Newfie wrote:A thread dedicated to identifying ideas for change. If some one idea generates a lot of traffic we can split it off to its own thread.
Starter post.
IDEA 1 - REPLACE INCOME TAX WITH A PRODUCTIVITY TAX
PROBLEM: A taxi driver pays income tax, a self driving taxi will not. A cashier pays income tax, self check out does not. Increased robotics, which lay no income tax displace workers who do. With the lost job government revenue goes down, and it assumes a burden to assist the unemployed. It incentivizes business to make people redundant. Income tax is often used for social engineering.
SOLUTION: Tax production; the act of driving or hiring a car, the act of accounting the bill, the assembly of a value added product. This will provide a more stable tax base, incentivize government to increase productivity, encourage hiring more people.
What are your ideas?
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Newfie wrote:Here in Atlantic Canada it’s Tims. More than once I’ve waltzed into Tims at 7am and asked to be included in the coffee clutch because I had a problem and needed local knowledge. “Who’s the best diesel mechanic around?”
Newfie wrote:IDEA 1 - REPLACE INCOME TAX WITH A PRODUCTIVITY TAX
PROBLEM: A taxi driver pays income tax, a self driving taxi will not. A cashier pays income tax, self check out does not. Increased robotics, which lay no income tax displace workers who do. With the lost job government revenue goes down, and it assumes a burden to assist the unemployed. It incentivizes business to make people redundant. Income tax is often used for social engineering.
SOLUTION: Tax production; the act of driving or hiring a car, the act of accounting the bill, the assembly of a value added product. This will provide a more stable tax base, incentivize government to increase productivity, encourage hiring more people.
Plantagenet wrote:1. We can learn a lot from Europe when it comes to taxes. They use a Value Added Tax which taxes each step of a product's manufacture and sale. This is a little like the Productivity tax being discussed above. We can just copy Europe and learn from how they do it.
Outcast_Searcher wrote:1). A VAT tends to be highly regressive. They end up expensive (see my second point), and so they take up a lot of the income of the lower middle class and below.
Outcast_Searcher wrote: At least in Europe, the VAT tends to be rather a large tax over time. Is the income tax going to be reduced any if that happens, or do we just let government grow to be much bigger (and still hugely grow the debt -- given the proclivities of the politicians and the voters who elect them?). Looking around, I'm seeing a lot of numbers hovering in the 20% area -- on top of the income taxes, that's a hell of a lot of taxing.
Outcast_Searcher wrote:Overall, I like the sense of your ideas on this. However, given how spread out and relatively rural much of the US is, the workability of mass transit outside the cities is going to be a big challenge re cost, including cost of maintenance. So that one might require some negotiation / tuning as it evolves.
Newfie wrote:Something about government needs to be revamped. Term limits would be a good start. I have a separate idea about how to revamp the Presidential selection process. I think the two party political system needs to go but don’t have a good idea how to effect that.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
The Tenth Amendment (Amendment X) to the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, was ratified on December 15, 1791.[1] It expresses the principle of federalism and states' rights, which strictly supports the entire plan of the original Constitution for the United States of America, by stating that the federal government possesses only those powers delegated to it by the United States Constitution. All remaining powers are reserved for the states or the people.
The amendment was proposed by the 1st United States Congress in 1789 during its first term following the adoption of the Constitution. It was considered by many members as a prerequisite to many state ratifications of the Constitution[2] and particularly to satisfy demands of Anti-Federalists who opposed the creation of a stronger federal government.
Newfie wrote:Tanada,
That idea has a lot of merit. Gut the party system. It’s not considered in the constitution it’s just a corruption that has grown.
The problem, if it is one, is that individual districts would no longer have a particular representative. I imagine NYC would be far over represented within NYS.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Newfie wrote:Gut the party system.
asg70 wrote:Newfie wrote:Gut the party system.
Overturning Citizen's United would help.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Tanada wrote:Yes, because returning to the days when public employee unions
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