“Fresh Ideas”

President-elect Barack Obama called the latest U.S. job losses on Friday “a stark reminder of how urgently action is needed” to revive the nation’s staggering economy. He said he was open to fresh ideas from Congress. “Just show me. If you can show me that something is going to work, I will welcome it. If it works better than something I’ve proposed, I’ll welcome it,” Obama told a news conference.

Here are some fresh ideas:

Deregulate the economy across the board. We’re told the economy has been too LITTLE regulated. Exactly the opposite is true. The economy is so regulated that pull and power took priority over integrity and competence. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government sponsored pseudo-businesses. Our current regulatory infrastructure was established by the ultimate liberal, FDR. It was supposed to prevent another Great Depression. For decades, “capitalism” has operated under the premise of privatized profit and socialized risk, totally because of government intervention. Does government get the blame? No way. The failure of government sponsored enterprises has, incredibly, been used as justification for the creation of still more government enterprises. Good luck!

Deregulate health care. People who live in highly regulated states should be allowed to buy health insurance plans based in other states. A plan that costs $500 a month in one state will cost $1000 a month in a more regulated state. This isn’t right, fair or economical. Doctors should be freed from the chains of Medicare and Medicare. The doctor-patient relationship should be restored, everyone agrees. The best way to do this is restore a free market. Health care should be sold on an open market JUST LIKE cell phones, televisions and a carton of milk. A free market makes products and services desired by massive numbers of people affordable for nearly everyone. People will figure out how to finance health care when government gets out of the way.

Lower taxes for everyone, everywhere. If one more person says, “MY taxes won’t go up under Obama; only the rich guy’s will,” I don’t know what I’ll do. How do people get their income? Through jobs, primarily. How are jobs created? By rich people. If these rich people weren’t rich, that would mean they’re out of business. Because they’re IN business, they have jobs to offer people who seek regular, normal incomes that most people have. How is taking more money from the rich people — so they can afford to hire fewer people — going to create jobs? Even if every penny of the trillions of dollars Obama takes from the country is used efficiently — an inconceivable scenario, to be sure — this will only be money that otherwise would have been utilized in the private sector. Government can not create a single penny. Not one. It can only transfer dollars. One thing government can do is print more paper money. This leads to inflation, as we saw in the 1970s. Inflation is inevitable when government grows and the private economy continues to stagnate. The inflation in the 1970s was terrible, but it did not destroy the country. Massive inflation — 50 or 70 percent, rather than 5 or 10 percent — would. Is this the road we want to even consider going down?

Are reducing taxes and making the private sector stronger — not weaker — such morally unacceptable things to do that we will sacrifice our entire way of life so that socialists craving power in Washington DC can have their way? None of my ideas — nor even a watered down version of them — will get a hearing by our new government. This is because while they pretend to care about doing “what works” instead of focusing on ideology, they are more ideological than most. They will only do what “spreads the wealth,” what punishes the rich, and what makes capitalism weaker and socialism more prominent than it already is in our society. Probably about 46 percent of the country already realizes it. In a few months, or several years tops, more than half of the country will know it and believe it.

What then? That’s the thing to watch.