Eight Economic Problems and Eight Solutions

In recent months, numerous people have asked me: What's wrong with the economy, and how can we turn it around? This essay I educate you, once and for all, about the eight main economic problems of today, and their eight solutions, so save this piece and forward to your friends - especially those who are running for office.

There are several problems with the economy. Some are short-term, others are long-term. Some have painful fixes, and some fixes are painless:

1. The falling value of the dollar. Long-term, the value of anything is a function of only three factors: supply, absolute demand, and relative demand to hold. In today's case, the two problems are with supply and relative demand to hold. The supply side is straightforward, with the US central bank simply creating too many dollars. It does so to finance the US Federal budget deficit as well as lending the money to banks and other credit institutions. Relative demand to hold (dollars) is a function of expectations of future economic and political developments. In brief, the market is believing that the US will suffer from higher taxes and more regulations, leading to less goods and services produces, and thus lower demand for dollars.

2. Higher prices on energy and other commodities. This is a similar case to the dollar, but in reverse: Supply is not growing much, but both real demand and relative demand to hold, are both going up. Supply is constrained because it's almost impossible to profitably increase the quantity of things such as energy. Regulations and litigation have caused the US to build not a single on-shore oil refinery or nuclear plant in about 30 years. Demand is growing because countries such as India, China and Russia are growing rich following low taxes, relatively low regulation in many areas, and privatization. Besides, didn't many Americans - including many environmentalists - argue for sharp increases in energy prices so that people would use less energy? At least according to them, $4/gallon gasoline must be a big improvement over 10 or 20 years ago, when the price was close to $1. You can't have it both ways...

3. Too high taxes. All sorts of businesses are leaving the US, incorporating anywhere from Macao to Ireland and Latvia because US taxes have become some of the highest in the world. US corporate income taxes are the second-highest in the world, after Japan. Many countries have zero capital gains taxes, whereas the US is at 15% and Hillbama proposing increases to 28% or 39.6%. The top income rax rates in Albania, Estonia, Hong-Kong and Russia are 10%, 13%, 15% and 17%. If you live in Manhattan, federal+state+local income tax is 49%. Small wonder the US economy is depressed with people fleeing abroad. Tax revenue has gone up for almost all of the last 67 years, with the biggest increases in the last 5 years. 70% of income taxes are paid by the top 5% of income earners. 50% of all taxes are paid by the richest 1% of taxpayers. In other words, the vast majority of taxes are paid by a few people at the top, who in some cases are in the process of moving their money abroad following the (recent and expected future) tax increases here at home, in combination with tax cuts abroad.

4. Too much government spending. As high as taxes have gone through the roof, they have not kept pace with spending. This year, the Federal budget is $3.1 trillion, or over over $10,000 per American. Of this amount, approx 20% goes to the department of defense. Most of the other 80% goes go social security, medicare and medicaid, plus gigantic government bureaucracies that make up new rules and new forms to fill out. The government employs literally millions of bureaucrats, whose jobs are to make it as difficult as possible to start and operate a business.

5. Too many regulations. Many US industries are very heavily regulated. It is illegal for FedEx and UPS to deliver first-class (i.e., regular) mail. Affirmative action laws add bureaucratic cost. Sarbanes-Oxley adds billions in cost and forcing companies to list their shares in London and Hong-Kong instead of NYSE and NASDAQ.

6. Too many lawsuits. US corporations spend more money on legal fees than on research and development. Do you think this is the case in India, China, Ireland and Lithuania? Of course not. A doctor's insurance is now over $300,000 per year. And you wonder why health care - and many other things - are expensive?

7. Too little savings. Americans save a very small portion of their income. Investment can only come from postponed consumption, so to make up for the difference we must borrow or receive direct investment from abroad. Americans don't save enough money because they believe that the big government welfare state will bail them out when they have a problem (social security, medicaid, medicare, disaster relief after a hurricane). In addition, we tax savings more than in other countries with higher rates on capital gains, interest and dividends. This party is all coming to an end as foreigners may become unwilling to lend to Americans or fail to invest here. Hence a key reason for the fall in the dollar's value.

8. Too much property owned by the government. Why is 92% of the land in America owned by various levels of government? Who owns most forests? Who owns 40 miles of beachfront between Orange County and San Diego? Who owns the three airports in New York? The US Post Office? The US is normally considered a capitalist country, and the US President is the leader of the free world, but fundamentally the US economy has more in common with the old Soviet Union and Red China under Chairman Mao, than most people realize. High taxes, high spending and high regulations are measurements of the degree to which a country is a socialist country, but so is the degree of government ownership of the most basic means of production: land.

The solutions to these eight problems are as follows:

1. How to stop the value of the dollar from falling? Print less dollars.

2. How to stop energy and other commodity prices from increasing? See (1) plus allow for new/more supply of energy by allowing people to build nuclear plants, oil refineries and drill for oil. But then again, some have been arguing for higher energy prices for decades, so...

3. How to deal with people and companies fleeing the country to lower-tax places? Cut taxes here at home. We should not have higher taxes than Albania, Estonia, Hong-Kong, Russia and Ireland. In addition to cutting taxes, make them simple by abolishing deductions and not more difficult to figure out than the tip on your restaurant bill.

4. How to deal with runaway government spending? Combine medicare, medicare and social security into one simplified - and much smaller - program called "welfare" which will be there to keep people from starving and perhaps freezing to death (simple solution: put people on buses to Florida, where it's warm and there are plenty of oranges growing on the trees). This would cut government spending by more than half, from $3.1 trillion to just under $1 trillion, cutting the tax burden on a family of four from $40,000 per year to approximately $12,000.

5. How to deregulate? Abolish all laws that don't interpret and enforce private property rights.

6. How to get rid of costly lawsuits? This one isn't lacking in complexity, but basically one key part of the solution is to have the losing party in a lawsuit pay for the other party's legal fees. That alone would probably cut over 90% of lawsuits.

7. How to get people to save and invest more? Cut taxes on saving and investments to zero. Also, by abolishing most forms of welfare programs, people would have a greater incentive to save. This would also attract foreign capital.

8. How to get rid of too much governmnent property? In the finest tradition of Margaret Thatcher and Boris Yeltsin, privatize! They turned two extremely poor economies into economic powerhouses not only by cutting taxes (which was extremely important) but also by selling/giving government property to the public. The US just privatized $20 billion worth of radio spectrum for wireless Internet in March 2008. Bravo! Now go sell most of the 92% of land it owns in this country, the US Post Office, airports, etc.

In summary, all of these cures to our eight economic ills are mainstream Economics 101. Generally, no serious economist disagrees with any of this. It's just that politics itself has its warped biases to do all the bad things. That's why so many economies around the world are operating at dramatically sub-par levels of performance. We may never get the optimal economic system installed - unless I am given dictatorial powers - but I still hope that someone will listen and do at least something in the right direction. The eight points above would do most of the trick.

How Socialism Is Anti-Green

On the one hand, it is remarkable that despite the sharp increase in energy prices and the global warming concerns, the major candidates for the highest office are not proposing meaningful solutions. On the other hand, it's not surprising at all - this is the way almost all issues of seriousness are treated in Washington, DC.

Sometimes, the obsacles to renewable, cheaper and cleaner energy reside not in Washington, DC, but in state and local governments. Ted Kennedy's opposition to wind power on Martha's Vineyard is one famous example.

Another good example is solar power, at least in the state of California. It takes 69 signatures from 8 different state and local bodies in California, in order to be allowed to install a solar panel on one's roof. This process takes an absolute minimum of 6 months to complete. And solar power is an alleged top priority to the California government?

Installing a few solar panels on the roof should be a no-brainer decision for most people, but who can take 6 or more months off from work to chase down 69 bureaucratic signatures from 8 government bodies? The solution to this problem is of course to deregulate: No government permit or signature should be needed in order to put up a solar panel on the roof.

As Ronald Reagan said about the socialist prescription for the economy: "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it."

Another thing that's been impossible to do for not only 6 months, but 30 years, is to build a nuclear plant in the U.S. It is widely known that nuclear energy is the most efficient technology available today on a sufficient scale to be able to substitute all coal-fired energy plants as fast as we can build them. We could build so many of them that we would make plug-in hybrid and all-electrical cars practical, reducing our dependence on oil dramatically.

But we haven't built a single one of them in 30 years. Why? Because the government has allowed people to file lawsuits against those interested in building them. In other words, the government has given the trial lawyers total veto power to prevent a cleaner environment and lower energy prices.

Again, the solution here is simple: The government needs to cease putting up this total obstacle against the building of clean energy. It needs to inform the trial lawyers that, sorry, a cleaner environment and the most rapid reduction in dependence on oil is a top national security priority, and you can't sue to stop it. In other words: John Edwards, you're out of business - go do something useful instead.

Interestingly, there are several very small U.S. communities, ranging from 50 to 5,000 people, who have continued to see nuclear plants being built to serve them, even in the last 30 years. They're called ships and submarines of the U.S. Navy. Speaking of 30 years, a U.S. aircraft carrier is not only 4.5 acres of sovereign U.S. territory, but its two nuclear plants can also operate for 30 years without refueling. They've been running like this for at least approximately 50 years now, and never an accident. And never a lawsuit.

Cleaner and cheaper energy should be a national security imperative. The ways to get there are to abolish the crazy socialist government policies of making it as difficult as possible to deploy solar power and nuclear power. In addition to lowering energy prices and improving the environment, this would have the additional side benefit of getting the Abdoullahs out of the Mercedes and onto the camel again.

Political speeches are filled with rhetoric about "hope" and "change" but never a sentence about abolishing the socialist obstacles to solar power and nuclear power. This is why it is so sad that the next President of the U.S. looks to be just another politician, as opposed to a businessman who has experience from the real world.

Oh, How Easy To Forget...And How Quickly Priorities Can Change

Times go by, and even within a generation, people forget major events.

16 years ago, Yugoslavia was in the middle of a civil war that broke up the country into at least a half dozen countries.

26 years ago, the United Kingdom declared war on Argentina and sent the Royal Navy to war over The Falkland Islands.

36 years ago, Arab terrorists took the Israeli Olympic delegation at Munich hostage and proceeded to murder all of them. A year later, all of the countries surrounding Israel including Egypt and Syria, proceeded to attempt the invasion of Israel.

46 years ago, the US failed its attempted invasion of Cuba at The Bay of Pigs, which was followed by the Cuban Missile Crisis when the world came minutes away from total war.

56 years ago, the US and the UN were fighting a Chinese-assisted invasion by North Korea of South Korea, and General MacArthur threatened to drop a nuke on the enemy, at which point President Eisenhower fired him.

66 years ago, the US had just declared war on Germany, Japan and Italy, and proceeded to go all the way to victory after 450,000 Americans fell.

76 years ago, Adolf Hitler was leading the election campaign for the German National Socialist Workers' Party (Nationalsocialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or NSDAP), in which he won and became head of the government. The only major world leader who protested and warned that this was bringing destruction to the world was Winston Churchill, an obscure right-wing back-bencher.

86 years ago, the US was experiencing unprecedented economic growth, but the German government thought it was harmless to increase the money supply, so it started printing money, which generated hyperinflation, followed by a depression and 40% unemployment.

96 years ago, the US government was debating 3 new policies that were implemented the following year: (a) prohibition of pot/drugs, (b) introducing the income tax, which previously had not existed and (c) requiring the use of passports for international travel.

Sen. John McCain's very vigorous mom Roberta was born 96 years ago, when drugs were legal, there was zero income tax and passports didn't exist.

Many Americans have conveniently forgotten these historical events. What's more surprising is that some Americans now also see September 11, 2001 - only little over 6 years ago - as a fading memory.

In this context, you may have missed it in all the coverage of Super Tuesday, but Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell gave his annual national security threat assessment to the Senate Intelligence Committee last week.

For anyone who still doubts that the United States and our allies are in a fight for our existence, Director McConnell's testimony should put those doubts to rest.

Here's part of what he said:

"Al Qaeda is improving the last key aspect of its ability to attack the U.S.: the identification, training, and positioning of operatives for an attack in the Homeland. While increased security measures at home and abroad have caused al Qaeda to view the West, especially the U.S., as a harder target, we have seen an influx of new Western recruits into the tribal areas since mid-2006. We assess that al Qaeda's Homeland plotting is likely to continue to focus on prominent political, economic, and infrastructure targets designed to produce mass casualties, visually dramatic destruction, significant economic aftershocks, and/or fear among the population.

We judge use of a conventional explosive to be the most probable al Qaeda attack scenario because the group is proficient with conventional small arms and improvised explosive devices and is innovative in creating capabilities and overcoming security obstacles. That said, al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are attempting to acquire chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons and materials (CBRN). We assess al Qaeda will continue to try to acquire and employ these weapons and materials -- some chemical and radiological materials and crude weapons designs are easily accessible, in our judgment."

What priorities will change after the next terrorist attack? Who will be blamed for failing to stop it? Will we blame our unguarded borders against Mexico and Canada? Will we blame the lack of biometric IDs? Will we blame the insufficient ability to wiretap suspected terrorists? Will there be calls to do what we did with the Japanese during World War 2? (internment camps)

I don't know what will be the precise dynamics in the media spin, but what I do know is that the political debate will shift dramatically at that point, and instantaneously, suddenly reminding us of 9/11 and various other turning points in history. We will be "shocked" to find out that we had become complacent and hadn't urgently addressed so many "obvious" holes in our security, such as our unguarded borders and lack of terrorist tracking.

The Greatest Generation vs. The Girlie Man Generation

American tradition is steeped in the history of rugged individualism. In social life, kids were taught to not whine or complain, but to focus on serious things and work hard. In economic life, kids were taught that rewards would come to those who do the right thing, and that there was no government hammock for those who underperform. In national security, kids were taught that America will fight for freedom - not surrender to those who are plotting to kill or enslave us.

We used to call the combination of rugged individualism and common defense of our freedoms the hallmark of The Greatest Generation - those Americans who first went to war against Japan, Germany and Italy on December 8, 1941 and then built up the middle America we inherited several decades thereafter. This was possible for a combination of the three driving forces of modern American civilization: Social morality, economic freedom and defense of liberty against the its enemies.

And so it was that America became - by far - the cominant economic power in the decades following World War 2. In addition, we fought wars in Korea and Vietnam, trying to protect small countries who were on paths to freedom, against communist invasion, enslavement and genocide. A third war, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, is seeing the second tail of clean-up work today.

Almost 67 years after we declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy, I am sensing that the stoic rugged individualism of The Greatest Generation is giving way to something very different. It has been brewing for years with "sensitivity training" at work and "political correctness" at school. Protected classes and subjects have been created, about whom you are not allowed to speak in a certain way for the fear of "offending" someone. Sort of like the Danish cartoons about Mohammed.

We see this most recently in the "celebrity"-crazed culture, where movie stars, singers and other entertainers are suddenly not only endorsing politicians - but also getting significant attention for it. In the past such endorsements would never have happened, and if they did, nobody would take them seriously or give them much attention.

It is a poor reflection of the state of American culture when instead of proposing substantive policies, contenders for the highest office in the land think they can win by surrounding themselves by the people who are featured in the tabloids normally found by the supermarket check-out counters. Supporters of such candidates seem rarely - if ever - capable of identifying any substance advocated by these candidates, but rather such specifics are clouded and cloaked in "change" and other similarly meaningless phrases.

It is a sad statement on the direction of our American civilization when the mentality of our political process has been transformed from the rugged individualism and non-whining of The Greatest Generation, to the whining political correctness - dressed in Hollywood celebrity garb - of this new Girlie Man Generation. So therefore, the biggest question determining the outcome of the 2008 election will be whether The Silent Majority of which Richard Nixon spoke so eloquently, has been transformed from Greatest Generation to Girlie Man.

Why the classics are classics

Proper schooling includes the study of the things in life that have withstood the test of time. This includes objects of art (Leonardo da Vinci), literature (Shakespeare) and politics (the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution). These are items in life who are classical because they are each fundamental in their own disciplines.

With the most interesting political campaign in a generation in full swing, it is worth reflecting on the extent to which what is being discussed in these political debates will go down in history 25, 50, 100 or more years down the road as "classical" - or important in the eyes of history.

Let me suggest that at this point in the political season, as interesting as the fights may be from a multiplicity-of-candidates perspective, the actual content of the issue disagreements isn't fought in a particularly classic way. What do I mean by that?

First, let's define what is the classic debate in politics. It is pretty simple, actually. Everything that is done in the world, every dollar that is spent, is either done so by someone who is in charge of himself (or the family/children), or by someone who has taken the resource or forced it to be directed in any other (involuntary) way. That's the government, which taxes, spends and regulates. For this reason, the classical debate in politics is very simple: Should the government tax/spend and/or regulate something, or should it not? If the individual is in control of his property, it is capitalism, but if the government regulates it and/or taxes/spends it, the thing in question falls in the column of socialism.

Almost every viewpoint in politics can easily be analyzed in this manner - capitalism vs socialism. It used to be a big geopolitical struggle between the free world and The Soviet Union, but the geopolitical struggle has now been replaced by the desires of radical islam and of ever-growing government at home.

In this context, the current debate of taxes and spending is pretty pathetic. Let's start with Obama and Clinton. They are both in favor of raising Federal income taxes to well over 40%, raising the capital gains taxes from 15% to well over 40%, and probably also raising the corporate income tax from 35% to that over-40% rate. In other words, doing their best to make sure that the value of all companies on the stock exchanges will see their values tumble dramatically. By reducing corporate profits, and the share of those profits that go to their owners, it is a most basic corporate finance iron law 101 that the values must decline. Hence, a major reason for the stock market decline over the last couple of months. If there is a chance Obama or Clinton may actually raise those taxes in 2009, better sell those shares now before they go down another 20%. This is pretty simple - and prudent - risk management by those who own shares.

The most baffling point about the proposed Clinton/Obama tax hikes is their concurrent reaction to the recent market downturn and fears of recession. Both candidates are in favor of immediate tax breaks to avert a recession!

Hmmm, the economy is going South because of the fear of 2009 tax hikes, so therefore the same people who are proposing those tax hikes now want immediate tax cuts! Why doesn't anyone call these deeply self-contradictory candidates on this evident inconsistency? It should be the first question in every interview/debate.

Unfortunately, the current crop of Republicans are not doing too much better in these departments either. While they pay lip service to avoiding tax hikes, and in some cases propose some (mild) tax cuts - such as a cut in the Federal income tax rate from 39.6% to 30% - they are fairly silent on specifics with respect to overall government spending. This year, the Federal government spends approximately $3 trillion, or $10,000 for each of us 300 million Americans. That's up dramatically from 1962, when the Federal budget was $100 billion, or some $500 for each of approximately 200 million Americans.

None of the leading Republican contenders - McCain, Romney, Giuliani or Huckabee - have the courage to spell out specifically what - if anything material - they would cut from this giant $3 trillion bureaucracy. None of them has proposed abolishing a single government department, as far as I know. None of them points this out in socialism vs capitalism terms. All of them have bought into the principle that big government is here to stay, only that it should grow at perhaps 2% per year instead of 7% or whatever.

What we are left with here is therefore the cowardly Mexican standoff between Republicans and Democrats: Clinton/Obama are unwilling to accurately describe their plans for taxing and spending as a step into a future of socialism, and McCain/Romney/Giuliani/Huckabee are unwilling to admit that they are unwilling to change the status quo by anything but a rounding error.

There is therefore nothing classical about this fight at all.

Rather, the current in-fighting in the two parties focus almost exclusively on personalities and resumes - not actual policies in the context of the eternal struggle between capitalism and socialism. Someone is for "hope" and "change", whereas someone else is for "experience" and "judgment." But is someone willing to take a stand for and against socialism and capitalism?

Not any of the leading candidates, that's for sure. With some degrees of difference in general direction, they have all basically bought into the model of big government, and the debate is about fine-tuning its size. Granted, it is important for the future of the stock market, economic growth and prosperity whether taxes are at 8%, 28% or 48%, but it doesn't address the issue of the very fat $3 trillion annual Federal budget.

There is only voice pointing out that the Emperors have no clothes in terms of the narrow scope of the debate: Ron Paul. He points out that almost all of our $3 trillion budget is unconstitutional and socialist. The original constitution spells out that the only legitimate functions of the Federal government are the maintenance of a judiciary and a defense against foreign enemies. If we had a constitutional government today, it would cost somewhere well below $1 trillion, or well below $3,333 for each of us 300 million Americans.

Example in point: The framers of the constitution had as a key objective to make sure that the government does not get its hands on the education of our children. "Public" (socialist) schools didn't exist until all of the founders of our constitution had died, in 1848, coincidental with Karl Marx's publication of Das Kapital. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I couldn't help noticing...

Yet today, the Republican candidates for President (except for Ron Paul) don't propose the abolition of "public" schools. Same thing for other big budget items such as social security, medicaid and medicare. All these things are, in fact, socialist programs and therefore not-so-coincidentally unconstitutional.

So there you have it - today's political debates have been reduced from comparing the classical differences between socialism and capitalism, to emotional nonsense such as whether we need a President who is for "change" and claims to be able to "unite the country." How do you "unite" the views of the person who will see a huge tax hike to pay for some government program with the bureaucrats and the alleged beneficiaries of such a program?

America needs a cold shower of hard and fundamental choice: Should we follow the constitution and dramatically deflate the size of the government budget and its millions of regulations, or should we march forward into full-fledged socialism? We know where Obama/Clinton stand, although they dare not say it. Unfortunately, we also know that McCain/Romney/Giuliani/Huckabee aren't proposing much more than "holding the line."

The stock market has been voting in recent months, and its verdict isn't all that rosy, as it starts to discount the probability of a leap into more socialism in 2009 and beyond. In the meantime, the rest of us can also vote our conscience - Ron Paul.

The Bodyguard Divide

I thought I knew how to explain all the differences between the Republican and Democratic candidates for President. From the policies on taxes, regulations, illegal immigration and the Muslim World Jihad against modernity, one can tell the current crop of Democrat and Republican candidates for President apart from a mile away.

Literally, as it turns out.

You can actually tell the Obama/Clinton campaign entourages apart from McCain/Romney/Huckabee/Giuliani crowds, a mile away. Why? The discrepancy in the number of bodyguards.

Obama and Clinton are surrounded by a security entourage fit for a sitting President. This is in part understandable, in the case of Hillary, who unlike in the roaring Monica Lewinsky 1990s sometimes travels with the former President Bill. For the first-term Illinois Senator Obama, however, the swarms of bodyguards appears a bit more mysterious.

Contrast this with the Republican candidates. I met both McCain and Romney on multiple occasions in 2007, and on none of these four occasions was there a single bodyguard in sight. I have heard from others that the story is similar at Huckabee and Giuliani events, with the exception of Giuliani having at least one bodyguard. You don't see some sort of boxing rope at a Republican event (or nightclub/Hollywood red velvet rope when Bill Clinton needs to feel at home).

To quantify this further, ONE of ANY of the top two Democratic candidates have MORE than 10x (probably 20x) as many bodyguards as ALL of the Republican candidates COMBINED. The difference couldn't be greater.

Traditionally, Presidential candidates have received Secret Service protection upon receiving the formal nomination by their respective parties, typically some time in the Summer. Until then, they had none or very little protection. Obviously, exceptions were made for George Bush in 1988 because he was the sitting Vice President, but generally this wasn't so. I was at the Republican Convention in San Diego in August 1996 when we nominated Bob Dole, and he was just getting his first bodyguards from Secret Service around that time.

What I don't know is what it means. Perhaps you the reader can offer some credible suggestions. Does it mean that the threat against the leading Democrats is greater? Nobody wants to harm the Republican candidates? Why?

Leaving Las Vegas

With the Nevada primary election for the 2008 Presidency less than a week away, there is one acute issue that every tourist notices in Las Vegas: The nightmarish cab and transportation situation.

Aside from a very limited monorail and some very sparse buses, the only mechanized way to move around Las Vegas is by cab. The cab lines are very long, and the price is approximately 2x compared to Manhattan. In other words, a consumer disaster.

It is also an environmental problem, for all the obvious reasons.

Las Vegas has over 150,000 hotel rooms, and the occupancy rate has been very high in recent years. This means there are probably over 200,000 tourists in LV on any given day. I estimate that each tourist takes 3 cab rides per person on average, per day. That's 600,000 cab rides. At an average fare of $15, that's $9 million per day in cab fares.

Each person waits in a cab line at least 10 minutes on average. That's 2 million person-minutes per day wasted standing in line, or 33,333 hours. At an hourly price of time of $20/hour, that's a cost of $666,666 per day. Even for a big city, that's a lot of waste. Of course, there is also a cost to the environment in the form of pollution.

The solution to this problem is of course simple: Build more Monorail and/or subway. Obviously, there should be a monorail right on the strip (Las Vegas Blvd) and/or a subway under it. There should also be something equivalent right under or behind the hotels on the West side. All of them should connect to the airport - how obvious!

Such a subway/monorail system would eliminate over 90% of the cab use by tourists. At conventions, people would get to/from meetings faster. Las Vegas would be a much more attractive place to visit. Conventions would flock to Vegas, instead of seeking to leave to cities with other attractive features.

So why hasn't this obvious improvement not happened? I don't know for sure, but the only plausible explanation points in the direction of a taxicab mafia of sorts. Taxis are the the only class benefiting from this inefficient transport system, whereas everyone else loses.

So are Obama and Clinton expressing any opinion on this subject? Are they in favor of reducing pollution and cheaper consumer prices? Are they willing to take on the taxicab union?

You guessed it. Of course not. Why try to offend something as important as the taxicab union? By the way, if you don't dare offending the taxicab union in Las Vegas, how will you take on Bin Laden?

I guess the Clinton/Obama solution to the transport congestion in Las Vegas is a much more subtle and macroeconomic one. Let's just raise everyone's taxes just enough to reduce people's propensity to travel to Las Vegas to begin with! Then the cab lines will be a little shorter - wait 5 minutes instead of 10. Then we can make this great shift of healthcare expenses from the individual's pocket to the government's pocket.

But wait - fewer people engaging in commerce, fewer business travelers, fewer tourists.... What happens to tax receipts? Ouch...

At least Romney/Giuliani/McCain/Huckabee/Thompson have a different recipe: Don't raise taxes, but rather prevent the unions from creating sensible and environmentally friendly transport solutions - monorails, subways. This would lower prices for consumers, enable people to move around faster, attract more business travelers and dramatically reduce all sorts of pollution, including noise. Unlike a tax hike, a capitalist solution to obvious problems.

I just hope someone makes this a political issue in next week's primary election, or in the November general election. I guess that's too much for which to hope.