Michael Barone has some advice for his fellow Michiganians:

I think it would be possible to improve Brewer’s proposals, to provide even more aid to beleaguered Michigan. My alternatives:

● Mandating all employers to provide health insurance that covers everything for all employees and dependents or face a penalty of life imprisonment without parole. (Michigan’s Constitution has banned capital punishment since 1855.)

● Raising the minimum wage from $7.40 per hour to $100 an hour and covering all workers or people who apply for a job.

● Increasing unemployment benefits by $1,000 a week, making all workers and job applicants eligible and adding 10 years to the time one can receive benefits.

● Cutting utility rates by 99%.

● Imposing a 100-year moratorium on home foreclosures.

Let the last Michiganian who leaves turn out the lights.

One of the problems that the Republicans have had is that by conceding the principle, they are always playing near their own end zone. They have to start arguing against these things on principle, rather than (as the old joke goes) haggling over the price. This kind of reductio ad absurdam can be effective in waging that battle.

…that Obamacare is bad for America.

Some good advice from the CEO of Whole Foods.

But even if there was the political will for it, how would one go about “repealing all state laws” that prevent insurance companies from selling across state borders? State by state? With a federal mandate (this would seem to oppose federalism, and allowing the states to serve as laboratories, but it would probably be more in line with what the Founders intended that the Commerce Clause be used for)?

…by refusing to spend:

Most in media do not understand the reality of this deliberately reduced and postponed spending as a political resistance movement. But that’s what it is. I’ve talked to many affluent entrepreneurs and professionals who have worked hard for years to finally reach their present income levels. They are intentionally refusing to spend money as a means of protest.

I was recently thinking about replacing my Ford Explorer with a new SUV, at minimum a new Explorer, but perhaps a Lincoln Navigator or Cadillac Escalade. The day Obama first trumpeted the proposed 5.4 percent tax surcharge on gross income of us high-productivity, high-responsibility, high income earners I changed my mind. Instead I spent $514.00 getting a little fender ding months old fixed, paint scratches touched up and the car detailed. The $30,000.00 or $40,000.00 I would have spent on the new car – and I’m a cash buyer – can sleep idly in the bank until the man who has chosen me as his target is gone. And I view it as deliberately depriving him of spending he desperately needs to help his economy. He needs me and others like me buying a new car a whole lot more than I need one.

There are lots of ways to go Galt. Socialists underestimate the ability of the producers to thwart their theft. Of course, we know what Stalin’s solution was for that with respect to the kulaks. Fortunately, they haven’t gotten the guns yet.

A good point:

…even if unemployment does start to decline steadily this year, the larger point is that the growth of government means a lessening of individual liberty. You have less control of your life, and bureaucrats have more. Would it be desirable to live in a country with only 1 percent unemployment — as Germany and the USSR sometimes had in the 1930s — but have almost no ability to earn and accumulate property and wealth?

The current efforts to centralize power in Washington must be resisted because they substitute the authority of the state for our individual autonomy over the direction of our lives. Only secondarily should we oppose massive spending because it does not work.

But we should also oppose it because it doesn’t work. There is no up side to it for us — only for those who would rule us.