Unfortunately for Harris, she feels compelled to tell the American people what she actually plans to do once she becomes president.

And that is a really bad thing for her campaign, because just about everyone hates her ideas.

For example, why would she tell the American people that she wants to raise taxes? I don’t know anyone that actually wants to pay more taxes.

She should have just said nothing about taxes and then raised them after the election. By telling people in advance what she plans to do, she is just losing votes.

Americans for Tax Reform examined the plan that she has endorsed, and they concluded that it would raise taxes by 5 trillion dollars over the next 10 years.

The biggest chunk of that new money would come from raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent…

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is proposing to increase the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21% if she wins a November election against Republican rival Donald Trump, her campaign said on Monday.

Harris campaign spokesperson James Singer said the move would be part of “a fiscally responsible way to put money back in the pockets of working people and ensure billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share.”

We are being told that raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent would bring in about a trillion dollars in revenue over the course of the next ten years…

When Trump was president, he slashed the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35% and implemented other tax breaks that are set to expire next year. Trump has vowed to make the cuts permanent.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan advocacy group, said on Monday that Harris’ proposal to raise the corporate income tax rate to 28% would reduce the U.S. deficit by $1 trillion over a decade.

But we certainly won’t raise that kind of revenue if corporations start moving out of the country in very large numbers. If what Kamala Harris is proposing becomes law, we will actually have a higher corporate tax rate than communist China…

Kamala Harris wants to hike the current 21% federal corporate income tax rate to 28%, higher than communist China’s 25% and the EU average of 21%, her campaign said Monday.

The Kamala Harris federal 28% rate is higher than the Asia average corporate tax rate of 19.8%, the EU average of 21%, the world average of 23.5%, and the OECD average of 23.7%.

If you don’t want to be called a communist, don’t try to tax businesses even harder than the communists.

Another element of the plan that Kamala Harris wants to implement that is causing a lot of controversy is a proposal to tax the unrealized capital gains of the ultra-wealthy.  According to the Los Angeles Times, taxing those unrealized capital gains is part of a scheme for “a 25% minimum tax on the annual income of taxpayers with wealth of more than $100 million”…

All right, guys, take a deep breath. Harris hasn’t proposed taxing your unrealized capital gains, or mine. What she has said, as the Harris campaign told me, is that she “supports the revenue raisers in the FY25 Biden-Harris [administration] budget. Nothing beyond that.”

So what’s in that Biden-Harris administration budget for fiscal year 2025?

The budget plan does indeed call for taxation of unrealized capital gains held by the country’s uber-rich. That’s part of its proposal for a 25% minimum tax on the annual income of taxpayers with wealth of more than $100 million — a wealth tax. If you’re a member of that cohort, lucky you. But at that level of affluence you don’t have grounds to complain about paying a minimum 25% of your annual income.

Maybe you agree with Harris that it is time to stick it to the ultra-wealthy. Okay, but what is going to happen when lots of them decide to move out of the United States because they don’t want their unrealized gains taxed?

As Chicago venture investor Robert Nelson has pointed out, this proposal would have very serious consequences for our economy…

Taxing unrealized gains is truly the most insane, economy destroying, innovation killing, market crashing, retirement fund decimating, unconstitutional idea, which was probably planted by Russia or China to destroy the economy. Dems need to run away from this wildly stupid idea.

Many of the ultra-wealthy were originally inclined to support Harris.

Why is she seemingly intent on driving them away?

So far, I have just discussed two of the elements of the plan that Harris has endorsed.  There are quite a few others that are also very troubling…

• Having small business owners pay taxes on their individual tax returns, up to 39.6 percent from the current 37 percent
• Imposing a second “death tax” — a mandatory capital gains tax at death — in addition to the current death tax
• Imposing a 21 percent global minimum corporate tax rate, which goes beyond the Organization for Economic Development’s (OECD) current 15 percent global minimum tax rate
• Quadrupling the tax on stock buybacks, which would impact Americans’ 401(k)s and other retirement accounts
• A 30 percent federal excise tax on electricity used in cryptocurrency mining
• A $37 billion tax on American energy
• A 32 percent increase in Medicare taxes

This is insane.

The federal government does not have a revenue problem.

Right now, the federal government is bringing in about 5 trillion dollars a year. What the federal government has is a spending problem.

We are trying to live way beyond our means, but the American people just keep sending the same big spenders back to Washington.

We are literally in the process of committing national suicide, and I really wish that I could get more people to understand that.

The national debt has surged past the 35 trillion dollar mark, and it continues to rise at a pace of more than 200 million dollars an hour.

Our federal government is the largest government in the entire history of our planet, and if #ComradeKamala gets into the White House it will inevitably get even larger.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

This new, covert strategy, hidden in plain sight, allows state and municipal officials to create sweeping policy changes that evade the scrutiny typically associated with customary legislative procedures, which include publicly available draft legislation, committee hearings, amendments and comprehensive floor debates.

In Boston, teachers’ union president Jessica Tang announced they secured “an unprecedented $50 million to commence bolstering the affordable housing that Boston students and families require.” Similarly, Los Angeles teachers incorporated “housing justice provisions” into their contracts.

Whatever the merits of affordable housing, it’s quite a stretch to argue that the issue is relevant to the matters properly encompassed within a teachers’ contract.

Yet the Boston contract is being utilized as a template by the AFL-CIO to advance housing and environmental “justice.” During the recent Connecticut AFL-CIO biennial convention, during a panel on Labor-Community Partnerships, the President of the New Haven Federation of Teachers stated on film, “Engage in negotiations and address the issues our community cares about, as it’s a win-win situation, and this is how we sustain those relationships and continue to advance our collective agenda.”

Collective bargaining agreements, which can range from dozens to hundreds of pages in length, encompass virtually all aspects of compensation such as wages, working hours, and conditions, in addition to medical and retirement benefits. These agreements are often intentionally drafted in vague terms laden with industry jargon, and require knowledge of local bargaining history for proper interpretation.

Although these agreements are negotiated in the name of taxpayers, in practice, the taxpayers are frequently overlooked in the process. Contracts do receive a vote from a legislative body, but it is typically a binary, up-or-down choice for the elected officials. There’s no open, deliberative process to review individual contract provisions or offer amendments.

Public sector unions have long used their significant political influence to draw attention to social issues that far extend beyond the scope of their work in the public sector, but this strategy takes that advocacy to an entirely new level. A growing trend sees them transitioning from vocal proponents of socialist reforms to using labor agreements negotiated in dimly light backrooms to impose their agenda on an often unwilling public.

This pernicious tactic will be used by unions and unscrupulous state and municipal negotiators to enact a laundry list of far-left social programs that could never win support through the democratic process. It conveniently provides cover for government officials eager to evade political accountability.

By creating an omnibus policy package within a collective bargaining agreement, the political class is able to silence any dissenting views and distract from the merits of reasonable objections. It’s far easier to claim that anyone who votes against the collective bargaining agreement is anti-teacher or anti-worker than to defend expensive (and potentially unpopular) new social programs.

Unions are telling us what they plan to do. We can no longer afford to ignore this reality.

Municipal negotiations, teacher unions and their progressive allies are leveraging the fine print of labor agreements to advance a collective agenda rooted in Marxist ideology, pushing for social programs they could never pass through the typical legislative process. Even if their intentions seem noble, bundling unrelated policy issues into teacher contracts raises concerns about transparency and accountability, and blurs the lines between union advocacy and the public’s interests.

In an era where we have witnessed a decline in student outcomes — the achievement gap has been widening, with students reading, math, science and civics scores falling — teachers’ contracts need to be focused on education. Yet more and more attention is focused on non-education related distractions.

The union agenda of enacting radical policy change through collective bargaining must be exposed, with negotiators trained to block these proposals. What’s more, reforms are desperately needed to limit the scope of collective bargaining and bring the negotiations into the light, so that the public paying for the contracts can view the entire process. That’s our best hope for bringing the interest of the taxpayers and the well-being of the workforce into a sensible balance.

Frank Ricci is a Labor Fellow at Yankee Institute, Retired Union President for New Haven (CT) Fire Fighters, and Battalion Chief. He was the lead plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case Ricci v. DeStefano and has testified before Congress. Frank is the Author of book Command Presence.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].

I’ve long said that Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are the path through which the depopulation and control agenda is manifesting. Perhaps the easiest example to use is the relationship between various governments, including America’s, with the private World Health Organization during Covid. International private bureaucracies like the WHO that are bestowed power over the people by governments is the model through which Public-Private Partnerships can be made to rule over us.

One of the reasons I often say we cannot vote our way out of the current perfect storm of existential threats is because the UniParty Swamp completely embraces PPPs. Moreover, even the handful of “good” representatives in the federal government dare not attack the concept of PPPs for fear of being politically eliminated by them. This can only be fought on three levels: spiritual, personal, and local.

When facing foes who sit in ivory towers with no accountability to the people, we must turn to God as the ultimate solution. Only He can topple them; no protests, lawsuits, or votes by the masses can make an impact unless He deems it so.

On a personal level, we must all do everything we can to prepare ourselves and our families by reducing or completely eliminating dependence on the state. I know living completely off-grid and hidden from society is impractical or even impossible for most of us, but getting as close as we can to a state of complete self-reliance is crucial.

As for localization, that is less of a solution than a delaying mechanism. Globalism is spreading like a plague, but through organized localization we can stave of the effects for a time. I’ll go into much more detail about this in the future because I feel it is an important and necessary step. In the meantime, trying to build our own little “Galt’s Gulches” may be delusional but achieving a localized ecosystem can still be beneficial. With that said, here’s Jörg’s article…

In 1990, socialism seemed to be done once and for all, but the times have changed. In the last twenty years, socialism has again become fashionable beyond the academic fringes. The covid-19 crisis demonstrated how quickly and thoroughly the traditionally free societies of the West may be transformed by small groups of determined and well-coordinated decisionmakers. Top-down central planning of all aspects of human life is today not merely a theoretical possibility. It seems to be right around the corner.

Now, the renaissance of central planning is an intellectual and practical dead end, for the reasons that Ludwig von Mises explained one hundred years ago. But if Mises was right, then how can we explain the renaissance of socialism as a political ideal? To some extent, this might be explained by the fact that new generations are likely to forget the lessons that were learned, often the hard way, by their ancestors. However, there are also other issues at stake. In what follows, I shall highlight two institutional factors that have played a major role: state apparatuses and ownerless private foundations.

1. State Apparatuses

An important driving force of the socialist renaissance has been the constant growth of state organizations. This includes all organizations that are largely financed by the state or thanks to state violence. For example, the so-called public service media are state organizations in this sense. In contrast, the so-called social media networks are mixed forms. It is true that they have received significant state support (for their establishment and for the expansion of the internet infrastructure). But they are also financed through advertising.

Socialism is growing out of the already existing state organizations. The crucial importance of this connection has been emphasized again and again by liberal and conservative theorists. A ministry, an authority, or a state-subsidized television station do not fully belong to the competitive life of ordinary society. Special rules apply. They are funded by taxes and other compulsory contributions. They are literally living at the expense of others. This has two important consequences for the renaissance of socialism.

On the one hand, state organizations are constantly forced to justify their privileged existence and therefore have a special need for intellectual services. Good cobblers and good bakers do not need to convince their customers with verbose theories. Their services speak for themselves. But creating and maintaining a government monetary system or a government pension system requires a constant torrent of words to pacify taxpayers, retirees, and the whole gamut of money users.

On the other hand, these intellectual suppliers typically have a personal agenda. State organizations are irresistibly attractive to ideological do-gooders of all stripes. This becomes clear as soon as we realize what doing good things really means.

Every day private companies and private nonprofit organizations create new products and new services—thousands of attempts at improvements. But their achievements fit into the existing social network. They are contributions that take into account the objectives and individual sensitivities of all other people. Private organizations thrive in competition. By contrast, the ideological do-gooder does not want to care about the sensitivities of other people. But that is only possible if his own income does not depend on those others, and if his plans can also be carried out against the will of the others. And that is exactly what the state, especially the republican state, enables him to do.

From the classical liberal point of view, the republican state should not pursue its own agenda. It should not be private, but public, should only provide the framework for free social interaction. But this theory hurts itself with the horror vacui it provokes. Ownerless goods will sooner or later be homesteaded by someone. Even an abandoned “public” state will sooner or later be taken into possession. History over the past two hundred years has shown that this privatization of the public state does not necessarily have to occur by coup or conquest. It can also grow out of the bosom of the state itself. The domestic staff, the servants of the state, can make themselves its masters.

Abandoned goods hold a magical attraction for people. An abandoned state magically attracts ideological do-gooders into the civil service. They are trying to privatize public space, to transform it into an instrument for their agenda. At first there may not be a consensus among them, but at some point the best-organized and best-connected groups gain the upper hand. The sociologist Robert Michels called this process the iron law of oligarchy.

The bureaucratic oligarchy can influence personnel decisions in terms of its ideology. Their ministry becomes “their” ministry (or their school, their university, their broadcasting service, etc.). It becomes an ideological state apparatus as defined by the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. Through commands and prohibitions, an ideological state apparatus can convey its ideology to the outside world.

Notice that the bureaucratic oligarchy is only a small minority. This explains why the oligarchic ideology is typically a socialist ideology. Only where there is private property is it possible for a minority to undertake anything that might displease other people. But the oligarchs of a republican state cannot assert property rights. The state does not belong to them—they just control it. In order to be able to direct it inexpensively, they must avoid inciting the majority to resist them. The easiest way to do this is through a socialist ideology. Slogans like “We govern ourselves” cover up the real power relations.

A classic case is the French ministry of education, which was appropriated by a coalition of Communists and Christian democrats after the Second World War. In those years, Professors Paul Langevin and Henri Wallon (both members of the French Communist Party) pursued a strategy of centralizing and homogenizing all secondary schools, along with a dumbing down of the entry requirements. With the help of their allies, Langevin and Wallon slowly but steadily filled all the key positions of the ministry with their people while greatly expanding it. Thus, they made “their” ministry resistant to reform. No bourgeois minister has ever dared to make it a “public” institution again. So it has remained in the Communist inheritance to this day. The supposed servants of the commonwealth have become the real rulers, against whom the elected representatives can only grind their teeth.

This tendency toward privatization is at work in all public institutions in all countries. President Donald Trump had not understood this before his 2016 election. He is probably wiser now, but the problem remains.

A state apparatus is often the first place where socialist reforms are implemented. In the past, state organizations have served as laboratories for expensive socialist labor-law reforms (quotas for civil servants, vacation regulations, etc.), for the typically socialist control of language (political correctness), and for harmonizing thought and action.

Over the past thirty years, international bureaucracies have played a growing role in making the world a better place for socialism. Intergovernmental organizations such as the European Union, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the International Monetary Fund have always served as reservoirs for intelligent radicals who found no place in national politics. But the influence of these people has grown considerably in recent years as they have played a key role in covering up interventionist failures.

This can be explained as follows: The state, which rules over the media and education, can gloss over and explain away its failures. But talk does not help when people see with their own eyes how things are abroad. The competition of political alternatives is ruthless, and the comparisons show time and time again that socialism and interventionism do not work. Hence the urge of all socialists to rule out alternatives as much as possible from the outset. So-called international cooperation and the abolition of the nation-state in favor of international organizations serve the same purpose. By proceeding as uniformly as possible, states aim to prevent the population from realizing that there are political alternatives and perhaps even better alternatives.

Another weapon in the socialists’ arsenal is the use of secret services to further their aims. The importance of these services cannot be overstated. This cloak of secrecy, often funded by substantial off-the-books resources, is particularly favorable for socialist agitation as long as the socialists are in a minority. Secrecy is a weapon often used successfully upon the unwitting citizenry.

It should never be overlooked that the socialists will use any and all areas of society and control of the state to further their aims and agenda.

2. Ownerless Foundations

The same iron law of oligarchy also applies to the large private law foundations (the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Bertelsmann Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, etc.). Although these organizations are usually not themselves financed by taxpayers’ money, they—and the US foundations in particular—have made decisive contributions to the renaissance of socialism, for three main reasons.

First, the executives of such institutions are in constant search of self-affirmation and self-justification, and are therefore prone to activism.

Self-justification is particularly necessary if the organization does not provide a clear statement of purpose. The large US foundations serve general goals such as “progress” or “humanity.” Words of this kind must of course be backed by concrete content, and this is where the ideological suppliers come into play, just as in the case of the state bureaucracies.

Ideological do-gooders find an ideal playground in the large private foundations, especially when the founders let the supposed “experts” run free and entrust them with the management of the organization’s assets without any strings attached. The executives of such ownerless foundations are then subject to even fewer restrictions than their colleagues in government offices. While the high bureaucratic officials are still responsible to the elected political leadership (even if this responsibility is small for the reasons mentioned above), the directors and supervisory boards of the private foundations are among themselves. Nobody gets in their way—nobody they have not themselves accepted into their illustrious circle. Ownerless private foundations will therefore sooner or later serve those ideologies that are highly valued by the leading experts. As in state institutions, there may be temporary rivalries among the leading forces. In the end, however, the best-organized and best-connected groups prevail with regularity. From then on, their ideas determine the foundation’s direction.

These ideas are often diametrically opposed to those of the founders, as Niall Ferguson explains in “I’m Helping to Start a New College Because Higher Ed Is Broken.” In my opinion, the most important reason for this contrast is to be seen in the fact that the founders no longer have to prove themselves and also reject excessive activism on the part of their foundation for other reasons. They know the importance of free competition. They know that excessive donations from foundation money can seduce the recipients into laziness and frivolity. They want to help others. But above all they want these others to know how to help themselves.

Things are completely different in the case of the supposed experts who run the foundations. In contrast to the donors, many of them have not yet been able to show that they can achieve great things themselves. The decision-making power over the foundation gives them the opportunity to put their stamp on the world. This temptation is just too great for most. Those who have large resources at their disposal can make it their business to improve the world according to their taste.

The history of the US foundation system provides numerous cases of this tendency, well documented by Waldemar Nielsen. The largest American foundations of the twentieth century (Ford and Rockefeller) in particular committed themselves to changing American society in the 1950s and 1960s. Such activism is more or less inevitable if ideological do-gooders have free rein and well-filled treasure chests.

Second, the cooperation between private foundations and state organizations has a very similar effect. Such cooperation concretely means the joint pursuit of goals; the pooling of private and state funds; and the exchange of personnel. The private foundations thus come into the ideological orbit of the state institutions, as Ludwig von Mises explained in Human Action; and state institutions are captured by the “managerial” spirit of private foundations, to use Paul Gottfried’s phrase.

The private foundations like the partnership of the state for reasons of prestige and use it to “leverage” their own activities. One example among many: The Ford Foundation had already developed the basic principles of what would become the American welfare state in the 1950s and financed them on a small scale. But the means were lacking for large-scale application. Things changed when US president Lyndon Johnson adopted the Ford model and used taxpayer money to spread it across the country.

This partnership is also very welcome to the state because its bureaucrats also feel confirmed by the friendly response and the active support from the Potemkin-style world of “civil society” financed by foundation funds.

Third, the combination of grandiose objectives and enormous financial resources entails the tendency to pursue large and highly visible projects. (The tendency also exists for cost reasons. For a private foundation it is usually cheaper to finance a few large projects than thousands of small initiatives.) These large projects must be planned for the long term and centrally managed. The management of large foundations is therefore typically associated with a perspective on the economy and society that is very similar to that of a central planning committee. The case of other large companies is very similar.

Because of this perspective, the executives of large organizations can succumb to a special kind of delusion, which we propose to call the Rathenau delusion in honor of the great German industrialist who flirted with the socialist planned economy at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Rathenau delusion consists in seeing only a difference in scope between the private planning of very large companies and the centrally planned economies of entire nations. In fact, there is a categorical difference here. Rational economic planning always takes place within an order based on private property and monetary exchange. It is this order that orientates the numerous individual plans and coordinates them. Mises taught us that the rationality of economic activity is always and everywhere rooted in a microeconomic perspective and presupposes a social order under private law. By contrast, the basic socialist idea consists precisely in abolishing this superordinate order and replacing it with top-down planning. But whoever does this saws off the branch on which he is sitting. Instead of making rational economic activity easier, he makes it impossible. This is exactly what Mises proved a hundred years ago.

For the past seventy years, the major US foundations have been the main drivers of socialism, even more so than the state bureaucracies. Something similar can be said about the Bertelsmann Foundation and other German foundations. They also apply a saw with great relish to the capitalist branch that carries us all.

Sound off about this article on my Substack.

About the Author

Jörg Guido Hülsmann is senior fellow of the Mises Institute where he holds the 2018 Peterson-Luddy Chair and was director of research for Mises Fellows in residence 1999-2004.  He is author of Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism and The Ethics of Money Production. He teaches in France, at Université d’Angers. His full CV is here. Article cross-posted from Mises.

This depiction of market behavior is normal and may seem chaotic to some who view the marketplace through a socialist lens. With all the recent talk about reining in artificial intelligence (AI), taming AI, and limiting its uses, it sounds like the hubris of socializing artificial intelligence products and services.

However, an AI-driven economy cannot be socialized by a single entity, despite all the noise about AI restrictions, limitations, and tighter rules and regulations sent down from the top elites. We all use artificial intelligence in daily activities, ranging from work and leisure to side hustles, if you have one. With the glitz and glamour of technology, particularly artificial intelligence, the point that is missed is this: AI products and services enable firms to meet demands, assist entrepreneurs to create value, and enhance the exchange processes we all take part in daily.

Zack Dugow, who wrote “How to Defend Yourself against All-Powerful Monopolies That Control Your Business” for Forbes, made an important observation but did not take it to its logical conclusion. Dugow said, “If you have a heavy reliance on one of these monopolies [artificially driven software or social media/web page tools], you need to be able to pivot your business quickly and have your backup plan readily available to you. What service providers can you switch to?”

Should AI technology and AI startups eliminate monopolistic behavior between firms and consumers and rid the market space of the unrealistic notion of any socialization of AI technology? Everything has a price and a cost, which is why socialism was debunked some time ago.

However, what about artificial intelligence? Can it be socialized in the market space? You can socialize some things, but artificial intelligence cannot generally be owned and operated by a single entity or widely restricted from public usage. Someone must own the productive resources, sell services, and upgrade and maintain the hardware and software.

Opening market spaces for AI seems reasonable; however, will the elites plan to socialize AI services and products, close up the industry, and eliminate AI buyer options? When prices, inputs, and outputs are calculated, it becomes an unfeasible proposition that AI services, products, and industries be socialized. Fortunately, more and more AI service startups are available for buyers. Again, people use AI-enabled services and products to a large degree for many day-to-day activities. AI startups are on the rise, and they are listening to the market space, despite the socialist view that permeates throughout the media pushing toward more regulations and clamping down on open competition. Nevertheless, even in an AI-driven economy, socialism still cannot work.

No company has yet been granted exclusive ownership privileges of AI products and services. Not yet! Currently, there are over thirteen thousand (and rising) private startups of AI services and products in the United States alone, according to eWeek. Will artificial products and services remain decentralized? AI is a tool and enabler of exchanges between customers and firms. The advent of AI technologies can ward off monopolist behavior in a free market because, with an innovative approach to a consumer product or service, any company may be able to prove themselves worthy in the face of Goliath. Contrary to popular opinion, firms that use AI to enhance customer satisfaction and increase productivity open more doors for regular folks to start up their own business, which gives buyers more options in the marketplace. It also allows customers to enjoy the many features and benefits of products and services that add value to their daily lives. Some need to see this point. In other words, those who want to centralize AI services and products to one seller and raise the barriers to industry entry are saying out loud that they want more for themselves and less for you (and me).

That means no firm should have the exclusive privilege of being the only provider of AI services. Right? So many industries started as decentralized firms and are now privileged providers. Question: Who sets the prices of AI services, packages, and models? While your local utility provider, in many cases, is granted the privilege of being the only supplier of utilities, Amazon, on the other hand, has not received the same privilege. Amazon has a strong position in the market, but we know of competitors out there we can visit if we would like to. The difference between privileged providers and Amazon is that Amazon is subject to market competition. Therefore, they must listen to customers and pay attention to price increases, warehouse logistics, and customer service improvements.

If AI products and services remain decentralized, it will allow the market spaces to regulate the prices and costs for using AI services as opposed to if AI services are centralized under one firm or an elite few, similar to airline companies. When consumers and entrepreneurs see the rising costs of AI-enabled platforms, it reduces the incentives to use that technology, but it also allows new entrants to come into the market space and attempt to deliver a better product at a marginally better price. To disregard this market movement is the intent of socialism in general.

Furthermore, a handful of AI service providers eventually reduces the quality of this handful of providers (there are many instances of this decline in quality and rising price when a provider is granted a monopoly privilege). However, a natural monopoly might be reasonably valued. Technology of any kind, operating in a free market, should be the mechanism by which people who desire to enter an industry can do so with their skills and investment and make their attempts at competing—even if they are unprofitable, they were able to enter the fray.

What is often misunderstood about monopoly and prices is explained by Murray Rothbard:

There is no direct control over price because price is a mutual phenomenon. On the other hand, each person has absolute control over his own action and therefore over the price which he will attempt to charge for any particular good. Any man can set any price that he wants for any quantity of a good that he sells; the question is whether he can find any buyers at that price.

In a free market, no one is granted monopoly privilege—a privileged market position is earned by providing the best quality and price that consumers are willing to buy. On the other hand, forced or restricted choice is a form of socialism, or at least interventionism. At this time, it seems the capital markets are deciding where to invest, which is apparent in the rising number of firms producing more products and services so that businesses can meet public demand. If, however, all capital for AI investment funnels to one entity, it would be a disaster insofar as an economic calculation.

The idea of socialism does not hold up to its tenets considering AI’s technological advances made in recent years from the rising number of firms, especially advances in AI for entrepreneurs and consumers alike. A socialist vision of the world is very compelling, but reality tells us something different. The basic premise is that someone has to produce, someone has to consume, and there is a price calculation for both to exist. In the reality of socialistic visions, when subjected to market space examination, this premise tends to break down.

In many cases, the producer and consumer are the same people at different times. Production must take time, and with knowledge of prices, producers know the quantity of goods to produce at any given time. Even if one can socialize the production of luxury items, homes, and vehicles, how does one produce the capital required to make those items? Even with all needed inputs, AI cannot engage in the economic calculation needed to make a socialist economy work.

About the Author

Raushan Gross is an Associate Professor of Business Management at Pfeiffer University. His works include Basic Entrepreneurship, Management and Strategy, The Inspiring Life and Beneficial Impact of Entrepreneurs, In Pursuit of an Entrepreneurial Culture, and Emerging Institutions of Entrepreneurship. His research interests include topics ranging from entrepreneurship, free markets, economies, markets and competition, and the role of technology in market coordination. Article cross-posted from Mises.

Or is he? On Friday night’s Bill Maher show, Sanders seemed to say something that runs completely contrary to one of the most basic tenets of socialism. He said he prefers “equality” over “equity.” And in case anyone thinks he may have misspoke or misunderstood the question, he defined equality as pertaining to opportunity, then acknowledged that equity is about results.

Watch:

Bernie Sanders Questioned On The Difference Between Equity And Equality – 'I Don't Know…' pic.twitter.com/juKzkTlbjf

— Red Voice Media (@redvoicenews) March 4, 2023

Is this the end for Sanders? If it isn’t, then perhaps something else he said Friday night can get him booted from the Neo-Marxist island. According to Daily Caller News Foundation:

Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said Friday night that the Democratic Party abandoned the working class in favor of “beautiful people,” indirectly referencing Hollywood and corporations.

“You say like they abandoned their cause to the beautiful people,” HBO host Bill Maher said to Sanders during “Real Time with Bill Maher.” “Who are the beautiful people?”

“Hey, Bill,” Sanders said, gesturing to Maher. “You look really beautiful tonight here in L.A. Here’s the point, the point that I was making is that when FDR was president, when Truman was President, even when JFK was president, you go out on the street, and you say to people which party represents the working class in America. Most people, I think, agree, would have said the Democratic Party. Today, you go out on the street, that is not the sentiment, In fact, the Republican party probably has more adherents than the Democrats.”

On today’s episode of The JD Rucker Show, I talked about what’s going on with Bernie as well as the difference between equity and equality.

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https://twitter.com/JDRucker/status/1632167313876332545

The scheme will cause a massive inflow of loans into the new system and cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.

Income-based repayment is affordable by definition. Currently, borrowers pay about 10% of their discretionary income over about 20 years, and whatever’s left—including all accrued interest—is forgiven.

Such a plan should be reserved only for people who have no other way to pay a larger amount, because it keeps them from defaulting and therefore maximizes loan payments in an affordable way.

But the new rules dramatically change the calculus:

• Payments are generally cut in half from 10% to 5% of income.
• The number of payments is generally cut in half from 20 years to 10 years.
• Income under which payments are $0 is raised from 150% to 225% of the poverty line.
• All payments, including “payments” of $0, trigger cancellation of that month’s interest.

In other words, borrowers will get more than 75% off of their total payments.

Which borrowers will choose that option? Almost everyone.

The Department of Education argues, arbitrarily, that there should be “greater parity between graduate and undergraduate borrowers, in terms of their incentives to choose an [income-driven repayment] plan.” Since graduate borrowers generally owe twice as much money ($41,000 vs. $20,000), they benefit much more from such a plan.

The department’s solution is to take graduate debt as the norm—which is the opposite of reality—and make undergraduate debt operate similarly.

As a result, the department estimates that the point at which this scheme breaks even—the point at which income is too high for even a 5% payment to benefit a borrower—is $75,500 for undergraduate borrowers.

Putting that in context, “An income of $75,500 for ages 22 to 25 ranks at the 98.21” percentile, according to the Personal Finance Data calculator. And 225% of the poverty line—$30,600—is at the 78th percentile for ages 22-25, so a huge majority of borrowers will pay nothing.

That means only about the top 2% of young earners are likely to stick with their current loan-repayment plan. Everybody else will take the payment cuts. The department could easily—but appears not to—admit that this will happen.

Who’s paying the bill for 98% of tens of millions of borrowers to get this windfall? America’s 100 million taxpayers, of course, yet again.

With this latest forgiveness scheme, the Education Department transfers hundreds of billions of dollars to college-educated people at the expense of taxpaying blue-collar workers and those who already met their responsibilities and paid their debts.

Think of it this way: For every $100 billion of debt forgiveness or payment reductions, that’s another $1,000 out of each taxpayer’s pocket.

Furthermore, it is well documented that colleges raise tuition when loans are made easier and more lenient.

That’s basic economics: Consumers can afford to pay more, so producers charge more for their unique products. For example, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, each dollar of federal loan subsidy has led to 60 cents of tuition increases.

The Department of Education’s moves over the past two years are just extending an unsustainable cycle we’ll never escape until Congress fundamentally overhauls student loans, such as by returning them to the private market.

It should not seem counterintuitive to observe that if the government stops throwing trillions of dollars into higher education tuition, tuition will stop rising at unsustainable rates.

Colleges might then finally have to stop the administrative bloat that enables many of them to have dozens, if not hundreds, of administrators who divide and alienate students from each other in the name of diversity.

The Department of Education can’t make college free, but it’s making strides in bringing socialism to higher education. Congress shouldn’t stand for that.

Article cross-posted from The Daily Signal.

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, the billionaire discussed those views, lamenting the current state of the U.S. economy and sharing his concerns for the future.

“I’m worried about capitalism,” Marcus told the Financial Times. “Capitalism is the basis of Home Depot, [and] millions of people have earned this success and had success. I’m talking manufacturers, vendors, and distributors, and people that work for us [who have been] able to enrich themselves by the journey of Home Depot. That’s the success. That’s why capitalism works.”

Marcus founded Home Depot alongside co-founder Arthur Blank in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1979 after the pair were unexpectedly fired from another home improvement chain. Since then, the store has expanded to more than 2,300 locations across North America.

In Marcus’ view, however, the company could not have achieved the same level of success if launched in today’s market.

“We would end up with 15, 16 stores,” he said. “I don’t know that we could go further.”

That change, along with a general lack of work ethic among the younger generation, can be attributed to the rise of socialism, according to the retailer.

“[N]obody works,” he said. “Nobody gives a damn. ‘Just give it to me. Send me money. I don’t want to work—I’m too lazy, I’m too fat, I’m too stupid.’”

It’s A Woke World

Marcus further lamented an increasing lack of respect for the First Amendment, noting: “We used to have free speech here. We don’t have it. The woke people have taken over the world.”

The nonagenarian also acknowledged that, given his age, he is less susceptible to cancelation attempts, though that hasn’t stopped certain groups from trying.

In both 2016 and 2019, Marcus’ political support for former President Donald Trump angered some shoppers to the extent that they threatened to boycott Home Depot stores.

In 2019, while noting that he did not agree “with every move” Trump makes, Marcus told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he intended to donate to Trump’s reelection campaign because the then-president had “produced more than anybody else.”

Marcus also praised Trump for his “businessman’s common sense approach to most things,” holding that the United States was better off under the 45^th president than it had been under the previous administration.

But while Home Depot sought to distance itself from its retired co-founder’s comments, Trump jumped to Marcus’ defense, urging his supporters to do the same.

“A truly great, patriotic & charitable man, Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot who, at the age of 90, is coming under attack by the Radical Left Democrats with one of their often used weapons,” Trump noted on Twitter in July 2019. “They don’t want people to shop at those GREAT stores because he contributed … to your favorite President, me!”

“Fight for Bernie Marcus and Home Depot!” Trump added.

Ultimately, those boycotts appear to have been unsuccessful, given that the company has an estimated annual revenue of $150 billion.

Republican Support

Marcus has been outspoken in his conservatism for years, attributing his views to a love of the United States and the freedoms Americans enjoy.

“I think there are two big reasons why this country is so great,” Marcus said in another 2019 interview. “The first is our Constitution, which guarantees a freedom of speech and expression. The second is our free market system.”

“The free market system has been the biggest creator of wealth and prosperity the world has ever known, lifting billions of people out of poverty and far more superior than any government program could ever be,” Marcus added. “The free market is the tool that allows many to reach out and grab hold of the American dream.”

Given his love of capitalism, the entrepreneur’s past support for Republican political campaigns—including the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and John McCain—should not come as a surprise.

And Trump is not the only Republican candidate to have recently earned Marcus’ support. As a Florida resident, the entrepreneur has also donated to the state’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“I give money to [Trump and DeSantis] because I hope they’re going to do the right thing,” Marcus told The Financial Times.

While adding that he thought Trump’s policies as president were “spot on,” Marcus demurred on which Republican he would like to see replace Joe Biden in the oval office.

“It’s going to be very interesting in ‘24 because I think that DeSantis will challenge him [Trump],” he said. “And may the better man win.”

Article cross-posted from The Epoch Times.

When Karl Marx died, his successors who formed the Frankfurt School pondered what went wrong. Why did communism not become the dominant political and economic ideology across the globe? They had popular support and what they believed was the right idea. So why did it not become a thing?

Their conclusion was that a combination of faith and familial ties kept people from adopting the ideology in wholesale. That is why around the turn of the 20th century they decided to rethink their strategies. The early stages of Neo-Marxism included discussions about how to separate people from their faith and their families. Only then, they surmised, could the masses be truly indoctrinated into accepting the end of their freedoms and personal property in exchange for the collective good.

That conclusion prompted them to develop the various strategies we’re seeing employed today. Cultural Marxism, for example, is an ideal way to attack both faith and familiar bonds. It forces people to take sides on issues that would have otherwise been unimportant to them. The most striking example is the push for pronouns. The vast majority of Americans couldn’t care less about pronouns since throughout the history of the English speaking world it was never an issue. Only today are people being compelled to question the most basic aspects of our language by denouncing biology and accepting our post-truth society as supreme.

On today’s episode of The JD Rucker Show, I was joined by Kay Rubacek. This enthralling interview exposed not only what the Chinese Communist Party and other Marxist governments are doing, but also what we must do in western society to keep it from spreading.

Of particular interest was her perception that the “rising Neo-Marxism” many of us believe exists may actually be fake. In other words, the popularity of socialism among Americans today may be manufactured for effect rather than an actual acceptance of the anti-American philosophy. They want us to THINK they’re getting traction and making waves when in reality they represent a minuscule portion of the population.

The most important lesson Rubacek has to share pertains to her experience talking to people who have been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party. Surprisingly, she also found similar stories from some of the persecutors themselves. Those who are able to make it through tyranny are those with strong faith and loving families. Those who have neither often suffer the most. Her explanation was startling.

It isn’t often that I strongly encourage people to watch or listen to an entire episode, but this interview with Rubacek is the exception. She is a wealth of knowledge and her message needs to spread far and wide.