You want "job-killing"?

Someone who really wanted to "kill jobs" could do no better than to adopt the following program.

First, tax gains on, for example, speculative financial machinations at a lower rate than ordinary income produced by, for example, investing in an actual business and making and selling actual things in the real economy, thereby encouraging those with capital to use it on nonproductive activities.

Second, weaken regulation of speculative nonproductive financial machinations (see above).

Third, adopt a tight-money policy, increasing interest rates and thereby making the borrowing needed to start or expand a business prohibitively expensive. Better yet, tie the currency to the gold standard, thereby plunging the economy into deflation that, while befitting those fortunate enough to be sitting atop piles of accumulated wealth, will bring purchases and investments to a grinding halt.

Fourth, cut government programs that generate immediate spending in the economy for goods and services (e.g., unemployment benefits, infrastructure construction, aid to state governments — all of which produce a boost of about $1.50 or more in GDP per dollar spent) and instead cut corporate and income taxes (which generate 30 cents in GDP gain per dollar spent).

Just a thought.

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A reminder that my talk at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore, postponed earlier due to da weather, will take place this Thursday, February 10, at 5:30 p.m.

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All good things must come to an end, and although my six months in the blogosphere have brought me incalculable fame, riches, and platoons of pulchritudinous proteges begging for mentoring from an experienced man wise in the ways of journalism and the world, alas spring beckons on the farm and reality is casting its sinister shadow in the form of a book I'm supposed to be writing.

Please check my author website from time to time where I will continue to post news, events, reviews, and the occasional piece of real journalism.

And sincerely: thanks for reading.

Bipartisan cultism

In the geography of politics, there is a strange and shadowy place far, far down the narrowing alleys of the left, where one turns a final corner and is suddenly face to face with like-minded wanderers who arrived at the same spot from exactly the opposite direction, via equally tortuous passageways.

The health and nature cults of the late 19th and early 20th centuries provided one venerable meeting ground for the loony right and the loony left; the most famous example being Hitler's vegetarianism and the Third Reich's more general enthusiasm for anti-vivisectionism, animal protection, food and health fadism, and back-to-the-soil nature worship.