The Full Galtie

Richard Epstein takes to Forbes today to offer advice for states bleeding red ink:  Go The Full Galtie!

On taxation, don't play the mug's game of imposing ever higher marginal tax rates on ever lower amounts of income. Play it smart for the long haul. Low-income tax rates (and no estate taxes) will attract into states and communities energetic individuals who would otherwise choose to live and work elsewhere. Treasure their efforts to grow the overall pie. Don't resent their great wealth, but remember the benefits their successes generate for their employees, customers and suppliers. Repudiate the politics of envy for the social destruction it creates. Don't fret about the states and communities left behind. Let them adopt the same sound policies to keep people at home. The outcome won't be a zero-sum game. Enterprise is infectious. Open markets are the rising tide that raises all ships. High taxation is the tsunami that sinks them.

I love that.  "Don't fret about states and communities left behind," like they wouldn't include human beings.  Darwin the little f'ckers right off the map!  Open markets!  Free enterprise!  Crush your opposition and take what they have if they can't defend it!  The United States of America becomes May The Best State Win.

On real estate, change the culture so that getting permits for yourself and blocking them for everyone else is no longer the preeminent developer's skill. The government can still prevent buildings from falling down and fund infrastructure through general taxation. But don't let entrenched landowners and businesses raise NIMBY politics to a fine art. Today our dysfunctional land-use processes too often build thousands of dollars and years of delay into the price of every square foot of new construction. The instructive requirements on aesthetics and handicap access should be junked, along with the crazy-quilt system of real estate exactions that asks new developments to fund improvements whose benefit largely belongs to incumbent landowners. And for heaven's sake, learn the lesson of Kelo and stop using the state's power of condemnation for the benefit or private developers.

And while I agree somewhat with the Kelo stuff, junking handicapped ramps, well...see my response to paragraph one:  Darwin the f'ckers right off the map.

(More after the jump...)

On labor, state and local governments have to junk the progressive mindset in both the public and the private sector. State and local governments should never, repeat never, be forced to negotiate with local unions. The huge pensions garnered by prison guards in California or transportation workers in New York present the intolerable spectacle of requiring ordinary citizens to pay huge subsidies to union workers far richer than themselves. On the private side, don't force developers to hire union workers on construction sites or to block the construction of new facilities that hire nonunion labor. If unions are really efficient--and they aren't--let them compete like everyone else.

So corporations should be allowed to leverage their power to dominate a market, but workers must never, ever, be allowed to do so.  Got it.

On other labor fronts, we should kill off minimum wage laws that reduce opportunities for youthful employees and overtime legislation that distorts labor markets. And yes, take on the sacred cow by repealing the antidiscrimination laws on race and sex, and especially age.

Ding Ding Ding!  And we have achieved the full Paultard here.  Here folks, take your two bucks an hour.  Better than being broke, right?  And yes, let's allow companies to say "I'm not hiring any people with skin darker than mine, or anyone with ovaries."  The free market will obliterate these corporations, correct?  Nobody will buy their goods and services.

Except for the people who are earning two bucks an hour who can't afford anything else.  Sure.  That'll work.  If not, well, you know the drill:  Darwin the f'ckers right off the map.

None of this activity costs the public a dime. All of it will increase tax revenues and reduce administrative expenses. The best test of a good policy is whether it is sustainable over the long haul. We know now that the progressive regime flunks this key test. At this point, all good libertarians can only take cold comfort that they have fought these destructive policies tooth and nail. In today's overheated environment, our New Year's resolution can be summed up in two words: deregulation now.

Because deregulation of the financial industry over the last ten years was so wildly effective.  We should bring that "success" to states too!

We can start by having free market bloggers point out all the idiocy in columns that the mainstream media has, and then watch as the reduced revenues for said media companies result in the companies searching for columnists who aren't quite as hacktastic.  That's liberating!