Political Solutions
Enough bickering. Time for solutions. Here are some of mine: (1) It's all about the incentives. (2). Realign the incentives, problems solved. Here's what I mean. Take a person who wants to save money for whatever reason, maybe retirement, or college, or a downpayment, etc. So the person puts money into an account, earns some nominal interest. In reality, the person is being penalized. First, the penalty is by inflation, then second, by perverse negative incentives like taxation of interest earned. So, what are the options? should the person put the money into the stock market? Sure, that is where the incentives are, like a lower capital gains tax rate, for example. But who benefits from this arrangement? See, it is biased against the saver. So, the first thing that I would do is to remove all taxes from all savings accounts. I would create a transaction tax on every single financial transaction, which would create a strong disincentive to move money around or play the market. I would give a tax break to every single small business. No taxes on first $1,000,000 of revenue. No payroll taxes paid from employers. All wages and benefits paid to employees are business expenses, and totally tax free to the employer. Small businesses are immune from federal workplace laws, like ADA, EEOC, etc. Small business manufacturers are immune from strict products liability. There must be a strong disincentive from growing too big to fail. Companies with more than 10,000 employees must pay a heft size tax. This would create incentive to spin off successful units, and to keep small so as to be nimble. Too big to fail leads to monopoly and lobbyists and hence corruption. These are some initial thoughts. More coming. Please share. Maybe someone in power will listen?
