Homeschooling 101

by the Home School Legal Defense Association:homeschooling

Where do I find curriculum and materials?

There’s an ever-increasing variety of curriculum—from traditional textbooks to homeschool-specific curriculum and correspondence courses. Thankfully, experienced homeschool moms have put together review guides, saving newcomers time and frustration. Just two such guides are Mary Pride’s Complete Guide to Getting Started in Homeschooling and Cathy Duffy’s 101 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum.

Start by contacting homeschooling veterans in your local and/or state support group—ask what they have tried, what has or has not worked for them, and why. You need to get to know your child’s learning style. Attend a couple of homeschool seminars and curriculum fairs where you can look at your options firsthand. To find a support group or state homeschool convention near you, visit HSLDA’s website.

How much time does it take?

A lot less than you think. Homeschooled students don’t have to take time to change classes or travel to and from a school, so they can proceed at their own pace. In elementary years especially, parents and children often find that they may only need a few hours to accomplish their work for the day.

What if I have several children in different grade levels?

You’ll be surprised at the subjects that can span grade levels. Certain curricula lend themselves to multilevel teaching. You can design your program so that older children work independently in the morning while you work individually with younger children, and then while younger children take naps in the afternoon, you can have one-on-one time with older students.

What about my child’s special needs?

Thousands of families are homeschooling children whose special needs range from Attention Deficit Disorder to severe multiple handicaps. Parents often find that when they bring these children home to be educated, they come out of the “deep freeze” that has kept them from making significant progress. Gone are the comparisons, labels, social pressures, and distractions that a regular classroom may bring. Parents can offer their children individualized education, flexibility, encouragement, and support, which may be ideal for children who are learning-disabled, medically sensitive, or attention-deficit. HSLDA offers resources and help at www.hslda.org/strugglinglearner.

What about socialization & special interests/enrichment activities?

Research has found that most homeschooled students are involved in a wide variety of outside activities, interact with a broad spectrum of people, and make positive contributions to their communities. Experience has shown that homeschoolers are well socialized and able to make lasting friendships across age and cultural divides.

What about the high school years?

Homeschooling your child through high school offers great benefits for parents and students. Sure, there will be challenges such as more difficult subject matter. On the other hand, your high schooler requires less supervision and can take increasing charge of his own education. You can do it, and HSLDA wants to help you! Check out the great resources at www.hslda.org/highschool. HSLDA’s two high school coordinators—moms who’ve graduated their own children from high school at home—bring a wealth of experience and friendly advice to share with member families who are navigating these challenging, yet exciting years.

What about a diploma, graduation, & college?

Homeschool graduates closely parallel their public school counterparts—about two-thirds go on to post-secondary education, and one-third directly into the job market. (Brian Ray, Strengths of Their Own—Home Schoolers Across America, NHERI, 1997.)
Homeschool students who have utilized community colleges for foreign language, lab science, or higher mathematics courses discover as an added bonus that these course credits make it easier to enroll in four-year colleges after high school graduation.

Article originally posted at HSLDA.org.

Emotional Responsiveness

by Carol Goode, Ph.D. – ICPA.org:emotional

Ninety percent of a child’s success in life depends upon emotional responsiveness. Can a child respond to life without hesitance and fear? You have a wonderful opportunity to help your child develop and use strong inner resources.

When we hear a negative thought repeatedly, we start to believe it. It plays on and on in our heads. We give it the power to determine how we interact with the world. All of our thoughts and emotions, good and bad, become imprinted within us over the years. Like the grooves on an old record, the more we hear a negative thought, believe it, and let it run us, the more it becomes deeply imbedded within our consciousness.

The same is true with emotional reactions. We strengthen emotional patterns by repeating them and giving them more power over us. Our emotions become automatic and habitual. Like a repeating program, they run again and again, as long as we let them. The good news is, we can turn the reactions off and change those patterns any time we choose!

Teaching our children to access and use their inner resources defeats negative thinking and erases emotional patterning. Let’s teach them to become aware of their emotions, and to pull new ideas from inside. Here are some simple methods to show them how to achieve an inner focus so they think before they respond.

Take a Breather

We’ve all heard the phrase “take a breather,” meaning to relax and refocus. A few deep breaths relax the body, quiet the emotions and clear the mind.

“My daughter was having problems in school with a little girl who was picking on her,” says Dyan Stein, a transformational breath trainer from Durango, Colorado. “She would come home upset, day after day, until finally we breathed with the intention of sending the other little girl some love.”

“The breathing session helped my daughter shift the way she responded to the little girl, and she didn’t get upset anymore. Now they are the best of friends.”

Stein says that she regularly uses breathing to help her daughter shift her focus when she comes home from school. They spend time together in a positive and loving way, with no distractions. Teaching children appropriate breathing shows them how to safely integrate their feelings, increase skill levels and stay mentally focused on their schoolwork.

Discover the Point of View

To give a 9-year old asthma patient a participatory role in his healing, I asked him how he saw things in his world. He chose to draw his viewpoint. He took the crayons and newsprint and went to his corner with pillows. With great intensity, he grabbed the black and brown crayons, held both in his hands, and drew puffy looking clouds across the top of the page. Next he drew a stick figure in the bottom center page in a bright blue. Then he surrounded the little person in a yellow, egg-shaped circle. Finally, he added some tentacles of the brown-black clouds dripping over the figure’s head.

In less than five minutes, he popped up like a jack-in-the-box to explain his viewpoint of the asthma. He explained, “This stuff on top of the page hangs around me all the time. It’s like my mom, always watching over me. Sometimes it drips on me like this here [he points to the tentacles]. But I feel good [he indicates the bright, blue stick figure]. And I’ve got a lot of energy [he shows me the light around his stick figure] around me so that stuff doesn’t get me.”

Could we have said it so eloquently? The picture hangs in his bedroom to remind him that he has his health and energy. Mom still hovers, but he understands she does it with a caring intention. Even Mom has learned to respect his point of view.

When Words Don’t Come, Move

Twelve-year-old Alaina stormed into the house after several hours at the beach with her friends. Their ages ranged from 11 to 15. It wasn’t unusual for Alaina and her friends to hang out together in the small beach town on the coast of Maine. However, it was highly odd for Alaina to slam the door and sigh loudly in disgust. When I looked at her, I saw a red face ready to explode in anger. Her chesty, fast-paced breathing indicated anxiety.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. She couldn’t speak. She held her hands up as if to say, “Give me a few moments,” while she paced around the kitchen. Wanting to ease her pain, I blurted out, “Move. Just keep moving.”

What she showed me in the next few moments with her actions could never have been so beautifully demonstrated with words. At first she walked briskly in circles, alternating her hands between resting on her hips and throwing them up in the air with a disgusted look on her face.

Her facial expressions were marvelous. She walked up to me with hazy eyes and protruded lips and took a long, slow drag from an imaginary thing in her lips. She slurped the air in and held her breath while smiling dreamily. “You want one?” she gesticulated. Then she turned to answer herself with adamant hand waving in front of her face. “NO!” That was clear! So far I’d determined that the older kids were smoking marijuana and were offering it to her. She got angry and told them no. But the worst was yet to come for this 12-year-old.

She imitated beautifully the charades of being pushed around, laughed at and made to feel as though she were a very uncool kid. She ended the movement by flopping on the kitchen chair and crying. I didn’t say anything. I just put my arms around her and silently thanked her for being so “uncool.”

Follow the Inner Rhythm

Researchers continue to find that children are affected by music in unexpected ways. Preschoolers given piano and voice lessons, for example, were found in one study to improve dramatically in their ability to put together picture puzzles of animals.

When you coach your children, rely on your instincts and experiences in terms of what they need at a given time. Children need quiet music, just as adults do, when they need to relax, sleep or be mentally alert. But if a child needs energizing to engage in tasks or games, lively, upbeat music, such as syncopated Latin dances, will provide the necessary stimulation for movement.

You can coach your child through moments of intense feelings with some musical processes that will make you both feel better. Anger, for example, can be pounded out on a drum; sadness can sing on resonator bells. Talking after the musical expression is much easier and your child will be better able to think of solutions for his situations and answers to his problems.

When you see the warning signs of anger or sibling conflict stirring, reach for the drums! Hand one to your child, along with the drumstick or soft mallet designed for playing it, and pick one up for yourself. Ask your child to use the drum to tell you how she feels. As she strikes the drum, support her playing with a simple basic beat, like 1-2-3-4. Reflect her mood by singing, “You sound very angry. Is that true?” If you get an affirmative response, ask for more: “Let me hear on the drum just how angry you are.” Keep playing your beat as your child lets her emotions out. Depending on your child’s age, drumming, rather than words, may be all you hear for awhile.

You don’t have to do this exercise with a drum. Other musical instruments that are easy and fun to play and to express with include maracas, clavas, jingle bells, spoon bells, resonator bells, sticks, woodblocks, castanets, whistles, kazoos or small horns. If you play an instrument such as piano or guitar, you may want to accompany your child on it while she plays the drum, or you might play a recording that features accented rhythm. West African and Native American drumming tapes are ideally suited for this purpose and are widely available.

Encouraging your child to express with musical instruments teaches him an appropriate way to show intense feelings instead of repressing them. Children who grow up with the freedom to express in a creative and enjoyable way become emotionally balanced adults and willing listeners to others’ feelings.

Music, movement, drawing and breathing are all ways to help relieve your child’s stress by directing their focus inside. As you join in the activities as teacher and coach, you’ll find your own stress will ease, as well. Learning inner focus enables your child to have more productive relationships with their friends, family and life situations. Since a successful life is so dependent upon keeping our minds and emotions clear, developing these skills in our children will strengthen their foundation for life success. All we have to do is be aware, and care. This will lead us to the right action.

Article originally posted at Author Joe WithrowPosted on Categories WellnessTags , , , , Leave a comment on Emotional Responsiveness

How Economic Aggregation Hides the Problems of Interventionism

by Gary Gallesaggregation
Article originally published in the March issue of BankNotes.

I was going through the textbook for my economics principles course recently, thinking about how I could better reconcile the fact that since only individuals choose, the logic of economics is about individual choices facing the fact of scarcity. Yet macroeconomics is generally presented directly in terms of aggregates and how to control them, as if aggregates were the
relevant measures.

The Limits of Macroeconomics

Perhaps in over-reaction to the paltry discussion such issues received in my undergraduate and graduate training, I spend a substantial amount of class time on the limitations of macroeconomic aggregates. For instance, I emphasize that not a single macroeconomic variable measures what we would like to know accurately. This is why we often evaluate more than one imperfect measure to see if the “story” they tell is consistent. We do this to estimate how much confidence can be placed in a particular “fact” (like what the official unemployment rate or a measure of inflation-adjusted output did over a given period). This is why I feel the need to drive home problems aggregation can cause more clearly to my students.

With that in my head, I read the textbook’s introduction to “net taxes.” It struck me how “looking behind the curtain” at that category illustrate how aggregation can hide information and distort important conclusions.

“Net taxes” equals taxes paid to the government minus transfer payments from the government to recipients, for the household sector as a whole. It is a useful category for looking at the net effect of government programs on the disposable income of the sector as a whole. But it can paper over massive amounts of income redistribution and substantial supply-side effects on productive incentives.
Say that the government taxes one subset of the population $3 trillion, and provides $2 trillion in transfer payments (food stamps, unemployment insurance, Social Security, etc.) to another subset. The net effect on households’ aggregate disposable income is a reduction of $1 trillion. But to consider only that net number in an analysis is to ignore very important considerations.

What’s Behind The Big Numbers?

Most obviously, the net number ignores what can be vastly different treatment of different households. And that is crucial to any moral or ethical evaluation of the effects. That is particularly true when we want to know the extent to which government offers “liberty and justice for all,” as we say in the Pledge of Allegiance — that is, how much it honors individuals’ self-ownership and their derivative rights to their own production. A state that steals from Peter to pay Paul on a massive scale violates our inalienable rights in ourselves, but aggregating the effects into “net taxes” hides those effects from view.

The adverse supply-side effects that such policies have also disappear from view when we overlook the redistribution. The reason is that when we “tax the rich and give to the poor,” we reduce both parties’ productive incentives. The higher tax rates faced by higher income earners reduces the fraction of the value they produce for others that they take home, so they shelter more and earn less income. That is, they do less for others with the resources at their disposal than they otherwise would have.

Less noticed is that the aid given to the poor is also conditional on them staying poor. For instance, people lose 30 cents in food stamps for each dollar of earnings counted by the program. They, too, therefore keep a smaller fraction of what their efforts produce for others, and will also produce less for others than
they would otherwise.

Hiding redistribution — and the extent to which it reduces jointly-beneficial production by focusing on “net taxes” — is not the only way in which aggregation distorts. For example, it is notable that those who back policies such as higher minimum or “living” wages because they will “help the poor,” primarily argue for it because they assert lower income earners, as a group, will have greater incomes.

Now, there are a host of issues involved in deciding whether that is true, but a focus on that question ignores that there will be a substantial number of lower skill workers who will lose their jobs and/or hours worked, fringe benefits, on-the-job training that builds future income potential, etc. They will be worse off. And arguing that the group in the aggregate might have higher incomes, which only means one subset’s increased earnings will be at least somewhat greater than another subset’s decreased earnings, in no way justifies harming large numbers of that group who are also poor, in the name of helping the poor.

Aggregation Provides Little Useful Knowledge

As Friedrich Hayek notes in “The Use of Knowledge in Society” (and elsewhere), the aggregation that is part and parcel of central planning by its nature throws away a great deal of valuable information. The “particular circumstances of time and place” which enable value creation and that only some individuals know (i.e., not the central planner), can be utilized only by decentralizing decisions to those who are most expert in those details, in combination with the information others provide via their market choices. But such knowledge by its nature cannot enter into statistics and therefore cannot be conveyed to any central authority in statistical form. The statistics which such a central authority would have to use would have to be arrived at precisely by abstracting from minor differences between the things, by lumping together, as resources of one kind, items which differ as regards location, quality, and other particulars, in a way which may be very significant for the specific decision. It follows from this that central planning based on statistical information by its nature cannot take direct account of these circumstances of time and place and that the central planner will have to find some way or other in which the decisions depending on them can be left to the “man on the spot.”

Aggregates used in constructing gross domestic product (GDP) have severe limitations as well. They rely on prices paid to assign values to goods or services exchanged. This demonstrated preference approach makes sense for purely market driven behavior, as the value for each unit would have to be greater than the price paid for self-interested individuals who make the
purchases. Even here, however, the excess value over what was paid that motivated the purchases (termed consumer surplus) is ignored. But where government intervenes, accuracy is severely degraded.

For example, if government gives a person a 40 percent subsidy for purchasing a good, all we know is that the value of each unit to the buyer exceeded 60 percent of its price. There is no implication that such purchases are worth what was paid, including the subsidy. And in areas in which government produces or utilizes goods directly, as with defense spending, we know almost nothing about what it is worth. Citizens cannot refuse to finance whatever the government chooses to buy, on pain of prison, so no willing transaction reveals what such spending is worth to citizens. And centuries of evidence suggest government provided goods and services are often worth far less than they cost. But such spending is simply counted as worth what it cost in GDP accounts.

Other Aggregation Sins

These aggregation issues do not do more than scratch the surface of the problems that arise with aggregation. There are plenty more once we dig into the details. For instance, the way employment and unemployment data are aggregated and reported, it is possible to have a job but not be officially employed or unemployed (e.g., workers under age 16), to have a job but be officially unemployed (e.g., workers in the underground economy), and to be officially employed but not currently working (union members on strike). Further, one person can be counted as multiple employees and employment and unemployment rates can move in the same direction at the same time.

The main point, however, is that to rely on aggregates as the focus moves attention away from individuals, who are the only ones who choose, act, and bear consequences. Even without further complexities and problems, that approach can hide everything from income redistribution between different groups (net taxes) to income redistribution within groups (minimum and living wage laws) to supply-side effects on production (taxes and means tested government benefit programs) to the impossibility of central planners directing an economy efficiently (with statistics that throw away details that are crucial to the creation of wealth) to the ambiguity of measures of the value of output (government production assumed to be what it cost). That is a lot to disguise or misrepresent, and such issues provide more than ample reason for suspicion whenever someone puts forth an argument from a major premise that “government aggregate X did Y, therefore we know that Z follows.”

Please see the March issue of BankNotes for the original article and others like it.

A Liberal Education at a Zero Price

by Christopher Westley – Mises Dailyliberal

Frank Bruni saw a woman swoon and sway back in the 1980s, and the recent memory of it caused him to call for increased federal support for liberal arts education.

The woman, Anne Hall, taught Shakespeare at UNC-Chapel Hill back in the days when North Carolina students were more focused on beating Duke in basketball than on Hall’s captivating performance of King Lear. Nonetheless, she made quite an impact on Bruni. “It was by far my favorite class at the University of North Carolina,” he wrote, “though I couldn’t and can’t think of any bluntly practical application for it, not unless you’re bound for a career on the stage or in academia.”

The Purpose of a Liberal Education

Today, some thirty years later and as a New York Times columnist, Bruni recalls this memory to bemoan the loss of liberal education at the large state universities in favor of piddling concerns such as skill acquisition and job placement. Will future generations learn like he did when they are instead focused on learning things that might actually land them a job?

Bruni is right to revere the liberal arts, but wrong to assume that its benefits are purely emotional. The goal of liberal education — at least before state funding diluted it — has always been about teaching students to think clearly about the world around them, develop a sense of right reason when confronting the great questions life, and grasp natural laws so as to better follow them and live happier lives. There is no question that the widespread effect of liberal ideas throughout Europe in the Middle Ages gave common man the framework within which to question the outlandish claims of kings over the people, such as those of divine rights and tribute.

From parish to pub and from family and factory, they were a major contributor to a decentralized Europe, leading to unprecedented levels of human flourishing and social freedom. Indeed, the liberal ideas had to be denigrated and then overcome in order for the modern nation-state to emerge in the nineteenth century, and we know the suffering and death this brought about in the century that followed.

The Shakespeare whom Bruni so admires was himself a product of liberal ideas still reverberating in England despite the efforts of Henry VIII, Cromwell, and others to squelch them. Furthermore, a modern-day Shakespeare would rightly ask the question Bruni avoids, which is whether one can receive the benefits of Lear and the liberal arts without also assuming $40K in debt in order to continue to feed the education-industrial complex (for which Bruni is actually lobbying).

To Bruni, such spending can never be enough, because liberal education is priceless. Whether it is or not, the irony is that the internet can now spread the benefits of liberal education at practically a zero-price, and one no longer must sit in a dank classroom of an elite university to receive its benefits. I speak with experience as a home-schooling father whose children have learned logic, Latin, the Classics, and the sciences, and whose freshman son is now nodding off in the logic class at his university that I (a public-school product) once struggled through as an undergraduate.

Do We Need Government To Fund the Liberal Arts?

Bruni should take heart: Many firms desiring a talented and smart labor force recruit liberal arts graduates. But do tuition revenue-focused public universities now oversupply them, and does this contribute to the problems associated today with the Millennials who are often over-trained, unemployable, and living with their parents? And do those graduates really learn to be critical of, well, anything, as opposed to having developed a sense of (in Bruni’s words) a “rawness and majesty of emotion”?

If so, the liberal education in its modern form has become part of the problem and should no longer be left to postmodern thinkers tied to the government dole. In the 1980s, Peter Drucker predicted that firms would start hiring workers out of high school because (1) they required a lower reservation wage, and (2) they could be trained to suit the needs of the firm in ways that were no longer happening at the universities. Many firms are doing just this in 2015. Thanks in part to the state of federally-funded liberal education, such practices will become more common.

None of this is meant to deny the tremendous need for classical liberal education, as our body-politic is directly affected by the loss of critical thinking skills by the median voter underexposed to it. One might argue this was the actual intent of Progressive Era education reformers who wanted to implement a national education system — modeled after the one in Bismarck’s Germany — in which the masses would be forced into public schools to be prepared for lives in the factory or army. People like Obama or Boehner want the man-on-the-street to be compliant and unquestioning of the world around him, thinking more about Fifty Shades of Grey than perpetual war, the national debt, and the NSA. So from that perspective, it’s exciting to think about how technology is wresting liberal education from those avenues favored by the State, largely by rebels who value it more and who opt out of the system.

Liberal education and the liberal society it fosters, noted Mises in Human Action, brought about “an age of immortal musicians, writers, poets, painters, and sculptors; it revolutionized philosophy, economics, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. And, for the first time in history, it made the great works and the great thoughts accessible to the common man.”

It still does. Although much of this is happening sub rosa, the liberal arts are actually flourishing relative to where they were twenty years ago, thanks to the internet and without regard to higher-education funding levels. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the New York Timesto acknowledge it.

Please see Mises Daily for the original article and others like it.

Don’t Be Fooled by the Federal Reserve’s Anti-Audit Propaganda

by Ron Paul – Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity:Ron Paul

In recent weeks, the Federal Reserve and its apologists in Congress and the media have launched numerous attacks on the Audit the Fed legislation. These attacks amount to nothing more than distortions about the effects and intent of the audit bill.

Fed apologists continue to claim that the Audit the Fed bill will somehow limit the Federal Reserve’s independence. Yet neither Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen nor any other opponent of the audit bill has ever been able to identify any provision of the bill giving Congress power to dictate monetary policy. The only way this argument makes sense is if the simple act of increasing transparency somehow infringes on the Fed’s independence.

This argument is also flawed since the Federal Reserve has never been independent from political pressure. As economists Daniel Smith and Peter Boettke put it in their paper “An Episodic History of Modern Fed Independence,” the Federal Reserve “regularly accommodates debt, succumbs to political pressures, and follows bureaucratic tendencies, compromising the Fed’s operational independence.”

The most infamous example of a Federal Reserve chair bowing to political pressure is the way Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns tailored monetary policy to accommodate President Richard Nixon’s demands for low interest rates. Nixon and Burns were even recorded mocking the idea of Federal Reserve independence.

Nixon is not the only president to pressure a Federal Reserve chair to tailor monetary policy to the president’s political needs. In the fifties, President Dwight Eisenhower pressured Fed Chairman William Martin to either resign or increase the money supply. Martin eventually gave in to Ike’s wishes for cheap money. During the nineties, Alan Greenspan was accused by many political and financial experts — including then-Federal Reserve Board Member Alan Blinder — of tailoring Federal Reserve policies to help President Bill Clinton.

Some Federal Reserve apologists make the contradictory claim that the audit bill is not only dangerous, but it is also unnecessary since the Fed is already audited. It is true that the Federal Reserve is subject to some limited financial audits, but these audits only reveal the amount of assets on the Fed’s balance sheets. The Audit the Fed bill will reveal what was purchased, when it was acquired, and why it was acquired.

Perhaps the real reason the Federal Reserve fears a full audit can be revealed by examining the one-time audit of the Federal Reserve’s response to the financial crisis authorized by the Dodd-Frank law. This audit found that between 2007 and 2010 the Federal Reserve committed over $16 trillion — more than four times the annual budget of the United States — to foreign central banks and politically influential private companies. Can anyone doubt a full audit would show similar instances of the Fed acting to benefit the political and economic elites?

Some fed apologists are claiming that the audit bill is part of a conspiracy to end the Fed. As the author of a book called End the Fed, I find it laughable to suggest that I, and other audit supporters, are hiding our true agenda. Besides, how could an audit advance efforts to end the Fed unless the audit would prove that the American people would be better off without the Fed? And don’t the people have a right to know if they are being harmed by the current monetary system?

For over a century, the Federal Reserve has operated in secrecy, to the benefit of the elites and the detriment of the people. It is time to finally bring transparency to monetary policy by auditing the Federal Reserve.

Article originally posted at The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

The Fallacy of Keynesian Stimulus

by Peter St. Ongestimulus
Article originally published in the March issue of BankNotes.

One of the great debates today between left and right is whether government stimulus is worth it. The left says “yes, early and often.” And the right says “only in the right circumstances.” Unsurprisingly, both left and right are completely off — stimulus is the quickest way to impoverish an economy.

To see why, we’ll start with America’s most famous burglar, Richard Nixon. Nixon is said to have remarked that “We are all Keynesians.” This is probably true; everybody Richard Nixon listened to was “all Keynesians.” And even today nearly every talking head on TV or in major newspapers is “all Keynesians.” Right-wing, left-wing, it’s just a big pile of Keynesians.

This is important when we see “balanced” debates among prestigious economists — “prestige” in mainstream economics is short-hand for “Keynesian.” Future generations may well find this funny, but today this is where we are.

Why does this matter? Because if the Keynesian orthodoxy is ridiculous, say, then all we get is “balanced” flavors of ridiculous.

Why ridiculous? Keynesians’ original sin is that it proposes that spending makes us richer. The other fallacies flow out of that core error. This rich-by-spending doctrine obviously doesn’t work in real life — if you’re poor, the solution is not to borrow money and have a party about it. The solution is to work hard and save up. It’s not rocket science.

Why the appeal? Why are nearly all economists, left and right, Keynesians? The idea that spending makes us richer is a very old one. It’s not original to Keynes, who wasn’t much of an economic or original thinker anyway. Keynes was just regurgitating the age-old fallacy known as “underconsumption.”

“Underconsumption”

Underconsumptionism holds that economies do well when the cash flows. It seems intuitive from the top-down: if people are spending money then times must be good. If they’re not spending money there must be a problem.

Unsurprisingly, this gets it exactly backward. Spending is what happens once you’re rich. It doesn’t actually make you rich. So if an economy is doing well then people do indeed buy more swimming pools. But it’s obviously not the swimming pools
that made them rich.

So what did make them rich? Investment. More specifically, market-led investment. Why the “market-led” part? Because zany bureaucrats define their bridges to nowhere and squirrel-menstruation research as “investment.

Now, it’s not that all government spending is useless — they do build gutters and sewage plants, after all. But we’ve really got no way to know whether some bureaucrat’s “investment” is growing the economy. Hence it’s tempting to say “private investment” is all that matters, but I’ll be open-minded and just
say “market-led.” Meaning that a government that actually did find out market demand (for a bridge from Manhattan to New Jersey, say) would qualify as “market-led” investment and make us wealthier. We can see the role of private investment in the

classic Robinson Crusoe picture. Poor Robinson wakes up hungry, wet, and cold. It rained all night, and he’s picked up a nasty cough. Robinson looks up at the sky, shaking his fist at the Gods of Poverty.

How does Robinson improve his lot? Why, he invests. He builds fishing hooks, fish-nets, berry-shaking sticks. He collects wood, first to build a shelter then to keep a fire going. Investments all.

And over there, in the corner, you can see the Keynesian tsk-tsking, “Why do all that hard work investing when you can just spend more, Robinson?” Remember, these are “prestigious” economists.

So how does this fatal error translate into policy today? The key thing to remember is that when the government increases “spending” it is simply making pieces of paper — known as “dollars.” Not fish hooks. Not firewood. Bidding tickets is what government makes. Why do they do this? Partly to buy votes, of course: if I could print up dollars, I guarantee I’d have a lot of Facebook friends. And partly to “boost” the economy with all that spending.

Fiat Money ≠ Wealth

The problem is, printing tickets isn’t a real resource. You don’t eat paper, as they say. Printing dollars merely bids away resources from other uses.

Let’s say Fed Chair Yellen made an error and printed me up a trillion dollars. Why, I’d use those dollars to buy all — and I do mean all — the beach-front property. I would have the most galactic beach-front party in history. Thing is, Yellen just gave me bidding tickets. She didn’t give me the booze, the DJ’s, the
concrete, or the wood.

So how do I put this party on? Why, I use Yellen’s dollars to bid it all away from you. Yep, you. Building a factory? Too bad: I’ve outbid you for the concrete. Building a back deck? Too bad: it’s my lumber. There’s a party on, didn’t you hear? A Keynesian party.

So is my resource-sucking mega-party making the economy grow? Nope. When it’s all over, when the hangovers along with the ear-ringing subsides are gone, we’ve used real resources. We’ve got no factories. No decks. We’re all poorer. But the politicians did get re-elected, right?

This, in a nutshell, is Keynesian “stimulus.” Whether it comes from government spending (“fiscal stimulus”) or from Federal Reserve money-printing (monetary stimulus). In either case, real resources were bid away from the rest of us and handed out to others.

Stimulus isn’t some magical leprechaun dropping ice cream and puppies from heaven — it’s merely redistribution of resources. Stimulus is taking from those who have and giving to the government’s pals.

So the question “does stimulus work?” is completely missing the point. Putting aside the injustice of redistributive theft, the productivity question is whether the guys who got the bidding tickets did more market-led investment than the guys whose tickets were devalued.

There is no economic reason to think mere redistribution would make us richer. In fact, there are excellent reasons that show redistribution hurts the economy. “Stimulus” itself is nothing more than widespread impoverishment so a clutch of politicians can buy friends.

Please see the March issue of BankNotes for the original article and others like it.

Wave of Share Buybacks to Hit Europe: What That Means for Precious Metals

by the Hard Assets Alliance Team:

Quantitative easing is coming to Europe. Will Draghi’s massive bond-buying program be enough to get the European economy on track? The Hard Assets Alliance team doubts it, but we are expecting European equities to rally just as US and Japanese stocks did after their central banks unleashed similar asset-purchasing schemes.

One way quantitative easing supports stock market rallies is by suppressing rates. Companies then use this cheap credit to build new factories and purchase new equipment, right? Not quite.

In the United States and Japan, firms have been reluctant to make capital investments due to lingering uncertainty. Instead, they have taken advantage of rock-bottom rates to buy back shares. Just look at what happened in Japan once rates started heading south:

Japanese Share Buybacks

There is nothing inherently wrong with stock buybacks. They are shareholder friendly, low risk, and effective at boosting stock prices. Share repurchases are also more flexible than dividends—the market punishes companies that suspend or reduce dividend payments.

However, by not building factories or purchasing new equipment, companies are tacitly expressing concern about the future. It’s important to understand this because share buybacks shrink share count and thereby juice the earnings per share (EPS) figure, making a company look more profitable.

QE is slated to have the same impact on European stocks, and that means a near-term investment opportunity. However, it’s also a reminder that market intervention is the only game in town these days. Sooner or later, the efficacy of these policies will wear off. When that occurs, you will surely want to own precious metals.

Article originally posted in the February issue of Smart Metals Investor at HardAssetsAlliance.com.

The Safety of Raw Milk

by Pathways Magazine– ICPA.org:raw milk

Protective Components: Raw milk contains numerous components that assist in:

Killing pathogens in the milk (lactoperoxidase, lactoferrin, leukocytes, macrophages, neutrophils, antibodies, medium chain fatty acids, lysozyme, B12 binding protein, bifidus factor, beneficial bacteria);

Preventing pathogen absorption across the intestinal wall (polysaccharides, oligosaccharides, mucins, fibronectin, glycomacropeptides, bifidus factor, beneficial bacteria);

Strengthening the Immune System (lymphocytes, immunoglobulins, antibodies, hormones and growth factors).

Pasteurization Harmful: Many of these antimicrobial and immune-enhancing components are greatly reduced in effectiveness by pasteurization, and completely destroyed by ultra-pasteurization.

Dangers Exaggerated: Although raw milk, like any food, can become contaminated and cause illness, the dangers of raw milk are greatly exaggerated. In an analysis of reports on 70 outbreaks attributed to raw milk, we found many examples of reporting bias, errors and poor analysis resulting in most outbreaks having either no valid positive milk sample or no valid statistical association.

USDA/FDA Statistics: Based on data in a 2003 USDA/ FDA report: Compared to raw milk there are 515 times more illnesses from L-mono due to deli meats and 29 times more illness from L-mono due to pasteurized milk. On a per-serving basis, deli meats were 10 times more likely than raw milk to cause illness.

Outbreaks Due to Pasteurized Milk: Due to high volume distribution and its comparative lack of anti-microbial components, pasteurized milk when contaminated has caused numerous widespread and serious outbreaks of illness, including a 1984-5 outbreak afflicting almost 200,000 people. In 2007, three people died in Massachusetts from illness caused by contaminated pasteurized milk.

Ancient History: Claims that raw milk is unsafe are based on 40-year-old science and century-old experiences from distillery dairy “factory farms” in rapidly urbanizing 19th-century America.

Modern Advantages: Compared to 30–50 years ago, dairy farmers today can take advantage of many advancements that contribute to a dramatically safer product including pasture grazing, herd testing, effective cleaning systems, refrigeration and easier, significantly less expensive, more accessible and more sophisticated milk and herd disease-testing techniques.

Unique Food: Raw milk is the only food that has extensive built-in safety mechanisms and numerous components to create a healthy immune system.

The Oppression

The FDA has threatened enforcement and taken action against both farmers and buyer’s co-ops across the country for allegedly violating 1240.61 and 131.110(a). Below are a few recent examples. There was no allegation that the raw milk had caused any illnesses in any of these cases.

The FDA spent a year in an undercover sting operation on an Amish farmer, Dan Allgyer of Rainbow Acres in Pennsylvania. Agency employees lied about their identity and joined local buying clubs. They picked up raw milk from private residences—again, concealing their identities—and sent the milk to be tested. Despite nearly a dozen tests, not one sample showed any contamination. Despite the fact that this clean milk had not made anyone sick, the agency ultimately raided Allgyer’s farm in May 2011. In February 2012, the FDA obtained an injunction in federal court to prevent Allgyer from distributing raw milk across state lines in the future.

FDA officials, together with officials from five other local, state, and federal agencies raided the Rawesome Food Club, a private buying club in Venice, California, on June 30, 2010. Police accompanying the various agency officials entered the store with guns drawn. The officials confiscated 17 coolers of food, including raw milk and raw milk products, even though the warrant stated that they could only take samples. In 2011, the government raided Rawesome a second time on August 3, with FDA officials again participating in the raid. Government agents seized almost the entire food inventory at the store, dumping out all the raw milk on the premises without any court order to do so.
The store manager, a farmer supplying the store, and an administrator for the farmer who did nothing more than take orders and disseminate information, were each charged with multiple felonies alleging violations of state food and dairy laws.

An FDA agent participated in the dumping of more than 100 gallons of impounded raw milk belonging to members of a Georgia food buying club, which had been legally purchased from a licensed South Carolina dairy in October 2009. The primary agency in that action was the Georgia Department of Agriculture, but the FDA official present at that time told the buying club’s agent that even an individual consumer cannot legally cross state lines to buy raw milk and bring it home under 1240.61 and 131.110.

In all of these cases, there was no allegation that the raw milk had caused any illnesses or was contaminated in any way. It’s time to tell FDA to focus on real threats to public safety—the consolidated, industrialized food system—and to stop interfering with direct farmer-to consumer transactions.

Article originally posted at Author Joe WithrowPosted on Categories WellnessTags , , , , , , , Leave a comment on The Safety of Raw Milk

What Will Be Gold’s Next Catalyst?

by Justin Spittler – Hard Assets Alliance :gold

Investors are finally coming to their senses. With the return of volatility, the complacency of the financial markets towards to the problems facing the global economy is now fracturing. That’s music to the ears of precious metals investors. And it’s a big reason gold started 2015 so hot.

Turmoil in Europe, in particular, has become too much to ignore. However, following the announcement by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to sever the franc’s peg to the euro and the landmark decision by the ECB to finally import quantitative easing (QE), investors are wondering where gold’s next push will come from.

Catalysts Outnumber Threats

Volatility is back. That’s bad news for most asset classes, yet positive for precious metals. Gold, in particular, shines brightest when fear trumps greed, and right now there are numerous forces conspiring to drive gold higher.

For starters, Europe is still very much a basket case. Relations between Ukraine and Russia remain tense, and the prospect of a “Grexit” looms large. There’s also a good chance that Draghi ups the ante on QE. Few analysts think that the €1.1 trillion bond-buying program will be enough to rejuvenate the continent’s much maligned economy.

A challenged eurozone isn’t the only probable catalyst for gold. The unexpected drop in energy prices could be foreshadowing a global economic slowdown. It also threatens to derail a US recovery that has leaned heavily on a domestic energy revolution, especially if prices stay low for long. JPMorgan estimates that three years of oil at $65 per barrel would lead to a 25% to 40% default rate across the US energy junk bond market.

Time will also reveal how resilient the US stock market rally is now that the Fed has removed the punch bowl. Let’s also not forget about China’s cooling economy. Same goes for continued bullion hoarding by central banks, increasing calls for repatriation, or a potential collapse of the Russian debt market, and that’s just on the demand side.

After registering all-time highs in 2011, gold dropped below $1,200 per ounce, or below the industry all-in sustaining cost of production. While total mine output inched higher during this weak price environment, nonferrous exploration budgets declined 45% between 2012 and 2014, according to metals consultancy group SNL.

Depressed prices have been especially unforgiving to junior miners, who play a key role in the global supply chain by venturing into uncharted territories in search of the next big deposit.

Total exploration budgets for junior miners fell 29% in 2014 after sliding 39% year over year in 2013 due to skittish investor interest.

Not even a dramatic price rally can undo years of greatly reduced exploration activity. In other words, the seeds of a supply crunch have been sowed.

Long Term Case for Gold Strengthens

There’s no guarantee that gold will maintain its momentum over the rest of the year but the scales are certainly tipped in its favor. Even commonly cited headwinds support the argument for owning gold over the long haul.

Consider the prospect of rising interest rates in the United States. Higher rates effectively increase the cost of owning gold, which pays no yield. Point taken, but a modest rate increase for bonds paying next to nothing isn’t going to make owning gold that much more expensive.

Further, Yellen will likely be extra patient with regard to raising rates. The Fed hasn’t lifted rates in nine years and doing so now would likely send the precarious recovery into a tailspin.

Sleep Easier With Precious Metals

If the first few weeks of 2015 are any indication, this will be an eventful year.

Global uncertainty has many investors on edge, but one can sleep easier with an appropriate allocation to precious metals. Just remember that today’s bargain prices won’t last forever.

Article originally posted in the February issue of Smart Metals Investor at HardAssetsAlliance.com.

Choose the Right Tomato

by Sam Mogannam– ICPA.org:tomato

With the recent resurgence of farmers’ markets and renewed interest in seasonal eating, it’s easy to take good tomatoes for granted. But a recent experience made me really appreciate good tomatoes. I ordered a BLT at a restaurant, and for some reason the chef made it with raw green tomatoes. It was awful! If the chef had only fried or grilled the green tomatoes, the sandwich would have been awesome.

How to Buy

As beautiful as tomatoes can be, the true test is in tasting them. That’s easy enough to do at the farmers’ market, but you have to be a little proactive in the supermarket. Don’t hesitate to ask a staffer to sample a tomato or two.

But you can—to a degree—judge a tomato by its cover. Tomatoes with full, saturated color all over are ideal. However, many commercial tomatoes are mechanically harvested while still green (when they are sturdier and better able to withstand travel) and later artificially ripened with ethylene gas. This treatment makes the tomato look red on the outside, but the core will still be pink; for this reason it’s useful to check out the cross-section of a cut tomato if you can. Ideally, the color will be consistent from the skin to the very center.

Buy organic tomatoes whenever possible. Most commercial tomatoes are heavily sprayed with pesticides and then treated with fungicides after harvest to prolong shelf life. Organic and unsprayed tomatoes are becoming more readily available, especially at farmers’ markets, so look for and purchase those if you can.

Tomatoes that still have a bit of green stem attached are optimal; The stems themselves have a short shelf life, as they dry and brown fairly quickly. Not only are stem-on tomatoes more work as far as picking goes, but also a bright green stem is a good sign that the tomato was recently picked.

Avoid tomatoes with split skins; it indicates a late rain or general over – watering, and that exposed flesh is vulnerable to mold.

It seems obvious to recommend buying tomatoes in season, but its importance cannot be overstated. Many folks associate tomatoes with summer, so guests start asking for them as soon as the weather warms up. However, because tomatoes are a late-planted crop (they can’t go into the ground until after the final frost), and they require an extended period of heat and sun to reach maturity, tomatoes aren’t ready for harvest until mid-July or later, depending on the weather and where you are.

Farmers’ markets are almost always the best places to find good tomatoes—but you can often find pretty good tomatoes at the supermarket if you know what to look for:

Cherry and grape tomatoes tend to be a little more flavorful than other varieties of supermarket tomatoes. Their small size makes it easy to sneak a little taste and evaluate the goods. Sungolds and Sweet 100s are a couple of varieties that tend to have good flavor.

Heirloom tomatoes are mind-boggling in their variety and proliferation. Some are utterly incredible; others are just so-so. When you’re shopping, it’s important to realize that “heirloom” refers only to the varietal category and doesn’t have anything to do with the way the tomato is grown. Some commercial growers have hopped onto the heirloom bandwagon and grow heirlooms just as they grow their other tomatoes: for size and appearance, not for flavor. So you might buy a huge, gorgeous heirloom, only to find that it’s bloated and flavorless from overwatering. They can be pricey, too—all the more reason to ask for a taste!

Roma and other “paste” tomatoes are the ideal choice for cooking if you have to buy fresh tomatoes out of season. San Marzano is my favorite variety in this category; they’re perfect for canning.

Slicer tomatoes, like Beefsteak, New Jersey and Early Girl, are so named because of their hefty size and round shape. “Vine ripe” tomatoes also fall into this category; they are generally hothouse-grown in Holland. Their flavor is decent, but not great.

Don’t forget canned tomatoes as a reasonable alternative to fresh tomatoes in the off-season. In the dead of winter, tomatoes from a can will have worlds more flavor than crunchy, underripe ones. They work perfectly if you’re going to cook the tomatoes anyway, and even make great salsas.

How to Store

Do not refrigerate tomatoes (and don’t buy refrigerated ones, either); the chill adversely affects the texture and diminishes the flavor. If you buy slightly underripe tomatoes, put them in a paper bag and let them sit on the counter for a few days; they will soften and become a bit sweeter.

How to Use

When you have really excellent tomatoes, especially organic heirlooms, all you need is a sprinkle of salt and a drizzle of high-quality extra-virgin olive oil.

Basil is a natural accompaniment to tomatoes; tarragon, thyme, oregano and cilantro are good partners.

Cherry tomatoes are excellent in salsas, tossed with tender green beans, or briefly sautéed and mixed with pasta. (For a quick meal, toss good spaghetti or linguine with sautéed tomatoes and garlic, basil, extra-virgin olive oil, and salt and pepper. Five minutes is all it takes to make the sauce, start to finish.)

Roma tomatoes are well suited to making tomato paste and sauce.

Heirlooms are at their best when you leave them raw; their subtleties and distinct personalities diminish when cooked. If you can get your hands on a few different heirloom varieties, try conducting a side-by-side tasting of your own. Pay attention to what’s happening in your mouth. You’ll find a surprising spectrum of textures, flavors, and seed structures. Some will seem incredibly sweet, and others will be almost salty.

Article originally posted at Author Joe WithrowPosted on Categories WellnessTags , , , , , , Leave a comment on Choose the Right Tomato