Equalizing Prosperity

In the United States of America, citizens are all too familiar with the two sided economic stances of the major parties, with labor unions and the public sector the favored child of the left, and corporations the darling of the right. And still, after nearly five decades of these policies, there still has yet to be a government which champions the valid proposal of a universal and flat tax, which the National Alliance Foundation firmly believes in.

Feeding the corporations might create a meager sum of jobs in the nation, but it scarcely assembles enough to add a large period of economic plenty to the national markets, thus staying the country in a limbo of inaction and uncertainty. And while jobs within the public realm seem worthwhile in the short run, they have a tendency of damaging the economy further as taxes are drawn from the people to provide for their salaries.

Possibly the most positive element to a flattened tax system would be the removal of the lower income individuals almost completely from the tax brackets in America. Because a universal rate would remove the proportional differences from the amount of tax levied on different income levels, poor and lower middle class would no longer have major stake in tax levels, adding to their overall financial security.

For larger income drawers, the system would help by leaving them with more funds to lend and invest in the markets, benefiting the middle class college graduates and small business owners who are trying to hold unto their personal share of success in the capitalist pool. In a day and age when our largest obstacle to more prosperity is the unwillingness of financial institutions and wealthy citizens to make secure loans to the younger generations, the economy needs a stimulant to help its markets rejuvenate its statistical potency.

Already in several other countries, including the power-brokering state of Russia, flat tax rates have worked tremendously, dragging the nation from a near dead zone at the start of Boris Yeltsin's presidency to yearly growth of 9.5% in 2009. With similar growth in the United States of America, businesses would begin lending and purchasing inventory much faster, pushing the markets out of the recessions abyss and into a more stable, job friendly economy.

Showing this sort of leadership might be difficult for the dusty halls of Congress, yet it is the precise remedy to our slowing national economy. No longer should the capitol act on ideology; it must move to save the futures of Americans in this generation and the next.

Andrew Rimmer

National Alliance Vice President for Communications

Economic Mayhem: Part II

In recent hours, the Obama Administration announced its plans for a new fiscal blitz against the wavering economy with a carefully labeled "economic plan." Quick to respond after reporters attempted to place the new attempt into the same category as the Administration's earlier stimulus package, the President furiously insisted on giving it the precautionary tag of the aforementioned plan, hoping to avoid a parallel comparison with his all but universally loathed  "cures" for our nation's monetary and fiscal problems.

Whether Barack Obama employs more rhetoric or even none at really is irrelevant at the point in history, and will not truly help us save us from the pitfall of an extended or double dipped recession within our economy. It is not that any members of the current majority government honestly feel or can prove the future benefits of the first and now proposed second stimulus; rather, they know the prior attempt was all a worthless facade, and the second will mirror its same classifications.

No, the Administration and the Congress is tying everything to the hated word of Capitol Hill, the binding fragment that should not inhabit the minds of our leaders as they make decisions,l yet is all too present in our present state of governance: political ideology. Even in its most mild form, the sensation has so passionately seized hold of the Democratic Party and the President that it now threatens to become the key ticket to both of their downfalls in this fresh decade.

What must be understood in explaining this is that the top dogs of the Democratic Leadership, most notably Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer, ran in 2006 and 2008 not with a European-style social democratic platform, but with a more moderate, fix Washington strategy. Americans were less appreciative of the Democrats than simply angry at the Republicans, and without too much difficulty, the center-leftist party coasted to an admirable victory, capturing both houses and inflicting several humiliating defeats on the incumbent Republicans. Two years later in 2008, the Democrats tried to play the same card, interrupted only by the presence of a somewhat annoying presidential candidate who was convinced that mass appeal was his ticket to the Whitehouse. He went from closing Guantanamo Bay, to fixing the economy, to trying terrorists in America,  with a touch of everything to please the unsatisfiable populace, and came out on top.

Now President Obama and his party's leaders are struggling to cover for the unrealistic policies which he foolishly proposed in order to win the 2008 election. After all the fundraising and claims of future prosperity, his government is boiling down to an atrocious mix of braggart ways and projected, not sincere, leadership.

With his latest gambit being a second stimulus package, even the President knows his plans will not work, but he is fixated about the historical view of his ideology. Did he stick his guns as a social democrat, or dispel Keynesian philosophy for fundamentalist common sense? Truth unveiled, Barack Obama cannot stand the notion of his ideology being publicly versed as ineffective a wrong. His type of persona will always object, arguing long after his presidency that "too much obstructionism was involved," and that "the time was not right" for his plans to reach positive fruition.

Despite the endless sentences of jargon we will be forced to endure both in defense of this new package and afterwards, good men must push on for beneficial additions to help the economy. As the National Alliance Foundation has made clear, the key to recovery is not in more government, or in breaks only for corporations, but in the restarting of the small business community to provide jobs and opportunity to the commonwealth. Entrepreneurs, armed with a restructured policy that aims to eliminate business income tax and hands out credits for companies who invest in domestically produced products will boost our state of fiscal stability to a healthy zone of general success in the near future.

If President Obama desires to mend his image with the voters, then he must shift his range of vision to focus on helping businesses survive, not in paying off union members with large checks from the taxpayer's pocket. In fact, it would be far wiser to simply give the money to businesses through loans and to state and local governments. Federal programs are known for their ineptitude and poor results, verse the wiser actions of councilors and delegates closer to the public.

Our recovery from this recession will not come from the government; it shall be made up of the efforts and bravery of the small business community, which is the heart and soul of the American People.

John Lai

National Alliance Treasurer and Comptroller General