Liberals have it wrong

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tea_Party_tax_day_protest_2010_(4525427013).jpg

Let’s clear the record. There are several liberal beliefs that if corrected, might lead to solutions conservatives could get behind. Here are the facts:

1. Regulation stifles business

Liberals like to point out that the unfettered free market and deregulation have led to economic catastrophe. But the fact is that regulations hurt small businesses much more than big ones. This hurts job creation and economic activity. Fewer and fewer small businesses are starting up, growing, and employing people than in the past [1]. We now have so many regulations and laws that you practically need a team of lawyers and licensed professionals to open a hair salon. The protections against things we don’t want, like corruption, pollution and economic catastrophe, are protecting us from the things we do want like small businesses, economic activity, and jobs. The solution is smart regulation, which requires getting rid of a lot of burdensome regulation and streamlining the protections that we do need. This is impossible right now when liberals are afraid of economic collapse from “deregulation”, and conservatives believe that any regulation produces market failure. There is a happy middle ground if we re-frame the situation based on principles of reasonable protections based on rational risks. But to get there, both sides have to set aside their worst fears and talk like people with common goals: prosperity and responsibility.

2. Unions are inefficient

Liberals say things like “Unions gave us the weekend” and “collective bargaining created the middle class”, and “Union rules made the workplace safer”. But the fact is that Union rules place unreasonable costs onto businesses, consumers and employees. Union dues no longer translate to increasingly higher wages [2]. Union rules are written to make reasonable tasks, like pushing a cart, the sole responsibility of Union members. This means an ice cream vendor must wait for a Union employee to push the Popsicle cart to the workers break room. And existing laws are pretty good now. All this makes everything harder, more expensive and less efficient. What Unions provided that benefited all of us was good information, rational safety, and reasonable wages. But today the department of labor provides this. What liberals and conservatives need to agree on are the principals for obtaining and disseminating the necessary information. After all, the optimum conditions for the free market include “perfect knowledge”. What you will find is that Unions do a lot of the information gathering and dissemination. Ultimately the best solution would be Unions but without the inefficiency. Getting there, however, is impossible until both the benefits and costs of an ideal solution for workers, employers, and society are understood. Knowledge, not slogans will get us there.

3. Taxes affect investments

Liberals like to grumble that taxes on the rich are too low and the income gap is widening. But those are judgement, not facts. The fact is that corporate tax rates in the US were so high that companies kept profits off shore and still too often prefer stock buy backs over investments to return value to investors [3]. Idealistic theories must be discarded for realistic policies based on behavior. There is plenty of data to go on from the failed French tax rate of 75% in 2006 [4] to the State policies that have eviscerated education in Kansas [5]. Guiding principals to make rational decisions could be things like an overall progressive effective tax rate, efficient programs with less overhead, a preference for taxing things we don’t want like pollution and an aversion to taxing things we do want like labor. But getting agreement on this will be impossible if liberals continue to present idealistic policies as if they were principals, when in reality they are nothing more than untested theories.

4. Big government is a drain on economic activity.

Everyone can agree that the government’s primary responsibility is to ensure the security of it’s citizens. What liberals don’t understand is that securing citizens against all risk is impractical. The cost of ensuring that everyone has a home, a minimum income, and total health coverage for life is beyond the means of the largest nanny state, draining resources and making investment capital too expensive [6]. But everyone can agree that fighting theft and assault are the responsibility of our Government, as is the judiciary and the legislature to define and rule on the law. But we have so many laws on the books that it takes a splattering of distinctly separate agencies to implement with career bureaucrats in a layered hierarchy that applies the rules with little regard to the value of the rule in a given situation. Our policies, systems, economy, technology, and society have become so diverse and complex that what once made sense, no longer does, and the changes we make require so much analysis their costs often exceed the benefits and too often have unintended consequences. This is why conservatives eschew the free market as the most efficient alternative, which it is, but it’s also unfair as the poor and middle class are left with a shrinking slice of the pie. What is needed is a single point of contact for people and businesses to interact with the government. Instead of the IRS and the local planning department, State and Federal EPA, the FDA and local health and fire departments, people would contact their government advocate and they would pull all the agencies together and make a unified determination. This would force the agencies to work together and it would also surface unreasonable policies for any given situation. Instead of just creating a new layer of government, it could become the conduit of creative destruction as government would be faced with presenting the citizens it serves with the justification of the bloated government it has become. Such an advocate would need guiding principals to evaluate the conflicts in the laws that people are to abide by. Security is one, but so is the relative cost. The cost should be proportional to the the capital invested, as long as the risks can be absorbed by the capital invested. If either is more, then a partnership arrangement with the government advocate could be arranged, but the costs and benefits would need public approval.

These four examples illustrate why the path forward is not a liberal or conservative one. I have attacked liberals here. But it could have just as easily been conservatives. Only by casting aside political loyalties will we be able to identify policies for the common good and bring our country together for a shared and prosperous future.

Footnotes:

Note: As I research the claims I’ve made in this article, these footnotes will be expanded and some of my claims revised and modified.

1. Fewer and fewer small businesses are starting up, growing, and employing people than in the past [1]
   1.1. https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/small-business-job-creation-myth/
   1.2. https://www.inc.com/inc-entrepreneurship-index/index.html
   *** This statement needs to be revised as it is not necessarily true without more evidence
2. The fact is that Union rules place unreasonable costs onto businesses, consumers and employees. Union dues no longer translate to increasingly higher wages [2]
   2.1. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/unions-workers.asp
   2.2. https://corporate.findlaw.com/human-resources/trends-in-union-membership.html
3. The fact is that corporate tax rates in the US were so high that companies kept profits off shore and still too often prefer stock buy backs over investments to return value to investors [3].
   3.1. https://taxfoundation.org/corporate-tax-rates-around-world-2018/
   3.2. https://home.kpmg/xx/en/home/services/tax/tax-tools-and-resources/tax-rates-online/corporate-tax-rates-table.html
   3.3. https://americansfortaxfairness.org/tax-fairness-briefing-booklet/fact-sheet-corporate-tax-rates/
4. There is plenty of data to go on from the failed French tax rate of 75% in 2006 [4]
   4.1. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-supertax/france-waves-discreet-goodbye-to-75-percent-super-tax-idUSKBN0K11CC20141223
   4.2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonhartley/2015/02/02/frances-75-supertax-failure-a-blow-to-pikettys-economics/#4c5384db5df2
   4.3. https://medium.com/@gainweightjournal2/france-imposed-a-75-tax-on-the-highest-incomes-it-didnt-work-and-here-s-why-546ccb832414
5. State policies have eviscerated education in Kansas [5]
   5.1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
   5.2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2017/06/07/the-great-kansas-tax-cut-experiment-crashes-and-burns/#579056195508
   5.3. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/tax-trump-kansas/542532/
   5.4. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/kansas-supreme-court-tells-lawmakers-adequately-fund-public-schools/
6. The cost of ensuring that everyone has a home, a minimum income, and total health coverage for life is beyond the means of the largest nanny state, draining resources and making investment capital too expensive [6]