The Lone Star Strategy for National Impoverishment

Angry Bear:
http://angrybearblog.com/2013/09/the-lone-star-strategy-or-the-house-that-conservatives-built.html#more-18416

and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/video-audio/the-lone-star-strategy

itemize some of the features of the Texas Republican Party platform 2012:
http://www.tfn.org/site/DocServer/20...pdf?docID=3201

“1. An orderly transition to individual private retirement accounts and the elimination of Social Security.

2. Privatization of Veterans health care.

3. Abolish all federal agencies who’s activities are not enumerated in the constitution including the department of education and the department of energy.

4. Oppose mandatory kindergarten

5. Abolish the EPA

6. Abolish the 16^th amendment and thus get rid of the IRS to be replaced with a national, state collected
sales tax.

7. Abolish the capital gains tax and estate tax.

8. Repeal the minimum wage.”

_______________

Each of these points will transfer wealth and income upward, even the elimination of mandatory kindergarten.  Indeed, what will remain after the implementation of these policies is a rump federal government, incapable of securing even the meanest rights for its poorer citizens. And this will be most of its citizens.  Each agency is an empowerment of the people, a securing of rights they would not otherwise have. The federal government will not be capable of securing the interests of its citizens even within the borders of the country, much less beyond them.

The EPA was established by necessity, unregulated industry having made such a mess of things that rivers burned, and people died from breathing the polluted air.

Privatizing Social Security and Veterans health care is sure to make a few rich, at the expense of many.

Item 6 is obviously regressive, since poor and middle class consume a larger portion of their income, and thus will end up paying a higher percentage of their income as tax than the wealthy.  

 Item 7 will result in the establishment of a moneyed aristocracy, something which is an anathema to a democracy. 

Repealing the minimum wage will create downward pressure on all wages, making the poor poorer, and impoverishing even those who now get by.  It shows the Texas Republicans to be parochial and shortsighted in their thinking, even with regards to their own fortunes.

They make the fallacy of composition.  They imagine that if they cut the expenses of their businesses, which, in one way or another are compensation to the people, they will make greater profit, and be richer.

But by cutting these expenses, they impoverish the people, and they destroy the market for the production of their own farms and factories, and render idle the foundation of their own fortunes. With the Texas strategy, they seek to impoverish everybody, themselves included.