People want another New Deal?

Thanks to mises.org for posting a nice, short article about how some are now calling for a new New Deal. Why would we want another round of government agencies that interfere in the market with the inevitable result that we will all be less prosperous? The New Deal was a disaster and prolonged the Great Depression. Its long list of new agencies, bureaus, departments, and commissions spent billions while Americans were waiting on bread lines. The AAA, or Agricultural Adjustment Administration, paid farmers to plow under their crops and murder their livestock!

Please, pundits, learn some history and economics. Stop calling for more government interference in the economy and violations of our property rights. Isn't 70 years of Keynesian economics enough?

Become a saver now

It's time to become a great saver and develop a diversified portfolio. 401k's, IRA's, money market accounts, gold coins, real estate, collectible cars, etc. Forego those assets that depreciate and may be completely worthless. Why?

As you can see by this article, the U.S. government has promised a lot more than it can deliver. The country has a seriously underfunded retirement system, and it's in the red by the trillions. Another great government plan.

According to some actuaries, the average American will, in 2024, be paying 40% of their income to Social Security alone. That's because all 78 million baby boomers will be 60 and over in 16 years. Currently, as I write this, they are turning 60 at the rate of 10,000 per week. So in 16 short years, there will be a ratio of 2:1, or two workers for every retired person. When they enacted this cranky scheme in 1935, the ratio was 42:1. Oops.

If history is any guide, this may lead to war. FDR pushed us into WWII because he couldn't find a way out of the Great Depression. War is a great way, politicians think, to get the citizens' minds off their financial woes. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. But the time to get ready is now, so you can handle any challenge that comes your way.

Interesting reads about Roosevelt, by the way, are The Roosevelt Myth, The New Dealer's War, Roosevelt's Secret War, and FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression.

It's not a sacrifice, it's a privilege?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of the worst presidents in American History, said it was a privilege to pay more taxes, buy more bonds, forego extra profits, and fight for your country. Amazing. What he's really saying is that your a government slave, and when the government creates a crisis or gets us into war, you'd better do what they say. Really. I thought it was a free country.

"It is not a sacrifice for any man, old or young, to be in the Army or Navy of the United States. Rather it is a privilege. It is not a sacrifice for the industrialist or the wage-earner, the farmer or the shopkeeper, the trainman or the doctor, to pay more taxes, to buy more bonds, to forego extra profits, to work longer or harder at the task for which he is best fitted. Rather it is a privilege. It is not a sacrifice to do without many things to which we are accustomed if the national defense calls for doing without."

From FDR's radio address on December 9, 1941, two days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Much recent scholarship indicates FDR pushed Japan into attacking the U.S. Quote thanks to Crisis and Leviathan by Robert Higgs.