Ramirez picks up the Nero theme

I don’t think our political class has truly embraced the spirit of Hope and Change just yet. After all, Obama ran on a platform that promised fresh new solutions and outside-the-box thinking, but so far, he hasn’t made a single proposal that wasn’t first floated in the 1970s or earlier. Increased unemployment benefits, huge job-killing mandates on employers, more power to labor unions, reducing the supply of energy while increasing the price – this is all very tired old junk we’ve seen a hundred times before, just with a bigger price tag this time. Here are some truly fresh tactics we could try:

Abolish collective bargaining for any corporation that receives a bailout. Since government workers generally are not allowed to organize, and Congressmen specifically forbid union activity among their staffers, it follows that a company supported by Congressional expense of tax money should not be forced to deal with union labor. This would have an immediate recovery effect on the U.S. auto industry, a primary recipient of bailout cash, especially since union labor is what got them into a pickle in the first place.

Cancel the pork-laden “stimulus” bill and use the money to fund a six-month holiday on capital gains taxes and payroll taxes. Obama and the Democrats say their top concern is to get the economy moving, right? They should have no problem with announcing their earlier spending plans are no longer realistic, and it would be better to sacrifice some government tax revenue to generate increased economic activity.

Eliminate all welfare programs, dismantle the social services bureaucracy, and instead offer businesses a huge tax break for every unemployed or indigent person they hire. You eliminate all the socialist overhead, stimulate job growth, and reward business for positive-growth activity. Long-term welfare dependents can be relocated to work camps, which they would build as their first order of business. Obviously they have no business taking out mortgages to buy homes, and will not be able to do so much longer in any event, so conscripted labor is the only means they have to repay the taxpayers for bailing them out of the Fannie Mae crisis. Residence in these camps would be strictly voluntary, but no benefits would be paid to anyone who does not reside in them. Businesses would be given tax incentives to recruit from the camps, which meanwhile could get some truly useful public work done – and it would be much easier to provide publicly funded services, such as health and child care, to the indigent if they all live in one place. After all, “it takes a village,” right? I think some of these camps could usefully be located on the Mexican border, and engaged in border security work.

The immediate resignation of every Democrat member of Congress. Who can doubt the stock market would explode? We’d get up to 12,000 Dow overnight. We are incessantly told by Democrat operatives, and the poor little folks who spend their days posting Twitter messages from party officials on conservative web sites, that Bush is responsible for the current economic mess. Well, we got rid of Bush. Now it’s time to get rid of the party in power during these last two years, when the market began to tank. A simple review of the market history demonstrates that as the number of Democrats in Congress has increased, the market has dropped – it’s almost an exact correlation. So, reducing the number of Democrats to zero should produce a huge market surge. It would not be fair to replace these Democrats with Republicans, since the latter did lose the last elections rather badly, but it occurs to me that we could recruit representatives from the only sector of the government that consistently demonstrates efficiency, resourcefulness, and selfless dedication: the military. We could select retiring military veterans to fill the vacant Democrat seats – maybe a random lottery among retiring vets with either combat or logistics experience. This would get us through to 2010, when we could thank them for helping us get through a crisis and let them stand for re-election.

I’m sure we could think of some more truly “progressive” ideas if we put our heads together!

Doctor Zero on March 6, 2009 at 4:28 PM