Dual Pricing for Economic Recovery in the U.S.

Developing countries frequently feature two prices for goods and services: a “local” price for citizens and the foreign price for tourists and ex-pats, which runs between three times and ten times as expensive as the local price.

I say it’s time for the U.S. to adapt that policy.

As I watch the dollar continue to fade against other countries’ currencies, I can’t help but feel sorry us. The British pound, Euro, Canadian and Australian dollars are all much stronger than the U.S. dollar. Every day the Indian Rupee and Indonesian Rupiah rise against the dollar, slowly, slowly, as if doing so in such a way no one in the U.S. will notice.

I can make a logical case for adapting the dual pricing system in the U.S.: Most tourists to the U.S. are from England, Europe, Russia and Canada, countries that are on an upswing, financially. Further, comparatively speaking, the U.S. is like a developing country. Eroding infrastructure, educational institutions, health care systems and retirement accounts actually mimic Third World Country problems. Tourism, I’m guessing, is our biggest industry. People who tour the U.S. from abroad are rich (I’m assuming this because all Third World Country locals assume tourists are rich). Therefore, rich tourists to the U.S. should pay more for EVERYTHING than U.S. citizens.

It makes sense.

Another developing country practice I’d love to see instituted in the U.S. is the restriction that no one other than U.S. citizens should be allowed to buy U.S. land. Bali does that. So does Himachal Pradesh in India. What that means is ex-pats who want to build a home in Bali or the Indian Himalayas need to get a local to buy a plot of land and lease it to them. It’s a win-win. The foreigners get their dream home and the locals become prosperous landowners.

Isn’t owning property the American dream? If we can’t afford to own it for ourselves, we should at least be able to capitalize on foreign ownership.

Finally, I think the U.S. should raise its import taxes. Like in India and Indonesia. Indonesia doesn’t seem big on vitamins, so most of the supplements here are imported from the U.S. and taxed heavily. A bottle of 3 mg melatonin, 60 tablets, for example, which sells for about five bucks in the U.S. costs $30 here because of the import tax.

Raising import taxes would create U.S. jobs by forcing countries to build plants in the U.S. in order to avoid the tax. That means outsourced Apple computer manufacturers would have to open plants in the U.S. so that the Chinese company that actually makes the iPad, iPhone, MacPro, MacBook, etc. would have to start making them in the U.S.

Brilliant, right?