Demagoguery grows in the fertile soil of ignorance and fear. Combating this with logic and wisdom will fall short, so conservatives need to learn how to use slogans to damage their opponents' character before explaining the issue. Here are two: 1) Progressives are like drug dealers. They force us into entitlement programs that make us dependent on the money for retirement. But the money we put in isn't enough, so we had to borrow the rest. They made us addicted to someone else's money - our children's...and we've mortgaged their future. 2) Progressives are like vampires. They suck the life-blood out of us by growing government through higher taxes, higher spending and thousands of wasteful programs. If we complain, they deceive us into...

I'm reminded of the last lines to my favorite song by The Who, Won't Get Fooled Again: "Meet the new boss/ same as the old boss." Liberation movements tend to suffer from the delusion that a change in leadership and "throwing the bums out" will magically produce freedom and prosperity for the masses. But that all depends on the organization of the law, the economy and civil society. The reason the Communists were worse than the Czars, the colonial magistrates and the petty dictators that they replaced, as well as the Ayatollah who replaced the Shah, is that authoritarian regimes were replaced by totalitarian ones. The fact that they were "new" masked the most critical element: their governing philosophy. In short, they were still...

Money is fungable. The "surplus" in Soc.Sec. is in the form of treasury bonds. That money was transfered to the general fund to make deficits appear smaller. These bonds are IOUs to be paid by future revenue. This future revenue may be in the form of higher taxes, higher debt or a devalued currency. The money everyone puts in is spent in less than 5 years, assuming compounded interest on a running average of 10-year bonds. Not only is it a Ponzi scheme, but S/S is effectively a welfare programs designed to keep Americans dependent on their government. If this system wasn't a defined benefit plan heavily subsidized by younger generations, workers would demand its privatization. The City of Galveston, TX opted their workers out years ago...

The idealist in me pushes on with the hope that constitutional conservatives will achieve sufficient mass and momemtum to reverse the suicidal course we're on. The realist in me understands that the critical mass needed may not arrive in time, if at all, and I should plan for a bleak future. Its become a cliche that only a crisis will force a change. But change itself is fraught with danger. What must happen is a change in how Americans view the role of government in the economy and their own sense of responsibility and entitlement. The political philosophy of progressivism is derived from Marxian assumptions about the alleged exploitation of labor and the efficacy of government intervention. The beliefs that sustain this illusion,...

A_Freeman is correct about the need for a constitutional amendment, but shifting most or all taxing power to the states returns us to something akin to the Articles of Confederation. A federal republic of enumerated powers will protect everyone's individual rights and liberties better than a confederation of insolvent people's republics. That's what we need to keep our eye on! In a confederation, states could and would confiscate property at will or deny equal protection under the law with the only recourse being to vote with one's feet. A repeal of the 16th amendment with the simultaneous adoption of a national sales tax would incentivize work, saving and investing rather than borrowing and consuming. But taxing less won't return us...

Its important to understand that businessmen earned their wealth through the application of time, money, invention and innovation to create goods and services that improve the lives of the people who freely buy them. The fact that workers agree to voluntarily trade their time and effort for money is not exploitation of labor, its the voluntary trade of one value for another value. This exploitation theory, that workers are cheated out of just compensation, comes from none other than Karl Marx. This theory has been thoroughly debunked by Von Mises and others (workers receive value indirectly through the creation of new goods and services that otherwise would not have been possible as well as a general rise in the wealth and opportunities...

As others have said, the problem is when a majority elect politicians who will redistribute the wealth. An entitlement means that some people have a right to other's money because they've been exploited by the rich or some other Marxist trope. The effect is to hurt the creators of wealth and simultaneously amass power and prestige for politicians while turning the middle class into angry, sniveling dependents of the state completely confused about what it means to have individual rights as well as the predictable consequences of collectivism. Neat little trick Marx and Keynes have pulled on us. Leftist intellectuals began teaching the theory of the exploitation of labor and that government intervention is the only way to help the...

I like your idea, but with one important change: we should have a simple SALES tax, instead of an INCOME tax. The power to tax is the power to destroy, or at least discourage something by making it more costly. An income tax discourages or adds to the cost of work, saving and investing. A sales tax would discourage profligate spending and consumption. This would dramatically shift the balance in favor of saving and investing which is fundamental to real, sustained growth. The income tax however encourages consumption and is further enhanced by our fiat currency that encourages borrowing and spending beyond our means. Of course keeping it at a low rate is the trick.

A large percentage of their compensation has been in the form of mandated benefits. Also, cost shifting to pay for corporate taxes diminishes everything from workers' payrolls to capital accumulation, stock prices and dividends and forces consumer prices higher than they would otherwise have been. The Congress did this to us, including protection of unions and trial lawyers' predatory lawsuits. The antedote is to move rapidly to a laissez faire economy, including eliminating all taxes on income and replacing the IRS with some form of national sales tax, and low enough to fund the military and the courts, and a return to the gold standard and eliminating the Federal Reserve.

There's another obstacle to paying off the debt. Our money supply shrinks as debt is retired, which would cause massive deflation. That's right folks, our money is no longer based on gold, a real asset, but government IOUs - debt. Every time the Federal Reserve buys government treasuries (debt), a credit is created for the government's balance sheet to spend that new fiat money and a debit is created on the Fed's balance sheet as an IOU. They magically call this a "reserve" because that money will in theory be paid back. This neat little trick allows the Fed to expand available credit to other the banks who "borrow" this "reserrve." Banks will now be able to loan this money, actually they'll loan up to 900% of the value since they only...