We need a viable third party for a number of reasons, but the most important is to keep our two dominant parties honest. Without a third party, both the Democrats and Republicans can lie to the American people about their intentions, saying they will do one thing while actively working to do something else. In many cases, both parties do the exact opposite of what they claim to stand for. Neither party truly stands for what they claim to, and neither party is willing to lift a finger (save perhaps the middle one) to earn the trust of the American people.
The Republicans talk a lot about limiting government, but as soon as specific limits are discussed, the Republican support for limited government evaporates. The last Republican to lower spending was Dwight D. Eisenhower, and wherever spending goes, taxes must eventually follow, making today’s Republicans a bunch of liars who claim to be against big government, but who are most definitely not in favor of a smaller government. Why did the Republicans fail to repeal Obamacare? Because they could not find a more expensive way to further break our healthcare system.
Not to be outdone, the Democrat Party has stopped pretending to be for anything at all (other than victimhood), and has become the party that runs against everything. If you are a man, the Democrats are against you. If you are a producer of anything, Democrats are against you. Fossil fuels provide cheap energy. Democrats are against fossil fuels, preferring things like wind turbines. Wind turbines take more energy to build then they produce during their serviceable lifetimes, and though only an imbecile could support an energy source that consumes more energy than it produces, wind turbines keep going up. To see the true cost of renewables, we need only look to Germany, where 30% of energy comes from renewables, and as a result energy is four times as expensive as the United States, or Canada, where in large swaths of Ontario families have to choose between feeding their families, or heating their homes. We have seven and a half billion people on the planet. Are Democrats for farming practices that can produce enough food to feed everyone? No. Democrats want organic-only foods, produced without pesticides or herbicides, and with only organic fertilizers. If Democrats had their way, it would be impossible to produce enough food to feed everyone, and billions of people would starve.
Democrats are willing to sacrifice prosperity to achieve equality. Bernie Sanders has even endorsed bread lines. Democrats claim to be for people, but they are against food, jobs, manufacturing, and everything else people actually need to survive. Democrats are idiots.
Republicans, not to be outdone, are in the hip pockets of large corporations, consistently voting for things that protect established wealth while making it more difficult than ever for the poor and middle classes to gain wealth.
Neither party is for prosperity, which is why both parties want to tax income. If we wanted to reduce inequality, we would tax wealth rather than income, for the truly wealthy live off of investments and pay only capital gains taxes. By taxing income, we penalize those who are working, and by taxing income at ever higher rates as people earn more, we penalize those who are in the best position to threaten the established wealth. The established wealth, in the meantime, pays very little.
Neither party wants to eliminate business taxes. The way Democrats demonize profitability, you would almost think they want to eliminate businesses.
Businesses do not pay taxes. Businesses pass whatever tax bill they have on to customers (through higher prices), employees (through lower wages), or shareholders (through lower returns). Wouldn’t it make far more sense to tax customers (through sales taxes), employees (through income taxes), and shareholders (through capital gains taxes) rather than taxing businesses? Businesses decide where to locate based on tax rates, so lowering business taxes encourages more businesses to locate here. The more businesses we have, the more we produce, and the more people we employ, driving up wages and lifestyles – and creating more wealth for us to tax.
We have to tax something unless we don’t want to have any government at all. Libertarians are not anarchists, and are not against all taxation, but we should be open to discussing what we want to tax, and at what levels. The Daily Libertarian has suggested that government should collect as much tax revenue as it possibly can, over the long term. As an economy grows, so too does the tax base, so any kind of tax that retards growth also reduces long term tax revenues. One would think that both political parties could agree on trying to collect as much tax revenue as possible over the long term. Republicans claim to want lower rates to expand growth, and Democrats are very open about wanting higher tax revenues. In the long run, both parties want the same thing, and yet neither party delivers.
The fact is that the Democrats are so enamored with equality that they cannot stomach prosperity, and the Republican Party is just simply corrupt. Neither party is working for the best interest of the American people.
Why can neither party tackle immigration reform? The answer is simple: both parties benefit from our broken immigration system. Democrats use Republican calls for a secure border to paint Republicans as racist, which plays well with the Democrat base, and Republicans rail about illegal immigration reducing wages to pander to their base. If we actually solved immigration, Democrats would have to find a new way to paint Republicans as racists, and Republicans would have to find a new way to scare their base into voting.
Democrats claim to be against the 1%, but what percent of the 1% are Democrat? The Clintons have a net worth of over $200 million. Most actors and actresses (virtually all of Hollywood), as well as most athletes, are Democrats. Many billionaires are Democrats as well. Will the Democrat rank and file ever tire of watching rich Democrats flying from mansion to mansion, in private jets, while railing against income inequality? It is interesting how none of the rich Democrats ever rail against their own wealth. Both parties seem very happy with a system in which it is easier to stay wealthy than to get wealthy, and the level of corruption on both sides of the political aisle is astounding.
If the American people ever want to be truly represented, we don’t just need a viable third party. We need a fourth party, a fifth party, a sixth party, and whatever number of other parties it takes to give each political ideology a voice. In most countries, compromise comes from coalition building, where common interests align. Democrats and Republicans only compromise when and where they are equally corrupt. We need as many alternatives to the Democrats and Republicans as we can get, but we have to start somewhere if we are ever going to break the back of our two party system.
We need a viable third party.