This is an excellent idea. However, in the case of any kind of spirits, won't the revenoors be at your door, as in days of old?

It would be good for us in many ways, having an up-and-coming chemist/enolgist in the family. But I'll bet the taxes are a killer. Not to mention inspections, code, etc

But this is a good idea.

However, in the case of any kind of spirits, won't the revenoors be at your door, as in days of old?

I don't know. I guess it depends on how big your operation is. If you're cranking out $10,000 a month of the stuff, maybe. If it's only $1000, probably not. Of course, in a situation where there is hyperinflation, no one's going to have much respect for law anyways.

I think what we need is a way of calculating what the inflation will actually be. We've spent something like $3 trillion in TARP money, so there will be $15 trillion in funny money ($3 trillion x reserve ratio (5)). Of that, about a third will be taxed back. So we're looking at $10 trillion of inflation over the next few years, if I'm right.

But I'll bet the taxes are a killer. Not to mention inspections, code, etc

Small labs, as long as they're not producing hard drugs like meth and heroin, are probably not going to be on the government's radar. But we're talking about a situation in which the government is basically on the brink of collapse. Who sits there worrying about what laws Mugabe writes in Zimbabwe? Not many people, I'd imagine. They're just trying to get by.

...so there will be $15 trillion in funny money...
>I've seen $30Trillion as the amount of spent or promised to spend money on top of the legacy SS and Medicare $$ ~55Trillion. Most of this money is gone IMHO (no smart people saying it, just me) and was used to make whole the people who got hosed on derivatives. You had $100million in a derivative, it went to zero, the gov't gave you $100million which makes it a zero sum. The money cost nothing, no extra $$ is in the system, therefore no inflation. The Fed Res. has $9Trillion on their books but won't tell where $6Trillion went. Hyperinflation is not 100% a calculated thing. There is herd mentality involved also. The only reason $20 is worth $20 is because we think it is. We have or had confidence in the US gov't, so we assign $$ a value. Greenspan's famous quote is: "What is a $20 bill worth? Another one just like it."

You can (or could) legally buy stills to make ethanol for running vehicles. They just make high octane liquor. After you make a batch, you are supposed to put some nasty stuff into it too keep people from drinking it. It's illegal to make any distilled spirits for consumption unless you have the paperwork. Wine and beer is limited to 'x' gallons for personal consumption per year w/o a license.

gotten into the act of predicting hyperinflation, which has been discussed at length here recently.
**PRCaldude**

I am now thinking hyperinflation will not occur. Claims of hyperinflation are rooted in a forecast that assumes federal spending remains constant and/or increases. If Obama survives the 2010 elections with the Dems in supermajority status, I see massive defense spending cuts.

I'm starting to agree. I'll add another post on this topic.

I'm starting to agree. I'll add another post on this topic.
PRCaldude

My earlier claim about massive defense cuts has been tried before and the public did not seem to care one bit at all. The last time I checked, Bill Clinton left office with a 60-something approval rating, despite the fact that his massive defense cuts had the following negative results:

"In less than a three-year period under Clinton, America's military manpower decreased from 2.1 million to 1.6 million. Of the 305,000 employees removed from the federal payroll by Clinton, some 286,000 (or 90 percent) were military cuts. Over the entire course of the Clinton years, the Army was cut from 18 divisions to 12. The Navy was reduced from 546 ships to 380. Air Force flight squadrons were cut from 76 to 50. Moreover, the Administration enacted a pay freeze on U.S. troops, 80 percent of whom earned $30,000 or less annually..."
from website:
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=644

In budgetary terms, this is kinda helpful:

"$453 billion – the average annual defense budget for the nine years before Clinton took office.
$377 billion – the average annual defense budget during Clinton’s time in office, a 16.7% decrease."
from website:
http://tpzoo.wordpress.com/2008/11/22/defense-spending-reaganbush-i-vs-clinton-vs-bush-ii/

Along with this piece of interesting news here:

http://pacificfreeze.ips-dc.org/2009/04/obama-imitates-clinton-with-major-defense-budget-cuts/

The Aussies read the same newspapers we do, so they are shifting their long-term military priorities to prepare for a dovish American non-existent force in the Pacific:

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/05/01/aussie-govt-american-power-fading/

The end result is that our Navy's USS Barack Obama could look like this:

http://urbangrounds.com/2009/06/26/three-new-navy-ships/

The financial markets will respond accordingly to the massive reductions in defense spending (and so will our enemies), with the result that hyperinflation may not be so much of a serious threat as we had once thought. Granted, Obama will exponentially increase non-defense expenditures, while cutting defense at the same time. But this should reduce or eliminate the threat of hyper-inflation.

But Obama's actions will not eliminate the future threat that the USA could lose a small war to a Third World country, like Argentina.

After the expenditures of the welfare state had almost financially sunk Britain's navy over time, Thatcher had to sink the Belgrano early on in order to prevent the 2-pronged attack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c3a30V7JEw

When a president makes massive defense cuts like Obama (and Clinton did), it takes many years to play "catch-up", as Thatcher found out.

My earlier claim about massive defense cuts has been tried before and the public did not seem to care one bit at all. The last time I checked, Bill Clinton left office with a 60-something approval rating, despite the fact that his massive defense cuts had the following negative results:

This is something I actually support.

First of all, a lot of people left the military under Clinton because they didn't trust him to send him to the right place. When I started NROTC at UCLA in the fall of 1998, I had the hots for this Serbian girl who was incredulous that we were bombing them. We had these pro-labs on Tuesday morning where we were told that bombing Serbia was a "Good Thing." Of course, we now know this to be false. The Serbs were no angels, but it's not our job to be the world police, especially in support of Muslim terrorists.

Now, we're fighting a 2 front war for what reason, exactly? No one seems to be able to answer the question of why we're still in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though we're "pulling out" of Iraq (yeah right). The logic goes that since the Moslems are still running around shooting at one another and behaving like 6th century ARab savages (ducks also quack), we still need to be there to keep them from killing one another. Funny, I thought just war theory dictated that wars were to be waged only if goals were achievable and desirable outcomes were likely to be achieved. Clearly, this is not the case.

Spending on the military industrial complex, likewise, needs to go away. It took obscene sums of money and decades to get the stupid F-22 working. Now, of course, it's been canceled. But other expensive and ludicrous projects will be undertaken that will demand another war to justify. Defense industry lobbyists will go to Washington to demand more money for their projects and wars to justify them. Presidents, looking to make a name for themselves, will in turn use our military superiority in immoral and irrational ways. Witness the last 8 years. Obama will be the same. Democratic presidents love themselves a war. This militarism has got to go. As GK Chesterton wrote in a critique of Rudyard Kipling:

Now, Mr. Kipling is certainly wrong in his worship of militarism, but his opponents are, generally speaking, quite as wrong as he. The evil of militarism is not that it shows certain men to be fierce and haughty and excessively warlike. The evil of militarism is that it shows most men to be tame and timid and excessively peaceable. The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines. Thus the Pretorian guard became more and more important in Rome as Rome became more and more luxurious and feeble. The military man gains the civil power in proportion as the civilian loses the military virtues. And as it was in ancient Rome so it is in contemporary Europe. There never was a time when nations were more militarist. There never was a time when men were less brave. All ages and all epics have sung of arms and the man; but we have effected simultaneously the deterioration of the man and the fantastic perfection of the arms. Militarism demonstrated the decadence of Rome, and it demonstrates the decadence of Prussia.

And unconsciously Mr. Kipling has proved this, and proved it admirably. For in so far as his work is earnestly understood the military trade does not by any means emerge as the most important or attractive. He has not written so well about soldiers as he has about railway men or bridge builders, or even journalists. The fact is that what attracts Mr. Kipling to militarism is not the idea of courage, but the idea of discipline. There was far more courage to the square mile in the Middle Ages, when no king had a standing army, but every man had a bow or sword.

The last sentence could have been written by any of our Founding Fathers. Indeed, nowadays, the government is more interested in the prevention of private ownership of the modern-day equivalents of "bows and swords" than in it is in courage, and far more interested in militarism than in just war. This also applies to our elites, though it was written of Kipling:

Being devoted to this multitudinous vision of duty, Mr. Kipling is naturally a cosmopolitan. He happens to find his examples in the British Empire, but almost any other empire would do as well, or, indeed, any other highly civilized country. That which he admires in the British army he would find even more apparent in the German army; that which he desires in the British police he would find flourishing, in the French police. The ideal of discipline is not the whole of life, but it is spread over the whole of the world. And the worship of it tends to confirm in Mr. Kipling a certain note of worldly wisdom, of the experience of the wanderer, which is one of the genuine charms of his best work.

The great gap in his mind is what may be roughly called the lack of patriotism — that is to say, he lacks altogether the faculty of attaching himself to any cause or community finally and tragically; for all finality must be tragic. He admires England, but he does not love her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reasons. He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English. There is no harshness in saying this, for, to do him justice, he avows it with his usual picturesque candour. In a very interesting poem, he says that —

“If England was what England seems”

— that is, weak and inefficient; if England were not what (as he believes) she is — that is, powerful and practical —

“How quick we’d chuck ‘er! But she ain’t!”

He admits, that is, that his devotion is the result of a criticism, and this is quite enough to put it in another category altogether from the patriotism of the Boers, whom he hounded down in South Africa. In speaking of the really patriotic peoples, such as the Irish, he has some difficulty in keeping a shrill irritation out of his language. The frame of mind which he really describes with beauty and nobility is the frame of mind of the cosmopolitan man who has seen men and cities.

"For to admire and for to see,

For to be’old this world so wide."

He is a perfect master of that light melancholy with which a man looks back on having been the citizen of many communities, of that light melancholy with which a man looks back on having been the lover of many women. He is the philanderer of the nations. But a man may have learnt much about women in flirtations, and still be ignorant of first love; a man may have known as many lands as Ulysses, and still be ignorant of patriotism.

Mr. Rudyard Kipling has asked in a celebrated epigram what they can know of England who know England only. It is a far deeper and sharper question to ask, "What can they know of England who know only the world?"

Our cosmopolitan rulers don't know anything of the USA. They don't know anything of patriotism. They're "citizens of the world." It's time we stopped volunteering ourselves to die for their causes and putting our mental energy into making them new weapons which we will be asked to hump into combat. Very few of them or their children will be doing the same, I assure you.

When a president makes massive defense cuts like Obama (and Clinton did), it takes many years to play "catch-up", as Thatcher found out.

How have the British "caught up?" Their navy is in a deplorable state, and their sailors and officers have zero courage. Remember that incident a few years back where the Iranians captured one of their Zodiacs and the sailors never even tried to defend themselves? The thing about Britain is that it's been completely hollowed out ideologically and spiritually. We're headed in the exact same direction.

Hyper-inflation? Eh, maybe not. Really bad inflation (20%/yr) - probably. It all depends on if/when the money velocity goes up and all the printed $$ start floating out of banks.
Inflation of any kind is foremost and always a money supply phenomenon.

Hyper-inflation? Eh, maybe not. Really bad inflation (20%/yr) - probably. It all depends on if/when the money velocity goes up and all the printed $$ start floating out of banks.
Inflation of any kind is foremost and always a money supply phenomenon.

Yes, but that money supply is going to be used to further pay down debts, both public and private, taking it back out of circulation. But the government will keep creating more debt and keep taking the Keynesian route, thus keeping us in the deflationary cycle we're in, correct?

[quote]They're "citizens of the world."

July 2, 2009 | PRCalDude [/quote]

Henry Waxman said something recently, can't find the quote right now of course, about "We need to stop being against the world".

The current liberal power in D.C. see themselves as for the world (citizens of the world), and see us traditional conservatives as against the world.

But, this isn't true. It isn't that we are against the world, we are for dealing with our nations problems first, and then world problems. So, as long as the liberals in power maintain their focus on placing their own nation second to that of "the world" their own nation will continue to deteriorate.

Tragic, isn't it?

[blockquote] There never was a time when men were less brave. All ages and all epics have sung of arms and the man; but we have effected simultaneously the deterioration of the man and the fantastic perfection of the arms. - GK Chesterton [/blockquote]

He's talking about the military.

But without context he could just as easily have been talking about the consequences of feminism on the deteriorating status of brave men in our culture.

He's talking about the military.

I think he's talking about the militarism of British society for the purpose of getting and maintaining an Empire and criticizing Kipling's support of it.

I'm fine with the military, for legitimate purposes. I'm not fine with militarism.

I too, echoeing my past posts about the war in Iraq while our open borders are causing hospitals to shut down, am "fine with the military for legitimate purposes, but I am not fine with the militarism." I agree that we are not constitutionally endowed with the title of the "World's Policeman."

As far as the British navy.... ..just prior to the Falklands War, the UK government was in the process of decommissioning one of the last 2 aircraft carriers to align itself with the purpose of being strictly a coastal defense fleet, not a blue-water fleet.

The Argentine invasion of the Falklands changed that strategy,and led to an increase in military spending and the UK having 4 aircraft carriers.

But years and years of Labor dominance in UK politics has shrunk defense spending such that today the UK is just focused on submariens, echoing your comment.

Did some more reading/research before posting. Smart people are about 50/50 on the hyperinflation/continued deflation argument (or 33/33/33 on H.I./deflation/crash and burn.) I have no clue but I think that the smart people % will change to H.I. when it starts getting closer.

Can you post some links?