Peace through Strength

The desire to achieve peace is shared by most countries in the world including America. Unfortunately there are those who prevail in breaking the peace every once in a while.

Some argue that the best way to bring peace is by doing nothing, not fighting back those who harmed you, not speaking against those who killed your people. And those pacifists always bring the example of Gandhi who refused to fight against Great Britain and avoided a war.

The example of Gandhi is nothing less than utopia in today’s world. The warriors of today fight for something beyond one’s imagination and probably even theirs, they fight for religion, they fight against Freedom, these people don’t tolerate freedom and that’s the main reason why they target America which is the first free country in the history of mankind.

During the Cold War, America elected one of its greatest presidents, Ronald Reagan. He understood that in order to bring peace and eventually end the cold war, America needed to get military stronger, and so he did by creating the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as “Star Wars”. This program was a missile defense system that wouldn’t allow a Russian nuclear missile to hit America. By doing that, Reagan showed the Russians that they couldn’t put up with America, and the Cold War eventually ended a few years later.

Peace through strength is the best way to avoid a war and to bring peace. And that’s why a well-armed society has a better chance to maintain its freedom. During the World War II, the Japanese government thought about invading America after Pearl Harbor, but they realized that would be a hard fight to win because almost every American citizen had a gun to defend himself and his country. 

The Urgent Need for Tax Reform

This year marks the centennial of the federal income tax. The IRS and its tax code have been a burden to the American People, not only financially, but hard to understand, and deal with as well. The Federal Income Tax Code has over 70,000 pages in regulations making the people of this country to spend 6 billion hours a year to pay their taxes.

Some members of Congress are trying to make the federal income tax flat. Since the current Administration likes to use the expression “Fair Share” to define income tax, nothing would be fairer than a flat tax. 15 countries around the World have adopted the Flat Tax system. This tax system brings the same income tax rate for all, and simplicity as well.

Some other countries don’t have flat tax, but they do have a much simpler tax code than America does, making it easier to do business, and not having to worry about 70,000 pages that can get you in trouble. It costs around $200 billion for all Americans to deal with income tax in the current code; all this money and energy to deal with taxes could be used in a more productive way to the economy.

The deductions are also complicated, and lots of people each and every year get audited and eventually in trouble for not understanding what can and cannot be deducted. Plus this code allows more political driven policies such as tax breaks for people who have solar panels on the roof of their houses, and other green energy useless stuff.

It’s about time for a Tax Reform, in a way that Americans can feel totally free to do business again. The cost of this mess in the tax code is beyond numbers, because it doesn’t count all the discouragement that it creates in the private sector.

The actual Federal Income Tax Code is a lose-lose situation, hurting both the government and mostly the people.