Politics, Again

Well, now that there are two clear candidates to run for President, it’s time for me to get back to writing about politics.

(Pause for applause). (Briefly).

So, where to begin? First, obviously, there is the epidemic raging across our nation and our world. Too big a topic for a modest blog. Besides, we all know what we should be doing, which is avoiding each other for at least a few weeks.

Then we can leave it up to our elected officials to deal with the problems. I know our President said that he suspected long before anyone else that a pandemic was coming, so we can have complete faith that all that can be done is already being done.

So, let’s move on to another topic.

Anyone remember Walt Kelly? Anyone remember Pogo?

If you don’t, let me digress. Kelly was an animator for Disney - he worked on Pinocchio and Dumbo among other films - and went on to become an influential cartoonist. Pogo was his strip, and well worth looking up. He tackled some of our nation’s worst political problems with a searing wit.

His best line, writing about an over-wrought political anger that was destroying our nation, was “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”  Kelly also had some advice worth remembering, ‘Don’t take life so serious, son, it ain’t nohow permanent.”

Well, back to the blog. The topic for today is the destruction of America’s economy, and the best way to save it.

Lots of people in Congress feel that we should just give money away to everyone, which I think is a fine idea. But, instead of writing $1,000 checks to every adult in the nation, I think there should be a deduction.

Anyone who benefited from the trillion dollar tax cut President Trump gave out in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 should have to pay some of it back. To be fair they should pay back ten cents on every dollar they got from that massive tax cut, which left our nation another trillion dollars in debt. So, if you got a $400 tax cut, you would only get $996. If you got a tax cut bigger than $10,000, you would get nothing. Seems fair to me.

Besides, the information on how much we each got back is already on our tax records, so that deduction would be easy to do, and would save us some badly-needed money.

Next, we are talking about bailing out business. We have to save the airlines and the cruise industry, the hotels and restaurants. Not to mention our long commitment to save our farmers from the suffering caused by our tariff war, and teachers and firemen…oh, wait, they aren’t on Congress’s list. Oh, well, you can’t save everything.

Now I would put some restrictions on any bailout for essential industries. What’s essential? Well, it depends on where you stand. It would be a hard argument to say that our country needs to save every on-line streaming service or every brewery, or even every motel.

OF course, if you run the only motel within 50 miles, it becomes more important. Something to consider.

Now, we don’t want anyone to unfairly profit from a bailout because they have political connections, so the first restriction is that no money could go to any business whose owners or relatives are now in government. You know, drain the swamp.

Next - and call me patriotic - I wouldn’t give any bailout money to any industry that makes money in the United States but pays no taxes here because their corporate headquarters is in some other nation. You know, like every cruise line.

In fact, instead of just giving money away to industries, I would just declare a tax holiday, and return every single dollar that a business paid in federal taxes last year.

I’m not sure how many companies would be effected by that. Amazon, of course, paid no federal taxes,  but different studies say that 60 or 80 or more of our Fortune 500 companies paid no federal tax in 2018.

I would also make it illegal for any bailout money to be used to buy back stock, which is a neat trick. If you are a business with 1,000 shares of stock outstanding and pay a 10 cent dividend, you pay out $100 to your stockholders.

But if you buy back 500 shares with that federal money, all of a sudden your dividend doubles. Just like magic. And if you are a CEO with stock options, well you just got richer. And, the value of your stock just went up.

Maybe that’s why compensation committees of those Fortune 500 companies - the ones that set salary and benefits for their CEO’s - keep finding that the man or woman working for them is superior compared to other people doing the same work in other companies.

Just think about that. We have 500 Fortune 500 companies, and at least 400 of them are run be above-average people. Just don’t ask where the 250 below-below-average CEO’s work.

Now when we figure out which industries are essential, we should bail them out.

Before we do, though, we have to ask if we really need so many airlines or cruise ships. If investors want to invest in them, that’s one thing. But if we become the investor, then we have to decide where to put our money.

Now once those big companies get a bail-out package, they should be able to figure out what to do with the money. After all, they did it last time we had to save them.

What did they do back then? Well, lots of companies bought back their stock. It didn’t create many jobs, but it sure pushed the Dow Jones average up. Sadly, it didn’t last.

So, instead of just talking theory, let me give you some ideas about how we can help save the economy, fast.

First, the government should give every person a $100 credit card that could be used only for a prepared food delivery service. Heck, fast food would be fine, so would a meal from a good restaurant. That would keep a lot of people working.

We could even work out a system that would let homeless people get a meal delivered to a shelter.

Second, everyone gets another credit card that can only be used to buy groceries. To keep it from becoming a cruel joke, I would set the card limit at $50 per person, so that a family of six would get more than someone living alone.

Third, I would start a major education program to create the nurses and technicians, lab workers and other support staff needed to keep hospitals running, then re-open the rural hospitals that have been closing for the past decade and build new ones in our cities.

When we do all that, which should be enough to get us through this first crisis, we can take a look at fixing potholes and run-down power systems.