Rick Kelo asks has Capitalism ended Starvation?

Richard Kelo

The biggest killer in all of human history has been hunger.  Nature is inherently scarce and very stingy with her resources.  Rick Kelo points out that only through peaceful trade with our fellow man have people advanced to the point where obesity, not starvation, is the main killer.

"When populations began to rise in 16th century England, and that change in the supply/demand curve pushed food prices up.  Prices reached the point it became profitable for farmers to invest in agricultural technology to get more out of their harvest.  That increased availability in food encouraged more population growth and so on," explains Rick Kelo.

Richard Kelo is a Chicago tax recruiter by day, but in his spare time also maintains a prominent position in the forefront of certain economic debates.  Well read in economic history, and himself educated on both topics at West Point, Rick is quick to point out that only by cooperating have people overcome the scarcity of the natural world.

"If any of us wandered off a trail in the park our stomachs would tell us after just a few hours in the woods just how scarce food is," Rick Kelo notes.  The way mankind overcame this scarcity was by using markets - peaceful trade - to guide production decisions.

"To finish the case of England," Rick Kelo continues, "That increased productivity eventually brought down prices, which encouraged farmers to spend more and more money investing in ways to make farms more productive.  That higher volume production allowed the farmer to break even from lower prices... lower prices meant everybody else had extra money left over to buy "stuff" with.  And so on it went as man got even more and more efficient."

Thus the story of how the economic incentives that naturally exist in the free market inspired mankind to overcome the cruelty of nature to the point that starvation... the leading cause of death in all of human history... has been wiped out in capitalist societies.

Rick Kelo crushes Keynes on Interest Rates

Rick Kelo

No economist garnered more fame in the 20th Century than John Maynard Keynes, the father of government stimulus spending, bail-outs, and a whole school of thought known as Keynesian Economics.  However, says Rick Kelo, the core thesis of Keynes' position is simple nonsense if examined.

"Keynes was avidly against saving & in favor of rabid consumption.  So if we consider people saving instead of spending, which Keynes called hoarding, this point is an incredibly central to his policy recommendations.  In 'General Theory' Keynes makes the case that in a recession we have this depressed interest rate, increased money supply, and therefore the incentive exists to increase cash positions or 'hoard,'" Rick Kelo continues, "Because the citizenry have this propensity to hoard, then Keynes claims government must overcome this "recessionary gap" through stimulus spending of its own to make up for the lack of consumption due to recessionary conditions making an incentive to increase cash balances."

What is really going on when interest rates are low?  This question still puzzles most economists but Rick Kelo gives us a straight-forward look in plain English:

When the Central Bank sets interest rates artificially low it makes it cheaper to borrow since loans and credit cards now have lower interest rates.  It also makes the alternative, saving, less attractive because savings accounts now pay less interest. 

Richard Kelo notes.  The actual economic incentive of a low interest rate creates the precise opposite effect Keynes claimed.

Rick Kelo discusses Castes in Capitalist Economies

Famed economist and philosopher Ludwig von Mises once noted that:

Every adult is free to fashion his life according to his own plans. He is not forced to live according to the plan of a planning authority enforcing its unique plan by the police.  ... Everybody is free to join the ranks of the three progressive classes (entrepreneurs, savers & technologists) of a capitalist society. These classes are not closed castes. Membership in them is not a privilege conferred on the individual by a higher authority or inherited from one's ancestors.

 Ludwig von Mises, "The Anti-Capitalist Mentality"

"People sometimes forget that upward social mobility never existed in human history until the adoption of capitalist economic systems," says Rick Kelo.

Certainly it is the case that upward mobility exists in capitalist societies.  Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, was the son of Syrian immigrants.  Rick Kelo notes that most of us can trace our own story like that if we only stop to put it in that perspective.  Which generation of your family was the first to attend college?  The first to own a sports car or some other prized luxury item?

The problem becomes that we often forget just how generous living in a capitalist economy is.  Politicians campaign for office by promising to "do" and "fix" things.  These promises inveritably lead to more government programs, which reduce the amount of economic output left for the private sector.

Rick Kelo

Rick Kelo Discusses The 20th Centuries Greatest Famines

The last century saw almost a hundred million people starve to death.  To Rick Kelo though there's a very noticeable common theme that runs through those mass starvations.

Causes of the Soviet famine of 1932–33:
"The government's forced collectivization of agriculture, a part of the Soviet Union's first five-year plan, forced grain procurement and political repression in the countryside were the main reasons for the famine."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%9333#Reasons

Causes of Great Chinese Famine / Great Leap Forward:
Chief changes in the lives of rural Chinese included the incremental introduction of mandatory agricultural collectivization.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

"It is very easy for us to forget the lessons we learned just in the last century," says Rick Kelo.  Socialism was the central theme that ran through the worst starvations, including in India, which was Socialist for much of the 20th century and also ranked near the top of the World Hunger Index for most of those years.

Richard Kelo

Rick Kelo Considers Whether Rights Come from a Government

Does a government grant you rights?  If there was no government would you still have a right to freedom of religion, or free speech?  This topic has become very important as politicians justify their ever-expanding programs by claiming they are "rights."

The "right to health care" and "right to birth control" have been a few recent examples.  The argument is that possessing those things is necessary to life (it isn't), and therefore the State ought to ensure that everyone has access to them.

Rick Kelo, an economist, social thinker, and alumni of the US Military Academy at West Point, looked at this question through the Classic Liberal lens and found that if the claim government determines rights is untrue, then every argument a politician uses for justifying a new program because it is a "right" must also be untrue.

"Rights are Human Constructs, you don't find them in the State of Nature.  Man had no rights until the government gave them to him," argue critics.

When asked how he responds to that claim Rick Kelo answered,"What political body gave the Neanderthal the right to defend his cave?  When two young children are playing with sticks they found on the ground and one takes the other's stick what political body gave the first one the right to reply, 'HEY!  That's MINE!'"

Kelo points out that humans are born with certain fundamental rights because every person makes their own moral choices.  They possess what philosophers call "Moral Agency."  As a moral agent we each independently understand that we possess certain rights and we also project our understanding onto every other person we meet and understand they possess the same rights.

Rick A Kelo

Rick Kelo - All Civil Rights are Ultimately Economic Rights

As a pacifist and prominent Classic Liberal social thinker Rick Kelo is very concerned with human rights and acts by the State that limit human freedom.

Richard Kelo points out a connection often overlooked.  To see the connection first p pick any civil right... maybe free speech?  What does it mean when we say you have free speech?   That means you have free speech in a place where you have an economic ownership interest.  You can say whatever you want in your house, or in a lecture hall that you rent, but you can't barge into someone else's house with a picket sign though because you don't have free speech there.

Rick Kelo

Consider the example of the person who shouts "FIRE!" in the crowded theater.  The reason you can't shout "FIRE!" in a theater when there's no fire is because you're violating property rights - an economic right as Rick Kelo rightly points out.  You're defrauding the theater owner of his revenue & the patrons of the show they purchased.  Freedom of religion follows the same, as do the rest.  For that matter try and figure out how there can be freedom of press when an individual is forbidden by Socialist decree from owning the press.

This applies broadly to overall economic systems just as it does individual examples.  If a government eliminates economic civil rights, like ownership of the means of production, this is why we see the people end up with no social civil rights either.  Workers in every Socialist state are powerless because all civil rights are ultimately economic rights.

Rick Kelo on the Virtue of Charity

As Rick Kelo points out charity is a frequently abused concept.  Politicians often abuse our basic notion of charity as a talking point to advocate something that isn't charitable.

Imagine for a moment that, in the dead of winter, you saw someone give their coat to a homeless man.  You'd consider the giver charitable and probably think well of them.  Now imagine that same cold winter day, but this time someone puts a gun to a passer-bys head and forces him to hand his coat over to the nearest homeless person.  You wouldn't consider the person giving his coat away charitable in that instance.

Rick Kelo - outspoken pacifist

Rick Kelo, as a Classic Liberal, knows that charity is only charity if it is voluntary.  Once it's forced it isn't charity.  "You're free to share anything that you own, but when you share your next door neighbor's car to me that's theft," Rick points out.

So the next time you hear a politician clamoring for a law on the grounds of "charity" ... say free birth control for anyone who wants it, or a bail-out for a mega-bank... remember to keep your natural impulse to be charitable in check because it isn't charity if it involves taking something by force first.

Rick Kelo Talks Locations Socialism Has Been Tried

Most people know that the USSR was Socialist, but did you know Iraq was a Socialist country until the U.S. invaded in 2003?  Rick Kelo, an outspoken advocate of human freedom, has been raising public awareness about what actually constitutes Socialism and where people can look for examples of its usage.

Some of the examples Rick Kelo provided of lesser known countries which were / are socialist include:

• Syria
• Iraq prior to 2003
• India until the 1991 economic reforms
• All Soviet satellite nations
• China prior to 1984
• Afghanistan prior to 1979
• Venezuela
• And a great many African nations that were a breeding ground for Marxism during the Cold War.  Two notable examples being Somalia & Zimbabwe.

Rick A Kelo

Richard Kelo - How Capitalism & Socialism Differ

As American politics slowly becomes more socialistic its important to remember what  really separates Socialism from America's economic tradition: Capitalism.  Rick Kelo feels the real distinction comes in how the two systems treat private property.

The defining hallmarks of Socialism are:

• No legal sanction of private property.
• No legal sanction of contracts.
• Workers can own the use value of capital goods but not the capital value.

No matter what else you consider it to include no form of Socialism can exist without those three things says Kelo.  Consider health care.  If health care is nationalized then the government owns and operates all hospitals, just like it does now with the VA.  If all hospitals only have one owner then it implies that there is no trade.  Right now we know how much a hospital is worth because if Community Health wants to buy a hospital from Hospital Corp. of America, then they will agree on a price.  When the government owns every hospital that can't happen.

That, says Rick Kelo, is an example of all three hallmarks of Socialism.  There is no legal sanction of private property because a government hospital can't be bought by, say, an expanding entrepreneur.  Also, the workers in the hospital can use the equipment, but unlike when the owners of Community Health buying a hospital after which they own the capital value, the workers only own the use value of the government hospital while they're employed there.

Rick Kelo when not deep in thought

Rick Kelo - The State in Free Markets

When most people picture a "free market" they think of a lawless free for all where anything goes.  Not so says Rick Kelo, an economic thinker educated at West Point and at Chicago.

"Market economies exist based upon legal sanction of private property and legal sanction of contract (as a form of property right)," Kelo says.  He remarks that in order to have a free market economy it is necessary for the State to provide courts of law where companies who engage in fraudulent commerce can be made to pay huge sums of money as a punishment to set an example.

He also remarks that it will probably always be a necessary function of government to protect the citizens from violence.  "To maintain a system of private property rights it's necessary for there to be a government.  The reason is we need that government to maintain a military to protect from attacks from outside, and a police force to protect citizen's from attacks on their person or property domestically," says Richard Kelo.

Paul Davidson, Rick Kelo and Lord Robert Skidelsky

Rick Kelo Critiques Socialism in the 21st Century

Have you heard of the concept "Socialism in the 21st Century"?   You can read a brief introduction on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_of_the_21st_century

It is essentially left-wing economic populism.  As an outspoken advocate of peaceful, and voluntary cooperation Rick Kelo has engaged in numerous public debates on the topic of Socialism vs. Capitalism.  He has noticed a common trend among Socialists that closely mirrors the main tenet of the Socialism in the 21st Century platform.  Advocates of Socialism in 2017 seek to distance themselves from the totalitarian Socialist regimes of the 20th century.  So, many try to disguise the fact their economic system is based on force by claiming they advocate a co-op economy.

This doesn't sound alarming to many people.  Richard Kelo though points out the deception at work in these claims.

"Socialism is not about co-ops.  There is nothing about co-ops that is inconsistent with a capitalist economy.  In fact you can find co-ops in most towns in America.  When a Socialist talks about co-ops he is using it as a diversion from his real agenda.  Socialists aren't in favor of co-ops.  They are in favor of an economy of ONLY co-ops where every other form of corporate organization is forcibly outlawed."

Rick Kelo on America's History and Automation

Many people misunderstand the role of automation in improving our daily lives.  When you're trying to decide a question like, "will the new ordering kiosk at McDonald's create unemployment for cashiers?" try taking a bigger picture look.

In 1776 when our nation was founded over 85% of the population was employed in agriculture.  What was the result of that?  We could not have any dentists, engineers, or software programmers.  In the centuries since then we've found new ways to feed ourselves with less than 3% of the population working agriculture.  The result has not been 82% unemployment! The result is that resources (labor among them) are freed to move into more valued and higher paying areas that previously could not exist.

Rick Kelo, Chicago tax recruiter

As a tax recruiter, and the owner of TaxScout, Inc, Rick Kelo has seen first hand the benefit of automation in freeing us from lower value work so we can focus on higher value work.

Rick Kelo- The Ills of Socialism

Understanding the Economic Ills of a System Like Socialism

Socialism is a word which stirs up mixed emotions in people across the world, especially in America. For many, it is the economic symbol that is deeply embedded with Communism, and therefore the idea of the old enemy, one which should be warned away and avoided. However, a new surge in socialist and left wing thought across the world has sent he word come back into play in recent decades. More and more, people are thinking that socialism might provide the answer to eliminating greed, and creating a more equal and sustainable society- hence the rise in politicians like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn. However, economic thinker Rick Kelo is one such classical liberal who believes we must do all we can to keep the powers of socialism at bay.

Rick Kelo a West Point grad, and former agent of the State, turned Classic Liberal thinker and writer. He describes himself as a 'rogue Economist', with original thoughts and ideas, heavily influenced by the Monetarist & Austrian schools. Rick Kelo's actual area of specialization, and employment, is taxation, where he is able to apply his deep economic theories to his profession by offering succinct and pertinent tax advice to his clients. He is the head of tax recruiting at TaxScout, Inc. Rick is in charge of the firm's nationwide executive tax recruitment as well as full service tax recruitment in several specific metropolitan areas. He also runs a widely read blog where he discusses the latest trends in economic circles, called Ceteris Paribus. This phrase is taken from the Economics from the Austrian & Monetarist traditions; political philosophy from the Classic Liberal tradition.

For Rick Kelo, socialism is a system that has repeatedly failed throughout the course of history. It has led to dictatorships, authoritarian governments, and social destruction. As a classical liberal, Rick Kelo is a firm proponent of the free market economics of the neo-liberal age which have defined the past three decades. In order to allow economic growth and flourish for Rick Kelo, governments must loosen their grip over economic measures, and allow businesses to flourish in the modern world.

Rick A. Kelo: Drawing Connections Between Economics and Pop Culture -- Death and Taxes

Rick A. Kelo is a successful businessman who has worked in a number of different industries. If you are interested in learning more about this great person please click the following link, https://plus.google.com/+RickKelo. After serving in the United States Army as Captain, Rick A. Kelo now works as an Executive Recruiter for TaxScout Inc. Since 2005, Rick has been helping any customer with any of their tax problems. While working there Rick is credited with creating the company’s candidate database to comply with all OFCCP requirements. He is also very well known at the company for promoting diversity when hiring candidates for managerial and executive positions. Two of his key roles when working at TaxScout Inc. is to advise all clients on all aspects of retention policies that include preparing formal retention programs. He has also been charged with the task of advising all clients on fair market compensation and perform compensation studies. Taxes are something that Rick A. 

Kelo takes very seriously, and something that he has written about before. He once wrote an article that linked two very unlikely things, Star Wars and Socialism. When most people think of Star Wars they often don’t think about economics and taxes, but Rick A. Kelo was able to draw a number of similarities between where he claims that the Empire itself, was a socialist force. In this article, Rick discusses some of the ways that people who support socialism try to distinguish it from Communism. His conclusion at the end of the article states that there is in fact no difference between Socialism and Communism. He has written on this issue a number of different times. It is because of his interest in economics and taxes that it is clear why he excels in the role of Executive Recruiter at TaxScout Inc. TaxScout Inc. is one of the nation’s leading tax search firms. One of his major duties at this job is to develop a new base of client companies that are looking to hire tax professionals. After doing this, it is then Rick’s job to act as the face of those companies in the marketplace. He has proven to be very proficient at this job which has allowed him to become very sought after today for his expertise on taxes. If you are interested in learning more about this great person please click the following link, https://www.youtube.com/user/RickKelo1 for more information.