Liberalism creates poverty, not wealth (or, what is quantitative easing)

One of the things progressives talk a lot about is the income gap between the rich and the poor.  They say they do not like it, and they say that the cause of it is unfettered capitalism.

So here we have Obama well into his 6th year in office, and he has added more progressive programs than any president since Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt.

Progressives believe that the only way to narrow the income gap is by "fundamentally transforming" America from capitalism to progressivism.  In other words, they believe it is necessary to "re-distribute" wealth from the rich to the poor.  They believe this is needed because greedy rich people do not spend their wealth wisely, and so the government must force them to support their agenda through high taxes and so forth.

Obama and progressives believe that capitalism makes the rich richer and that the middle class just stagnates, and the poor get poorer.

Anyway, the progressive tax and spend (redistribution) agenda has advanced more during Obama's first six years than at any time since the Johnson and Roosevelt administrations, and today we learn via the New York Times, "Middle Class Shrinks Further as More Fall Out Instead of Climbing Up," that the income gap has (drum roll please) under Obama risen four times faster than under George W. Bush.

Huffingtonpost.com reported that "Inequality has been even more pronounced under Obama than it was under George W. Bush."

There is a good reason for this income gap increase, and it has nothing to do with capitalism.  Consider the following facts as reported by the Huffington Post:

• Many Americans lost their jobs in the 2009-2010 recession and were unable to find another job that paid as well (meaning they make less now than then)
• Today we have a record number of people (46 million) living in poverty.

You might also wish to consider the following statistics:

• Today we have a record 92,898,000 working age people not working
• Today the U6 unemployment number, the one that includes those 92,898,000 working age unemployed workers, is a whopping 13.6%

Progressives believe that the income gap is created because the market isn't fair. So they make it fair by making laws that create regulations and programs by taxing the rich.  In other words, they force the rich to support their progressive programs that are basically a redistribution of wealth.  

Then, when they realize that they can't make enough money from taxes to support their spending, so they start to print more money in a process called quantitative easing.  This is a process where the government prints more money and pumps it into the equities market (i.e. the stock market). It goes into the stock market because the people with the power to print it come from the stock market.

And so where has all this newly printed money been going: to the stock market. Who makes money off the stock market? The rich people. So they get richer.

This is why the stock market has grown by leaps and bounds under Obamanomics. It's because the same people who print the money just give it to themselves. This explains why the income gap has grown.  It's because the stock market, in an ever growing recession where the poor get poorer and the middle class is stagnant, has grown by leaps and bounds because of quantitative easing to pay for all the progressive programs created by the Obama Administration.  It's full fledged liberalism at work here.

If you have money in the stock market, if you can afford to do so, you are probably sitting pretty about now. If you are an average American with a 401K you are probably sitting pretty.

Obama will tell you that the stock market is growing completely independent of anything he is doing.  But that's not the case at all.  The Federal Reserve is pumping money into the stock market left and right in order to make it look like progressivism is working.  Yet once we evaluate the underlying data and see that the income gap is increasing as a result of it, we see what is really going on here.

The rich people who can afford to invest in the stock market are getting wealthier and wealthier and wealthier.  But it's not because people are smart and know what stocks to invest in, or not because of any genius business move.  It's because money has been artificially pumped (some $3.5 trillion) into the stock market under the name of quantitative easing.

The stock market has not grown because millions more Americans have decided to invest their money there. It has not grown because of unfettered capitalism. It has grown artificially due to some idealistic progressive attempt to create money to pay for progressive programs that do not work.

This is the only way to explain how the middle class can be stagnant at the same time the stock market grows. It explains why so many people in this country are making sacrifices, yet the rich continue to get richer.

Some of the rich will always get richer because they have the money to take risks in the stock market or other places. Sometimes they lose, although sometimes they win and make even more money. With more money in the stock market due to quantitative easing, the rich just get richer. This also explains why there are always just a few filthy rich people in communist nations.  

Anyway, progressives programs (bailouts, regulations, subsidies, Obamacare, Social Security, TARP, and you name it), coupled with the fact that progressive programs do not cause people to rise up from poverty and into the middle class, results in a rise in the income gap.

High taxes, coupled with regulations that make it so entrepreneurs cannot afford to start their businesses, make it so people do not rise up above the middle class.  So this makes the middle class stagnant.

All Obama did was create programs to help the poor.  He made it so those who do not have jobs can get unemployment for a longer period of time.  So that means all those people are not working and therefore not making money.  The middle class are not creating new jobs, and they are not investing more in the stock market.  So capitalism is not working here.  So to pay for their bailouts and such, progressives had to print more money and put in into the stock market.

This helps the rich get richer.  The middle class is ignored.  The poor get poorer. People from the middle class who lose jobs get new jobs that pay less, and some of them move down into poverty.

Progressives will blame this on capitalism, so they will propose creating more laws and regulations to make things more fair, by their definition of fair that is. But it's not capitalism that is at fault here, it's progressivism; it's Obamanomics. It's the growing number of people on welfare. It's all the progressive regulations made to create fairness and equality and a perfect world.  

That's what happens when you have six full years of full fledged liberalism.  This is yet another example that proves why liberalism/ progressivism has never worked.  It has been tried over and over and over again since the ancient world.  It is what caused the collapse of the mighty Roman Empire and many other empires. It has been called many things, but it always results in the same thing: failure.

Progressives complain that things aren't fair, and so they have to have their own progressive experts define what is fair and what is not.  So they create laws and regulations to force people to comply. They make the market fair, something capitalism, they say, will never do.  Yet fairness by their definition, means that everybody is the same. If everyone makes the same amount of money (fairness), then everybody will be poor.  

The irony here is that progressives complain all the time about how it is unfair that rich people make so much money.  So they raise their taxes, redistribute their wealth, have the Federal Reserve print more money, and all that money goes into the stock market, and the rich get even richer.  How else do you explain how the rich keep getting richer even under Obamanomics when Obama hates the rich.

Since high taxes and regulations discourage potential entrepreneurs from creating new jobs, and prevent corporations from expanding, fewer jobs are created.  The end result here is that the middle class stagnates, and more people enter into poverty.

You simply cannot create wealth and fairness by taking from those who make and giving it to those who do not make.  The reason is because in order to give to the poor you have to take via taxes from those who make money.  And once you take their money, they don't have it. The rich can afford this, the poor and middle class cannot.

Then they create programs that give people money to live by without them having to do anything, and then they become dependent on the government to survive. They are not encouraged to seek work because that would mean losing their government subsidies. So the cost of government goes up while income goes down. So progressives have no choice but to raise taxes to make more money. It becomes an endless cycle.

Then children growing up in these families never see capitalism, so they don't see any better way of life.  So they too end up trapped in poverty.

Yes, this is what unfettered liberalism does.  This is what they call fairness. This is why 30 plus years of progressive leadership in Detroit has driven that city from one of the most prosperous cities in the world during the 1950s into complete and utter bankruptcy.  The New York Times wrote an "Anatomy of Detroit's Decline' back in 2013.

Under unfettered progressivism, or socialism, or communism, or fascism, everybody is the same, everybody is poor, except for the the few on the upper end, and that would be the progressive leaders.  This is the system, by the way, the people lived under for 99 percent of our history.

It's called totalitarian government.  It's a system where only the aristocracy gets to enjoy the benefits of profit.  They accomplish this by taxing the people who do all the work.  Unless this is what we want to go back to, progressivism must be stopped in its tracks.  

The bottom line is that unfettered liberalism creates more poverty, it does not create more wealth.  This is why the income gap has increased after six years of Obamanomics, as opposed to decreasing. 

People used to have thick skin, were not offended by facts

The Manistee Chippewa's Logo used to be a colorful painting of this guy.

When I was a kid my grandma used to always (generalization I know) complain about my mom. It used to upset me, but I never said anything. After a while I realized my grandma was not going to stop complaining about my mom. I loved my grandma, so I developed thick skin. Sure it irritated me to a certain degree, but I got over it and went on with my life.

The same thing about things like the confederate flag. There are many people who think of the confederate flag as a symbol of the south more so than just a battle flag representing anti-slavery. Surely there are some people who saw it as otherwise, but they developed thick skin about it and went on with their lives.

The same thing with race.  There are people of all races and creeds in the U.S.  This is because we are a nation of immigrants.  In an all white town, if you were from Iran, you might have people, from time to time, ask you where you were from. Most people were proud to talk about where they were from.  Others not so much.  Regardless, people didn't get offended by it. Like with my grandma complaining about my mom, there was no way that an Iranian-American was going to get by without someone being curious and asking. So the Iranian-American just developed thick skin and went about his life.

This is no longer the case today.  Today people have so much time on their hands that they think they are offended by just about anything.  I don't think people are truly offended, it's just that the people who run the media, and particularly people running Washington are telling us that we ought to be offended about this or that.  They do this in order so that they can use this to push forth their agenda.

A perfect example is the confederate flag. Only a few people are offended by the flag, and for most of the past 150 years those who were offended just developed tough skin.  The Idea that Indians are offended by sports teams being named after them is another example.  Polls show that over 80% of Indians are not offended, but if you read accounts in the media you'd think they all were.  The truth is that most Americans are just fine with the nickname Redskins.

They are honored, in fact, when sports teams are nicknamed after them.  They are honored, because some Indians were fierce warriors, especially when it came to protecting nature and their tribes.  This is a fact.  Yet since we are told they are offended, teams like the Manistee Chippewas had to paint over nice paintings like the one shown in the picture.

Recently a waitress was fired because she wrote on her napkin, "Black couple."  She had to do this because it was a busy day and she needed to keep track of what went to what table.  She got fired because she wrote a fact on a sheet of paper.  Today, people are told they should be offended by facts, rather than developing thick skin.

It's in Obama's world that we are offended.  But we really aren't offended, we are just told we are. People in this nation need to stop listening to people telling us we are offended.  We need to stop being politically corre

What candidate should be chosen

When choosing a candidate to vote for, we must not choose candidates just to limit the criticism of the media. We must not choose a woman just because feminists think republicans have a war on women.  We must not choose a black candidate just because most blacks vote democrat.

Those are things we should avoid doing.  If we choose candidates that they want, candidates who might support a few things we are opposed to, such as the pro-choice movement, then all we are doing then is playing right into their agenda.  We don't want to do that.  That will get us nowhere.  

What we need to do is choose the best man or woman, black or white, yellow or red, Catholic or Jew, who is the best conservative for the job.  We must choose the most conservative candidate (The Bill Buckley Rule).  

We need to pick someone who can campaign well. We need to pick someone who can get votes. We need to pick someone who can speak well and articulate conservatism, like Ronald Reagan.  We need to pick someone who is a true conservative, not just someone who claims to be, like John McCain or Mitt Romney. We need to pick someone who truly believes what he or she is saying. 

Don't pick someone who is going to undercut the conservative agenda. Don't pick someone who disagrees with the cause on "just a few issues."  Don't pick someone just to satisfy a particular constituency that's more aligned with the democratic party. 

That's identity politics.  That's the wrong thing to do.  That's the opposite of the conservative cause.  The conservative cause is doing things, believing in things, that will lift the entire nation; that will benefit everyone.  We must not choose a candidate who caters to one cause or one group, but someone who is for lifting up the entire ship. 

We do not want gender politics.  We don't endorse that kind of planning.  What we want is to vote for the best person for the job.  We want only the best speaker, the best communicator, and the person with the best conservative agenda getting elected. It is this person who comprises the general classical liberal views of the majority of the people who live in this country. 

We want leaders who the most qualified to inspire and motivate all the people of this great nation, people who are right on the issues and policies. This is why it is important who you vote for, and why elections matter.  

Think of it this way. Here's a good idea of what I'm saying here. Every time the republican establishment nominates a candidate for president who is supposed to cater to the left on certain issues, we lose.  

I'll rattle off some names here: Gerald R. Ford, Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush (1992), John McCain, and Mitt Romney. These are all candidates who were moderate republicans, or those who catered to a certain group of people instead of the nation as a whole.  

When people see that the republican candidate is just as liberal as the democrat, they think that republicans are no better than democrats.  They might as well vote for the democrat and let them get blamed for advancing the progressive agenda, an agenda that creates nothing but chaos and failure. 

We need to vote for the best conservative candidates, and it does not matter what race, color, sex, creed, or even political affiliation.  What matters is that these men and women understand that it was classical liberalism, now called conservatism and libertarianism and constitutionalism) that made this country great, and this is what will make this country great once again.  

Progressives stole the name liberal, we want it back

The progressives took the word liberalism and claimed it for themselves. Liberalism is the choice that unites most of us. That's the one where we all come down together and say, "Look, we can live with each other."

From the time of the founders to the 1940s liberalism was most people were called.  Liberalism stood for limited government to protect and defend liberty.  Progressives stole that term and claimed it for themselves to shed a positive light on their agenda of creating a large government that tramples on liberty. 

Why did our "classical liberal" ancestors allow this to happen? We need to take it back.  We need to start calling liberals progressives again.  And we need to call conservatives and libertarians liberals again.  This makes sense, because progressive and liberal are opposites.  

We need to take the term liberal back and allow the people to see progressives for what they really are: people who think they know what's best for you, so they create laws to force their agenda on you.  But this requires you to sacrifice your freedom and liberties."

You can't say to people, "Marijuana is bad for you, so we need to create a law banning you from manufacturing and selling it, without taking away their liberty to choose.  You are basically deciding for them what is good for them, and forcing them to be perfect.  What this does is create a dark market for marijuana."

For crying out loud, did we learn nothing from prohibition.  During prohibition it was illegal to import, transport, produce or sell alcohol in the U.S. What resulted was an underworld that made men like Al Capone rich.  It showed on a full scale level that governmental attempts to perfect the world create nothing but chaos.  

Yet we continue to allow it.  We continue to let progressives win at every level in the country.  We continue to let it continue even though only 14 percent of Americans admit to supporting their agenda.  They have infiltrated our nation. They have made it acceptable to allow government officials to say things like, "Hey, you should wear a seat belt.  So let's make a law that will fine you if you don't." 

"Hey, we feel that throwing more money at education will make it better.  Why don't we put the federal government in charge of it and throw lots of money at it." That happened in the 1960s and all it did was make education in the U.S. worse. They create regulations and programs aimed at fixing things because it sounds like a good idea, people buy into it, and then they make them worse. 

The same thing with the war on poverty. Trillions of dollars have been thrown into entitlement programs in this country aimed at ending poverty since Johnson's War on Poverty began in the 1960s, and all it resulted in was more people in poverty. 

If you need a good example just look at Detroit.  

These are the same progressives who stole the name liberal and claimed it for themselves.  We need to take it back and let them wallow in their progressivism. We need to let people see them for what they are: people who want to create big government at the expense of liberty. 

Liberalism is the exact opposite of what they are. We are liberals.  But we will be satisfied with people calling us classical liberals.  That's what we are.  That's what I am.  

As it is, we settle for the name conservative, constitutional conservative, liberatarian conservative, or simply libertarian.  That is what we are.  But what we really are is classical liberals, or simply liberals.  But we can't call ourselves what we really are, because progressives stole and obliterated the meaning of it. 

The reason this is important is because you have about 20 percent of people in the democratic party who don't want to be conservatives, and so they stay in the democratic party. 

They may not agree with us on everything, but they think like we do.  But they don't want to become conservatives because they think that's what Ronald Reagan was and they don't want to be that. But if we call ourselves classical liberals, we can draw all of them together.  They may not agree with us on everything, but all classical liberals believe liberty should come before state, and people should not be allowed to vote their freedoms away, regardless what the cause or belief or theory.

Most people understand classical liberalism.  They see progressives calling themselves liberals and they say, "I'm a liberal just like them."  But what they don't understand is that what they are championing for is not what they think it is. 

They have no clue they are championing for progressivism, which is a sister of socialism, communism, Fascism, Fascist Socialism, and all those types of governments.  Yet what they truly yearn for is classical liberalism.  

People in Europe think of Conservatives as the opposite of classical liberalism, or the opposite of freedom.  They think of us as Nazis and Fascist.  Yet this is not true, because we are the true liberals.  We are the classical liberals.  But because the progressive movement stole our name, they have succeeded at re-branding themselves in a better light. They have pulled the wool over the eyes of the world, so to speak.  

We need to recreate the image of freedom in the world.  We need to recreate what we are, we need to call ourselves classical liberals.  This way we can collect all the classical liberals into one party and take our country back.  

Why I'm a Classical Liberal

Classical liberalism (what used to be called liberalism) is what made America Unique. It's pretty much what every democrat president was from Thomas Jefferson down to Grover Cleveland.  Then progressivism happened, and the democratic party turned progressive.  When the term progressive became unpopular, they stole the term liberal to make their game look good.

So now we have to call what we are classical liberal, a.k.a. libertarian conservatism.  It's limited government, strict constitutionalism, and following the rule of law.

Here's why I am a classical liberal.

1. You can't spy on me
2. We can't have these never ending wars
3. You can't just throw me in jail without a trial
4. You cant kill me without a trial
5. You can't make laws that fine me for not doing something, such as not wearing my seat belt, or not eating the foods you think I should be eating, or not living a healthy enough lifestyle.  
6. You can't make me buy health insurance, or car insurance, or any insurance
7. You can't force me to participate in a social security program
8. You can't tell me I can't smoke cigarettes or sell marijuana or take hormone pills or experimental medicine 
9. You can't tell my kids they can't pray in school
10. You can't take away our public nativity scenes if that's what we choose to display at our courthouses or schools.

Ronald Reagan and the booming 1980s

Ronald Reagan was a Kennedy Democrat who switched parties when progressives infiltrated the democratic party.  He would later say, "I didn't leave the democratic party, the democratic party left me."  Reagan would go on to become the second best president of the 20th century (Calvin Coolidge receives top honors).  

Perhaps by his skills as a former Hollywood Actor, Reagan excelled at communicating, both with Congress and the people. He would become dubbed "The Great Communicator."  Yet because he shunned the progressive movement, he was sometimes described as a "dunce." Late Democratic Presidential Adviser Clark Clifford went as far as to refer to him as an "Amiable Dunce."  

Yet Reagan was not a dunce, in fact, he was far from it.  He understood that progressives, both democrats, and republicans, were taking this country in a direction the involved sacrificing liberties at the expense of economic prosperity. He aimed to change this, and he succeeded.  

He understood that the way to economic prosperity could not be created by experts in Washington creating laws forcing people to act in certain ways, but by cutting taxes, cutting spending, and getting the government out of the way so that the entrepreneurial spirit of the American people could be unleashed. 

Reagan proved once again that the way to economic prosperity was not created with more government, but with less.  In other words, prosperity was created not with progressive tax and spend programs, but with unfettered conservatism/ capitalism.

Reagan was an ardent supporter of Say's Law, which states that supply creates its own demand. As taxes go down, this gives businesses an incentive to spend and invest, and this results in more job creation. More supply of workers paying more taxes results not just in a decreased unemployment, but also more revenue to the government.

This results in economic growth and prosperity.

Here is a list of what he accomplished.

1. Government revenue nearly doubled during his 8 years in office. The 70% tax rate when he entered office generated about $500 billion in revenue to the federal government. When Reagan left office in 1989, the top marginal rate was 28%, and the take, the revenue to the Treasury had nearly doubled, to almost $1 trillion.

2. Americans gave more to charity during his 8 years than at any other time in American history. According to National Review, "charitable donations by individuals rose from $64.7 billion (1990 dollars) in 1980 to $102 billion in 1989, an increase of 57.7 percent. Moreover, after declining relative to national income during the seventies, charitable donations rose from 2.1 percent of income in 1979 to a record 2.7 percent in 1989.

3. Productivity tripled during his 8 years in office. A study performed and reported by the New York Times that the rate of manufacturing productivity growth had tripled during the 1980s. Likewise, the jobs created were not just hamburger flipping jobs, but jobs of the higher skill categories.

4. The poor got richer both got richer. In the period of 1983 to 1989, the poorest 20 percent of the population saw their income rise 12%, and the richest 5th of the population also saw their income rise 12%.

5. Inflation remained low. Inflation was low during the 1980s, as low as 5% even though economic growth was sustained during most of the 1980s. This happened despite the theory that inflation could not go down at the same time unemployment went down.

6. Despite tax cuts, tax revenue increased. Reagan cut taxes in 1983 from 70-50% on the top wage earners, and tax revenue, according to the Heritage Foundation (I wrote about this here), rose 99.4% during the 1980s, and by 1989 tax revenues increased by 54%. In fact, during the 1980s federal revenue rose from $550 billion to $991 billion.

7. The rich did not get richer at the expense of the poor. In fact, the share of total tax revenues which was paid by those making $40,000 or more increased from 45.1 percent to 48 percent. The tax burden of those making less than $40,000 dropped by the equivalent percentage.

8. Jobs were created. About 20 million jobs were created during the 1980s and 82% of those jobs were higher-skilled and better-paying jobs.

9. The economy grew.  From 1982 to 1990 the United States experienced 96 continuous months of economic growth, the longest peacetime economic expansion in history up to that time.

10. The stock market rose. Nearly tripled in value during the 1980s

11. Average real family income grew, and it grew by well over 15% from 1982 to 1989, according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census

12. For the poorest 5th of Americans, real income grew almost 12%

13. Families earning more than $50,000 (in 1990 dollars) went from less than 25% of families in 1980 to 31% in 1991.

14. The percentage of families earning less than $15,0000 dropped.

15. According to the U.S. Treasury's Office of Tax Analysis, of those who were in the bottom-5th income bracket in 1979, 65% jumped at least two income brackets during the 1980s. More made it to the top and stayed than made it to the bottom.

16. Incomes levels continued to rise. Federal Reserve data shows that families with incomes between $10,000 and $50,000 a year experienced a higher percentage of growth in net dollars than those in the top one one-fifth income group. Households were five times more likely to have their incomes rise than have them fall.

17. The rich paid more taxes. The top 1% paid more than 25% of all federal income taxes in 1990, a 40% increase over 1980, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The bottom 60% paid 11% of federal taxes in 1990, 20% less than in 1980. Plus, all income groups paid fewer taxes, with the poor receiving the most relief, and the rich receiving the least relief. Yet the rich actually paid a greater share of the income tax in relation to their income.

18. Black people made more money during the 1980s. The black middle class grew rapidly from 2.6 million households with incomes of $25,000 or more in 1979 to 3.9 million in 1989. In fact, while between 1979 and 1982 poor blacks rose by more than 2 million, between 1982 and 1989 the number of poor blacks fell by 400,000.

19. Fewer people entered into poverty. Between 1983 and 1989 the total population under the poverty line decreased by 3 million people, with an unprecedented number of poor entering the work force.

20. Federal spending increased. Federal spending on poor for income, food, health care, housing, education, training, and social services increased. Progressives said this could not happen, and it did.

21. Charitable givings increased. Charitable givings by corporations and individuals increased to record levels during the 1980s. In fact, during the 1980s charitable givings was 55% higher then the previous 20 years. In 1992 Americans gave 2.01% of their income to charity, the highest rate since 1971. Donations totaled $124.31 billion, up 6.4% after inflation. Individuals gave $104.98 billion, representing the greatest percentage of total family income given to charity since 1963. This was a result of the government taking less, allowing people to earn more. This provides Americans with greater freedom of which to decide how to spend their money. When the government decides how to spend your money, people give less. When the government takes too much out of people's checks, they tend to hoard the money they do have. They go on vacation in sunny Bermuda until the market is more suitable for their business.

22. Everyone got richer during the 1980s. During the Carter years, only the incomes of the top 1% grew. During the Reagan, the incomes of every income bracket grew.

23. After-tax income rose.  Between 1982 and 1989, real after-tax income per person rose by 15.5%, and real median income of families, before taxes, went up 12.5%.

24. Federal spending increased. Federal spending on poverty programs increased from $140 billion in 1982 to $180 billion in 1991, an annual growth of 3%.

25. The federal deficit Rose, but it didn't have to: The deficit rose to $230 billion in 1985. Yet every one of Reagan's spending cuts was rejected by a democrat congress. Yet even with no spending cuts, in 1987 the Federal Deficit was reduced to $150 billion. It fell because even while taxes were cut, more jobs and more taxpayers were created. Plus those making lots of money didn't need to hide money they were making, as they usually do when taxes are high.

Ben Franklin's 13 Subjects

Ben Franklin was smart enough to know that even though he was a brilliant man, he could, by himself, make himself an even better man. It was in this light that he described a game he played with himself, one that many now refer to as Ben Franklin's 13 Subjects.

He described the game in the first half of his autobiography, the part he wrote before the Revolutionary War when he still had a good relationship with his son.

He created the 13 Subjects, which were essentially qualities that were necessary or desirable for him to acquire and try to master in order to be the perfect Ben Franklin. Each week he would focus on one of the subjects and try to master it.

He would sit down each night and record moments when he succeeded at mastering it, and also the times when he failed. This was his attempt to keep track of how he was doing in order to get batter at each subject.

He was able to go through the entire list in thirteen weeks, and repeat th process four times a year.

In 1960, Frank Bettger wrote "How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Sales.” In his book he said that if a man as successful as Ben Franklin had created a method of making his life better, then, perhaps, it would be wise for other people who wished to succeed in life to follow his plan, or develop an individual plan of their own based on his.

That said, here are Franklin's 13 Subjects.

• Temperance: Eat not to dullness, drink not to elevation. 
• Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. 
• Order: Let all you things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. 
• Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. 
• Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing. 
• Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions. 
• Sincerity: Use no harmful deceits; think innocently & justly, and if you speak, speak accordingly. 
• Moderation: Avoid extremes; further resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve. 
• Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries, or emitting the benefits that are your duty. 
• Cleanliness: Tolerate no unseemliness in body, clothes or habitation. 
• Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable. 
• Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of our own or another’s peace or reputation. 
• Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates. 

He admitted that he had occasions where he failed at these, but would always make himself aware of his fault, either immediately or in the evening when he reviewed how he did. Then he'd come up with a method to prevent himself from repeating his errors.