Sidelines?! What sidelines?

As a Brit for Ron Paul, I'm sometimes tempted to feel like I'm on the sidelines. So what if Ron Paul is promising to abolish the Federal income tax and the IRS for Americans, without replacing them with some other overpriced bureaucratic nightmare? So what if Dr. Paul is also promising to balance US federal government budgets by abolishing the Federal Reserve and return the US to a gold standard? Bully for the Americans? Well, yes - but bully for us, too, because we live in a global market. Let me explain.

National governments constantly compete to expand their own tax base at each other's expense, and big trading blocs like NAFTA and the EU do not essentially change this reality. What's more, governments appreciate that modern economies involve a hugely varied skills base to maintain and develop them. They all need writers, artists, economists, bricklayers, plumbers, carpenters, computer programmers - and on and on. The list varies from country to country and time to time, but essentially it's endless.

Now, what do you suppose would happen elsewhere if the US became a low-tax as well as a high-skill economy? That's right, British and European governments would feel pressured to lower their own tax rates in order to retain their most productive citizens and workers - and poach people from elsewhere. So, you and I would all become richer whether or not we were considering emigration from the UK .

But surely a less well financed government would have to do something about that? Quite so. It would have only two choices: to inflate the currency, or to do less. Unfortunately for our glorious leaders, if Ron Paul also abolishes the Federal Reserve and starts forcing the US Government to balance its books in the meantime, the value of the dollar (and/or its replacements) will rise on the international money markets, and more people will want to save money in US-based currencies. Can you see how an impending savings drain from the UK would make an inflationary policy even more painful for everyone even more quickly? The only viable choice would be for UK and European governments to do less.

Now, I agree that means we'd have to do more for ourselves, but we'd experience less government interference as we did, and we'd only have to pay for what we wanted as we went along. In a global market, national government decisions inevitably have international consequences. Peace is cheaper for taxpayers than war, and - as I've hinted above - sound money is ultimately cheaper for everyone than inflated money.

So, if you're a US expat - or simply a fellow Brit for Ron Paul - please donate generously to Dr. Paul's campaign in whatever way you can: in the global market there are no sidelines left for any of us, and if you think personal freedom is expensive, take it from me: you don't want to try slavery instead.

- Houseman