The American Enterprise Institute's blog categorizes this little bit of Right Wing Social Engineering as being a "big idea". But its just warmed over class warfare with an optimistic spin framing it as a path to "unleash American productivity".
America 3.0: The Coming Reinvention of America
By James C. Bennett and Michael J. Lotus
In recent years, American government has become increasingly dysfunctional and crushingly expensive. Moreover, it is failing to fulfill many of its most basic obligations. The America 2.0 template no longer fits and no longer works.
What is unspoken here is their underlying assumption that since the 1930s and the New Deal
government is failing its most basic obligation to only serve ONLY the top 0.01%. Therefore it no longer 'works'.
So they prescribe a "painful" 25 year assault on the Middle Class.
The existing system is likely to be replaced by pro-growth laws and regulations that will lead to a vibrant and growing economy. A key theme of any such policy proposals will be a radical decentralization of power to increase the options of individuals, families, businesses, communities, and states to choose their own paths.
This radical plan envisions largely dismantling the Federal Government that we have today.
Economic regulation and taxation will vary across jurisdictions, permitting Americans to select the regime they want to live under. Historically, this type of “regulatory arbitrage” has been a great force for freedom and prosperity.
That will open the door for states and localities to begin their race to the bottom by pitting them against each other to see who will cut to the bone most ruthlessly, and externalize the most corporate costs onto state and local citizens.
A major first step for successful reform must be the creation of an open and accountable process to unwind current government obligations at all levels, with protection to the extent possible for older Americans who have relied on government promises. This “Big Haircut” will likely require a one time, across the board debt restructuring, accompanied with realistic measures to get entitlements under control and unleash American productivity. The danger lies in being too timid or too tardy, not in being too bold.
Of course the central feature of all Right Wing social engineering is some sort of "Big Haitrcut" scheme to roll back the New Deal and Great Society's social protections dubbed the "Safety Net". They also ignore the fact that Corporate America has been very successful in severing any link between worker productivity and worker compensation over the last three decades. Extra points for excessive radicalism in cutting.
A New Morning
We guesstimate that by 2040, America 3.0 will be in full flower. The painful transition period will be over and 400 million Americans will be living in a prosperous and free society marked by rapid and exciting technological change.
They then tick off some of the technological wonders the future holds for those who can still afford them.
So we should look forward to 25 more years of disruptive changes, wrenching economic dislocations and increasing deprivation to achieve the Far Right's Corporate Utopia the authors James Bennett and Michael Lotus dub "America 3.0".
This is glimpse of a a truly frightening future the Republican Party's dominant radicals want to shackle the US with. A diminished ugly American future dominated completely by a tiny elite preoccupied mostly with their own greed. An elite with no constraints at all on their prerogatives from the vast majority of their powerless subjects. That is the kind "Liberty" the Randian Right want for the elites, for everyone else "Liberty" will become an empty government slogan.
Ready for your haircut?