President Trump recently floated the idea of eliminating the federal income tax. That tax became a fixture in 1913 when Congress ratified the 16th Amendment. The first U.S. Tax Code was about 400 pages. Today, with everything included, it’s more than70,000 pages! Initially, the income tax was1% on all incomes above $3,000($95,000 in today’s dollars) and applied to only 3% of the population. Today, the graduated rates start at 10% for families earning more than$30,000and go up to37% for families earning above $609,000. Therates vary greatly: The top 1% of taxpayers pay 45% of all income taxes, the top 25% pay 89%, and the bottom 47% pay 0%.
Trump understands that the tax system is a yoke on the neck of American prosperity. According to the National Taxpayer’s Union, Americans spend approximately $260 billion a year complying with the federal Tax Code, most of which goes into the pockets of accountants and lawyers. And that doesn’t count the countless billions businesses spend adjusting their operations to reduce their tax burden in the first place.
Trump has floated the idea of replacing the income tax with tariffs on imports. That’s neither feasible nor a great idea, but the notion of scrapping the current system is a compelling one, particularly if it eliminates the IRS. There’s a great (albeit not perfect) replacement for our current system, one that would replace the current dysfunction and replace it with something that would give the American economy a much-needed jolt: The FairTax.
Basically, the FairTax replaces all federal taxes, including Income, Corporate, Social Security, and others. It replaces all of them with a single retail tax to raise a similar amount.
Here’s an example of how it works: Let’s assume it costs $1.00 for a loaf of bread. According to the people at FairTax.org, $.22 of that $1.00 represents the aggregated federal taxes paid by the baker, distributor, retailer, and every other entity who had a hand in putting that bread on the shelf, including the individual income taxes their employees pay. The bottom line, though, is that you’re paying $1.00 for a loaf of bread.
Under the FairTax, all those aggregated taxes would be eliminated. The loaf’s cost would then be $.78, which includes all the inputs and profits from the farmer, distributor, retailer, etc. At retail, the tax would be $0.23, making the bread’s price $1.01, which is almost the same as before.
But here’s the kicker: Under the current system, when you earn $1.00, you only have between $.63 and $.90 cents left after taxes with which to buy that bread. Under the FairTax, when you earn $1.00, you have $1.00 left after taxes. (You can find the extra penny between the couch cushions!)
Given that the bread’s price stays basically the same, one might ask, “What’s the point?” Well, there are many beyond that whole paycheck in your pocket.
1. Spur Investment in America:
America could use a real shot in the arm. GDP growth is miserable (currently 1.3%). “But at least it’s growing,” you say. Not really.
The government will print (borrow) $1.2 trillion this year to pump into the economy, which will likely come in at about $28 trillion. So, basically, the government is adding 4.2% to the economy via debt, which will have to be paid back, even as GDP grows by less than 1.5%! That’s not real growth. The FairTax would fix that. There’s no single thing Congress could do that would more effectively spur investment in the American economy.
By dropping the income tax to zero, America would spur companies worldwide to prioritize investment in the United States and create millions of new jobs. At the same time, it would motivate American taxpayers to bring home most of the $4 trillion they hold offshore, as would US corporations that hold additional trillions of dollars outside the country. Both would spur investment and create jobs.
2. Spur Entrepreneurship:
American employment is driven by small businesses that are mostly owned by individuals who report their income on their personal tax forms. By eliminating federal taxes and allowing entrepreneurs to keep more of their money, the FairTax would spur more Americans to become entrepreneurs.
3. Increased Competition and Innovation:
As efficiency returns to the market and more entrepreneurs are motivated to start businesses, competition will increase, which leads to more innovation and lower prices. Consumers will not only keep more money in their pockets, as competition drives down prices, those same dollars will buy even more.
4. Limit Congresses’ Power:
Eliminating the Tax Code would remove Congress’s ability to use it to punish disfavored industries and reward pet projects. Lobbyists would inevitably lose much of their power, as a significant amount of lobbying is predicated on enticing Congress to write industry-favorable tax laws.
5. Collect Taxes from Underground Economy:
Everyone who shops would pay the FairTax, including those in the underground economy who currently pay little or no taxes, such as illegals, drug dealers, or employees who are paid in cash.
6. Eliminate the IRS:
Does this need any elaboration?
7. Spur investment and innovation:
By taking the yoke of the Tax Code and IRS off the neck of individuals and businesses, the FairTax spurs investment and innovation. That puts the United States on the strongest economic footing possible on an increasingly competitive global stage.
8. Gives people their time back:
The FairTax frees individuals and businesses to focus 100% of their attention on starting, running, and expanding their businesses rather than contemplating countless tax consequences for every move.
9. A Boost for the Poor:
The FairTax gives every household a “prebate“ equal to the tax a person living on the poverty line would pay. As a result, every family in America who’s living at the poverty level would essentially receive a 22% increase in their income.
The FairTax is not a panacea—just ask the WSJ. It won’t solve all of America’s problems, and it won’t balance the budget, rein in government spending, or eliminate the vagaries of the business cycle. Some employers may try to reduce wages, which will spur labor disputes.
Those issues pale, though, when compared to the FairTax’s greatest benefit: It will begin reining in the imperial federal government, thereby taking the first step in returning America to its true foundation. That foundation is an understanding that the primary function of government is to protect its citizens’ freedoms and allow them to pursue prosperity and happiness unfettered by the tyranny of an oppressive state. Such a resurrection of the 10th Amendment would by itself make the FairTax a worthwhile endeavor and, indeed, go a long way to Making America Great Again.
I’ve
always been a fan of the prosperity created by Western civilization in general
and the United States in particular. Indeed, I even created a website
called Gratitude for America, where I write about
American entrepreneurs who invented things like barbed wire and standardized
shipping containers. But maybe there’s a downside to this prosperity because
we’ve created a class of people (especially in government) completely disconnected
from how the world actually works.
Cyrus
McCormick, who invented the mechanical reaper, is the most important
entrepreneur in human history. He basically untethered mankind from farming,
one of the most dangerous occupations on earth. In 1831, when he invented the
mechanical reaper, approximately 80% of the American population was involved in
agriculture, and, in most places in the world, it was higher—in some cases,
95%.
Back
then, farming’s efficiency hadn’t changed much since the time of the pyramids.
A man, using a scythe, could harvest approximately one acre of grain a day.
Fifty years later, McCormick guaranteed that, by using his machine, a farmer
could harvest 15 acres a day. With today’s machines, a farmer can harvest up to
100 acres in a day. Small wonder that only 3% of the US population today farms.
The
reason McCormick is so important is not because of farming, per se, but because
he freed up most of the population to go out and do other, less dangerous
things. With that shift, work-life
expectancies began to skyrocket in the latter half of the 19th
century. In 1800, the average life expectancy was approximately 30 years, with
Europe averaging 33 and the US close behind. By 1900, the
world average had increased to 32, but in Europe it had jumped
to 43 and in the US to 47.
Since
they didn’t have to be on farms, people became inventors, entrepreneurs, and
innovators. During the late 19th century, countless inventions (e.g., usable
electricity, automobiles, and the telegraph) and innovations (e.g., drilling
for oil, railroad expansion, and the widespread adoption of the assembly line)
changed the Western world. Food became more abundant, transportation became
easier and safer, housing became cheaper, and medicine began to improve.
In the
20th century, things really took off. Today, a quarter of the way through the
21st century, world life expectancy is 72 years, while in the US, it’s 78, and
in Western Europe, it’s above 80.
Not only
are we living longer, but we’re also prosperous beyond anything in human
history. Our food is more varied, dependable, and plentiful than ever. We have
transportation, hospitalization, housing, employment, clothing, education,
sanitation, entertainment, and leisure opportunities exponentially beyond
anything in all of human history.
Contrast
all of that with what humanity endured through most of our history. Poverty and
scarcity were the norm. Food availability was always an issue. War was almost
constant. Work was dangerous. Slavery was everywhere. Many worked seven days a
week, changing clothes was rare if at all, people rarely bathed, virtually
everyone was illiterate, plumbing didn’t exist, disease was rampant, shelter
was overcrowded, heating in the winter was from burning wood or dung if either
could be found, infant mortality was stratospheric, and leisure was a luxury
only the elites could afford.
The
average Westerner’s life is far superior to any experienced by 99.999% of the
people who ever lived, but, somehow, everyone today is a victim—and we know
that everyone is a victim because the elites tell us so. Through schools,
media, and government, we’re told that Western culture is racist, sexist,
fascist, or somehow otherwise oppressive. Basically, the better things get, the
worse they get.
America
today reminds me of a Jetsons episode I saw as a child. George Jetson, the
father of the “Space-aged family,” came home one day exhausted from working at
Spacely Sprockets and said, “Jane, these one-hour-a-week workweeks are brutal.”
No doubt we’d be told he’s still a victim.
The
reason those elites, the ones who seek to manipulate the public, get away with
it is because a significant portion of the population believes them. And they
believe them because of the division of labor-driven prosperity that McCormick
unleashed.
Virtually
the entire left in this country has zero connection with anything having to do
with creating anything, growing anything, building anything, or risking
anything. They spend their days pushing paper in offices or selling
cappuccinos, if they work at all. Not only are few of them farmers, but few are
truckers, lumberjacks, steel workers, plumbers, electricians, or entrepreneurs.
Few have ever had to balance paying a credit card bill versus making payroll.
Few ever risked their money and invested sweat equity to start a business.
The left
today is largely government employees, students, college-educated white women
working inside large corporations, Wall Street, academia, the cabal of NGOs,
the media, the 40 million who suckle on the government teat through programs
like SNAP, and the 47% of the country who either pay no tax or get “refundable
tax credits”.
Few of
those people do anything remotely productive for the economy. Few understand
that the government doesn’t have money beyond what it takes from taxpayers or
prints via taxpayer IOUs. They have no appreciation for Capitalism, the thing
that gave us our prosperity. They flush the toilets and expect them to work,
flip the light switch and expect the room to illuminate, and go to the store to
pick up a pound of beef without knowing how it gets there. Few of them have any
real connection to the basic functionality of life.
The
result of this societal bifurcation is that half of our population has little
understanding of or vested interest in the country’s or the economy’s continued
functioning. More regulations and higher taxes are always the answer because
none of them are affected. Regulations make it harder to open a business or
keep one running, but they’re easy promises for politicians to offer as the
solution to every problem because their voters never pay the price for the
consequences.
We’re
living in the world Ayn Rand envisioned in Atlas Shrugged.
Everything we see going on in our cities, on our streets, and on our border is
so because the division of labor has allowed so many people to bask in
prosperity without having a clue about how it’s actually created or what’s
necessary to maintain it. Their checks come, their jobs are secure, and they
don’t have to deal with the government’s suffocating regulations, so everything
is good.
Of
course, it’s not good, and things are getting worse. Thomas Jefferson
understood the problem, saying in 1824: “I think we have more machinery of
government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the
industrious.” That is 2024 incarnate.
This
needs to be fixed. How we do that, I’m not quite sure, but, at a minimum, we
need to slash government spending and regulations at every level. Perhaps only
those who pay taxes should vote. Perhaps government employees should not be
allowed to vote. Maybe we make election day the day after Tax Day. Whatever the
solution, until those voting have some vested interest in a well-run government
and a functioning economy, things will only get worse, and they’re already
pretty bad.
Americans are busy people—but the real risk in the lead-up
to 2024 is that we may be too busy to pay attention to our last chance to
preserve our liberties.
In one respect we’re no different than any other people on
the planet given that our primary needs are food, water and shelter. Beyond
that however, Americans enjoy a life of leisure opportunities that virtually no
one else on the planet enjoys. Not leisure that’s measured in hours
worked as in France or Germany. Workers in most developed
countries work fewer hours per year than Americans do.
No, what’s different is that Americans have so many ways to
spend their leisure time: Motocross. Shopping. Video games. Countless cable
channels. Amusement parks. Golf. Swimming. Skiing. Football. Baseball. Golf.
Putt putt golf. Pickleball. Off-track betting. Gymnastics. Theater. Karate.
Star Trek conventions. Habitat for Humanity. Cornhole. BBQ competitions.
Quilting competitions. Beauty pageants for kids. These are only a tiny fraction
of the myriad options Americans have at their disposal to entertain themselves
or spend their leisure time watching or participating in.
If one were to compare the spectrum of activities available
to the average American with the equivalent spectrum for any other country on
the planet, it wouldn’t take long to see an enormous difference. Many countries
share some of our pursuits, but the depth and breadth available to Americans is
unparalleled. None of this came about by accident. The reason Americans have
dozens of sports and thousands of activities to participate in, from grade
school to the senior center, is because the nation has been so prosperous for
so long, and the nation has exemplified creativity for things both
consequential and not. The result is a nation where most people have available
a level of entertainment and leisure unparalleled in history.
One consequence of such is that Americans are busy. So busy,
in fact, that they forget to pay attention to some things that really
matter—specifically, government. In a perfect world, no one would have to pay
much attention to the government because it would be run like a well-oiled
machine in the background that wouldn’t cause any trouble. But that’s not how
governments work. Our Founding Fathers knew that, which is why they gave us a
government of separated powers with staggered terms for those responsible for
exercising them. But even such a near-perfect document cannot stand forever in
the face of avarice and the lust for power.
That greed and lust for power is the defining
characteristic of what we call the Swamp. And it was enabled by a plethora of
acts that strengthened and emboldened the apparatchiks who man it. These
included Executive Orders by JFK and Nixon giving federal employees powers or “protections”
they’d never previously had, as well as a 1984 Supreme Court case that required courts to defer to
federal agencies as it relates to rule-making when there is ambiguity in the
legislation.
Together, these and other acts made the Swamp possible. They
built a federal government where it’s almost impossible to fire anyone, and
agencies essentially get to decide who and what they regulate while those
affected have limited redress. So basically, we have agencies that decide what
laws they want to write staffed by people who can’t be fired regardless of
their failure, incompetence, or criminality.
Of course, every two years, the cacophony that is American
life is made that much more dissonant by elections. Most Americans, however,
unfortunately, spend less time learning what’s really at stake in those
elections than they do selecting teams for their March Madness brackets or
wondering what’s going on in the dysfunctional Kardashian universe. The reality
of this disaster was demonstrated 15 years ago
by John Ziegler.
This situation might have been acceptable 100 years ago when
the federal government was relatively small and had little discernible impact
on most American lives. Today, however, when the leviathan of the federal
government seeks to control virtually every aspect of our lives, it’s simply
not. There’s a tipping point in every endeavor in life, and the lifecycle of a
Republic is no exception. Leaving the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin
Franklin was asked: “Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?” He
responded: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
Two hundred and thirty years later we are on the verge of
losing it. The problem is that too many Americans have no idea what the danger
is and have little interest in finding out. They’ve spent so much of their
lives enjoying the leisure and entertainment our Republic has made possible
that they’ve forgotten that the foundation of freedom and prosperity upon which
those conditions are built are not ordained by God, not set in stone, and not
guaranteed. The conditions underlying Americans’ freedoms and prosperity are
far more fragile than most recognize but, like frogs in a pot of slowly warming
water, they’re succumbing to the creeping threat. Indeed, there’s an inverse
relationship between government micromanagement and citizens’ freedom.
Natural gas has been a key element of cooking in America for
centuries. It’s a clean-burning fuel, cheap and plentiful, with a variety of
sources, mostly in red states, which makes it hard to control. So,
if Democrats can’t control the supply of something, they simply take control of
the demand. Doing so in this case has the twin virtues of harming the economies
of red states while forcing Americans to buy new, “green lobby approved”—read:
dysfunctional and expensive—appliances. All, of course, in the name of the
“Climate Change” hoax.
These and literally tens of thousands of other federal regulations are
the cost to Americans of not paying attention, summed up
by the notion that politics is downstream from culture. Hollywood and the media
destroyed American culture, which made turning Washington’s alphabet departments,
agencies, and bureaus into tools of tyranny easy.
The question is, can anyone shake the American people out of
this political stupor long enough for them to recognize the danger they face?
Will Americans rise to the occasion in 2024, or will they instead continue to
eat the fruit from the tree of liberty, oblivious to the rot of its roots?
Perhaps a paraphrasing of Martin Niemöller might help:
First, they raised the minimum wage, and I cheered because I
had a job.
Then, they destroyed public education, and I didn’t act
because I sent my kid to private school.
Next, they limited cable rates, and I applauded because I
saved $20 a month.
When they came for my light bulbs, I didn’t react because it
made me feel good to help the environment.
One day, they said ethnicity was more important than ability
for college acceptance, but I said nothing because I’d already graduated.
They increased taxes on the rich, and I didn’t care because
I wasn’t rich.
Then they came for my gun, my car, my job, and eventually
everything I hold dear, but there was no one left to stand with me because no
one remembered what real liberty was or how it was supposed to be protected in
the first place.
After almost 250 years however the life of the average
American is not directly impacted by what those white men did in Philadelphia. Indirectly however, we experience the world
build upon their foundations every day… and most of that world was the result
of the inventions and innovations of other white men.
If you woke up this morning and did anything other than work
on a farm, you can thank Cyrus
McCormick.When he invented the
mechanical reaper in 1831 farming hadn’t changed in a thousand years, where one
man with a scythe and two helpers could harvest two acres of grain a day.McCormick’s early reaper allowed a man to double
that and his later reapers multiplied that many times.His introduction of payment plans made his
machines the workhorses of a dramatic increase in efficiencies in farming.At the time of his invention 80%
of America’s population was either directly or indirectly involved in farming.Today that number is closer to 2%.So in essence Cyrus McCormick freed up almost
80% of the population to go out and do pretty much anything… from becoming
entrepreneurs, to florists to baseball players to scientists, to plumbers to
Instagram models and, yes, sadly, professional race grifters and activists.
Another white guy who had an extraordinary impact on America
today was Henry Ford.Many people think
Ford invented the automobile.He
didn’t.But his auto manufacturing production
line brought the car from a luxury item only the rich could afford to a product
tens of millions and eventually billions of people around the world could
afford.With that unprecedented access
to cars the universe opened up for Americans.Transportation limits on where they could work, live or go to school
evaporated.Suddenly they could drive
anywhere they wanted, not limited to where public transport went or how far
their horse could travel in a day or how far they could walk. Today 250 million
Americans drive three trillion miles a year, six times the distance the earth
travels around the sun!
There’s also Willis Carrier, the man who invented modern air
conditioning.Every summer as temperatures
soar across the country, scorching everything in their path, most Americans can
retreat to their homes and relax in air conditioned comfort or enjoy a movie
theater or restaurant that would otherwise feel like a sweatshop. The degree to
which the air office spaces changed the face of America is hard to
exaggerate.While manufacturing steel or
working on a farm might not be impacted greatly by the invention of air
conditioning, many of the things Americans do for work would be much more
difficult if not impossible without it.Things like medical research and high tech manufacturing or more mundane
things like computer programming or working in a superstore or busy restaurant.
Then there is Elisha Otis, inventor of the safety
elevator.Take a look at the skyline of
any American city and you’ll see buildings that stack 30 or 50 or even 100
floors high.Of the tallest, skyscrapers
of 40 or more floors, New York City alone has 250, and there are almost a thousand
across the country.None of those,
or even the tens of thousands of buildings of just 10 or 20 stories high wouldn’t
be possible without Otis’s safety elevator.His presentation at
the 1853 New York World's Fair helped usher in the advent of skyscrapers by
giving much of the public the confidence to ride in elevators.
And there are countless more including George Eastman, the
personal camera innovator, Charles Goodyear who put tires on our cars, the
Wright Brothers and their airplane, Samuel Colt and his guns, Isaac Singer the
sewing machine magnate, Levi Strauss and his jeans, Leo Baekeland who brought
us plastic, and thousands of others.To
those historic figures you can add (for better or worse) contemporary white men
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark
Andreessen and in reality, millions of others.
The fact of the matter is that these white men built much of
the world we live in today. There’s no group of people in human history who
have had a greater impact on mankind than white males in general, and American
white males in particular.The world
they created may not be perfect, but measured against virtually every culture
that came before them the level of freedom and prosperity isn’t even close.
As such, we should celebrate White Male Pride!Yay!
But here’s the thing, although these white men may have
accomplished much, white men have also done extraordinarily bad things… from
Jack the Ripper to Hitler to Stalin to Teds Kaczynski and Bundy.
We can’t celebrate white male pride because white men are
not monolithic.Some white men are great
and others despicable human beings.The
thing that made America great wasn’t the fact that her Founding Fathers were
white, but rather it was the ideas they had and the framework they put in
place.
The notion of white pride is simply absurd. But the truth
is, so too is black pride and gay pride.George Washington was no more of a representative of all white males than
was Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas shooter.Equally, MLK was no more a representative of all black males than was
Samuel Little, the nation’s deadliest serial killer.
And while celebrating white males is absurd, we should nonetheless
be grateful for the things that some of them bequeathed to us that have allowed
Americans to live lives that kings couldn’t have imagined just a century
ago.
And that legacy isn’t due to skin color, it’s due to a
culture that developed individual rights, freedom and representative government
over more than two millennia, and happened nowhere else on earth. Those basic
elements, when combined with free markets and limited government, found their
apex in the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution.Today the nation built on those foundations is
the most robust and prosperous in history.
But that prosperity can only survive if the fundamental
tenants of its culture remain strong. Sadly they’re not, and that’s why America
is fraying.The Democrats’ balkanization
of Americans by race and sex have taken Americans’ focus off of creating more
prosperity and instead put the focus tribalization and redistributing wealth,
with the full weight of the government, media and academia driving the transition.
No nation in history has prospered by redistributing wealth.It’s against human nature and a recipe for
tyranny.The key to prosperity is
creating more wealth and the Democrats have undermined that as they vilify
whites, both past and present, for the crime of being white.The truth is, we don’t need black or gay or
white pride. What we do need however is pride in the successes America has
achieved and the building blocks of freedom that made that success
possible.
Just as comparison and envy are the roots of evil, gratitude
and conscientiousness are the fount of prosperity. Although it’s verboten to
mention in woke 2023, the reality is that white men built much of the world we
live in today. We can be grateful for their efforts without making them gods or
denigrating anyone else.The beauty of
America, particularly in the 21st century is that anyone can
succeed.We should look to history with
curiosity seeking to find inspiration in what those men (most of whom happened
to be white) accomplished, not with scorn and disdain for their sin of being men
of their times.
This past summer there were a lot of American flags ripped,
walked on and set on fire around the country.Protesters pulled down statues, looted stores and set buildings on fire
across the country.They claim that
America is racist.They claim Donald
Trump is a fascist.They suggest
Capitalism is a cancer and must be replaced.And the Constitution, as it has been a tool of oppression since its
writing, must be eliminated.
To listen to protesters speak, the United States is a
cesspool of racism and oppression where only the rich thrive.
Maybe they’re right.Maybe America is nothing but one large work camp where citizens are
oppressed by their overlords where they have no freedoms and experience a
quality of life that is something out of Dickens. Maybe…
If that’s true, it should be easy to spot.Below are a variety of tables listing measures
of life ranked by country.The sources
for each set of data is different but most evaluate between 180 & 210
countries, depending on how that term is defined.
So what do the data say about this fascist, oppressive American
country? Well, as a journalist might say... lets's go to the data.
How about we start off with the basics… Life
Expectancy.Below is a table of selected
countries for life expectancy.The world
average is 72.6 and the United States comes in at 78.9, putting it solidly in
the top 25%.That’s not terrible.
Then of course there’s earning a living.Below is a table with the average incomes
around the world and the United States comes in at #5, with not a single
country above the United States having more people than the city of New York. That
matters of course because like herding cat, having a country where people are
spread out over vast areas, have extraordinarily different backgrounds and
heritages it’s far more difficult to get everyone on the same page in terms of
what works to achieve prosperity.America has done that.
And of course everyone talks about GDP, the sum of all of
the goods and services a nation produces. Below is a table of the 15 nations
with the largest GDPs in the world.The
United States, with 5% of the planet’s population produces 24% of the world’s
economic output:
Another way of looking at this is GDP on a per capita
basis.Here too none of the nations
above the United States has a population above that of New York.Again, none of the other countries on this
list comes close to being similar to the United States in terms of size and
diversity of our population, and with only Australia being similar when
compared to geographic footprint.
Of course it’s not all about income, it’s about what you can
do with that income.Below is a table showing
the top 20 countries (out of 101) based on the cost of living which measures
what one can actually purchase with the money they earn.And the United States comes in at 4.
Most of us work for a living and sometimes things work out
well and we accumulate significant assets, making us millionaires!Sadly, I’m not one of them, but there are a
LOT of millionaires in the United States.As a matter of fact, the United States, which again is 5% of the world’s
population, is the home of fully 40% of the world’s millionaires:
Millionaires: (in thousands)
1
United
States
18,614
2
China
4,447
3
Japan
3,025
4
United
Kingdom
2,460
5
Germany
2,187
6
France
2,071
7
Italy
1,496
8
Canada
1,322
9
Australia
1,180
10
Spain
979
11
Netherlands
832
12
Switzerland
810
13
India
759
14
South
Korea
741
15
Taiwan
528
And not only that, the number of millionaires as a
percentage of the population is higher in the United States than any nation on
the planet other than Switzerland… but in our defense, Switzerland has really
good chocolate.
Particularly important in this discussion is who those
millionaires are.The makeup of American
millionaires is below.Minorities,
making up 40% of the nation’s population, make up 24% of the millionaires.
And what’s equally important about achieving economic success is mobility into
America’s economic elite.Forbes, which
publishes its annual Forbes 400 chronicling the 400 richest Americans reports
that fully 70% of America’s richest individuals are self made while only 30%
inherited their fortunes.
American Millionaires By Race (and Population Race
Breakdown):
But of course not everyone will end up millionaires, but
opportunities exist nonetheless.Below
is a table that chronicles social mobility, which is roughly characterized as
the ability to move from one economic level to another.Of the approximately 180 countries in the
world this table looks at the 82 with the most measurable opportunities.The average of these 82 countries is 62.2,
and the United States comes in position of 27 with a mobility score of 70.4,
while Denmark is first with a score of 85.2 and Côte d’Ivoire is last with a
score of 34.5.A significant element of
this measure is education and healthcare, both of which drag down the United
States significantly thanks to excessive government intervention.
The reality of the fact that government intervention in
healthcare and education handicap the country is be demonstrated by the
following table that looks at the ease of doing business.This metric includes starting a business as
one of its measures, along with things like regulations, taxes, rule of law and
others.Starting a business is one of
the most effective ways in which one might improve their family’s economic
situation.To the degree that the United
States is ranked sixth out of 180 nations in terms of the ease of doing
business yet 27th in terms of social mobility suggests that that economic
opportunity is very real, while other measures hold the country back.
How about getting to work to run that business or make that
money – and hopefully have some fun too!Americans love to drive.As such,
the price of gas is a big deal.Below is
what people pay in different countries for gas.The world average is $3.80 and the US comes in at $2.15 per gallon while
in France they pay $5.94 and in Hong Kong they pay $8.49!
But it’s not just gas, but there’s buying a car and
maintaining it.Below is a table that
shows the percentage of annual salary it would take to buy a family car and
operate it for one year.These costs
include not only the car and its gas, but insurance and maintenance as well.
And where might an American drive?How about home!Below is a table showing the size of homes
for various countries around the world.The only nation where homes are bigger on average than in the United
States is Australia, but that should be expected as apparently all Australians
keep pet crocodiles!
It’s not just the freedom to drive around that American’s
like.For a nation that was founded on
the pursuit of freedom, freedom of all sorts is still important.Below are two tables, one measuring Economic
Freedom and the other Personal Freedom.
The freedoms in the following two tables in this analysis encompass
a variety of measures including these: Rule of Law / Security and Safety /
Movement / Religion / Association, Assembly, and Civil Society / Expression and
Information / Identity and Relationships / Size of Government / Legal System
and Property Rights.The numbers below
are the top nations of the total pool of 162 nations measured.
And of course the number one freedom someone can have is the
freedom of speech. Without the freedom to say what’s on your mind without fear
of retribution from the government is the strongest tool available for keeping
a government honest.Below is a table
demonstrating something that anyone paying attention this summer would
recognize, Americans have a level of free speech unfettered by government
authorities that is unprecedented in the world.
Another part of freedom is access to information, which is
increasingly delivered via the Internet.Below is a table that looks at the percent of the population with
Internet access for 214 countries.
While the United States may lag far behind on academic
success in primary education, our university system is the best in the world by
far.Below are the 15 best universities
in the world and the only two on the list that are not from the United States
are Oxford and Cambridge in the UK.
Then there is charity.The United States spends more money on charity than any other nation by
far.That is a function of both the
largest GDP as well as the percentage of giving.That is reflected in the table on the left
below.The table on the right measures a
more holistic giving approach that combines donations, volunteering and helping
strangers.Here the United States sits
at number two.
But it’s not just charity that demonstrates America’s
willingness to help, it’s the total social welfare spending.For whatever one’s views on such endeavors,
the United States is behind only France in social welfare spending.This measure includes things such as public
and private social expenditure, the effect of direct taxes (income tax and
social security contributions), indirect taxation of consumption on cash
benefits, as well as tax breaks for social purposes.
We are slight slackers however when it comes to spending on
video games.Americans come in number 3
behind Japan and South Korea on this important measure.
There is one last measure that must be looked at.That is Defense.The United States spends more on defense than
the next 10 countries combined.For some
that might sound problematic, but the reality is that American spending on
defense has allowed the world, particularly Europe to thrive.The second table below shows defense spending
as a percent of GDP.One of the reasons
that European nations are able to generate such extensive welfare spending programs
is that they have kept their defense spending low for decades while the United
States defense expenditures brought about the longest period of overall peace
in Europe in history.That spending may
not show up in happiness measures or salary measures, but it most certainly
shows up in the fact that both Europe and the United States remain bastions of
freedom, democracy and peace, and the carnage of a world war is a distant
memory we read about rather than something we all experienced firsthand. The
first table shows absolute defense spending and the second shows spending as a percentage
of GDP.
At the end of the day, this is piece is a chronicle of the
reality of America. America is indeed imperfect, no doubt for every table here
someone can find their own tables that paint a far darker picture using their
own sources.America does have
inequality, dysfunctional education and healthcare systems and too much
government regulation, but at the same time, Americans have done more with what
they have than any nation on earth.America offers economic opportunities on a wider scale (both geographic
and occupational) than any nation on earth. From Florida to New York to
California to Wyoming the opportunities are simply staggering from doctor to
scientist to graphic designer to business consultant to startup founder to
mechanic to plumber to Instagram model…
What many of the protesters don’t care about is the fact
that the United States Constitution guarantees Americans freedoms that people
in most of the world can only dream of and to the degree that others share some
of them, those freedoms are often at the mercy of political majorities.That includes minority opinions because
things that the majority agree with don’t generally need protection.
At the same time, the United States regularly receives more
immigrants from more places than any nation on earth and gives them opportunities
and freedoms most would or could not dream of at home.And it integrates immigrants at a pace that
no nation has in history.
While there are racial tensions in the United States as
there have been since its founding, in the last half century the country has
made extraordinary leaps which can be seen in both culture and economics, the
former can be seen on televisions, on sports shows and regularly on the radio
while the latter is demonstrated by the fact that 8% of American millionaires
are black, 8% are Asian and 7% are Hispanic.I’ve not found a source thus far, but one can imagine that those numbers
were far smaller during the 1950’s and 1960’s. But I can say that the story the Democrats and the media try and foist on us that America is indeed a bastion of racism is fiction. (https://imperfectamerica.blogspot.com/2020/06/data-shows-driving-while-black-meme-is.html)
For those who want to tear apart American culture because it’s
not what they like, denigrate American values because we’ve not achieved them
on their timetable, want to overthrow America’s capitalist system because they’d
prefer the “equality” promised by socialism or Communism, I’d ask, what place
in the world today, or in world history has a nation done a better job than
America of giving opportunity to its citizens, generating prosperity for its
citizens, protecting its citizens’ freedoms and at the same time helping drive
prosperity and peace around the world?If such a nation exists perhaps I’d certainly be interested in reading
about it.
Tomorrow there are two choices on the ballot.One candidate, a very flawed but passionate man,
understands that the United States is the greatest nation to ever grace the
face of this earth and sees his role as protecting that legacy and rolling back
government intervention to allow Americans of all stripes to address the
country’s shortcomings and achieve even greater success in the future.
The other also an imperfect man, but he sees the United
States as a highly flawed nation, he sees Americans of various identities as
victims and the Constitution as a roadblock to change rather than a guarantee of
freedom and a limit on government intervention on behalf of the majority.
If you like what you’ve seen in the streets of America over
the last six months and would like to see more of it, Joe Biden is your man and
the Democrats are your party.If however
you believe like Ronald Reagan that America’s best days are ahead of her and
that freedom and opportunity are the solutions to most of the problems we face,
Donald Trump is your man and the Republicans are your party.
