IMF Wants you to Pay 71% Income Tax Rate

[cr1776]

Fresh on the heals of the global wealth tax proposal, I n order to "maximize revenues", the IMF wants tax rates to be set at 71%:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-12/imf-wants-you-pay-71-income-tax



If rates like that don't spur people to protect themselves, little will.

[godislove]

To understand what's happening, read "Shock Doctrine".  The policies the Washington consensus used to impoverish South America and Asia with the world bank and IMF are now being used against Europe.  The methodology is this: get countries in debt in terms of a currency they do not control with the promise their economies will do better.  Then take control of their assets when they can't pay.  In a sense the country's infrastructure becomes the asset against which the loans are made.  The "conqueror" does not want to make the loan in a local currency because then the victim country could print money to pay the debt.  The currency can easily make its way home and potentially cause inflation, so you pass laws so that it can only come back in order to buy products that your people produce or to build a factory inside your borders so that the paid debt is not used to take control of your country. This is a currency control and a block on free trade, which the Washington Consensus has brainwashed the world (except China) into thinking it is bad for everyone through the hand-waving magical phrase "comparative advantage" which is true only under certain conditions.  The other error is the simplistic thinking like Jim Rogers: "inflation is bad, deflation is good".  It all depends on how you do the printing and contraction of the money supply as to if money supply change is good or bad.  

The other option is to say "No, we are not going to pay. You made a stupid investment". This is what should be said to foreign-held Treasuries and to real estate mortgages.   Then we would not be able to get foreign nor local loans. For the countries who were victims of this austerity shock doctrine, it's OK if they kept good on contracts with foreign companies with local assets who are willing to invest more without raping resources.  They could print their way out if they produce excess food and other needed commodities.  They default and toughen up ifthey do not have commodities and will have to buy them on the world market.  The reason it works like this is because commodities are the foundation of money.  But it's not exactly like that. A really smart populace can make up for this by turning foreign commodities into goods.  Then "intelligence" is your commodity that's in abundant supply, like Japan.  In all cases of "commodities", it takes long term planning and a lot of investment.

The Euro is a foreign currency to every member except for (partially) France and Germany.  So the banks of Europe have the citizens of Europe in a bind.  The Euro was pushed by France because Germany was becoming completely dominant again on the continent through its superior ability to produce. But Germany did not accept the Euro without protecting itself during its formation.  Germany is dominant because it does not make loans like the rest of the West.  Its loans to itself have been made to increase its productive capacity, not to build up a fictitious economy of financial and insurance "services". It's not all smart: its excessive spending on solar cells was lobbied by German manufacturers, but they let the Chinese in under a free trade type of thinking and it destroyed German manufacturers and was a fantastic boon to Chinese solar production....but only because China has a currency control.  See the results of simplistic views on economics?  Free trade plus strong currency = destroy your productive capacity.  Intelligent currency control = build your country.  Every fool in the U.S. could see the U.S. in the 1990's was destroying its industry with free trade and a strong dollar.  But the economics experts assured us this was not the case.

From Michael Hudson:

"The idea by the Progressive Era in the early 20th century was that instead of banking being predatory as it had been for thousands of years, instead lending against real estate or to governments for war loans – or for petty consumer usury, foreclosing and putting people in debtors’ prisons – for the first time in history banks were going to make loans to finance direct investment in new means of production. The aim was to mobilize banking and savings to expand industry, to build factories and equipment that weren’t already there.

This is how Germany rose rapidly to industrial power with the Reichsbank, along with the rest of central Europe. Leading up to World War I, German banks worked with the German government almost as semi public entities – along with the military-industrial complex, to be sure. But at least you had banking taking industrial form.

World War I changed everything. You had a reversion to the English-Dutch-American kind of banking that was called merchant banking. Banks would make loans to ship goods that are already produced, or they’d make loans against real estate. So today you have 80 percent of bank loans in America and England and Scandinavia are all loans for real estate. So, essentially the function of the financial sector has been simply to load down the economy with debt without helping the economy grow.

What you really want is for banks, instead of loading the economy down with debt, to be able to finance economic growth instead of just eating into growth as an overhead."

[zeroday]

Yet another great proposal from InternationalMotherFuckers

[Adrian-x]

What you really want is for banks, instead of loading the economy down with debt, to be able to finance economic growth instead of just eating into growth as an overhead."

Wise words but good luck to our overlords they have the goal.

The above is true only within the old paradigm, the goal isn't true growth as in more, bigger, busier , we don't need more at this stage in the West. We need better, effective, secure, the tools invented by the Monetarist, are ineffective at creating ingenuity, creativity, efficiency and thrift. 

Growth is the wrong target. The target needs to be Better. (The Austrian toolbox has the most appropriate equipment to get the job done.)

[Siegfried]

What you really want is for banks, instead of loading the economy down with debt, to be able to finance economic growth instead of just eating into growth as an overhead."

Wise words but good luck to our overlords they have the goal.

The above is true only within the old paradigm, the goal isn't true growth as in more, bigger, busier , we don't need more at this stage in the West. We need better, effective, secure, the tools invented by the Monetarist, are ineffective at creating ingenuity, creativity, efficiency and thrift. 

Growth is the wrong target. The target needs to be Better. (The Austrian toolbox has the most appropriate equipment to get the job done.)

Agree completely. Growth is an irrational goal. Extrapolate growth indefinitely and extinction is the only possible outcome.

[odolvlobo]

At 71%, we are only 29% away from becoming slaves.

[LostDutchman]

At 71%, we are only 29% away from becoming slaves.

You are already slaves.

You just haven't figured it out yet.

My $.02

[AnonyMint]

Armstrong commented on this. Also on the Cycle of War which ramps up in 2014.

Firemen fighting the police in Brussels.

Net worth 71% tax is coming because current debt is $150 trillion.

And that doesn't include the $quadrillion in derivative credit swaps, nor the $quadrillion in unfunded social system promises.

Globe will go F.U.B.A.R. in a few more years and stay that way for 2 decades.

We are just spinning our wheels with more debt, buying time.

[LostDutchman]

I and my associates are working on methods to help those who want to keep their crypto transactions essentially underground and un-noticed by The Powers.

I'll get back to you.