The Fall of America from Planck's Constant

Wind Power Generation.Inner Mongolia
Photo by: Zhang Yu

China and India are on the brink of becoming great economic powerhouses and we here in the States sit with thumbs up our butts wondering how long before America becomes a third-rate country. It won't be long unless we get rid of the myriad hobbles constraining our economy.

While we waste over 50 billion dollars a year on the War on Drugs [Drug Sense] China and India spend their money on more productive ventures:

Dinocrat, A central economic question of our time (continued)
Morgan Stanley predicts that emerging economies will spend $22 trillion (in today’s prices) on infrastructure over the next ten years, of which China will account for 43%. China is already spending around 12% of its GDP on infrastructure. Indeed, China has spent more (in real terms) in the past five years than in the whole of the 20th century. Last year Brazil launched a four-year plan to spend $300 billion to modernise its road network, power plants and ports. The Indian government’s latest five-year plan has ambitiously pencilled in nearly $500 billion in infrastructure projects. Russia, the Gulf states and other oil exporters are all pouring part of their higher oil revenues into fixed investment.

While we waste hundreds of billions on complying with our Income Tax System [Fair Tax], Russia has a simple, uniform 13% tax on all individual income [Worldwide Tax]. Yes, even Russia has a simpler tax system than ours.

It's obvious now with gas over four bucks a gallon that failing to vote properly on home-drilling is costing us hundreds of billions of dollars.

Pork barrels cost us tens of billions of dollars every year.

Agricultural subsidies costs us tens of billions of dollars a year [Global Policy Forum].

Affirmative Action costs us untold billions of dollars [Independence Institute].

Illegal immigrants costs us more than ten billions dollars a year [Washington Post].

Too many government agencies do nothing, save nothing, make nothing but cost billions every year.

Poor roads costs us 54 billion dollars a year [American Society of Civil Engineers] which is mainly the fault of Unions. Which brings us to one of the most costly constraints on our economy.

Unions cost us almost a trillion dollars a year:

Manufacturing and Technology News, Do Unions Help the Economy?
The Economic Effects of Labor Unions Revisited says that unions have cost the American economy $50 trillion over the past six decades, according to the authors, two professors at Ohio University. "Workers in high union-density states such as Michigan lost as much as $6,000 per person in 1999," say Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway. Union labor monopolies in manufacturing, transportation, mining and construction "have decimated employment in those industries, increased the supply of employment in less unionized fields, and lowered their wage growth," they say in the study located at http://nlpc.org/olap/lrev/economy.pdf.

America was once an economic King Kong which we have completely shackled through socialism, welfare-statism, agri-business welfare, unionism, cronyism, over-taxation, environmentalism, affirmative action, and thousands of other stupid political, social and economic restraints, regulations, restrictions, and controls.

Our water, sewer, road, and power systems are perilously close to completely disintegrating and Americans are loath to come up with the money to fix them [Atlanta Journal-Constitution].

By instituting a flat tax we could fix every bridge, every road, every tunnel, sewer system, water supply, power plant in this country in one year.

If we stopped the wasteful, futile War on Drugs we could build 50 new Golden Gate Bridges every year in this country.

If we eliminated Unions, the money we saved in one year could finance the building of a single-span bridge from New York to California. Without Unions we could have had high-speed trains that could whip from coast to coast in less than a few hours.

Little Carmine told Tony Soprano in Episode 84, "You're at the precipice Tony - of an enormous crossroad." We, too, are at the precipice of an enormous crossroad. If we continue the road we're on, the road we're on will crumble beneath us.

I sometimes imagine America without all these hobbles. We could be a true paradise on Earth.