Atlas Shrugged is a 1,000+ page novel that most people will never read, so I don’t feel bad “spoiling” it here. An important part of the book centers around the question “Who is John Galt?”
It turns out John Galt is an inventor who is tired of having his work stolen, taxed or taken advantage of by the government and society.
As a result John Galt organizes a protest of sorts, by hard working people. They all physically withdraw to Galt’s Gulch, a hidden valley where they set up their own society. They are all productive and trade value for value. They don’t take advantage of each other and they don’t print new money from a central bank to dilute the value that others have worked to store!
Bitcoin, in principle and in action, is a way for smart people to create their own productive society alongside the current society. We don’t need to physically withdraw ourselves. We merely need to withdraw our productive capacity and wealth from the system. You simply do this by buying some bitcoin and poof! You have entered the secret society where value is preserved!
Why would you want to enter this society though? Ask yourself “If I want to save $100 today to spend in 2 years how do I do that?”
It is actually a MUCH harder question to answer than it seems at first glance.
Sure you can just put a $100 bill under your mattress but as we have experienced in the last 2 years, you could lose 10% a year or more, and that is just in the USA. In places like argentina (until recently) you could see inflation of 100% a year meaning prices double each year. You could put it in the stock market, which has a 75% chance of being up any 1 year. But it also has a chance of going down. You could buy a bond but with changing interest rates it’s hard to know if you would actually have the same amount of money next year or not!
You could buy gold, but short term it has trading fees in and out and might be up or down in any 2 year period. There is just no really good way to store value! This is all due to central banks and governments printing more money everyday!
As they print more money, the cash you hold becomes less valuable!
People just accept that this is the way things have to be. But it is not! Bitcoin has the potential to be an asset that slowly gains value every year. There is a fixed amount of bitcoin ever to be created, 21 million. These 21 million bitcoins measure the value of all goods in the world. As there is more abundance the value of the fixed amount of bitcoin continues to increase!
Many of the smart, productive, people that I know have purchased at least some bitcoin to join the community. They purchase goods and services from each other in bitcoin. You too can join this exclusive community of productive, smart people. Shoot me an email or leave a comment asking any questions you have about bitcoin!
The Truth heard one time sounds stranger than a lie heard a thousand times.
The truth is, inflation is caused by the government printing money. There are only so many goods that are possible to be produced by the limited amount of resources in the economy. An infinite amount of dollars cannot create more goods. More money only causes the price of the existing goods to increase as there is more money chasing the same amount of goods.
This is what happens every time the government increases the money supply. This happens everyday.
We have been in this system since everyone alive was born so it seems like it should be the natural system, but it is not.
Ask a fish to describe air and they’d be confused because they are surrounded by water. We are surrounded by fiat currency so we don’t recognize a good sound money when we are exposed to it.
We don’t need money distributed by the government. Money is an IOU. Money is a medium of exchange that people accept to pay for goods and services, and to repay loans. It’s a commodity that’s widely accepted, holds its value over time, and can be easily translated into prices. Money is the main measure of wealth, and it circulates between people and countries to facilitate trade.
Many things have been money over history, shells, gold, silver, copper, stones. Many of these have not been issued by governments. Fiat currency, money by decree, is a recent development. It inherently has no value. It only has value due to a fluke of history. Until 1971 USD was technically backed by gold. You were supposed to be able to trade in dollars for Gold. But that link was broken in 1933 by Executive order 6102 for individuals in the USA and in 1971 for any countries that wanted to exchange their USD for gold. Both were only supposed to be for a short time and both ended up being permanent, so far.
Another truth is the Government takes value that you have accrued by printing new money. This would be much easier to recognize if the world consisted of 3 people and you each had $100 for a total of $300, but then 1 of the 3 people had the ability to create new money. If the 2 people wanted to buy something and they had $100 total each to bid on that thing but the 3rd person was able to create $500 out of thin air and bid against them the 2 people wouldn’t let that happen. They would recognize that the $500 wasn’t really as valuable as the original $100 that each person had because the individual had just written $500 on a piece of paper and said it had value. This is counterfeiting! Creating new money is illegal for individuals, but the government does it everyday. Why is that ok? This is the same for many governments in history. Governments always default to stealing value from the governed by printing new money.
Why do we put up with this? We all have 1,000 different priorities in our lives. We have to take care of our kids, we have to take care of our parents, we have to take care of ourselves! We want to take a trip. We want to build a house. We want to take a vacation. We want to buy a car. We want to go out to eat or we have some other project we want to dedicate time to. In the USA inflation has been relatively low for many years so while we lose about 3% of the value we create each year, we just deal with it.
But many places have experienced high inflation both recently and over time. Argentina has recently had 100% inflation for multiple years in a row. There is nothing inherently different from the operation of the Argentina economy and central bank from the USA central bank. Turkey, Germany, Zimbabwe, Sudan, they have all experienced hyperinflation at various times.
Physical money is just a replacement for an IOU. An IOU works between 2 individuals. But when you start accounting for goods and services delivered across continents between Billions of people an IOU doesn’t work. That is why IOU’s have been abstracted to Dollars or other currencies.
But IOU’s between individuals don’t lose value. If someone does 1 hour of work for you you owe them 1 hour of work back. But if someone does 1 hour of work for you and you pay them $15 and then in a year they want you to do 1 hour of work for them, you will likely charge them $16 due to inflation. Why is this? It is because the accounting system, US Dollars, is broken! They dollars don’t hold value across time.
This is because the government prints more dollars everyday. Every time the government prints a new dollar, every existing dollar loses value.
The only way to fix this is an accounting system that has a fixed amount of units. That is what Bitcoin provides. There are only 21 million Bitcoin available. Each bitcoin can be broken down to 100 million satoshis.
The only reason the price bitcoin is changing today is due to supply and demand for Bitcoin. But you need to look past the present day and envision the future. The future is where bitcoin has been fully adopted by everyone in the world who wants a sound money. In this future the value of all the bitcoin in existence will measure all the goods in the world. As the amount of goods grows with world productivity by about 3% a year the value of bitcoin will continue to grow at the same rate. There won’t be huge swings because there won’t be people speculating on the future price of Bitcoin. It’s price is just a measurement of the good in the world. And since there are 21 million bitcoin, a fixed amount, there is no devaluation of the Bitcoin because more new Bitcoin are not made.
This is the fundamental idea and reason for Bitcoin. It is not a stock or a company. It is a ledger that measures value of things. It can’t be debased like existing USD ledgers.
If you understand this problem, the government stealing value from you via money printing, the solution of Bitcoin appears obvious.
The only question is, does Bitcoin actually solve this problem by being a fixed amount and will the system continue to function as it does today? If it continues to function as it does today, it should continue to gain value. If something comes along and changes how they Bitcoin system works then it’s possible that it could not function as described. Currently, that would be an “unknown unknown”. There is no obvious thing that would cause Bitcoin to fail. But I always leave a possibility for something to happen that I don’t anticipate in any situation.
Because Bitcoin seems to fix the problems with USD and other fiat currencies (Euros, Yen, Yuan, etc) I believe we should support it’s continued development. That is why I try to educate individuals on the problem that Bitcoin fixes, like with this article.
If you have any questions I’d be more than happy to discuss Bitcoin with you. Please comment or get in touch!
Bitcoin is not an investment. Bitcoin is a store of value. The value you create. Bitcoin is an agreement between people who create value in the world that they will trade their value for other value. The value you create and store in Bitcoin cannot be debased or inflated away by any government by money printing.
What is money?
The Google AI answer is below.
“Money is a widely accepted medium of exchange that can be used to pay for goods and services, repay loans, and store value. It’s also a unit of account that can be easily translated into prices. Money can take many forms, including:
Cowrie shells, Copper ingots, Rum, Gold coins, Paper banknotes, Digital bank records, Barley, Peppercorns, and Silver.”
A different way to think about it is money is a store of value provided to you in exchange for something of actual value (good or service) you have created, that you can cash in at a future date. You work all week, but you don’t need to spend all that value you created at the end of the week. So you try to store the value you have created in US Dollars.
There is an obvious problem with the main money we use in the world today, the US Dollar. It loses value every day.
Not every form of store of value has this problem. If you borrow a cup of sugar from someone and they repay you with a cup of sugar later, they don’t usually give you 95% of the sugar you gave them. They usually pay you back the exact same amount of value you gave them.
If you work for someone for an hour as a favor they don’t come work for your for 55 minutes. They pay you back the full hour.
So why if we are paid $100 for our work and we hold it in the bank are we willing to have that money lose value while it sits in the bank? It is still the same $100 later, but the value the $100 can purchase has decreased over time.
This is reflected in higher prices for good, inflation.
What causes inflation?
According to Milton Friedman, “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon”. This means that inflation is a rise in the general price level, and can only be produced by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.”
Meaning, the government causes inflation by printing money. Contrary to what politicians want you to believe (that greedy business people cause inflation), politicians themselves are the cause of the inflation! People need to understand how the system works. Businesses raise or lower prices with demand. If demand lowers, they will lower prices or they won’t be able to sell products. They also have to raise prices faster than inflation so they can stay ahead of inflation and stay profitable. Businesses are not the cause of inflation, the government printing more money, that is being spent on the same amount of goods, is what causes inflation. This has happened many times in history, from the Roman Empire to Revolutionary France. Inflation is always produced by governments printing money to try to buy goods.
Bitcoin puts handcuffs on the government. It is impossible to print more bitcoin. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoin. Bitcoin is the only chance we have at reigning in government spending and stopping inflation.
Bitcoin is not an investment. Bitcoin is a store of value. The value you create. Bitcoin is an agreement between people who create value in the world that they will trade their value for other value. The value you create and store in Bitcoin cannot be debased or inflated away by any government by money printing.
Until you understand the exact problem, you won’t see bitcoin in the right way. You will see it’s value, denominated in dollars. As it goes up you will be happy you have more dollars. But more dollars is not the goal. More bitcoin is the goal.
The Fed has no power to stop government spending, which is the root cause of inflation!
Below is a quote from Senator Elizabeth Warren, during a grilling of Fed Chair Jerome Powell
Senator Warren: In other words, you don’t have a plan to stop a runaway train if it occurs. You know, Chair Powell, you are gambling with people’s lives. And there’s a pile of data showing the price gouging and supply chain kinks, and the war in Ukraine are driving up prices.
You cling to the idea that there’s only one solution: lay off millions of workers. We need a Fed that will fight for families. And if you’re not going to lead that charge, we need someone with the Fed who will. – original link here.
What does Senator Warren think he is going to do about price gouging and supply chain kinks, and the war in Ukraine?
The Federal Reserve literally has 1 tool in their tool box, and that is to raise rates. He can’t stop the war in Ukraine. He can’t fix supply chain kinks. While she has identified some things that are nominally impacting inflation, it’s not all of them. There is 1 big one she is missing, which she could impact as a Senator, Government Spending!
To be clear, what the Fed is trying to do is reduce spending by individuals so they aren’t buying so many things. They try to reduce spending by offering higher rates on bonds. The thought is that people will buy bonds paying 5% interest instead of spending their money on goods. The fewer people trying to buy goods, the less money is chasing the same amount of goods and the prices will go down.
Elizabeth Warren lives in her own kayfabe financial world. She is bullying the Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, to lower interest rates because she thinks he is hurting the economy. She is right that higher rates are one of the things that is likely to hurt the economy in the long run. But the real thing that is driving inflation in the USA is government spending. The US government debt is rising by $1 trillion about every 100 days.
Like I mentioned above, if the goal is to reduce spending in the economy by taking individuals’ money out of circulation by getting them to buy bonds, then the government comes in and is spending $1T, there isn’t less money chasing the same amount of goods, there is more money!
The Fed has no power to stop government spending, which is the root cause of inflation!
More money chasing the same amount of goods causes inflation. It is that simple.
Think of it as if you are at an auction and you have $100 in your wallet and 5 other people also have $100 in their wallets.. There is another bidder who has a printer who can literally print $100 bills at will and outbid you and all others at anything you want to buy. This bidder with unlimited buying power will bid up the price of things until they are beyond your reach. Are other bidders, who also all have $100 causing the problem? Or is the bidder with the money printing machine outbidding everyone causing the price of things at the auction to go higher?
It’s pretty clear in this situation that the money printer is driving prices higher. People don’t study fiscal policy (use of government spending and taxation to influence the economy) very often. Most people just want to work and then come home and live their lives. Because people don’t study it often, and it’s a pretty big and abstract thing to most people, it’s very hard to wrap their heads around.
There is also, unfortunately, almost nothing anyone can personally do to impact government spending.
I can only think of a few things you can do personally.
Learn what is actually causing inflation instead of listening to the news tell you what they think is causing it.
A couple of books I recommend to understand money and its role as a tool
Have a personally sound balance sheet. Spend less than you make. Invest your excess income in sound assets. Stocks, Real Estate, Gold, Bitcoin.
Communicate with others about personal finances and government finances. If we all become more fiscally literate we might form a large enough coalition that we can start impacting government spending. But first we need to understand it ourselves. It is my hope that writing this and sharing it helps educate just 1 or 2 others about the topic.
As an addendum to the above, I have copied the 2023 Congressional Budget Office report below, in case it disappears in the future. It highlights how the government spending is projected to grow as a percent of GDP every year going forward. Do we really want the government spending more and more of our money? Do we think a central authority is better at knowing what we need than we ourselves do? I think not.
Each year, the Congressional Budget Office publishes a report presenting its projections of what the federal budget and the economy would look like over the next 30 years if current laws generally remained unchanged. The long-term budget projections typically follow CBO’s 10-year baseline budget projections and then extend most of the concepts underlying them for an additional 20 years. This year, the long-term projections are based on CBO’s May 2023 baseline projections but also reflect the estimated budgetary effects of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 (Public Law 118-5), which was enacted on June 3, 2023.
Deficits
In CBO’s projections, the deficit equals 5.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023, declines to 5.0 percent by 2027, and then grows in every year, reaching 10.0 percent of GDP in 2053. Over the past century, that level has been exceeded only during World War II and the coronavirus pandemic. The increase in the total deficit results from faster growth in spending than in revenues. The primary deficit, which excludes interest costs, equals 3.3 percent of GDP in both 2023 and 2053, but the total deficit is boosted by rising interest costs.
Debt
By the end of 2023, federal debt held by the public equals 98 percent of GDP. Debt then rises in relation to GDP: It surpasses its historical high in 2029, when it reaches 107 percent of GDP, and climbs to 181 percent of GDP by 2053. Such high and rising debt would slow economic growth, push up interest payments to foreign holders of U.S. debt, and pose significant risks to the fiscal and economic outlook; it could also cause lawmakers to feel more constrained in their policy choices.
Spending
In 2023, outlays fall to 24.2 percent of GDP as federal spending in response to the pandemic diminishes. Outlays continue to decline through 2026 but increase thereafter, reaching 29.1 percent of GDP in 2053. (By comparison, from 1993 to 2022, outlays averaged 21.0 percent of GDP.) Rising interest rates and persistently large primary deficits cause interest costs to almost triple in relation to GDP between 2023 and 2053. Spending on the major health care programs and Social Security—driven by the aging of the population and growing health care costs—also boosts federal outlays significantly over the next 30 years.
Revenues
Revenues fall to 18.4 percent of GDP in 2023 and continue to drop until 2026, when the scheduled expiration of certain provisions of the 2017 tax act causes tax receipts to increase. Revenues generally rise thereafter, reaching 19.1 percent of GDP in 2053, as an increasing share of income is pushed into higher tax brackets. (By comparison, from 1993 to 2022, revenues averaged 17.2 percent of GDP.)
Changes From Previous Projections
Measured as a percentage of GDP, federal debt is now projected to be 2 percentage points higher in 2023 and 9 percentage points lower in 2052 than it was in last year’s report. Overall, CBO’s projections of debt have increased through 2042 and decreased in later years.
The financial advising industry doesn’t work for most people. Advisors charge 1%-2% a year which can cost clients $10k-$40k a year! That is money that people could be living off of instead of giving to advisors.
Other people might have so little money (usually less than $500k is “little” to financial advisors”) that they won’t work with people.
The Giving Solution is a non-profit that provides free financial advising for anyone. If you have $50 or $50 million, The Giving Solution will connect you with a Fee-Only Financial that they have deemed is a trustworthy advisor and will invest in a way that is best for your personal net worth growth. You pay nothing.
They will meet with you via Zoom or other online options if you are unable to meet with them locally. They will meet with anyone, anywhere in the world!
Connect with them yourself.
Share with others who you think could benefit from financial advising.
I keep thinking of new ways to think about what value Bitcoin provides. Below is the way I thought about it today. It started while talking with a friend at a coffee shop about money. We discussed the gold standard and he asked how it would be possible to go to a gold standard today. The market capitalization of all the gold in the world today is only about $13.7 trillion and the value of all the money in the world is around $450 trillion. Gold currently costs about $2,000/oz. To fully back the $450 trillion of money with gold the gold would have to significantly appreciate. It would increase it’s monetary premium. In fact some central banks have explicitly said they are buying more gold in case this happens!
This website, gold survival guide, did a calculation of what you’d have to reprice gold to, in US dollars, to get only a 26% backing. They determined that you’d need gold to be worth $33,690/oz. This would be a significant monetary premium on gold over what it is worth today.
Gold is the most commonly thought of thing that has a monetary premium. Houses are a good example of something that people don’t often think of that has a monetary premium. Many houses are bought by speculators to store value. For example:
Rich Chinese buyers are willing to use houses, which are not very liquid, to store value outside of China. It is a lot simpler way to get value out of the country. It would look a lot more suspicious if they just shipped hundreds of thousands of dollars out of China and parked it in a bank. But to buy a property is an “acceptable” reason to take money out of the country. People are resourceful and will find ways to store value.
People want assets that will rise with inflation. They can be willing to pay more than the utility value of the asset to acquire it. Unfortunately, it’s never explicitly stated or even talked about that some things have a monetary premium on top of their utility value. Commodities like corn or oil have very little or usually no monetary premium.Their only value is from the things they can be used to do. They don’t store well. To have a monetary premium a good has to have a long life, like gold or houses. Stocks are another thing that has a monetary premium.
One thing that also has a monetary premium that is not often talked about is money! People like to talk about the fact that Bitcoin has no “intrinsic value”. Do you know what is another thing that has no intrinsic value? US dollars. Think about it. What gives a dollar its value? It is it’s network effects. It is accepted as valuable by others. Gold has a utility value as well as a monetary premium. Some people get confused by gold having a utility value and they think that any money has to have a utility value. But that is not true, as evidenced by the US dollar, the primary money in the world, having no intrinsic value! In fact there is really only 1 major difference between US dollars and bitcoin. US dollars can be created at will by the US government, and are everyday. This reduces the purchasing power of every existing dollar, including the ones you own and worked to earn.
Bitcoin has a fixed supply. Once you own a fraction of a bitcoin, you own that much of the total bitcoin network. There is no way for anyone to steal your percentage of the network by creating more bitcoin
I often say, if the government quit printing dollars, we wouldn’t need bitcoin. Every government that has had their own currency in history has always printed and debased that currency until it has lost all value. See the Romans. They literally has physical silver coins. They would periodically recall them, melt them down, dilute the silver percentage and reissue them. Initially they would act like they were the same value of coin, but as people came to realize that new coins had less silver they would require more coins for the same goods. So back to the monetary premium. US dollars have no inherent value. Neither does bitcoin. But US dollars have a created monetary premium from their acceptance as a means of payment. There is no reason that bitcoin, or anything else that a group of individuals choose to use as a store of value and means of payment could become that and gain some of the monetary premium that dollars have. In essence we can transfer the monetary premium from dollars to bitcoin, if we choose to. In El Salvador bitcoin is already accepted as a means of payment. Many individuals and businesses around the world have already individually chosen to accept bitcoin as a means of payment. SInce dollars don’t reliably store value, due to the ability of the government to print more, why wouldn’t people choose to store value in a tool that it is impossible to make more of? That is why I choose to store some of my value in bitcoin. If you are interested in talking about the idea of monetary premium more, or the idea of transferring monetary premium from one good to another, get in touch!
I put on my goals for 2024 to write at least 4 letters to politicians this year. This is my 2nd letter. You can find the 1st here. I believe I would find very few people who would be against these ideas. There have been multiple bills proposed to rectify both of these issues. But none has ever been passed by Congress. Why? Ask your politicians. Vote them out if they don’t fix this.
I write these so you can copy, paste, send to your politicians if you agree with these ideas. We often think writing politicians doesn’t do anything, and it might not. But if they know there is large enough support that people will act on (vote them out) if they don’t do what we want, they will eventually do the right thing.
“Bans on stock trading & term limits for Congress are *wildly* popular, yet never get enacted because they run against the self-interest of Congressmen. Here’s the solution: propose legislation requiring it & just “grandfather” exemptions for those enact it. It’d pass instantly.” – Vivek Ramaswamy, 1-31-2024 X post
I am writing you to encourage you to vote in support and show my support for
Mr. Ossoff (for himself, Mr. Kelly, Mr. Warnock, Mr. Bennet, Ms. Duckworth, Mr. Luján, Mr. Schatz, Ms. Baldwin, and Mrs. Shaheen) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
Trust in the government, which you are a part of, has been eroding for over 60 years.
One of the reasons is that it appears that many politicians get into government after they are already rich and then proceed to use their positions to get even richer.
There are multiple websites and X accounts to follow Nancy Pelosi’s stock trading.
Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker ♟- @PelosiTracker_
The 1 reason why I like Ron Desantis is he sold his stocks before he became a member of Congress to remove any show of insider trading. While I don’t agree with all his policies, I appreciate that about him. I wish others would follow him.
The fact that there is a bill in congress that has been proposed multiple times to ban stock trading but has not been passed makes me trust Congress even less.
I ask you why this bill has not been passed?
As mentioned in the original quote from Vivek, there is also a bill proposed to pass term limits for members of Congress.
H.J.Res.20 – Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to limit the number of consecutive terms that a Member of Congress may serve.
Why do I spend so much time reading about Bitcoin and writing about Bitcoin and telling others about Bitcoin? I do it because I want the world to be a better place. Historically, I have given money to many charities to try to make the world a better place. I think that is still a good thing to do. But I’ve always wondered why the world is so messed up in the first place? Many things don’t seem to work.
At a more naive point in my life I told a friend “I want to work to get rid of money.” Because I had this feeling that somehow money was making the world a worse place. I have obviously grown in my thinking immensely since then. I now see money as the clear tool it is to foster trade and specialization. Money is actually imperative to a functioning society. Trade and specialization increase efficiency and make the world a more abundant place.
Unfortunately, the money we have is not functional itself. There are over 100 fiat currencies in the world, Yen, Yuan, USD, Euro, and a hundred more. So while there is more abundance for some, the abundance is actually concentrated and many are exploited.
Each currency is dysfunctional in the same way. New units are created everyday, reducing the value of each existing Dollar, Euro, Yen, etc. It is no wonder that there are so many issues in the world when an entity, (the Government) is able to print money and manipulate the market to purchase as much as they want for any pet project that a politician has.
Just 1 example that I am highly against is Social Security. I went through and created a hypothetical person who started working in 1984 at the age of 25 (after being born in 1959).
If that person started making $10k in 1984 that would be equivalent to $30k/year in 2024. I gave this person a 3% raise a year. You can see that in the “income column” below. So this person would have ended working in 2024 with a salary of $32k/year (being 65 years old).
The next column shows the 12.5%/year that this person + their employer is paying into Social Security. After 40 years this person would have paid $98k into Social Security. I went through and put all the earnings data into the Social Security website benefit calculator, found here.
It provided an estimate of $1,378/month or $16,536/year.
I provided an alternative column, where you would instead take that 12.5%/year and invest that in the S&P 500 for 40 years.
As of January 26, 2024, the S&P 500’s price is 4,890.97. If you invested $100 in the S&P 500 at the beginning of 1984, you would have about $6,606.25 at the end of 2023, assuming you reinvested all dividends. This is a return on investment of 6,506.25%, or 11.14% per year. This person would have $1,074,860.37 in their 401k. They could safely withdraw $42,944/year from this (4%) as well as having a portfolio worth $1 million dollars! This is making a relatively low $30k per year equivalent for 40 years!
But most people I know who have made $30k a year for 40 years do not have a million dollar portfolio. Why is that?
It’s because they are unable to invest 12% of their salary a year, because it is required to go to the government and the Social Security Fund. This is robbing millions of workers of $25k/year in their retirement.
And input the dollar amount in the table for each year to find the benefit.
This is bad enough for a $30k/year equivalent worker. The more money you make though, the worse of a deal Social Security is. This is because of the “knee points” in the Social Security return table. The more you pay in, the less you get out. https://retireby40.org/early-retirement-impact-social-security-benefit/
While Social Security being a terrible return on your money is something of a first world problem, there are plenty of other instances of money losing value in other countries that really hurts people in those countries.
You can read from Alex Gladstein to learn about some of those.
“The rate of inflation in the U.S. is paltry compared to many other countries worldwide. The chief strategy officer for the Human Rights Foundation, Alex Gladstein highlighted this issue on Monday in a series of tweets. Gladstein is also a bitcoin (BTC) proponent and has been an evangelist for the leading crypto asset for quite some time.
“Many might think that extreme inflation is a rare occurrence in today’s modern world,” Gladstein said to his 27,000 Twitter followers on Monday. “That’s simply not the case. There are 1.2 billion people currently living in countries experiencing double or triple-digit inflation,” Gladstein insisted.”
F.A. Hayek in 1984: “I don’t believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can’t take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can’t stop.”
First 15 minutes of the podcast “Why Bitcoin Makes The World Better – The Bitcoin Layer”- I think this is a great 15 minute video to learn about “why Bitcoin” if you aren’t sure what “problem Bitcoin is trying to solve”.
Full episode – Why Bitcoin Makes The World Better – The Bitcoin Layer
Inflation/money printing by the government is a hidden tax, or more nefariously, theft of your savings.
I received the below email from a coworker related to this home for sale.
I was walking the dog tonight and there are several new houses down the street. I looked up what they go for. There is a video of it on the page, it’s a just a house. Nothing huge, with some basement finished. – coworker
I shared the below picture with this coworker. If you are measuring the world in USD then things are getting more expensive. But if you are measuring in Bitcoin, things are getting cheaper, as Jeff Booth explains in the initial Youtube video I shared above.
Below is the rest of my reply to this coworker.
You could always try to put multiple families together in one house, as times will get desperate. That would be the historic solution. And as you said, as people are poorer, they will just have to do it again.
There are plenty of very poor both in the USA and abroad already living this way.
As referenced from the trip I just got back from India from.
Most of the world is ALREADY poor. The USA has benefited from being able to export inflation to the rest of the world for the last 50 years.
We do this by everyone having to buy USD to buy oil. Then every country has a huge pile of US treasuries/dollars. Then we print more. Printing money is effectively stealing value from people who hold dollars. That is why NO ONE ever wants to have cash for longer than they have to.
Don’t you think that’s kind of crazy that no one actually wants US dollars “money”?
We buy bonds, gold, real estate, stocks, anything to store the value because we know that dollars lose value over time. It’s wild!
It’s even more obvious in countries like Argentina or Turkey where they have REALLY awful money. But our money also sucks for preserving value over time.
It all started with 1971 and removing the gold backing of the USD. Well really that started in 1930 with executive order 6102 which the government confiscated people’s gold. Paid them $20.67/oz of gold. Then repriced the dollar to $35/oz! they literally stole $15 worth for every oz of gold they took. It is crazy!
So I’m just saying you are noticing the results, extremely high home prices. Things getting more expensive. I am telling you there is a clear history to how we got here. And there is literally 1 solution to this problem. Well 2 but 1 will never happen.
If the US government quit over spending and printing new dollars that would fix it. But that will NEVER happen. So the alternate solution is to save in a currency that has a maximum limit, 21 million bitcoin.
If we DON’T support the bitcoin network we will continue down this path of everything getting more expensive. I have read so many books about the history of money and governments messing with money. It always happens this way.
The Romans debased their money, see below.
See quote below.
I really encourage you to learn more about bitcoin. It is our only hope.
Super short book, 2 hours on audible, but it’s really great.
The Bullish Case for Bitcoin Paperback – May 8, 2021
by Vijay Boyapati (Author)
F.A. Hayek in 1984: “I don’t believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can’t take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can’t stop.”
I wrote a letter to Joni Ernst (and Chuck Grassley) about Bitcoin that you can find here. I have posted Joni’s reply and then my reply to her, trying to correct the many incorrect things she noted in her letter (or her email reply person’s letter). I understand why most people dont’ waste their time contacting their politicians. You never get a straight answer. But unfortunately, beyond voting them out, which is nearly impossible to do as most politicians stay in once elected, the only thing we can do is contact them to try to educate them on topics and encourage others to contact them also. That is why I post my emails with politicians, so others can just copy/paste send them, if they want, to show our politicians that it’s a topic people care about, without making others spend time writing a letter.
Thank you for reaching out to me regarding digital asset regulation. It is important for me to hear from folks in Iowa on this rapidly evolving topic.
Whether it is Bitcoin, central bank digital currencies, or digital currency exchanges like FTX, digital assets have been a big topic of conversation in Washington. Cryptocurrencies can create new avenues for financial transactions, investments, and other economic activity given they do not rely on a government’s central bank. While digital assets offer new possibilities, there are legitimate concerns we must also address.
For example, Bitcoin is among the most popular cryptocurrencies, but we do not know who created it or how much of it exists. These uncertainties raise questions as to how legitimate Bitcoin can be as a currency. Further, cryptocurrencies are volatile. We have seen currencies become extremely valuable, and then, in the blink of an eye, lose their value all-together. This volatility raises questions around the extent to which cryptocurrencies may need to be regulated in some form or fashion so as to create more stability for investors.
Additionally, the decentralized nature of digital assets create potential risks related to fraud and illicit activities. We have already seen how bad actors across the world take advantage of the secrecy digital currencies provide in order to commit crimes, fund terrorism, or evade sanctions.
However, there is much benefit to be had from greater use of technology in the financial system. Cryptocurrencies do open doors for people who may not otherwise have access to capital. Though substantially distinct from digital currencies, the Federal Reserve recently unveiled its new FedNow service to help give people and businesses instant access to their money when they transfer it from account to account.
As we continue to flesh out the use of digital currencies and technology in finance, we must strike the right balance between fostering innovation, protecting individuals, and limiting the ability of bad actors to abuse the system.
You may be interested to know, this year’s National Defense Authorization Act included a provision to tighten oversight of financial institutions working with cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. By instituting regulatory clarity while weeding out bad actors, financial institutions can better ensure digital assets are not improperly used. This is just one of many crucial provisions in the annual defense bill that bolsters our national security and sends a clear sign of strength to our adversaries.
Thank you again for reaching out to my office, and please know that I am closely monitoring this situation as it develops. Please feel free to share any additional insights or concerns you may have regarding digital assets as I always enjoy hearing from Iowans.
Sincerely,
Joni K. Ernst
United States Senator
My reply is below.
Senator –
Thank you for your reply. I wanted to point out that you didn’t really address any of the specific topics I noted and you even shared some incorrect factual information. It concerns me when my elected Senator (or their email writer/advisor) is so wrong on a very basic topic.
It is obvious that this is your canned bitcoin/crypto currency response. I want to emphasize to you there is a fundamental difference between bitcoin and “cryptocurrency”
You can read about the differences in this short blog post .
I also asked you to to learn from Alex Gladstein about the human rights benefits that Bitcoin provides. He has already tried to speak to congress on this.You did not mention that at all.
Are you not interested in the plight of those fleeing authoritarian regimes?
You did mention, unprompted that “Bitcoin is among the most popular cryptocurrencies, but we do not know who created it or how much of it exists.”
While it is true the inventor, Satoshi Nakamato, is unknown, we do know that there will only be 21 million bitcoin ever. This is ingrained in the code.
This is unlike the amount of US dollars of which we truly can’t know how many will ever exist. Every year the US government prints trillions more in new dollars.
While Republicans pay lip service to the budget deficit when Democrats hold the presidency, historically, Republican presidents run even larger budget deficits than Democrats! You are right to fight against deficits but I believe you do it only in word for votes. I don’t believe you have any personal conviction to reduce the deficit.
I encourage you to talk to your fellow Senator, Cynthia Lumis. She seems to understand Bitcoin.
MyWheelLife.com 