Blog - Three-Week Stopgap in the Works

Get rid of all that useless defense equipment that will never see the light of day.

Our biggest budget buster is defense spending which accounts for 90% of our overall fiscal budget if Republican’s compromise on cuts in this area say about $200 Billion a year we could cut our deficit.

SSA/SSI are so small compared to the waste on defense spending.

The basic libertarian argument for a BIG is that the public should be compensated for use of public lands and resources, and that if the money is managed by the government it will simply be miss allocated.

Even the 2008 Huckabee presidential nominee “fair” tax proposal had a monthly prebate up to the poverty line, which is something very similar, And their is also the Alaska Permanent Fund which is another very similar concept. BIG works together the compensation for use of public resources, prebates of taxes upto the poverty line, and money that would otherwise be spend in welfare uses into a simple flat payment to every citizen.

I support BIG from an entirely liberal position however…… =p

Who says this can’t go on forever? I think it’s in the GOP’s interest to keep doing continuing resolutions until the next elections. That way they can continue to use the budget for leverage.

HAHAHA, I don’t like their character limit either.

As far as prebates go, I’m ok with it if it is administered by the states, from revenue collected in the states, and that revenue is given back to the people in the state upon which it was collected, on a program constitutionally protected FOR the states. I emphasize “for” because the basic premise is more state independence from the federal government. Even if it’s not constitutionally protected, if the people in a state vote for something like this, then they should be able to have it.

I would contend though that ending taxes on businesses, especially the payroll tax, would provide more incentive than the hiring credits or other credits & incentives that they currently enjoy.

You’ve definitely given me a lot to do research on, and some good stuff to think about. Thanks!

OOOOH, just thought of something. If we stop paying SSA/SSI for 1 month, only 1 month out of the twelve that we have, then we’ll cut $60 billion from the federal government. Within 1 month, we can achieve the cuts originally proposed and not cut funding to anything else. Now, the states will have to carry SSA/SSI for that 1 month, so taxes will probably increase and such, but that would mean we get cuts without cutting programs, and those on SSA/SSI still get paid. Would it ever happen? No, it wouldn’t. But thinking about it, progressives (to my understanding) believe social responsibility is important. What is more responsible than having everyone in a state pay for someone else’s retirement? That’s the same thing as giving room/board/food to a homeless person for a month.

Winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics who fully support a basic income include Herbert Simon, Friedrich Hayek, James Meade, Robert Solow, and Milton Friedman

Fair tax by itself is an unworkable system, their are other changes that could be implemented to make such a system workable, but politically they would be very difficult to pull off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee

replacing most welfare functions(wic, foodstamps, min wage, etc) with a basic income guarantee(BIG), funded by much much higher royalties on resource extraction industries, vat taxes, and a carbon tax(tax and dividend system).

Single payer health care funded via income/payroll taxes, and an expansion of social security to provide about 75% of retirement income basically making it a national pension fund.

Only under these conditions a fair tax(aka flat income tax rate with no deductions/credits/subsides or otherwise loopholes) would be workable.

We would still need something to direct industrial and agricultural policy else China would simply “corrupt” our industries out from under us.