Economics For A Tea Party
If I may offer a few words of economic advice to all the individuals forming up the Tea Party movement. What I mean is I have noticed that this movement consists of Americans who on the one hand believe government spends and taxes them way too much but on the other hand almost everyone of them, except for a small core of libertarian constitutionalists in the crowd, are perfectly fine with lots of government spending especially on the military empire.
I hate to pop your bubbles but this is a classic childish "have your cake and eat it too" scenario. Grow up because it is impossible to have it both ways. For those of you in the party who call yourselves conservatives and who think we must spend trillions to defend our nation, there is a fundamental error in your thinking. This kind of spending for anything will bankrupt the nation possibly destroying it even more quickly than any overseas foe. You are advocating spending our nation to death.
On the other side of the coin there are many who are just fine with domestic spending especially by the federal government on all sorts of social programs like Medicare. However, this spending especially now is also deadly to our nation as well as totally unnecessary. If we get our economic and social house in order around the concept of more personal and economic freedom and less foreign and domestic intervention by the federal do-gooders and profiteers we can turn this mess around in a year or two. Within five to ten years we would again be the wealthiest nation by far. Here is how:
1. Completely scrap all taxes on labor, sales, production and ownership - except for the ownership of land. Why so? We need more wealth right? Wouldn't that make everything better if we all just had more wealth? However, wealth doesn't grow on trees unless someone picks it and brings it to market. So wealth is land resources plus human labor mixing together and it results in the stuff humans either want or need to live a modern civilized existence. Our trouble for five thousand years or more is the governments and kingdoms have always taxed the labor and capital (saved up labor) part of wealth creation while mostly ignoring the land part. By taxing just the value of the location that individuals, groups and corporations owned it could easily bring in trillions. Mind you the buildings and other land improvements would be tax free. We should only tax the value of the location. The main beneficial effect of this shift in economic thinking is it makes urban land hording unprofitable for speculation. Owners of those slum properties, boarded up buildings and under used urban tracks of land would be paying the same tax as the owner next door with a nice building who now pays ten times more in tax for this privilege. The effect of this simple change in our approach to taxation would cause an enormous explosion in building and improvements which means jobs, jobs and more jobs. This tax can't be evaded period so everybody who owns land that has location value pays the tax. People owning land in the out lying areas would pay little tax and farmers would pay zero tax. Food would become more plentiful and cheaper at the same time.
2. But this is only the revenue side of our problems. The spending side must be address as well or all this new efficiently collected cash will just be squandered especially on this empire nonsense to make us safe. This is the same idea as you equipping your home with the most advanced electronics to guard against thieves, build a moat around your property, have laser beam weapons on the ready but have no money left to pay the mortgage or buy food. How stupid would that be? But this is exactly what our current batch of politicos do to supposedly make us safe. Tell me how safe people feel when they and their children live in the streets like millions of Americans do today. It's a disgrace and must end or the nation will end. So the philosophy of war spending until our nation's ending must stop! Bringing the troops home will end the trillion dollar subsidy to foreign nation - many of whom now despise us. That wealth will stay in America and peculate around in our economy. An additional trillion dollars a year into our economy is just the medicine we need right about now.
3. On the domestic side of the spending question we must stop spending billion each year restricting liberty. In just about every case the government has sold you these restrictions as necessary for your safety when the reality is these laws are for the safety of the profits of the powerful. Take hemp for example. Hemp and its cousin marijuana are illegal to protect big multinational corporations from being wiped out by their inability to compete in a free market. By the way we have no free market. We have corporate crony capitalism based on the elite having legal privilege and monopoly and the people - not. Therefore, the vast majority of Tea Party folks rail at the cost of gasoline yet are not up in arms about legalizing hemp which might cut the cost of gas in half. Hemp would cheaply replace petrochemical fertilizers and can even be made efficiently into fuel compared to corn. The homegrown fibers of the plant would revitalize the America garment industry. It's cousin marijuana has too many medicinal values to name here but I will mention one. The pharmaceutical industry would be decimated by legal pot because it would replace many of their toxic pharmadopes that are literally killing the patients today.
Just these three proposals would radically change America for the better and virtually overnight. The changes in the tax law, the millions of troops spending and living at home and the savings reaped by not banning positive things like hemp and marijuana would create tens of millions of jobs immediately many in the local government. These new areas of economic activity would need to be made "regular" in the vernacular of the early Americans meaning honest and responsible. It did not mean government being busy bodies minding every aspect of our personal business. So it is true lots of people will lose jobs in say, the petrochemical industry and the oil tanker jobs will wain. But these jobs will be replaced with ten times more higher paying jobs - at home.
Just because you may not understand economic law will not suspend the effects of economic law. You just won't know why the economy is screwed up and you will demand childish things as a result that will only make matters worse as children often do. Plus you have no unifying principle to fuse into a viable political movement without the above changes. Many Tea Party folks are willing to sacrifice tomorrow for some pleasure today. Stop acting like junkies and children and be more responsible and grown up. You know the current system is broken and we are sinking fast. Have the courage to change now or the Tea Party will eventually collapse in chaos along with the nation.
I hate to pop your bubbles but this is a classic childish "have your cake and eat it too" scenario. Grow up because it is impossible to have it both ways. For those of you in the party who call yourselves conservatives and who think we must spend trillions to defend our nation, there is a fundamental error in your thinking. This kind of spending for anything will bankrupt the nation possibly destroying it even more quickly than any overseas foe. You are advocating spending our nation to death.
On the other side of the coin there are many who are just fine with domestic spending especially by the federal government on all sorts of social programs like Medicare. However, this spending especially now is also deadly to our nation as well as totally unnecessary. If we get our economic and social house in order around the concept of more personal and economic freedom and less foreign and domestic intervention by the federal do-gooders and profiteers we can turn this mess around in a year or two. Within five to ten years we would again be the wealthiest nation by far. Here is how:
1. Completely scrap all taxes on labor, sales, production and ownership - except for the ownership of land. Why so? We need more wealth right? Wouldn't that make everything better if we all just had more wealth? However, wealth doesn't grow on trees unless someone picks it and brings it to market. So wealth is land resources plus human labor mixing together and it results in the stuff humans either want or need to live a modern civilized existence. Our trouble for five thousand years or more is the governments and kingdoms have always taxed the labor and capital (saved up labor) part of wealth creation while mostly ignoring the land part. By taxing just the value of the location that individuals, groups and corporations owned it could easily bring in trillions. Mind you the buildings and other land improvements would be tax free. We should only tax the value of the location. The main beneficial effect of this shift in economic thinking is it makes urban land hording unprofitable for speculation. Owners of those slum properties, boarded up buildings and under used urban tracks of land would be paying the same tax as the owner next door with a nice building who now pays ten times more in tax for this privilege. The effect of this simple change in our approach to taxation would cause an enormous explosion in building and improvements which means jobs, jobs and more jobs. This tax can't be evaded period so everybody who owns land that has location value pays the tax. People owning land in the out lying areas would pay little tax and farmers would pay zero tax. Food would become more plentiful and cheaper at the same time.
2. But this is only the revenue side of our problems. The spending side must be address as well or all this new efficiently collected cash will just be squandered especially on this empire nonsense to make us safe. This is the same idea as you equipping your home with the most advanced electronics to guard against thieves, build a moat around your property, have laser beam weapons on the ready but have no money left to pay the mortgage or buy food. How stupid would that be? But this is exactly what our current batch of politicos do to supposedly make us safe. Tell me how safe people feel when they and their children live in the streets like millions of Americans do today. It's a disgrace and must end or the nation will end. So the philosophy of war spending until our nation's ending must stop! Bringing the troops home will end the trillion dollar subsidy to foreign nation - many of whom now despise us. That wealth will stay in America and peculate around in our economy. An additional trillion dollars a year into our economy is just the medicine we need right about now.
3. On the domestic side of the spending question we must stop spending billion each year restricting liberty. In just about every case the government has sold you these restrictions as necessary for your safety when the reality is these laws are for the safety of the profits of the powerful. Take hemp for example. Hemp and its cousin marijuana are illegal to protect big multinational corporations from being wiped out by their inability to compete in a free market. By the way we have no free market. We have corporate crony capitalism based on the elite having legal privilege and monopoly and the people - not. Therefore, the vast majority of Tea Party folks rail at the cost of gasoline yet are not up in arms about legalizing hemp which might cut the cost of gas in half. Hemp would cheaply replace petrochemical fertilizers and can even be made efficiently into fuel compared to corn. The homegrown fibers of the plant would revitalize the America garment industry. It's cousin marijuana has too many medicinal values to name here but I will mention one. The pharmaceutical industry would be decimated by legal pot because it would replace many of their toxic pharmadopes that are literally killing the patients today.
Just these three proposals would radically change America for the better and virtually overnight. The changes in the tax law, the millions of troops spending and living at home and the savings reaped by not banning positive things like hemp and marijuana would create tens of millions of jobs immediately many in the local government. These new areas of economic activity would need to be made "regular" in the vernacular of the early Americans meaning honest and responsible. It did not mean government being busy bodies minding every aspect of our personal business. So it is true lots of people will lose jobs in say, the petrochemical industry and the oil tanker jobs will wain. But these jobs will be replaced with ten times more higher paying jobs - at home.
Just because you may not understand economic law will not suspend the effects of economic law. You just won't know why the economy is screwed up and you will demand childish things as a result that will only make matters worse as children often do. Plus you have no unifying principle to fuse into a viable political movement without the above changes. Many Tea Party folks are willing to sacrifice tomorrow for some pleasure today. Stop acting like junkies and children and be more responsible and grown up. You know the current system is broken and we are sinking fast. Have the courage to change now or the Tea Party will eventually collapse in chaos along with the nation.
posted by Tomás Estrada-Palma at
6:24 AM
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