“We are the 99%!” This slogan of the Occupy Wall Street protesters has been called the most memorable quote of the past year. Those who rally to its cry do so in opposition to the villainous 1%.

For a handful of the protesters, being a member of the 1% means being a wealthy recipient of a government bailout, or some other form of corporate welfare. But for the economic egalitarians in their ranks, it simply means being too rich. They say the wealthiest 1% of the country are getting more than their fair share of the wealth in society, at the expense of the 99%.

Whatever one thinks of the current plight of the 99%, throughout almost all of history, things were much worse for the vast majority of the population. In precapitalist ages, the average member of the economic 99%, if lucky enough to survive infancy, was consigned to a life of back-breaking work and poverty, constantly on the verge of famine, disease, and death.

The only individuals who did not have such a wretched life were the “1%” of old. This economic 1% was virtually identical with the state. It was made up of the French kings, the English lords, the Roman senators, the Egyptian viziers, and the Sumerian temple priests. The members of this elite lived in Olympian splendor: servants at their beck and call, as much food as they could possibly want, spacious homes, an abundance of jewelry, and a tremendous amount of leisure time.

And of course, this lifestyle was borne on the backs of the masses. It was the 99% who produced the bread that stuffed the mouths of the 1%, who felled the trees to erect their mansions, and who mined the precious metals and stones to adorn their bodies.

CONTINUED at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Written by Daniel James Sanchez.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

I had a long weekend but it is now over. My time in Gainesville with my cousin and friends was a blast, as I haven’t actually been partying too hard over the last month. This trip was a good way for me to drown in bourbon, Irish whiskey, tequila, Long Islands, Guinness, ginger beer and Pabst. I’ve been trying to be healthier in an attempt to lose weight and potentially live a somewhat longer life but even with my more health conscious attitude, my inner party monster still needs to be entertained and unleashed every now and again. What better time than with other party monsters that I genuinely cherish in a wild college town during graduation weekend? There was no point in taking any prisoners, as we ran roughshod over downtown Gainesville leaving no bottle unturned. A few days later, my stomach still hurts and my head is still swimming in a sea of 86 proof delirium – a special shout out goes to 1.75 liters of Old Crow Reserve.

To those who might find my more health conscious behavior a bit unsettling, there is no need to worry. It’s not called selling out when you do it because your liver hurts and you’ve been pissing blood. The blood part was not related to the booze but it was still a wake up call to straighten my shit out some what. Have no fear though, I will not go soft and become a shell of my former self like so many writers and artists who went clean only for their work to suffer and lose its appeal. Trent Reznor immediately comes to mind, although his Academy Award for a very boring and minimalist film score probably proves me wrong but only if you take the Academy seriously and turn a blind eye to their petty politics.

Anyway, my first night in Gainesville on this latest trip was intense. It started almost immediately with two Guinness Draughts and four Long Island iced teas while I watched my friends play pool. I didn’t participate in the contest because I was enjoying my own game of drown the writer in the dark and dingy corner of smoke and neon light. It is a one-player game but the odds are always steep and the challenge is never dull. Needless to say, I won the bout and went on to fight in other bouts in other venues for the remainder of the 48 hour tournament.

The weekend wasn’t all about completely succumbing to vices however. I mean, I never came across any other substances to entertain myself with and that’s fine, the booze was enough. I did get to spend a lot of the time talking politics and economics with the college kids, some of them a part of the Occupy Gainesville movement. Now while we didn’t see eye-to-eye on solutions, we did agree on the vast majority of the problems. My job, from my standpoint, was to try and get them to understand that you can’t just blame the banks for the madness. The government is just as responsible as is the Federal Reserve. Truth is, they were really receptive to a lot of the things I was saying. Now I had half a dozen conversations with a dozen or more people but for the most part, other than two or three close-minded joiners, they got what I was saying and left the conversations with the intent to look into their new perspective on these matters themselves. One of them even promised to pick up some of the books I wrote down for him on a napkin (titles by Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Milton Friedman and more modern authors Jeffrey Tucker and Stefan Molyneux – who has a ton of free e-books).

One interesting thing I discovered among talking to multiple college kids, is that their only real beef with Ron Paul is his pro-life stance. I told them that it is an issue I also disagree with Dr. Paul on. However, I told them that if you look at the rest of his platform and like it, writing him off over one issue is a bit careless. Especially since Dr. Paul thinks that it should be an issue left up to states and not the federal government regardless of his personal opinion on it. Most of these kids understood that but had a hard time envisioning a country were states’ rights were protected, at least on this issue. I explained that you cannot pick and choose issues and that the rule had to apply with everything. If you make one exception, you will make plenty more. They got and respected it but still had a bug in their ass about it and I get that. I then spoke to them about Gary Johnson who is basically a clone of Ron Paul policy-wise but is pro-choice instead of pro-life. Most of the people I talked to had not heard of Johnson and were actually pretty excited upon finding out his stance on the abortion issue. They also liked that Gary Johnson was not a Democrat or a Republican. I didn’t bring up all the issues they said they had with Obama however, as there were a lot more than what they had with Paul. Regardless of this, they will probably vote for Obama again even though they claim they are opposed to war, Gitmo and a plethora of other issues he has failed them on.

Now don’t get me wrong, not everyone was cordial. There were those few dumb bastards in the mix and fucking with them and sending them off in a self-conlficted rage was quite amusing. One kid was calling for anarchy and at the same time was calling for government to step in and regulate the banks more. Point is, this kid’s whole world-view was completely hypocritical. On one hand, this kid (and those like him) want to scream “Fuck the man!” and “Fuck the police!” while on the other hand want the government (the man and the police) to step in and regulate everything even more than they do now. I don’t understand how so many young people can’t seem to make a correlation between these two things? You want the government who is bought and paid for by the banks to regulate the banks? You can’t see how this is completely asinine, let alone how this is what has caused all these problems to begin with? Your solution to the problem is more of the problem itself? Does the meth addict break the cycle by taking more meth? No, the meth addict dies! Common sense is like a disease in the hipster socialist-anarchist psyche.

The ones who are so passionate in their ignorance don’t even care about the real crux of the problem. They want to continue to buy into their conflicted and hypocritical indoctrination and smash anyone who doesn’t swim in their sea of shit. On top of that, they don’t want to better themselves, they want to stay at the bottom so they can continue to bitch as they wallow in dirt and filth because if they were to try and actually get out of it, they’d be outed as a “sell out” or even worse a “hard-working capitalist pig consumer”. Yep, keep pointing your Djarum-clutching fingers as you slur your PBR-soaked words kiddies.

Not all is lost on the generation after mine however. Amongst the sea of those I dealt with, only a few were bad apples and completely hopeless. I remember myself at that age, as I had a similar view of the world. It was someone challenging me on my preconceived notions that got me to pay attention and learn how this whole game really works. If at least one of those kids breaks free from the mold and is affected by our encounter, my debt is repaid. I enjoyed the friendly and civil debates and even had fun with the assholes. In the end, it is about standing your ground and living by your own code not the code of some undefined group whose ideology is lesser than the sum of its parts.

I got home, feeling pretty good about how most of the weekend went down. I also felt great for ignoring my responsibilities for a few days while not even paying attention to what was going on in the news. I didn’t really miss anything, other than Rick Santorum finally wiping away his bitch tears to endorse Mitt Romney, which just gave me flashbacks to 2008 when he was riding that Romney train hard. Something tells me that if I had the same debates with Santorum supporters that I had with the college youth of Gainesville, it wouldn’t have been as civil. I hope that all of those sweater-vests the Santorumites bought up like quaaludes at a disco are constructed of Iranian dog hair and Chinese asbestos. It would be the perfect ending to such a vile group of people.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

Anybody but Obama! That has been the mantra shouted out by Republicans and Tea Partiers all over America for quite some time now. The reality pill that no one on the right is willing to swallow that I myself took a double dose of a few years ago is that the two groups are really just one in the same. Sure, the Tea Party talks a big game and I really wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.. no, I really did. However, this 2012 election cycle on top of their complete lack of real vigilance after their hollow midterm victory in 2010 has just gone on to prove my worst fears about these “non-partisan” big talking “fiscal” conservative hacks.

So as I type this while sitting at the bar in my favorite local Irish pub, I must reflect on the incident that inspired this article. You see, it was just this past Saturday that my local chapter of the Tea Party decided to hold an event in an effort to celebrate Tax Day. By “celebrate”, I mean bitching and moaning about crazy spending and government waste while trying to sound like true fiscal warriors out to chop off the heads of our big government leviathan. Now I didn’t attend this Tea Party and truth be told, I haven’t gone to one in well over a year because I just don’t see the point in trying to parade around with those who are primarily hypocrites and blind to the fact that their actions have a stark contrast to their rhetoric. Honestly, I’d rather spend my afternoon eating ribs and going to a bar to work on my writing in an effort to really bring forth some change in this country or at least give some ammunition to the hundreds of thousands who read my words regularly. I did witness the latest installment of the angry Anti-Obamanoids however and I can’t not share what I saw and my thoughts on it and the whole Tea Party movement in general at this point.

I tried to blow passed them but I couldn’t help but slow down my car and gawk at the ludicrous display, as I rolled by the event on my way to the local barbecue joint. My how the mighty have fallen in just a short short time. The saddest part, and I can only speak about my local chapter, is it looks like the numbers of participants has dwindled from where it was just two years ago. It was kind of sad actually. In what is a pivotal election year, participation at this rally was nowhere near the magnitude of the monstrous rallies that were spread across America leading up to the 2010 midterm elections. It’s like two-thirds of the Tea Partiers were satisfied enough with the Republicans taking back the House of Representatives that this much bigger election doesn’t even matter. This lack of participation has been apparent in the fact that the number of people voting has been down quite consistently across all the primaries from just four years ago when Obama bitchslapped McCain and his Alaskan parrot.

Then again, maybe those two-thirds that seem to be missing are of a much smarter stock and have decided to abandon the hopeless Tea Party crusade as I have. Maybe, just maybe, they see the forest for the trees and understand that this “Anybody but Obama!” mantra is complete and utter bullshit! Yes, Obama is shit as president and this isn’t in any way being written in defense of him but to think that anyone could just walk onto the job and do better is fucking moronic and completely careless. It just goes to show how clueless a lot of these damn dolts are. The fact that the roadside was decorated with Mitt Romney signs further proves my point.

You see, even just a few months ago, these Tea Party people – while screaming, “Anybody but Obama!” – were adamantly opposed to Mitt Romney. These tea-sippin’ geniuses clung onto every other candidate that wasn’t Romney in an effort to get someone to the top of the heap. Then again, for the most part, the vast majority of the Tea Partiers didn’t give Ron Paul a real shot at the top. Everyone else got their day though: Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Hell, even Jon Huntsman gained some key delegates early in the voting process. However, during this long and arduous game of pass the hot potato, no one gave it to the only guy who actually practices what these hypocritical hobbits preach. Again, as I’ve pointed this out countless times, Dr. Paul gave birth to the Tea Party but the group that exists now is just the Tea Party In Name Only. So I guess “Anybody but Obama!” doesn’t include the only guy who could statistically beat Obama. This is why Republicans continue to fail and why the Tea Party is deader than shit.

These people don’t want a real solution to the things that they bitch and complain about. What they want is for a Republican victory over the Democratic led progressive machine. I guess the fact that the guy that all these anti-Obamanoids are now rallying around is also a progressive doesn’t really seem to matter. You see, these people are the establishment and they are a part of the problem. Their goal is soulless and their aim is bullshit. Now that the smoke is starting to clear, these people are lining up behind Mitt Romney, the guy they all talked shit about for years. The same guy who provided the model for Obamacare in Romneycare. You know, Obamacare – the issue that got these people so up in arms just 24 months ago!

So why do they now support this guy? Because the Tea Party has been co-opted and taken over by sheep and shepherds who don’t understand that they are really just sheep as well. These people, who are typically glued to the O’Reilly Factor and Rush Limbaugh day-to-fucking-day, don’t have the aptitude for politics that they believe they do. They’re malleable idiots being shaped and formed by the pontificating jackturds who speak to them from the other side of a speaker or screen where the words they utter are manufactured by a sinister agenda fueled by corporatist pigs and an unrelenting all-too-powerful two party system. This isn’t conspiracy theorist lunacy, it is facts – plain and simple. To deny it only solidifies your ignorance. To not question everything and educate yourself just shows that you give way too much trust over to people you do not know who only have their own best interests at heart. And this just really goes back to my earlier comment about the Tea Party’s complete lack of real vigilance.

If the Tea Party was as vigilant as they claimed they were and if they stood for the principles plastered across their signs, they’d have already put several of their heroes’ feet to the fire. I don’t have to look much further than my own state of Florida to give examples of Tea Party sweethearts who have proven to be nothing more than progressive neocon establishment bitches. Marco Rubio, a senator from Florida who many Tea Partiers want to run alongside Romney, has been fiscally irresponsible, supported unconstitutional war, tried to limit the freedom of speech, supported pro-police state legislation across the board and committed many other heinous acts that should completely disqualify him from being a Tea Party superstar. Allen West, a Florida congressman, has also voted almost consistently in-line with Rubio while sitting on the House side of Congress. Then there’s Michele Bachmann, who is just a complete mess and a retched dingbat, as well as Herman Cain who proved that giving deals on pizza toppings doesn’t make you knowledgeable enough to become president. The long list of Tea Party politicians that stormed the steps of Congress two years ago have gone on to perpetuate the madness they ran against while still gaining the approval of the intellectually lazy Tea Party majority.

As I drove by the event this past Saturday, I did notice a few young people holding up a giant Ron Paul banner. Those kids get my respect and at least there are a few sane people left in a sea of bad apples. While their valiant effort was dwarfed by the overabundance of Romney propaganda, they did look like the only people there who were actually enjoying themselves. Then again, the ex-soccer moms and their obedient husbands, whose kids are now adults and moved out of the house, did show a wee bit of energy waving their “Anybody but Obama!” signs from the comfort of their overpriced and overly-stylized lawn chairs. They probably don’t want to overexert themselves like the three youngsters with the Ron Paul banner however, as their senior entitlements may soon run dry. Who’s fault is that really?

I understand that there are people, some who I am still friends with, that feel it is necessary to play this Tea Party game. The truth is, it’s a waste of time. The real movement is dead and has been dead for quite awhile. Even if it could magically be brought back to its early glory, it would still be associated with the Tea Party name and just like the words “liberal” and “conservative” before it, the name “Tea Party” has been so bastardized and abused that there is no coming back from the shitty abyss it has sunk to. Fuck these giant corporately co-opted groups. It’s time for people to be self-educated, self-starting, self-thinking individuals again and let the bullshit die. Find your own path and don’t be swayed and if you come across those who share your principles and your beliefs, embrace them. Just stay truly vigilant and don’t let them piss all over the dream and leave it a urine-soaked carcass not even worthy of being kicked around for sport. At least the Occupy Wall Street movement had the sense to tell corporate sponsorship to fuck off. With that, they get more respect from me than the Tea Party, who has continually compromised their principles and values because one really doesn’t have those things when they are just adopted from what some billionaire pundit has dictated to his obedient flock.

If you people were really worried about the state of this country, you’d do something about it. Something real, something that actually mattered! However, that starts with getting off of your asses and doing your own self-educating. And yes, I’m talking to all you people with stacks of books with the names Beck, O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Levin, Savage, Coulter, Ingraham and Hannity scrawled across their spines. Maybe it’s time to trade those in for books with the names Mises, Rothbard, Hazlitt, Hayek, Friedman, Sowell, Rockwell and Paul on them. What’s the worst that could happen? You might actually learn something, gain my respect and be a lot less of a fucking tool.

In his lecture at George Washington University on March 20, 2012, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said that under a gold standard the authorities’ ability to address economic conditions is significantly curtailed. The Fed chairman holds that the gold standard prevents the central bank from engaging in policies aimed at stabilizing the economy after sudden shocks. This in turn, holds the Fed chairman, could lead to severe economic upheavals. According to Bernanke,

Since the gold standard determines the money supply, there’s not much scope for the central bank to use monetary policy to stabilize the economy.… Because you had a gold standard which tied the money supply to gold, there was no flexibility for the central bank to lower interest rates in recession or raise interest rates in an inflation.

This is precisely why the gold standard is so good: it prevents the authorities from engaging in reckless money pumping of the sort Bernanke has been engaging in since the end of 2007 by pushing over $2 trillion in new money into the banking system.

The Federal Reserve balance sheet jumped from $0.889 trillion in December 2007 to $2.247 trillion in December 2008. The yearly rate of growth of the balance sheet climbed from 2.6 percent in December 2007 to 152.8 percent by December 2008. Additionally the Fed has aggressively lowered the federal-funds rate target from 5.25 percent in August 2007 to almost nil by December 2008.

Consequently the yearly rate of growth of the AMS measure[3] of the US money supply climbed from 1.5 percent in April 2008 to 14.3 percent by August 2009.

CONTINUED at the Ludwig vin Mises Institute. Written by Frank Shostak.

Recorded 10 March 2012 at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. Featuring Peter Klein, Joe Salerno, David Gordon, Shawn Ritenour, Guido Hulsmann, and Jeffrey Herbener. Includes a Question and Answer period.

1. Authoritarian Capitalism (Fascism) and Liberal Capitalism (the Free Market)

What is sometimes referred to as “authoritarian capitalism,” or fascism, is in fact a variety of statism, specifically socialism, the system of political economy in which the prerogatives of ownership over the means of production and distribution are vested in the state. Under the fascist economic system, private capitalists are nominally regarded as the owners of the means of production, meaning that they hold property titles to these assets and are referred to as “owners” of these assets. However, this so-called ownership is merely illusory. The actual prerogatives of ownership are vested, not in the private capitalist, but in the state and its bureaucracy.[1] It is the state that tells the private capitalist how he must use “his” property, under the threat of confiscation or even imprisonment. In the words of economist Ludwig von Mises, it is “socialism in the outward guise of capitalism.”[2]

This is a very different political-economic system from “liberal capitalism,” also known as “free-market capitalism.” Free-market capitalism is an authentically capitalist system, in which the prerogatives of ownership over the means of production are vested in private citizens, not in the state. Under this system, the means of production are genuinely privately owned, and the private-property owner holds, not just a property title, but, more importantly, the actual prerogatives of ownership and ultimate control. In the system of free-market capitalism, the private-property owner is regarded as having property rights (i.e., an enforceable moral claim to the prerogatives of ownership) that must be respected by all others, including the state and its functionaries.

In their purest forms, these two systems of political economy are fundamentally different in kind; in fact, they are polar opposites. However, this opposing nature stems from the degree to which the prerogatives of ownership of ostensibly private property are arrogated to the state — i.e., the degree of state intervention. On the one extreme we have the free market, in which there is no — or at least little — state interference with private-property ownership (which is therefore genuine); on the other extreme we have fascism, in which there is plentiful or total state interference with private-property ownership (which is therefore illusory).

Since fascism and the free market are distinguished by state intervention we can therefore see that the two systems are separated by a connecting bridge of interventionism through the system of the “mixed economy.” The fascist system can be viewed as a system of hyperinterventionism, accruing when state interference with private-property rights is so extensive that the alleged private ownership of property becomes a mere farce, and the state may properly be regarded as the de facto owner of the means of production and distribution — i.e., there is de facto socialism. For this reason, the analysis of fascism and its long-term viability is very similar to the analysis of interventionism in the mixed economy, and the same kinds of economic and political insights apply.

CONTINUED at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Written by Ben O’Neill.

The US unemployment rate dropped to 8.3 percent for January — naturally it was a good photo opportunity for US president Barack Obama to say the economy is improving. Really? In fact, a large chunk of those people who finally found work last month landed low wage jobs, and almost half of the unemployed (43%) have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks. That’s 6 months without a job for 5.5 million people in this country, and that’s only the official tally. Youth unemployment is also awful, stuck at 23 percent. So what are we supposed to do? How do we fix this? Well, author Jeffrey Tucker is in studio with us today — a special treat — and he will tell us what he thinks should be done. One solution that washington has proposed is raising taxes, and in fact, today is the income tax’s birthday. Hurray! Wait…should we be celebrating this or should we be asking the question “where is our money going?” Maybe washington should be held accountable for all the money it not only wastes, but outright steals, before it starts extending its hands asking for more. Maybe congress should start curbing insider trading, or kickbacks, before it starts raising taxes for the majority of americans, but providing loop holes for the well-connected. And what role does the Federal Reserve play in all of this? How can it be held accountable, and should we just abolish the federal reserve as Ron Paul says? Well, Jeffrey Tucker will tell us what he thinks. He will be debating Dean Baker tonight in Washington on just this issue, and he is going to lay out his case against the fed.

Specific Reforms Required

The growth of the American government in the late 19th and 20th centuries is reflected in its increasing presence and finally monopolization of the monetary system. Any attempt at restoring monetary freedom must be part of a comprehensive plan to roll back government and once again confine it within the limits of the Constitution. That comprehensive plan may be divided into four sections: monetary legislation, the budget, taxation, and regulation. We shall begin with monetary reforms, and conclude with a word about international cooperation and agreement.

Monetary Legislation

Legal-Tender Laws

As we have seen, the Constitution forbids the states to make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debt, nor does it permit the federal government to make anything a legal tender. One of the most important pieces of legislation that could be enacted would be the repeal of all federal legal-tender laws. Such laws, which have the effect of forcing creditors to accept something in payment for the debts due them that they do not wish to accept, are one of the most tyrannical devices of the present monetary authorities.

Not only does the Federal Reserve have a coercive monopoly in issuing “money,” but every American is forced to accept it. Each Federal Reserve note bears the words, “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” The freedom to conduct business in something else — such as gold and silver coin — cannot exist so long as the government forces everyone to accept its paper notes. Monetary freedom ends where legal-tender laws begin.

The United States had no such laws until 1862, when the Congress — in violation of the Constitution — enacted them in order to ensure the acceptance of the Lincoln greenbacks, the paper notes printed by the US Treasury during the wartime emergency. That “emergency” has now lasted for 120 years; it is time that this unconstitutional action by the Congress be repealed. Freedom of contract — and the right to have such contracts enforced, not abrogated, by the government — is one of the fundamental pillars of a free society.

CONTINUED at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Written by Ron Paul.

Murray N. Rothbard presented this speech at the Michigan Libertarian Party Convention, held in Southfield, Michigan, in May 1989. This selection also includes a question and answer session. Special thanks to Bob Roddis for making this video available.