North American Union?

Ron Paul was attacked when he referred to an ongoing effort to create a North American Union and a NAFTA superhighway. I've also noticed there's a lot of conspiracy theories that revolve around the Council of Foreign Relations and its promotion of world government. What I am starting to notice is that this isn't a hidden conspiracy at all. It's pretty much out in the open in plain, transparent view. I discovered this site recently http://www.cfr.org/publication/8102/ which contains a working group report published by the Council of Foreign Relations and hosted on its own website. The PDF is available for download on the site and has their recommendations. I also cached a copy in case it's taken down. My question is why is this so hush-hush and off limits to talk about when it's so out in the open? Should this not be discussed and debated?

The high level recommendations included:

• "Establish a common security perimeter by 2010"
• "Develop a North American Border Pass"
• "Develop a unified North American border action plan"
• "Expand border infrastructure"
• "Lay the groundwork for the freer flow of people within North
  America."
• "Expand NORAD into a multiservice Defense Command"
• "Increase information and intelligence-sharing at the local
  and national levels in both law enforcement and military
  organizations."
• "Intensify Mexican efforts to accelerate its economic development"
• "Establish a North American investment fund for infrastructure
  and human capital"
• "Enhance the capacity of the North American Development
  Bank (NADBank)"
• "Develop a NorthAmerican energy strategy"
• "Fully develop Mexican energy resources"
• "Conclude a North American resource accord"
• "Make a North American commitment to a cleaner environment"
• "Expand trinational collaboration on conservation and innovation."
• "Adopt a common external tariff"
• "Review those sectors of NAFTA that were excluded or those
  aspects that have not been fully implemented"
• "Establish a permanent tribunal for North American dispute
  resolution"
• "Establish a joint approach to unfair trade practices"
• "Establish a trinational competition commission"
• "Ensure rapid implementation of the North American regulatory
  action plan"
• "Open skies and open roads"
• 'Tested once' for biotechnology and pharmaceuticals"
• "Integrating protection of food, health, and the environment"
• "Make a North American standard the default approach to
  new regulation"
• "Expand temporary migrant worker programs"
• "Implement the Social Security Totalization Agreement
  negotiated between the United States and Mexico"
• "Create a 'North American preference"
• "Move to full labor mobility between Canada and the United
  States"
• "Mutual recognition of professional standards and degrees"
• "Create a major scholarship fund for undergraduate and graduate
  students to study in the other NorthAmerican countries
  and to learn the region’s three languages"
• "Develop a network of centers for North American studies"
• "Promote Internet-based learning within North America"
• "Develop teacher exchange and training programs for elementary and secondary school teachers"
• "Develop 'sister school' and student exchange programs"
• "Encourage imaginative ways to build North American connections"

Ron Paul with Larry King

This is a good interview. Unfortunately, CNN didn't air it (maybe they don't want us hear what Ron Paul had to say).

Social Security Thought Exercise

While working on a blog post about taxation (not yet finished), I started looking into social security. I made a spreadsheet to calculate what would have happened if instead of paying social security taxes to the government, individuals had been required to invest that money in a private retirement account. Note, I am not advocating mandatory retirement accounts, but I think it is a useful exercise to show just how bad our current system is.

Let's take the case of an individual born in 1941, retired in 2007, and made the median family income from 1959 to 2007. If he had invested 7.5%, the amount taken out of wages by the government for social security, of his income into an account that made 7% per year (pretty conservative), he would have had $477K in savings in 2007. The same person would now be entitled to $23K per year in social security benefits. Now let's say instead his employer also was required to contribute 7.5% (which is required under social security). In that case, he would now have $955K in savings. This would result in a much higher standard of living than the amount currently received under social security.

This is a somewhat simplistic model though. A typical person doesn't start off at 18 making the median income. It takes many years to reach the medium income. Let's say he started off at age 18 making half the median income and didn't reach the medium income until age 35. In this case, he would have $862K saved for retirement. This would still afford a much higher standard of living than the amount currently received under social security.

The result though is that social security is a pay-as-you-go system. There is a myth that social security is a savings plan, but in reality, the people paying taxes today fund the people receiving benefits today. The surplus is "lent" to the government, which really means it's spent.

I am not advocating mandatory retirement accounts, but I do think we would be much better off today had we had them instead of the current system. Nobody knows what the average performance of those accounts would have been because adding those trillions of dollars of investments would have impacted the economy in a very different way than what actually happened where the government spent the money. But in general, I believe the free market would have used that capital to create some amazing innovations that we can't possibly imagine today. Instead we probably spent the money on subsidies, special interests, and weapons that did not increase the longterm wealth of the country.

We could have still provided a safety net to people who made bad investment choices through a welfare program for the elderly at likely a much lower cost. Instead, we now have saved very little as a country and have over $60 trillion in unfunded liabilities, My generation and the next generation are going to have to live well below our means in order to pay for the retirement of the baby boomers and our other debts.

Data for these calculations
Median income data
Social Security Calculator
Spreadsheet

Gold and Oil Hit Record Prices

Gold hit a record price at over $860/oz yesterday. Oil hit $100 for the first timer ever. What's that sound you ask? That's the sound of your paper dollars becoming worthless due to inflation of the money supply that's not backed by any real economic growth.

America: Freedom to Fascism

This is a very interesting film from Aaron Russo, the producer of Trading Places and many other films.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656880303867390173

United States heading to bankruptcy

Don't watch this if you don't care about the country going bankrupt.

Great Ron Paul Video

I love this Ron Paul video:



And who doesn't like Adam Curry: