Donald Trump has equated the removal of statues honoring Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson to the removal of statues honoring George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. In doing so, he was speaking to a far-Right Wing supporters who honestly belief the removal of Confederate monuments is simply part of an insidious liberal agenda to culturally and psychologically sterilize the American People in order to neutralize any threat to government oppression. To this faction, the Civil War was a heroic attempt to defend States’ Rights from government oppression. President Trump, at the very least, appears to see the removal of Confederate monuments as a counterproductive attempt to whitewash history.
As a Nation, however, Confederate symbols are offensive. When the US began embracing the spread of democratic values and freedoms to the disenfranchised and dehumanized, the Confederacy was attempting to destroy the Nation in order to preserve the white privilege enjoyed by wealthy plantation owners and blunt the spread of individual freedom. Because the freedom to dissent is sacrosanct to democratic society, however, the fate of Confederate monuments is a local issue. If it was an issue of building new Confederate monuments to sow insurrection or glorify white supremacy, it would be a national concern. That said, all US citizens have the right to be offended by Confederate relics and the ideologies of those defending them as well as statements that stain the name of American heroes like George Washington.
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The “Unite the Right” protest against the removal of a statue depicting Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, VA was always guaranteed to be contentious. When violence between protesters and counter-protesters broke out, the event quickly turned deadly. The ensuing firestorm of media coverage and public outrage immediately focused on the racist stances of the groups involved then suddenly shifted to what Donald Trump had to say. Although the President’s silence and muddled message can emboldened hate groups, what Donald Trump had to say is the least important issue surrounding the tragic event.
The racist views of the so-called “white nationalists” have obviously taken the spotlight, but there is also merit in preserving history, even if the truth offends. For these activists, racism is a secondary concern. Robert E. Lee was a man who tried to tear the US apart in order to secure the Southern slave economy. He and other Confederate figures should be remembered and their monuments preserved, because their actions affected the Nation in a terribly profound way, but that is why museums and history books exist. That said, a true culture clash was on display in Charlottesville that needs to be explored. Republicans, under the leadership of President Donald Trump, hope to lower the US corporate tax rate to the lowest level possible, which could mean 15%. The GOP’s pro-business stances have long been a fundamental part of the Party’s identity, so this is expected. Many Republicans are so infatuated by the idea of an ultra-low corporate tax rate that they are willing to forsake fiscal responsibility. There are, however, others who continue to prioritize America’s fiscal health over frivolous giveaways for an already wealthy special interest group. There are also those who seek to reform the tax code to lower taxes for the benefit of all taxpayers in line with the economic needs of the Nation.
Unfortunately, Republicans cannot deliver a tax code that actually serves the interests of the United States nor the interests of the American People, because their views are upside down. By catering to corporate interests, Donald Trump’s envisioned tax policies seek to stimulate the economy. Although the effective corporate tax rate is already close to 15%, making it easier for corporations to avoid taxes would allegedly offer corporations more money to invest in the economy. Business growth and development is not, however, driven by the amount of money a company has to spend. It is a product of increased demand. As such, consumers are the ones who need more money to spend, if corporations are to invest in growth. Six million dollars was the price a single individual paid for Planet Calypso in 2011. On the one hand, paying six millions dollars for all the rights to any planet’s resources would produce an unfathomably return on investment. On the other hand, the human race has no ability to even visit a planet outside or inside of the Solar System for the foreseeable future. To boot, Planet Calypso is actually a virtual property in The Entropia Universe, which is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game, i.e. a MMORPG, created by Mindark. In reality, spending millions of dollars on a video game relic is ludicrous. In the world of investment, however, the fact that Calypso is not real has absolutely no bearing on the quality of the investment.
When it comes to investments, the only thing that matters is the ability to derive profit, whether from revenue or the resale of the investment. Exchange markets, such as the NYSE, determine the value of companies, commodities, and “securities” via the willingness of traders to sell and buy into these things. Simply put, it is voting with money based on what others are expected to buy, which is why stock performance often deviates from real economic growth. Originally developed to raise capital from investors for companies and commodity producers, e.g. farmers, exchanges now trade “exotic” products, such as mortgage-backed derivatives, i.e. the cause of the Great Recession, and cryptocurrencies. What is sold no longer matters. Cryptocurrencies are the natural byproducts of a digital revolution and globalized economy thoroughly reliant on market exchanges as a means of pricing goods. Purely mathematical in nature and exchanged with a complex series of encryptions, cryptoucrrencies like Bitcoin are highly secure, fast, and largely untraceable. They are also a decentralized currency, which means neither governments nor banks or any one group of individuals controls the use of cryptocurrencies. They are currencies that transcend government interference, which is helpful when dealing with corrupt and dysfunctional governments, and break the monopoly banks have over the global supply of money.
So good are the upsides to cryptocurrencies that a growing number of people would like to replace their national currencies with cryptocurrencies. In the US, the advantages to abandoning the dollar are minimal, but poorer and/or highly dysfunctional nations like Kazakhstan could actually use cryptocurrencies and a global cryptocurrency market to help stabilize their national economies. In a globalizing economy, national borders, regulations, and taxes are seen as little more than obstacles, so the ability of cryptocurrencies to transcend national and economic institutions makes the adoption of cryptocurrencies extremely appealing to many individuals. There are, however, other factors to consider. |
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April 2020
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