1% Socialism

This Is America.

Photo by Sharon Mollerus. (License: Creative Commons Attribution)

This Is 1%.

Photo by Kate Raynes-Goldie. (License: Creative Commons Attribution)

All we need to fix all America's economic ills is a wealth ceiling for the richest 1%. Say $1 Million each after their primary residence. No one on Earth needs more than $1 Million after owning their residence - anyone who says they do is obviously a robber baron:

The "World Wealth Report" is a report on individuals with a net worth of at least $1 million in all assets except their "primary residence". The report is compiled annually by Capgemini for Merrill Lynch. World Wealth Report 2007 - "The 11th annual World Wealth Report from Merrill Lynch/Capgemini finds the World's High Net Worth (HNW) population growing to 9.5 million with their assets rising to $37.2 trillion."

Most of the world's robber barons either reside in the USA or keep their assets here. So if we let the rich keep their primary residence plus $1 million of US assets each that nets the treasury about $27T in seized assets and cash. This is 2/3rds of the way to the 40 Trillion we need to achieve the "Patriotic Retirement Plan":

There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them $1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1. They MUST retire. Forty million job openings - Unemployment fixed.
2. They MUST buy a new American CAR. Forty million cars ordered-Auto Industry fixed.
3. They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage- Housing Crisis fixed.

We need another $13T to do this. Well, there's 300,000 churches in America. We could just replace these prayer-houses with twitter - which could finally get twitter paid at, say, 10c per tweet every Sunday ... but the back of my envelope says this selling the steeples only nets about $3T. So we won't get to own our homes shaking down the priests. We need a bigger gun - an elephant gun. Because a personal wealth ceiling ignores the elephant in the room.

The Corporations ...

That's where the robber barons shelter their real assets - those trillions in personal assets are all just for show. We can easily fund another $100T simply by introducing Georgism to the obscenely rich oil, coal, weapons and communications companies. These unholy cabals sell us the land under our feet and the conversations in our assemblies - both our birthrights as Americans sold back to us at extortionate prices. And they sell us the blood of our neighbours who never did us any harm. Let these monsters pay realistic land and infrastructure value taxes and do the American People a public service instead sucking our lifeblood. We'll let them keep enough to stay in business. But their presently gigantic oily asses truly belong to We, The People.

Under 1% Socialism we would have all America's debts paid, all its people housed and economically empowered to the tune of $1 million each, all its primary industries re-established, and an appropriate dividend to all our retirees that they will properly use to send their kids and grandkids to school and pay for the services of the new, prosperous generation of Americans.

Now I admit there is a downside. There would be several hundred billionaires beating a path to the door under this model. But if those ultra-rich value American freedoms so little, just let 'em leave their US assets in the US and vamoose. Because there's an old saying:

If someone borrows a buck from you and you never see them again, that was money well spent.

The robber barons and inheritors of robber barons can go live in the foreign principalities they own in South America and the Middle East. So long as they don't let the North American door hit them in their offshore tax evading butts on the way out, there's no bad karma in that. Wherever they go or whatever they do to the rest of the world, they're not our problem any more.

The other 99% of Americans can continue as pure capitalists. Fat, happy prosperous pure capitalists.

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