We need REAL conservative thinking on economics

Conservative Mark Brennan speculates (Chronicles, Feb 2018) that a way to deal with the destructive debt of our great country (3.65 trillion dollars in 2007) might be to tax the top 20 percent who own roughly 83 trillion dollars in aggregate wealth, which is about 85 percent of the wealth of the nation. Fed outlays are over 3 trillion dollars a year, which would be about 4 percent of the wealth of the 20 percent. So Brennan suggests taxing the top 20 percent that 4 percent spent by the Fed, with no deductions.

That is the kind of conservative thinking that Wilhelm Ropke might have liked, who said "The market is only one section of society. It is a very important section, it is true, but still one whose existence is justifiable and possible only because it is part of a larger whole which concerns not economics but philosophy, history, and theology."

It is hard to think of libertarians as conservative because they promote an extreme laissez-faire political philosophy advocating only minimal state intervention in the lives of citizens. Alas, that is the political philosophy of the new tech billionaires, and it also is the position of the corrupt neoconservatives. Economic nationalism is more conservative because economic nationalism emphasizes "domestic control of the economy, labor, and capital formation, even if this requires the imposition of tariffs and other restrictions on the movement of labor, goods and capital. In many cases, economic nationalists oppose globalization or at least question the benefits of unrestricted free trade." (Wikipedia)

Burke rightly said that political change should be gradual, but the economic solutions suggested above look revolutionary. 21 trillion in debt (now more) will probably soon force the government to change its current 75,000 page tax code, which was virtually written by the almost criminal lobbyists who do not care about our country. The obscenely wealthy will fight those changes, and they usually get what they want. But a few of the top 20 percent, for example Warren Buffet, says that he should be taxed more than his own beleaguered office help, who are now taxed more than he is.