BLAZER PROPHET
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If it’s still possible to have a remotely semi intelligent and serious thread, I wanted to solicit people’s unbridled ideas on how to solve the problem with our company.
Our unemployment/underemployment rate is 25%. We now spend over 100% of our GNP yearly. Our deficit has more than doubled in the last 2 years and we’re on the cusp of the largest entitlement program that is guaranteed to cost more than Medicare and Social Security put together. We’re poised to default on our obligations. Clearly, our financial model is broken. So what is your answer? If you had the ability to put forth a plan in Congress, what would it include?
Since this is my thread, I’ll start with a few basic thoughts:
1) Taxes. End our current system and we would go to a flat tax. Based on studies I’ve seen, it would probably 4-6% with no deductions. Whatever income is received, the Fed gets that percentage. This is, to me, 100% fair and ensures that everyone who has skin in the game pays.
2) Budget/Debt. First, attack entitlement programs and reassess who is eligible and how best to better fight fraud/waste/abuse. End subsidies. Repeal Obamacare and simply give cash grants to the individual states to promulgate their own healthcare plans, thus ending what is to be the largest bureaucracy in the nation. Eliminate Dept of Education and others. Let natural attrition cut the number of federal employees down 25-35%. Deliver mail 3 days per week, saving billions there alone. Lastly, a mandatory balanced budget plan that allows us to have a certain size deficit when the economy is down and a mechanism to pay the debt off when times are better. One aspect to it is that if the Congress/president fail to strictly adhere to the plan for any 1 year, they become legally ineligible to run for their next reelection.
3) Deficit. A 3% national sales tax solely for the purposes of paying off the deficit. It should take 9-12 years to pay off, and thus making us solvent.
Our unemployment/underemployment rate is 25%. We now spend over 100% of our GNP yearly. Our deficit has more than doubled in the last 2 years and we’re on the cusp of the largest entitlement program that is guaranteed to cost more than Medicare and Social Security put together. We’re poised to default on our obligations. Clearly, our financial model is broken. So what is your answer? If you had the ability to put forth a plan in Congress, what would it include?
Since this is my thread, I’ll start with a few basic thoughts:
1) Taxes. End our current system and we would go to a flat tax. Based on studies I’ve seen, it would probably 4-6% with no deductions. Whatever income is received, the Fed gets that percentage. This is, to me, 100% fair and ensures that everyone who has skin in the game pays.
2) Budget/Debt. First, attack entitlement programs and reassess who is eligible and how best to better fight fraud/waste/abuse. End subsidies. Repeal Obamacare and simply give cash grants to the individual states to promulgate their own healthcare plans, thus ending what is to be the largest bureaucracy in the nation. Eliminate Dept of Education and others. Let natural attrition cut the number of federal employees down 25-35%. Deliver mail 3 days per week, saving billions there alone. Lastly, a mandatory balanced budget plan that allows us to have a certain size deficit when the economy is down and a mechanism to pay the debt off when times are better. One aspect to it is that if the Congress/president fail to strictly adhere to the plan for any 1 year, they become legally ineligible to run for their next reelection.
3) Deficit. A 3% national sales tax solely for the purposes of paying off the deficit. It should take 9-12 years to pay off, and thus making us solvent.
