Summary of political beliefs

[Deus Naturae]

Economic Issues

Taxation: First off, abolish all forms of hidden taxation. Since tax withholding laws require employers to subtract income and payroll tax from workers' salaries before employees ever see the money, many people have no idea how much they're paying. I've met several people who are under the impression that they pay no income tax despite the fact that they're in a qualifying bracket. Corporate taxation is really a tax on consumers (because the cost of taxation has to be made up by raising prices), but people are completely unaware of how much the tax is and many just blame businesses for hiking prices. As for my "ideal" form of Federal taxation, I'd say the least bad system would be one where the feds require each State to pay a certain amount, and the State governments can each decide to raise their required amount. That way, people have more say over what kind of taxes they pay and really bad ideas don't get forced on the entire nation. Absent that, the FairTax is probably the best proposal with any chance of being enacted, since at least with that we can clearly see how much we're paying and everybody has an incentive to push down the tax rate.

Health Care: Get rid of insurance regulations requiring procedures people will never need like hair implants, eliminate tax distortions and HMO subsidies that have created a system of "insurance" that prevents people from paying for anything out of pocket and comparing prices, abolish hospital licensing requirements that prevent countless medical facilities from being built or expanded on, prevent the FDA from delaying life-saving drugs for years, abolish patents that prevent new drug development, get rid of physician licensing and medical school regulations that allow the AMA and other interest groups to limit the number of doctors and push costs up, and limit non-economic damages for medical malpractice and medical device malfunction cases. Do all of those things, and health care costs will plummet, without any need for taxpayer-funded schemes like Obamacare, Medicaid, or Medicare.

Money/Credit: End the Fed, repeal legal tender laws, and abolish the Greenback. Allow competing forms of money and deregulate interest rates so that artificially easy credit can't create phony booms which turn into catastrophic busts. With the hidden regressive inflation tax gone, the poor and middle class will be in much better shape and our economy will no longer be victim to central bank-created booms and busts.

Minimum Wage: Abolish. Wage floors discriminate against low-skilled workers and prevent low-income individuals from entering the labor force. If you set the minimum price of a burger at $20, no one is going to buy crappy McDonald's burgers. Same goes for labor. If you set the minimum price of an hour's worth of labor at $7.25, no one is going to want to hire a low-skilled worker who can't provide that much value. So, poor people with bad education and few valuable skills are unable to get jobs, can't acquire useful training in the first place, and remain perpetually unemployed and in poverty.

Unions: Ideally employers should be able to set their own conditions of employment, which includes requiring employees to join a union. However, as long as employers are banned from requiring employees to NOT join a union (on top of a bunch of other government-granted union powers), the opposite should also be illegal.

Foreign Policy:

Foreign Presence: Withdraw all foreign bases and troops. All of our foreign bases are either unnecessary (like those in Europe) or counterproductive (like those in the Middle East and Asia). Stop occupying foreign countries and making their residents hate us and stop paying for the defense of developed countries like Germany and Israel.

Wars/Interventions: Invading and imposing our wills on foreign countries will never solve anything, even if they're in the middle of a civil war or suffering under a tyrant. We always create more enemies and unintended consequences.

Foreign Trade: Unconditional free trade with every country. If a good can be produced at lower cost in a foreign country, it should be and will benefit us in the long run. Free trade allows capital to flow from rich to poor countries and allows for the spread of new ideas to oppressed and/or primitive locations.

Foreign Aid: Stop propping up oppressive governments and distorting foreign economies. Free trade is the way to help the third world develop.

Social Issues:

War on Terror: Repeal the Patriot Act and defund the NSA. People have a right to control their personal information and share it with others as they see fit. Terrorism suspects have the right to due process and should be judged before a jury like any other suspected criminal. Close Guantanamo and ban torture practices. Abolish the TSA and let airports handle their own security.

Drugs: Legalize all drugs and don't tax any of them. Stop jailing drug addicts and creating violent, cartel-dominated black markets (which is the result of taxation as well as criminalization). People shouldn't need any kind of license to grow a plant in their own home or on their own farm.

Gun Rights: People have a right to defend their own persons and property. Allow people to own and carry firearms without a license, as is the case in Vermont. No restrictions on magazines or certain types of firearm.

Marriage: Abolish marriage licenses and get the government out of marriage altogether. No special tax treatment for married couples. Allow any two (or more) people to commonly own property if they wish, but no need to bring government licensing of relationships into it.