Roman Bread and Circuses in the Electronic Age, Part I

by: J. Rick Normand, Financial Columnist

Everybody senses something is wrong in our economy. What most don’t sense is that their wealth and quality-of-life standards are being pilfered by design and, worse yet, almost none understand how it happened! I hope to shed some light on this predicament.

Decimus Junius Juvenalis (Roman Satirist, 55AD-127AD), whose scornful words “bread and circuses” have become meaningful in today’s environment when you understand that Roman citizens, as their economy deteriorated, became increasingly addicted to free distributions of food, violent gladiatorial entertainment held in the Coliseum, and the chariot races of the Circus Maximus. He felt that Romans had lost the capacity to govern themselves and monitor government corruption once they became distracted by mindless self-gratification. Today we may be seeing this self-gratification manifested in our fascination with the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, Dr. Phil, reality shows, violent video games and action movies, political party conventions, etc…whatever it takes to distract ourselves from pain, depression, victimization by legally sanctioned wrongdoing, and destruction of our quality of life living standards. What follows is the story of the old tried and true technique of the Roman Caesars…namely, to divert the people’s attention from the reality of omnipresent corruption!

Before government can delve into corruption on a massive scale, it must first cause a deliberate failure of education such that the public will have no knowledge of, or ability to comprehend, the sophisticated methodology of government created transfer of wealth programs from the middle class to the upper class (the “1.0%”). This is done through devaluation of our currency, hyper-inflation, diminishment of the purchasing power of our retirement investments, and outright force majeure seizure.

Many public education critics believe that the principal problem with today’s public education is the avoidance of focusing on results. Indeed, that complaint can be taken one important step further. We not only fail to hold individual students accountable for poor performance, we have also failed to hold the Department of Education accountable for its performance since at least the Viet Nam War. For instance, ECONOMICS hasn’t been taught in our public schools in all that time and now virtually no one understands it. If no one understands it, then no one will ask why it is that everything is going wrong!

Average “Scholastic Aptitude Test” scores fell 41 points between 1972 and 1991. Apologists for public education argue that such factors as the percentage of minority students taking the SAT can explain this drop…which is patently false! Scores for European-Americans have also dropped. Kids scoring over 600 on the verbal part of the SAT have fallen by 37% since 1972, so the overall decline can’t be blamed on just ethnicity for “diluting” the results. The typical American high school student spends only 1,460 hours on subjects like math, science, and history during their four years in high schools. Meanwhile, their counterparts in Japan will spend 3,170 hours on basic subjects, French students will spend 3,280 on academics, and German students will spend 3,528 hours studying such subjects – nearly three times the hours devoted in American schools. In light of these facts, the U.S. Commissioner of Education Statistics recently revealed the results of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study which ranked U.S. Grade 12 competency in mathematics, the sciences and history as only the 16th best in the industrialized world after being number one from the end of WWII until the end of the sixties.

Beyond failed education policy, for government to delve into corruption on a massive scale, it must employ statistical manipulation to calm the “masses of unwary victims of public education.”

The growing difference in perception of inflation, versus reality, is primarily due to changes made over decades as to how the CPI is calculated and defined by the government. Specifically, changes made to definitions of terms inherent in the CPI (Consumer Price Index) methodologies in recent decades have reflected “theoretical constructs” offered by academia that have little relevance to the real-world use of the CPI by the general public. Moreover, these changes generally are not understood by the public. Most people believe the government’s CPI is a reliable measure of the cost of living necessary to maintain a constant standard of living. The use of “hedonic” quality modeling (characterized as the wishes of the individual for greater enjoyment) in adjusting the prices of goods and services has destroyed the concept of the CPI as a measure of the true daily cost of maintaining a certain quality of life. Why? Because it allows substitution of lower-priced and lower-quality goods in the basket (i.e. more hamburger when steak prices rise) which lowers the reported rate of inflation versus the old fixed-basket measure.

To wit, recently the Bureau of Labor Statistics (“BLS”) has introduced 1.] geometric weighting—a purely mathematical gimmick that automatically reduces the weightings of goods rising in price, and vice versa—it has no demonstrated relationship to consumer substitution of goods based on price changes. And, they’ve introduced 2.] more frequent re-weightings of the CPI index from every ten years to every two years, which moved the CPI closer to a substitution-based index, but the change was not considered a change in methodology. Furthermore, the government BLS has introduced 3.] ongoing re-weightings of sales outlets (discount/mass-merchandisers versus Main Street shops), also moving us closer to a substitution-based index and creating other constant standard of living issues.

Meanwhile, regarding unemployment, the government’s other main measure of the success of our economy, its data base shows that about 9 million people without jobs have been removed from the labor force simply by defining them as not being in the labor force anymore. Indeed – effectively all of the decreases in unemployment rate percentages since 2009 have come not from new jobs, but through reducing the workforce participation rate so that millions of jobless people are removed from the labor force by definition.

When we pierce through this statistical smoke and mirrors charade and “factor back in” those 9 million jobless, whom the government has defined out of existence, then the true unemployment rate is a depression rate 19.9% and rising, and not 8.3% and falling.

Furthermore, our government invokes yet another technique to placate the public as it creates one “stimulus package” and “bailout package” after another. It promotes the employment of cheap money, and easy money handed out by government, as well as debt-fueled economic growth as tantamount to a victimless crime against our middle class, especially baby-boomers!

Government cannot simultaneously borrow from our future while eroding the basis for that future because that always leads to impoverishment…adding the weight of growing obligations on top of diminishing wealth-production ability, resultant of declining educational standards and achievement, cannot produce prosperity. The government recently reported a massive 40% drop in median U.S. household net worth from 2007-2010. There is only one method to generate prosperity and that is encouragement of the public to save…we’re talking savings of productive businesses and people to set aside a portion of their income, usually at a small interest rate, with which to make investment in their own business or in some other business or just lend out at a reasonable interest rate to conserve their capital until it may be used for something productive.

The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank’s Zero Interest Rate Policy (“ZIRP”) destroys this capability with total certitude. ZIRP discourages investment by business, discourages savings by the young, discourages work, and devastates middle class retirees who tend to use interest as part of their survival cash flow while needing to preserve the purchasing power of their saved capital. Further, ZIRP guarantees no fresh investment in industry or business because the return from the investment is too low to risk the money. But, it does enrich banks who have to pay no interest to the public for use of their funds while making high-yield risky investments with it.

Yes, you are the victim of the Fed’s ZIRP. So, who is it that’s responsible for this legal thievery of your net worth? Possibly, a well-concealed, unaccountable, unregulated, unelected, non-transparent, and misunderstood documented partnership between the permanent bureaucracy of U.S. Treasury Department and the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank commonly known as “the Fed.” We’ll take an in-depth look into this scenario in Part II!