Donald Trump is
rapidly becoming popular for getting things done. It's not just the booming
stock market. Even Democrats are starting to like him or at least tolerate
him ... well, some of them anyway.
In fact, this sea
change is undoubtedly a large part of what's instigating the
continued whining and complaining that could escalate soon enough into
panic when Trump starts to break down the walls of the last bastion of the
Democratic Party—identity politics—as he seems bent on doing.
A simple way exists
to do just that, one that is a win-win for our minorities and for the
America public. And that method would be aimed at all economically
disadvantaged communities, not just African-American or Hispanic, because that
would be racist and perpetuate identity politics, not end it, right?
As I said, the method
is simple. Three to five trillion dollars—no one knows the exact total,
but a huge amount of money—belonging to U.S. corporations sits overseas,
avoiding onerous American corporate tax rates. Apple, as we know, has tons
of it. The Trump tax plan is to lower those corporate taxes from 35%
(one of the highest in the world ) to 15% (among the lowest) to encourage
companies to do business here. Good idea—or should we say at long last? There's
also a plan being floated to charge 10% as a one-time incentive
for the corporations to bring those trillions back to the USA straight
away.
What if that 10% were
only 5% or even 2%—if the money were guaranteed to be spent only on
investing in our economically disadvantaged communities?
Imagine one
trillion dollars or more coming home, pumping money everywhere from West
Virginia to Ferguson to the Rust Belt to upstate New York, building factories,
shopping malls, hospitals, recreational facilities, sports stadiums, all
constructed and run by private corporations, not the government.
Those corporations would have a vested interest in the success of
their investments. Jobs would be coming out of the woodwork. The life of
those communities would change incrementally, but substantially, with the
whole country benefitting as their standard of living rose. Bye-bye,
Black Lives Matter with its reactionary race politics. Bye-bye, the drastic
labor participation rate with ninety-five million Americans out of the work
force (a decent part of that anyway). Bye-bye, homeless all over
our big cities. Change, as they say, you could believe in.
Could Trump
accomplish such a thing? Why not? Who would stop him? It wouldn't cost the
taxpayers a penny. In fact, they'd make some. Could a Democratic senator vote
against something like that?
Well, sure, they'll
grouse and find fault, as will the media, but that would be easy to
counteract, with or without Twitter. The truth, in this case, is too clear.
If
Barack Obama had done something even approximating this, the editorial board of
The New York Times would have had a collective orgasm and dedicated the
next hundred issues to personal stories of all the good he had done—just like
they did the "Neediest" around Christmas—and Time would have
named Obama Person of the Decade... maybe the Century. One wonders why
Obama didn't do something so obvious. Perhaps because lowering taxes
isn't "fair."
Anyway, it's good
that he didn't do it. It would have ended up completely a government program
and nothing would have been "shovel ready" until 3006.
Trump's a
businessman and knows if you want to get something done, you give it to private
industry. He's showing that in his cabinet picks, much to the dismay of
the liberal cognoscenti who whine about too many billionaires oblivious to the
fact that one of the biggest billionaires of all (George Soros) is underwriting
practically everything they do.
So just do it,
Donald. Bring that money back for the forgotten people. America will remember
you for it—in 2020!
