The really neat thing about the incoming Obama administration and the bazillion dollars we're going to spend on infrastructural pork and deadbeat banks is that in proposing a program we no longer have to worry about how to pay for it.
The liberal mantra used to be how are you going to pay for that tax cut?
The conservative mantra used to we can't afford that program.
But thanks to Paul [There is no God but Keynes, and I am His prophet] Krugman assuring us that deficits don't matter in digging out from a massive recession, I can propose any damn thing I want and not be criticized for explaining how to pay for it.
So here's the issue for Libertarians: how do you help people either get back on their feet or stay on their feet without using the coercive power of the State?
Simple. You eliminate taxes. Not cut them. Eliminate them wholesale.
Because now that the Treasury admits that it can print as much money as it needs, it no longer needs your tax dollars.
How this works is simple:
1) Eliminate all payroll taxes--both employee and employer paid--for one year. Pay for Medicare and Social Security by printing money.
2) Eliminate Federal income taxes for the first $50k for individuals, first $100k for families.
3) Make mortgage interest, credit card interest, auto loan interest, and medical expenses not tax deductible, but tax credits.
4) Make all of these changes retroactive to July 1, 2008, and put the IRS to work sending people their money back. Give the IRS a requirement to use its massive banks of computer spyware to generate profiles of taxpayers so that everybody who can't get the information together on time (by April 15, 2009, just to be ironic and all), then the IRS will be required to send them back the average refund due to any individual or family with the same profile.
In other words, transfer about $500-800 billion back directly to the taxpayers who generated it in the first place, let them use it to pay their mortgages and retire their credit card debt, or to do whatever the hell they want to do.
What about all that Keynesian infrastructural pork?
If Obama, Krugman, Reich, and Geitner (once he figures out the tax code) want to still spend on all those roads and bridges, that's fine. Let them print the money.
It's what they plan to do, anyway.
The liberal mantra used to be how are you going to pay for that tax cut?
The conservative mantra used to we can't afford that program.
But thanks to Paul [There is no God but Keynes, and I am His prophet] Krugman assuring us that deficits don't matter in digging out from a massive recession, I can propose any damn thing I want and not be criticized for explaining how to pay for it.
So here's the issue for Libertarians: how do you help people either get back on their feet or stay on their feet without using the coercive power of the State?
Simple. You eliminate taxes. Not cut them. Eliminate them wholesale.
Because now that the Treasury admits that it can print as much money as it needs, it no longer needs your tax dollars.
How this works is simple:
1) Eliminate all payroll taxes--both employee and employer paid--for one year. Pay for Medicare and Social Security by printing money.
2) Eliminate Federal income taxes for the first $50k for individuals, first $100k for families.
3) Make mortgage interest, credit card interest, auto loan interest, and medical expenses not tax deductible, but tax credits.
4) Make all of these changes retroactive to July 1, 2008, and put the IRS to work sending people their money back. Give the IRS a requirement to use its massive banks of computer spyware to generate profiles of taxpayers so that everybody who can't get the information together on time (by April 15, 2009, just to be ironic and all), then the IRS will be required to send them back the average refund due to any individual or family with the same profile.
In other words, transfer about $500-800 billion back directly to the taxpayers who generated it in the first place, let them use it to pay their mortgages and retire their credit card debt, or to do whatever the hell they want to do.
What about all that Keynesian infrastructural pork?
If Obama, Krugman, Reich, and Geitner (once he figures out the tax code) want to still spend on all those roads and bridges, that's fine. Let them print the money.
It's what they plan to do, anyway.
Comments
Today on DelawareTalkRadio, Randy Nelson had former Congressman John Leboutillier, who essentially proposed the same thing.
He said why not just have a complete tax moratorium for a year. They're already going to borrow a trillion anyway for their "stimulus", so technically a tax moratorium instead would give you the same net result, and would quickly and directly relieve people's financial pain.
But this is where we run up against the national statist reality of the Obama-Krugman-Reich ilk, who talk of helping struggling Americans and getting the economy stimulated...so long as the money passes through their hands and accomplishes their ulterior political and social agendas.
It is their standard long-standing prescription for pork, influence-peddling, and vote-buying from corporations and organized labor now too.
Much as I love Pandora, she wrote this today, which I think is probably the most dead-wrong and misguided take on this country - certainly a prescription for a welfare-vassal nation :
"Americans don’t hate taxes, they want to see what their taxes produce - they want to see the benefits."
Given their choice these days, I would say the vast majority of Americans hate the way taxes are collected and abused in this country, but have been beaten down into accepting the horrible reality that we can do little to stop the massive government complex that infiltrates every level of life and community...every nook and cranny of our lives, from local burg to the hallowed halls of Washington.
Washington would rather frame it like they were grandparents giving money away to their grandchildren instead of giving back money that was already yours to begin with.
Makes them look better to their constituents.