Dear Friends,
It seems to me, if a government wants the nation to be wealthy, they must create the circumstances where the people become rich, since the nation is an extension of the people. This is a very radical concept for many. The modern paradigm is to impoverish the people as best you can, while enriching a few, so while the nation itself maybe so poor it cannot afford good roads, the elite that rule it are so rich they couldn’t care less, because they fly over them in private helicopters, to their walled, gated and guarded estates. Take the US example, since at least the 1970’s, the elite have been hollowing out the currency, exporting jobs, importing workers, regulating whole industries out of existence, and raising taxes. All of which have a deleterious effect on the demand for labor and thus wages.
While these policies have driven down the wages of the American worker and lowered our life outcomes, it has vastly enhanced the life outcomes of the politically favored. As the elite do everything in their power to drive down demand for labor, in the US, they have handed out billions perhaps trillions in crony capitalism. Making a few people very wealthy, but not contributing a thing to GDP, or hiring a single long term worker. Anyone remember Solyndra? Driving down demand while importing people to compete for fewer jobs… doesn’t seem to me to be a path to rising wages and societal wealth. Why do you suppose the progressive faction is so intent on regulating away industries, taxing firms to bankruptcy, importing workers and exporting jobs? Maybe because the poor are their constituents?
To generate real societal wealth any nation must do several radical things. Things that the Marxist/progressive element will fight tooth and nail, because they will result in vast societal wealth, utterly discrediting their utopia for a much better reality. Education is of the utmost importance. Children should be taught not only the three R’s, science and history, but how to write a letter to get a business loan, profit loss statements, industrial arts, home economics, philosophy, economics, and how to negotiate. Teach every kid to be a handy philosopher entrepreneur. Cut regulations to the bone, create positive standards or adopt the best from overseas, cut taxes especially payroll taxes, protect intellectual property, while creating and maintaining limited government enforced by a Fourth Branch.
Imagine a nation, or better yet, a whole planet of nations where the vast untapped potential of humanity is released by thoughtful standards, protection of copyrights and patents, and a wealthy, entrepreneurial and free populace, looking to have our lives enhanced by the next great innovation. Give kids a wide variety of possibilities of career choices, but most importantly, make those choices possible. Where everyone has a stake in society, and knows it, society will flourish. A nation of innovative small businesses can only lead to an improving standard of living. Children would go to a vouchered school competing for them, have great potential life outcomes. The scourge of drugs would be erased, because most drug use is due to our toxic culture, progressively inculcating hopelessness and alienation.
To go from our present utopia to a truly wonderful reality is our choice. Not the choice of the elite, because they selected national poverty and personal wealth. We must constantly write letters to our legislators, governors, prime ministers and presidents. We can no longer sit idly by while our jobs are exported and workers imported to compete with our kids. In what world does it make sense to carry 100 grand of student loan unforgivable government debt, for a job that is taken by a foreigner with an H1B visa? Cutting a check to the government every month, out of a waitress pay, doesn’t build societal wealth as quickly as cutting it out of 70 grand a year, writing code. Then again, if the faction in power’s constituency are the hopeless and poor… it is crucial there be plenty of them.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
