04-02-2005, 09:31 AM
Here comes Topic Resuscitator Man!
My slant, first of all, is libertarian liberal. This means I take liberal economic stances and libertarian social ones. Not Libertarian like the party, which is heavily conservative on economic issues, but libertarian.
You will help nothing by raising OR lowering taxes. How much money the government puts into the economy or takes away from it doesn't matter.
Social issues, both bad and good, are results of a process composed of rules. The inputs are constant: people, what they have, and what has them (communities and whatnot), etc. Social issues are the result. So what to do to get a better result? CHANGE THE RULES OF THE PROCESS.
Large corporate growth needs to be constrained on the one hand, and new, living wage jobs are needed on the other. The solution, IMHO, is as follows. Create tarriffs and import taxes so that once prices are jacked up to account for them foreign made products cost the same as USA made ones. Once this is done there will be no incentive to outsource since you don't make more profit for your products. It will also help the government raise money it sorely needs.
There are two reasons we don't see a lot of job growth: 1. Large corporations can outsource and mechanize, thus reducing their need for labor, especially unskilled labor 2. Small businesses are having a hard time becoming big. The first can be solved simply by regulating how large a market share in how many markets a single company can hold, like we used to do with media until the Republicans fucked it up. Small businesses are having a hard time becoming big because barriers to entry of most markets are high, due to large corps already having technological advantages AND a market foothold, because they are being bought out, and because of oligopolies. An oligopoly is what you get when several large corporations that together dominate the market agree, either openly, secretly, or implicitly by the actions they take, to not take their own competition to a point that would open the market to new competitors. Hence the endless yet irrelevant service and price wars between auto makers, package delivery companies, computer makers, soft-drink companies, and television providers (ie: cable and sattelite companies). These should be treated as antitrust cases and forced to compete with each other: in a competitive game cooperation should be considered cheating. Barrier to entry problems will be solved partially by getting rid of oligopolies, and the rest can be aided through encouraging banks to help small businesses situate themselves in the market, which would be advantagous for the banks to do, seeing as these are their loan and account clients. Possibly the government could establish center(s) for keeping of business statistics that could be assured as reliable.
Even these won't fix things completely though. Trickle-down hasn't worked, but a rising tide still lifts all boats. The source of that tide must be from the bottom. We need to pass living wage laws that determine said wage by the mathematical formula used to calculate the cost of living in an area, by area (perhaps counties?) each year. The calculated wage should be the mandatory minimum wage. Also, American manufacturing companies must be encouraged in a way other than price equalization, possibly through a small (very small most likely) tax break for each American citizen employed full time to manufacture. Thus, the more American workers being employed, the more living wages being payed, the larger the tax break. This should of course, be done AFTER rewriting the tax code from the ground up to seal the gaping holes that have been opened in it, such as offshore tax shelters and "business expenses". My father once bought me a gift and then managed to write it off as a business expense, even though he was visiting me on a pleasure trip that had nothing to do with the bank he works at.
Once you've got Americans actually being employed as something other than service-sector "professionals" again, it would be a good idea to close the loophole that allows companies to get out of much of the regulations governing health insurance by setting up their own plans. This would help because then we could revive the old system of insurance companies with many different clients, thus allowing a collective pooling of risk and allowing more people and employers to afford health care coverage.
All views expressed here are merely my own and should be taken very seriously when I run for Congress and President. Until then, please, no flamage.
My slant, first of all, is libertarian liberal. This means I take liberal economic stances and libertarian social ones. Not Libertarian like the party, which is heavily conservative on economic issues, but libertarian.
You will help nothing by raising OR lowering taxes. How much money the government puts into the economy or takes away from it doesn't matter.
Social issues, both bad and good, are results of a process composed of rules. The inputs are constant: people, what they have, and what has them (communities and whatnot), etc. Social issues are the result. So what to do to get a better result? CHANGE THE RULES OF THE PROCESS.
Large corporate growth needs to be constrained on the one hand, and new, living wage jobs are needed on the other. The solution, IMHO, is as follows. Create tarriffs and import taxes so that once prices are jacked up to account for them foreign made products cost the same as USA made ones. Once this is done there will be no incentive to outsource since you don't make more profit for your products. It will also help the government raise money it sorely needs.
There are two reasons we don't see a lot of job growth: 1. Large corporations can outsource and mechanize, thus reducing their need for labor, especially unskilled labor 2. Small businesses are having a hard time becoming big. The first can be solved simply by regulating how large a market share in how many markets a single company can hold, like we used to do with media until the Republicans fucked it up. Small businesses are having a hard time becoming big because barriers to entry of most markets are high, due to large corps already having technological advantages AND a market foothold, because they are being bought out, and because of oligopolies. An oligopoly is what you get when several large corporations that together dominate the market agree, either openly, secretly, or implicitly by the actions they take, to not take their own competition to a point that would open the market to new competitors. Hence the endless yet irrelevant service and price wars between auto makers, package delivery companies, computer makers, soft-drink companies, and television providers (ie: cable and sattelite companies). These should be treated as antitrust cases and forced to compete with each other: in a competitive game cooperation should be considered cheating. Barrier to entry problems will be solved partially by getting rid of oligopolies, and the rest can be aided through encouraging banks to help small businesses situate themselves in the market, which would be advantagous for the banks to do, seeing as these are their loan and account clients. Possibly the government could establish center(s) for keeping of business statistics that could be assured as reliable.
Even these won't fix things completely though. Trickle-down hasn't worked, but a rising tide still lifts all boats. The source of that tide must be from the bottom. We need to pass living wage laws that determine said wage by the mathematical formula used to calculate the cost of living in an area, by area (perhaps counties?) each year. The calculated wage should be the mandatory minimum wage. Also, American manufacturing companies must be encouraged in a way other than price equalization, possibly through a small (very small most likely) tax break for each American citizen employed full time to manufacture. Thus, the more American workers being employed, the more living wages being payed, the larger the tax break. This should of course, be done AFTER rewriting the tax code from the ground up to seal the gaping holes that have been opened in it, such as offshore tax shelters and "business expenses". My father once bought me a gift and then managed to write it off as a business expense, even though he was visiting me on a pleasure trip that had nothing to do with the bank he works at.
Once you've got Americans actually being employed as something other than service-sector "professionals" again, it would be a good idea to close the loophole that allows companies to get out of much of the regulations governing health insurance by setting up their own plans. This would help because then we could revive the old system of insurance companies with many different clients, thus allowing a collective pooling of risk and allowing more people and employers to afford health care coverage.
All views expressed here are merely my own and should be taken very seriously when I run for Congress and President. Until then, please, no flamage.