Traditional regulation’s depleted---innovative taxes are key.

Is this what the global economy is coming to? Not yet. However, we are treading on dangerous waters already. The great recession of 2008 and its global consequences on growth, fiscal, and monetary policies did not only change our perspectives on how the economy works, they have created an alarming situation, whereas common sense and sound economic logic have been replaced by virtuous calls of destruction of a system that, although not without problems, has created the fastest growth, a reduction in poverty, and most widely distributed benefits known after the Middle Ages. We stress the word “virtuous” here: the many who have been speaking as economists with a sentiment of moral advantage and self-imposed but fake social compassion on the problems of others can be completely misleading—not on their intentions but on their anticipated results.1

The calls for increased taxation, global redistribution, higher regulation, more laws on how the economy should work, the war on global innovation, the proposed perpetuation of the failed welfare state cannot make and have not made a difference in the lives of those in need. What they have done, and will continue to do with force if these calls succeed, is to create powerful global monopolies, to reduce competition, to increase the size of the government, to promote corruption, to increase the chances that crises create a stream of new working poor.

There is where the Great Oxymoron lies: those that have been pretending to champion the needs of the many are actually those that are guarding the privileges of the few. Those that are willing to increase tax rates can only widen the income gap and not close it; those that are in favor of more regulation are protecting the monopolies already in power and are making sure that the many cannot rise beyond what the wage that these monopolies pay them. It is time that we address this oxymoron and return to common economic sense. It is time that we shattered the vanity mirror of those that by fooling themselves want to fool the rest of us. If this book is part of the new resistance, its intent then is to take another strike on this mirror.

The problems associated with taxation and growth are not new and neither are the economically viable and socially responsible solutions. The current state of global economic affairs is, however, in urgent need to address these problems and to do so by providing solutions within the post-crisis constraints. That is, without resorting to increased, debt-driven government spending or by a perpetuation of non-conventional monetary policy or (worse) by a return to isolationist policies and trade wars. Enter taxation: the only remaining viable instrument of policymaking not yet used but, unfortunately, already abused. In this volume, we make the argument that taxation can and should be used constructively in the only way possible: by lowering the tax and regulatory burden with a solid understanding on the purpose of taxation and the methods it should use.