The longer I live and the more I see, the more I realize how important a classical liberal education is for Western Civilization.  When a civilization loses its roots, it is easily washed away with the latest ideas and fads.  The classic literature from the past can help build roots deep enough to stand the storms of modern life.  I have made a commitment to myself to read all of the classic over the next 10 years.  Our liberties, laws, economics, and faith all stem from the thinking and ideas from those who have gone before us.  This gives us our foundation to leap even further than our progenitors.  But if we do not read and comprehend our past, we have no foundation to leap ahead.  I recently read a biography on Robert Hutchins.  It was a fascinating book that discussed in depth the meaning and purpose of a classical liberal education.  The West enjoys more free time than ever before; but instead of educating ourselves, we entertain ourselves to death.  I believe a group of men and women who will discipline themselves to learn our past is necessary, if we are to ensure our futures.  Here is an article that Robert Hutchins wrote to introduce the Great Books series.  Please share your thoughts on the Great Conversation.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

The Great Conversation

 by Robert M. Hutchins

The tradition of the West is embodied in the Great Conversation that began in the dawn of history and that continues to the present day. Whatever the merits of other civilizations in other respects, no civilization is like that of the West in this respect. No other civilization can claim that its defining characteristic is a dialogue of this sort. No dialogue in any other civilization can compare with that of the West in the number of great works of the mind that have contributed to this dialogue. The goal toward which Western society moves is the Civilization of the Dialogue. The spirit of Western civilization is the spirit of inquiry. Its dominant element is the Logos. Nothing is to remain undiscussed. Everybody is to speak his mind. No proposition is to be left unexamined. The exchange of ideas is held to be the path to the realization of the potentialities of the race.

At a time when the West is most often represented by its friends as the source of that technology for which the whole world yearns and by its enemies as the fountainhead of selfishness and greed, it is worth remarking that, though both elements can be found in the great conversation, the Western ideal is not one or the other strand in the conversation, but the conversation itself. It would be and exaggeration to say that Western civilization means these books. The exaggeration would lie in the omission of the plastic arts and music, which have quite as important a part in Western civilization as the great productions included in this set. But to the extent to which books can present the idea of a civilization, the idea of Western civilization is here presented.

These books are the means of understanding our society and ourselves. They contain the great ideas that dominate us without our knowing it. There is no comparable repository of our tradition.

To put an end to the spirit of inquiry that has characterized the West it is not necessary to burn the books. All we have to do is to leave them unread for a few generations. On the other hand, the revival of interest in these books from time to time throughout history has provided the West with new drive and creativeness. Great Books have salvaged, preserved, and transmitted the tradition on many occasions similar to our own.

The books contain not merely the tradition, but also the great exponents of the tradition. Their writings are models of the fine and liberal arts. They hold before us what Whitehead called "'the habitual vision of greatness." These books have endured because men in every era have been lifted beyond themselves by the inspiration of their example, Sir Richard Livingstone said: "We are tied down, all our days and for the greater part of our days, to the commonplace. That is where contact with great thinkers, great literature helps. In their company we are still in the ordinary world, but it is the ordinary world transfigured and seen through the eyes of wisdom and genius. And some of their vision becomes our own."

Until very recently these books have been central in education in the West. They were the principal instrument of liberal education, the education that men acquired as an end in itself, for no other purpose than that it would help them to be men, to lead human lives, and better lives than they would otherwise be able to lead.

The aim of liberal education is human excellence, both private and public (for man is a political animal). Its object is the excellence of man as man and man as citizen. It regards man as an end, not as a means; and it regards the ends of life, and not the means to it. For this reason it is the education of free men. Other types of education or training treat men as means to some other end, or are at best concerned with the means of life, with earning a living, and not with its ends.

The substance of liberal education appears to consist in the recognition of basic problems, in knowledge of distinctions and interrelations in subject matter, and in the comprehension of ideas.

Liberal education seeks to clarify the basic problems and to understand the way in which one problem bears upon another. It strives for a grasp of the methods by which solutions can be reached and the formulation of standards for testing solutions proposed. The liberally educated man understands, for example, the relation between the problem of the immortality of the soul and the problem of the best form of government; he understands that the one problem cannot be solved by the same method as the other, and that the test that he will have to bring to bear upon solutions proposed differs from one problem to the other.

The liberally educated man understands, by understanding the distinctions and interrelations of the basic fields of subject matter, the differences and connections between poetry and history, science and philosophy, theoretical and practical science; he understands that the same methods cannot be applied in all these fields; he knows the methods appropriate to each.

The liberally educated man comprehends the ideas that are relevant to the basic problems and that operate in the basic fields of subject matter. He knows what is meant by soul. State, God, beauty, and by the other terms that are basic to the insights that these ideas, singly or in combination, provide concerning human experience.

The liberally educated man has a mind that can operate well in all fields. He may be a specialist in one field. But he can understand anything important that is said in any field and can see and use the light that it shed upon his own. The liberally educated man is at home in the world of ideas and in the world or practical affairs, too, because he understands the relation of the two. He may not be at home in the world of practical affairs in the sense of liking the life he finds about him; but he will be at home in that world in the sense that he understands it. He may even derive from his liberal education some conception of the difference between a bad world and a good one and some notion of the ways in which one might be turned onto the other.

The method of liberal education is the liberal arts, and the result of liberal education is discipline in those arts. The liberal artist learns to read, write, speak, listen, understand, and think. He learns to reckon, measure, and manipulate matter, quantity, and motion in order to predict, produce, and exchange. As we live in the tradition, whether we know it or not, so we are all liberal artists, whether we know it or not. We all practice the liberal arts, well or badly, all the time every day. As we should understand the tradition as well as we can in order to understand ourselves, so we should be as good liberal artists as we can in order to become as fully human as we can.

The liberal arts are not merely indispensable; they are unavoidable. Nobody can decide for himself whether he is going to be a human being. The only question open to him is whether he will be an ignorant, undeveloped one or one who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining. The question, in short, is whether he will be a poor liberal artist or a good one.

The tradition of the West in education is the tradition of the liberal arts. Until very recently nobody took seriously the suggestion that there could be any other ideal. The educational ideas of John Locke, for example, which were directed to the preparation of the pupil to fit conveniently into the social and economic environment in which he found himself, made no impression on Locke's contemporaries. And so it will be found that other voices raised in criticism of liberal education fell upon deaf ears until about a halfcentury ago.

This Western devotion to the liberal arts and liberal education must have been largely responsible for the emergence of democracy as an ideal. The democratic ideal is equal opportunity for full human development, and, since the liberal arts are the basic means of such development, devotion to democracy naturally results from devotion to them. On the other hand, if acquisition of the liberal arts is an intrinsic part of human dignity, then the democratic ideal demands that w should strive to see to it that all have the opportunity to attain to the fullest measure of the liberal arts that is possible to each.

The present crisis in the world has been precipitated by the vision of the range of practical and productive art offered by the West. All over the world men are on the move, expressing their determination to share in the technology in which the West has excelled. This movement is one of the most spectacular in history, and everybody is agreed upon one thing about it: we do not know how to deal with it. It would be tragic if in our preoccupation with the crisis we failed to hold up as a thing of value for all the world, even as that which might show us a way in which to deal with the crisis, our vision of the best that the West has to offer. That vision is the range of the liberal arts and liberal education. Our determination about the distribution of the fullest measure of these arts and this education will measure our loyalty to the best in our own past and our total service to the future of the world.

The great books were written by the greatest liberal artists. They exhibit the range of the liberal arts. The authors were also the greatest teachers. They taught one another. They taught all previous generations, up to a few years ago. The question is whether they can teach us.

Robert M. Hutchins has been deemed one of America's most highly esteemed and most well known educators. He was born on January 17, 1899, in Brooklyn, New York. Hutchins was educated at Oberlin College in Ohio, before serving in the military during World War I. He later completed his education at Yale university, graduating in 1921 and earning a law degree in 1925. From 1927 to 1929, he was the Dean of the Yale Law School. By the age of 30, Robert M. Hutchins became the President of the University of Chicago. He remained at the university until 1951, and served as Chancellor of the University of Chicago from 1945 to 1951. Hutchins then went on to become the director (1951) and President (1954) of The Fund for the Republic. He served as Chairman of the Board of Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1943 until his death on May 14, 1977.

Here is a fascinating article on a subject that all freedom loving people should read.  Independence is only maintained by an independent, responsible, and vigilant citizenry.  Think through these issues as the author, Robert Genetski shares them.  How can we, as a community, bring personal responsibility back into vogue?  We cannot demand for dependence on government and expect to remain independent for long.  If someone provides for your security, they do so at the price of your freedom.  As Patrick Henry said, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?”  I do not demand for security, but I do demand an equal opportunity in my country to sink or swim based upon my efforts and the content of my character.  Let no wealthy person forbid the poor from their opportunity, and let no government forbid the wealthy from their honestly gained wealth.  Equal opportunity, not equal results has always been the ideal for true freedom loving people!  A nation of dependents cannot expect to remain Independent!  Enjoy the article and please share your thoughts. God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Excerpted from A Nation of Millionaires, by Robert J. Genetski. Copies of this 168-page book were delivered in May 1997 to nearly 10,000 state and federal policy makers, journalists, think tank representatives, and Heartland friends and donors nationwide. Additional copies are available for $8.95 pre-paid from The Heartland Institute.

For two centuries, the United States has been a beacon of hope for the rest of the world. That hope is based on what was once a novel and untested idea: that citizens could successfully govern themselves. The United States has proven democracy so successful that it has become the only legitimate model of political organization. But democracy was only one part of the Founding Fathers' unique experiment. They believed not only that individuals can be responsible for governing themselves . . . but also that individuals have a responsibility to provide for their own needs.

Government's Duty

As viewed by the Founding Fathers, government has certain responsibilities. First and foremost is the obligation to provide an environment that enables individuals to achieve their highest potential, in terms of their contributions to society and in terms of the rewards they receive for those contributions. Creating this environment involves four things: low tax burdens, free markets, protection of property rights, and a stable currency with which to conduct business.

Low taxes make it easier for people to provide for their own needs by letting them keep their hard-earned income. Free markets help maximize output, and thus earnings, by providing vital information about the value of goods and services. Markets are free when government is limited and individuals are primarily responsible for their own needs. Property rights protect the accumulation of assets from confiscation. Without such rights, individuals would have little incentive to create wealth. A stable currency is needed to provide reliable information about transactions and to prevent government from usurping resources by devaluing the currency.

In recent decades, government has obviously failed in its obligation to provide an economic environment in which individuals can achieve independence and assume responsibility. High tax rates, the seemingly unconstrained growth in government, interference with markets, a withering away of property rights, and persistent inflation have placed substantial barriers in the way of achieving independence. As the ability of individuals to provide for their own needs is eroded, economic, moral, and cultural deterioration accelerate. If recent trends persist, insecurity, injustice, and crime will become even more pervasive.

Why People Behave As They Do

Behavior is shaped by three things: values, incentives, and information. An individual's values are formed from the lessons provided by parents, teachers, friends, relatives, religious leaders, and even government. A government that is corrupt and immoral is certain to be a negative influence on its people. A judicial system that renders the concept of law meaningless by interpreting it to conform to the latest social theory hastens the erosion of moral values. When those charged with interpreting the law mold it to reflect their own preferences, they undermine respect for the law and promote lawlessness.

The inclination toward criminal activity can be overcome by a strong system of social and moral values. Still, the more society's institutions reflect a lack of values, the greater the erosion is likely to be among its people. When a society adopts policies making it more difficult to respect moral values, it dilutes those values.

Behavior also is influenced by incentives. While individuals don't always realize it, they often make decisions in response to economic pressures. For example, when an individual has little to lose, the potential gains from criminal activity seem relatively high and the penalties for getting caught appear relatively low. Applying such cost-benefit analysis to crime may seem crude, but it is both appropriate and accurate. The greater the rewards from an activity, and the lower its costs, the more people will tend to engage in it.

The commission of a crime can be a rational economic choice if the expected loss is minimal. If individuals have little income and assets to lose, and if their expected punishment is fairly mild, more of them can be expected to commit crimes. As taxes take a larger and larger bite out of people's paychecks, the ability of lower-income workers to support themselves--not to mention their families--is undermined. As the rewards for legitimate work decline, the pressures for criminal activity become even greater.

On the opposite end of the income spectrum, it doesn't make much sense for a millionaire to engage in criminal activity. Relative to his or her prospects in the legitimate economy, the potential benefits of crime are small. Moreover, the cost of getting caught is enormous: considerable lost income for time spent in court or in jail, lost assets for compensating the victims of the crime and paying court costs, and social rejection by family, friends, and the community at large.

This doesn't mean that the rich are more virtuous than the poor. Many who are poor have the social and moral upbringing to avoid the temptations of criminal activity. By contrast, those who are rich and without principles do commit crimes, but they are seldom the random, violent crimes that have become commonplace in recent years. When individuals see themselves as being or becoming rich, they have strong incentives to avoid crime, particularly violent crime.

Policies that Promote Dependency

Government policies that promote dependency seriously undermine values and incentives. These policies encourage irresponsible behavior by providing misleading information about its consequences. The influence of such policies extends well beyond the welfare population. Collectively, they have produced a nation of individuals dependent on government.

Policies that foster dependency permeate almost every aspect of our lives: retirement, health care, the legal system, welfare, and, perhaps most importantly, education. Instead of encouraging individuals to accept responsibility for their lives and their decisions, government policies discourage such behavior.

As government takes on more responsibility for the problems of its citizens, individuals feel less responsibility to provide for themselves. Moreover, their ability to do so is significantly reduced. Each time government is called on to fulfill a need, there is a cost. The more needs government attempts to fulfill, the higher the costs. Since individuals are the ones who pay for government programs, they are inevitably left with fewer resources to fulfill their own needs.

It is instructive to realize what has happened to the typical family's income over time. The most meaningful way to measure income is after taxes and after inflation. This measure is called real spendable earnings. It measures the amount of money a family has available to live on. The federal government used to calculate a similar figure, but it stopped doing so sometime around 1980 because the trend was so depressing.

Despite the lack of official figures, it is possible to estimate the trend in after-tax family income. Consider the "typical family," one whose yearly income is right in the middle of all families (that is, there are as many families earning more as earning less). After-tax income trends can be plotted for several types of families: two-income families, single-parent families, etc. Since cultural changes and financial hardships led many families to shift to two wage earners in recent decades (thus making it difficult to plot income trends over a long period of time), it is most useful to focus on the typical family where only the husband works.

In today's dollars, that family earned after-tax income of $31,000 in 1972, but just $26,000 in 1993. In that 21-year period, the family's after-tax take-home pay fell by 16 percent. As government has taken a progressively greater share of family income, families are left with less money for their basic needs, and they are made more dependent on government.

Dependency may be appropriate for young children. But as they grow and mature, even children must be given more responsibility. If they are not, they remain dependent upon their parents and never become responsible adults.

Similarly, a nation where a significant portion of the population behaves as dependents can never be a great nation. It can be only a nation of individuals who have failed to attain maturity and independence; a nation of individuals who will insist on blaming others for their problems; a nation of individuals who constantly look to government, as a child looks to a parent, to solve its problems.

In the United States, government increasingly has taken on the role of parent. Unfortunately, it has done a miserable job with its "children." Almost without fail, government has hindered the development of independence and maturity. Politicians have developed programs to "solve" the problems of their needy constituents, instead of providing the tools and assistance to enable individuals to solve their own problems.

Social Security

Our current system of Social Security gives government the power to decide how much of an "allowance" retirees should receive and how they must behave to receive it. Those who choose to work past the normal retirement age can be punished with lower allowances. Spouses who never worked may be rewarded with greater benefits than those who worked full-time. Single persons who die upon reaching retirement age have all of their allowance taken away.

By creating a class of dependent retirees, Social Security has led to resentment, indignity, and a sense of frustration and betrayal. It has caused retirees to form political pressure groups to defend what they have earned and what they thought they had been promised. Born of a program based on dependency, these political groups tend to act like children. They insist that their immediate demands be met and ignore the longer-term implications of maintaining the present system. Like children, these groups often refuse even to listen to any suggestions for altering the system.

Welfare

The tendency of government programs to create dependents extends most destructively to the current system of welfare. Unlike retirees, who have already lived productive, independent lives, welfare recipients have their lives and the lives of their children influenced by the policies of dependency. At virtually every turn, the present welfare system works to keep those who are poor from overcoming their condition. Any of the poor who decide to work and accumulate assets face the prospect of losing food stamps, housing allowances, educational grants, and a host of other potential benefits.

Instead of providing the poor with the means to solve their problems, government welfare programs aim at solving their problems for them. By penalizing constructive behavior such as thrift, deferred gratification, or the exercising of foresight regarding the future, the present system makes it extremely difficult for the poor to gain true independence.

Health Care

For many at the lower end of the income scale, the health care system creates a major incentive against legitimate work and accumulating assets. Those individuals who have few assets and little income, or those who are in prison, can receive unlimited free or nearly free treatment for serious illnesses under various government programs. Those who work hard for a living must pay heavily for the same services.

The public education system, legal system, and regulatory system also create dependency. Through them, government is called upon to educate children, ensure that the injured receive compensation, and restore or maintain the environment. All are important objectives. But a healthy society is one that provides the institutional arrangements necessary to help people solve their own problems.

A Nation of Dependents

Over the past several decades, a cycle of dependency has been created. Government policies have eroded the responsibility of individuals to provide for their own well-being, and taxation has severely limited their financial ability to do so. Government policies have replaced a nation of free, independent individuals with a nation of individuals dependent on government.

A nation of dependents can be neither great nor prosperous. To reverse the deterioration in today's society, we must fundamentally change government policies. Our efforts must be aimed at the heart of the problem, changing incentives and information to reinforce each individual's responsibility for shaping his or her own life.

Here is a fantastic thought provoking article from Robert Murphy.  Massive government intervention is responsible for the economic mess that America is experiencing in the first place and the Obama plan adds more government intervention to allegedly get us out of the mess.  I believe the Austrian economists have a better plan.  I don’t care if you are a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian or other, read these proposals and think for yourself about this common sense approach.  America lasted nearly 150 years without an income tax, so don’t tell me that society would crumble without it.  I agree that massive government would crumble without our money, but government in America was never intended to be the behemoth that it has become.  We need honorable statesmen who will balance the budget and tell Americans to work for their own rewards and not beg for government doles.  Leadership is a tough business and if they can't stand the heat then they need to get out of the kitchen.  Robbing our future generations to pacify slothfulness will never make America great, loved, nor respected.  Immigrants flocked to America for an equal opportunity not government handouts!  Why are we robbing our future generations of their opportunities to experience the hope and ideas that made America the envy of the free world for centuries?

No one can legitimately explain why we have troops in at least 135 other countries.  Why should American taxpayers foot the bill for another sovereign country's defense needs?  We are massively going into debt while having troops in Germany, Italy, Brazil etc. (see the complete list below) that are protecting who from what?  Are you telling me that German, Italian, and Brazilian (along with the rest of the countries) cannot raise men to defend their own countries on their own dime? If a country cannot legitimately do this, then I doubt the sovereignty of the country in the first place.  Can you imagine a foreign military establishment protecting our borders?  This hasn’t happened since America was an English colony. America must balance our budget and having a defense budget that is nearly 10 times higher than the next nation is sheer madness.  Is there not anyone capable of balancing a budget (a skill set that every American working family must do) in Washington?  Read the article and please share your thoughts.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Foreign Countries with American Troops

Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Cote D’lvoire, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji,  Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Liberia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua,  Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia and Montenegro, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Article by Robert Murphy - Faculty member of the Mises Institute

A lot of people get annoyed with Austrian economists because they tend to be so dogmatic (we prefer the term consistent) and because they cloak their strictly economic claims with self-righteousness (we prefer the term morality). After a good Austrian bashing of the latest call to steal taxpayer money and waste it on something that will make a given problem worse, the stumped critics will often shout, "Oh yeah? Well do you guys have a better idea?"

Now, in truth, someone doesn't have to have a better suggestion in order to point out that a recommended strategy will exacerbate the situation. If an allergic man has been stung by a bee, I don't know what to do except rush him to the hospital and maybe scour the cupboards looking for Benadryl. But I'm pretty sure drawing blood from his leg, in order to inject it into his arm and thus "stimulate his immune system," is a bad idea on numerous accounts — not least of which, is that I'm pretty sure an allergic reaction means your immune system needs to calm down. But the point is, if a bunch of guys hold the man down — he has to be forced to endure the procedure for his own good, don't you know — I feel perfectly qualified in yelling, "Stop!"

If you grasped that analogy, you can understand my feelings about anything Paul Krugman writes.

(All joking aside, I am pretty proud of the above analogy. But to make it even more accurate, let’s stipulate that a blind heroin addict, who has been convicted of manslaughter on three separate occasions, is the one entrusted with making the transfusion. Naturally he will use one of his own needles for the procedure.)

An Austrian Recommendation for President Obama

In one sense, the critics are right when they ask, "Oh, so we should just sit back and do nothing and let the market fix itself?" Yes, that would be a perfectly good idea. The whole reason we are in a recession in the first place is that the capital structure of the economy had become unsustainable due to the Fed's massive credit expansion following the dot-com bust and 9/11 attacks. Resources — most notably, labor — are currently idle, because the economy needs to readjust. Overextended lines such as housing and finance need to shrink, while others need to expand. (And no, I don't know what those understaffed lines are; that's why we have a price system.) Because Americans lived beyond their means for so many years, they now need to live below their means, consuming less while they rebuild their checking accounts and portfolios.

Given the diagnosis, we can be sure that efforts to borrow and spend our way back into prosperity, or massive bailouts of the banks and homeowners, are only pumping air into a flat tire with a gaping hole. And Bernanke's unbelievable injections of new funny money into the credit markets will only ensure that those failed institutions remain afloat, paralyzing true recovery in the loan market, and risking very large price inflation if Bernanke does not soon reverse course.

However, even though "nothing" would be much, much better than all of the alleged remedies being bandied about, the Austrians actually do have concrete proposals for President Obama. The following list includes items that I would have endorsed even before the crisis, but inasmuch as they would definitely help things, I offer them with sincerity to the new administration.

One last caveat: I know there are many purists who read the Mises Daily, and will be aghast at my watered-down recommendations. Yes, yes, I agree that the best thing would be for Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and all my friends to say, "You know, if you look at the history of this company, it always ends up wasting money and getting innocent people killed. I think we should just quit and go volunteer at a church instead."

But, if I said that as an Austrian recommendation, it would be dismissed as "unserious," a very grave charge indeed. Thus, the following list of recommendations are not politically impossible, just exceedingly unlikely:

Eliminate the personal and corporate income tax. Don't put in a flat tax or a fair tax or a VAT or any other cute name for a very uncute process. To make sure that individuals and corporations realize you are serious, blow up the IRS building. (Have everyone vacate the premises first, of course.) Tell all of the displaced workers that they have 9 months of full pay, plus whatever pension and health-care benefits they had contractually earned to that point. If the workers get new jobs 3 days after being laid off from the IRS, that's fine; they still get their full 9 months' pay. But if they haven't found a new job after 9 months, tough.

Unfortunately, dismantling the Social Security system will have to wait. (That means some of the IRS personnel would — sigh — have to be retained. But they would move to a different building.) Getting rid of the income tax will knock out much of the federal revenues, and taking out all payroll "contributions" would take us into the realm of "unserious." Note that in 2007, even without the personal and corporate income tax, the federal government still took in more than $1 trillion in receipts.

The loss of some $1.5 trillion in annual tax receipts sounds absurd, but the actual figure would be lower, because of "supply-side" effects. That is, the true stimulus to the economy from such an enormous tax cut would cause the revenues from other sources to grow. So long as the federal budget were cut by, say, a trillion dollars, within a few years it would be in the black.

Reducing annual federal expenditures by $1 trillion sounds inconceivable, but it actually could be phased in. The government has many assets that it could auction off into private hands, so that in the first year or two, the government could take certain programs and say, "This will have its budget cut by one-third over each of the next three years." The auction receipts would fill the gap until these phased-in reductions had fully occurred. Some of the obvious auction items would be the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (current value of about $35 billion at $50/bbl oil), as well as all of the mineral deposits (both onshore and offshore) technically owned by the federal government. It is difficult to come up with an estimate of how much the latter properties would fetch in an auction, since the proposals right now are for leasing extraction rights. But since the Outer Continental Shelf is estimated to have some 86 billion barrels of oil, presumably the government could receive many hundreds of billions of dollars — and possibly trillions — from an orderly and staggered sale over a few years of the most lucrative (and environmentally noncontroversial) lands.

Now, where to start cutting?

Eliminate the DEA and the SEC. Since the SEC failed to catch Madoff, despite nine years of warnings, I think its $950 million annual budget is obviously a waste of money. The DEA's $1.9 billion budget in 2007 also strikes me as counterproductive. Beyond the issues of violent gangs and judicial corruption, there is the fact that this is a recession and we need to cut costs. If you're afraid of your kid doing drugs, have a serious talk and then make him watch this movie. And if he's still keen on the idea, I'm not sure the DEA is going to stop him. (By the way, the DEA and SEC employees get the same deal as the laid-off IRS personnel.)

Cut the Pentagon budget in half. In FY 2008 it was (officially) some $460 billion, so that cut alone would free up $230 billion per year. This isn't an article about foreign policy, so we won't be specific about how the military could achieve such cuts. But if you're worried that the country would suddenly be overrun by Iranian tanks, the following chart should reassure you:

Top 10 Countries by Military Expenditure, 2007

Eliminate the Department of Education. That would save $68.6 billion a year, based on its latest budget. Does anyone want to argue that Americans are well educated? And incidentally, I was a college professor for a few years, so I can say from personal experience that there are way too many kids going to college. If you think "everyone should get a college degree," let me ask you this: Should everyone get a PhD? If not, then why a bachelor's degree? The more kids crammed into the school, the harder it is to teach to the truly academic, and the less of a signal the diploma provides. Plus, $68.6 billion is some serious money.

Cancel all the pending "stimulus" and other bailout packages. Tell the Big Three that small is beautiful. Tell the banks, "OK your 'short-term' loan from the Fed has expired, here are your mortgage-backed securities back, and we'll be taking our reserves. Good luck to you. This is a capitalist country, where you keep your earnings if you forecast well (we just eliminated the income tax!) and where you go bust if you don't realize real estate sometimes drops. Have a nice day." Yes, this would cause some banks to immediately go bankrupt, but the big banks aren't doing anything now anyway. The dreaded liquidation would actually wipe the slate clean so recovery could begin. As it is, trillions of dollars in capital is now locked up in undead institutions that can't make new loans but won't mark their assets at true values, since they are insolvent. And with the income tax being wiped out, the toxicity of these troubled assets would come way down.

Allow unrestricted immigration so long as the incoming folks had a secure job in which the employer (a) paid three years in advance on any state and local taxes that would accrue from the employment and (b) bought at least a $100,000 house for the immigrant and his or her family. (Yes, yes, the last point is silly, but it will help sell the package.)

Abolish the minimum wage. That — coupled with the elimination of the income tax — will take care of unemployment within 6 months.

The above steps are incomplete, and I'm sure many readers will email me with snags in them. Fair enough. But I am confident that the above would make a heck of a lot more sense than letting blind heroin addicts borrow an extra trillion dollars to "stimulate" the economy.