Forget all the theory that the economists and socialists keep peddling to us. Any American recovery in practice must go back to the American way! The American way is one of self reliance and reliance on community not reliance on big government and its entrenched bureaucrats. I really do not think America will choose to go back to the American way but if they did the following is probably the way to do it.

Taxes – Do away with the IRS. Get rid of all income taxes on corporations and individuals. Get rid of all payroll taxes on employers. There would be no deduction for employees other than a 15 percent deductions for all health and social programs (see below). Stop taxing savings and investments. They generally do not even keep up with inflation anyway. Keeping up with inflation is hardly income. All this tax compliance requires millions of people doing work that produces nothing but higher taxes.

Pay for federal government with a twenty percent sales tax on all products purchased without any exceptions. Big ticket items like houses and cars will be rolled into the monthly payment. Limit federal government spending to what it takes in. Set apart one percent of this twenty percent to pay off the national debt. People will be taxed only on their own consumption and the only deductions from their wages will be 15 percent to pay for the retired, the disabled, the poor and catastrophic health insurance for all.

State and local taxes – No payrolls taxes or taxes on business. State and local governments would get their funds through sales taxes and property taxes.

World Trade – If other nations dump products or keep their exchange rate too low we should put a tariff on them to make their products competitive.

Economy – Get rid of all benefits from the employer. There is no free lunch and people with big families are being subsidized by others doing the same job. You pay for your benefits anyway by receiving lower wages or paying higher prices for goods and services. Employers should only have to worry about producing and selling goods and services and paying their employees a wage. Employers should not be required to become a social welfare agency. Employees should bargain for good wages to cover their living expenses.

Do away with unemployment insurance. It is no longer insurance it is a government give away program. Employers should be required to pay severance pay when they fire people without documented bad conduct or substandard performance. If they cannot because they are bankrupt then government should cover it and government should be first on the list to recover the funds in any bankruptcy distributions. Two weeks pay for every year worked for an employer seems fair to me. The real point is to give people income until they can take another job, it should not be paying people not to work. In times of less than full employment the government should give employers incentives for on the job training and creating jobs. Getting rid of the illegals in the work force will open up millions of jobs right off the bat.

Do away with a minimum work week and minimum wage. A standard work week will not be necessary since nobody will be getting extra benefits by working full time anyway. Millions of workers today are just being screwed because employers keep them working part time so they do not have to comply with government benefit laws that apply only to full time employees. When skills are equal the only fair system is equal pay for equal hours worked.

If the bureaucratic book keeping nightmare necessary to satisfy government laws is taken off the back of employers and if employers and investments are not taxed it would encourage much more investment and the creation of many millions of new jobs. Employees would then be able to bid up decent wages.

Government – We can get rid of half the federal government because half of the government only exists to create and enforce laws that keep people dependent on the government. We need to just shut down many government agencies and programs. Having worked in government myself for many years I know that most government employees do not pull a full load. The number of government employees can be cut back drastically without any ill effect. We can save 10 to 20 percent of the time they waste by just eliminating team meetings and social engineering indoctrinations.

Politics – Have term limits and limit contributes to any political campaign from a person or a special interest group to about twenty bucks. Let’s have a government of the people for the people and not a government bought and paid for by special interests and political action groups.

Health Care – Other than the retired and the disabled everyone should pay for their own health care directly to providers. The very poor would pay some of the costs but the costs would be subsided by government on a sliding scale. Catastrophic health insurance would kick in on a sliding scale after a determined deductible. Paying most of your own health care will not cost you as much as what you might think. If health providers can get rid of the insurance and government bureaucracies and all the staff they employ to comply with the rules of these bureaucracies they could lower the price of all basic routine visits and procedures by a third. Most insured are already paying one third of medical costs through coinsurance, co-payments, deductibles and things not covered, so all you would need to do is double what you are already paying for most health care.

Over half of medical visits today are totally unnecessary. People comes to medical centers and even emergency rooms for treatments a nurse can advise them over the phone or Internet. It is ridiculous. Those on government programs do it because they pay nothing for a visit. Doctors get such low reimbursements from government and insurance companies that some pad their numbers by making people come in for refills when it is usually unnecessary. Get rid of the unnecessary visits and the doctor shortage will also vanish. Take the incentives away from lawyers to sue health care providers and half the unnecessary expensive tests would never be ordered by doctors.

For the poor we can have sliding scales and and for all we need to have catastrophic insurance but it would be more like house insurance where insurance companies or government pays the cost of the catastrophe but they have no say in how you rebuild or refurnish your house.

Here’s food for thought – The average family between the costs of employer and employee now pay over $1000 a month for health insurance plus they pay co-payments, coinsurance and deductibles. If you had what amounts to well over $12,000 in additional income each year do you think you could pay double your medical cash outlays each year? Also, remember that you will have catastrophic insurance for any very costly procedures that might arise so do not consider that in this equation. So the bottom line on my health care suggestion is that cost of most medical visits and procedures might cost you double what you pay today but you would have $12,000 more buying power each year if you received the income that you and your employer pay for health insurance.

Get rid of all these inefficiencies and the layers of bureaucracies and the cost of all medical care in the United States would be about half of what it is today. It would be more like 8 – to 10 percent of the GNP rather than the 17 percent it is now. That would be more in line with what the rest of the developed world pays.

Immigration – No illegal immigration will be allowed and legal immigration would be limited. All immigrates would have to learn English. Getting rid of the illegals will create millions of jobs in America almost instantly. It can be done. It was done in the 1950’s when almost all the two million illegals from Mexico working in the United States got the message from President Eisenhower and the INS and went back to live in Mexico. If nobody can hire illegals and they get no benefits by being here they have no incentive to stay.

Religion  – The American way allows all religion and does not prohibit the free expression of it in public. There will be no IRS telling preachers what they cannot preach. There will be no banning of  prayer or the name of Jesus from the public square.

Foreign policy and national defense – We must have the best defense in the world but we generally do not need to fight wars for other nations. We need to develop mobile and ship based laser and electromagnetic defensive weapons that can destroy any weapon intended against us. We need to train and equip a large number of rapid strike special forces that will have the capabilities to destroy any terrorist training camp anywhere on the planet. We need to develop plasma and electrical pulse weapons that can destroy the offensive capabilities of any nation that would dare to war against us. We also need to reduce by a third the number of people within the military industrial complex. Most of these are highly paid civilians.

Activist judges that legislate from the bench – We must establish reasonable methodologies to impeach and remove judges at all levels.

Energy policy – The energy crises is government made. Get government and obstructive environmental lawsuits out of the way and we will become completely energy independent in less than two decades. We have natural gas and oil reserves that can be produced for the equivalent of $2.00 a gallon gas and it will last for at least two hundred years. We have vast coal reserves that are even less costly to develop for cheap electricity production.

Crime – No more tolerance for gangs, either decriminalize drug use or have zero tolerance for it and stop it by prosecution of both users and dealers. Take the cites back from criminals. Take the prisons back from gangs. Encourage law abiding  men to routinely carry firearms. Contract out non violent felons to labor camps instead of putting them in warehouses called prisons. Make them repay their debt to society by doing hard work on our farms and repairing our national infrastructure. No more tolerance for soft crimes like various  frauds! If  people like stealing more than working they should reap more hard work than they ever bargained for. Prisons for the violent should by ruled with a rod of iron. There should be zero tolerance in prisons for gang activity or gang recruitment and indoctrination under the guise of religion.

Education – Do away with the Education Department and all federal social engineering mandates. Those in grade schools should not be indoctrinated they should be learning basic skills like reading, writing. English and math. They should also learn the true history of our nation and the world and they should be instructed in the social skills necessary to live in a civil society. We need much smaller community schools not smaller classrooms.

Abortion – should not be the right of the mother. Created human life has a right to live. If the mother does not want the child the child should be adopted out to a couple that will raise it.

Marriage – Marriage in civil society and all history has always been between one man and one woman. There is no reason to pervert what we know works.

Gay rights,   etc. The American way is for the federal government to keep out of the personal lives of people as much as possible. Moral codes of a community should be decided by the people living in that community.

The Dollar – Back paper with something tangible.

Banks – Break up the big banks in this country. Go back to real community banks and credit unions that serve the community and that do not speculate in risky investment and have undue influence on national politics and national media.

Retirement and Medicare– Since we cannot go back instantly to a nation where the young take care of their old we will have to have a retirement system for the old and truly disabled. There are no funds in Social Security because the government robbed them to pay for social engineering programs and to pay for wars. So we need a new pay as you go retirement system but we should never let government rob the bank again, nor should we tell employers to pay for these programs. There will only be two young people supporting every old person in the decades ahead so do the math.  I think retirement age and the age to receive Medicare will have to be raised to 70 over a period of time. People will be living longer healthier lives anyways with advances in medicine. I think it will take about ten percent of all wage income to support these old age programs if the age is raised and they are plenty of jobs. One thing we can do to remedy the age imbalance in our demographics is to stop aborting babies and to encourage more adoptions of children from third world countries by those that have sufficent income to bring these children up to be productive citizens. Then eventually the ratio between young and old will be more balanced and the percentage of income necessary to support these old age programs can start to fall.

Medicaid, food, charity etc. – Some should be federally funded out of that 15 percent deduction. Some should be state funded and some needs should be the responsibly of local charities and churches. No more double and triple dipping where people get food stamps and spend it on crap or sell the food stamps so they can buy crap and then go to local food banks and local charities for food that they should have bought with the food stamps!

Communications – Reasonably priced high speed Internet communications should be available for everyone even if that means we have to put up government supplemented antenna systems and a satellite system to serve those in very rural areas.

Now, if the tea party and the Republicans would push such a platform and people would actually vote to return to the American way there could be some hope for America. But, considering the ongoing moral decline in this nation I sincerely doubt if it can happen.