My good friend Jim sent me an email in which we were discussing the affluence of Americans and whether or not the benefits of perceived wealth was driving us to purchase lower cost goods to maintain and artificial standard of living. I had simply too many thoughts and too much writing to share with just one person, so here is some of my part of the conversation.

I don't think it's our affluence creating the trouble at all, it's our lack of it. I think there are plenty of people like me, who prefer to spend more for durable goods which last, rather than durable goods that turn out to not be durable at all (appliances, cars, etc). Our government is simply spending too much of our damned money on shit we don't need it to spend on. The new cuts in military spending MOSTLY make sense concerning troop levels and equipment readiness (I have heard rumors of cuts to VA services and pensions, which I can't support). The days of world war type actions are, in all likelihood, far behind us for several reason of which I'm sure you are aware. What isn't talked about very much is that our ability to fight that scale of war can be ramped up in a matter of a few months while the military in place is deployed - if the war is justifiable and supported by the American people. If it's not, then I don't WANT the ability to go to that kind of war!

Instead, we should be having a debate about whether all that tax money should be returned to citizens in an effort to provide comfort and stability, redistributed to the poor to help eliminate poverty and suffering, or not even collected in the first place. Here's something to think about before you vote.

Our economy is based on competition. The tendency for this competition to increase quality and decrease prices (relative to wages, which should go up to justify the government printing money for investment) is what makes American people the most productive in the world. The very nature of competition, though, is to establish winners AND losers. If we support an economy which must necessarily produce losers (or else not be competitive) is it not ethical to support some basic level comfort beyond necessity for those who lose? I know there are a lot of stories of welfare queens and food stamp kings paying for Doritos with our tax-money while wearing gold chains and driving Lexuses (Lexii?) but the basic fact is that the stagnation of our wages and the increasing costs of living (known as stagflation) has made poverty levels laughably low and depressingly austere.

This at a time when the people and trusts who own larger business pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes and do less to grow the American economy. I understand that Mitt Romney's 14% taxes is more than what I would pay at 100% taxes, but the bottom line is that he didn't CREATE that money or his own wealth. Everyone who owns a business that employs more than one person depends on other people for his/her success. Of course, I understand the need for talent, vision, and risk, but talent and vision come at more than the top level of management and ownership, and, frankly, the more wealthy a person is, the less risk he is actually taking in that business. For example, if I want to open a laundry, I would have to save thousands of dollars to qualify for a loan which would leverage all of my credit and put me in a position which, if I fail, could destroy my prospects of comfort and security for quite some time. Oprah, on the other hand, could open an entire chain down the East coast of Laundromats, which, if they failed would hardly make a scratch in her financial statement. Not much risk there.

At the turn of the 20^th century, slums with 6 families or more per apartment with laundry hanging out the window and trash on the street signifying the nearly starving people inside were within walking distance of the palacial mansions of the families who owned large businesses. What we had then and what we are heading towards now smacks of exploitation, which is solidly against American values as I understand them. The problem is finding the best way to motivate small businesses into becoming large businesses, and motivating large businesses to properly care for the people who make them large businesses in the first place. I get really pissed when I hear all this jazz about not taxing the wealthy because the wealthy create jobs. The wealthy don't create a god-damned thing…consumer demand does. That's why all those bailouts failed to create measurable economic growth. They are NOT going to hire people to create shit that they have to pay to sit in warehouses. They are wealthy because they often have a modicum of business sense, and that would be stupid. What is the best way to create consumer demand? Why, people like you and me who spend our money. The larger question is how to get money into OUR hands and how to convince us to spend our money on AMERICAN goods and services.

Is our government regulation forcing the cost of American goods up? If the goal of that regulation is to increase the standard of American living, it might not make sense to continue. It costs money to regulate business, right? Is that money better spent directly on Americans? If it will lower the price of American goods and create the same outcome, it might well be. I think most larger businesses could handle paying more taxes if it meant acquiring a larger share of the global market because of more competitive pricing. Remember, most of them have business sense, and can tell that 10% of $1,000,000 market revenue is more than 15% of $500,000. Although their business would grow in size at a larger proportion than their own income or bonuses, their own income or bonuses would still grow and "that's the bottom line" – THEIR bottom line.

As long as this global competition is driving our spendable income down, we will be forced to buy disposable shit instead of durable goods and continue the same descending circle of increasing poverty. What's my solution? Higher taxes on wealthy individuals, brackets on investment income taxes, lower taxes on businesses, MUCH lower taxes on small businesses, and BASIC government health care with supplemental packages at personal cost. It will be easier for small businesses (who can't benefit from the economy of scale) to grow into large businesses, large businesses to use their economy of scale to lower prices and increase revenue or increase spending on their employees or charity events and make it a more desirable company to work for and support with purchases, decrease penalties on people trying to invest a few thousand dollars while exacting government revenue from people investing hundreds of thousands at relatively low risk to themselves, and encouraging wealthy people to leave money in their companies for growth and stability rather than extract it as income. We are at a point where our government should be able to find money to provide preventive care like physical checkups, basic infection treatment, tooth-pulling and maybe even broken bones and end-of-life care and such to all citizens. Catastrophic care, like cancer treatment, advance dental, minor eye care, and all the other things we use our insurance for should be supplemental. Forcing people who can't afford insurance into the emergency room where they have to leverage perhaps what might have been their spending money for the next two YEARS is unconscionable when the actual cost of care outside an emergency room could have been a few hundred dollars.

Of course, I'm just a guy who doesn't understand much about the economy, but I think my solution would fix more problems than it would create, and the only real problem with this vs. plans I've heard is that mine wouldn't satisfy any special interest groups or lobbying firms because the American people no longer have a lobbying group of their own. We used to, and it was called congress.