Alan Keys on the economy
Taken from the website alankeyes.com
Taxation / government spending
Tyrannical taxation, and excessive government spending and borrowing, are not only threats to our economy — they erode the resource base of our freedom and our moral responsibility.
The income tax is a twentieth-century socialist experiment that has failed. Before the income tax was imposed on us just 85 years ago, government had no claim to our income. Only sales, excise, and tariff taxes were allowed. We need to return to the Constitution of economic liberty that our Founders intended to be a permanent bulwark of our political liberty.
The income tax in effect makes us vassals of the government — the politicians decide how much income we can keep. No mere “reform” of this slave tax, such as flattening the rate, can correct its fundamental denial of control over our own money.
Only the abolition of the income tax will restore the basic American principle that our income is both our own money and our own private business — not the government’s.
Replacing the income tax with a national sales tax would rejuvenate independence and responsibility in our citizens. True economic liberty and moral revival go hand in hand.
A national sales tax would also put the American citizen back in control of fiscal policy. The best way to curtail government spending is to cut taxes, because they can’t spend what they don’t get. With a sales tax, we could deny funds to a spendthrift government — and give ourselves a tax cut — whenever we make the private choice to alter our spending and saving habits.
But we must also take away the government’s credit card. With limits on both tax revenue and borrowing, the Federal government would finally be forced to get serious about spending cuts. That’s why a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, with barriers to both borrowing and spending, is the best way to secure budget discipline.
Fair trade
American “free trade” policy in recent years has increasingly involved grants of excessive authority to international organizations of questionable political legitimacy. The GATT/WTO agreement was a big mistake. The World Trade Organization undermines America’s sovereign international economic interests.
The American people must repudiate the policy of establishing unelected international bodies that act like the Supreme Court of the United States, striking down our domestic laws. We must repudiate disgraceful, profit-driven alliances with the despots in Beijing. And we must refuse to permit our representatives in Congress to volunteer for constitutional impotence by granting “fast track” authority to the president to strike back room trade deals without the advice and consent of the Senate.
I have always been a staunch defender of free enterprise and an opponent of the domineering bureaucracies, both national and international, which try to suffocate it. But I cannot stand with those so-called conservatives who believe that “free trade” is more important than free government, or the “fiscal conservatives” who seem to believe that money and economic advantage matter more than our right to constitutional, elective self-determination. Trade socialism must be defeated root and branch, even when it is called
“free trade.”
I think we gave away a portion of our sovereignty that we should never have surrendered when we entered the WTO. It violates the fundamental principle of our way of life: no legislation without representation. I’m not interested in protectionism or withdrawal. But folks ought to be paying a premium price to enter this market, or else giving us something concrete in return that’s of tangible benefit to the American people.
I believe we need to move away from negotiating multinational trade agreements, and ought to focus instead on cutting better deals by bargaining one-on-one with individual countries. I also believe we should impose tariffs on countries that undercut American farmers and manufacturers with cheap products.
What $9 million could buy
