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On the eve of the Republican National Convention, several prominent Florida economists, including Christopher Westley of Florida Gulf Coast University and Marshall DeRosa of Florida Atlantic University, urged Donald Trump to consider seven policies to make “America great again.”
Westley and DeRosa are among a group of free-market economists associated with the Mises Institute, an Austrian economics think tank, who recently published the following letter to Trump:
First, the Affordable Care Act should be repealed in its entirety and, as you have already pointed out, any prohibition on interstate competition in health insurance also should be repealed. Health care and health care insurance should be left to the market.
Second, all recent thousand-page international trade agreements should be replaced with a single, clearly worded paragraph that allows any U.S. business (or consumer) to trade with any other business (or consumer) anywhere else in the world on terms that are mutually satisfactory. Period.
Third, you or the Congress should immediately remove cannabis (marijuana) from its current Schedule One prohibition status under Federal law; cannabis and drug policy generally should be left entirely to the states. (Ideally the entire drug war should be scrapped and the production and consumption by adults of any “drug” should be legalized.)
Fourth, the federal minimum wage should either be permanently fixed at its current rate or reduced; legally minimum wages should be left entirely to the states. (Ideally, all minimum wage laws should be repealed since they cause job destruction.)
Fifth, the U.S. corporate tax rate should be reduced so that it is the lowest (not the highest) in the industrial world; ideally, it should be repealed entirely because it constitutes double taxation on shareholders of corporations who also pay income tax on their dividends.
Sixth, the Federal Reserve should be required by law to end all forms of quantitative easing and interest rate regulation now accomplished primarily through open market operations; interest rates for savers and investors should be market determined. In addition, the Federal Reserve's budget should be determined by Congressional appropriations like that of any other federal department or agency.
And finally, as a long-run solution for our recurring financial problems and economic recessions, replacing the current inflationary paper dollar with alternative monetary arrangements that provide for a sound, market-based commodity money, such as the gold standard, should be seriously considered.
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