Skip to main content

"Radical And Immediate Action" Libertarian Style

I tire of the lefties who constantly whine that free marketeers "don't have any ideas about immediate action," simply because we point out the factual truth that 100 years of Obama-style "stimulus" has been, without exception, a failure that usually *extended* economic malaise.

You want quick action and radical solutions that would deliver real results in this economy? Fine. Here they are. All of them would remove the massive barrier to growth and investment that government has become, and would create real, lasting jobs pretty much immediately.

1) A five year payroll tax moratorium. This would create 1 million new small businesses and 7 million to 8 million new jobs within the first two years of the implementation of the plan.

2) A 15% across-the-board reduction in government spending in EVERY federal department. The federal government is rife with waste, as even the most outspoken lefties will concede. It surely would not be difficult to examine and extract 15% of the budget of each department while having little to no impact on its operations and functions.

3) Eliminate the capital gains tax on sales of stock, personal real estate, and commercial real estate on profits up to $1 million. Stock market crash? What stock market crash? 3 million new jobs created.

4) End TARP. Take the remaining funds and allocate them to the FDIC to cover deposits at the banks on the brink of failure. Liquidate the insolvent ones that are "zombies" and distribute their assets to efficiently-run banks that didn't make bad loans. Credit card companies, auto finance companies, and other subprime companies or irresponsible lenders should be allowed to collapse into bankruptcy or liquidation as any failed enterprise would. The sooner the losses "off balance sheet" get on balance sheet, accounted for, and dealt with in bankruptcy, the sooner confidence returns to the market. 1 million new jobs in financial services created.

5) Treat interest on any personal debt accumulated prior to Febrary 1, 2009 as tax deductable, so long as the debtor is paying down at least 1% of the principle per month. This will create incentives to repay existing debt, reducing defaults, while also encouraging savings and sound personal finances.

6) Require federal employees to pay a proportion of their health care and other benefits identical to the private sector average. Those who object should be invited to find jobs in the private sector with similar benefits. State governments receiving federal funds or bailout commitments should be required to implement a similar policy with state employees before receiving those funds -- state governments that do not comply should receive no further "assistance."

This economic plan could be passed in an omnibus bill, and would largely pay for itself in a balanced package of cuts to offset reductions in revenue. New jobs would create new tax revenues and further offset the costs. And the program would create 11 million to 12 million new jobs -- a feature that not even the most brazen of shills for the Bush-Obama "borrow-and-spend-and-borrow-and-spend-some-more" approach would argue their plan delivers.

Comments

Bowly said…
Meanwhile, Steve's "slippery slope" argument from earlier this week doesn't seem so fallacious now.

When do I get to call it socialism without being called a red baiter?
Thomas L. Knapp said…
"When do I get to call it socialism without being called a red baiter?"

When it starts being socialism instead of managerialism. Read your Burnham.

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

With apologies to Hube: dopey WNJ comments of the week

(Well, Hube, at least I'm pulling out Facebook comments and not poaching on your preserve in the Letters.) You will all remember the case this week of the photo of the young man posing with the .22LR squirrel rifle that his Dad got him for his birthday with resulted in Family Services and the local police attempting to search his house.  The story itself is a travesty since neither the father nor the boy had done anything remotely illegal (and check out the picture for how careful the son is being not to have his finger inside the trigger guard when the photo was taken). But the incident is chiefly important for revealing in the Comments Section--within Delaware--the fact that many backers of "common sense gun laws" really do have the elimination of 2nd Amendment rights and eventual outright confiscation of all privately held firearms as their objective: Let's run that by again: Elliot Jacobson says, This instance is not a case of a father bonding with h

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?