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Government employee retirement funds are NOT funded by ‘investments’: Wall Street fees are twice the income of fund contributions, taxpayers pay 95% of costs, net returns average less than 1%. Solutions are monetary reform, public banking: 22-minute video walkthrough

Saturday, March 11, 2017 16:26

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(Before It's News)

Among the game-changing “fake news” We the People are told by “leaders” in government and corporate media is that government employee retirement contributions placed into investment funds pay for retirees’ benefits.

Let’s summarize the data of California’s 2011 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR; the last time I looked) and what it means for the state’s 12 million households:

Officials and corporate media never remind taxpayers, but California holds $600 billion in taxpayer cash and investments ($50,000 non-disclosed assets per household).
California’s ~14,000 various government entities’ CAFRs have a sampled-data total estimate of $8 trillion in surplus taxpayer assets ($650,000 non-disclosed assets per household). For examples, page 63 of L.A. County’s 2011 CAFR shows $66 billion in cash and investments; City of L.A.’s CAFR page 58 shows $38 billion.
The state’s $600 billion cash and investment fund is explained as designated for funding state pensions. The CAFR data show the opposite: $27 billion in pension cost receives only $1 billion income from $600 billion in withheld taxpayer assets, fund “managers” receive over twice the net income as California pensions receive, and a massive $68 billion increase in “fair value of investments” doesn’t translate to actual funding of pensions.
Californians are taxed $19 billion to pay for pensions (95% of the public cost) while also losing $50,000 in assets the state withholds in cash and investments.

The $600 billion fund in cash and investments contributed 4% of the state’s $27 billion pension costs, but since 2008 has been “managed” to cost taxpayers more than the net income it produces.
Governor Brown is silent about the $600 billion in surplus cash and investments, claiming the $16 billion budget deficit can only be addressed by austerity – massive funding cuts to our essential infrastructure. A 2.8% divestment of the fund would cover the $16 billion deficit.

So the natural question is if the state’s withholding of $600 billion in our cash and investments does not fund pensions, address a budget deficit, or prevent devastation to infrastructure, how can we best restructure the purpose and use of OUR MONEY for optimal public benefits?

22-minute interview by InfoWars in 2012:

This scam is similar to:

The Clinton Foundation saying they fund “charities” when only 10% of the $2 billion they’ve received goes to charities.
The US Defense Department claiming to have “lost” $6.5 trillion (~$60,000 per average US household).
The IMF, World Bank, US political leadership, and corporate media all claiming to “do their best” to end poverty while allowing ~ one million children to gruesomely slowly die from poverty every month.

Data, discussion of ~$1,000,000 benefits per average US household with monetary reform, public banking:

The top three benefits each of monetary reform and public banking total ~$1,000,000 for the average American household, and would be received nearly instantly. Fed Chair Janet Yellen publicly acknowledges monetary reform as described below, but continues a history of criminal fraud in her lawful fiduciary responsibility to truthfully provide what you’re about to read. The data below include evidence of a .01% oligarchy criminally looting tens of trillions of our dollars.

Monetary reform is the creation of debt-free money by government for the direct payment of public goods and services. Creating money as a positive number is an obvious move from our existing Robber Baron-era system of only creating debt owed to privately-owned banks (a negative number) as what we use for money. Our Orwellian “non-monetary supply” of adding negative numbers forever causes today’s tragic-comic increasing and unpayable total debt. You learned these mechanics of positive and negative numbers in middle school, and already have the education and life experience to conclude with Emperor’s New Clothes absolute certainty that accelerating total debt is the opposite of having money. As a National Board Certified and Advanced Placement Macroeconomics teacher, I affirm this is also exactly what is taught to all economics students.

The public benefits of reversing this creature of Robber Barons are game-changing and near-instant. We the People must demand these, as .01% oligarchs have no safe way to do so without admission of literal criminal fraud by claiming that debt is its opposite of money.

The top 3 game-changing benefits of monetary reform:

We pay the national debt in proportion to removing private banks’ ability to create what we use for money as debt in order to prevent inflation. We retire national debt forever.
We fully fund infrastructure that returns more economic output than investment cost for triple upgrades: the best infrastructure we can imagine, up to full-employment, and lower overall costs.
We stop the ongoing Robber Barons who McKinsey’s Chief Economist documents having ~$30 TRILLION in tax havens, and the Fed finding the US top seven banks creating shell companies to hide $10 trillion. This amount is about 30 times needed to end all global poverty, which has killed more people since 1995 than all wars and violence in all human history.

Public banking creates at-cost and in-house credit to pay for public goods and services without the expense and for-profit interest of selling debt-securities. North Dakota has a public bank for at-cost credit that results in it being the only state with annual increasing surpluses rather than deficits.

Top 3 game-changing benefits of public banking:

a state-owned bank could abundantly fund all state programs and eliminate all taxes with just a 5% mortgage and credit card.
a state-owned bank could create in-house and at-cost credit to fund infrastructure. This cuts nominal costs in half because, as you know, selling debt securities typically doubles the cost. For example, where I live we’re still dismantling the old Bay Bridge in NoCal from the upgrade that cost $6 billion, but the debt-service costs will add another $6 billion when it’s all paid.
CAFRs (Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports) stash “rainy day” funds no longer required with a credit line from a public bank. In addition, the so-called “retirement funds” currently deliver net returns of just a few percent on good years, and negative returns on bad years (here, here). California’s ~14,000 various government entities’ CAFRs have a sampled-data total estimate of $8 trillion in surplus taxpayer assets ($650,000 non-disclosed assets per household, among California’s ~12.5 million households).

$1,000,000 of benefits per US household:

California’s CAFR data of ~$650,000 of assets per household is evidence of huge cash assets of similar magnitude in every state.
Paying the US national debt of ~$18 trillion saves ~$180,000 per household.
Ending state taxes in California to pay a budget of ~$170 billion saves each household ~$15,000, with similar savings in every state.
~$30,000 per household savings annually: the American public would no longer pay over $400 billion every year for national debt interest payments (because almost 30% of the debt is intra-governmental transfers, this is a savings of ~$300 billion/year). If lending is run at a non-profit rate or at nominal interest returned to the American public (for infrastructure, schools, fire and police protection, etc.) rather than profiting the banks, the savings to the US public is conservatively $2 trillion (1). If the US Federal government increased the money supply by 3% a year to keep up with population increase and economic growth, we could spend an additional $500 billion yearly into public programs, or refund it as a public dividend (2). This savings would allow us to simplify or eliminate the income tax (3). The estimated savings of eliminating the income tax with all its complexity, loopholes, and evasion is $250 billion/year (4). The total benefits for monetary reform are conservatively over three trillion dollars every year to the American public. Three trillion is $3,000,000,000,000. This saves the ~100 million US households an average of $30,000 every year. Another way to calculate the savings is to figure those amounts per $50,000 annual household income (for example, if your household earns $100,000/year, you save ~$60,000 every year with these reforms). This savings represents a 60% raise for every US household’s income.
Related, if the ~$30 trillion hidden in tax havens by the .01% have $10-$15 trillion from Americans, and we count the Federal Reserve report that the US top seven banks have over $10 trillion stored, then the average US household could clawback ~$200,000 to ~$250,000.

Famous Americans already on record for these reforms:

Please understand that I represent likely hundreds of thousands of professionals making factual claims with objective evidence anyone with a high school-level of education can verify.

The Emperor’s New Clothes obvious pathway out of these mechanics of our “debt system” is to start creating debt-free money (a positive number) for the direct payment of public goods and services, and create public credit for at-cost loans (a negative number). I have three academic papers to walk any reader through these facts; an assignment for high school economics students, one for Advanced Placement Macroeconomics students, and a paper for the Claremont Colleges’ recent academic conference:

Teaching critical thinking to high school students: Economics research/presentation

Debt-damned economics: either learn monetary reform, or kiss your assets goodbye

Seizing an alternative: Bankster looting: fundamental fraud that “debt” is “money”

Let’s examine just some of the facts of the current US economy that demonstrates its criminal status:

We’ve already documented how the global so-called “elite” 1% are now wealthier than the 99% while ~30,000 children die daily from preventable poverty in gruesomely-slow agony. Just 62 people on Earth own more than the bottom 50%.
The US .1% own more than the bottom 90%.
The top 20 Americans (.000006%) own more than the bottom 50%.
The top three public benefits of monetary and banking reform would add ~$1,000,000 to every US household. The lies of omission and commission by US “leaders” with legal fiduciary responsibility to communicate full and transparent economic data to never advise Americans of these options is a massive crime causing damages in the trillions of dollars yearly.
Our current system of creating what we use for money as debt has the so-called “developed” and “former” colonial nations $50 trillion in debt, and lying for public austerity rather than admit the option of monetary and banking reforms.

For Americans still zombiefied to “believe” in America, please embrace the reality that 40% of US children live at least one year of their lives in under-measured poverty, while oligarchs most responsible literally laugh in grandiose glee of the poverty they euphemise as “income inequality.” Please absorb this 1-minute reality check:

John Perkins’ 2-minutes of context as an illustration of what the US rogue state executes:

More game-changing economic data that confirm what we receive for economic leadership is literal criminal fraud:

decaying infrastructure getting uglier from “deferred maintenance,”
real unemployment near 25% with most families demanding both parents work longer and longer hours,
real inflation well above official reports,
US poverty of 20% among children, 40% for living at least a year in poverty,
72% of California students in schools with over half the children classified as “socio-economically disadvantaged,”
the annual interest payment of ~$450 billion for the US national debt is over four times the amount needed to invest for ending all forms of global poverty (~$100 billion/year for ~10 years).
a rigged-casino economy designed for “peak inequality,”
“too big to fail” banks demand public subsidies (so-called “bailouts”) while gambling with over $200 TRILLION in derivatives,
these “too big to fail/jail” banks deriving most of their income from subsidies and apparent market manipulations,
Daily and never-ending Orwellian criminal-complicit lies of corporate media.
US college Class of 2015 students average $35,000 in debt, with the total for 2015 graduates nearly $70 billion: more than ten times the amount from just 20 years ago. The average time to pay this debt is now 15 years (think paying until age 40).
half of US 25-year-olds live with their parents, more than twice the number from 15 years ago.
Over one million US college students are “Sugar babies”: selling sex as part-time employment. The UK has the same condition (here, here).
31% of US adjunct professors live in poverty.

15-minute video of obvious solutions: Mark Anielski and Ellen Brown’s powerful 15-minute response to an interview at the Seizing an Alternative conference (and here, with videos here) with former World Bank economist Herman Daly and co-author John B. Cobb of For the Common Good (video should start at 1:04:43):

81-minute interview with Byron Dale and Greg Soderberg of WealthMoney.org (the three of us have combined over 90 years of research on this topic):

Endnotes:

1) Of $60 trillion total debt, a conservative current interest cost of 5% is $3 trillion every year. Two trillion dollars of savings if the profits are transferred to the American public rather than to the banking industry is probably low. St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/TCMDO

2) The US GDP is ~$17 trillion. Three percent growth is moderately conservative.

3) Of the US Federal government’s ~$4 trillion annual budget, about $1.7 trillion is received from income tax.

4) Tax Foundation. Hodge, S, Moody, J, Warcholik, W. The Rising Cost of Complying with the Federal Income Tax. Jan. 10, 2006: http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/1281.html

Note: I make all factual assertions as a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History, with all economics factual claims receiving zero refutation since I began writing in 2008 among Advanced Placement Macroeconomics teachers on our discussion board, public audiences of these articles, and international conferences. I invite readers to empower their civic voices with the strongest comprehensive facts most important to building a brighter future. I challenge professionals, academics, and citizens to add their voices for the benefit of all Earth’s inhabitants.

Carl Herman is a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History; also credentialed in Mathematics. He worked with both US political parties over 18 years and two UN Summits with the citizen’s lobby, RESULTS, for US domestic and foreign policy to end poverty. He can be reached at [email protected]

Note: Examiner.com has blocked public access to my articles on their site (and from other whistleblowers), so some links in my previous work are blocked. If you’d like to search for those articles other sites may have republished, use words from the article title within the blocked link. Or, go to http://archive.org/web/, paste the expired link into the box, click “Browse history,” then click onto the screenshots of that page for each time it was screen-shot and uploaded to webarchive. I’ll update as “hobby time” allows; including my earliest work from 2009 to 2011 (blocked author pages: here, here).