HappySqurriel said:
mrstickball said:
dany612 said:
I'm pro capitalism, I'm anti corporate greed and corruption. |
So how do you enforce this 'anti corporate greed and corruption'?
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A few thoughts ...
Government involvement in the economy is bound to happen and is not (necessarily) a bad thing, but the role of the government should be more like that of a referee than a participant. Essentially, their focus should be on fairness (think in the context of sports, ie. equality of opportunity) and preventing dangerous activity that creates excessive risk of injury (fraud, corruption, etc.)
Restrictions should be put on campaign finance ... Individuals, corporations, unions and charities should all be able to make political donations, but there should be a uniform cap on their total donations in a year; and donations to a party or a third party cause should count against the same cap. The cap should be high enough that people can freely support the candidates and causes they want, but low enough that organizations can't buy influence by funding every candidate in every election.
The tax code should be simplified and handled in a non-political fashion. In my opinion it would ideally be a flat tax, but even in a progressive taxation system the rules should be set up in a way that is free of political grandstanding; for an example of progressive system free of political grandstanding, you create the divisions based on something measured (normal curve of income distribution) have the tax bracket variations based on an increase over the base rate (+0%, +5%, +10%, etc) and the only thing that can be adjusted is the base rate to meet revenue needs.
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And such measures are fine. My issue is that generally when one discusses greed and corruption, the answer is a lot different. Its never about simplicity and transparency, but complexity and secrecy. Our tax code is over 20,000 pages and our evironmental regulations in just the Clean Air Act are over 7,000 codes and climbing. We're doing nothing to reduce the size or burden of government, but to continually increase, augment and boost what they do, which is having devastating effects on our economy. Favored corporations get money and power. Favored politicians grow in clout and lawmaking ability, while the general populace and entrepreneur foot the bill and get screwed.
