothing.

Mises and Rothbard taught a lot about the subject of money.  Money is a medium of exchange.  It is hard to consider Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency a form of money at this point because it is not yet widely accepted.  But it is not unknown either.  There are online retailers that will accept Bitcoin.  There are charities and other non-profits that will accept Bitcoin.  At $6,000 per bitcoin, who wouldn’t want to accept them?

Mises and Rothbard explained that money originates in the marketplace because of its value and usefulness.  It is subjective value, but people did not originally seek gold and silver just to be used as money.  They were sought-after commodities, and they became of form of money because of this subjective value and their unique physical characteristics.

It was only after gold served as money in the marketplace that governments were able to come in and play games.  There were certificates issued that would represent a certain quantity of gold.  These certificates served as money, as they could be redeemed for gold at any time, at least until the government changed the rules.  Finally, the government would renege on this promise and people were left holding certificates with no gold backing.  Mises claimed that a fiat money could only come about because of the original gold backing (or some other backing).

But Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies seem to be defying this logic.  Bitcoin is not backed by anything.  You can’t trade it for any particular commodity.  If anything, people trade it for U.S. dollars or other fiat currencies.

Perhaps Bitcoin is serving as a main form of money in a place such as Venezuela.  But even there, it is not likely being widely used.  Still, it is showing that it is possible.

I never would have guessed that Bitcoin would last this long and go up this high (again, in terms of U.S. dollars).  It is my lost opportunity, even if it all comes crashing down.

Even though it is hard to consider Bitcoin a major form of money at this point, it is still somewhat trying to prove Mises (an economic genius) wrong.  Perhaps Mises underestimated just how much some people dislike government-issued currencies.

There are cryptocurrencies popping up all over the place now.  And that is really indicative of the problem.

Can I just start a new currency called “Libertarian Investment certificates”?  I can hand them out to people and they can use them for trade in the open marketplace.  Aside from the technology, how is this any different from Bitcoin?

I don’t like criticizing Bitcoin too much, and it is not because I didn’t invest in it early on.  It is because many of its advocates tend to be on my side of the fence, at least in terms of criticizing government money.  As long as they aren’t trying to force anyone to use Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, then I certainly don’t regard them as enemies.

Still, for me, it doesn’t take away the fact that bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies are essentially made up out of thin air.  Bitcoin has more similarities with a government-issued currency than it does with gold in this respect.  Gold has been in demand for thousands of years, and it has other uses than just serving as a form of money.

For this reason, my long-term bet is still on gold (and silver secondarily).  I think the wave of the future in terms of free market money will be a gold-backed digital currency.  This is already starting to become a reality.  We just need for some more loosening of government restrictions.

This is a business that a company could easily start.  You have a warehouse of gold and you issue digital certificates representing the gold in the warehouse.  The warehouse could be fully audited (unlike the Federal Reserve).  It would be similar to Bitcoin, except it would be backed by gold.  It would be redeemable in gold (probably for a fee).  You could trade small fractions of a certificate that represent one ounce of gold (or however they are issued).

If you want to speculate in Bitcoin, I am not going to tell you otherwise because I have been wrong up to this point.  It is a very volatile investment and very risky.  But if you do speculate by buying bitcoins, then it should probably not be a buy-and-hold strategy because I don’t think they will last forever.

In the end, gold will beat Bitcoin and every other cryptocurrency.  It is just a matter of time.  History is on the side of gold.

In my most recent post, I discussed whether tax cuts can help grow an economy, even if there are no cuts in government spending.  I concluded that although cutting spending would be the key driver of increased economic growth, it is possible for tax cuts to help with growth without spending cuts if taxes are really high and acting as a severe disincentive to work.

If we are on the left side of the peak of the Laffer Curve, then the cutting of taxes will ultimately lead to less tax collections by the government.  If spending remains the same (or increases), then the deficits are going to increase.  While this is seemingly bad, there is a long-run case to be made for this, as opposed to not cutting taxes at all.

To be sure, cutting taxes can have an initial stimulative effect, just as creating money out of thin air has an initial stimulative effect.  But government spending and monetary inflation both ultimately misallocate resources and hurt wealth generation that is in accordance with consumer demand.

In addition, cutting taxes can give some of us a better chance in terms of saving extra money in the short run and investing in assets that benefit from the inflation.  But cutting taxes and not cutting spending will, on net, typically not be beneficial for society as a whole and for economic growth.

However, the case to be made for tax cuts is that it will perhaps put stricter limits on spending in the future.  To examine this closer, let’s take an extreme example.

Let’s say that the deficits keep getting bigger and bigger.  Let’s say that interest rates also go up as the debt goes up.  The interest payments from the Treasury get larger and larger.  The interest payments consume a greater and greater portion of the federal budget.

If the federal budget remains the same overall, then a bigger and bigger percentage has to go towards paying the debt.  This means that spending will be cut elsewhere, whether it is on military spending or domestic welfare.

Let’s say we hit a scenario where the federal government is still spending $4 trillion per year in total, but payments on the national debt now equal $2 trillion annually.

In round numbers, the government currently spends about $4 trillion, with about $300 billion (a little less) going towards interest payments.  Essentially, the government is spending around $3.7 trillion on everything else.  In the above scenario, the government would now only be able to spend $2 trillion on these same things if the total budget remains the same.

This would mean massive cuts.  Some would say it would mean cuts to “services”.  But for libertarians, it would mostly be positive.  It would mean major cuts to the military and a likely scale back on interfering in other countries.  It would likely mean reduced entitlement spending.  It would mean massive cuts, or perhaps eliminations, to whole departments such as education, energy, commerce, and transportation.  Maybe it would mean major cuts in drug enforcement, the spying agencies, and the intelligence agencies.

Instead, this $2 trillion would be going to the holders of U.S. government debt in the form of interest payments.  This would likely include substantial amounts to the central banks of China and Japan.  It would also mean substantial amounts going to investors.

In any case, it would likely be a better allocation of resources.  At least the private investors would likely put the capital to productive use.

But more importantly, we would see a continued rise in interest rates.  Maybe we would see a default on the debt at some point.  We would likely see the U.S. dollar lose its status as the world’s reserve currency.  And even though the Fed can create money at will, there are limits here.  The limit is that they don’t want to see runaway price inflation.

And once the Fed has to stop (or at least severely slow down) its creation of money, then it will be up to private investors and foreign central banks to buy the debt.  But the government won’t be able to afford to issue a lot more debt at this point, especially at high interest rates.  Ultimately, the politicians in DC will be limited to what they can collect in taxes.

Unfortunately, even though this will all be painful when it inevitably happens, it is likely going to be necessary in order to downsize the federal government.  Unless we have a quite dramatic turn in public opinion towards libertarianism, this is our likely path for downsizing Washington DC.

If overall spending by the federal government could fall to $3 trillion annually, or even $2 trillion, we will be so much better off.  There will be winners and losers in the short run.  However, in the longer run, it will be mostly those with the political power who lose.  The average American will be a beneficiary in the long run, even if there is some short-run pain.

If tax cuts with higher deficits can speed up this process, we will actually be better off.  I would rather see the government have to downsize extensively in the next five years than have to wait another couple of decades.  The quicker that this downsizing can happen, the quicker we will return to greater prosperity.

Frank Shostak recently wrote an article for the Mises Institute titled “Tax Cuts Without Spending Cuts Won’t Grow the Economy“.

I wholeheartedly endorse the spirit and main point of his article, but I do want to dig deeper into the main argument.

I recently wrote a post about the Trump/ Republican tax plan.  There are some positive aspects about it, along with some negative ones.  In some ways, it really is like rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking Titanic, except that some will make out better than others.

In my post, I wrote the following, “But this tax proposal does not really deal with our high tax burden. The reason is because it doesn’t address spending. Regardless of whether this thing passes, the federal government will still be spending about $4 trillion this year. This is money coming out of our pockets one way or another.”

This is basically the whole point of Shostak’s article.  Still, I might take exception to the title of his piece, along with one sentence within the article.  He writes, “Contrary to what the followers of supply-side economics claim, it is not possible to strengthen economic growth by lowering the tax rates whilst keeping the size of government outlays intact.”

He is basically correct in this, but we have to make a caveat.  This is only true to the point where tax cuts are not so confiscatory as to severely hamper economic activity.

While I do not endorse much of what supply siders say, I do think they are correct to a certain extent on the Laffer Curve.  It is not anything brilliant that Arthur Laffer came up with.  It simply says that there is some tax rate (or tax rates) in which tax collections to the government will be maximized.  This is easy to confirm when you take the rates to either extreme.

If tax rates are zero, then the government is not going to collect anything, unless it is voluntarily handed over.  If marginal tax rates are 100%, then almost nobody is going to work above the income threshold that puts them in this bracket.  They are not going to work for free.  Of course, in a country of 325 million people, you can almost always find a few exceptions.  There would be a few people who would work just to send all of their earnings over to the government.

The point is, tax rates at zero and 100% would yield the government virtually nothing.  Therefore, the maximum collections would be somewhere in between these two rates.  The Laffer Curve doesn’t claim to know the exact rate, although it doesn’t stop us from speculating.  The maximum tax collections might happen at 20% or 80% or whatever.

Therefore, if marginal tax rates are really confiscatory so as to severely hamper production, then a cut in rates could actually yield more tax collections for the government.  We must also figure that taxes could be cut so as to yield approximately the same tax collections.

For example, let’s say the government could maximize its revenue with a top marginal rate of 50% to collect $4 trillion.  Let’s say the current top rate is at 60% and the government is collecting $3.5 trillion.  Let’s also say that the rate could be lowered to 42%, which would yield the same collections as the 60% rate due to the increased economic activity.

Therefore, in this example, the government could cut the top rate from 60% to 42% and it would still yield the same revenue of $3.5 trillion.  In this scenario, it would be hard to argue that tax cuts would not be beneficial for economic growth, even if government spending remained the same (regardless of whether the government is running a deficit).

I don’t want to overemphasize the Laffer Curve as is done by the supply siders.  Of course, at least for any libertarian, the goal is not to maximize the government’s collection of taxes.  In addition, not knowing which side of the curve we are on, it is hard to justify tax cuts on the basis of increased government revenue, or even a revenue neutral tax cut.

The major problem here, which is rarely discussed by supply siders, is the existence of a central bank that can create money out of thin air.  This enables the government to run high deficits and accumulate huge amounts of debt that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.  If you cut taxes at the state or local level, you really can starve the beast.  In the case of the federal government, they can just issue more debt.

In addition, the whole idea of increasing government tax collections by decreasing tax rates is clouded by monetary inflation.  When tax cuts were pushed and implemented by the Reagan administration in the early 1980’s, there was ultimately an increase in tax collections.  (Despite what the left often claims, the larger deficits/ debt were not a result of tax cuts.  They were a result of increased spending.)

But the increase in tax collections was also partially a result of the monetary inflation.  The Fed had a tight policy in 1979 and the very early 1980’s, but the Fed started to loosen up again.  In order for government tax revenue to increase that much over a period of time, there almost has to be monetary inflation.

To summarize, I do think it is possible to strengthen economic growth by lowering tax rates in certain situations, even if government spending remains intact.  But that is not likely the scenario we are in now, with the possible exception of the corporate tax rates.  The corporate rates are very high, especially as compared to the rest of the planet, and lower corporate rates could bring more businesses to be headquartered in the United States.

Still, I agree with the general spirit of Shostak’s article.  We would see much greater economic growth if the government were to significantly cut spending.  Government spending diverts real resources away from their most efficient use as determined by consumer demand in the market.  Government spending is a misallocation of resources that makes us poorer.

While seemingly everyone is discussing tax cuts, we desperately need government spending cuts.  That is what would significantly improve the lives of middle class Americans.

The latest numbers for the Consumer Price Index (CPI) were released on October 13, 2017.  The CPI rose for September by 0.5% after going up by 0.4% in August.  However, the September rise was actually less than the forecast for a 0.6% increase.

The year-over-year CPI jumped up to 2.2%.  Meanwhile, the more stable median CPI is also at 2.2% from the previous 12 months.  The median CPI increased by 0.2% for September.

One of the main reasons that consumer prices were expected to jump was because of the higher gasoline prices in the wake of the hurricanes.

Still, it is not as if these higher numbers are irrelevant.  The soaring gas prices make sense during the hurricanes and shortly after, as supplies are diverted to the hard hit areas.  But they have not fallen back to the levels seen before the hurricanes hit.  Therefore, it is a legitimate expense for most people that has increased.

If you look at the CPI just for August (0.4%) and September (0.5%), it is nearly a jump of 1% over the course of two months.  This is significant when compared to the relatively low price inflation numbers over the last several years.

In our world of finance, the markets react based on the difference between reality and expectations.  We didn’t hear any dire warnings of inflation when the forecasts were made.  But when the actual CPI numbers come in 0.1% less than expected (0.5% versus 0.6%), then all of a sudden there are questions about whether the Fed should follow through with its plans for a rate hike and a slow draining of its balance sheet.

I don’t know about the rate hike that is expected in December.  It will have some impact on the financial markets just because of investor expectations.  But overall, this rate is not that meaningful right now.  It is a reflection of the rate paid by the Fed on bank reserves.  Banks get free money (more bailouts) for simply not lending depositors’ money.

The federal funds rate is not being driven by the Fed’s balance sheet at this point.  The Fed could engage in monetary inflation or monetary deflation and it wouldn’t much impact the target rate, unless the deflation were really significant.

The bigger deal at this point is the Fed’s balance sheet.  Assuming the Fed keeps reducing its balance sheet slowly as it has stated that it will, then the void will have to be filled by investors.  I haven’t heard of any plans to reduce the annual deficit, so someone has to buy the bonds to finance it.

Investors have already been funding the deficit for the last three years since the end of QE3.  Now they will have to finance the deficits, plus an additional $10 billion per month that the Fed is draining from the monetary base.

While I don’t think Trump is going to make it to 2020 without a recession, we might still have some legs left in the mini-boom.  It is not a boom for most middle class Americans, but it is a boom for stock investors and some real estate sectors.  The high CPI numbers for August and September tell me that we may still have a little bit of boom left to go.

I expect the CPI numbers to decelerate in the coming months.  If, however, they continue to come in high, then the good times (for some) will keep on rolling for a little while longer.

I have been a strong proponent of the permanent portfolio as described by Harry Browne.  While it is defensive in nature, it also typically provides growth above price inflation in the long term.  Of course, there are no guarantees of anything, but I consider the permanent portfolio as the best strategy for long-term passive investing.

There are probably better investments for those with an entrepreneurial spirit.  Your best investment is in yourself in almost any situation.  But from a monetary standpoint, someone with a profitable business that does not require an exorbitant amount of time to be spent by the owner is probably the best investment there is.

Real estate investors can also do quite well, at least for those who are savvy.  If you can own rental properties and have them managed by a dependable management company, then this is close to passive income.

Still, for anyone with a significant amount of wealth, I think having some assets in a permanent portfolio is a good idea.  It is a matter of diversification.  Even a long-time business owner or real estate investor can run into problems.  Even Bill Gates sells off some of his Microsoft holdings to diversify in other investments.

In the past, I have made suggestions for tweaks you can make to your own permanent portfolio.  The most common objection is owning government bonds, especially with interest rates so low.  It is still an important piece of the puzzle because bonds will do well in a depression/ deflationary type situation.  They will probably do well even in a more mild recession.  If you really hate bonds, I have suggested putting a slight percentage into paying down mortgage debt.

For risk takers, I have also suggested a more aggressive version of the permanent portfolio in which you reduce your cash portion.  For example, you could put 30% in stocks, 30% in gold, 30% in long-term government bonds, and 10% in cash.

This portfolio is more aggressive and would have bigger ups and downs.  It would do much worse in a recessionary environment, as cash tends to help in this situation.  But over a long period of time, there is a greater chance for greater returns.

This is just my own suggestion for someone looking to be more aggressive.  I haven’t seen this suggested by others.  I never heard any such suggestion from Harry Browne.  He would have said to keep a separate portfolio for speculations.

Of course, most people out there are either too conservative (too much cash) or they are too aggressive (too heavy in stocks).  It is more the latter.  One thing you can be sure of is that almost nobody owns any significant portion of gold investments.

Right now (October 2017), all asset prices seem to be on the high side.  The permanent portfolio has not done that great because interest rates have been low for quite a long time now.  The bond and cash portions have put off low returns in the low interest rate and relatively low price inflation environment.

Stocks make me nervous with them hitting all-time new highs, seemingly almost every day.  Gold does not make me quite as nervous, but it could still take a decent dive if we hit a bad recession.

Bonds are a good protection for a recession, but they carry their own risks.  With the Fed threatening to decrease its balance sheet (albeit slowly), who knows if private investors will pick up the slack?

Despite past suggestions of decreasing the cash portion for those who want to be aggressive, I don’t think now is the time to do it.  You want to have a good cash portion if we hit a recession, and I believe the risks of a recession are greater now than they have been in a while.  During down times, cash is king.  There is a caveat to this.  It is only king if we are not in an environment of high price inflation.

With that said, even in the 1970s, while cash was a loser, it wasn’t horrible either.  The interest rates went into the double digits, so you could put money in a money market fund and make a good nominal return.  It would lag behind inflation, meaning the real return would still be negative, but it wasn’t really bad.

It is always important to have cash (which includes cash equivalents like checking accounts, savings accounts, and money market funds).  It is not just for emergencies though.  It can be used to buy assets when they are cheap.  Assets become cheap in a recession.  This is why cash is king.  In a recession that is not accompanied by high price inflation, cash is in high demand.

Until the Federal Reserve starts another round of massive monetary inflation, I don’t expect price inflation to take off.  You may lose a little bit with your cash holdings, but it will be minimal.  At this stage, it is better to have liquid funds to buy cheap assets in a recession.

In terms of major asset classes, stocks have been king for the last several years.  But kings get overthrown all the time.  Cash will rule once again, at least for a period of time.

With Trump and the Republican’s failure to repeal Obamacare, they have moved on to tax reform.  I could say tax cuts, but that might be misleading, as there are also tax hikes in the plan too.

For a libertarian, there are things to cheer, and there are things to denounce.  We should cheer virtually any reduction in taxes, especially when it comes to tax rates.  I do not count tax credits in which some people actually receive money for the year, as this is another form of welfare.

We should denounce tax hikes, but this should also generally apply to the removal of tax deductions and most tax credits.  While the complicated tax code is far from ideal, it is better to have most deductions than to not have them, as it ultimately results in some people paying less in taxes by having these deductions available.

If we could have a law that would just raise taxes on bureaucrats and politicians, then maybe I could make an exception, but even here I would just assume that the law would be written so as to result in the exact opposite of its stated intention.

Here are a few things to cheer about the Trump/ Republican tax proposal:

• Reduces corporate tax rates
• Reduces corporate taxes through a change in how companies can claim depreciation
• Reduces the tax on S corporations, partnerships, and sole proprietorships
• Eliminates the federal estate tax
• Eliminates the alternative minimum tax
• Possible repeal of the 3.8% investment tax through Obamacare
• Possible opportunity for companies to repatriate money from overseas and pay a one-time tax

Unfortunately, we don’t know all of the details yet.  It is possible a few of these things could end up being negative too.  We all know that once the legislators, lobbyists, and administrators get going, there is some crazy language in these bills.

For example, while S corporations, partnerships, and sole proprietors may end paying a lower tax instead of the top marginal tax rate of 39.6%, the proposal also says that measures will be taken to prevent the reclassifying of personal income to business income so that wealthy individuals do not avoid paying the high marginal tax rate.  You can see where this thing could get messy quickly.

For the overall tax rates, we also can’t really say whether this will be positive or negative.  Unfortunately, while we have been told that the reform will contain three rates of 12%, 25%, and 35%, we have no idea what the income thresholds are.

It is rather foolish, if not devious, of Trump to lay out this proposal without identifying the income thresholds for the different tax brackets.  There isn’t much point on telling us the different rates if we don’t know how they apply.  If the top rate of 35% kicks in after you make just $50,000, then this would be a horrible plan.  It would be a massive tax hike.  On the other hand, if the 25% rate didn’t kick in until an individual makes over $100,000, then this would be great, as most middle income people would be looking at a big reduction in overall taxes.

One of the big negatives about this plan that we do know about is the reduction in deductions.  While the mortgage interest deduction would still be there, more people would not be claiming it because the standard deduction would go up significantly.  And while we should seemingly cheer for the increase in the standard deduction, we don’t know if this will be much of a benefit because we have no idea about the income thresholds for the various rates (see paragraph above).

We do know that deductions for state taxes are likely to go away if this plan becomes reality.  This has a lot of people upset, especially those in “blue” states.  It seems that Trump is trying to get his revenge on those who live in states that did not hand him electoral votes in November.  While it is not a perfect correlation, the blue states tend to be states that have higher living costs, higher incomes, and also higher taxes.  By eliminating deductions for state taxes on the federal income tax return, it will disproportionately hurt those in the blue states.

Of course, for conservatives, and even libertarians, it is tempting to cheer this on, especially for those living in red states.  After all, if the blue state people don’t like it, then they should lower their taxes.  They are the ones who cheer for higher taxes, especially on the wealthy, so that is what they are getting.

Both sides can make the argument that the other side is being subsidized. On the one hand, the high tax states are being subsidized because they get to claim more deductions on their federal tax returns, which could come at the expense of lower tax states.

On the other hand, low tax states are being subsidized because they tend to also be states with overall lower incomes.  Therefore, the people in these states are paying lower taxes than those with higher incomes.

With all of that said, there are still many people living in New York, California, and other high tax states who did not vote for Hillary Clinton.  They already have my sympathy because they live in these high tax states, and now they may be paying even more if this tax proposal passes as it is.  Of course, if it really bothers them, they could always move to a different state.

Overall, there is no question that this tax plan would tend to help those in lower income and lower tax states, while doing the opposite for higher income and higher tax states.

The cut in corporate taxes would be very positive for almost everyone.  It has been needed for a long time.  While people don’t see it directly benefitting them, it will help them in the long run.  It will mean more competition, more products coming to market, and ultimately higher wages and cheaper prices, all else being equal.

If I could pick one tax to cut or eliminate, I think it would be the employer portion of the payroll tax.  This is rarely discussed because people want to live under the illusion that Medicare and Social Security are like insurance programs in which you pay premiums.

The employer portion of the payroll tax is highly burdensome on independent contractors and small business owners.  In addition, by eliminating this tax, it would help increase wages, as the cost of hiring for employers would drop.  Unfortunately, I think we are a long way off from this tax even being reduced.

There is one more key thing to discuss in all of this.  It is something that even most conservatives ignore.  This tax plan, whether or not it is supposedly “revenue neutral” (I really don’t like that term), is not addressing the fundamental financial problem that we have.

Our problem is that we are highly regulated and highly taxed.  We also deal with a central bank that distorts the price of money.

But this tax proposal does not really deal with our high tax burden.  The reason is because it doesn’t address spending.  Regardless of whether this thing passes, the federal government will still be spending about $4 trillion this year.  This is money coming out of our pockets one way or another.

I know the whole theory about the Laffer Curve and how tax reductions can lead to higher tax collections.  If taxes are burdensome enough, this can certainly be true.

But again, the government is still spending $4 trillion per year.  These are resources being consumed and allocated that are not in accordance with consumer demand.  Government spending is typically a misallocation of resources.  Almost all spending that is not being used strictly to enforce contracts or protect property rights is spending that is misallocating resources.  Therefore, most government spending makes us poorer.

If we really want to increase our living standards, we should be calling for massive cuts in spending by Congress.  Unfortunately, there aren’t many calls for this.  Instead, we get more tinkering with the tax code.

Even though some people lose more than others with this tax plan, most Americans lose because the federal government keeps spending $4 trillion per year.