Dear Editor,

Permit me to suggest four useful tips for the incoming Davis administration:

1. Reject austerity and start taxing the rich

Already, various special interests and pundits are telling our new government that its response to the debt crisis caused by our regressive and inflexible tax regime should be to double down on the brutality that regime has done to our middle class and poor by cutting spending and selling off our remaining public assets.

Ignore them. Instead, end the indulgence and state welfare that we needlessly extend to the rich and to wealthy local corporations when we tax the consumers that produce their income, rather than that income itself.

Start taxing that income. This is standard practice the world over and it is pure madness to expect any kind of international sympathy for our supposed dilemma when, firstly, it is of our own choosing and, secondly, those whose sympathy we seek cannot themselves afford to extend the same luxury to their own rich – even if they wanted to.

And such is the level of untaxed wealth and income in our domestic economy that we can easily afford to remove or reduce consumption taxes while also reducing our debt if we just taxed it.

Further, politically, there is nothing difficult or complicated about taxation of high personal and corporate incomes, as it will not affect the average voter. In fact, it would be wildly popular.

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