Wealth comes from surpluses of energy and time.

When a village digs a well they no longer have to walk a mile for water, and they have time and energy left over to plant extra crops and the water to irrigate them. This is creating wealth. If our country will go to work manufacturing (!) the means of energy production we will become wealthy. If we continue to pay rent to oil producers we will become poor.

We could simply build our way out of recession, since we will at first have distributed moneys which will percolate through the industrial sector, yielding orders of capital goods. We will also have immediate income for installers which will spread out through suppliers. Our trade balance immediately begins improving because we buy less oil, and we will  eventually be exporting our new, improved, low-cost energy systems.

We will rebuild our manufacturing sector and not be depending on fake wealth through the financial sector. Some factors which will aid the process include steep tax rates on high income levels, and steeper rates on capital gains. We want that capital to stay invested, yielding income, not windfalls. We want people to value work, not lottery or speculative success.

We should also place tariffs on imports, to restore an internal clothing, electronics, and furniture industry. It is hard to maintain that using more cheap jeans that wear out and are discarded is better use of money than a more expensive pair that both lasts longer and is worth repairing. Those jeans only seem cheap since one is comparing incomparables, currencies in developed as opposed to developing countries.

In other words, let us combine the tax stricture of the 1950s with the technology of the 21st century, and the personal empowerment of home computers and cell phones. Chasing wealth has made a few wealthy and the country saddled with debt, hostage to external suppliers.

Devaluing wealth will make the country as a whole wealthy, even if the few are not quite rich enough to buy countries anymore. If people will realize that the vast majority of us will not be hedge fund managers we can stop offering them such insane breaks as paying only 17% tax on a billion dollars of income. 

Doesn't seem that complicated, does it?