I actually think the problem is different,and it is the fundamental problem with the social democracy which governed the US from about the time of FDR until the

I actually think the problem is different,and it is the fundamental problem with the social democracy which governed the US from about the time of FDR until the time of Reagan when the Neoliberal era arrived. The problems are well laid out rather presciently by Hillaire Belloc in his 1914 book "The Servile State" where he discusses the problems of capitalism the consequences of class warfare. Belloc should be on everyone's reading list in this way because he represents a very cogent criticism of both capitalism and centralized efforts to resolve the fundamental class struggles that inevitably occur. Belloc notes that the classes have different goals out of class warfare. The employed class wants security while the capitalist class wants profit. The ultimate arrangement which perfectly provides both would be a system of regulated slavery, where the would-be slave knows he gets certain guarantees and the would-be slave-owner gets compulsatory work for his own profit. He notes further that through the ancient world, this was the normal economic order. His thesis then is that the working poor are willing to let things move towards slavery in exchange for subsistence, and this is the logical direction for the elites to push. So what he suggests then is that class warfare is most often won by the elites, and history agrees with him. He then argues that without land, and ownership of one's own tools, the workers cannot be free. He then attacks worker protections as undermining the status of the worker as a free agent and suggests that instead we should seek to eradicate the border between worker and business owner. If we take Belloc's theories reasonably seriously, I think we have to consider the possibility that the social democracy of FDR directly lead to the Neoliberalism of Reagan, and that if we don't seek to undo the damage caused, we will simply slowly regress to classical liberal capitalism of the sort that both Belloc and Marx believed was unstable, but with the added factor that self-employment will be heavily discriminated against, and the prison system with forced labor will be the safety net for the poor. Forget wages. Focus on land, tools, and business opportunities. 1. Tax rental income unless the rental agreement is convertable to a rent to own agreement. 2. Get rid of the estate tax, or at least exempt productive property from it, since such a tax privileges corporate ownership over individual ownership. 3. Exempt businesses with fewer than 5 employees from most federal and state regulations. Make it the default and require that Congress or the state legislature explicitly includes such businesses when passing additional regulations. 4. Provide tax breaks for businesses owned and operated by married couples. 5. Tax overseas increases in balance sheet equity (assets minus liabilities) as corporate income, thus eliminating a major loophole major corporations use to pay less or even no taxes. In other words decentralize the economy. Let's encourage self-employment and household self-employment, and let's encourage even the middle and lower classes to go into business for themselves and own their own homes without going through the banking system. BTW, one of the amazing things about open source software is that it brings the worker ownership of the tool ideal into a reality in a way that we seem to be otherwise losing.