Five year plan?

From Tyler Durden:

Yesterday Senator Tom Harkin introduced S. 544, “a bill to require the President to develop a comprehensive national manufacturing strategy.”

In effect, Senator Harkin wants the President to centrally plan the economy. Never mind that the President has zero experience in business or manufacturing. But hey, this worked out so well for Stalinist Russia, it’s no wonder Mr. Harkin wants to copy that model.

If I were emperor of the U.S. I could come up with a plan that outperform anything the President could accomplish in five years and have it implemented in five days. It’s really simple:

Government shall make no law restricting the free association of people other than a tax on retail sales not to exceed 5% and to enforce contracts freely entered into by people and companies.

All waste products shall be safely contained or returned to the natural environment in such a manner that those people responsible for producer of said waste are willing to build their own homes on, eat, breath, or drink said waste products.

In five years there would so much wealth generated there would be private companies with terraforming Mars, robots bringing mining products back from the asteroid belt, and sex tourists going on vacations to the resorts in low earth orbit.

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7 thoughts on “Five year plan?

  1. Can Harkin not look around and see government FAILURE on a scale to rival young mountain ranges ? If this bozo is hoping for a complete financial and societal collapse then his plan is how I would go about it. Stupidity on the level displayed by Harkin should be punishable by hanging.

  2. I’m convinced that many bills and policies are pushed only because of either a profound ignorance of history and economics, or an utter disregard for efficacy in the desire to accumulate power for power’s sake. Nothing else can explain such a regular occurrence of things this stupid on a regular basis.

  3. To rule, you must have power. Power comes from control. This is the base line thinking of all politicians. Some may not be able to articulate it this starkly, but they all understand how it works.

  4. Pingback: Joe’s Plan for the Future | My Constructed Reality

  5. You make some excellent points there…..but….I think I may require a more in-depth (har) study on those vacations to the resorts in low earth orbit.

  6. Is there any viable taxation scheme that would not require the government to have a record of people’s income in order to enforce it? Don’t get me wrong, a single sales tax that maxes out at 5% would be an believable breath of fresh air, but in my ideal world, the .gov would not be allowed to know how much anyone makes or how they make it. It seems that a retail sales tax would still require record keeping and auditing to ensue that retailers aren’t evading the tax.

  7. Given our current path, he may actually be doing the best thing. We’re heading in that direction anyway, if you do it all at once, it will collapse faster. Sort of a pulling the bandage off quick – or slow question. Even most of the communists figured out that if they wanted to be anything more than dirt poor and corrupt (and being corrupt doesn’t pay nearly as well when everyone is dirt poor) a free market was the only way to get there. Seems unlikely to get any traction.

    I’m just hoping they can hold off stealing everyone’s retirement funds for a few more years. Then I can empty my 401k before they take it.

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