gold and the great inflations - miles franklin...gold and the great inflations “civilizations are...
TRANSCRIPT
Gold and the Great Inflations
“Civilizations are fragile, impermanent things.”
Joseph A. Tainter, ‘The Collapse of Complex Societies’, 1988
“Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing glove.” PG Wodehouse, ‘Jeeves and the Old School Chum’, 1930
Forget CPI, PPI or even CSI. Inflations that really matter - some of them ‘hyper’, most irreversible – are now breaking out all over. They’re devaluing life as we know it. And they’re making the world a scarier, dumber though funnier place. And it’s to these evil eruptions that gold has been responding and will continue to respond. While we’ve chosen to bury our head in the sand, there’s been a golden thermometer stuck in our rectum.
Goldand the
Great
Andy Smith Dubai Precious Metals Conference 2013
Dubai – which will be nice when it’s finished – needs no reminding about inflation. After all, it’s home to the biggest erection in the world. Totemic projects like these tend to be either a celebration of virility, or compensation for the lack thereof. Some delicate research reveals neither is obviously the case in Dubai. Only the UAE’s ‘measurement’ is available, but this is actually ‘medium’ (or ‘commendable effort’).
Great…
Egyp
t
Fran
ce
USA
Mal
aysi
a
'Tai
wan
'
Cana
da
Pola
nd
'UAE
'
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Great…erectionsPenis length, inches
Source: targetmap.com
Height, metres
BurjKhalifa
(Dubai)
- 1 -
However, the symbolism of placing one of the world’s shortest men on top of the world’s tallest building is confusing. Perhaps King Kong was not available? We’ll revisit this pr...ecocious personality later.
Speaking of egos – weren’t we? – we are in fact statistically correct in suspecting what a big ‘ego’ hides. (Bahrain is the nearest I could get to a local measure of intelligence to accompany ‘
Size matters?
SingaporeUK
Bahrain
India
Cameroon
3 4 5 6 7 8Penis size [inches]
60
70
80
90
100
110
120
Inte
llige
nce
Inde
x
Source: http://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=3073
'best fit' line
manhood’.)
Some will pay anything to appear to have a bigger ‘ego’ - almost $5 billion at last count. It’s a vanity, a pill-popping flight from reality - one of many - duly noted by gold. To get a hand[le] on this, consider cause and effect – could male ‘enhancement’ pills be a response to an outstanding female ‘augmentation’? We live in a surgically-enhanced world of mutually-assured inflation. It looks (more than) fine. But it doesn’t feel right. To cut to the chase: “when you borrow a lot of money to create a false prosperity”, as Michael Lewis put it (‘Boomerang’, 2011), “you import the future into the present. It isn’t the actual future so much as some grotesque silicone version of it.”
- 2 -
95 2000 2005 20100
1.5
3
4.5
6
0
500
1000
1500
2000
(Via
gra,
Cia
lis, L
evitr
a)Er
ectil
e D
ysfu
nctio
n pi
ll sa
les,
$ b
illio
n
Gol
d pr
ice
$/oz
Erectile Dysfunction pill sales
gold price
Sources: 10k reports Pfizer, Eli Lilley, Bayer
Rising markets
1995 2000 2005 20100
1
2
3
4
5
(Via
gra,
Cia
lis, L
evitr
a)Er
ectil
e D
ysfu
nctio
n pi
ll sa
les,
$ b
illio
n
0
100
200
300
400
500B
reas
t aug
men
tatio
n op
erat
ions
US
(000
)
Sources: 10k reports Pfizer, Eli Lilley, BayerAmerican Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery
Erectile Dysfunction pill sales
Breast implantoperations USA
Enhancing growth
In a world where appearances matter so much, every Johnny must have a prize. Witness the devaluing of the ‘Gold Standard’ of the English education system. With so many now winning an ‘A’ at A-level - and remember, breast enlargement studies is probably on tsyllabus these days - what is the ‘standard’ for laboproductivity? It’s like some cruel credit rating agency has run amok and given everyone ‘Triple A’ – welcome to sub-prime youth.
he ur
Off ‘The Gold Standard’
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
% g
aini
ng 'A
' at A
-Lev
el e
xam
, UK
0
500
1000
1500
Gol
d pr
ice
$/oz
% awarded 'A' at A-level
gold price
Source: University of Buckingham
Most of which feels ‘entitled’. Whose only ‘issues’ are psycho-babble denials of responsibility, not the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Whose perception of ‘risk-taking’ extends to losing an I-phone, I-pad, or I-tune. A ‘Me, Me, Me’ generation who wants it all, now, on credit, or, better still, free. “We’ve sacrificed the high art”, Aldous Huxley lamented in ‘Brave New World’, but “we have the feelies and the scent organ instead.” The only ‘failure’ in this award inflation is shrinking growth potential, a withering of the backbone that’s supposed to keep us upright when the ‘leaded glove of Fate’ slaps us in the face. And we’ve been here before - as Edward Gibbon recorded in ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’: “the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste.”
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
15
25
35
45
55
Inde
x of
'Me'
on
'Goo
glet
rend
'
0
500
1000
1500
2000
$ go
ld p
rice
weekly correlation 0.98 !!
gold price
'me' on Google
It’s all about ‘Me’
And lo! Almost everybody is famous. Is it a coincidence that this inflation in ‘celebrity’ - here Halls of Fame established in the USA - followed our departure from the ‘Gold Standard’? Honest opinion has gone the way of honest money. Hard to come to grips with 8 wrestling Halls of Fame, isn’t it? And, fittingly for the Left Coast, there’s now a California Social Work Hall of Fame. Roger Kimball, in ‘The Fortunes of Permanence’, perhaps describes this eulogy of non-entity best: “It might …be worth asking what had to happen in English society for there to be such a thing as ‘Sir Elton John’.” Coming soon - a ‘Precious Metal Conference’ hall of fame? Another perch for Mr Cruise?
Gold price freed
1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s0
10
20
30
Source: derived from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_halls_and_walks_of_fame
Halls of Fame opened in USA by decade15 minutes for all !
- 3 -
We’re dumbing down our children into babies almost as fast as we’re regressing adults into children – soft, irresponsible over-emoters who expect and vote that everything is done for them. ‘Super-nanny’, the world’s most sustainable bubble, the inexhaustible Big Government teat – the biggest breast enlargement in history – will provide. My gut feel is that at least entrails make provision for the elimination of waste. ‘Big Gov’ is about the least efficient form of grand larceny. It makes Mr Madoff look like an engaging amateur.
Obama-care…
Obama-care… entrails
Take (please) the Babel that is ‘Europe’. It charges a ‘spread’ or (as the European Court of Auditors has put it, for 18 straight years) a “material error” of 3.9% on average, at last guess. But that’s OK, this skimming only affects spending in the “agriculture market and direct support; rural developments, environment, fisheries, and health; regional policy, energy and transport, employment and social affairs as well as research and other internal policies”. That’s ‘for ‘the whole schmeer’.
Eurospeak’
rograms ’ youth, 10 agencies to promote exports, 342 programs for economic development, plus 47 different job-
emember Reagan’s nine scariest words in the English language? “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
S
the
- 4 -
And there’s nothing the EU can teach the US about public waste. There the government runs 50 different programs for the homeless across eight agencies, 23 programs for housing aid through four agencies, 26 programs for food and nutrition aid through six agencies, 27 programs on teen pregnancy, 130 pfor ‘at-risk
Government (toilet) paper
19901992
19941996
19982000
20022004
20062008
20102012
0
200
400
600
800
EU le
gisl
atio
n te
xts
(000
)
0
500
1000
1500
2000
$ go
ld p
rice
Source: http://eur-lex.europa.eu
EU legislation texts
gold price
training programs. Welcome to Brussels on the Potomac. RA warning posted (‘R’ in the chart below) when ‘payments to individuals’ – ie. pay-offs levelling the wealth playing field to ‘scorched earth’, turning the ‘work ethic’ to the ‘shirk ethic’ - still counted for less than half Ugovernment spending. But the ‘Great Communicator’ was only echoing another president, fifty years before: “Continued dependence [on government support] induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer ofhuman spirit.” That was the Father of Big Gov, FDR, in his State of Union in 1935.
nd here we are: from Great Communicator to Great Entitleist. In a hole, in one… or at least two terms.
A
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2012
0
25
50
75
Paym
ents
to in
divi
dual
s as
% U
S fe
dera
l spe
ndin
g
0
500
1000
1500
$ go
ld p
rice
Payments to individualsas % US govt. spending
R
gold price
When the going gets trough…
Source: Office of Management and Budget
…the
troughers
get golfing
century before FDR, Alexis de Tocqueville s
he
t f
but
ut aren’t Americans too big to fail, as the inflation in
u
e
d from
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
10
20
30
40
50
% U
S no
t pay
ing
Fede
ral i
ncom
e ta
x
0
500
1000
1500
2000
gold
pric
e $/
oz
Source: Tax Foundation
gold price
% US not payingFederal income tax
No skin in the game A(‘Democracy in America’) had his finger on thisomething-for-nothing US public drip-feed: “As tgreat majority of those who create the laws have no taxable property, all the money that is spent for the community appears to be spent for their advantage, ano cost of their own…In other words, the government othe democracy is the only one under which the power that votes the taxes escapes payment of them.” Result: “the public treasure was exhausted in order to relieve indigent citizens or to supply games and theatrical amusements for the populace.” The arithmetic of dependent democracy doesn’t add up, to anything penury. Bthe gastric by-pass surgical community implies? As youweigh this productivity-squishing over-consumption, this addiction to comfort food over hard choices, as yowitness the first nation that actually does march on its stomach, the irony of there being too MUCH skin in thgame will not be lost on you. The World Health Organisation calculates that world obesity double1980 to 2008, but half of that was added from 2000 to 2008, gold’s charging bull market.
19921994
19961998
20002002
20042006
20082010
20120
1000
2000
3000
4000
for M
etab
olic
and
Bar
iatr
ic S
urge
ryM
embe
rs A
mer
ican
Soc
iety
0
500
1000
1500
2000
Gol
d pr
ice
$/oz
Members of American Societyof 'gastric by-pass' surgeons
gold price
Source: http://www.americanbariatrics.org/
Too much skin in the game
- 5 -
Obesity-related treatment was one fifth of US health sp in 2005. No surprise that it’s gastrically linked to
e
endingThe Heritage Foundation’s measure of ‘government dependency’ (an index weighted 30% housing, 25% health and welfare, 20% retirement, 15% education, 10% rural and agricultural services) which has tripled since 1980. Ware all Mississippians (66% obese) soon, beeping as we reverse into socialised medical care? As we speak Mr Cruise is probably bulking up for a sequel, perhaps his biggest picture.
1980
1990
2000
2010
2020
2030
0
100
200
300
400
US
mal
e ob
esity
(set
to 1
980
= 10
0)D
epen
dend
y on
US
govt
(Her
itage
Fou
ndat
ion)
0
500
1000
1500
2000
$ go
ld p
rice
Source: UN, Heritage Foundation, 'F as in Fat' - www.healthyamericans.org
Mississippi
Colorado
% US obese
Dependencyon US government
gold price
Mississippian
Possible?
GASTRIC
ut enough good news. As Mark Steyn put it (National
BReview, 29 March): “The most reliable constituency for Big Government is single women, for whom the state is a girl’s best friend, the sugar daddy whose checks never bounce. A society in which a majority of births are out of wedlock [true in the US for women under 30] cannotbe other than a Big Government welfare society.” 19
9319
9419
9519
9619
9719
9819
9920
0020
0120
0220
0320
0420
0520
0620
0720
0820
0920
1020
1120
12
30
32
36
40
42%
birt
hs to
unm
arrie
d m
othe
rs, U
SA
500
1000
1500
gold
pric
e $/
oz
% births to unmarried mothers USA
gold price
Source: US Dept Health & Human Services; National Vital Statistics System
(Illegitimate) birth of a nation
At the other end of the demographic spectrum, it’s a grey area. But that – the ‘Great Age Inflation’ - is another expanding part of the problem. As we extend the shelf-life of the average Pillsbury Doughboy, by beggaring those left standing, the underbelly of our economies becomes softer. Japan lost two decades (and counting) after the ratio of its geriatrics to working population overtook that in the US. China, the maker of most that’s cheap and dis-inflationary in the world, is about to reach that crossroads, signposted ‘Go Slow’ or ‘Public Purse’.
1950
1955
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
2010
2015
2020
2025
2030
2035
2040
2045
2050
0
10
20
30
40
50
Ove
r 65s
as
% w
orki
ng p
opul
atio
nD
epen
denc
y ra
tio
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
gold
pric
e $/
oz
Source: United Nations
Dependency ratios: Japan USAChina
Age… Age…concern
1950
1955
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
2010
2015
0
10
20
30
40
50
Ove
r 65s
as
% w
orki
ng p
opul
atio
nD
epen
denc
y ra
tio
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
gold
pric
e $/
oz
gold price
Dependency ratios: Japan USAChina
Source: United Nations 6 - -
umour has it the ubiquitous Mr Cruise is
Rworking on this script too.
GERIATRIC
he upshot is algebra even an ‘A’ level student could understand. (Though we now see why the young have to be
ey.
the long run Plato would recognise that the ancient
on it!
P
rinting
Tdumbed down – they are about to be robbed blind.) The Big Beast of government swallows responsibility and defecates a self-perpetuating, growth-eroding, public debt dependency. Hard choices are as quaint as hard mon“The welfare state is a kind of zoo”, as English commentator Malcolm Muggeridge put it, “which provides its inmates with ease and comfort and unfits them for life in their natural habitat.” Plato noted that “in democracythere’s no compulsion either to exercise authority if you are capable of it, or to submit to authority if you don’t want to”, and quipped “it’s a wonderfully pleasant way of carrying on in the short run, isn’t it?” InOlympian ideals of ‘faster, higher, stronger’ flip to ‘fatter, older, dumber’. Public debt (D) expands inexorably, by choice, democratically – ‘depend’And real output (O) waddles and withers so grows more slowly. All that’s left to balance the Debt/GDratio, ie as D↑/(P*0↓), is more P↑: inflation. Which happens to rob savers to help debtors, aka ‘the majority’ in most democracies, who return governments with the fastest hands on the ppress. Onward, upward!
Public DEBT
G D P
Pr ices
Output
m
A Towering Proble
Dumber,fatter, illegitimater, older, bigger governmenter…
Burj-eoning
DEBT
OUTPUT
By-pass
Pensext ion
…requires ‘P extension’, and QE, and worse
- 7 -
we’re lucky. According to official exponential
d
nk
Ifprojections of US public debt/GDP – basis health spending grows ‘normally’: belly laugh now – erecting inflation isn’t easy. So, along the way, enjoy ‘financial repression’ by QE; cosmeticallydepressed interest rates so The Big Beast can be fecheaply. Or worse. FDR confiscated Americans’ gold, remember? How could those who were almost robbed of their “guaranteed” Cyprus badeposits by the Brussels Gang forget? Oh, and thiswheel of misfortune is only likely to miss a turn through crises…which always beget even bigger government!
1940
1960
1980
2000
2020
2040
2060
2080
0
100
200
300
400
500
US
Fede
ral d
ebt h
eld
by p
ublic
as
% G
DP
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
$ g
old
pric
e
gold price
US public debt/GDP
If health spending grows 'normally'
'Base case'
Source: Congressional Budget Office; Office of Management and Budget
Beast AugmentationUS public debt
But if it ain’t broke – equity markets at all time
t) highs, after all – why fix it? Well, consider (righthis familiar, perpetual-looking upward motion. Turkeys don’t see Christmas coming, much less vote for it – they have no choice. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
0
5
10
15
20
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Weeks fattening
0
5
10
15
20
Source: 'Growth evaluation of turkey heavy hybrid by means of asymmetric S-functionZ. Skrtic, G. Kralik, Z. Gajcevic, 2007
Turkey live weight in kilos
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Weeks fattening
0
5
10
15
20
Source: 'Growth evaluation of turkey heavy hybrid by means of asymmetric S-functionZ. Skrtic, G. Kralik, Z. Gajcevic, 2007
Turkey live weight in kilos
- 8 -
nlike European elites, we should not s
In in
Ucount our turkeys, or chickens. Work hajust begun on a ‘House of European History’, celebrating the perpetual ‘progress’ of the European project. 1913 the Peace Palace was completed The Hague, avant le déluge. Halls of Infamy.
House ofEuropean History:
Work started November 2012 The Peace Palace:Completed 1913
urely not all our turkeys will come home to roost (and be slaughtered) simultaneously? The remarkable inflation
And
Sin living standards since the Federal Reserve was hatched is more than mere monetary magic, isn’t it? Superimposethe rise and fall of the stock of the South Sea Company, albeit on a daily scale 1719-1720, and you’ll see that exuberance is timelessly irrational. How wise was Wodehouse (‘Something Fresh’, 1915): “It is curious how frequently in this world our attempts to stimulate and uplift swoop back on us and smite us like boomerangs.”how timely Tainter: “the citizens of modern complex societies usually do not realize that we are an anomaly of history….It is little surprise that collapse is viewed so fearfully.” Statistically, civilised life as we know it is a multiple standard deviation blip.
1600
1700
1800
1900
2000
2050
2100
0
1000
2000
4000
6000
8000World GDP per head, $1990
Federal Reserve born here
Erectile…
1600
1700
1800
1900
2000
2050
2100
0
1000
2000
4000
6000
8000
Wor
ld G
DP
per h
ead,
$19
90
0
200
400
600
800
Sout
h Se
a C
ompa
ny £
sha
re p
rice
[dai
ly, A
ug 1
719
- Nov
172
0]
World GDP per head
South Sea Company share price
Sources: Angus Maddison; Yale School of Management
Erectile…Dysfunction
rguably all that’s missing from a perfect parallel between our and Rome’s decline are the orgies – though if you
- 9 -
Abrave any English town centre on a Saturday night you may disagree. Tainter is pretty explicit (about Rome’s demise, not the orgies): “Emperors, upon accession, were often faced with an insolvent government”. They adopted the same ‘cure’: “debasing the currency”.
This had “the politically expedient
e cost of
e
“those
ic
ous
advantage of shifting to some indefinite point in the future ththe current crisis…the inflation that would inevitably follow would tax thfuture to pay for the present, but the future could not protest.” Why ‘politically expedient’? Becausewho lived off the treasury were more numerous than those paying into it.” Nero’s fiddling was only the start. Emperor Nerva established a “publsystem for the care of Italian orphans” (Obamacare, The Early Years?). And Gibbon records more generally that “alarge portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specidemands of charity.”
NeroGalba Otho
Vite
llius
Vespasian
Titus
Domitian
Nerva
Trajan
Hadrian
Antonius Pius
Marcus A
urelius
Commod
us
Pertinax
Didius Julianus
Septimus S
everus
AD
54-
68
68-9 69 69
69-7
9
79-8
1
81-9
6
96-9
8
98-1
17
117-
39
138-
61
161-
80
180-
92 193
193
193-
21150
60
70
80
90
100
Denarius silver percent
260-
268
Gallienus
Emperors…
Source: Joseph A.Tainter – ‘The Collapse of Complex Societies’
Compare and contrast the debasement
cuses’
.
of
ad
of the dollar under presidential regimes since the ‘bread and cirbegan (with Nixon welching on the promise to back the dollar with gold)In less than half the time (Nixon to Obama) America has achieved twicethe debasement of Rome. Perhaps we’re asking the wrong question – ‘when will it end in tears’? “Insteadinquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed,” Gibbon argued, “we should rather be surprised that it hsubsisted for so long.”
Nixon 1
Nixon 2Ford
Carter
Reagan 1
Reagan 2
Bush Snr
Clinton 1
Clinton 2
Bush W 1
Bush W 2
Obama 1
NeroGalba Otho
Vitel
lius
Vespasian
Titus
Domitian
Nerva
Trajan
Hadrian
Antonius Pius
Marcus A
urelius
Commod
us
Pertinax
Didius Julianus
Septimus S
everus
AD
54-
68
68-9 69 69
69-7
9
79-8
1
81-9
6
96-9
8
98-1
17
117-
39
138-
61
161-
80
180-
92 193
193
193-
21150
60
70
80
90
100
Denarius silver percent; $index normalised to Nero
260-
268
Gallienus
1969
2009
Emperors… with no clothes
- 10 -
o, what can you do faced with these Vandals, the inflating tribes of The Obese, The Ageing, The Stupid that will
o be
or example:
he Head of the German School of Bariatric
rgentina’s leading cosmetic surgeon (5’ 4”)
nd for a ‘buddy/buddy’ movie, why not this
Snot be denied, the gathering ‘Clan of Dependency’ over-running democracy to rape and pillage your wealth? Get a powerful friend, maybe? Why not try out for the lucrative position of Mr Cruise’s next sidekick? This will be difficult - you’d have to be smaller than Mr Cruise (under 5’ 7”). But one part at least is easy - you only need tless dominant on a global scale. F TSurgery (5’ 5”) probably has the guts for it. Awould (nip and) tuck in nicely. AIranian nuclear option, a (5’ 2”) pocket rocket?
r maybe, in such a scary world, there’s nothing for it
let holes
Obut to pass the ammunition? P.J. O’Rourke (‘Don’t Vote’, 2010) astutely calls his .38 Special his “MasterCard of the future.” If you join the bulto make a trend, you’ll see that it’s…golden.
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12
400
800
1,200
1,600
FBI b
ackg
roun
d ch
ecks
000
s
FBI gun purchase checks
3 month averages
How many Bullet Points …
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12
400
800
1,200
1,600
FBI b
ackg
roun
d ch
ecks
000
s
FBI gun purchase checks
3 month averages
How many Bullet Points …make a trend?
Time trend
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12
400
800
1,200
1,600
FBI b
ackg
roun
d ch
ecks
000
s
200
600
1000
1400
1800
gold
pric
e $/
ozFBI gun purchase checks
gold price
3 month averages
- 11 -
lternatively, suppose Edmund Burke was right three
ow
Ahundred years ago; that “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”. Then hmuch worse can it get when ‘good men’ head for hills? Their votes with their feet (and skills) out of the labour force, leaving our benighted A-levellers at the wheel of stalling economies, are being counted by the (real) gold price.
1980
1990
2000
2010
0
250
500
750
1000
1250
1500
1750
Rea
l gol
d pr
ice
(201
2 $/
oz)
33
34
35
36
US
labo
ur N
ON
par
ticip
atio
n ra
te %
Real gold price
US labournon-participation rate
Source: US Bureau of Labour
Head for the Hills?
Plato’s day The Have-Nots, the “class of thriftless
on
Inidlers…drones”, found The Haves “a plentiful and most convenient source to extract honey from.” In 1955 Ayn Rand (‘Atlas Shrugged’) imagined such men of substance would leave the “looters” to their unhappy lot (Hayek called it ‘Serfdom’) by escapingto a Hidden Valley. Her nightmare is now reality in the flight from high- to low-tax American states. There can hardly be a clearer sign of the desperatiof The Haves than Belgium being chosen as a hide-away by the French-tax-fleeing Gerard Depardieu. (Maybe gastric by-passes are cheaper in Brussels?) Surely Dubai has more than a sporting chance to become a haven of choice?
New York
New Jersey
California
AlaskaWyoming
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14State taxes as % income, 2010
-15
-10
-5
0
5
10
15
20
% employment growth [NF payroll] 2002 - 2012
HappyValley
Serfdom
Sources: Tax Foundation; BLS
best fit line: R2 0.44Texas
It’s a taxing problem
our mission, should you decide to accept it, is
ith their
ut if you do go for height, you’d also provide a
Yto build it – a meritocratic, low tax, small government temple (neither western-style democracy nor record-breaking height required!). And they, the ‘good men’ wassets and ideas, will come. Bplace for their gold safe from prying eyes.
Andy Smith
icola Shiels of JefferiesBache and to Ted Arnold for their comments on this tall story.) (I am grateful to N