The Wisdom of Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was one of our founding fathers and his words still ring true today. He knew that we would make mistakes with our government and he also knew what we should do to fix it. After viewing this pass it on to others.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people .....  They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government, those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

Information is the currency of democracy.

It does me no injury for my neighbour to say, there are twenty gods or no God.

It is error alone which needs the support of government.  Truth can stand by itself.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes.  A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

It takes time to persuade men to do even what its for their own good.

Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body.  Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press if free no one ever will.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

The government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

When the press if free and every man able to read, all is safe.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

Cartoon predicts the future 50 years ago. This is amazing insight!

The Economic Climate (10): The Government and the Fed

The US federal government is much bigger than it was during the last Great Depression. 

Back then, it didn't have much economic clout. 

• There was no welfare, no social security, no housing department, none of the hundreds of departments that exist today. 
• In 1935, the entire federal budget was $6.4 billion, about 1/10th of the total US economy. 
• In 1995, it was $1.5 trillion, and nearly 1/4 of the total economy.

An important divide in US:  As of 1992, more people worked in local, state, and federal governments than in manufacturing.  This so-called public sector pays so many salaries and pumps so much money into the economy that it keeps the economy out of the deep freeze.  

• Whether business is bad or good, millions of government employees, social security recipients, and welfare recipients still have money to spend. 
• And when people get laid off, they get unemployment compensation for several months while they look for another job.

The dark side of this story is that the government has gotten out of whack, with huge budget deficits that

• soak up investment capital and
• keep the economy from growing as fast it as once did. 

Too much of a good thing has become a bad thing.

The agency in charge of climate control is the Federal Reserve System, also known as the Fed.

The Economic Climate (9): Goldilocks climate, the perfect situation doesn't seem to last.

The perfect situation for companies and their investors is the Goldilocks climate:  not too hot and not too cold.

But whenever we get into a Goldilocks climate, it doesn't seem to last.

Most of the time, the economy is either heating up or cooling down, although the signals are so confusing that it's often hard to tell which way we're headed.

The government can't control a lot of things, especially the weather, but it has a big effect on the economic climate. 

Of all the jobs the federal government does, from fighting wars to fighting poverty, it may be that its most important job is keeping the economy from getting too hot or too cold.  It it weren't for the government, we might have had another Great Depression by now.

The Economic Climate (1): Companies live in this economic climate

Companies live in a climate - the economic climate.

They depend on the outside world for survival, just as plants and humans do. 

• They need a steady supply of capital, also known as the money supply.
• They need buyers for whatever it is they make, and
• Suppliers for whatever materials they make it from. 
• They need a government that lets them do their job without taxing them to death or pestering them to death with regulations.

When investors talk about the economic climate, they don't mean sunny or cloudy, winter or summer.  They mean the outside forces that companies must contend with, which help determine whether

• they make money or
• lose money,

and ultimately, whether they

• thrive or
• wither away.