Reducing Poverty

The Free Market philosophy is built on Self-ownership and Respecting your rights. Don’t hurt others or take their property.  Poverty can be reduced by cutting unnecessary spending and by reducing regulations in markets, such as housing, urban transit, and healthcare, that are now heavily regulated.

 

Bring all the troops home from overseas: Would you pay your neighbor’s electric bill if they wanted your job? Today the U.S. has approximately 200,000 troops stationed around the globe in about 170 countries on some 800 bases at a cost of $150 billion annually or roughly $450 for each American man, woman and child. Many of the countries we are defending are also our economic competitors in the global economy. The cost of the wars thru Jan. 2020 is $19,000 per each man, woman and child.

 

More choices in education; schools in poor neighborhoods are often poorly funded, get poor results and harm the students. End the government’s control of the schools.  Open the market to new ideas and give students an opportunity.

 

End the Federal Reserve: Stop the erosion of our wages by government inflation.  One 1913 dollar has the same value as $26.29 today. We need a stable currency.

 

End the drug war: The drug war was born in racism and has heavily targeted Blacks and Hispanics.  Young people who get arrested carry that burden for life. It costs $51 billion annually.

Repeal all restrictions on health care providers such as midwives, nurse practitioners, and others. In most states today the laws deprive an expectant mother of a choice in birth attendants. Abolish the Certificate of Need Program. Abolish the FDA.  An estimated $1 to $1.5 trillion is wasted annually on healthcare.

 

Abolish land use laws and other housing regulations: These laws cost the nation about $1.6 trillion annually or almost $3660 per worker. Zoning laws have their roots in the nation’s racist history and now everybody pays the price. While these laws harm almost everyone they are especially harmful to renters and low income workers, especially young families.  Boarding houses that once were home to about 30% of the people in cities have been outlawed in most cities.  In 1901 the average family paid 23% of their income on shelter. Today many low income, families spend twice that.

 

Open the transit marketplace to alternative providers. City politicians outlawed competition from private businesses in the early 1900s. Today you pay about 17% of you income for transportation compared to 8% in 1930 thanks to regulations. Regulations that limit your right to own and operate a private transit business need to be repealed. Elderly women, working mothers and members of minority groups are the victims of the lack of services. As one government study reports, “The lack of personal mobility has economic, social and human costs, such as higher unemployment, reduced tax revenue, greater welfare and medical costs, and limited social potential.” Six percent of white households do not have a car.  14% percent of minority households don’t have a car, and for Blacks specifically, it is 18%, or three times that of whites. 

 

Abolish occupational licensing laws: In our nation these laws have been used to restrict competition especially between blacks and white after the Civil War. In 1950 about 5% of jobs required some license, today 35% of jobs do.

 

Abolish business licensing laws including Cottage Kitchen laws: We engage in trade to provide food, shelter and clothing for ourselves and families. When the government requires a license, they are selling your right to engage in that trade.            END/ mhw

 The Military

The U.S. government has over 200,000 military personnel stationed on over 750 bases in more than 75 countries. This is a drain on the American economy and is a subsidy to our global competition. This does not include those in Iraq, Afghanistan or related theatres of operations.

When we include such items as military pensions, the Veterans Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the C.I.A, Department of Homeland Security and other related items the budget to defend the United States comes to over $3,000 for every man, woman and child in our country.

Since the end of World War II the American taxpayers have helped protect the nations of Western Europe from a possible attack from the Soviet Union but the Soviet Union is no more and the Cold War has ended. But now that the nations of Western Europe are back on their feet the transfer continues and is detrimental to the American worker who is competing in a world market.

We have 53,000 troops in Germany, 50,000 in Japan and 28,000 in Korea. Each of these countries spend about one-fourth what the U.S. does on defense for each man, woman, and child. From each of these countries Americans buy cars, electronic gadgets, steel and other products from companies that compete against American workers

We maintain roughly 9,000 troops in England.  Who are we protecting the English from?  Do they expect the Normans to come across the Channel again?  The last time they did was 1066. 

Then there is Italy where we have roughly 9,000 troops.  Italians spend about $600 each for defense.

The deployment of U.S. troops abroad could be like a tripwire where a misunderstanding drags us into war as almost happened in 1983 with the Able Archer military games in Europe.

 

Approximately 48% of the world’s military spending is from the U.S. Estimates place the cost of our defending other nations at one-fourth our national defense budget, at least $250 billion annually, or almost $750 for each American citizen.  This is more than the nations where we have troops stationed pay to defend themselves!
           

The political leadership in America has failed to explain the costs of this deployment to the taxpayers, nor do we have an understanding of the consequences of this long-term commitment.  

Is it wise for these foreign nations to depend on the U.S. for this commitment?

What will happen should the U.S. have to withdraw from these commitments due to crisis elsewhere that is of a military nature, or a financial one in America?

Some sources estimate the U.S. has used the military to intervene in the affairs of other nations over 100 times since 1900. That does not include WWI & WWII

Major General Smedley D. Butler USMC, retired, now deceased and twice a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor had this to say about war:

“WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

 

When was the last time your Senator or Congress person explained how much it costs to keep our troops overseas? Call them and ask!

It makes no more sense to pay the defense bills of those we compete with in this global economy than it does to pay the electric bill of your neighbor.

Draft/mhw  579 words