Jim: ! ! I'd have to think about your tax plan, but I'm pretty much with ! you on the trade part.
Thanks for the partial bump. I've given it a lot of study and thought. The tax plan is designed to facilitate both economic and cultural liberty. But for the trade policy -- which I would argue is a philosophical issue before it is ever an economic issue -- it's somewhat libertarian in its overall mindset. I think libertarians are wrong when they posit that all humanity would be better off in the same single universal division of labor (hence their almost religious fervor for free trade in its fair or free flavors). You can't force people to work together, and the homogenizing affect of such a policy would sadly reduce what is of value in each culture. Let nations be who they are (unless they be really bad neighbors), and let states be who they are. People should be focused on changing themselves and their local communities first if they have an itch to change something. Basically the idea is that the government gets no bigger than "trade" (real trade, not that bogus Gordon-Gecko-greed-is-good global division of labor masquerading as "free" trade) allows. Trade only flourishes if consumers in the home market can afford to buy goods and services above and beyond what the home market can supply. This is the case when the home market is experiencing a rise in standards of living, which means an increase in per-capita wages (capital investment). IOW Standards of living rise when there are no impediments and or reasonable inducements to the increased per capita capital investment in domestic labor. A tariff to encourage that capital investment both assures it is advantageous to invest in the labor of the home market, and collects what the government is allowed to spend from a revenue standpoint. No more deficit spending, then again, no more need for a nanny state to take care of you or your morals either. The fact that government cannot control you by controlling your wallet directly means it can't tell you where or when to pray, to whom you can give what and how much, with whom to sleep or live, or where. It should appeal to liberals and conservatives alike because they both don't like it when the government reaches into their wallets on certain issues. Conservatives hate paying for abortions, liberals hate paying for liberating the oppressed in foreign lands run by socialist dictators. ;-) Issues like abortion and gay marriage would be dealt with at the state level, and people would be free to move wherever cultural issues are dealt with in a manner more to their liking. It would force a foreign policy of "peaceful commerce" and limit government's ability to rub its nose in other countries' affairs. (Withhold the observation that this appears to contradict my other known views brifely... It doesn't really, I'm speaking here as my normal paleo-conservative self, as if the threat of Islamofascism doesn't exist.) I may personally hold some very traditional views and I am free to live in states with local laws more amenable to my disposition, but at the federal level really only the big things should see the light of day. Government does indeed exist to preserve, protect and defend. Government should strong enough (but no stronger than needed) to preserve our traditions and cultural institutions at the local and state levels, protect our wage and price structures from the intrigues of foreign powers at the national or federal level, and defend us militarily from aggressors and would-be aggressors at the global level. It's not a perfect statement of everything I think, but it's more concise than my usual stream-of-consciousness posts. (And no, I don't try to reconcile it with everything else I think... I recognize a lot of what I think is pretty foreign to most people so I simply share this in the abstract. In reality, we end up having to choose between so many bad alternatives, that we end up defending and becoming comfortable with the bad alternative we most recently espoused...I've come to the conclusion that a perfect system of any kind is simply not possible, and despairing of that is counterproductive.) - Bob @see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_System_(economics) "The Tariff is the cheaper system. While by the direct tax system the land must be literally covered by assessors and collectors going forth like a swarm of Egyptian locusts. By the tariff system, the wholel revenue is paid by the consumers of foreign goods...By this system the man who contents himself to live on the product of his own country pays nothing at all." -- Abraham Lincoln ! ! Jim Eddins ! ! ! 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