Flat tax rate system should be enforced now.

[Killiana1a]

mrstickball said:

Killiana1a said:

Kasz216 said:

Based on that logic we need to start taxing outside buisnesses.

Afterall, a buisness in China that sells stuff here benfits just as much... if not more so. (What with the no taxes.)

Agreed 100%. US and European corporations conducting business in China are doing so expressly and purely to avoid paying higher wages, to avoid child labor laws, to avoid 40 hour work weeks, to avoid paying workman's comp, to avoid paying benefits, and to avoid paying any taxes on their goods.

What we get are cheaper consumer goods at the cost of tens of millions living wage skilled manufacturing jobs. The trade-off is not fair because everyone suffers except the wealthy. The public sector suffers because that skilled manufacturing tax base has just been moved overseas to places like India, the Philippines, or China. Future generations suffer because their choice after high school is either: 1. Spend tens of thousands in higher education to get a degree which does not guarantee a job with a living wage, 2. Take a low pay service sector job, 3. Join the military, or 4. Start a small business with a 70% chance your small business will fail in 5 years. The remaining workers suffer because they are expected to work the equivalent of 3 jobs. Finally, the retired suffer because their pension is jeopardized with less domestic workers paying into the pension fund.

Anyone who argues "comparative advantage" is just rationalizing like a politician who has been caught taking a briefcase full of money from a lobbyist. In my first paragraph, I have already destroyed this argument.

If I was the President of the United States, here is how I would handle big business and free trade. If you as a company elect to manufacture overseas, then you have to give me a 5 years of research why the Chinese or Indians are genetically superior in creating a widget. If you do this, then every single foreign made good sold in the US will be hit with a 50% tariff based on the retail price. For example, if you are selling a video game at $60, then you have to pay $30 to the US Government.

In turn, the tariff money will be allocated to a new governmental agency called "Made in USA," which will then use the tariff funds as grants to your competitors and any small business needing financial help.

Free trade as I see it is called screwing the developed nation worker.

Don't forget all the millions of people that will be homeless without their living wage jobs in China...

Oh, and an economic collapse. You know they did the thing you suggest - major tariffs for overseas producers - in 1930. It was a major contributor to the depression.

Caring about people in other countries is a luxury CEOS who have outsourced the jobs of people in their own country and bleeding heart liberals who feel pain everytime they see a Sally Struthers commercial for aid to Africa.

I am neither and a nationalist first when it comes to economic policy. So long as there are homeless and unemployed worthy of a job here in the US, then to hell with another in China who would gladly take their or my job.

You are referring to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 between the US and Europe. Funny thing is, the stock market collapse of 1929 came first. Saying Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 caused the Great Depression is akin to blaming TARP and Obama's stimulus as the reason for this current global recession.

The truth is more in the middle, where the economy of the 2000s was structurally weak with a real estate bubble coinciding with an earlier dot com bubble all under the watch of an Ayn Rand fanatic at the head of the Federal Reserve by the name of Alan Greenspan.

Here is what I see as the structural problems in the US economy:

1. Higher Education insensitive and detached from the private sector putting out too many liberal arts majors to become baristas at Starbucks, while what we really need are more engineers, scientists, urban planners, health managers, and on.

2. The largest segment of the US population (Baby Boomers) aging and retiring imposing a huge entitlement burden on Social Security, public employees pensions and Medicare.

3. Federal and State governments running up deficits to pay for insolvent entitlement programs (Social Security, public employee pensions, and Medicare).

4. Overreach of US foreign policy. We have too many troops engaged in wars that do not directly benefit US citizens. Instead they are fighting for abstract causes such as "freedom and liberty," all the while costing hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

5. Lack of a broad skilled, blue collar worker base. Since the 1980s and particularly since NAFTA in 1996, we have been transitioning into service sector economy where the bulk of jobs are in the low wage service sector who service the upper income, so-called "creative class," leading to a hollowing out of the middle class.

I think I have the bases covered except for a few wonky monetary aspects.