James MacDonald of ForeignPolicy.com describes the current Seldon Crisis occurring in Western economies as the end of a seven decade experiment. This seven decade experiment is described by Walter Russell Mead as The Blue Social Model. He talks us through its particulars below.

Graduate from high school and you were pretty much guaranteed lifetime employment in a job that gave you a comfortable lower middle class lifestyle; graduate from college and you would be better paid and equally secure. Life would just go on getting better. From generation to generation we would live a life of incremental improvements — the details of life would keep getting better but the broad outlines of our society would stay the same.

This system has been irretrievably holed below the water line. The fundamental organizing principal of the American Economy will have to be moved away from the rudiments of the now-failed Blue Social Model. The GOP candidates competing with Barack Obama for the presidency will have to demonstrate they can effectively drive this transformation. Today we discuss the pros and cons of Michele Bachmann’s stated policies and past actions with regard to this monumental task.

We begin with Michele Bachmann’s stated positions on how to resurrect the US economy. She has not been bashful. You will not have to walk around wondering what the Congresswoman really thinks. On the front of the Issues Page of her primary campaign website, Congresswoman Bachmann lays out five top priorities as a constitutional conservative. Three of these five issues relate directly to economics.

Restore our economy and create millions of new jobs.
Repeal Obamacare and its unconstitutional mandates.
Achieve deep cuts in spending to reduce America’s debt.

She has taken an obvious stand against massive government involvement in revitalizing economic growth. She is further critical of the current policy prescriptions being employed by President Obama below.

President Obama’s economic policies have failed: employers are paralyzed by record spending and debt, a weakened dollar, exploding energy prices, the explicit threat of new tax increases on top of the highest corporate rates in the world, Obamacare with its burdens on businesses, and a flood of new rules such as carbon regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency – which should be renamed the Jobs Killing Agency.

She issues a specific set of political promises on the same page of her blog as the critique.

I will lead the way in cutting spending, reducing taxes and deep-sixing our 3.8 million-word Internal Revenue Code so companies can invest again. As a first order of business, I will direct the elimination of counterproductive regulations, repeal Obamacare and stop cap-and-trade in its tracks so companies can operate again.

I next move to an examination of Michele Bachmann’s Congressional record to determine if these stated views are reflected in her actual political work. She has authored legislation to simplify the tax code and make it more business friendly. She Sponsored HR 86: End Tax Uncertainty Act of 2011. According to THOMAS, this bill was intended to accomplish the following.

Makes permanent: (1) the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001; (2) provisions of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 that reduce income tax rates on dividend and capital gains income; and (3) the repeal of the estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes.

Amends the Internal Revenue Code to: (1) repeal the alternative minimum tax (AMT) on individual taxpayers; and (2) reduce to 25% the maximum income tax rate on corporations, including personal service corporations.

She also championed regulatory reduction by sponsoring HR 87: To Repeal the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The name of this bill describes well its intended course of action.

Her final major economic bill was H.R. 1286: Healthcare Fiscal Accountability Act of 2011. This was her attempt to effect the repeal of ObamaCare. In essence, Michele Bachmann’s legislative record pretty much reads like her campaign promise. She wants to reduce and simplify taxes, offer regulatory relief and reduce domestic spending by nuking ObamaCare from close-Earth orbit.

There really isn’t a whole lot that needs to be said in summary. She’s laid out a set of proposals that she believes. She has attempted to leverage her limited power as a Congressional Representative to get these priorities enacted into law. She is now running for The Presidency to step up to the Bully Pulpit and ram-rod these policy proscriptions through.

It’s a direct and blunt approach and the ideas are the essence of traditional, Conservative economic policy. If you like meat-and-potatoes, limited government conservatism this should appeal. If you believe lower corporate taxes, coupled with regulatory relief will solve a lot of America’s unemployment problems, Michele Bachmann’s economic views are 180 degrees different than what the government is trying right now.