Andrew Sirkis Quoted on Lew Rockwell!

Wow! Andrew Sirkis was quoted on Lew Rockwell!

See:

Amazing! You know when someone with the stature of a Lew Rockwell quotes you, you've made a great statement...You maybe wondering just "who is this Andrew character?" Well, he is a friend of mine who has been quoted at length in this very blog describing how much of a safer place Japan is to live in than the United States!

Please refer to: "Japan is a Much Freer and Better Place to Live Than the United States."

Dear Mike,

Went to the beach with my 9 year old and 2 of her friends this Sunday afternoon.  It was a warm day and the beach wasn't crowded.  No cops anywhere in sight;  the lifeguard was there, but hidden from view and totally unobtrusive.

I drank a can of ice cold beer that I bought at the corner liquor store a block from the beach.  Just one can.  No one said a word about it.

The children went in the ocean and I kept an eye on them.  Everyone was well behaved on the entire beach.  No loud radios, drunks, bums, or slobs.  No trash. No one allowing their dog to run around unleashed and harass people.

An 8-ish year old girl shows up with a 2-ish year old looking child, probably siblings.  The 8-year-old wraps the child up in towels just like a Japanese mother would do, to keep the sun off the child's skin.  I looked closely to see, yet no parents are in sight.  The older child places the younger child in an inner tube and they spend several hours floating around and enjoying themselves.  Another Dad and I take turns keeping an eye on the nearby children, but they never need to be admonished, playing respectfully together and laughing.  When I go in the water I leave my valuables in a waist pouch on the beach, with no fear at all that anyone would steal anything.

We all wash off at the public beach shower and walk home.  Stopping for ice cream along the way.   At 5PM, a friend of my 9-year-old rides her bike home, about a 15 minute ride to the other side of town.

If you read between the lines, you may understand how this vignette represents a very particular way of life in many respects.  It would be easy to contrast this to my experiences in America, many of which were good as I lived in San Francisco, a most beautiful part of the world.

Well done, Andy!

The United States Committed at Least Two Acts of War Against Japan Before Pearl Harbor

I can hear everyone say, "NO! Japan attacked the USA first!"

If you mean that the Japanese bombed the military base of Pearl Harbor, before the US ever bombed the Japanese, then that is not exactly true. 

If you mean that Japan committed acts of war against the United States first, before Pearl Harbor, then the answer is a definitive, "No!" 

The United States committed at least two acts of war under international law against Japan before December 7, 1941. They were:

1. US military pilots — 40 from the Army Air Corps and 60 from the US Navy and Marine Corps — in a clandestine operation organized by and funded by the Whitehouse — flying bombing missions against Japanese forces in the famed Flying Tigers as early as 1937.* These people did “volunteer” to fly for the Flying Tigers but they were paid employees of the US government. US pilots flying bombing missions for the Chinese was an act of war under international law by America against Japan. Even with the weak argument that these professional military men were “volunteers” (when they were actually sent & paid by the US government), under international law, a nation is responsible for the actions of its nationals. To claim otherwise is hypocritical and completely irresponsible.
   
   
2. US initiated oil embargo against Japan. This is an act of war under international law. The US was also totally hypocritical on this point as they forced the British and the Dutch to uphold the embargo, yet secretly allowed Japan oil from the United States as a way to spy on Japanese shipping. See: Day of Deceit by Robert Stinnett.

Counting the above two, then President Roosevelt had a total of eight plans to incite hostilities with the Japanese. The rest, as they say "is history." There are a great many excellent books and articles on what really happened in World War II. The serious student (and professor) would do themselves and their country good to seek out the truth. Things are not as black and white as US public schooling and US history books would lead us to believe. The true causes of the Pacific War were the clash of the US empire in Asia and the Japanese empire.

* See: Wikipedia, "Claire Lee Chennault": Chennault retired in 1937, went to work as an aviation trainer and adviser in China, and commanded the "Flying Tigers" during World War II

Marketing Japan: Lots of Japanese Toys & More from the 1960's!

This just came across my desk and I thought it was a gas. It's a collection of TV commercials from the 1960's made by John Behrens and it is called, "Batteries Not Included."

I thoroughly enjoyed this film and was especially pleased that I am allowed to embed this on this site for your viewing pleasure. I remember some of these toys from the 1960's and wish I hadn't of bashed them up. Some of them are worth a fortune now! Especially the made in Japan cars that, when you examined them closely, you could see that they were fashioned out of aluminum beer cans I saw some of those in mint condition selling at a toy show a few years ago and they were going for $500 ~ $900 each!

Here are John Behrens comments:

Batteries Not Included a Film by John Behrens:

Batteries Not Included is a film that I put together early this year, after I made the film I did not know what to do with it because it is so much different than the Experimental art films that I am most known for doing. I decided to release this film on the internet and I thought the best place to do this would be right here on the Internet Archives.

About the Film:
Almost as long as I have been a filmmaker I have also been a film collector. I have for many years wanted to assemble a collection of vintage toy commercials into a flowing little feature length film, that feature all of these wonderful toys from 1950's 1960's and 1970's all of the major toy companies are represented in this film. Matel, Ideal, Hasbro, Marx, Aurora and many many others. So strap your self in and take a trip back through your childhood and you may discover a commercial for a toy that had a kid and my hope is that it will spark pleasant memory's from those days.


Enjoy and Best Regards
Jon Behrens

I greatly enjoyed this film and wish that you can see it now (or come back later when you have the chance). Wow! What a time trip!

This is a wonderful film and will take you back to a better time. For those of us born in the mid-1950's, it is a reminder that we were so lucky to have been born and lived in the most golden time that the USA ever had or probably ever will have.

Grab some popcorn, get your girl and watch this movie. Enjoy!   

To go to the original link, click here.... Tell them I sent you!

Reflections on Hating the Rich and Evidence of More of it to Come

I recently posted a few articles about that examine, from a more practical viewpoint (meaning mine) how government deficit spending and high taxes are destroying the economy (add that to a rapidly aging society which is a problem in the United States but especially in Japan)... It seems obvious to me that anyone with a basic understanding of economics could follow the train of thought.

Me and my wallet

Nevertheless, it seems that far too many people do not. The first post of the topic was entitled Japan is Collapsing. I was writing about how the economy has fallen over these last few years and put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Japanese government spending us into debt at 237% of GDP. I also pointed out that Japan now has over 15.7% of the population under the poverty line. I even backed up my article with commentary by Mish Shedlock.

Even with those facts, some claim that the fault lies with rich people or private industry. The last letter on that post I received, said this:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Japan is Collapsing":

So say you are not able to send your kid to the most expensive school in Tokyo and you claim every other option is crap. Turns out, you are not entitled to that school. If they made a better school, 10x more expensive, you wouldn't be entitled to that either.

(No. I said my kid goes to that school and the company pays.... Just like everyone else - it's a corporate tax break! - Mike)

If now, in a moment of economic downturn, those schools don't lower prices it must mean they have enough rich people to pay for it. Too bad you can no longer afford it. Too bad that woman won't sell a couple of BMW and perhaps start working to be able to afford the education she wants for her kids. But guess what, if you can't make enough money you can't get in.

If you want to live in a world where all services are private so taxes are low, where only money can get you into the really good stuff, you need to be prepared to not being able to afford the best. It's what you signed up for.

  
This commentator doesn't come out and say it directly but he also blames the rich. Let's examine his last paragraph once again:

"If you want to live in a world where all services are private so taxes are low, where only money can get you into the really good stuff, you need to be prepared to not being able to afford the best. It's what you signed up for."

I wonder what world this person is speaking about? I'd like to live in a world where taxes are low so I could pay for services. That certainly isn't Japan, I'll tell you that! In Japan corporate taxes are 46%. After that, when I pay my employees, there's another 20% taken off the top of that. I'd consider that outrageously high.

I'll trade back that more than 68% of the money taken from me in taxes and pay for my child's school ten times over.

It's obvious this person thinks government provided services are "good" (kind of reminds me of the British guy who told me NHS (National Health Services) in the UK were great because they were "free!" I asked him how they could be "free" if they are paid for through taxes?)

As I said, his hidden meaning is that government spending is good. This person needs to read the classic "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt to see just how far off base he really is. Yes, my friend, I want to live in a world where taxes are low... Give a guy a break and tell me where that place exists!

Laughingly, he writes, "It's what you signed up for." No. It's not what anyone signed up for. I'll drop the government spending to zero and see my disposable income increase ten-fold and spend it on the real economy; not paying off government debt or having the government hire their crony friends for building bridges to nowhere.

Sorry. Your defense of socialism and government out-of control spending is illogical and ignorant of the situation here in Japan. See? This guy defends the government and socialism... Another under-handed attack on the so-called "rich."

I examined the hatred of the rich in more detail in yesterday's blog post as it has been a subject that I've thought about for a long time and it really has come to the fore over these last 2 years or so (it seems to me). Class warfare is alive and well in the USA.

From yesterday's post, I received two letters that I'd like to repost here:

Michael C commented oo: "The United States and the West Are in Big Trouble....":

I think most of the rich hate in the U.S. stems from the fact they don't pay the same tax rate the rest of us do. It's BS that Romney only pays a 12% tax rate. You can argue it's due to his 'charitable contributions' but he can donate to a non-profit Super Pac to get tax deductions, that spends the donated money supporting Romney, it's a pretty screwed up system.

Also, the fastest growing Rich in the U.S. isn't job creators it's the financial industry. A hedge fund doesn't make it's money from creating jobs, it makes it's money from shuffling around investments.

Entrepreneurs are the ones that create jobs, but the likelihood of getting incredibly rich as an entrepreneur is minuscule to the financial markets.

Almost everything here doesn't really bother me but Michael C seems to make a mistake that is common. Michael, my friend, may I ask you why you think that,

"...hate in the U.S. stems from the fact they (the rich) don't pay the same tax rate the rest of us do. It's BS that Romney only pays a 12% tax rate."

Michael, the problem with the US economy and the collapse of the middle class has zero to do with what tax rate the rich pay versus the middle class. If anything the taxes across the board are way too high. The problem with the US economy is many but it's not what you've been lead to believe with this mass media - soundbite nonsense. 

The real problems are many but just let me name a few: 

1) The Federal Reserve devaluing your money 97% in the last 100 years.

2) US military empire and bases in over 160 countries.

3) Financing foreign wars by borrowing trillions and trillions of dollars from the Japanese and Chinese.

4) Extremely loose monetary policy and low interest rates.

5) US Total Unfunded Liabilities at 99 Trillion Dollars

6) Total US debt as of the writing of this blog: $16,160,432,335,905.30

7) Taking tax monies and bailing out insolvent banks and foreign corporations on the back of the American public.

There's a whole litany of problems for the US economy... Whether or not people like Romney pay 14% or 40% ~ 50% (like everyone else) on $250 million dollars ain't gonna make a drops worth of difference in the Pacific Ocean. 

This one argument has been common and, I think it points to, and makes a strong case for me, that the Hate of the Rich is growing. The "Hate the Rich"  trend is useful for the government as it deflects attention away from government mishandling of the economy. It's also good for the mass media (populism builds ratings and sells advertising).

Think about it.

Finally, I do want to share with you a comment that I basically have no qualms with at all. Anonymous commented on "The United States and the West Are in Big Trouble....":

I think these last blog entrys are really on perception and need to be put into perspective. The United States citizen hates the decline of the middle class, loss of spending power, high unemployment, and the ultra-high concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. 

Do politicans exploit this angst and muddy the waters for their own gain, you betcha. Mike Rogers decrys cronyism, and I believe is part of the solution. The United States is not the same country it was when M. Rogers left it. 

I proudly voted for Ron Paul. The press decried Ron Paul's idea that the Federal Emergency Management Agency should not bail out rich people who could easily buy private insurance for their expensive beach front properties. 

The upper echelons of the Democrats are fabulously wealthy. The finanical collapse of 2008 was really eye opening for this generation. The banker bailouts proved it was Socialism for the rich, and free market for the rest. One only has to look at the last four president's cabinet members. Its made up of bankers galore. The same type of bankers that are hurting Japan with allowing so much debt. 

Harvard educated Americans become lawyers (mainly corporate) or bankers. People in the mid to late 2000's really thought if they could get a 2nd house they could be famously wealthy.The free market proved otherwise and the government got the tax payer to bail them out. 

Both Obama and Bush 44 voted for the bail out.

Yep! Exactly! Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting.

The United States and the West Are in Big Trouble. Japan is Collapsing and Why Corporations Pay For Schooling For Ex-Pat Children in Japan

(Update at bottom)

The United States and the West are in a world of trouble. I say this for probably not the reasons that you expect and are so obvious to most concerning debt and a poor economy. I say this because the USA & the West are in serious trouble due to poor schooling and with that, are you ready for it? The current hate of the rich and wealthy.

Send your kids to the best school you can afford

Yes. Far too many people in the west seem to hate the rich these days. It's a very bad situation and if this continues will certainly have seriously bad repercussions for all nations and even poor people. Why? Well, Karl Marx would be happy, but hating the rich translates into people thinking it is OK for the government to increase taxes and get more involved with wealth redistribution.

Folks, more government is not the answer. Government is the problem. If more government were a good solution to our problems then the Soviet Union would have been a very successful country. But they weren't. 

One thing good about Japan, though, is that I don't notice the Japanese hating the rich. The Japanese have their problems too but they have their heads on straight and do not hate the rich. They aspire to become the rich. That's logical and normal behavior. It used to be normal behavior in the west too. But now? Now in the USA and the west, people have probably started hating the rich because they can't find a way out of their debt and their financial troubles so they become jealous of what others have. I know this trend is definitely forwarded by the mass media.

Just think how much derision was scorned on Mitt Romney because he is rich! Sure, Romney is might be a jerk, but being rich is not one of the reasons why.

It hasn't been that long ago that books like "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki was a best-seller, was it?

The seeds of this current trend of hating the rich (around for a long time on Liberal Arts university campus) seem to me to have been really accelerated  from the so-called "99%" trend that came out of the "Occupy movement" that says the 1% are evil and somehow got their money through dishonest ways. Certainly there are some who were involved in criminal enterprises but I'd wager they pale in comparison to the crimes our government commits on a daily basis. Certainly it was the government who bailed out the banks and zombie industries. But how that now translates into the current trend of hating the rich is a curious leap indeed.

It's not the rich who are our problems here folks. It's the poor who are the problem; the poor have no money and, in many cases, a bad education. If you think I am wrong then go to some rich neighborhood and check it out then, after that, go to the ghetto in Los Angeles, New York or Detroit look around and then tell me that you think it's the rich that are "part of the problem." 

Recently, I posted an article entitled, "Japan is Collapsing" I wrote:

I am angry at the stupid Japanese government for taking our tax money and bailing out these zombie banks and keeping the status quo intact at the expense of the people and our children's future. I am furious that the situation has gone on for so long. I am angry that it is not only us who is feeling the pain but everyone else I know... I get angry when I read the news and see that 15.7% of all Japanese are under the poverty level. I get pissed off when I see that our debt to GDP is over 237%....

And I really get angry when I read that these idiots in government want to raise our taxes and keep with the failed policies of these last twenty plus years.

And it really really astounds me that the people who got us into this mess can get reelected again. What a farce.

Due to that article, I've been infuriated with socialists making absurd claims. The most ridiculous (and incorrect ones) one from a reader who still insists that "one of the problems with Japan's economy is that everyone assumes a paternalistic company to pay for all these benefits for their employees?"

This is just so wrong on so many levels that I don't know where to begin. First of all, companies do not pay for the local Japanese to send their kids to private schools; this is a practice limited to hiring and recruiting top-class foreign labor.  To think that such a small .00078740157 percent of the population is part of the reason of Japan's economic funk is mind-boggling.

Anyway, it shows what I mention above: a bad education and a trend for hating the rich. There are rich foreigners in Japan, for sure, but most of us do not get paid that well... Sure they might drive nice cars and live in big houses, but those houses and cars are paid for by the corporation. Also, ex-pats are only here for a short number of years. Their children cannot be allowed to fall behind in school compared to their peers back home (otherwise the experienced foreign talent won't come here). The companies pay for these expenses as a tax break (individuals paying for private schooling in Japan is not tax-deductable).

Think about it; a corporation pays for good talent to work for them in order so that the company can make more money. The schools receive these funds and pay for employees and those employees take that money a recycle it back into the economy. And some people think this is a part of Japan's economic problems?

What the heck? Don't people understand basic economics anymore? 

There's 127 million people in Japan and ex-pat westerners don't even number over 100,000... 

So the debt to GDP of 237% and 15.7% of all Japanese living below the poverty line is, in part, fault of the .00078740157% of the population of the country and, people who comprise folks living in the upper-class of wealth. (100K divided by 127 million is .0007874015 or .078740157 percent).

Right. You see, it's the rich people who are the problem?????

Like I said, the real reason (and the real part of the world wide problem of too much government spending and too many people on the dole) someone makes a claim that "one of the problems..." (is because of foreign corporations paying for ex-pat children schooling) is actually a symptom of what's really wrong with American & western society today: People have a poor education and can't think. They watch too much TV and have been indoctrinated (brain washed) into thinking that being rich and having money is a bad thing (Why not hate what you can't have, right?) Whereas decades ago, being rich and having a nice car, a large house, a beautiful wife, were things to aspire to, today they are something that people criticize and hold in suspicion.

The mass media has done a good job of marketing to the unwashed masses. 

I have written volumes about mass media brainwashing. It shouldn't surprise me at all how easily people are duped... But it still does sometimes.

Interestingly, over at Zerohedge, there is an article today that explains exactly what the problem is with these people who think private industry or the wealthy are the problem... Please refer to "Hating the Rich:

Western culture is presently defined by many things; one of which being an instilled sense of extreme jaundice toward wealth. No doubt Karl Marx would beam with pleasure in seeing how the contemporary bourgeoisie is regarded with hateful suspicion.

... 

Before the twentieth century and the ascendance of the all-intrusive state, sumptuous living was typically seen as something to aspire to. It aroused jealously which fueled a lust for reaching such heights of luxury; not to pick away at success. 

... 

The bourgeoisie values of prudence and temperance are no longer respected in the Western world. They are seen as anachronistic and not in tune with the needs of society. This is a self-defeating attitude that will only lead to further impoverishment. For as long as success is punished and high time preferences are rewarded, the capacity for productive efforts deteriorates.

Coercive egalitarianism based on ill feelings of Schadenfreud is a cancer. 

Absolutely. How anyone could think that people who create private business and create jobs and wealth (and pay huge taxes) are a part of the problem is beyond comprehension. 

It is they who have no money and think the government should do more, along with that government interference in the economy and our lives that is the problem. 

What a pathetic situation indeed. I'm teaching my children that being rich is good and that emulating and aiming for that in life is what each and everyone of us should do.

My kids deserve the best. Don't yours?

Update: I know economically illiterate people, especially leftists and Liberals, won't bother to read Henry Hazlitt, "Economics in One Lesson" so let me direct them to a short explanation in a more macro sense at Market Ticker: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=214480