Originally posted July 12, 2011.
Courtesy of The New York Times and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman.
Paul Krugman is well read as a featured op-ed columnist for the New York Times. In a July 3 piece headed Corporate Cash Con, Krugman concluded, “What our economy needs is direct job creation by the government.” I wish I were making this up, but unfortunately this summation is exactly what Times/Krugman are subjecting readers to. I have run my own business for almost 35 years, advising small business owners (America’s jobs creators) and retired and soon-to-be-retired, conservative investors on protecting their life savings. With zero reservation and a lifetime of direct experience, I can assure all Times readers and anyone else exposed to the delusional Krugman reasoning that this prescription is nuts.
What America needs is a return to the federal republic form of central government espoused by Thomas Jefferson, in which the federal government, Congress and the president would be confined to the specific activities enumerated in Article I Section. 8. and Article II Section. 2. of the Constitution. In such a constitutionally correct setting, the federal government would be dramatically smaller than what it is today with a weak presidency, as is the case in Switzerland, and most ideally a part-time Congress featuring legislators who agree to run for only a single term. The majority of today’s Washington-based departments would be dissolved, with designated duties turned over to the states. Social services would be the concern of individual states, to include reformed Medicare and Medicaid. Social Security would be privatized. Total government outlays, in such a constitutionally correct environment, would plummet, allowing a long overdue scrapping of the tax code. No more corporate income tax. No more tax on savings. A modest, everyone-pays-a-share, individual income tax filed on a one-page form would emerge. An equally modest national sales tax with—once again—everyone paying a fair share would also emerge.
The word modest is a cornerstone of a new tax scheme, as the federal government in the future would be but a shadow of the current constitutional violator. The need for accountants would rapidly disappear, and lawyers would be in increasingly light demand. An overhaul of the legal system would put an end to class action lawsuits and punitive damages. Federal court activities would be greatly diminished, with state courts appropriately taking over. A new, national right to work law in combination with a reformed tax and legal system would quickly combine to make newly energized American businesses the model of the world. The job creation engine run by America’s small business owners would switch into overdrive.
America’s military would concentrate 100% on defending American soil. We would no longer attempt to project U.S. military power abroad. There would be no need to engage in the massive projection charade that, for over 100 years, has been the province of America’s military/industrial complex. America’s economic might, its new hard currency status (the Fed would be history), and its well-promoted homeland military power would combine to produce an economic/military presence unmatched in the world.
Such an eminently sensible, constitutionally correct American federal republic could be the basis of a Tea Party revolt. There are obviously many losers in such a revamped American system. It has taken since 1913 to assemble America’s Jabba the Hut bureaucracy. It is, in 2012, time to start an orderly dismantling.
