Posted by
Mike on Saturday, May 16, 2009 12:20:59 AM
http://westernperspective.blogspot.com/
To fix the economy, step number one is to change the tax structure. This will mean revising the tax code to tax individual wealth rather than individual or corporate income, and abolishing the death tax. Taxes on individual wealth, or net worth, are justified because the wealthy benefit more from basic government services such as police and fire protection and health care.
My proposal is to tax individual wealth above the 90 percentile range at a rate of 95%, and above the 95 percentile range at a rate of 99%. There would be no tax on income which destroys the incentive to earn. Additional tax revenues would be generated through sales, excise and tariff taxes as needed pursuant to the
Fair-Tax Plan championed by Alan Keyes.
Capital
ism is, along with social
ism, an outgrowth of the 18th Century French Revolution, and is inherently unjust because it reduces the human person to a mere instrument of production and consumption. Government's legitimate role is to promote justice by promoting entrepreneurship and giving tax credits to new businesses just starting up. Small businesses employ most of the American workforce outside of government including the military branches.
Distributivism is a Third Way of economic organization. The goal should be to promote independent, eco-friendly ways of producing things with the workers themselves having some ownership interest through tax incentives, and a more equitable corporate ownership to include the workers themselves. Just as in home equity, people act more responsibly when there is a more widely held ownership interest in businesses.
Subsidiarity must be respected, so that higher levels of government do not usurp the roles of lower levels, or infringe upon the responsibilities of business, community or family organizations.