A Wee Bit WEF: Taxes, Capitalism, and
the Presentation of a New Star
by Not Sure
21 Jan 2021
Alan Watt has mentioned that new political stars are
presented at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland, and cited Arnold Schwarzenegger’s trip to the ski resort town just
before he became governor of California.
It is possible that we have been introduced to a new light in the
constellation, in the form of Argentina’s new president, The Most Excellent
Javier Milei, a former economics professor and television personality who has
been described as a libertarian, a right-wing libertarian, a right-wing populist
(keeping company with Bolsonaro, Orbán, Meloni, and Trump), a supporter of laissez-faire
economics, and an anarcho-capitalist.
One thing that Milei is not, is a loose cannon. He supports Ukraine, and closer ties with the
United States and Israel.
Attached is a link where you will see the English
transcript of a speech that Milei gave at Davos last week, and embedded on the
page is a video of the speech.
Davos 2024: A special
address by Javier Milei
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/01/special-address-by-javier-milei-president-of-argentina/
The speech
has been described as “fiery.” Milei
chastised the audience for their bent toward socialism; the answer to every
problem is more government intervention.
He championed capitalism, he said the Western world was in danger. In a separate meeting, he took on inflation
and poverty with the head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva. Argentina’s inflation is currently
211.4%. His solution? A “tough austerity package.” A tough poverty package.
***
In the
first section of Carroll Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope, he wrote about the
long history of capitalism, and its various stages. In a subsection entitled “Financial Capitalism,
1850-1931” he wrote:
“This third stage of capitalism is of such overwhelming
significance in the history of the twentieth century, and its ramifications and
influences have been so subterranean and even occult, that we may be excused if
we devote considerate attention to its organization and methods.”
He then
proceeds to give that considerate attention which includes a history of the oligarchy
intimately connected to money, e.g. the Rothschild dynasty, foundations and
interlocking directorships, the creation of a type of a banker we now refer to
as the “international banker,” money as debt, sound money, the gold standard,
and so on. Later in this section,
Quigley writes:
“Another paradox of banking practice arose from the fact
that bankers, who loved deflation, often acted in an inflationary fashion from
their eagerness to lend money at interest.
Since they make money out of loans, they are eager to increase the
amounts of bank credit on loan. But this
is inflationary. The conflict between
the deflationary ideas and inflationary practices of bankers had profound
repercussions on business. The bankers made loans to business so that the
volume of money increased faster than the increase in goods. The result was inflation. When this became clearly noticeable, the bankers
would flee to notes or specie by curtailing credit and raising discount
rates. This was beneficial to bankers in
the short run (since it allowed them to foreclose on collateral held for
loans), but it could be disastrous to them in the long run (by forcing the
value of the collateral below the amount of the loans it secured). But such bankers’ deflation was destructive
to business and industry in the short run as well as the long run.”
***
Free market and free trade
are two very different concepts, though they are often intentionally
conflated. We are living in a free trade
world that set its wheels in motion after World War II and has now been
accomplished in the form of trading blocs.
To suggest that nations or individuals could return to the quaint idea
of Gilded Age laissez-faire capitalism or a Randian idea of the
unfettered individual who engages in capitalistic pursuits and the good, but unintended
consequence is a social system most beneficial to the poor, is naïve in the
face of the beast which is Free Trade organized by an oligarchy.
Tax our wealth, super-rich
tell politicians at Davos
Meanwhile
very wealthy Davos attendees, including Abigail Disney and Valerie Rockefeller,
tell the politicians (those who weren’t too busy with high-priced hookers, and
boozy schmoozing) “tax our wealth.” As
if…
© Not Sure