Socialism is gaining power in America… Just not the way most folks think… In the mailbag: Is the U.S. taking a suicide dive into the death spiral?
On Wednesday, March 27, at 8 p.m. ET, legendary speculator and Legacy Research cofounder Doug Casey will take to the air in the world premiere of Totally Incorrect: LIVE.
In this live web event, you’ll get a rare behind-the-scenes look at Doug’s career over the past 50 years as a speculator and freethinker. You’ll find out how he formed his unique approach to the markets… along with how he made his greatest windfalls.
If you don’t already know about Doug and his career, it’s going to be a great way to get more familiar with him.
But it’ll also be a chance to find out what he sees coming down the pike for America – and what you can do about it.
That’s because Doug will be revealing five politically incorrect predictions for 2019… along with five speculative plays on his predictions that could 10x or more over the next year.
So make sure to secure your spot at next Wednesday’s big event right here.
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As we’ve been showing you, more and more Americans believe there’s something wrong with capitalism.
They say it’s to blame for the widening gap between rich and poor… And that we need to switch to a more socialist system instead.
Rising Democratic Socialist star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is the best-known advocate of this view. She wants to soak the rich with a 70% tax rate on income over $10 million. (Today’s rate is 37%.)
And she’s not alone. You can expect higher taxes on the rich to be a major topic in the upcoming Democratic presidential primaries.
Bernie Sanders wants to slap a 77% death tax on billionaires’ estates. And Elizabeth Warren is calling for a 2% levy on household wealth in excess of $50 million… and a 3% levy on wealth above $1 billion.
That’s what you’d expect from the folks on the left. To quote AOC, they believe capitalism is “irredeemable” and can only be saved by more government control.
We’re not talking about the RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) – folks who vote Republican out of habit.
We’re talking about some of the most dyed-in-the-wool conservatives.
Take right-wing pundit Ann Coulter. She wants to take things even further than AOC.
Here’s what Coulter tweeted in January in reference to Charles and David Koch – two of the Republican Party’s biggest donors…
The majority rank-and-file Republicans now believe that the rich should get their comeuppance, too.
A Fox News poll that came out in January found that AOC’s proposal to jack up income taxes on earnings above $10 million has the support of 54% of registered Republicans.
Before today, would you have believed that AOC, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Ann Coulter, and the typical registered Republican could agree on anything?
But shocking as it may seem, in the end, the capitalism versus socialism debate on Capitol Hill is a sideshow.
As we’ll show you in today’s dispatch, it’s all just a distraction from the government’s greatest power grab of all… its hijacking of the money system.
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But it wasn’t always that way.
For more than a century, the gold standard forced it and other governments to convert each unit of the currencies they issued for a fixed amount of gold.
But that system came crashing down in 1971. As Legacy Research cofounder Bill Bonner explained it…
A half century ago, both Democrats and Republicans rolled along in good order, on the firm footing of mostly balanced budgets. They had little choice. If not, federal borrowing would drive up interest rates – “crowding out” private borrowers – and force a general correction.
Then, in order to avoid reckoning with the results of over-spending on the war in Vietnam and the Great Society, the Nixon administration switched tracks. It changed the money system.
The new dollar, not limited by gold-backing, gave the financial engineers more to work with. They could add cash and credit almost at will.
It’s the scandal of the modern age: Governments now have a lock on the money system.
Money is no longer a commodity outside their control… like it was under the gold standard. They can now create as many new dollars… euros… or yen as they want with a few keystrokes on a computer at a central bank.
That’s according to Bill’s fellow cofounder here at Legacy Research, Doug Casey…
The argument shouldn’t be over whether this will “work” or not. The argument should be about whether it’s moral and proper for people in the government – whether elected or appointed – to print money to change the economy into something that suits them better.
Money represents the hours of your life that you spent earning it. That’s the basic principle here. It represents concentrated life – all the things you want to have and do for yourself, and provide for others in the future. When these people destroy the value of money, they’re destroying part of your life.
That’s why the capitalism versus socialism Punch and Judy show is a waste of time. The rich can easily hire accountants to get out of paying higher taxes.
But all of us have to deal with the feds’ control over money.
And governments will continue to abuse their power over the money system with schemes like quantitative easing (aka money-printing) and negative interest rates when the next crisis strikes.
It’s why we’ve been urging you to reduce your exposure to public money – dollars, euros, yen, and so on – and to increase your exposure to private money – gold and Bitcoin.
And as we’ve been showing you, there’s now a way to combine these two forms of sound money – gold-backed cryptocurrencies.
These are all great ways to protect your buying power as fiat currencies sink.
That’s the question on the table today, as the debate over the rise of socialism continues…
America and humanity are absolutely better off without socialism of any kind. The psychological principle that “the behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated” is at the core of this issue. One naturally avoids pain, but one should recognize that pain focuses the mind far better than comfort. The progress of humanity depends upon painful realizations/crises pushing us to refine ourselves.
It is unjust that productive members of society are forced to pay for the coddling of unproductive members of society. It gathers fools, at increasing speed, into a degrading contest to prove one’s stupidity and insufficiency as a means to qualify for survival payments from the government.
Welfare programs basically amount to enforced compassion. Socialism is an illogical, short-sighted, suicide dive into the death spiral and ultimately leads to the human species devolution. I could expand upon my assertions ad infinitum but I’m sure those of us who are productive have better things to do with our time.
– Stephanie E.
Throughout recorded history, over different civilizations and political economic systems, capitalism is the only monetary and socioeconomic system that ACTUALLY creates MORE than it destroys. Namely, it creates incentives to save and produce. It rewards industry and efficiency. And it flows (more naturally) from weaker hands to stronger hands.
Being aligned with human nature, capitalism allows for the greed and expected rewards to equal the fear and expected risks. Blaming rising income inequality on “the evils of capitalism” is like blaming “muddy fields for bad crops.” Without the mud, there is no soil to plant. Without capitalism, there is no abundance of capital… to create wealth!
– David W.
There is merit to a mixed system. To portray “free” healthcare and education (i.e., paid by taxes) as socialism on par with Venezuela is plainly wrong – maybe done out of ignorance. Look at the Scandinavian countries. They are mixed systems – i.e., market economies with strong welfare systems. All of them are doing pretty well economically, as well as in surveys of people’s well-being and happiness.
Seems to me that most of the U.S. Democrats’ “socialist” proposals are more Scandinavian-style than Venezuelan-style.
– Claes A.
Will more socialism send America the way of the Scandinavian countries… or of Venezuela? As always, write us at feedback@legacyresearch.com.
Regards,
Chris Lowe
March 21, 2019
Dublin, Ireland
Watch the Trailer for Totally Incorrect: LIVE
In the world premiere of Totally Incorrect: LIVE, legendary speculator Doug Casey will reveal his five politically incorrect predictions for 2019 and beyond.
Doug’s upcoming forecasts are too outrageous to reveal in full here… You’ll have to hear them straight from Doug during his live event on Wednesday, March 27, at 8 p.m. ET.