THERE IS a way out of the ever-increasing tax spiral.

Today, the big need is broadband to outlying areas. The fastest growing Census bureau demographic is the “X-urb”: upper middle class, entrepreneurial, and well-educated people who are moving to rural areas. Maybe they see multi-ethnic cities as powder kegs. Katrina was a wake-up call to those concerned about law and order, and many of us recall how the cops just gave up on it and went home to protect their own families.

Just like during the Great Depression, use the unemployed to build the infrastructure. Urbanites are blissfully ignorant, but the REA (Rural Electrification Administration), in bringing electricity to family farms, allowed agribusiness to develop — and with that came dramatic increases in production at far lower costs. The GOP bitched about “socialized energy,” thinking it would only benefit the small farmers, but they were wrong.

If we don’t find a way out, then the economy will crash — and the people with any foresight do not want be invested, much less live, in multi-ethnic cities during such a scenario.

But this X-urban class of entrepreneurial spirits with access to venture capital needs broadband to support their business plans.

If you further add up the infrastructure support needed by trucking, such as the constant repair to the roadway surface, there is a real niche available for a new generation of heavy freight aircraft — that would go point-to-point unimpeded by traffic jams, road work, road taxes, weigh stations, truck stops, or speed limits. Using state-of-the-art NASA aeronautics software,these  aircraft would get similar tonnage per mile fuel consumption — but move faster than — high speed rail, and do so without the need for roadway right of way and all its attendant problems. They just need airports. If it flies at just 300 mph, it can land at 60mph — on short runways.If that sort of infrastructure isn’t already there, it can be added for minimal expense.

We don’t need to be moving people around, just goods and information. So what we need to empower the X-urbs and their intelligence and productivity is broadband and freight.

By the way, if the Democrats want to do “the poor” any good, they should use FEMA trailers to move moms and kids out of the drug-infested cities onto the farmland where they can be taught to grow their own food rather than have them eat at taxpayer expense with food stamps. The kids would be much healthier. But that would remove Democratic voters from urban polls. And the Republicans do not want Democratic voters moving into their rural districts. So we can’t have that, even though it’d be good for everyone but the major parties.