Since my ultimate wish as an economic conservative is the economic well-being of my fellow citizens, I have outlined some of the moves that should be made at each level of government to achieve that end.
On the local level, we need to cut down on the high-priced boondoggles. Some outstanding examples include the Ocean Center in Daytona and the public Golf course in New Smyrna Beach. Didn't we learn our lesson with the mistake that is The News-Journal Center?
Categorically, government at the county and city levels can be characterized as having too many public employees and too many burdensome regulations.
The City of New Smyrna appears to be moving toward a severe financial situation. This situation could be easily corrected by declaring bankruptcy and turning the city management over to a bankruptcy referee. However, it would be much better if the city fathers could get hold of the city finances and bring things under control.
A word or two of warning as we move to the federal and state levels: Most of these moves probably have very little chance of being done, but at least they point us in the right direction.
At the federal level, we need not only to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, but make them even deeper and add to them. We need to stabilize the value of the dollar, eliminate barriers to foreign trade, reform the legal system to protect property rights more and pillage the public less.
Finally, we need to eliminate or mitigate many of the rules and regulations that plague us. These moves would make it easier for most of the population of the United States to become rich. People need to get away from hating and punishing the rich because all such moves are a waste of effort and result in severe damage to the non-rich.
We also need to be implementing market- and property rights-oriented solutions to reforming the Social Security System and medical cost problems..
There are a lot other specific things that would be quite useful, but these items will make a very good start.
At the state level, moves that would really help are repealing the classroom size regulations and getting over the notion that we should be pumping obscene amounts of money into public education.
One specific reform that is needed is to extend the protection of the Save Our Homes laws to cover everybody’s property as well as business property. The Idea that outsiders should be treated badly is bad economics and un-American.