Tag: alternative finance

Non-Profit Skepticism

submitted by jwithrow.501c3 Stamp

We think that the idea of non-profit organizations, as the 501(c) code exists, is un-American.

Hold on! Hear us out on this one before you call us heartless capitalists – we have a good reason. Actually several reasons.

The non-profit structure as it currently exists violates the equality under law principle upon which America was founded. 501(c) organizations receive favorable treatment by law relative to for-profit organizations.

But the American vision of limited government was such that it should protect equality under law rather than promote inequality by law. Equal opportunity as we used to say.

Additionally, the 501(c) structure reinforces Marxist principles in the minds of Americans in a very devious way. This we really don’t like.

The Marxist ideology is opposed to profit because it violates their “from each according to ability, to each according to need” credo.

In granting favorable status to non-profit organizations the government is actually supporting the belief that non-profits are more desirable than for-profit organizations. Think about it – why else would 501(c)’s be granted privileges if they weren’t seen as deserving of such favoritism? So in a sneaky kind of way this sows the seeds of Marxism by silently stating that the profit motive is not to be commended while the non-profit motive is superior ideology.

Which brings us to our last point:

The whole non-profit part of 501(c) organizations is fraudulent!

Sure, the organization itself does not show a profit but have you ever looked at the executive salaries at these “non-profit” organizations?

We have.

They are systematically much higher than average wages. MUCH higher.

Sure looks like profit to us.

Now there are some very good non-profit organizations out there. We have donated to some good ones that we knew were good because we knew the people running the show and we could see the charitable work being done. But most of the giant non-profits are frauds and we would steer clear of them. A good rule of thumb is that if a non-profit has a commercial on television then it is probably not worthy of your attention. Otherwise it wouldn’t need a commercial on television.

Also, don’t get us wrong, we like the fact that non-profits are tax-exempt. The less money appropriated by the Feds the better, in our opinion.

But we think that a much better idea would be to get rid of the corporate income tax altogether. Then you wouldn’t have a need for special non-profit treatment. And you might even notice some jobs sneaking back into America also – as long as the corporate income tax was repealed and replaced with nothing.

Of course this is just our humble opinion. Maybe the bureaucrats know better than we do.

Distinguishing Wealth from Money

submitted by jwithrow.Wealthy Life

At Zenconomics we feel like it is extremely important to differentiate wealth from money.  Pop culture and mainstream personal finance relentlessly tell us that the two are one in the same but they are mistaken.

The key to differentiating wealth from money is to understand the difference between exchange value and use value.  You already implicitly understand this difference but it is not immediately apparent in our culture today.

Money, by nature, holds an exchange value.  You can exchange money for goods and services and the quantity of goods and services for which you can exchange money is determined by the value of your money.  But this is all that money is good for – serving as a medium of exchange.

Wealth, on the other hand, holds both exchange value and use value.

You can exchange wealth for goods and services and the quantity of goods and services for which you can exchange wealth is determined by the accepted value of your wealth.  Wealth in most forms, however, is not as easily exchanged for goods and services and this is precisely why money plays a vital role in a developed economy.

Unlike money, wealth also holds a use value.  You can ‘use’ wealth in some capacity. Take real estate for example.

If you own residential real estate then you can either live in the home or you can rent the home out to a tenant to generate income.  These actions both utilize use value.  Of course, you can also sell real estate for money which utilizes exchange value.

Maybe your real estate consists of farm land which could be used to produce food.  Now your real estate, which is wealth if owned outright, can be utilized to produce additional wealth in the form of food.  Now your food has both an exchange value and a use value.  You can take your fruits and vegetables down to the farmers market and exchange them for money if you want to utilize the exchange value.  Or you can eat your fruits and vegetables if you want to utilize their use value.

It is important to point out that an asset must be owned free and clear of an attached debt in order for it to be considered personal wealth.

If you own a home with a big mortgage on it then you are one financial emergency away from losing the home and thus the case could be made that you do not truly own the home yet.  This is not to say that taking out a mortgage to buy a property is a bad idea, but be cognizant of the fact that you will need to satisfy the mortgage before the property can truly be considered wealth.

It is also important to point out that some forms of wealth may hold better exchange value than others.  A classic car collection may be extremely valuable to the owner but it may be difficult to find a willing buyer if the owner wished to exchange the collection for money in the future.

To reiterate, money is not wealth.

In fact, the only reason to hold money is to use it to purchase desired goods and services.  There is no other use for money.

And if you want to maximize your own wealth, you must wisely use money as a tool to acquire wealth.

**For more of Joe’s thoughts on the “Great Reset” and personalized asset allocation please read “The Individual is Rising: 2nd edition” which will be available later this year. Please sign up for the notifications mailing list at http://www.theindividualisrising.com/.

The Stock Market Deception

submitted by jwithrow.GW Paper Money

The stock market is comprised of numerous exchanges through which buyers and sellers can trade securities. The New York Stock Exchange is the world’s largest stock exchange followed by the NASDAQ. The Tokyo Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange are third and fourth in terms of market capitalization.

As we mentioned, the exchanges enable buyers and sellers to trade securities with one another.

We repeat this statement to emphasize the next one:

The exchanges are not where businesses raise capital unless an initial public offering (IPO) is taking place.

We think it is important to recognize this fact.

The vast majority of trades on a stock exchange are simply speculative – there is very little productive activity taking place. Even IPOs are usually not terribly productive as the intent is often not to raise capital for business operation but rather to enrich the owners and private investors.

So if most trades are just speculation then why do we view the stock market as a gauge of economic health? Why do we assume that the underlying economy is good when stock prices go up?

We do not assume that the economy is good when corn or oil prices go up. But corn and oil contracts are also traded on futures exchanges and there are speculators who profit when their price rises.

Conversely, why do we assume that the underlying economy is bad when stock prices go down?

Nothing real is destroyed when stock prices fall. Buildings don’t collapse. Equipment doesn’t break. Goods don’t go up in smoke. Engineers don’t lose their knowledge.

Maybe there was a time when stock prices somewhat reflected the financial health of individual companies, but those days are long gone. With mark to unicorn accounting, leveraged stock buy-backs, and all other manner of financial wizardry, CEO’s can and do manipulate stock prices regularly.

Additionally, the Federal Reserve has spent the past three decades ensuring that liquidity flows directly into the stock market so that equity prices continuously rise in unison over time.

The point is that there is a huge disconnect between the stock market and the productive sector that mainstream finance pays no attention to. In fact, mainstream finance has convinced most people that speculating in the stock market is the _only_ way to invest for retirement.

There may be a place for stocks within your asset allocation model, but it is important to recognize the stock market deception for what it is and understand the game you are playing if you do delve into the market. I would highly recommend enlisting the services of independent financial analysts if you do allocate some of your capital to the financial markets.

As we have touched on in a number of other essays here at Zenconomics, financial planning should be comprehensive and diversified according to your own unique circumstances. Simply amassing paper equities denominated in fiat currency is a very fragile plan.

As Nelson Nash says: “If you know what’s going on, you’ll know what to do.”

Be wary of the stock market deception and plan accordingly.

**Want more information on how to build a sustainable financial plan? Are you ready to turbo-charge your retirement portfolio? Do you yearn to exit the rat-race? Is financial freedom calling to your spirit?

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Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out – A Modern Interpretation by Paul Rosenberg

 By Paul Rosenberg, FreemansPerspective.com

This was a big phrase in the 1960s, as young people turned away from
the corporate conformity of the 1950s and decided that they wanted more
out of life than being an adequately-fed cog in a big machine.

Let’s be honest and admit that the modern corporate script involves
selling your own wishes and dreams for paychecks. I know that a lot of us have played along with it because of necessity, but this is not a way of life to cling to, it’s a way of life to escape.

You are meant to live your life. Yes, I know it can seem hard, but
it’s the only life that’s really worth living. You have to give meaning
to your life, and you’ll never get it by following the televised script and hoping for pats on the back from the people who are playing along with you.

This life you have is precious. Human beings are engines of creation;
we are able to imagine and to turn our imaginations into reality. And we
are capable of supercharging our creative abilities by sharing our lives
and loves with other people. We are astonishingly capable creatures.

Don’t waste all your life’s abilities in a corporate cubicle. You’ve
already seen how that goes: Work excessive hours, go home tired, watch
TV, sleep, and start over. Your kids end up in mini corporate worlds
called “schools,” where they are taught to sit, be quiet, obey, and turn
off their internal desires and loves. If you play that game you’ll miss
most of your life in the process, as well as most of your children’s
lives.

Once you get some corporate inertia going, it is all too easy to get
sucked into it permanently. Don’t let that happen to you.

So, here’s my modern (and slightly adjusted) interpretation –
Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out:

Tune In

Wake up and see the world as it is. Turn off the
talking heads on TV and get to know the real world. Stop spending all
your brain cycles on celebrities, sports heroes and gossip hounds – get
to know your neighbor and the old woman who lives around the corner,
strike up a friendship with someone on the other side of the world. Travel. Spend your time with real people; get to know them, and reveal yourself to them. It only seems weird because the people who programmed you didn’t want you to think freely.

Do you think I am being dramatic by referring to “the people who
programmed you”? If so, read this:

Education should aim at destroying free will so that
after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished.

That was from the highly esteemed Bertrand Russel, by the way, and
I’ve got plenty more of them. Take this seriously, because your
programmers have been.

Tune in to yourself rather than your programming: What do you really
want? Most people can list a dozen things that bother them, but not a
single thing that they really want. This is a problem. Find out what you
want. What do you love? What do you want to work for?

Do you remember all those times in the Bible where Jesus berates
people for being “hypocrites”? Well, the real word he used was actors –
as in stage actors. And whether you are religious or not, this is
crucial: Stop acting in someone else’s play. Take off all the masks and
find yourself.

Turn On

Start doing what you love. Don’t wait for someone else, do it
yourself. Start helping your friends and neighbors, spend serious time
with your children – not at a game or a party, but just you and them,
talking. Find out what they love. Tell them what you love, what you are
proud of, what you regret. Tell them you love them. Tell them things you
don’t tell your friends. Let them know you.

Start living, not merely existing. DO the things you feel an urge to
do. And don’t fall into the usual trap of “what if I make a mistake?”
That’s simply fear-based conditioning. Resist it. Do what you love, and
in so doing, you will turn yourself on.

Are you going to go through your whole life and never follow your own
wishes, always sacrificing them to the tyranny of other peoples’
opinions? Please don’t do that to yourself – you’ll suffer greatly for
it when you’re old.

Screw all the expectations and turn on – act on your own will.

Drop Out

Stop wasting your time and energy on governments and arguments and
politics. Drop out of their mindset and start reclaiming all those
wasted hours. Lying politicians are simply not worth your devotion. Drop
the endless party fights and stop arguing about them. Politics is ugly,
and politics on the brain makes us ugly.

Stop paying attention to the hundreds of ads you see every day – they
are scientifically designed to grab your thoughts. Turn away. Stop
buying trendy things, and definitely stop buying things for the purpose
of impressing other people.

Stop trying to fit in, and stop living according to other people’s
expectations. Let them call you weird. Let them talk about you. Stop
caring about it. If they were real friends, they wouldn’t treat you like
that. So if they are willing to call you names, you’re better off
dropping them now.

Don’t fight the system – that just keeps all of your energy and
attention focused on them. Forsake the system and start creating a
better life for yourself, the people you love and the people you
respect. Stop giving all your life’s energy to a barbaric system of
force and manipulation.

Let the system go; all of it. Move on and let it rot where it sits.

But We Need A Plan!

No, you don’t. You need a life!

Let go of the plan addiction. Life is organic, not mechanical.

First of all, you need to identify what you want to create with the
precious life you’ve been given. Not what you want to stop, but what you
want to make.

If you’ve never been told to do this before it may seem hard, but you
can do it if you try.

Don’t sit and wait. Stop talking and start doing.

ACT! NOW!

[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the
outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the
author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our
complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Visit his site to get your free copy.]

Avoiding the Identity Trap

submitted by jwithrow.Identity Trap

The identity trap is the belief that you need to conform to what others think that you should be. It is when you feel the need to speak or act a certain way because other people think that you should speak or act that way. It is when you participate in an event or join an organization because others expect you to do so.

While these other people who expect you to conform to certain expectations are typically well-intentioned, you are doing yourself a disservice if you allow yourself to be pressured into the identity trap. Your life will not be harmonious if you are not true to your own inner self.

People, often subconsciously, do not see others as individuals but rather they see others as members of a particular group. They then assume that the other person holds all of the associated group’s beliefs and traits and thus they expect the other person to speak and act accordingly. But everyone is a unique individual and groups are comprised of individuals.

Individuals have a responsibility to themselves to do what they think is right at all times. Individuals have a responsibility to stay true to their beliefs and principles. Individuals do not have a responsibility to put on a façade because other people expect them to be something other than themselves. Falling into and remaining stuck in the identity trap is an impediment to your personal freedom. You can never be free if you must pretend to be something that you are not.

Harry Browne, in How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World, laid out four specific principles to recognize in order to avoid the identity trap. They are as follows:

1. You are a unique individual — different from all other human beings. No one else has the exact same nature that you have; no one else reacts to things in exactly the way you do. No one else sees the world exactly as you do. No one can dictate what your identity should be; you are the best qualified person to discover what it is.

2. Each individual is acting from his own knowledge in ways he believes will bring him happiness. He acts to produce the consequences he thinks will make him feel better.

3. You have to treat things and people in accordance with their own identities in order to get what you want from them. You don’t expect a stone to be a fish. And it’s just as unrealistic to expect one person to act as someone else does. You don’t control the identities of people, but you can control how you deal with them.

4. You view the world subjectively — colored by your own experience, interpretation, and limits of perception. It isn’t essential that you know the final truth about everything in the world; and you don’t have the resources to discover it.

Avoid the identity trap and realize your true individual potential.

MyRA-QE Taper Connection

submitted by jwithrow.Government Help

We have a question for you:

Is it a coincidence that the government has introduced the “myRA” plans just as the Federal Reserve has begun to taper its quantitative easing programs?

Let’s think this thing through for a minute.

We know:

  • China is now a net-seller of U.S. Treasuries so the Federal Reserve has had to step in and purchase U.S. Treasury Bonds in increasing quantities to support government spending.
  • The average American saves for retirement in a qualified retirement plan focusing primarily on mutual funds, exchange traded funds, and stocks with bonds comprising a small portion of the allocation.
  • The proposed myRA plans are designed to focus on U.S. Treasury Bonds.
  • The Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing programs have pumped massive amounts of liquidity into the system which has resulted in a broad increase of stock prices across the board.
  • Tapering QE will withdraw liquidity from the system which will almost certainly result in a broad decrease of stock prices across the board and quite possibly a severe stock market crash.
  • A falling stock market would likely cause many Americans to seek investment options that they deem “safer”.
  • The government is already hard-selling their myRA plans stating that there is “no risk to lose what you put in”.

Hmm.

Maybe our benevolent bureaucrats really do think that myRA plans will help the common man.

But we hold dearly to a personal mantra:

Maximize Capital,
Minimize Crap,
Never Trust the Government.

With that mantra echoing in our mind, we can’t help but be a little suspicious – something funny seems to be afoot.

What do you think?

The Rule of Law

submitted by jwithrow.Rule of Law

The Rule of Law is rooted in British common law that dates back to the Middle Ages and it is the foundation of Western civilization. It is the underlying legal/ethical code of conduct that enabled western civilization to thrive.

The Rule of Law can be condensed into two fundamental laws:

1) Do all that you have agreed to do and nothing that you have agreed not to do.
2) Do not encroach upon other persons or their property.

The first law forms the basis of all contract law and the second law forms the basis of criminal law. These laws are simple and intuitive and history shows that a society dedicated to these laws is able to achieve prosperity.

Unfortunately, the Rule of Law has been subverted by the rule of legislation in our society today. There are now hundreds of thousands of petty laws on the books accompanied by millions of pages of legal mumbo-jumbo in supporting documents. Much of this legislation actually violates the Rule of Law as it encroaches upon personal liberty and property rights. Further, these petty laws are enforced at the discretion of the political class; politicians and insiders are largely exempt from abiding by their own legislation.

There was a time in America when grade schools taught common law and history lessons focused almost exclusively on common law principles. Sadly, this is no longer the case as the public educational system now teaches children to never question the validity of legal mandates and regulations, no matter how petty.

Fortunately, the Internet Reformation seems to be setting brushfires of liberty in the mind’s of men once again. These are certainly interesting times we are living in.

“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.” – Tacitus

“Where there are too many policemen, there is no liberty. Where there are too many soldiers, there is no peace. Where there are too many lawyers, there is no justice.” – Lin Yutang

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws” – Plato