Michael Moore proclaims “Capitalism did nothing for me.”

You’re wrong, Michael. Dead wrong. Capitalism has done plenty for you, sport.

1. American Capitalism made your 7,500 calorie per day diet cheaper (and tastier) here than anywhere else in the world.
2. That shirt you’re wearing. Polo, by Ralph Lauren. $80 in size XXXL, available at Big and Tall Mens shops nationwide.
3. Horizontal stripes. A guy your size would be locked up in most socialist countries for that fashion faux pas. Probably executed in Italy, France or Sweden.
4. The world’s best health care system, good for taking care of behavior-related chronic health care issues like cardio-vascular disease, type II diabetes, and gout.
5. Intellectual property rights are protected under capitalism. (It makes me shudder to refer to your, ahem, body of work as “intellectual property”, but there you have it.)
6. If you subtract out the rentals and royalties you’ve earned from theaters and distributors who are capitalists, you’d be living under a bridge somewhere.
7. Your freedom to ambush corporate CEOs made you rich. You try that stunt with the new owners of GM, and you’ll have your kneecaps broken.
8. Or worse, your next movie will be called Jimmy Hoffa and Me.
9. A cushy apartment in Manhattan, the Bolshevik paradise.
10. Most of all, you should be thankful that capitalism has given you an affluent, liberal, self-loathing audience which eagerly laps up your tripe.

H/T cnsnews via the Drudge Report

Out amongst the usual street theater that follows a meeting of world economic powers like that held last week in London, the observer will behold a good sample of debased political idiom. The banners read like cant on stilts: “Abolish money” and “One currency, one government, one world” and “The government lies” and “Democracy is an illusion” and — my favorite — “No borders anywhere.” It is a peculiar amalgam of cynicism and Utopia, this idiom. The great reaction against a failed aspect of modern Capitalism shows at once a sneering mistrust, often bolstered by dreary conspiracism, and an almost innocent hope in drastic remedies. Somehow modern politics has managed to bring into alliance despair and idealism.

Read More →

The almost singular driving purpose of our American economic policy should be* to encourage productive capital to move here. (Not high finance engineering, but actual means of production, to use the old terminology.) In fine, the driving purpose of our policy should be Hamiltonian through and through — the difference being that while he had to build a base of productive capital all we have to do is restore one.

What is the dearest thing on earth right now? Capital.

So we offer a two year tax holiday — on everything: income, payroll, cap gains, business, corporate, you name it; and to this tax holiday append a mechanism to grandfather in any company that moves operations into the United States. In other words, I propose to institute a radical Federal tax holiday until 2012, say: at which point the previous regime kicks back in — except for those operations that moved into America during that window of tax abeyance.

To mitigate some of the budgetary nightmares implied by this, we could go with a flat 50% tax on income above some level of wealth. (My thanks to Francis for suggesting this modification.)

Sure, we create the outlines of a mischievous regime of economic aristocracy, which our descendants will likely abuse, but at least we give ourselves a shot at recovering to real economic health, sooner rather than much later.

_____

Read More →