I strongly recommend several things to get us out of the economic recession we are in now. For our economy to be as productive as possible, as many people within it need to be working and spending their own money, thus increasing production.
- Abolish the minimum wage. It was intended to prevent the exploitation of workers, but it actually hurts the working class by limiting the ability of businesses to hire and keep employees. It is far better to have over 99% of workers employed at $3.00 an hour than it is to have only 80% of those workers employed at $7.00 an hour. With the minimum wage, there is a gap between the employed and the unemployed that wouldn’t exist otherwise. We never needed a minimum wage because in a truly free market, companies can compete for workers. If workers feel they are being paid less than they are worth, they can search for and find another company that may pay them more per hour.
- Establish a MAXIMUM wage. Many corporate CEOs and other executives so vastly overpay themselves that they actually are parasites on their own companies rather than leading them to prosperity. If their pay is limited, then the company can hire more workers, increasing production. More production results in a stronger economy.
- Outlaw outsourcing. It is the height of absurdity for a company based in the United States to have its manufacturing done in other countries to reduce labor costs and with it the final price of the goods produced. This causes workers in the United States to switch to service positions so they are no longer producers, but middlemen only. This threatens American independence. Thus, a company that outsources its manufacturing is betraying the American people! It is far better to pay higher prices for fewer goods of a higher quality than to pay lower prices for more goods that are of lower quality. It’s really that simple! When we make our own goods, we tend to care more about how they are made.
- Remove the property rights from corporations and ban corporate mergers and corporate bailouts. The biggest mistake we as a society ever made was to grant corporations the same property rights as individuals. This is because corporations are unlimited in size, and when such giant corporations fail, millions of people may lose their jobs, causing a drop in cash flow that threatens other businesses. So I would recommend that when any corporation fails, the government should NEVER bail it out, but instead should be required by law to BUY OUT the company, fire all its executives, and sell all its properties at auction to individual investors who wish to start and run their own small businesses. I feel that lassez-faire capitalism can really only work when there are NO giant corporations to screw up the works. This is because corporations are more like governments than like individuals, and the same problems of abuse and inefficiency that plague governments ultimately affect corporations as well.
- Deregulate small businesses. It should be as easy as possible for anyone to start and operate a business. The more people we have owning their own businesses, the more people in general will value their freedom and insist on the government being accountable to them rather than vice versa.
- Stop the printing and coining of new money for at least a decade. When the Federal Reserve prints more money, inflation results. Stop the printing of paper money and the making of coins, and we will have deflation as less and less money remains. Deflation will increase the buying power of the dollar, making up for the less remaining currency.
- Tax the wealthy heavily and do not tax the poor and middle classes at all, while reducing taxes overall. This policy will prevent the hoarding of money that impedes cash flow. It does not matter at all how much money is in the economy. If there is less cash flow, the economy is weaker. If there is greater cash flow, the economy will be strengthened. The poorest economies are those with extremes of wealth and poverty, with almost no middle class. We need to increase the middle class and lessen the economic power of the wealthy. Then we will have a stable economy instead of the boom and bust periods we have had repeatedly since the late 1970s. The horror of “Reaganomics” should be thrown into the trash can of history and buried forever!
- Reduce the size of government. Also, put government officials under the same economic rules as those outside the government, so that no one can use government to enrich themselves. There should be NO soverign immunity for any government agencies and the people that operate them. Focus primarily on paying down the public debt and make it illegal for the government to ever borrow money. If the government cannot afford something, it should not be done.
- Decriminalize all drugs. We waste too much public money on law enforcement by imprisoning people who take illegal drugs instead of treating them like victims of a health problem. Why do we keep tobacco and alcohol legal and regulate them, but not treat all drugs the same way and boost the economy by allowing American citizens to produce and sell them without fear of arrest? Because we have hypocrites running the federal agencies!
- Outlaw credit cards. They cause too many people to run up large personal debt that limits their ability to spend money on goods and services later.