The cure for 'structural unemployment'

A response to Paul Krugman
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/opinion/27krugman.html


So, Mr. Krugman, suggesting another World War to solve the 'structural unemployment problem'? Sorry, the world is a different place and the nature of war has changed. Time to look for more productive solutions.

The US Treasury is empty. The Fed is printing toilet paper as fast as the presses can go. We don't have any money, and what there is, gets less valuable with each passing moment. The government cannot finance another wasteful and ineffective spending spree.

No one has sufficient understanding or control over the future to know what programs or policies to implement to restore our economy: that’s why Central-planning solutions have never worked. Therefore the federal government needs to concentrate on removing all non-essential obstructions to entrepreneurialism; and on eliminating all non-value-added costs that they have imposed on American business for the past 100 years. American business has been continually streamlining their processes for 40 years. It’s time for governments (federal, state, and local) to catch-up. The free market will reveal the ‘natural’ opportunities when it is freed of the suffocating detritus that accumulated when American business did not have to compete for consumers.

The most promising solution is to repeal the 16th Amendment and implement the Fair Tax as presently structured. With the stroke of a pen, everyone who is employed gets a 23% boost in their take-home pay; US exports become 23% more competitive in the global market; monthly pre-bate checks provide an offset for the taxes on essentials and provides cash flow to every household; and the Trillions of dollars sheltered off-shore can come back into our economy to fund the expansion that results from improved export posture.

The only way our economy is going to get better is for Americans to become more productive. The only way to become more productive is to become more competitive in the global market. Therefore we have to eliminate the non-value added costs that accrued during our 25 year, post WWII monopoly on global manufacturing capacity.

Longer-term we need to restore the historic American ideals of individual resourcefulness, entrepreneurialism, and accountability; even as we erase the deadly acceptance socialism promoted so disastrously over the past 50 years.