No. It was just some back of the envelope from treasury and department of energy data.
And i didn't attempt to model secondary effects; Like imports of high energy density products or refined fuel substitutes or retail sticker shock on gasoline and electricity.
And i didn't address the moral concerns you have to match the scope of the taxes to the government function.
*Many of the items in this list are complex enough to merit white papers or even books. In particular, the reform of the Federal Reserve and implementation of the Chicago Plan, the instatement of a land tax, and other measures merit much deeper discussion.*
You sir, make the usual error of the intellectual academic.
This is not hard at all. You "reform" the fed by nuking it and everyone related to its functioning. Same with land tax. Policy changes are very rapid under armed conflict.
Policy changes are, indeed, very rapid under armed conflict. But those who use violence to gain power make the same mistake over and over: they take power; they don't know what to do with it; and then end up hiring the very people they just ousted to advise them on how to run things.
Trump literally just did this in 2016, the Germans did it when they took Rome, and everyone in between did too. About the only exception was the Communists, who shot all the people who knew how to run things; but since the Communists didn't know how to make things work either, they just kept shooting people.
That's stupid. We need to not be stupid. That means we need to have our own policy plan for how to run things better than they are currently run. You're welcome to nuke the Fed, go to it. Someone still has to think through how things *ought* to work once its nuked. May as well be me.
PS I'm not an academic. I'm an entrepreneur. I earn my living by offering goods people want. If they don't want them, I starve and lose my house. No tenure and no salary here.
I'm not Trump, nor a German, neither were any of the Catholic Princes that pushed back muslims from Europe. And yes, of course you need an alternative, but the alternatives are really quite simple and nowhere near as complicated as ANY of the current systems we have in place. And yes, I did write a white paper on a replacement system years ago. I think it would work well too, it's not public yet, because anyone who successfully presented a model and started working it tends to get droned. It might be coming close to the time it could be implemented, and it's really quite simple. Fractionated metal-based currency, flat tax of say 10% for all beyond a certain baseline income, and apply Roman Law throughout on everything. Institute Catholicism (the original one, currently only present in sedevacantists) as the only state sanctioned religion. It would take probably less than a month to codify it all up. A week if you focussed on it, and about three weeks to tweak any major issues.
And by intellectual academic, I don't mean you are a tenured professor. I mean that it is rather clear you never had to protect yourself, people you were responsible for, or dealt with physical confrontation, including armed physical confrontation on a regular basis. So your ideas are ultimately a kind of fairy tale. Nice in theory, untenable when ACTUAL change comes, because ACTUAL change inevitably comes out the barrel of a gun.
As the Prussian said: No plan survives contact with the enemy. You know what does? Objectives. You either achieve them (win) or not (lose). And we are witnessing this in real time with Russia vs USA and NATO.
All the grand-theories of the usual suspects mean absolutely nothing when high powered copper-jacketed lead is the ultimate arbiter of who decided to implement what.
1) My proposal so far is a $600 poll tax -- it's not complex, grand, or hard to understand or implement. It's simpler than your own proposal.
2) You have no knowledge what I have and haven't done in my life. Maybe I write like a ponce or academic? If so, that doesn't change the fact that I've had to physically protect myself several times in my life. I've also served in the US military, earned a black belt, and enjoyed a concussion from hard blows taken boxing. I've never avoided physical confrontation anytime it's come up.
I have not, thankfully, ever had to protect myself from an armed aggressor. I've trained for it; I hope if it ever comes I have the fortitude to do so. If not, then I'll suffer the consequences of my failure.
In the interest of good will between men of the right, I would ask that you refrain from hypothesizing about my warrior prowess and/or lack thereof. You don't have the facts and your attempts to evaluate my manhood vicariously are insulting.
Fair enough. I still don't think you grasp just how chaotic masses of humans are and the role that massive and equally chaotic violence plays in these things regardless of which side of the equation you are on.
Glad you seem to be prepared at least at an individual level. I hope you are surrounding yourself with like-minded people.
Indeed. Which is why I focus on the baseline of having the same fundamental religious beliefs that have worked well for two millennia. The recent (250 year old or so) infiltration not being a unique event in the Catholic Church, just one of the more severe, as was for example the Arian heresy. You'll find that such monolithic religious doctrine is key in forming resilient communities.
There is one big exception to Trump's continuity with the Uniparty after 2016: US Trade Arrangements were massively overhauled, and the result was growth in real wages for the first time in decades. Even Biden felt obligated to keep Trump's policies in that area, and promise to accelerate domestic growth by doing more Onshoring.
(Biden was lying through his teeth of course, and the Uniparty is achieving the same ends more directly by importing the Third World and paying them nearly all of post-2020 economic growth.... but the fact they feel the need to lie in first place is illuminating.)
This kind of planning also has a direct political & military utility as well, by clarifying who who is reliably loyal to you out of self-interest, and which enemies can be dealt with at the negotiating table. For some examples, any drastic peacetime financial reform will need a clear plan to deal with the UK; any post-petrodollar plan will need to rebasline current arrangements with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States.
That planning doesn't happen quickly, and needs competent LOYAL people to achieve it. The modern Imperial Banks of Zimbabwe couldn't even attempt to execute a modern Chcago Plan, while having every personal and Ideological reason to sabotage it. The same is true for most of our problems today.
As Yarvin says: become worthy. This post is an excellent step, however small, down that road.
Thanks for the kind words. I agree entirely. The Right needs to develop plans in advance and tap loyal people to implement the plans. Otherwise the Deep State will just carry on.
> And by intellectual academic, I don't mean you are a tenured professor. I mean that it is rather clear you never had to protect yourself, people you were responsible for, or dealt with physical confrontation, including armed physical confrontation on a regular basis.
And you think your experience in physical combat somehow gives you unique insights into how to run an economy.
I admit to complete ignorance in all of this. I've read a lot over the decades about taxes & fiscal policy, but little sticks in my mind.
For what it's worth, this principle may be worthwhile- Back in 2000, my Dad & I crunched the numbers & found that if the Social Security Tax was removed from our income, we'd have enough surplus to give his Mother more than the SS income she made and have more left over to ourselves. To me, this meant a structural change in culture, taking care of our own, was more profitable and efficient than trusting massive structural bureaucracies to do it.
On an even larger concept, I've never understood Fiat money. It only has value because people agree that it does. The vast majority of people don't even think about that, and so it's a 'given' as functionally real as the air we breathe. But unlike air, there are people creating this given out of nothing. Whatever replaces this collapsing system cannot be based on another thing created out of nothing, it must be based on a hard good. Gold, Silver, Salt, I don't know, but not Monopoly Money.
I agree, I hope everyone knows that ! But as I said in the article, I don't want to be accused of offering up unrealistic tax plans by "assuming" we will spend less money. My aim is to demonstrate that *even if* we're stuck with big government, we can have lower rates and more sensible taxes. Does that make sense?
But we also can't assume our glorious *criminal* government will simplify & make sense of taxation. Not when it depends on the byzantine maze to hide its massive crimes.
Iow, as long as we're fantasizing about how to pay for, we may as well fantasize about how to spend the $$.
With respect, I disagree; I think it is more comprehensible when we "fantasize" about each topic separately. That's just preference, of course, and if you or someone else proposed a combined tax-and-cut plan on on substack, I'd happily read and evaluate it. But for my own writing, I prefer to evaluate one system at a time.
Poll taxes? A tough sell politically. But theoretically sound.
One want to make this more politic would be to have the federal government run a profit, and give out dividends -- but local governments get a poll tax's worth of that dividend. Use that as a replacement for all federal aid to localities, save perhaps disaster relief.
Agreed: It's a tough sell politically. That said, I'm not attempting to "sell" these ideas politically. I'm just laying out policy ideas so that should Elon Musk call me up to as an advisor to the New Space Republic, I have ideas on hand.
The air utility fee in the new space republic will make your earthly poll tax look benign and puny by comparison. (BTW, Andrew Moriarity does an interesting job of exploring the economics of living in space in his Jump Space series, starting with "Trans Galactic Insurance.")
Reading your description, "Militia (maintainence) Tax" would be another term for this version of a Poll Tax, especially if (like Singapore) you include a Civil Defense Force as part of the national toolkit.
Every nation should have done this in some form after WW2 at the latest. It would have drastically improved our handling of the recent Hurricanes, to cite just one example.
This would also tie neatly into reforms both of the Police and the Militia.
The cure for this is structural. You need to limit the franchise to those who can afford to pay for it. Either an optional poll tax at around 50K/yr -- enough so only the motivated vote. This will get rid of most of the entitlement and income transfer stuff and shrink the state.
However, I think that won't happen until Washington DC is no longer the capital, or until the US Federal defaults all obligations. Or both.
For this series of articles, we aren't concerning ourselves with "will Trump enact this" or anything. This is me thinking through what policies we might want to have IF events lead to the opportunity to implement it.
> The cure for this is structural. You need to limit the franchise to those who can afford to pay for it. Either an optional poll tax at around 50K/yr
The problem with restricting voting to an optional poll tax is you end up with a version of the "rational ignorance" problem. Any one person's vote is unlikely to make a difference so it's not in his interest to pay the tax. The end result is a plutocratic oligarchy.
True, you also create the incentive to continuously increase the poll tax so that only the 0.1% can pay it, and then we are right back to where we started - oligarchy.
Then it's aristocracy or some sort of feudalism. My opinion is that the most stable and just system is one that lies somewhere between absolute monarchy and universal democracy. It should be broad enough to disperse power, but limited enough to keep out the irresponsible. The Founding Fathers thought the same thing. They were not against political hierarchy, they just wanted a merit-based hierarchy rather than a hereditary hierarchy.
If we are only speaking about taxes, their type, rate, and implementation, rather than a reduction in overall spending, the emphasis can either be on the progressiveness/regressiveness of each tax, or the effectiveness of each tax. If I can't cut the budget or change the spending priorities, I want the tax system to maximize growth, especially through higher efficency, or at least minimally impead it. BTW, I prefer Fisher's version of the plan over the Chicago version, otherwise you will need to pay to do banking.
Fisher wanted to allow for banks to continue to be able to lend money from savings accounts, just not be able to create money. This is what you, me, a loanshark, or an S&L are allowed to do. The Chicago Plan, banks would only handle transactions while lending would be done by credit trusts. If the banking business model was limited to monetary transactions, then they would need to charge for their services. Using a credit card, checking, deposits, and withdrawals would no longer be free. Adding additional costs to transactions decreases transactional efficiency. The old S&Ls subsidized checking accounts, and later credit cards, by requiring a savings account with a minimum deposit.
The fees are high because 5 large banks control over 90% of the banking industry, and the direction of Western nations is toward a cashless digital society. Unlike a cash society, every transaction requires an intermediary. In addition to monitoring and controling our all of our income and purchases, we will have no choice but to pay the banks' transaction costs if there is no opt out. You have given one of the primary reasons why poor people would rather deal in cash, the other being tax avoidance.
What about royalties on mineral extraction as a source of sovereign revenue?
That's lindy.
I did the math years ago that a BTU based royalty&tariff on fossil fuels and uranium would cover fedgov expenses and then some.
And turn into a sovereign wealth fund after 10 years.
That's very interesting. Have you ever published your findings?
No. It was just some back of the envelope from treasury and department of energy data.
And i didn't attempt to model secondary effects; Like imports of high energy density products or refined fuel substitutes or retail sticker shock on gasoline and electricity.
And i didn't address the moral concerns you have to match the scope of the taxes to the government function.
*Many of the items in this list are complex enough to merit white papers or even books. In particular, the reform of the Federal Reserve and implementation of the Chicago Plan, the instatement of a land tax, and other measures merit much deeper discussion.*
You sir, make the usual error of the intellectual academic.
This is not hard at all. You "reform" the fed by nuking it and everyone related to its functioning. Same with land tax. Policy changes are very rapid under armed conflict.
Policy changes are, indeed, very rapid under armed conflict. But those who use violence to gain power make the same mistake over and over: they take power; they don't know what to do with it; and then end up hiring the very people they just ousted to advise them on how to run things.
Trump literally just did this in 2016, the Germans did it when they took Rome, and everyone in between did too. About the only exception was the Communists, who shot all the people who knew how to run things; but since the Communists didn't know how to make things work either, they just kept shooting people.
That's stupid. We need to not be stupid. That means we need to have our own policy plan for how to run things better than they are currently run. You're welcome to nuke the Fed, go to it. Someone still has to think through how things *ought* to work once its nuked. May as well be me.
PS I'm not an academic. I'm an entrepreneur. I earn my living by offering goods people want. If they don't want them, I starve and lose my house. No tenure and no salary here.
I'm not Trump, nor a German, neither were any of the Catholic Princes that pushed back muslims from Europe. And yes, of course you need an alternative, but the alternatives are really quite simple and nowhere near as complicated as ANY of the current systems we have in place. And yes, I did write a white paper on a replacement system years ago. I think it would work well too, it's not public yet, because anyone who successfully presented a model and started working it tends to get droned. It might be coming close to the time it could be implemented, and it's really quite simple. Fractionated metal-based currency, flat tax of say 10% for all beyond a certain baseline income, and apply Roman Law throughout on everything. Institute Catholicism (the original one, currently only present in sedevacantists) as the only state sanctioned religion. It would take probably less than a month to codify it all up. A week if you focussed on it, and about three weeks to tweak any major issues.
And by intellectual academic, I don't mean you are a tenured professor. I mean that it is rather clear you never had to protect yourself, people you were responsible for, or dealt with physical confrontation, including armed physical confrontation on a regular basis. So your ideas are ultimately a kind of fairy tale. Nice in theory, untenable when ACTUAL change comes, because ACTUAL change inevitably comes out the barrel of a gun.
As the Prussian said: No plan survives contact with the enemy. You know what does? Objectives. You either achieve them (win) or not (lose). And we are witnessing this in real time with Russia vs USA and NATO.
All the grand-theories of the usual suspects mean absolutely nothing when high powered copper-jacketed lead is the ultimate arbiter of who decided to implement what.
1) My proposal so far is a $600 poll tax -- it's not complex, grand, or hard to understand or implement. It's simpler than your own proposal.
2) You have no knowledge what I have and haven't done in my life. Maybe I write like a ponce or academic? If so, that doesn't change the fact that I've had to physically protect myself several times in my life. I've also served in the US military, earned a black belt, and enjoyed a concussion from hard blows taken boxing. I've never avoided physical confrontation anytime it's come up.
I have not, thankfully, ever had to protect myself from an armed aggressor. I've trained for it; I hope if it ever comes I have the fortitude to do so. If not, then I'll suffer the consequences of my failure.
In the interest of good will between men of the right, I would ask that you refrain from hypothesizing about my warrior prowess and/or lack thereof. You don't have the facts and your attempts to evaluate my manhood vicariously are insulting.
Fair enough. I still don't think you grasp just how chaotic masses of humans are and the role that massive and equally chaotic violence plays in these things regardless of which side of the equation you are on.
Glad you seem to be prepared at least at an individual level. I hope you are surrounding yourself with like-minded people.
Some, but not enough. They are hard to find.
Indeed. Which is why I focus on the baseline of having the same fundamental religious beliefs that have worked well for two millennia. The recent (250 year old or so) infiltration not being a unique event in the Catholic Church, just one of the more severe, as was for example the Arian heresy. You'll find that such monolithic religious doctrine is key in forming resilient communities.
There is one big exception to Trump's continuity with the Uniparty after 2016: US Trade Arrangements were massively overhauled, and the result was growth in real wages for the first time in decades. Even Biden felt obligated to keep Trump's policies in that area, and promise to accelerate domestic growth by doing more Onshoring.
(Biden was lying through his teeth of course, and the Uniparty is achieving the same ends more directly by importing the Third World and paying them nearly all of post-2020 economic growth.... but the fact they feel the need to lie in first place is illuminating.)
This kind of planning also has a direct political & military utility as well, by clarifying who who is reliably loyal to you out of self-interest, and which enemies can be dealt with at the negotiating table. For some examples, any drastic peacetime financial reform will need a clear plan to deal with the UK; any post-petrodollar plan will need to rebasline current arrangements with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States.
That planning doesn't happen quickly, and needs competent LOYAL people to achieve it. The modern Imperial Banks of Zimbabwe couldn't even attempt to execute a modern Chcago Plan, while having every personal and Ideological reason to sabotage it. The same is true for most of our problems today.
As Yarvin says: become worthy. This post is an excellent step, however small, down that road.
Thanks for the kind words. I agree entirely. The Right needs to develop plans in advance and tap loyal people to implement the plans. Otherwise the Deep State will just carry on.
> And by intellectual academic, I don't mean you are a tenured professor. I mean that it is rather clear you never had to protect yourself, people you were responsible for, or dealt with physical confrontation, including armed physical confrontation on a regular basis.
And you think your experience in physical combat somehow gives you unique insights into how to run an economy.
You are deluded if you think you understand how human beings act and react once the SHTF and that has no bearing on an economy.
Running an economy in permanent SHTF mode is a good way to destroy it.
Thanks for demonstrating you have grasped precisely ZERO of what I hinted at. Be well.
I admit to complete ignorance in all of this. I've read a lot over the decades about taxes & fiscal policy, but little sticks in my mind.
For what it's worth, this principle may be worthwhile- Back in 2000, my Dad & I crunched the numbers & found that if the Social Security Tax was removed from our income, we'd have enough surplus to give his Mother more than the SS income she made and have more left over to ourselves. To me, this meant a structural change in culture, taking care of our own, was more profitable and efficient than trusting massive structural bureaucracies to do it.
On an even larger concept, I've never understood Fiat money. It only has value because people agree that it does. The vast majority of people don't even think about that, and so it's a 'given' as functionally real as the air we breathe. But unlike air, there are people creating this given out of nothing. Whatever replaces this collapsing system cannot be based on another thing created out of nothing, it must be based on a hard good. Gold, Silver, Salt, I don't know, but not Monopoly Money.
Howzabout we stop spending trillions of $$ genociding people at home & abroad.
From what I understand, in recent years our glorious gov spent some $16trillion mass murdering here & abroad.😠
I agree, I hope everyone knows that ! But as I said in the article, I don't want to be accused of offering up unrealistic tax plans by "assuming" we will spend less money. My aim is to demonstrate that *even if* we're stuck with big government, we can have lower rates and more sensible taxes. Does that make sense?
Yes & no.
We can't assume spending will slow down.
But we also can't assume our glorious *criminal* government will simplify & make sense of taxation. Not when it depends on the byzantine maze to hide its massive crimes.
Iow, as long as we're fantasizing about how to pay for, we may as well fantasize about how to spend the $$.
With respect, I disagree; I think it is more comprehensible when we "fantasize" about each topic separately. That's just preference, of course, and if you or someone else proposed a combined tax-and-cut plan on on substack, I'd happily read and evaluate it. But for my own writing, I prefer to evaluate one system at a time.
Poll taxes? A tough sell politically. But theoretically sound.
One want to make this more politic would be to have the federal government run a profit, and give out dividends -- but local governments get a poll tax's worth of that dividend. Use that as a replacement for all federal aid to localities, save perhaps disaster relief.
Agreed: It's a tough sell politically. That said, I'm not attempting to "sell" these ideas politically. I'm just laying out policy ideas so that should Elon Musk call me up to as an advisor to the New Space Republic, I have ideas on hand.
The air utility fee in the new space republic will make your earthly poll tax look benign and puny by comparison. (BTW, Andrew Moriarity does an interesting job of exploring the economics of living in space in his Jump Space series, starting with "Trans Galactic Insurance.")
> One want to make this more politic would be to have the federal government run a profit,
Ok, now you're in total la-la-fantasy land.
When calculating the costs for protection of persons & property did you include prisons and courts as well as law enforcement proper?
The last poll taxes assessed in the USA in 1964 were 2 dollars per voter.
That's 31.85 in 2024 money. A rounding error from your calculation.
RTVRN.
Reading your description, "Militia (maintainence) Tax" would be another term for this version of a Poll Tax, especially if (like Singapore) you include a Civil Defense Force as part of the national toolkit.
Every nation should have done this in some form after WW2 at the latest. It would have drastically improved our handling of the recent Hurricanes, to cite just one example.
This would also tie neatly into reforms both of the Police and the Militia.
That's a really good suggestion.
The cure for this is structural. You need to limit the franchise to those who can afford to pay for it. Either an optional poll tax at around 50K/yr -- enough so only the motivated vote. This will get rid of most of the entitlement and income transfer stuff and shrink the state.
However, I think that won't happen until Washington DC is no longer the capital, or until the US Federal defaults all obligations. Or both.
For this series of articles, we aren't concerning ourselves with "will Trump enact this" or anything. This is me thinking through what policies we might want to have IF events lead to the opportunity to implement it.
> The cure for this is structural. You need to limit the franchise to those who can afford to pay for it. Either an optional poll tax at around 50K/yr
The problem with restricting voting to an optional poll tax is you end up with a version of the "rational ignorance" problem. Any one person's vote is unlikely to make a difference so it's not in his interest to pay the tax. The end result is a plutocratic oligarchy.
Feature not bug. Plutocratic oligarchies made the British Empire Great.
True, you also create the incentive to continuously increase the poll tax so that only the 0.1% can pay it, and then we are right back to where we started - oligarchy.
In only one guy in your town can vote. Then:
1. He doesn't need to contort public money to bribe voters or vote wranglers.
2. If he votes to oppress his neighbors overmuch, they know his name and address.
That's called Monarchy. Just replace "vote" with "orders".
When voters = 1 then yes.
I was thinking more squire-archy from early modern england.
Then it's aristocracy or some sort of feudalism. My opinion is that the most stable and just system is one that lies somewhere between absolute monarchy and universal democracy. It should be broad enough to disperse power, but limited enough to keep out the irresponsible. The Founding Fathers thought the same thing. They were not against political hierarchy, they just wanted a merit-based hierarchy rather than a hereditary hierarchy.
“At present, the federal government funds itself with the following:”
Good list, but partial.
- Borrowing/printing money. Trillions and trillions.
- Inflation (Borrow money and pay it back with money that's worth less than what you borrowed.)
- Fines and permits. They add up.
Read on one more paragraph, and I discuss borrowing and inflation, both in total volume ($1.8T) and the amount that it's monetized (20%+).
If we are only speaking about taxes, their type, rate, and implementation, rather than a reduction in overall spending, the emphasis can either be on the progressiveness/regressiveness of each tax, or the effectiveness of each tax. If I can't cut the budget or change the spending priorities, I want the tax system to maximize growth, especially through higher efficency, or at least minimally impead it. BTW, I prefer Fisher's version of the plan over the Chicago version, otherwise you will need to pay to do banking.
What was different about Fisher's version? I haven't read it, only the Revisited Plan.
Fisher wanted to allow for banks to continue to be able to lend money from savings accounts, just not be able to create money. This is what you, me, a loanshark, or an S&L are allowed to do. The Chicago Plan, banks would only handle transactions while lending would be done by credit trusts. If the banking business model was limited to monetary transactions, then they would need to charge for their services. Using a credit card, checking, deposits, and withdrawals would no longer be free. Adding additional costs to transactions decreases transactional efficiency. The old S&Ls subsidized checking accounts, and later credit cards, by requiring a savings account with a minimum deposit.
OK. I am in favor of allowing banks to lend money from savings accounts. I'm not in favor of them being able to create money.
My bank already charges a fee for all its services in any case... Lower income Americans pay lots of banking fees.
The fees are high because 5 large banks control over 90% of the banking industry, and the direction of Western nations is toward a cashless digital society. Unlike a cash society, every transaction requires an intermediary. In addition to monitoring and controling our all of our income and purchases, we will have no choice but to pay the banks' transaction costs if there is no opt out. You have given one of the primary reasons why poor people would rather deal in cash, the other being tax avoidance.
> Unlike a cash society, every transaction requires an intermediary.
Not necessarily. See Bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies.
The intermediary in the case of crypto is the internet. It's not a bank, but the infrastructure definitely is not free.