Rick Kelo - Should we Fear a Large Company?

Rick Kelo

Fear-mongering politicians have campaigned for generations on how they are necessary to keep the intangible boogey-man "business" at bay.  Economists tell us that isn't the case at all.  In fact, the Public Choice school of Economics revealed... and earned some half dozen Nobel Prizes for doing so... that in actuality the State is "captured" when it begins competing against business.

Why shouldn't we fear the large powerful business?  Rick Kelo sits at a unique intersection of perspective as an economist, pacifist and a Classic Liberal philosopher.  He points out that, "Competition in the marketplace prevents what people actually believe would occur with one company becoming "powerful."  What politicians who campaign against business won't tell you is that no business can get a dollar from your hand unless you voluntarily give it to them, but not so with that politician," says Richard Kelo.

Rick Kelo points out this is why we see powerhouses like Microsoft go from controlling the internet browser market to only holding 20% of it in just a matter of a few years.  Especially if a country has free trade.  Government interference (like tariffs) stop lower priced foreign competition from serving its purpose.  The wealthy in one society cannot accumulate enough power to rig the market under capitalism.  Their only avenue to do so is the approach the Public Choice school discovered: by using a special interest lobby to get government to intervene against the free market in the form of different kinds of favors.

Rick Kelo Discusses Religious Freedom

Every individual person makes their own moral decisions.  However, says Rick Kelo -  a West Point graduate, tax recruiter and social thinker - there are really two types of morality.

"There's the morality people use to govern their own individual choices as they go through life," says Richard Kelo.  "Then separately there's the morality that pertains to our interactions with other people.   The problem is when people try to take things they've settled on as personally moral and force other people to adopt their choices as the way we all interact with one another in society," he continues.

The Wedding Cake
Consider the now-famous example of the prejudice wedding cake baker who refuses to make cakes for same sex weddings.  What is the proper way to view this?

According to Kelo if we use force to compel the cake baker to make a cake, then we are imposing our own personal morality on him.  Instead, says Rick Kelo, "In the relations between people we have to remember to view our fellow man as someone to be persuaded.  To be reasoned with and convinced, but not to be coerced and forced to live his life by our personal code of morality."

In interactions between people we must remember not to steam-roll people who don't think like us.  The world is big enough for more than one wedding cake baker.

Rick Kelo

Rick Kelo Speaks on Venezuelan Socialism

When Hugo Chavez re-wrote the Venezuelan Constitution he called for a Socialist society made up of worker-owned cooperatives.  As Venezuelan Socialism collapses all around us Rick Kelo feels this is an important point to drive home.  Especially because American Socialists like Bernie Sanders often try to disguise their agenda by claiming they merely favor an economy of worker co-ops.  If we tasked them with writing a socialist constitution it would come out exactly like Venezuela:

Article 118:The right of workers and the community to develop associations of social and participative nature such as cooperatives, savings funds, mutual funds and other forms of association is recognized. These associations may develop any kind of economic activities in accordance with the law. The law shall recognize the specificity of these organizations, especially those relating the cooperative, the associated work and the generation of collective benefits.
The state shall promote and protect these associations destined to improve the popular economic alternative.

Article 308:
The State shall protect and promote small and medium-sized manufacturers, cooperatives, savings funds, family-owned businesses, small businesses and any other form of community association for purposes of work, savings and consumption under an arrangement of collective ownership, to strengthen the country's economic development, based on the initiative of the people

Rick Kelo points out the deception of Socialists,"Co-ops already exist freely in capitalist economies.  You can see farming, banking and other types of co-ops in most towns around America.  So the claim we need Socialism in order to get co-ops is ridiculous on it's face."

Rick Kelo - West Point grad and Tax Recruiter

Rick Kelo on the 2 Ways to Organize Society

None of us is an island.  We all spend every waking moment of our lives as an individual, but also living in a society of individuals.  This is an unavoidable aspect of human existence.  So how should we best organize our interactions with one another?

Rick Kelo, a West Point graduate and outspoken liberal philosopher notes that there are ultimately only 2 ways to organize the economic activity of huge groups of people.  They're either:

1. The voluntary way, named Capitalism
2. The coercive way, named Socialism.

In the voluntary way, says Rick Kelo, consumers voluntarily choosing which entrepreneur most meets their needs.  The consumer decides which business owner will become rich and successful and which will fail. 

The only other way to organize society is by violence, coercion & force as the substitute of peaceful, voluntary cooperation.  For a government to seize private property and declare it their own as Venezuela did to their nation's oil or the USSR did to Russia's farms.

Rick Kelo

Rick Kelo Considers Economic Mobility

Rick Kelo is concerened that most Americans are unaware, due to the problem-inventing / fear-mongering from politicians who need something to promise to fix in order to get votes, that economic mobility in our country is very high.

Rick Kelo

Someone born into the lower class, which in economics refers to the bottom quintile of income distribution, is more likely to reach a higher income quintile than they are to remain in the lower class they were born into, notes Richard Kelo.

Rick Kelo also noted that many of the persistent & gripping effects of inter-generational poverty stem from interventions against the market.  The governmental welfare apparatus has become literally a machine for producing poor people & keeping them poor due to the fact it is loaded what public choice economists call 'perverse incentives.'  The government monopoly on schools is just as bad.  Ask yourself this: when you go into a poor neighborhood you will see many fancy cars.  You will not see any fancy schools.

The difference?

Cars are provided by markets, schools by government.

Rick Kelo - A Thought on Monopolies

Rick Kelo

What most people picture when thinking of a monopoly is a big company.  But sheer bigness alone isn't enough for a company to be a monopoly.  In order to function as a monopoly a company has to be able to withhold supply from the market in order to drive the price up.  When they can accrue a higher profit than the firm would be able to earn in the market that extra is what's known as a "monopoly profit."

In studying the history of anti-trusts Rick Kelo noticed that the majority of the monopolies in the 20th century existed in socialist countries.  Every case of actual monopoly only existed when the government granted either:

1. Special protection from domestic competition.  For example PDSVA in Venezuela has no domestic competition because the State seizes any domestic oil and gifts it to PDSVA.
2. Tariffs or import restrictions that grant protection from being under-cut by foreign competition.  Standard Oil, in America, was able to grow large because a very high tariff on kerosene protected them from foreign competition.

When we research monopolies, as Rick Kelo did, an odd pattern emerges.  We discover that very few so-called monopolies in America in the 20th century were actually monopolies.  They were accused of being monopoly based on sheer bigness alone, but even Standard Oil never withheld supply in order to raise prices.  Kerosene prices went from over 30 cents a gallon in 1869 (when Standard Oil began to grow) to a mere 8 cents a gallon by the 1880s.

Rick Kelo - A Thought on Starvation

The state of nature is scarcity.  If any of us wandered off into the woods it would only take a few hours until our stomachs started complaining about the absence of our fellow man.  That's because we rely on doing the work we're the most productive at for a wage, then trading for things we produce less efficiently than specialists in other areas.  For most of us that includes buying food from experts at food production.

In the 20th century we saw numerous mass starvations that killed well into the tens of millions.  Many people haven't stopped to consider though that they all occurred in socialist countries.  The two most notable were in China & the USSR.  However, India also suffered chronic famines through much of the last century while it was socialist.  Somalia the same.


Where did starvation go extinct?  In the freest market, most capitalistic countries first.  The US and the other liberal western countries with relatively free markets & relatively free trade.

Capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any force in all of human history.

Rick Kelo, a father, a pacifist and an entrepeneur

Rick Kelo, an advocate of peaceful cooperation, has noticed this trend.  In countries where force is the central value in organizing society, like in all Socialist countries, the forces of supply and demand stop signaling how much food should be produced. But, as Rick Kelo also points out, in countries where the State doesn't obstruct people trading peacefully & voluntarily with one another society is able to pool the total knowledge of every single consumer, through prices, to signal how much of each thing should be produced.

Rick Kelo- Understanding Tax Rates on a Deeper Level

Rick Kelo is an Authoritative Economic Voice, Who Helps Others Understand How Ideas Have Shaped Our Modern World

Nothing quite sparks heated debate in the US as does the subject of taxes and what we should and shouldn't be paying. On the one hand, many see taxes as an important part of civilized society- providing the government with the money to spend on things we can all benefit on- schools, roads, hospitals and other aspects of infrastructure. For others, taxes are the government greedily deciding how our hard earned money should be spent, and taking the power into their own hands. In many ways it also explains the partisan political divide in the US, as many of these ideas fall on either side of the Republican/Democrat fault line.

Rick Kelo is a head tax adviser, and also prolific economic thinker. He is a member of the academic question and answers forum Quora.com, where he helps answer users questions about economics and explain them in context of the real world. A recent question posed was as to Why the US has the Highest Rate of Business Taxes in the World. IN a short and informative response, Rick Kelo answered as follows.

''Firstly there are Marginal Tax Rates, or the maximum amount on paper that a corporation may pay before deductions. Secondly comes the Effective Tax Rate (called ETR in taxation). This is the amount that a firm actually does pay after deductions. The other point I’d clarify is you say “Businesses.” Really in an American context we’re talking about C Corps, and in the context of the answer I am about to give you it is publicly traded C Corps. It is impossible to verify or truly know the tax rate of private companies. America's Effective Tax Rate, that our large corporations actually pay, is the second highest in the world. Our multinationals (MNCs) pay an average ETR of 30%. Only Japan is higher at 37%.''

Rick Kelo has seen himself become an important member of the Quora community, where he has been able to use it as a platform to share his ideas on classic liberal economics, and the importance of keeping old ideologies such as socialism at bay. His educated mind is one of many which is most welcome on forums such as Quora, which are helping shape the way people think in the age of the internet.

Rick Kelo – The Right Way to Handle Finances as a Small Business

For small businesses, and large businesses for that matter, there are few things more important that correctly managing finances. When just starting out, the scale of a business’ financial structure is typically such that the average individual can handle the organization and filing on their own. As the business grows, however, it becomes increasingly important to bring in a professional. This is for two reasons. The first reason is the sheer volume of tasks that must be handle as they relate to a company’s finances. This is not something that one single person has the time to do on his or her own. Second, as a company grows and becomes more complicated, so too do the taxes and other financial matters for that company. The consequences of incorrectly filing your taxes or making a mistake in the record keeping for your company can result in fines or even jail time. That is why for any business that has its feet underneath it and is starting to develop serious revenue and a serious client base, it is important to find an expert who can help you manage your assets.

According to recruiter profile, Rick Kelo (inChicago, IL) that is exactly the type of service that TaxScout brings to their clients. TaxScout is the largest tax professional placement service in the country. They offer the best candidates and continue to work with clients after placement in order to manage retention of the professionals they have placed. What TaxScout and Executive Recruiters such as Rick Kelo specialize in is helping bring together tax experts looking for employment with businesses that need financial support. Rick Kelo and other professionals help with this by creating company candidate databases to comply with OFCCP, promoting diversity, developing client bases, advising on retention policies, and advising on fair market compensation for the experts that they place.

One of the company’s biggest accomplishments is their impressive 70% retention rate. This means that roughly 70% of the financial experts they place in companies stay with that company in the long run, more than double that of other firms. This is because TaxScout continues to work with clients after placing them with a suitable company in order to manage the retention of the professionals they have placed.

For more information about Rick Kelo, TaxScout, or the services that they can provide to you or your business, visit his professional website, LinkedIn, or any of the various blogging platforms that publish his articles.

Rick Kelo – Bubbles

As a tax expert with a degree in economics, Rick Kelo knows (and has written more than one article) about economic bubbles. A bubble, to put it one way, occurs when any asset is traded for a price that far exceeds that item’s intrinsic value. A bubble is far from a new phenomenon; as a matter of fact, the first bubbles occurred in the 17^th century, well before real-time information on any asset was available.

Bubbles, of course, lead to economic crashes, which lead either to recessions (bad enough), or outright depressions (far worse). The British South Sea Bubble, which occurred in the years 1711 to 1720, gave us the term we use so often today. Previous bubbles (including the Dutch tulip bubble, which caused widespread economic devastation) were known as “manias”.

Some economists are of the opinion that a bubble cannot be identified before it begins, and thus, that a bubble cannot be prevented from starting. They believe that any measures taken to prevent the formation of a bubble will create a crisis; therefore, it is best to let a bubble form and burst – which, also, will cause a crisis. Not only that, but the subsequent crash can cause long-term economic problems, as shown by the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the housing bubble of earlier this century.

When a bubble has formed, owners of the assets that are the subject of the bubble have the tendency to spend more. Given that their assets are seriously overvalued, these owners feel that they are richer. The housing bubble is one such example. Then, when the bubble bursts, spending is cut and economic growth slows considerably.

Economists have yet to agree on what causes bubbles in the first place. One theory puts forth the idea that they are driven by sociological factors. Another theory is that excessive monetary liquidity creates banks to lend money under unfavorable terms. This, in turn, creates markets that are vulnerable to inflated asset prices driven by speculation. To quote Axel A. Weber, formerly the president of Deutsche Bundesbank, “The past has shown that an overly generous provision of liquidity in global financial markets in connection with a very low level of interest rates promotes the formation of asset-price bubbles.”

In other words, when assets are highly appreciated, economic bubbles tend to occur. When the bubble bursts, as it must, assets fall in price and confidence sinks, which may lead to a financial crisis.