First a quick tip of the tam o’ shanter to Joe for pointing out this article.
An interesting opinion piece by Mike Jensen pointing out some of the problems with our tax system, and a potential solution. There is a lot of analysis and poking of holes in solutions through out the article. As I read through it, and walked away from the piece the one thing that strikes me is the math. Folks, there is nothing here that most high school students could not work out, if you fed them the problem and the numbers to work with. What our society is missing though is that NO ONE IS PAYING ATTENTION TO THE MATH. When you start throwing around 100% individual tax rates, and you ARE UNABLE TO BALANCE THE BUDGET then increased taxation is not the solution (as King George found out in ’76).
80 years ago the New Deal worked because people were willing to work. Today we live in a nation of entitlements and people have forgotten how to work. I have posted before on some of Mike Rowe’s observations on work. Here is my latest observation. Today, I had to go buy a new keyboard as mine had been beaten on a little too much and was malfunctioning. At the same time, the store that I was in was conducting a job fair to hire for their in home installation and computer repair services. Cool gigs for a lot of young people, or even old people. If I was unemployed this would be a good stop gap and keep some form of income coming in. There was no one there. Zero. They had chairs and tables all laid out to conduct interviews, waiting areas and not a single candidate in the place.
Back to the topic at hand, as much as I dislike the idea of codifying the need for a balanced budget, that amendment that keeps floating around might be a good idea. Of course that only works if elected officials are law abiding. It seems like there are some issues on that front as well.
Reduce spending. Provide tax incentives to get businesses to grow. Provide incentives to increase consumer spending. Focus government spending on goods and services that grow the economy NOT on entitlement programs, or industrial subsidies. Restructure the US Code to eliminate collective bargaining and unions. Let society reset itself on unions for a decade or so. If the business climate is such that unionization arises again than enable it as necessary without it getting out of control.
I am starting to go off on a tangent again. Bottom line, increased taxation is not the solution to the economic issues that we face. Distributing the wealth is an answer that essentially defines communism. Balancing the budget, and bringing an end to deficit spending ARE the first steps to solving our current economic issues.