Want To Fix The Economy? Cut Taxes And Go Back To The Gold Standard, Says Steve Forbes

Back thousands of years ago gold, was a bright shinny trinket that not very many people had . It sparkled when worn and it was reserved for kings and the like.Gold really has very limited use , electronics ,jewelry, limited coins. You can't eat it ,and when the world becomes a place where you have to scratch out a life , as it is becoming, when you want to eat the farmer is going to laugh in your face when you offer him some gold for a side of beef. Some things have very little real value perhaps a field full of corn , beens, tomatoes etc are the real valuable treasures.

It's actually pretty easy. Banks aren't insurance companies. They shouldn't have trading floors, they shouldn't be writing CDS's. Their business is LENDING MONEY TO QUALIFIED BORROWERS. NOT CHARGING FOR THE PRIVILEGE OF KEEPING YOUR MONEY IN THEIR BANK. Banks at a historical measure do not make large margins. No bank should make 15-20% margins. It should actually be impossible. The only way to get margins that big are to steal from your customers or make large very risky bets, not loans at a 4% spread.

gold is the money of kings
silver is the money of gentlemen
barter is the money of the poor
debt is the money of slave

trust fools with your money and you will have none.

when the people give up control of their money and their free markets they become slaves to their handlers.

We cannot go back to the gold standard with a large account deficit. Being on the gold standard means treasuries can be exchanged for gold. We have 800 billion in gold reserves. China has 1 trillion in U.S. treasuries. The second we go on the gold standard China will want gold. This would crash our currency and cause the worst depression the world has ever seen. Please look up the Nixon Shock of 1971 to see how this happened to a minor extent already.

The gold standard only works when you have low budget deficits or a surplus.

No-one ever talks about cutting taxes for wage earners. Workers are the backbone of the economy. Every dollar a worker has to pay in wage taxes, is a dollar they don't have. Except for blue bloods, almost every business is started by a worker who saved up enough to be able to take a chance on their own. Taxing wages drives up wage demand, and it also gets passed on in the form of a higher cost of living, which then drives wage demand even higher.

If taxes on wages were completely eliminated, replaced instead with consumption taxes, wage demand would drop dramatically, and the price of exports would also drop in response to that, making the US more competitive in the international marketplace.

Democrats demand social programs to support the low end idle class, and Republicans demand tax cuts for corporations to support the high end idle class. Neither party represents the vast majority of us who are working to make a living.

Fire both parties in 2012.

In other words, what we should to is to "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate��� it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people." (Andrew Mellon, President Hoover's Treasury Secretary, at the start of the Great Depression).

In the long run, a gold standard might help the economy. Austrian Economics makes a lot of sense to me. But you can't get there from here without passing through a great depression that will probably make the one in the 1930s look a lot less great. Same goes for abrupt, massive cuts to government spending. May get the economy into better balance, but not without passing through depression in the short run. So we need those who propose either solution to be honest. If they claim that massive budget cuts will somehow inspire businesses to hire all the workers losing jobs supported by public sector spending in some way or another, (those aren't just government jobs, either) and hire new people at the same time, they aren't being honest. In the short run, businesses aren't going to hire into an economy from which billions of dollars and thousands, even millions, of jobs are being removed.

Either we find a graceful, gradual, deliberate way to restructure the tax system (yes, that includes raising some taxes) wind down wars we've been putting on credit, and have a serious discussion of what we want from our government, OR we do it all at once, and let a great depression work its purgative wonders on the economy and society. That's the choice, those who advocate the latter option just need to be honest about what they're proposing.

Three years ago, Wall Streeters needed to be bailed out by the public from the consequences of their greed and stupidity. Public debt and deficit weren't worrying them then. Since then, they've had three years to invest their fat paychecks and bonuses in ways that will protect them from a depression. So now they say "bring one on". Now debt and deficit are the biggest problem. Now that they've gotten what they can from the public. Now they're ready to cut everyone else loose. In depression, they should be able to pick up houses and business assets even cheaper.

There are no easy choices here. All our options are worth considering, but we need to be honest about what they are.

The way to fix the economy is to quit spending money to police the world and fix the inefficiencies in government. Then there would be money to encourage business to hire local people and quit sending jobs overseas.

You can't garrison the entire world , and control every regime and situation to promote that day's security priorities, and still maintain what are some of the lowest tax rates in the world.
Especially if you get most of it wrong.

What has really been the return on US investments in foreign wars lately?
Vietnam, Iraq, Pakistan, Grenada, Afghanistan, Panama, Kuwait,Somalia and all the skulduggery , assassinations and graft in South America.
What are the garrisons doing in the closest allied countries such as UK, Germany, Italy etc..
I could go on but I can't remember it all.

Who wants the system fixed?

I just want justice ... let's roll some heads ... let's have a head rolling contest!

Why don't they make taxing easy. "If you manufacture is 100% done in the U.S., then you get a tax break. If any piece of it is imported, you are taxed." How to apply that to banking or service industry, who knows. Plain and simple, they have to earn their tax break by putting Americans to work.

Cutting taxes USED to increase tax revenues, because the tax savings were reinvested in jobs in the USA.
Now, the tax savings are reinvested in offshore jobs, So, no more jobs to tax.
No increase tax revenus.

Time to wield the pitchforks, light the torches and head for the Hamptons, boys.

The tax code is the greatest weapon the government has to force us to live the way it wants us to.
A free country shouldn't allow it's government to forceably control it's citizenry with it's purse strings.

We're already redistributing wealth-taking from the working class and giving it to the lay@bouts. Since when does someone who has never worked a day in their life deserve a big screen TV, gold chains, cruises, trips to casinos and still have money to buy lottery tickets and lobsters?
The working man isn't spending any money because he's smart enough to see that DC's "solution" to the problem is to raise taxes not curb spending. Everyone calls for higher taxes on the rich but our polticians ARE THE RICH. They talk about raising taxes on the rich to buy your vote but it won't happen because they are rich and so are the people they associate with. D o you think they'll screw themselves and their buddies? That's why they bail out big corporations, so their pals won't do time and possibly spill the beans about all the dirty deals p0liticians are involved with.

Let's wake up folks before our future is stolen from us.

Forbes has preached for years for the Flat tax. Then everyone is invested in our country. All the money you make is yours. But every purchase no matter who you are or where your from you pay tax. South Dakota, Montana and other states have no income tax. They have growing populations.

Why listen to people who do not pay their own way? He inherited a fortune so that makes him a person of knowledge?

I think Mr. Forbes is trying to say a strong currency is good for the long term financial health of all economic classes, but a weak currency allows crooked politicians to steal from us. Think about it!
Second, as a professional tax preparer I can tell you corporations do not truly pay taxes; they remit taxes. YOU, the American taxpayer pay all the taxes. A corporation will simply hire a person like me to figure ways around the code or directly price the "cost" of the tax into the product or service the corporation sells or reduce the dividends to the shareholders. So taxing corporations just makes it easy for Washington to give political favors. We would be better off eliminating the corporate tax in its entirety and mandating all corporate profts be distributed to the shareholders and subject to the personal income tax. Thus, the truly wealthy corporate owners would pay their fair share!

Oh, well gee golly, I wonder why would a guy with a ton of cash would advocate a policy which would lead to deflation...

How much gold does he own?

The problem with cutting taxes is that it is ONLY pro-growth if it is NOT offset by spending cuts, because cutting taxes will increase the GDP far less than the reduction in GDP that will result from spending cuts. This is pretty obvious if you look at the last 30 year of tax cutting (Reagan/Bush) and tax increases (Clinton). The tax increases under Clinton had a way better result than Reagan which cause an unsustainable increase in the deficit, or the economy under G.W. Bush which was not that great even with the unprecedented tailwind of the housing bubble.