demagogue on 13/11/2010 at 16:22
What I find weird about all the fanaticism for small government is the idea that our ideal model for American government is Malawi. Big ambitious complex economies need to have complex regulatory controls that can keep up, unless a rural agrarian subsistence economy is really your thing.
Edit: For that matter, it's also a little insulting to Malawi, which needs real administrative reform to build its economy, and here a mass of dumb Americans who don't know how fortunate (and dependent) they are come blaring that regulation is the problem.
CCCToad on 13/11/2010 at 17:06
Quote Posted by demagogue
What I find weird about all the fanaticism for small government is the idea that our ideal model for American government is Malawi. Big ambitious complex economies need to have complex regulatory controls that can keep up, unless a rural agrarian subsistence economy is really your thing. .
I defnitely see where you are coming from, with as many industries as there and the size involved quite a bit of regulation is needed. What I think we can both agree on, however, is that the system could definitely use some tweaking to make the playing field more equitable.
One example that I've heard about from my own town involves the estate tax. When I left town, there were two major telecom companies: one was centurylink(one of the largest telecom corporations) and the other was a locally owned and operated establishment. Obviously, the locally owned telecom company provided vastly superior packages, customer service, and convenience. In the years since then, the owner of the company died. In order to pay the taxes that were incurred on his death, the family was forced to sell the company to Centurylink. As a result, Centurylink now has a monopoly in this town and the quality of service has gone to hell in a handbasket. The difference was massive when I last visited home: services drop regularly, customer support is now run through an out of state call center where representatives are openly hostile towards customers, and issues that used to take a day or two to fix now take a week or more.
Thats one example where the policy will hurt the rich more in theory (the telecom execs are richer than the local guy), but in practice it ends up helping the rich by eliminating competition to the large corporations that they control.
I'll admit that I don't have a clue how to go about it, but I would absolutely love to see the tax code reformed so that small business doesn't get hit with the same tax rates and penalties as individuals who just own that money in cash or investments(and probably aren't creating jobs with that money).
