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Old March 19th, 2012 #1
Alex Linder
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Default Government Makes Everything More Difficult and Expensive

[This thread will be stickied and include examples as I come across them from time to time]

Inflation Plus….by Eric Peters

March 17, 2012

Inflated car prices are a great way to gauge how much we’ve being gouged by the private banks that control (and relentlessly devalue) the currency of the United States. But we’re also being gouged by the government – and those costs are even more hidden.
Let me explain by way of example:

In the latest issue of High Performance Pontiac magazine (I’m a subscriber) there is an article about a restored 1977 Trans-Am. The base price of this car in ’77 was $5,799.

Using the CPI inflation calculator (see here) you’ll discover this sum has the same buying power today as $21,785. To parse this in terms of the real cost increase of a new car (as opposed to merely the increased number of “notes” one must have in one’s pocket today to match the buying power of $5,799 in ’77) it is instructive to take a look at what this sum will buy Now vs. Then.

Then – back in 1977 – $5,799 ($21,785 in today’s money) would buy you a brand-new Trans-Am. Not merely a Firebird. The Trans-Am was the top-of-the-line version of the Firebird – and also one of the most expensive Pontiacs at the time. For another $75, a buyer could select the optional high-performance 400 cubic inch engine and with it, a close-ratio manual transmission. Add $281.76 for that (in inflation-adjusted 2012 dollars).

Total MSRP for a ’77 Trans-Am with the optional high-performance 400 engine and manual transmission: $5,874 in 1977 – the equivalent of $22,067.53 today.

Now let’s step into a Chevy showroom and see what $22k (the equivalent in real purchasing power of $5,874 in ’77 money) will buy:

A base model V-6 Camaro.

Well, not quite.

The 2012 base model Camaro’s sticker price is $23,280 – so about $1,200 higher in inflated 2012 dollars (about $320 higher in ’77 dollars) than the cost of a top-of-the-line Trans-Am equipped with the optional engine (a big V-8) back in 1977.

The more direct cost comparison is to compare the cost of a current V-8 Camaro SS to the cost of that ’77 Trans-Am. And how much is a new Camaro SS? $32,280. In ’77 money, that’s equivalent to $8,592 and change. So, the real cost of a modern version of the ’77 V-8 muscle car is about $2,800 more – which doesn’t sound like a lot until you put it in terms of inflation-adjusted 2012 money.

Which comes to about $10,520 and change. Not including interest on the loan.

That’s not inflation. It’s the cost of government. For things like driver and passenger side airbags, tire pressure monitors, traction/stability control and all the rest of it – plus more to come, including the just-mandated back-up cameras that every new car will be required to have beginning with the 2014 model year. Those costs are fairly easy to quantify; dual air bags, for example, add an estimated $800-$1,000 to the bottom line cost of every new car. Assuming the lower figure – $800 – that comes to about $212 in ’77 money – or about three times the cost of the ’77 TA’s optionally available high-performance V-8 and manual transmission! Which would you rather have? A pair of air bags in a V-6 base model Camaro? Or a big (6.6 liter) V-8 and close-ratio manual transmission instead?

For one third the cost of the air bags?

Too bad the choice is made for us.
The costs of meeting the government’s “safety,” “emissions” and fuel efficiency mandates are harder to nail down. But they’re certainly not cost-free. A new Camaro comes with four catalytic converters and four O2 sensors; the ’77 TA had one cat and no O2 sensors. The ’77′s engine was fed by a single Rochester Quadrajet four-barrel carburetor. Today you can buy a brand-new replacement Q-Jet for about $400 – which is about $106 in ’77 money. See how far $106 (or $400 in inflated money) gets you today when your modern car’s direct port injected EFI needs major service. The new Camaro SS’s V-8 uses cylinder deactivation technology and a skip-shift feature in its manual transmission to help it get better gas mileage. Those aren’t free, either. Granted, the ’77 TA got much poorer gas mileage – but then, you could afford to feed it because the car cost so much less.

Today, the car and the fuel costs more – vitiating the mileage improvement. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather have the 15 MPG $5,799 top-of-the-line TA than a 26 MPG base model Camaro that costs significantly more in real terms. (Full disclosure: I own a Trans-Am from that era and love its air bag-free 15 MPG self. It doesn’t have a computer; there’s no OnStar monitoring my activities and while it may not have a great stereo, it makes great sounds… government-free sounds. It doesn’t need a stereo.)

The scoop is this:

A top-of-the-line ’77 Trans-Am cost less in real terms than a current-year base model Camaro because the ’77 Trans-Am did not have to comply with all the rigmarole that is required of the new Camaro. GM – like all the other car companies – simply transfers these costs to you, the buyer.

And one of these costs is that V-8 muscle cars are now (mostly) middle-aged men’s cars. Because it takes most men that long to be in a position to afford one. Back in ’77, a young man just out of school – even high school – could finagle a way into a new Trans-Am. The muscle car began as a youth car in 1964 (first year for the Pontiac GTO). Today, it’s an easy-fit jeans car.

You can thank the Fed – and Uncle Sam, too.

http://ericpetersautos.com/2012/03/17/inflation-plus/
 
Old March 19th, 2012 #2
Rick Ronsavelle
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Mr. Peters seems to be using the kool-aid price index from the, ahem, government. Inflation is increase in money supply, not rising prices. (Inflation/dilution/adulteration) causes rising prices. M2 in 2/1977 was $1178B. M2 2/2012 is $9787B. This is 8.3 times the '77 figure. The car should cost $5874 times 8.3 or $28,673- however there are standard extras, other than mandated stuff:

6 way power seat
Bluetooth wireless
aluminum engine (!)
4 wheel disc brakes (front only for Trans-Am)
independent rear suspension (!)
Pirelli P-Zero tires
6 speed trans (4 speed for Trans-Am)

http://www.chevrolet.com/camaro-performance-car/
 
Old March 19th, 2012 #3
Thomas de Aynesworth
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Dad bought his 69 Firebird (350, 2 bbl. carb, 2-speed TH350) for $700 with something like 100k on the odometer back in the late 70s.
 
Old March 24th, 2012 #4
Alex Linder
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Doug: That's just what I mean. Actually, the trend towards both partners in a marriage having to work really started in the early '70s – after Nixon cut all links between the dollar and gold in August of 1971. Before then, in the "Leave it to Beaver" era, the average family got by quite well with only the husband working. If he got sick or lost his job, the wife was a financial backup system. Now, if something happens to either one, the family is screwed. I think, from a very long-term perspective, historians will one day see the '60s as the peak of American prosperity – certainly relative to the rest of the world… but perhaps even in absolute terms, even taking continued advances in technology into account. Maybe the '59 Cadillac was the bell ringing at the top of that civilizational market.

http://lewrockwell.com/casey/casey113.html

[the jews finalized their takeover in the 60s, which was, not coincindentally, the high point of pre-jew wellbeing]
 
Old March 24th, 2012 #5
Alex Linder
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L: Policies aimed at encouraging consumption, instead of increasing production, are what turned the savings rate negative in the US and resulted in the huge sovereign debt issues we're seeing in supposedly rich countries…

Doug: Well, the governments themselves have spent way more than they had or ever will have, and that's par for the course when you believe spending is a virtue. However, it's the false signals government interference sends to the market that caused the huge malinvestments that only began to go into liquidation in 2008. That has to do with another definition of a depression: It's a period of time when distortions and malinvestments in the economy are liquidated. Unfortunately, that process has barely even started. In fact, since the bailouts started in 2008, these things have gotten much worse. If the government had gone cold turkey back then, cut its spending by at least 50% for openers, and encouraged the public to do the same, the depression would already be over, and we'd be on our way to real prosperity. But they did just the opposite. So we haven't yet entered the real meat grinder…
 
Old March 24th, 2012 #6
Alex Linder
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As Bob Lefevre used to say: "Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure."

[excellent. just as whites figured out how to stop jews, they will eventually figure out how to control the mentality that sees government as the solution]
 
Old March 25th, 2012 #7
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The cost of a car nowadays is the cost of a home 20 to 30 years ago.
Every car now is loaded with felonious crap that will with
time make it irreparable due to the cost of maintained which
you can not do yourself. Built in self destruction/obsolesce
is what has been designed by no mistake
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Last edited by SlagMaster; March 25th, 2012 at 04:05 AM.
 
Old May 29th, 2013 #8
Leonard Rouse
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Wednesday, May 15, 2013

More Dangerous than the Factory Building Collapse

The recent collapse of a garment factory building in Bangladesh, resulting in the death, at latest count, of more than 1,100 workers who were employed there, has led to international outrage not only against the building’s owner but also against the various retailers in the United States and Europe, many of them prominent, that have sold clothing produced in that building. It is demanded that they assume responsibility for working conditions in the factories that supply them and not deal with factories that do not provide safe and humane conditions and pay fair wages.

Such demands rest on the belief that, if left free of government interference, the profit motive of businessmen or capitalists leads them to pay subsistence wages to workers compelled to work intolerable hours in sub-human conditions. And, more, that the profits allegedly wrung from the workers in this way exist in the hands of the capitalists as a kind of disposable slush fund as it were, at least some more or less substantial portion of which can be given back to the workers from whom they were taken, or used on behalf of those workers, with no negative effect except to deprive the capitalists of some of their ill-gotten gains. It is generally taken for granted that the reason the kind of conditions that prevail in Bangladesh and the rest of the Third World do not exist in the United States and Western Europe is the enactment of labor and social legislation, and that what is needed is to extend such legislation to the countries that do not yet have it.

Every aspect of this set of beliefs is wrong and its consequences are highly destructive, above all to the masses of workers in the Third World who already live close to starvation and who are in danger of being driven into it by needlessly increasing the cost of employing them either by arbitrarily raising their wages or by requiring that they be provided with improved working conditions that must be at their expense and which they cannot afford.

One of the most elementary propositions of the science of economics is that the higher the price of anything, the smaller is the quantity of it that will be purchased. This applies to labor no less than to goods. If wage rates in Bangladesh are arbitrarily increased, fewer workers will be employed in Bangladesh. In that case, workers who would have earned low wages will earn no wages. They will starve. If employers in Bangladesh are compelled to make improvements in working conditions of a kind that do not pay for themselves, the cost of those improvements represents the equivalent of a rise in wage rates. Again, there will be unemployment. The unemployment could be avoided only if workers’ take-home wages could fall sufficiently to offset the cost of the improvements. In that case, the situation would be comparable to making the workers use their already meager wages to pay for improvements that they simply cannot afford.

These are not outcomes that the advocates of imposing labor standards want. What they want is higher wages and better working conditions. Their problem is that they do not realize what is actually necessary to achieve these results.

What will achieve these results is leaving business firms in Bangladesh and throughout the Third World alone, to be as profitable as they can be. (It should be obvious that the loss of a factory building and its machinery was not profitable and that while it may be legitimate to denounce the building’s owner for criminal recklessness and negligence, it is simply absurd to denounce him for seeking profit, when what he actually achieved, and could only achieve through such conduct, was total loss.)

The high profits that can be earned in a Third World country, if not prevented by too many obstacles, will be heavily saved and invested, mainly in that Third World country. As the experience of Taiwan, South Korea, and now even mainland China shows, a generation or more of such a process results in a vast accumulation of means of production in the country—i.e., numerous new factories, with better and better equipment. This results in an intensified competition for labor and thus rising wage rates. As wage rates rise, workers can more and more afford to accept lesser increases along with improved working conditions of a kind that must be at their expense.

Economic freedom, not government interference, is the road that the wealth of nations travels.

-----------------

Copyright © 2013 by George Reisman. This article may be reproduced electronically provided this note is included. George Reisman, Ph.D., is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics and the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996; Amazon Kindle Edition, 2012). His website is www.capitalism.net. His blog is www.georgereismansblog.blogspot.com.


http://georgereismansblog.blogspot.c...-building.html
 
Old May 29th, 2013 #9
Rick Ronsavelle
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Economic freedom, not government interference, is the road that the wealth of nations travels.

Except for Israel.

{Federal Reserve Act of 1913} http://www.llsdc.org/attachments/fil...LH-PL63-43.pdf

For the rest of the world, freedom is necessary but not sufficient. The other ingreedyent is accepting the redeeming grace of our lord and saviour, christ h. jesus. See the holy bible for

There may be another ingredient, but is slips my mind at the moment. Oh yeah, it may have something to do with mind. . .

Freedom plus mind may be necessary and sufficient. . .
And mind power in not equally distributed on Earth- denied by jews like Reisman.
 
Old March 30th, 2014 #10
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Only force rules. Force is the first law - Adolf H. http://erectuswalksamongst.us/ http://tinyurl.com/cglnpdj Man has become great through struggle - Adolf H. http://tinyurl.com/mo92r4z Strength lies not in defense but in attack - Adolf H.
 
Old July 2nd, 2014 #11
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Only force rules. Force is the first law - Adolf H. http://erectuswalksamongst.us/ http://tinyurl.com/cglnpdj Man has become great through struggle - Adolf H. http://tinyurl.com/mo92r4z Strength lies not in defense but in attack - Adolf H.
 
Old July 3rd, 2014 #12
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Speaking of cars, did the Volkswagen (run by the NS German workers union as a public enterprise) make automobile ownership more or less available to average Germans during the Third Reich?

It's mind boggling that someone who has "Gas The Kikes" in his avatar uses a disgusting Jewish capital manipulating parasite like Peter Schiff as a reference. That guy's been predicting the "NEXT BIG ECONOMIC CRASH" that you can conveniently avoid by buying his snake oil for years now.

These economic apocalypse types are no different than their evangelical equivalents. The market will collapse when the Jewish cabal that controls Wall Street gathers together and makes it happen, government intervention or not. Government is in the pocket of capitalists (especially Jews), all nations in history that have had a capitalist system decline into plutocracy.
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Old September 24th, 2014 #13
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Marc Faber on democracy and big government

Quote:
Generally, in small societies, democracy is more successful than in large societies.

In countries like India or the United States, the federal government has become so large that they take decisions that are not necessarily in the interest of the individual. This is different from Switzerland, where we have municipalities, “Gemeinden”, and states, “Cantons”, with a lot of decentralized power, which I find very desirable.

Basically, over the last, I would say, 100 years, the Keynesians and the Neo-Keynesians thereafter propagated their view that the larger the government and the more the interventions the better a society becomes. They have managed to discredit the Austrian School of Economics.

As a result, society in general has turned into an entitlement society where we have an insurance policy for everything and the government is expected to pay the bills. And so, the freedom of the individual is undermined. But with freedom comes responsibility, personal responsibility.

This has been pushed aside and people don’t realize that they can’t be free if they don’t take on responsibility. Adam Smith said the government should be in charge of a well-structured legal system, low taxes and defense and nothing else!

Instead, we have more and more socialism and state planning, which diminishes people’s freedom. I believe we need to have a huge change in society to make people understand that if you want to have freedom you also have to take on personal responsibility.
- See more at: http://www.marcfabersblog.com/2014/0....viTGJ31t.dpuf
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