by gg3 » Tue 30 Nov 2004, 08:01:04
Jack says, speaking about himself in the third person, "And, he's ruthless enough to use the necessary "human engineering" to get what he wants."
Jack has thereby defined himself as fitting two of the key diagnostic criteria for adult antisocial personality disorder (disregard for others, and willingness to lie and manipulate for personal gain). In other words, Jack is a sociopath. Hey Jack, some day you're going to need other humans for something you can't buy with money, and they're not going to be there for you. And unless you change your ways, you're going to die loveless and miserable. He who dies with a lot of toys and no love, loses the most of all.
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So, what to do to dig out the USA...?
First of all, encourage and support a culture of reason and responsibility.
Measures such as the line-item veto to enable de-porking of government budgets, may or may not have "truly significant" practical value, but they certainly send a message that the pork mentality is no longer acceptable, and pork will be chopped where it's found.
Put real teeth in the usury laws and apply them to consumer credit, notably credit card interest rates. This will have the effect of causing banks etc. to be much more selective in issuing consumer credit, thereby reducing both individual debt burdens *and* frivolous consumer spending. Both of these effects will in turn promote conservation and also strengthen the institution of our currency. (Slightly offtopic: To those religious extremists who say that marriage is the foundation of our society and gay marriage would destroy the institution, I say this: Money is the real foundation of our society, and usury is destroying the institution of our money by causing it to become worthless. Put your money where your mouth is.)
Immediate means-test for social security. Forget the enormous lie that it's a type of personal savings account. It's a tax and an entitlement, so treat it like one. Tax progressively and entitle progressively. Retirees with personal income above X in any given year get nothing, nada, zip, during that year.
Crash building program for 1,600 GW of nuclear fission, 400 GW of wind, and (as new tech makes it cost-effective), 400 to 800 GW of photovoltaic, with a 20-year timeline to completion. (We'll call this, "Gazillions of Gigawatts":-). Plenty of high-wage jobs to go around doing these projects. Streamline the approval process, and institute an "anti-NIMBY" clause that requires any juridsdiction that votes to oppose a power plant, to come up with equivalent power by other means or suffer power cuts when & as needed.
Crash program for efficiency upgrades, starting with transportation and buildings. Automobile mileage to increase such that average efficiency (CAFE rating) is 50 mpg within 20 years. Increase gas tax proportionally every year such that the cost of driving increases far less when efficiency increases are factored into the equation. Building retrofits to reduce need for heating and air conditioning; and any building that can't be retrofitted gets demolished and has its materials recycled for something new. (Say goodbye to all that floor-to-ceiling glass in office towers!) Massive deployment of high-bandwidth telecom to urban and suburban areas to enable move from physical-commuting to telecommuting.
Create a volunteer national sevice program for young adults to participate where relevant, e.g. running wind surveys and site surveys, clearing brush for transmission lines, insulating buildings, etc., and technical work depending on individual capabilities.
Major tax incentives for items in the preceding three paragraphs, including targeted reductions in capital gains taxes, and a "sweat equity capital" provision to enable individuals (usually in lower income levels) to obtain capital gains tax status for sweat-equity labor.
Now here I'll borrow two pages from the liberals, not just in a spirit of bipartisanship, but because they seem to be practical.
One, legalize pot and tax the hell out of it. Raise the tax on distilled spirits and nationally-distributed brands of beers and wines, to a level where marijuana becomes the preferred social relaxant.
Financial rationale: pot is an enormous cash crop with far more tax potential than patrickjford assumes. Go look at the numbers, they'll knock you over faster than a joint of powerful weed.
Social psych rationale: pot stimulates the reward mechanisms in the brain, thereby providing a substitute gratification to replace the pleasures formerly gained by high levels of consumer spending. In other words, it makes people sit around and enjoy staring at their belly-buttons rather than running off to the mall with their credit cards. Good, just what our society needs as it tries to cut back wasteful consumer orgies.
Two, steeply progressive income tax. As I said in another posting somewhere around here, beyond a certain level, increases in personal income become subject to the law of declining utility. At some point, additional increments of personal income produce zero additional increments of benefit (either personal or indirectly to society at-large).
This conclusion rather surprised me and led in turn to a logically necessary outcome: Figure out what the threshold levels are, and set up the tax structure to become 100% confiscatory of all income above the high end of that level, aside from whatever income is channeled to capital investment (and then tax the ROI in an approximately similar manner, thereby encouraging private charitable giving, which in turn enables reduction of government-based charitable entitlement programs).
However, capital gains tax breaks for investment in strategic industries, i.e. anything related to non-fossil energy production or efficiency measures. The combination of taxes and tax breaks will act to channel enormous funding into the relevant areas, thereby providing the capital for the "gazillions of gigawatts" construction plan above.
(More later, gotta go...)