Fixing The U.S. Economy -- Stop Squeezing The Bottom

Here's something government officials (both federal and state) can do to get the economy chugging stronger again:

Loosen things up on the struggling classes, again.

It is well documented that the wealthy classes have been getting candy and roses for the past seven years.

Six figure beneficial tax cuts.

Record oil company profits.

Huge severance packages for transitional CEOs.

Here's a theme that cranks me up: today's CEOs. Hired in, to restructure the company for profit. Usually accomplished by cutting benefits, hours, pay and positions, mostly among the lowest tiers; or they create shut downs in American manufacturing in favor of contracting or purchasing overseas products for less.

CEOs that cause great increases in market shares over short runs, then seem to so often sail off in treasured ships just as calculatable storms come assailing company's ports.

The tops of the middle classes have been progressing well along; but their bottom half is increasingly afflicted by the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the loss of jobs from downsizing and overseas competition and the vagarities of wage and benefit reductions, when they too often end up with the transitioned role in restructurings.

Traditional economic generators for the unemployed in this country were focused on by recent tax enforcement mentalities.

Americans managing to earn a few thousand per year by smartly or doggedly working flea market circuits suddenly came under scrutiny and enforcement.

The true burden of the fines and licensing requirements place by the government on these minimal earners caused devastating changes in the lives of the groups traditional majority; while the paranoia which enforcement's tactics instilled in the management of these circles caused a tightening of wagons that increasingly shut people out.

The action was to require that these people be licensed and suddenly start charging, banking, and forwarding sales taxes for every meager market selling; with receipts and book work all properly marked.

The mathematical and paper headaches this caused to the traditional majority of flea marketeers left many suffering from hours lost from other pursuits, and relatively healthy fines for mistakes that we're made.

For demographics: if you've been to a flea market consider the number of people who "sell" at flea markets that are economically fringed folks; retired, disabled, no longer usefully skilled.

Consider the numbers of aspiring middle class income earners that have been playing their way in.

Many discovered these generating markets while suffering a lack of employment. They came to sell the things they'd collected, and discovered a workable world. The lure of making an additional five to ten thousand per year for an average of two weekends per month is very appealing; to the homeless, the transient, the limited income, and to those with house payments, kids in school, and college to buy.

The state's motivation, of course, is to increase income by making sure they tap in to every trickle of every economic generator.

Let no money be made that the government doth not charge a fee for.

Sadly, the bureaucratic overlay stifled many of our nation's struggling (a majority of the traditional players in these generators) right out of participation in these markets.

Mathematics indicates that this could only lead to a lowering in the overall economic flow within the state. This is based on the fact that the money those people "were" making before being trapped out, was being circulated into the economy by allowing these folks to pay utilities, rent, something on their debt, and allow them to buy food, clothing and make all manner of other purchases.

Without access to these generators, many of these folks will have had to have turned to social services for some, or more, help.

It is safe to bet, that the loss to the state by the restrictions placed on these lowest levels of economic flow, has far exceeded what ended up being raised by collecting from those who were capable of adjusting to the hoops.

Money is dynamic.

If you want to better the economy, you've got to have free flow through ALL of the people, not just the top fifty-one percent.



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25 January 2008

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Bill's Spirit is an Artist, Writer, Poet, Philosopher currently wordsmithing from a humble digital forge in small town Ohio.

The works of the man behind Bill's Spirit have been published in small alternative and amateur presses since 1986. Before that, they just filled notebooks, decorated walls and gathered dust in piles and boxes.

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