Book 9: A Libertarian Paradise.
Cmdr. Gulliver and his friends visit The United Colonies, a libertarian paradise. The basics of this country are extensive freedom, with important responsibilities, and equality of opportunity. The taxes are very low but there is a very high end of life tax-- an estate tax. The people must take care of themselves without government support. They have an extensive educational system. throughout the book the characters compare the US with the country they are visiting.
Excerpt:
"Meanwhile the rich keep getting richer. In the US recently the average worker’s pay went up 2% while the average CEO salary rent up 23%. Moreover the average CEO pay for the top 200 firms in the US was $11.4 million a year.
“Farm subsidies for not growing food or cotton, government subsidies to produce ethanol and to search for more oil, tax breaks for businesses for employment no matter where in the world they employ people. I don't want to appear antibusiness or anti-globalization but there is this moral streak in me that sees injustice and seethes. I know that our government pushed for globalization, thinking we would profit more than anyone. But 'lo and behold' the Chinese and Koreans outsmarted us. The Germans outsmarted us. The Norwegians outsmarted us. Even the Somalian pirates had done better than we had during the recession.
“But I see other social factors that have oozed into our world as we have forgotten our individual wellbeing and joined the pack of treasure hunters seeking our fortunes. As the world becomes more globalized people tend to identify themselves with racial, ethnic, religious or to causes rather than identifying themselves by the political boundaries in which they live. So being Muslim, Catholic, black, Hispanic, Pakistani, Somalian, a Tea Party member, a Greenpeace adherent, a PETA member and so forth become more important than being Americans, Swedes or Spaniards. National identities have been losing ground as more asylum-seekers and manual laborers immigrated into the once ‘pure blooded’ nations. Is this a better way of framing our world? Certainly we need some kind of identity, but must these identities be so divisive?"
