I’ll preface with this chilling news out of the new People’s Republic of NYC.
The New York City Council has passed what has been called the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) that will force private building owners to offer up their property to nonprofits and government entities before they make any private sale, effectively causing massive delays in property sales and other regulatory hurdles in the Big Apple’s housing industry.
In the scenario that it is passed, NYC will have the largest COPA program in the country. The act forces landlords to offer their property to the city as well as nonprofits before the building can be sold on the public market. The lawmaker who sponsored the law, Council Member Sandy Nurse, claims that it will be a win for New Yorkers.“Corporate interests and big real estate tried their hardest to block the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act with a misinformation and fear-mongering campaign, and they failed,” Nurse said about the law’s passage, per Pix 11. “Today marks the beginning of a new social housing era in New York City… COPA levels the playing field and makes it possible to preserve and create thousands of permanently affordable homes across our city.” [emphasis mine1]
Keep that quote in mind as we continue.
I just read a piece by Chevan Nanayakkara (CN). It is nothing short of delusional. It demonstrates the ignorance of economics that have led so many young people to embrace socialism. In this case, the writer seems to think he’s hit on a terrific hybrid of socialism and capitalism, with the government in the driver’s seat. CN argued that we ought not have Universal Basic Income (UBI). Rather, he opines, we need Universal Basic Assets (UBA). Using modern Lefty “logic” he claims we can afford to do this because we have an inexhaustible supply of money with which to do it.
Then in another context he says we don’t. But no matter. He plows ahead anyway.
CN is seriously blind to the absolute authoritarianism which will come from what he sees as a great idea. He also, whatever his credentials, is clueless about economic reality. This article is a political pamphlet tarted up to look like sound economics.
While it does have true statements infused into the article, many assertions are blatantly untrue, the conclusions are wildly flawed, and it stinks of economic central planning. What CN proposes is socialism on steroids.
Let’s talk specifics
We’ll start with the author’s motivations.
The real question isn’t which ideology to choose. It’s how do we use our understanding of monetary systems to build institutions that serve everyone in a pluralistic, diverse society? How do we create an economy where someone can choose a quiet, subsistence-level life without stigma, while their neighbor pursues wealth-building in competitive markets. Both can have dignity, security, and genuine opportunity? [emphasis Nanayakarra’s]
What’s wrong with this quote? Well, a lot, actually.
First, economics. He compares socialism to capitalism. Those are not ideologies. Conservatism or Liberalism are. The former are economic systems. Sound economics work with either ideology, if the government isn’t the major player in an economy. Sadly, too many people, including the author of the linked essay, conflate politics and economics as if they are SUPPOSED TO BE joined like Lego pieces.
Also, through all of history, the system that has served everyone is free market economics. The pluralism and diversity mentioned are aspirational political concepts, and romantic notions in the modern meaning of the words - which is to say the way a man like the author sees those terms. Again, not of the business of sound economics.
We’ll see in a minute what the author means with his comparison between choosing a quiet subsistence-level life as opposed wealth-building. Suffice it to say that the former provides neither dignity nor security (as the author contends), and spurns opportunity. In Nanayakkura’s utopia, the takers will have to be told, constantly that they have dignity and security. When the world around them moves forward, they will be left to beg the nanny state to give them more money or stuff. It matters not at all whether Uncle Stinky gives them cash - UBI - or the finished product - UBA - they now MUST have, to maintain their “dignity”.
I will have to move along quickly. As is the case, whenever liberal pipe-dreamers spout what appears to be cool stuff, I’d have to write a book to take this article apart appropriately. So, to bolster my counterpoints with sound reason, consult Adam Smith, F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman or Henry Hazlett.2 That is where you will find economic reality. Modern Monetary Theorists, like CN like to think they are smarter then those better men, because their work is so old fashioned. (The correct term is timeless.) But REAL economics, the basic realities of how we buy and sell and live our lives, are as hard and certain as gravity. Every time societies have strayed from the concepts of those four REAL economists, whether they knew their names of not, those societies have paid a heavy price. Those societies FAILED!
So augment what you read here with a book.
CN claims the government has no spending constraints. He says that like it’s a good thing. But the statement is only true because our currency is not a store of value. And this is the root of how economic power is abused by the central planners. This is why it is so easy for them to feed cronies and burn the taxpayers. The cronies in question are ALL the very billionaires Dems and other Lefties claim to hate…but their Democrat political betters kneel before.
The federal government doesn’t “get money” from anywhere. When Congress authorizes spending, the Treasury instructs the Fed to credit bank accounts. Money is created by keystrokes. No vault. No pile of tax dollars. No Chinese credit card.
This isn’t political spin, it’s operational reality. Ask Fed officials, Treasury officials, or banking system operators. The government spends first (creating money), then taxes later (destroying money). Taxation doesn’t fund spending. It removes money from the economy to control inflation and redistribute purchasing power. [emphasis mine]
Again, there are too many problems here to deal with them all, but as the argument unfolds, you’ll be able to fill in a lot of blanks and skips. If you grab one of the linked books on the subject, you’ll see right through what CN is saying.
And who would understand the first paragraph of the previous quote better than Biden’s chief economic advisor, Jared Bernstein. Get a load of this short clip before moving on or come back to it for a good laugh.
Double click, then click.
In the clip, Bernstein isn’t having a stroke. He DOES know how the system works. He just couldn’t find a way to honestly explain the way the system works without causing a mass revolt. In other words, he’s not a good liar. So he settled for looking stupid to avoid telling a whopper, or showing you honestly how much the government has rigged the system against you.
Taxes used to be how the government acquired what it wanted to spend. When money was a true store of value (backed by gold), people were more conscious about their wealth and income. They had to know that what was taken from them was for good reason. There was also a time when we didn’t have our money taken automatically, before we saw our paychecks. It almost goes without saying that if you had to cut Uncle Stinky a check for many thousands of dollars every year, you’d be a lot more judicious about who you elected.
Now, taxation and a constant state of inflation, steadily scraping away at your wealth, are monetary tools, which NC seems perfectly happy with. And why not. He is an Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) advocate. Just print all you want and confiscate it on the back end.
And all this to do what? “Redistribute purchasing power.” Create false dignity.
Before I get to the reason for CN’s essay, I will break down just a few of his almost self-defeating assertions about economics.
First:
Before comparing UBI and UBA honestly, align on one fundamental reality: the federal government has no spending constraint.
Then later:
Can the government create infinite money? Yes, operationally.
Should it? No, because real resources and productive capacity are finite.
I think it’s just terrific that Chevan sees this problem…after stating categorically that the government has no spending constraints. OUR problem is one of RFK Jr’s rules of governance. “If a government is given a power it will always abuse that power.”
Conservatives had to fight tooth and nail to prevent the Left from printing another trillion+ dollars on top of all the Covid waste. That trillion and all the previous trillions, as CN states would have to be taxed back later. And we’ve not flushed all the waste from the system yet. Some of the spending programs were multi-year. We’re still printing the money for those!
In his pronouncements, CN allows for mass spending for infrastructure. This is a naked defense of the “Infrastructure Act”, which was about anything but infrastructure. That money will be spent on green projects, most of which will never be completed. Oh well, it’s the good intentions that matter, right? I only noted that to point out CN’s ignorance upon which he bases his argument for UBA.
And the central planners do OFTEN overshoot the resources and productivity capacity causing the Fed to constantly jigger interest rates. This causes instability in the markets, making investment inefficient. It causes the products debt provides, big ticket items, to increase or decrease in price due to artificial manipulation in finance caused by government policy. Ya gotta love those central planners!
Example: Our present housing prices are NOT the result of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”, the free market at work. They are the result of interest rate manipulation and the government buying of mortgages regardless of their REAL value vis a vis the broader economy. So long as the funny money is washing through the system, prices will go up. In the case of housing, college and medicine, they will go up astronomically until we wrest control of those markets BACK from the government.
In an effort to absolve the government from it’s role in a permanent state of inflation, Nanayakkara insists that these are the culprits.
Supply shocks (COVID breaking supply chains, OPEC restricting oil)
Monopoly pricing power (four companies control 80% of beef processing and coordinate increases)
Bottlenecks (semiconductor shortage, port congestion, labor shortages in sectors)
Sometimes excess demand (rarer than believed and when it does happen we should ask: for what, from whom, why?)
The breakdown in supply chains closely followed the bags of money the government threw at us during Covid. But it wasn’t Covid that ”broke” the supply chains. Our government caused the break, along with demographic decline that started in 2018-19. More on that in just a bit.
Monopoly pricing? Meat went up like everything else. We have no information on whether meat giants are colluding or competing. Without such evidence we must assume they are competing. They didn’t just discover during Covid that they could charge whatever they wanted. No gouging is evident.
Besides, that Davos lunatic, Klaus Schwab, who dresses like a Klingon, said publicly that in the future beef would be only for the wealthy people like him. So, for Lefties anyway, shouldn’t beef be $30 per pound at least?
Bottlenecks like those listed were temporary and didn’t include chips. Those factories were forced to stay open. In China, employees were held against their will on premises. Port congestion was caused by people buying things they normally wouldn’t have due to the infusion of money from Uncle and too much time on their hands. The majority of labor shortages in this country are due to the shitty education most kids now get, along with being told by EVERYBODY including the government (with crony universities to feed) that college is the only answer. So the trades suffered from a labor shortage.
All of these things always have contributed to spot inflation since money was invented. But the kind of inflation we’ve seen recently was money thrown into an economy with no rhyme or reason.
This led to more demand than could be met even a few weeks behind. This on top of the mild lag caused by Covid, and you have a supply chain problem. It was a wild contraction followed by a wild recovery, followed by a sudden drop in demand because people were back to spending at pre-Covid levels.
But the slam in inflation was created by people who think like CN, people who believe MMT isn’t central planner bullshit.
In brief, ALL the shocks and shortages were caused by “found money” washing through the system. As CN says, people “shifting from services to goods”. Just look at the RV and boat industry. They saw prices go through the roof from people who never considered such a purchase…until Covid. Now, after all that buyer’s remorse has kicked in, you can barely give an RV or boat away.
All this is to point out how warped views “experts” among the Nanny State fans hold are SO wrong! And it is upon this thinking that Nanayakkara bases his belief that giving people houses, education and medicine will be good for an economy…or for the people.
He misses completely how badly the government has already fucked up all those industries with the influence they’ve already wielded in them. Because loans are guaranteed by the government, and not the borrower, the price of education has exploded. The quality in those sectors, especially education, from kindergarten to grad degree has decreased dramatically.
Obamacare was just a takeover of the insurance industry with all the inherent government incompetence, corruption and inefficiency. With its inception, insurance premiums rose immediately. In some parts o the country where insurance companies sold their bets on health quite reasonably, premiums doubled and tripled almost overnight. Since then, knowing the money would come pouring in, the government approved insurance companies, hospitals - hell - the entire medical industry have cried poor mouth every year charging more and more for everything. This was predicted by me and others at the time. The game was so lucrative that hedge fund vultures bought up hospitals treating them like cash cows. In cases such as two hospitals outside Philadelphia, they gutted the coffers and the hospitals closed as the vultures parachuted out, laughing all the way back to the Hamptons.
This is how ALL private industry goes when the government puts its finger on the scale. In the case of the medical industry, the government smashed the scale and took the purse strings. Only the cronies benefited. YOU now pay utterly outrageous premiums, co-pays and deductibles. There is NO hope that this will ever change in your favor. And no, subsidizing it doesn’t help. That money is immediately baked into the next years profits of all the cronies involved. YOU will never see a break!
And so it goes with college loans.
And so it goes with the mortgage industry. Lenders know the government will buy up every loan. Realtors know this too. So every week prices creep up and up. Real Estate values are as artificially high today as they were 2006-2008. It is a government mandated scam. But it is nothing compared to the stupid idea CN and other morons are proposing.
Chevan Nanayakkara says that UBI will not provide people “dignity”.3 CN says this is because that cash will just be added to the cost of goods and services, especially rent.
Well, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Unless it is a digital clock on military time, then it is only right once a day. Even that is closer than CN gets to the mark.
He argues that UBA is the answer. Give everyone housing, education and medicine. There! Everything is fixed and everybody is happy.
Oh, if only.
Have you looked at the condition of almost every low-income housing project where the government pays the rent? They are almost without exception rat infested, drug addled, crime ridden shit holes. That’s because the tenants did not earn their shelter. They are under no threat of losing it and they have no stake in the condition of any of it outside the confines of their little portion of it all. The property owners are obligated to do a certain minimum to keep the subsidy money coming in. Enforcement on this is very slow. So is the work most of these landlords provide. They don’t have to compete on the market to get tenants. For the tenants, the shit is free! All they have to give up is their security and their dignity to get an apartment. There is no dignity because there is no pride of ownership; no sweat required to have it.
Do this for all and you multiply these problems by infinity. Who will say what the size and quality of you housing will be? The government! And you will not own it. Because the system will be run by the government, it will be utterly inefficient. They can’t provide dignified, efficient housing for those who NEED it NOW. How the hell are they to house the entire population? And if the law says it is universal, how can anybody own a home?4
In the byzantine regulations governing the building and upkeep (what little there will be) of these wonderful government quarters, a supply of materials will be required. From day one of UBA every manufacturer of drywall, bricks, nails, pipes, wires, windows, lumber, roofing, etc. will have an army of lobbyists, paying for the crony treatment, to get contracts. Once secured, they will cry poor-mouth every year. Every year the cost of building and maintaining this monster will rise artificially.
As with doctors who get sick of dealing with Medicare; as with the landlords who want to bilk the system for every dime, building suppliers will tire of the red tape. They will provide the barest minimum of quality and volume to keep the money rolling in.
Forget not that people like NC are the work coolies of the Davos/WEF cult. With the takeover of all housing, except that of those in favor (super-rich crony bankers and donors, and political whores), all of it will incorporate the smart city concept. That will be sold as a futuristic, comfortable existence. What it will ultimately be is you electronic prison.
At a time when we need to grow the population (with our own kids, not illegals), this system will be a sure fire way to discourage procreation. If you grow your family, you’ll have to beg the nanny state for larger quarters. And if it is granted, you will go on a waiting list. How the hell can you plan a family?
All of this is inevitable. No amount of regulation will stop it. It is the regulators and central planners who will CAUSE it. And who will you complain to? You will be at the mercy of the people telling you that this is a good thing. You will be told that if you fight back you are ungrateful, even unpatriotic.
Let’s remember the other Bobby Junior maxim. Once a government has taken a power, they will not give it up. These people are not going to admit a mistake and dismantle the UBA nightmare. They’ll just print more money and throw it at the pig they created.
So the government (local,state and federal) who destroyed healthcare, destroyed advanced education, and at up to $30k per student is graduating functional illiterates from high school, is going to run the most basic need for the population? Your shelter? Are you going to let them?
Warning: Look for places like California, Washington state, Minnesota or some other place where morons reign to create Potemkin villages showing happy people of all races and creeds living in a state of euphoria in their government owned homes and smart cities. Yes, if they pursue this nonsense with any seriousness, that will be the first big step to roping in the gullible.
No, Chevan. UBI and UBA are both socialist. UBA is the ultimate fascist idea.5 There must not be “universal” ANYTHING put in the hands of Uncle Stinky OR state and local government. If for no other reason, the very term “universal” makes your mayor, governor, legislatures and the federal piggy one, big, onerous blob. I don’t care your political stripe, if you have gotten this far you know you must reject this stupidest of all ideas. If you are Left of center, this is one time where you must reject the tribe or pay a horrible price.
A Frumpy Footnote
Frumpy Fani is back in the news!
As you might remember, Frumpy, Fulton County DA and girlfriend of THE STUPIDEST LAWYER in the country, Nathan Wade, was running a sham case against Trump in coordination with the Biden DoJ. For the truly slow, such coordination is illegal. Her boyfriend collected three times the going rate to prosecute the case, completely under her micromanagement.
At the end of November the case was dropped. The prosecution was utterly corrupt. But there was a question about whether the Trump team was right about voting irregularity in Georgia. At the time Team Trump believed it, but couldn’t prove it.
Well…
Three weeks ago, after getting their ducks in a row, the Team Trump was finally ready to sue the state to produce the voting records from 2020. At first the Georgia Dems said no. But, as I like to say, discovery is a bitch.6
After reviewing their position, Georgia released the records and admitted that yes, there were 315k early votes that were counted inappropriately. Ballot tapes for the votes were not signed. They must be signed by an election official before the associated votes are counted. Other ballot tapes were “misplaced”.7 Oopsie! THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN THOUSAND VOTES! Trump lost Georgia by 11k votes!
Here’s my theory. Officials at key polling places knew there was shady shit going on in several areas, especially Fulton County8 - Hmmmmmm. The Dem officials were more than happy to pass on the ballots to be counted, and they were. But no one was going to be stupid enough to validate what they knew to be dirty ballots.
Arizona, with their “slow counts”9as full of shit in their elections as Georgia ever was, would have been the last holdout to keep DJT out of the White House. After FIVE YEARS we find Georgia was an election sewer as we suspected. But we were called conspiracy nuts. We were right all along.
And how, other than A LOT of this kind of cheating, can you account for Biden accruing 15 MILLION more votes than Obama. Those same 15 million surplus voters completely disappeared in 2024.
So yeah, you can rest assured that Arizona with their “slow count” was as bad or worse. You can now hold your head high and say DJT likely won in 2020.
Many people, including election officials and Frumpy herself knew all this and hid it from the public in order to build a phony case against Trump. I think the present case against Georgia election officials should go forward, and Frumpy Fani should be disbarred and face criminal sanctions.
I like to end my shows on a happy note.
Cheers.
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The mention of “non-profits” is almost comical in modern parlance, especially here. While on paper, these government cronies will show no “profit”, the heads of these entities will pay themselves lavishly.
Also, is emphasized the the terms fearmongering and misinformation. Without reading a word of the case against the unconstitutional NYC power grab, I guarantee you it will mirror much of what I say here, along with valid arguments for property rights being violated. Who the FUCK do these people think they are?
The link for Hazlett will teach you more about REAL economics than two semesters of college “economics”. In college, they don’t teach REAL economics, at least after the introductory classes. They teach you how to manipulate economics for one outcome or another. That’s how we breed corruption.
We know that already. Giving people things only breeds a sense of entitlement and in many cases resentment and ingratitude toward the giver. Remember the saying, “No good deed goes unpunished.” In the case of government largess with other people’s money, there is NEVER any gratitude on the part of the receiver.
Remember the quote I often use from the Davos/WEF cult. “You will own nothing and you will be happy.” This is how the government will justify the END of home ownership, and how they will utterly dominate your life on the most intimate level.
With Obamacare, college loans, government mortgage buy-outs, FDR’s invasion of private enterprise and the Nazi Germany, government and businesses are both given inordinate control over your lives. THAT’S FASCISM for the Antifa poofs out there. The “public/private partnership is what separates fascism communism. You are told it is all for your good. They are, in reality, power grabs never seen in history.
I think I picked up that phrase from Megyn Kelly, a former lawyer.
They should check behind the cereal boxes near the screwdrivers. How may more early ballots were invalid?
Fulton County, Georgia only has a population of 1.09 million souls. Probably 60% even bothered to vote! Let’s assume half voted early. That means almost all of the early votes were dirty!!!
Party hack question: How many votes to we need to win? Election “official” answer: How many do you want?
