I am aware of ways in which jobs could be created in America. I am not saying it is impossible to improve the economy or make America richer in the future. There are a great deal of common sense measures that could lift America out of recession tomorrow.
For instance, we could reform the tax code into a simpler flat tax. This would in and of itself save Americans hundreds of thousands of hours of laborious tax preparation. It would also distort the economy less as people ceased trying to avoid taxes via loopholes and exemptions.
We could also cut the corporate income tax, which would allow our products to sell more competitively abroad.
We could also scrap a ton of petty red tape regulations governments have put on businesses for no valid reason, like requiring handicapped access into every building and bathroom, which cost far more than any benefit they might provide.
We could get rid of affirmative action and the equal employment opportunity act, allowing businesses to hire the actual best men for the job, instead of making obviously irrational business decisions in order to avoid lawsuits.
We could allow in unlimited numbers of high-value immigrants, people who are likely to start businesses in America and hire American workers to work under them, and people who pay more than they're worth in taxes to our strapped government coffers.
We could free up the oil, gas, and coal markets, ignore the sky is falling mentality around global warming, and build the Keystone pipeline already. America is one of the most fossil fuel rich countries in the world, and if allowed to drill offshore and in public lands, we could employ millions of workers who would help fuel the rising demand for energy in places as distant as India and China. This would help us close our trade deficit with the outside world, strengthen the dollar, and give all Americans more buying power when it came to imported manufacturing goods as a result. Cheap energy also creates an environment favorable to cheap manufacturing -- chemical industries, steel mills, all sorts of companies could use cheap energy to make cheap products and then sell them abroad, undercutting even the low wage labor of China.
We could legalize drugs and tax them, making them a business that hires workers to farm and sell the products, instead of a crime that ends up putting millions of people into idle jail cells. Then we could tax these products for a profit, instead of having jail cells that represent an enormous drain on our tax dollars.
We could reform the education system such that graduates have actually useful job skills, and mandate that businesses hire qualified graduates so people don't end up with unpayable college debts.
We could invest in a series of infrastructure improvements, from new roads and bridges to high speed internet cables and carbon fiber telephone lines, advanced car engines that rely on natural gas or diesel power for increased energy efficiency, new dams, new refineries, new everything.
In the longer term, we could improve the economy via colonizing new virgin planets throughout space, or using genetic engineering or eugenics to improve our base human capital, or inventing fusion power, etc.
But here's the thing. Mitt Romney lost the election. All of Mitt Romney's common sense proposals, like lowering the corporate income tax or building the keystone pipeline, were thrown aside in favor of more Obamanomics. And what is the central pillar of Obama's economic thinking? Throw more money into an education system that already doesn't work, and give everyone a useless paper certificate saying they're 'educated' when all they've been is brainwashed with liberal pieties. He is a Johnny one-note with basically no other plan for the economy.
Since democratic control of the government is now assured for the rest of history in the United States, the libertarian dream of making a better business climate in America so that more Americans can be hired into productive jobs is just a delusion. This country is being deluged with Hispanics and Asians, both of whom vote overwhelmingly democratic. Meanwhile, Republican voters are elderly whites who will soon be dying off. If Puerto Rico joins us as our 51st state, that's another nail in the coffin. If amnesty passes, that's another nail in the coffin. And so long as Republicans keep to their "no help for the poor" platform they will lose the votes of single mothers and blue collar white men forever, who depend on these programs in order to live. There is a vast, unbeatable Democratic coalition in America, a permanent majority of new poor immigrants, dysfunctional families, unemployed native workers of less than stellar intellect, and social ideologues who care more about civil rights and human rights than the economy. So long as Democrats stay in control, none of the above economic fixes will be implemented. Instead, Democrats plan on making the economy even worse than it is today, via a 'carbon tax' which punishes our most promising industry, out of control deficit spending, a byzantine health care system that takes effect in 2014, etc, etc.
Republicans won't be making policy any more, only Democrats will. Therefore, even if there were some libertarian plan that would lift all boats and save the poor without having to give them any free handouts, the plan will never be implemented, which means libertarians must yet again confront the fact that most Americans can't find productive work and are living off government aid, the very aid they wish to cut, which would mean the mass slaughter of Americans on a level never before seen.
Charles Murray already realized this problem and came up with a compromise -- a citizen's dividend for all Americans, whether employed or unemployed, poor or rich, in exchange for getting rid of economic disincentives like welfare. Why can't the rest of the libertarian movement get behind this wonderful idea? With the citizen's dividend, plus socially liberal stances on abortion/gays/drugs, plus conservative economic principles regarding taxes, regulation, and spending, there would be a party that could actually contest the Democrats in elections. The 'sink or swim' libertarian party, however, will never win more than 1% of the vote, and is dead on arrival. What's the use of insisting on hopeless platforms and simply ceding America to liberalism forever? Why not try to get at least some part of the libertarian platform into effect and improve America as much as we realistically can? There are a lot of good Republican ideas. But without a guarantee for America's poor, Republicans will never be trusted with their vote again. It's either compromise or die at this point. After Obama's victory, surely anyone can see that.
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