UPDATES: LICENSING SCAMS, INEPT FED, CHARTER BATTLES, & CRONY CAPITALISM

     JAM VIEWS members know that we periodically revisit important topics 1) to ensure we all fully understand the dramatic impact of correct economics and business practices, and 2) to remind us that the fight for free markets and rugged individualism is a never-ending battle against the Looters.
     LICENSING.  Previously we learned that state, city, and county licensing requirements are merely scams to protect the entrenched business interests which are funding the politician's campaigns, and to generate revenue to support the ever-expanding government bureaucracy and entitlement programs on the backs of hardworking small business owners.  Recently, the state of Arizona has freed small business and individuals by passing a law to be the first state to recognize out-of-state occupational licenses, including more than 40 professions from cosmetologists and court reporters to psychologists and surgeons.
     Republican State Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita stated, "The reform opens up an appealing job option for low-skilled workers who otherwise would have had to pay between $8,000 and $15,000 for (re)-schooling to do the same work."  This leadership-by-example will have a dramatic impact across many states and release more capitalism than you may imagine.  Also, this is a huge benefit for military spouses whom uproot themselves and their professions to move with their transferred service member.  GOP State Rep. Jeff Weninger declared, "We are open for business, and we're trying to cut back on red tape here."  Congratulations to Arizona!
     STABLE DOLLAR.  Following up on our lessons explaining that the goal is not a strong dollar, nor a weak dollar, but a stable dollar, Judy Shelton, an economist and author of "Money Meltdown: Restoring Order to the Global Currency System," recently released some interesting statistics to support our case.  Judy's book explains that we should question the Federal Reserve's competency, as "no other government institution had more influence over the creation of money and credit in the lead-up to the devastating 2008 global meltdown."  Currently the Fed pays banks to keep their $1.5 trillion in excess reserves (8x what's required) in accounts earning interest instead of making loans to the public to create businesses and spur job creation.
     The Fed has always incorrectly believed that inflation results from job creation.  Judy points out that "inflation results when too much money is chasing too few goods.  It is not caused by real economic growth where wages increase to properly compensate people for their higher levels of output achieved through productivity gains."
     Also, as we keep preaching, the Bank of England's recent report concluded that today's "Fed-controlled" system has performed poorly in comparison to our periods under the gold standard (1870-1913) and the gold-exchange system (1948-1972).  Having the stable gold standard enabled "accelerating labor productivity, falling income inequality and increased workforce participation.  The Obama 2015 Economic Report of the President even suggested that if this same growth had continued once Nixon took us off the gold standard in 1973, that U.S. citizen's "incomes would have been 58% higher in 2013, and "the median household would have had an additional $30,000 in income."
     JAM VIEWS members know we must have a stable currency based on gold (or something else), and that the technocrats the Government keeps trying to tell us are brilliant, are not.
     CHARTER SCHOOLS.  This week we are reminded that bureaucracies and entrenched interests hate the upstarts which greatly outperform their mediocrity, especially in our children's schools.  Ben Chavis, a Lumbee Indian raised by sharecroppers in rural North Carolina and successful businessman-turned-educator, became principal of American Indian Public Charter School (AIPCS) in 2000.  This Oakland, California public school was then the poster-child for failed schools: truancy, drugs, violence, failing test scores, and all the rest.
     By 2004, after Chavis installed discipline, standards, and performance metrics, the middle school students achieved higher math and reading test scores than students at any other public school in Oakland.  After Chavis then opened a high school, this charter in 2008 ranked fourth in the entire state for performance.  To top it off, he also started a second charter middle school which ranked 5th out of 1,300 California schools, and in 2006 was named one of the top 250 schools in the country.
     So how did they reward him?  In 2011 Mr. Chavis announced plans to expand further, so the Oakland School Board began an investigation and found "financial improprieties."  Next, to great national media fanfare, the federal prosecutors indicted Mr. Chavis on mail fraud, money laundering, and conflicts of interest (see "Indicting a ham sandwich").  Thank God, last week the U.S. Attorneys Office in San Francisco dropped all of these charges for insufficient evidence, and Mr. Chavis agreed to a technical violation in order to move forward.  But, he had to leave AIPCS in 2013 to fight for his life for 5 years.  With class and grace this week, he stated, "I'm not the victim.  The kids are the victims."
     Remember to support school choice, support merit-based rewards, and to embrace others who succeed.  No schadenfreude!
     Finally, a quick note on CAPITALISM.  Ms. Chamlee-Wright, President of the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University, issued an article clarifying that our ultimate goal is not only to defeat all aspects of socialism, but also Crony Capitalism, the entrenched large-corporation, political-lobbyist, licensing-barriers-to-entry types of impure capitalism.  She also promotes questioning everyone and everything.  She stated, "I believe that competitive and open markets (plus lots of social and political freedom) are the answer.  Perhaps you think otherwise, but we should have that conversation rather than unthinkingly accept what's put in front of us."  She must be a JAM VIEWS reader!
     A reminder this week to do everything possible to support business startups and entrepreneurial mentality.  Stop at every lemonade stand, and always buy those water-logged golf balls from the kid peddling his inventory next to the pond on the 7th hole.  The Universe is watching.

"We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage."  -  F.A. Hayek, Economist.

** Thank you very much to the WSJ, Forbes, and Fortune for the above quotations and statistics.

** For more information on Jeff's Books, Blog, and Legal Challenge, please visit www.jeffmartinovich.com.

** To access JAM Views directly please visit jeffreyamartinovich.blogspot.com 

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GROWTH & LOWER TAXES SAVE THE WORLD

     Throughout our relatively short American economic history, just when we were about ready to go over the cliff, new policies promoting lower taxes, less regulation, and rugged individualism have sparked strong economic growth, and we, and the world which depends on us, have lived to see another hopeful future.
     This week we must again step back to objectively review the state of our economy as compared to the previous decade.  We must periodically stop, analyze, and employ rational thought to gain understanding, lest we find ourselves amongst the non-thinking masses which morph into the current rhetoric and ideology of the media and whomever is shouting the loudest.
     This week our economic statistics against showed the strongest economy in half a century.  We have unemployment rates which you had been told were not possible ever again, with record-low unemployment rates for African-American and Latino citizens.  We have strong wage growth for middle-class workers, servers, and hotel staff.  We have high labor participation rates, which means that the people who had given up looking for work, or had decided that a government check was a better alternative, have now instead decided to take one of these new jobs.
     This does not happen by accident.  This is not the result of "cycles."  This is not lucky timing.  This is clear cause and effect which us JAM VIEWS members must understand, lest we are later swayed by the economically-uneducated masses. "He who stands for nothing will fall for anything."
     According to Stephen Moore, a senior fellow with the Heritage Foundation, the previous Administration's government stimulus "went for food stamps, unemployment benefits, ObamaCare subsidies, 'cash for clunkers' and failed green energy handouts (see Solyndra or EPV Solar)."  This was when our then-President proclaimed that if you owned a business "you didn't build that."  This focus merely re-distributed the slices of a finite and decreasing pie.  This strategy always guarantees defeat for everyone.
     We must be educated on abundance instead of scarcity.  Growth brings abundance and an ever-increasing pie, which brings more slices for everyone.  Today, with the tremendous jolt to our economy from tax cuts, reduced regulations, and other efforts to get the government out of your pocket and off your back (and some would say their heel off your throat), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has grudgingly determined that "higher-than-expected growth will add an extra $1.2 trillion to federal revenue in the coming decade, covering about 80% of the Treasury's original projected cost of the tax cuts.  If 3% growth is sustained for another year, the growth surge will have (already) paid for the tax cuts," according to Senator Phil Gramm.  And after that, all of the extra government revenue is whipped cream on top of the ice cream of an incredible boost for the nation's citizens, themselves.  The current President would assert, "Get the government out of the way, so you can build that."
     And, certainly more grudgingly, even the New York Times this week acknowledged that "Joe Six-Pack" received a nice tax break this year in order to better care for his middle-class family.  It wasn't all to support the rich.
     We have to stay diligent with our rational and mathematical logic, or we will always go with the flow of current thinking, which is almost always wrong, as JAM VIEWS continually highlights.  When the heated debate of the current tax reform was in full force, Larry Summers, a top Obama advisor, wrote in the Washington Post that tax reform would make no difference unless "you believe in tooth fairies and ludicrous supply-side economics."  Mr. Summers followed up about the specific cuts, "I am proudly guilty of asserting that it is some combination of dishonest, incompetent and absurd."
     One of the Friends of JAM (FOJ) sent me the current Wikipedia definition for the Laffer Curve.  This Curve, which illustrates the relationship between taxation and the resulting levels of government revenue, was originally sketched on a napkin in a meeting of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Arthur Laffer.  The economy has consistently proven that the lower the tax rate, the more wealth for the citizens and the more wealth for the government.  Yet, the Wikipedia listing states, "The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics reports that estimates of revenue-maximizing tax rates have varied widely, with a mid-range of around 70%.  There is a consensus among leading economists that a reduction in the US federal income tax rate would not raise annual total tax revenue."  What?  Consensus of whom?  Ridiculous!  This is what our children are being fed in college.  This is why JAM VIEWS attempts to stop us from blindly following the TV show, your professor, the government, your boss, that guy on the corner.  They are almost always wrong.
     Don't be mentally lazy.  Think.  Have a great week!

"Victory smiles upon those who anticipate the changes in the character of war, not upon those who wait to adapt themselves after the changes occur."  -  Italian Air Marshall Giulio Douhet

Many thanks to the WSJ, Forbes, & Fortune for the above statistics and quotations.

** For more information on Jeff's Books, Blog, and Legal Challenge, please visit www.jeffmartinovich.com.

** To access JAM Views directly please visit jeffreyamartinovich.blogspot.com 

* SUBSCRIBE TO JAM VIEWS

* PLEASE USE THE BELOW SHARE BUTTONS TO SPREAD THE WORD!