Reviving the Economy

Products - Everything Google

The economy is going to hell, but then it didn't have far to go when Barack Obama took office. Conservative mouthpieces make a great deal of the fact that, under Obama, the deficit has risen from $8 trillion to $14.1 trillion in one term. What seems never to be mentioned is the fact that Bush inherited a $5 trillion surplus from Clinton. This means that Bush was guilty of a $13 trillion overspend, or $6.5 trillion per term, as compared with $6.1 trillion for Obama.

Clearly, somebody needs to do something to get us back into the prosperous groove we were in only eleven years ago (long years, to be sure, but still only eleven of them. Obvious things include:

1) getting us out of our T.E. Lawrence act in the Middle East. Stop the wars and bring the soldiers home and immediately give them the opportunity to fill federally-created jobs to shore up our physical infrastructure.

2) get all our strategically unnecessary military bases out of foreign countries. The Soviet Union is no longer trying to take over Europe, but we're still pretending that they are. It's an expensive hobby and one we cannot afford.

3) Stop giving tax breaks for LT capital gains on stock trading other than IPO's.  Only stock purchase at an Initial Public Offering (IPO) actually helps capitalize new enterprise growth.  Gains from IPO stocks should be taxed minimally to encourage investment.  Gains from secondary stock trading should be taxed like any other gambling proceeds.  Same for dividends.

Give SEC some real muscle and a mandate to make Wall Street behave.  The rules exist.  Enforce them.

4)  Legalize marijuana and TAX IT.  Saves money on DEA activities, keeps a lot of people out of the criminal justice system, and generates big revenue.  Everyone wins except foreign drug traffickers.

It's not that hard.  It only requires good faith (always hard to come by with politicians), rationality (ditto), and a genuine commitment to problem solving.

The idea that cutting taxes will revitalize the economy is not economics; it's an unproven article of faith, and those who peddle it are faith healers dealing in not science but revealed religion.