I believe Huey Long was the greatest politician who ever lived. I love his dying words- “Lord, don’t take me now, I have so much left to do…”

Anyway, Long advocated a tax system that would essentially limit incomes to $13 million a year in today’s money and total fortunes to $130 million in today’s money. There would be little to no taxation up to that amount, and those making more could choose to give it away instead of paying a tax on it. Long saw his solution as breaking up big clumps of money so that more would circulate and stimulate the economy, and also prevent large corporations from cornering markets by providing size limits on pockets of wealth. I’m still not sure if I buy his logic.

Long was accused of being a Communist for this plan (of course, he wasn’t, since no Communist supported a system that allowed someone to make $13 million a year tax-free). Long’s response, during the Depression, was that he was saving the rich from Communism, which would do a lot more than just limit their incomes and fortunes to several million dollars. Long saw that the extreme inequalities in wealth during the Depression would provide an opening for Communism that he wanted to close.

In this way I think the Republican Party fears Buchanan because they think he is a protectionist, when in reality he is a realist who is trying to save them from protectionism, as the economic environment created by our idiotic trade and economic policies will create the political steam to propel a real protectionist to power. Buchanan himself merely advocates fair trade on equal terms instead of forcing American manufacturers to compete with subsidized slave labor in third world countries

Tom

I appreciate your point of view. I agree with you. was merely trying to illuminate any who might be holding onto some vestige of hope that something the government did might actually be to the benefit of the proletariat. As you might have noticed, I tend to direct my comments to the blogger, “irregardless” of whether they are actually aimed at him.

I think I have concluded that the current gridlock (as of 20070101), in the absence of any true statesmanship, is probably the preferred state of our representative leviathan. And since any real change is unlikely to occur in the forseeable future (unless, perhaps, we are all taken “in the twinkling on an eye” — but not at all under human power), I think I would encourage this coming state of the Union. Until the Gipper’s doppleganger appears on the US’ political chessboard, I think I’ll be voting less for the lesser of two evils, and more to simply change the names to protect the innocent.

In simple terms, vote out the incumbent, vote in the other guy… anyone else. Like the [two-months] dead woman who won the civic election somewhere in the midwest this week. Or a mailbox. Can a dog run for president? (The four-legged variety… Bill Boy proved a dog could win)

Brian

PS: Thanks, Ross! …twice…

Like I said, I don’t advocate raising the minimum wage, just a little schadenfreude for the corporate globalists. The political support for raising it springs from the fact that our economic system creates incentives for offshoring US production and jobs. It is a reaction with a basis in reality- namely, that the elites in this country care nothing for the people of this country or the country’s long-term economic health. Bill Gates, Jack Welch, none of them have an ounce of feeling for their country- they are self-proclaimed citizens of the world.

Of course, wages have to be earned, and the only type of job that offers the average person a high enough productivity rate to justify a high wage is manufacturing. We can’t all get rich shuffling paper around, trading houses or selling mutual funds. An economist friend of mine notes that once the Chinese figure out that they can make their own Powerpoint presentations, the white-collar Americans in the “business services” sector who are so arrogant about the benefits of globalization are going to find themselves quickly unemployed.

Basically, I advocate an economy that optimizes for median income, not average income. We should have free trade as long as it’s fair and with first-world nations. If you want to buy a Mercedes from Germany or a piano from Japan, that’s great- we can compete on equal terms because they earn comparable wages, have comparable environmental regulations, etc- and the competition will be based on quality and consumer choice, not a race to the bottom on the basis of cost-cutting in labor and quality. I do not think we should force American manufacturers to compete with slave labor from China or other less developed parts of the world. Every other developed nation, including Germany and Japan (#2 and #3 respectively in GDP), protects their domestic industries. We should too. Of course, I don’t advocate the other socialist baggage associated with European economies.

This might mean a 10% increase in the cost of consumer goods, but would result in a 50% increase in median wage. Such a tradeoff is acceptable IMO, because of the social benefits (stable families that can be supported in comfort from a single earner, long term wealth building for the average person) from a more equitable distribution of earned income.

Merle Haggard puts it better than I could:

http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/w/wishabuckwasstillsilver.shtml

http://people.bakersfield.com/home/viewblog.php?id=253&pid=2290

A more apropos description of my political views would probably be Christian libertarian. (I prefer grape, please! …reminds me of my friend, Jonesy…)

The fact is, less than 2% of minimum wgae earners support a family on this income. That is, have a family to support, not that over 98% fail to support one. Union (read that “communo-socialist organizations”) wages are usually indexed to the minimum wage, so if min wage goes up, union wages go up. This serves only to raise the bottom line for manufactureres and suppliers of virtually every good or service in the marketplace. (And they wonder why stuff keeps costing more…?)

‘Course, then their pocket politicians just take it back from ‘em in the form of higher taxes. Go figure…

And let’s be serious here, Tom. Have you ever had a supplier that upped their rates to you, and you didn’t pass the “savings” on to your customer? I doubt this would really comprise even a blip on the radar of companies that size. Long-term, anyway.

And shame on you for dissin’ Mssrs Walton and Kroc, two true American entrepreneurs (who, honestly, are probably spinning in their graves right now, wondering how their businesses ever came to this) — of course, that’s prolly just more Scots-Irish hero-worship on my part. Actually, I think it’s because, sometimes, the acorn falls far, far from the tree.

I forget who said a democracy would last only so long as it took the voting public to realize they could vote themselves largesse from the public funds, but it looks like we ain’t got far to go now.

You know, the funny thing is, when I first heard of good ol’ Pat, he sounded like a reactionary nut, and I basically wrote him off. Strange, then, that he’s seemingly one of the only reasonable voices out there now.

Minimum wage hikes passed in every state that considered them, by 70+% margins. Yet more evidence that the average person in this country is not a Kool-Aid-drinking libertarian from the Wall Street Journal.

While the minimum wage is a reactive policy I oppose in theory (far better to bring about natural wage increases with economic nationalism), I can’t help but smile to think Wal-Mart and McDonald’s will be forced to give up some of their profits selling us plastic junk and junk food respectively to pay their workers a decent wage- and since retail can’t be outsourced and has been the main beneficiary of globalism at the expense of the American economy (and also the largest employer of min. wage workers), it is a sort of poetic justice.