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Revive the American Dream

 26 July 2011

Two things in recent news reports caught my attention:  1) Since 2001 job growth has been horrible in this country and 2)  Wal-Mart's income tax rate is over 30%.  This got me wondering how hard it would be to get American's back to into a mindset where the expectation is a family could live on the income of a single family member.  

Right now a Wal-mart cashier or baker or shelf stocker doesn't make enough to raise a family or in many cases save enough for college.  Yet we take 33% of that potential income often putting it social programs to help the underprivileged get the opportunity for college and healthcare.  In fact, this is one of the reasons I believe there are so many Reagan Democrats.  Reagan Democrats by definition are people that work hard for little money and are willing to support policies that hurt their own standard of living because they are frustrated so many loafers get more money from the government than they get in a paycheck.  And I understand their frustration even if I know they would be better off working within the Democratic party to correct the injustice.  But this gets me wondering.  Is it possible to design a free market system or the tax code within the free market system that encourages a company like Wal-mart to use that 30% to raise the pay of the working class?  That is can we get this money into the hands of the cashier directly from the employer without the company taking a cut for itself?  If we can I think this country would go a long way in getting the country back to one income families.  If more families were able to thrive on one income this would take a lot of people out of the job market.  Then it wouldn't matter that the economy is not creating jobs as fast as it did in the 1990's.  

Even though I believe we should be looking to go back to a system where families thrive on one income but I believe this should be the case because it will allow the other spouse to improve their skills while they are not working.  With this mindset the family can keep striving to improve their station in life.  I see a system where one spouse works for 5 or 10 years while the other studies and gains knowledge.  Then they switch for 5 or 10 years.