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How Would YOU Fix The Economy?


Rokkaholik

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We could try duct tape, duct tape fixes lotsa things.

 

When I saw this thread with kuronin as last post, I told myself "oh boy this should be good." Kuronin does not disappoint.

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If I were Ruler of the World, the steps I would take to tackle our short and long term social and economic woes would be:

 

1) Marijuana. Legalize and tax it. This will take billions of dollars out of the hands of the drug cartels, cutting down on civil strife in Mexico, and decreasing the likelihood of us having 30 million refugees flooding our southern border in the next couple of years. It will also put billions of tax dollars into the hands of the government to be used to pay off our national debt - the revenues, of course, being earmarked to paying off debt only. Leftists like Obama will not be able to use these revenues to put towards refundable tax credits to the lower class. Under my watch, all transfer payments by the federal government will STOP.

 

2) Medicare and Social Security. Social Security as we know it will disappear. Never again will the federal government be responsible for individual pension ponzi schemes. When Madoff does it, he goes to jail, but when the government does it, it's OK? I think not. Privatize it. Incentive plans like Health Savings Accounts to expand, which will allow people to put money aside each year to pay for medical expenses should they arise, and will allow them to withdraw the funds like an IRA once they reach retirement age, meaning no matter what, the money is theirs to use.

 

3) Eliminate corporate income tax rates. Corporations don't pay taxes. An increase in the corporate tax rate is nothing more than an increase in our taxes, and it accomplishes nothing more than to incentivize our corporations to move overseas to places with lower rates. Lowering rates decreases prices and increases the return-on-investment of the owners of the corporation (us), which in turn incentivizes us to invest more into the long-term viability of the corporation, which leads to corporate growth, which leads to economic expansion.

 

4) Individual income taxes - either make them flat, or change to a consumption tax. The key to fixing our economic woes is to have a voting population attentive enough to understand what is going on around them. The leftists in this country have succeeded in placing as many people as they can on the government plantation. As it stands, 50% of our workforce does not pay a single dime in income taxes. The one problem socialist countries like ours eventually fall into is that there is no pride of ownership. In my America, every working individual will pay income taxes, thus every working individual will have a vested interest in the manner in which their tax dollars are spent. In our current position, 50% of the voting population has no vested interest in the direction of the country - all they have to care about is whether they continue to receive the money they never earned in the mail. This is bad for business, and it needs to stop.

 

If the progressive income tax structure can't be regressed substantially without strife, we would do away with income taxes altogether and implement a consumption tax similar to the FairTax. Every economic study ever conducted has shown that consumption taxes and income taxes have opposite economic effects. Income taxes tend to dissuade production and stifle growth, whereas consumption taxes have the effect of incentivizing increased output, thus economic growth. The only problem with moving away from an income tax and toward a consumption tax is that it takes away the power of congress to engineer society via the internal revenue code. Keeping in mind that it was in large part social engineering legislation that got us into this current predicament, I don't think we'd find too many people in opposition to limiting congresses power over our lives just a little bit.

 

5) Bailouts. Stop them. No more. If banks want to repay TARP funds and become wholly private again, allow them. Do not do as the current administration is doing and refuse to sell shares when banks try to buy TARP funds back. This only shows that the intent of government is NOT to properly leverage banks, it is instead to control the US financial system, and this creates uncertainty in a fragile market, which stifles growth. In my America, every investment a business goes into is theirs to win or lose. If their investment turns out to be extremely profitable, the profit is theirs. Government will not try to take it away. Conversely, if the investment they make is poor, the loss is theirs, and the government will not step in to stabilize them. Once businesses realize that they are on their own, with no government to make or break them, they will make wiser investment decisions. It all once again boils down to pride of ownership. There's a reason Amtrak hasn't had a single profitable year since the government took it over. There's the reason the USPS is operating at a loss continuously. When the government owns you, you don't have to be responsible. When you own yourself, you make more efficient decisions.

 

6) Education. This is the biggie. The bedrock of a properly functioning democracy that expects to survive is an educated populace. Right now, America is failing in this regard. Miserably. Since the federal government usurped states in controlling public education, our students have only improved in about half of the testing areas, and those areas we did improve on, we only did marginally (by a couple of points). What did it take for us to bring some of our scores up by a trace amount? It took us quadrupling the amount of money spent on each pupil in the United States. Was it worth it? For all intents and purposes, no. We can shift our focus back toward putting education into the hands of the states. Using a basic competitive model, no one will argue that having dozens of individual enterprises competing for the top spot is the best way to improve the overall performance of the group, especially when compared to a system where all decisions are delivered from a centralized authority with a terrible track record at running enterprises efficiently. The best we can say about our current education system is that, while it sucks and produces extremely stupid young people, at least we are all equally stupid. Have the federal government administer tests to objectively rate the quality of education in the individual school districts across the country, and those districts who produce the best students can be an icon for poorly performing districts to emulate. To outline the difference, a big case in DC with the private school voucher programs has shown amazing results. Using private vouchers, once-public school students attended private schools in the DC area. The results are staggering. Students in the private schools had a higher graduation rate, higher grades, higher student and parent satisfaction... and the best part? They achieved this at 1/4 the cost per pupil! $6,000 per pupil vs. the $26,000 per pupil spent in DC public schools. But, sending kids to privately run institutions steps on the feet of our elected officials, who want to use the public school system to indoctrinate our stupid younglings into their ideology, as was evidenced when Obama and our congress allowed the successful DC voucher program to phase out next year, despite proof of its results. We have chosen the more expensive, less efficient, less productive method. The reason for this is not logic or economics, it's purely politics. It's not about the quality of education, it's about control.

 

If you'd like to nominate me for Ruler of the World, you are more than welcome to. I'm accepting campaign donations. If you disagree with me, that's great, too. Make your opinion known... while you still can. :unsure:

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Sorry lo, but TLDR lol. I Just read your first word of every wall of text...err...paragraph. 100% agree with number 1.

 

No problem. It didn't seem that long while typing it... but I get in a trance, and when I hit the Submit button... it turns out to be a LOT longer than I expected... :unsure:

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Yay! Another long-winded explanation!

 

The only difference being, unlike the rest of the long winded explanations we've been getting from our elected officials, mine actually makes sense... but then again I'm biased :lol:

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The only difference being, unlike the rest of the long winded explanations we've been getting from our elected officials, mine actually makes sense... but then again I'm biased :lol:

 

Where is your solution to Immigration?

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Where is your solution to Immigration?

 

Elaborate :)

 

EDIT: If you are talking about what I would do to stem the tide of illegal immigrants, my answer is nothing.

 

For lack of a better way to word it without sounding like an butthole, I'll yield the explanation to Saint Milton Friedman, who always had a knack for eloquently getting sensitive points across:

 

If you have free immigration, in the way we had it before 1914, everybody benefited. The people who were here benefited. The people who came benefited. Because nobody would come unless he, or his family, thought he would do better here than he would elsewhere. And, the new immigrants provided additional resources, provided additional possibilities for the people already here. So everybody can mutually benefit.

 

But on the other hand, if you come under circumstances where each person is entitled to a pro-rata share of the pot, to take an extreme example, or even to a low level of the pie, than the effect of that situation is that free immigration, would mean a reduction of everybody to the same, uniform level. Of course, I’m exaggerating, it wouldn’t go quite that far, but it would go in that direction. And it is that perception, that leads people to adopt what at first seems like inconsistent values.

 

Look, for example, at the obvious, immediate, practical example of illegal Mexican immigration. Now, that Mexican immigration, over the border, is a good thing. It’s a good thing for the illegal immigrants. It’s a good thing for the United States. It’s a good thing for the citizens of the country. But, it’s only good so long as it's illegal.

That’s an interesting paradox to think about. Make it legal and it’s no good. Why? Because as long as it’s illegal the people who come in do not qualify for welfare (yet), they don’t qualify for social security (yet), they don’t qualify for the other myriad of benefits that we pour out from our left pocket to our right pocket (yet). So long as they don’t qualify they migrate to jobs. They take jobs that most residents of this country are unwilling to take. They provide employers with the kind of workers that they cannot get. They’re hard workers, they’re good workers, and they are clearly better off.

 

The sad fact is, since January the intentions of our new government are clear - they are determined to set this country firmly and irreversibly down the path to a total welfare state. That part is not disputable. It's done, we've voted, and there's nothing we can do about it besides sit back and take it as they dish it out.

, and I think his idea still rings true. When we finally are a total welfare state, and we relax our immigration laws, people rationally come over to get their piece of the welfare pie. But, as long as they come here illegally, and are thus unable to obtain these social "benefits" (for lack of a better word), they are incentivized to be productive. And this is proving to be the case. But the leftists, not to be outsmarted, are now pressing to allow illegals access to medicare, social security and the like. Once this happens, there will be a flood of illegals unlike any we've seen before, and our system will collapse from within. As long as they are left free to come here to be productive in search of a better life, we all win. But, when we cross the line and allow them to come here for social benefits, we all lose.

 

Lemme know if that is what you were getting at.

Edited by LoArmistead

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Elaborate :)

 

Nvm, I'm not the political type. I just wanted to see what your position on illegal immigration is, and how you would go by regulating it, or the lack of regulation.

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My opinion on this is the same as my opinion on domestic cars. If American products were truly the best value, the government wouldn't have to trick us into buying them with stuff like this. And if they're not the best value, buying them anyways out of some strange patriotism just sends the message that you're willing to accept second rate products as long as they're stamped with an American flag (figuratively, of course).

I don't think corporate failure has anything to do with the quality of the goods...it just shows that the business model they follow doesn't work. Plenty of companies offering great products go out of business because someone goofs up in a way completely unrelated to the product.

 

 

EDIT: Also...hookers and blow. They'll cure anything.

Edited by Waco

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