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We're all "in this" together...right? So...
1. Let Bush tax cuts expire;
2. Cut military spending by 50%;
3. Close all tax loopholes;
4. No more tax breaks for charities and religious organizations...sorry;
5. Cut foreign aid spending by 50%;
6. Raise taxes on those making over $2m/year;
7. Cut all life-time pensions for all politicians;
8. VAT increase;
9. Increase capital gains taxes;
10. Cut the Dept of Homeland secutiy budget by 50% (or just rid of the bloated thing altogether);
11. No more bailouts of unsuccessful businesses;
12. Raise taxes on American corporations' overseas operations.
Things that aren't cuts, but I think would help improve the economy (short- or longer-term):
1. Small businesses: Start-ups who hire people should have a federal tax holiday;
2. Health care: Health care should no longer be tied to employment. In other words: UHC;
3. Repatriation tax holiday for companies who move operations from abroad back to the US;
4. Infrastructure spending;
5. Focus on improving education opportunities for all children in high-needs areas (mostly STEM).
Wow ! Can you be my Prime Minister ?!? I'll vote for you.
I would also put ALL Politicians on exactly the same conditions as any other civil servant ( pension, paid vacation etc) and no Politician would ever be allowed to sit on boards of companies or be special "advisers" ( apart from the conflict of interest I think ALL their time should be spent on doing their job, not making money every which way they can)
I think 2 million dollars is too high as the cut off for higher taxes though. Make it smaller and you have my vote ! ( I was thinking more like $500,000)
And lobbyists would be given exactly the same amount of time and attention whether the little guy from some backwoods county or multinationals. No more, no less. Get rid of that stench of corruption and venality.
Any companies which does not pay its due taxes due to tax evasion and avoidance to have their assets seized. Loopholes and Havens really have to go. It is shocking to see how many multinationals play the "hide the assets" game and get away with murder. Basically more often than not the little guy or middle classes are subsidising the rich which is just not right.
So, in sum, you have no answer for the debt problem and simply choose to change the subject? Perhaps you are the one who is "clueless" as you have voted for your own financial destruction- well done.
There is no public debt problem. Why would I discuss a problem that does not exist? Your plan if we were on a gold standard, is to close the gold mines during a depression. Reduce the money supply during debt deflation is complete stupidity. Even Friedman is rolling in his grave since its quite apparent there is no goods and service money supply. .
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We are on the road to insolvency. As this thread has shown, the liberals have no answer for our escalating debt and choose simply to ignore it. It is akin to ignoring a cancer, once treatable, which will kill the patient.
What insolvency? The nation debt is the money. We have a foreign debt problem easily solved with the exception of the interlard ignorance in the way of how money works . The national debt problem is nonexistent.
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The options I have suggested (which are markedly opposed by Obama and will never be implemented) would have a chance at saving the nation now. Of course, our politicians are more concerned with pandering to an ignorant electorate and will spend to the point of national destruction.
All of them are deficit hawks which means they want a Wall Street money monopoly. So they all suck.
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1. 15% VAT tax
VAT taxes are idiotic beyond all comprehension. Adam Smith and all the classical economist despised mere excise taxes and you want to implement that hideous abomination? I cannot over emphasize just how hideous VAT is. Its ludicrous. Its a dead weight on a dead weight mixed in like spit in soup.
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2. balanced budget amendment
Destroying the entire money supply. The only way to grow it with that insanity is for more private debt. What don't you understand? We are not on a metal system and it means government debt is now the only specie there is. Its the money supply. You take out a loan. I am not.
4. 10% of revenues per year ear marked to cut the debt.
So we can have more bank loans for you and me or depressions?
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The nation will be destroyed by our wild spending. As seen in this thread, liberals have no answer for this and are perfectly fine with allowing ruin to unfold. This, of course, will lead to the break up of the current USA.
Your ideas are beyond dangerous; they are suicidal.
What should be alarming is I am a small government, libertarian. What I am talking about has nothing to do with the size of government, which I believe should be smaller. It has to do with its operations and you are moving the wheel to enrich private government granted monopolies of land and money interests.
You act like the macro economic system is a private house hold. its junk economics trying to run a country like 5th grade personal finance.
You are to the right of Milton Friedman which make you King George of the inbred landed gentry and house of Rothschild all in one
So the question is, which are the least bad taxes? In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago.
...
The next least bad tax is a flat-rate tax on income above an exemption. I could design my ideal tax system it would contain an income tax, but it would not be the kind of monstrosity we have now. It would be a flat-rate tax on all income, from whatever source derived, less only a personal deduction and strict occupational expense, and that kind of income tax I think would be the least inconsistent with a strong free enterprise system.
Even he knew what a VAT is .
Your ideas are the worst I have even seen in one place....hideous.
I think 2 million dollars is too high as the cut off for higher taxes though. Make it smaller and you have my vote ! ( I was thinking more like $500,000)
That's covered under "let the Bush tax cuts expire," which -- along with big spending cuts -- is precisely what will happen on 1/1/13 as a result of the "fiscal cliff."
Thanks for the list. A few of those things I certainly agree with and would certainly be a very good start on the path to solvency. I do not agree with increasing income taxes or capital gains taxes (as that shifts money from productive individuals to a non-productive government), but that is simply a different political view point.
Thanks for the good list and actually addressing my original question.
Thanks. A couple of those things would affect me financially, too, but I think we both realize (and you and I are wayyy on opposite ends of the political spectrum) that shared sacrifice is the only hope to at least try and reach solvency. I'm a liberal and I understand that default is a very, very bad thing. Sometimes we've got to put our political differences to the background and try to get this done
Unfortunately, Washington is run by idiot opportunists, so very few if any of our suggestions will be even considered.
W.F.B.: It's mostly because I'm beaten down by my right-wing theorists and intellectual friends. They always find something wrong with the Single-Tax idea. What I'm talking about Mr. Lamb is Henry George who said there is infinite capacity to increase capital and to increase labor, but none to increase land, and since wealth is a function of how they play against each other, land should be thought of as common property. The effect of this would be that if you have a parking lot and the Empire State Building next to it, the tax on the parking lot should be the same as the tax on the Empire State Building, because you shouldn't encourage land speculation.
Let me sum that up for ya; they are corrupt or they are idiots.
Why? Oh golly gee maybe because land speculators make absolutely nothing? Same with the banks who create credit out of thin air and collect interest on nothing.
But lets tax goods and services with hidden da guberment taxes with nice, juicy, fat VAT
W.F.B.: It's mostly because I'm beaten down by my right-wing theorists and intellectual friends. They always find something wrong with the Single-Tax idea. What I'm talking about Mr. Lamb is Henry George who said there is infinite capacity to increase capital and to increase labor, but none to increase land, and since wealth is a function of how they play against each other, land should be thought of as common property. The effect of this would be that if you have a parking lot and the Empire State Building next to it, the tax on the parking lot should be the same as the tax on the Empire State Building, because you shouldn't encourage land speculation.
Let me sum that up for ya; they are corrupt or they are idiots.
Why? Oh golly gee maybe because land speculators make absolutely nothing? Same with the banks who create credit out of thin air and collect interest on nothing.
But lets tax goods and services with hidden da guberment taxes with nice, juicy, fat VAT
If you tax land value you don't need a VAT. The some 1/3 of our economic output now going to Wall Street and their mortgage taxes could pay for everything. No more housing bubbles either.
I want to tax bads and disservices
VAT taxes goods and services.
Real complicated ....
Tax bad
Don't tax good.
We don't have a national debt problem because its the money supply.
The private debt problem is from land speculation, and if people took out 25k mortgages instead of 250k mortgages then there would be no private debt problem.
Since we would no longer have Wall Street leaches and we would pay taxes with land value there would be little or no other taxes on labor or capital. This would make us internationally competitive, solving the foreign debt problem.
If you tax land value you don't need a VAT. The some 1/3 of our economic output now going to Wall Street and their mortgage taxes could pay for everything. No more housing bubbles either.
I want to tax bads and disservices
VAT taxes goods and services.
Real complicated ....
Tax bad
Don't tax good.
Noted.
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