[OwenKellogg]

Colonel Frank Ryan resurrects Jimmy Carter's misery index.

Although written earlier this year, Colonel Ryan's solutions are still relevant for a congress wrestling with the right way to go:

For starters, we must:

•Curb government spending and reduce our national debt
•Audit the Federal Government and produce a meaningful balance sheet and cash flow statement to include all unfunded liabilities.
•Audit the Federal Reserve to determine the true financial vulnerabilities in our banking system.
•Reduce and streamline government regulations to help businesses reduce costs so they can begin rehiring
•Sell off state owned enterprises to reduce costs and improve efficiencies
•Emphasize a national policy of rebuilding of American manufacturing
•Provide significant tax credits for education and retraining of American workers.
•Make free international trade a national priority.

[org.whodat]

About 50/50! Half of it is bs and half is not!!! The only correct parts are rolling back government and government employees and doing away with regulations. Hell Reagan deregulated the transportation industry and we had a boom, every since that day, the democrats with willing republicans have inch by inch re-regulated it. And free trade is BS, we need balanced trade.

[loveliberty2]

"•Sell off state owned enterprises to reduce costs and improve efficiencies
•Emphasize a national policy of rebuilding of American manufacturing
•Provide significant tax credits for education and retraining of American workers."

Excellent start!

To begin with, America's Founders never envisioned that the "state" would own and run "enterprises." They understood human nature and the human tendency to abuse power, once delegated. Owning previously private companies would never have entered their minds.

Second, to "emphasize a national policy" is not morally equivalent to a "command" economy. Rather, it would be a return to what James Madison called "the benign influence" of a responsible government. The "national policy" of the Founders of this free society was to prohibit the government from interfering in what they called the "individual enterprise" of "We, the People," thereby allowing opportunity, creativity, innovation, and prosperity to thrive.

That is a "benign" government--not one of "malignant" tendencies to grow and stifle economic the growth and prosperity of its citizens.

Next, to "provide tax credits" for education and retraining is the opposite of the current power-hungry controllers of education. Rather, they believe in adding more and more "taking" in "taxes" so that they can buy votes from the huge bureaucracies they have created. These ideas are the opposite of America's Founders' principles.

The writer cited on this thread did not provide recommendations for state command, but for freeing up the citizenry to accomplish what Americans accomplished in the first 200 years.