[7 min read]

Dan Denning

It used to be you had to already be in jail to get to Australia. But now they’ll throw you in jail for trying to get there. My, how times change. Everything in the world is upside down.

If you’re one of the 9,000 Australians trapped in India — a country in the grip of a huge wave of coronavirus cases, according to the media — you’d probably take the five years’ jail time to get home. Or the fine of up to $51,800. Do you think anyone’s really going to serve jail time for trying to get back into a country in which they’re a citizen?

But these ARE crazy times. When it’s a criminal offence to return to your native country, you know things are upside down. The government made its ‘emergency determination’ to ban returning travellers who’ve been in India at any time for the last 14 days. It went into effect at 12:01am Monday morning and will be ‘reconsidered’ on 15 May.

There’s no doubt plenty of Australians — you’ll find them making comments on news articles and Twitter — who support this action. These are extraordinary times. You can’t risk the safety of 25 million people in Australia to protect the 9,000 who (for whatever reason) were in India. Right?

Well, you can make that argument. And it sounds ‘reasonable’ and for ‘the common good’, or even necessary under the current circumstances. But it’s not a great look. It might make you start to wonder about the benefits of citizenship to a country in which the government treats people like criminals.

To be fair, most governments in the world now treat their citizens like criminals. We are under constant digital and physical surveillance. The lickspittles in the media and academia — goaded on by their new allies in public health — are pushing for vaccine passports and pervasive contact tracing. The control freaks have embraced their moment with gleeful enthusiasm.

I’ll come back to that in a moment. But what about markets? How are they coping with India’s crisis? Well, they’re ignoring it. Financial markets decoupled from the real economy and the real world sometime in 1971, when US President Richard Nixon severed the link between the US dollar and gold. It’s been downhill — with bigger government and weaker money — ever since.

It all picked up speed in 2008 with the GFC. Since then, central banks have been running the show. And if you’re rich, white, and almost retired — what a show it’s been! In the US, financial asset values (houses and shares) have soared. Who cares if automation, globalisation, and financialisation have destroyed middle class wage growth? That’s their problem!

In the US now, the Deep State elites see their danger AND their opportunity. Their danger is that wealth inequality has become so shockingly obvious that it can’t be ignored. Something must be done about it. Even if that something is superficial and not likely to affect the 1% (the ones who make the laws as well).

Wealth taxes, higher capital gains taxes, negative interest rates on ‘excess savings’, ‘exit’ taxes if you try to move from a high-tax jurisdiction to a low one, international ‘tax harmonisation’ to eliminate offshore tax havens — all of these are in the financial repression tool kit. If you have money, they are coming for you.

Some of it is theatre — measures meant to placate working class voters who know they’ve been screwed. Some of it is genuine relish by the Marxists and socialists who have made their way into government by pretending to be ‘social democrats’. They smell blood in the water. And the rest?

The rest is the result of the financialisation of the economy. When hard work and savings are replaced by speculation and leverage, you get what we have. And what we have is an entire culture in a headlong rush to get rich and cash out before the whole thing falls apart. Good luck with your timing.

In the meantime, the time to examine the 2015 Biosecurity Act is now. Actually, it was a year ago. Unelected public health officials now wield extraordinary power thanks to this law. It’s anti-democratic and quite frankly tyrannical. These powers should be revised and rolled back as quickly as possible.

Sensible people understand that emergencies happen. In a natural disaster or an invasion, the normal rule of law is often suspended to deal with an immediate crisis. But now?

Now we have the artificial and deliberate creation of a permanent emergency. It’s a crisis that’s designed to never end. And because it never ends — this variant, that variant, this vaccine booster, one shot, another shot, another shot — the suspension of normal law and civil liberties becomes permanent. That’s what’s happening now.

You fight it by standing up for what you believe and speaking out. But as ever, we believe the best defence against attacks on your liberty and your family are to become as independent as you can. Wealth gives you the independence to make decisions about where you’re going to live. It makes you less vulnerable to government policies, inflation, and financial repression.

If you don’t believe financial repression is already here, you haven’t been paying attention. But the good news is that there ARE money moves you can make. They aren’t foolproof. But if you haven’t started yet, you have to start somewhere. I recommend you go here for more details.

Regards,

Dan Denning,
Editor, The Rum Rebellion

No Tears for the Rich
Bill Bonner

‘All governments use force and all assert that they are founded on reason. In fact, whether universal suffrage prevails or not, it is always an oligarchy that governs, finding ways to give to “the will of the people” that expression which the few desire.’

Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto

‘We the people are the government,’ said Joe Biden in this week’s historic address to Congress.

No truth alarms went off. But the big lie — that government = the people — is central to the whole flimflam of spending proposals unveiled in Biden’s discourse.

Just to keep it simple: Some people govern…others are governed. Some people owe…some are owed. Some pay…others are paid.

Here at the Diary headquarters, we take our verbs seriously. We govern no one but ourselves.

But the Biden Administration — with the support and complicity of the bureaucracy, academia, a majority in Congress, the media, and big business — governs 330 million people.

And with its armies and sanctions, it attempts to boss around hundreds of millions more.

Elite scam

It was the great early 20^th century Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, who popularised the idea of an ‘elite’. It doesn’t matter what you call your government, he explained, there are always some who control it…and others who are controlled by it.

Pareto is famous for the 80/20 principle derived from his observation. 80% of the work is done by 20% of the population. 80% of the wealth is owned by 20% of the population. Etc.

But the 20% are not always the same people. The barrier between the elite and everyone else is not like a prison wall. It is more like a prison gate. There’s always a trickle of people coming and going under the watchful eye of the guards.

And occasionally — in a revolution, war, or social collapse — the prison walls come down, as they did at the Bastille in 1789.

But the idea that ‘the people’ govern is a fraud. And it is just one of many scams that help the real governors — the elite — remain in power.

Today, we explore another one.

Back to basics

This week, we saw how the left wing of the Deep State aims to get an almost permanent grip on the White House. It is going back to age-old basics. To bribery, that is.

Again, keeping it simple…rich people have always used their wealth to get power. And powerful people use their power to get more wealth.

(‘The richest man in Rome’ Marcus Licinius Crassus, is often said to have bought his way into the triumvirate with Caesar and Pompey, for example.

But he was also a competent military man, the hero of the Battle of the Colline Gate and of the Third Servile War. The latter was the war with Spartacus, in which Crassus raised an army at his own expense.

After he put down the slave uprising, he crucified his 6,000 prisoners, leaving their rotting bodies along the Appian Way as a warning to others.)

Now in control of the full faith and credit of the US government, team Biden aims to use it to get both more wealth and more power.

$4 trillion vote-buying scheme

The Democrats are already the party of the elite and ‘minorities’. But they need to recover at least some of their support among the working classes.

Free college, free childcare, more paid leave — 12 weeks! — more stimmy, along with new make-work jobs in ‘infrastructure’…

The whole package will cost about US$4.1 trillion (US$2.3 trillion for the infrastructure plan and US$1.8 trillion for the families plan)…but it might be enough to give the Democrats a lock on the White House for decades.

Tax the rich

But how to pay for all this?

Joe Biden proposes not only to give the masses more stuff, but to give them the pleasure of seeing ‘the rich’ get squeezed. From CNBC:

‘Taxes may soon be going up for the wealthy.

‘President Joe Biden aims to fund expanded education, child care, paid leave and other reforms by collecting more tax revenue from Americans who make more than $400,000 a year.

‘He would do so by raising the top income and capital gains tax rates, changing the taxation of wealthy estates, closing so-called tax loopholes and focusing audits of the rich to prevent tax evasion.’

And yes, the plan appeals to the masses. Here’s CNN:

‘About half of Americans who watched President Joe Biden's address to Congress had a very positive reaction to the speech, and 71% said they walked away feeling more optimistic about the country’s direction, according to a CNN Poll conducted by SSRS.’

But the Democrats are now the party of the rich. Are they going to allow the taxman to take a bite out of their own fat derrières? We have our doubts.

Tax increases will get no support from Republicans. And many Democrats are nervous about them, too. Already, they are reassuring their rich donors. The Washington Examiner:

‘The truth, in this case, is that the Democratic Party is currently “pushing a tax cut for the wealthy” by trying to get rid of the cap on state and local tax payment deductions, also known as SALT. […]

‘The only people who would benefit from getting rid of the SALT deduction cap, which is currently set at $10,000 per family, are the wealthy. The average taxpayers who accept the standard deductions and pay less than $10,000 in state and local taxes would not be affected at all.’

Elite rule

What will happen? Most likely, taxes will go up. But while there will be big talk, few will want to walk the walk and really squeeze the rich with substantially higher taxes.

And then, when the grandstanding is over…and the committees and tax policy wonks get to work…

…on subsection 21(a) of Chapter 1031…Part D, as amended by Temporary Federal Statute #105935, further updated by Tax Court ruling on 21 January, Year of Our Lord, 2006, describing how amortisation schedules for fully funded legacy accounts, created on or before the 32^nd of February by the light of a full moon…are to be discounted…

…the rich will still be in the 20% who rule…and the 80% will still be ruled.

After all, it is the elite who write the laws. It is they who interpret and enforce the laws. And they know which side their bread is buttered on.

So, dear reader, there’s no need to sob for the rich this weekend. They’ll be OK.

But if the rich don’t pay, who will? Stay tuned…

Regards,

Bill Bonner,
For The Rum Rebellion

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