I can go along with some of that stuff (most won't work) but not legalizing drugs or cutting NASA. :hmmm:

And you caved in to motorcycle tracks too easily, you won't last a day against the special interest groups ;)

Now I heard about the new policy that would convert all petrol driven motorcycles to eletric-moped motors using bio-degradable batteries by this september. :yeah: or the tax on any 2 wheeled machine that has the letter "Z" (I'll translate for our english folk: Zed)

I disagree. Allowing your goods to be made in countries with no environmental laws by slaves working in dangerous sweatshops is no benefit to anyone worth benefiting. You either raise the standard by making them toe our line or gut our laws to match theirs (or lack thereof). We cannot compete with slave labor.

Regarding SS: No way would i surrender that point to you or anyone else. That is my money and i'll have it back with interest.

As for single issue parties, I don't see why you think they'd be effected. There is more than one way for any single issue group to make it's wishes known nor is there anything in what i said that implies groups and organizations couldn't recommend favored candidates to their membership.

Are you insinuating that the entertainment software industry has single-handedly sustained the U.S. economy? Or that students perform lower on tests because they only care about computer games?
If so, how do you account for the marked decline in U.S. School performance since the 50's? 60's? 70's? 80's? Those were not big computer decades, relatively speaking.
I'm all for disbanding current educational standards by abolishing the Department of Education, but an educational system based on competition between schools for students and parents' dollars must take its' place. All privatized, half-privatized, voucher-system, any combination thereof, any of it has got to better than what we have now. Furthermore, we should remove legislative support for teachers' unions.

I wish I could say it in a gentler fashion but that's ridiculous. Science and exploration with nothing but technical training!?
And where, my friend, do the other sectors of the economy figure in? And how does this rectify the ineptitude of the current education system?
You could train every student in the U.S. in nothing but nuclear physics from grade 1 and still fail to achieve desireable results in that field, especially for the investment and the costs to other economic sectors.
The problem is one of quality, not curriculum or quantity.
As always, Zach, I applaud your initiative to sieze the future and think ahead, but there are other concerns that must be met first to form a basis for such policy. You can't just jump from a service economy to technopia. What on God's green earth is this nation going to do with 30 million scientists in addition to the ones we already have? Where are they going to work? Who is going to pay them?
The economy doesn't work like that. It isn't a materr of simply deciding where the future lies and redirecting resources of any kind towards that goal. All your plan would do is result in a lot of underpaid or unemployed specialists. Supply and demand, it's a law for a reason.


Well, I'm all for cutting NASA spending. The 50% of present-day funding I reserve is mostly for maintaining commercial space interests. Eventually, I'd like to see the agency eliminated entirely.
Nothing but profit drive and private interest is ever going to create sustainable space research and exploitation.


Considering that this system already exsists, to a large extent, I'd need to know more about your system before offering my opinion.
The one problem I have with this policy is that it is no different than current policy. Even if we developed some nice solar water purifiers and even found a cure for aids, it does nothing to address the issues that make these problems rampant in 3rd world countries in the first place.
All you will end up doing is contributing to an unsustainable population boom and incur a lot of costs.
The main problem that all 3rd-world nations share is oppressive, centralist, governments. That is part of why none of our aid helps much. The other problem is the population. Giving them different essential needs isn't going to help. You'll just make a bigger oppressed population that requires more aid next year.
Either you militarily remove the offending governments and institute capitalism to benefit living standards, or you just let them be. I prefer to let them be. Honestly, I don't have a solution for 3rd world nations except to hope that they revolt and put some semblance of a functional state in place. I wouldn't commit U.S. troops or tax dollars to achive that end. Private charities can do it if they care enough.


Good news: We have the cheap part nailed down.
Bad News: Effective is expensive.

Under my policy, you and anyone like you will have all the freedom in the world to develop such housing and take the market by storm. I'll even get taxes and a lot of licensure regs out of your way. However, I won't give you one red cent of taxpayer money to achieve that goal.
If the idea is really that good, you should have no problem convincing people to fund you, but the state shouldn't be wasting money on maybes.

On the bright side, you get to keep any money you make all to yourself (minus a nominal income tax) and use it for whatever means you desire.

Can I try, as a foreigner???

I would start by properly closing off your southern border, funded by the dismantling of homeland security. Employment won’t be an issue, because you can retrain the bureaucrats and send them south to patrol the border. This will boost the economies of towns down south as you’d have people resettling there. Hooray!

Next would come legislation holding accountable those responsible for large sums of taxpayers’ money. As an example, NASA. I wouldn’t shut it down, but I would force them to justify their programmes with quantifiable results. (I’d also try make it impossible for Dr Hanssen to work anywhere in the country!). If NASA wants to keep its funding, then they must produce results. Same applies for the military. I’m not advocating cuts per se to the defence budget, however once the majority of the military is out of Iraq there will be significant savings to be made by focussing solely on the Afghani theatre. However there are a number of programmes which seem to eat money mercilessly. If contractors can’t produce goods close to the time allocated, and close to the costs estimated, then they lose their contracts. Competition amongst private enterprise for many projects is a good thing, provided those bidders meet stringent security tests.

Next, your health system is messed up. It’d cost to fix it, but I’m sure a couple of the trillion dollars spent on ‘stimulus packages’ could’ve helped here! Your hospitals are flooded with sick people, suffering sniffles and little more. Solution? Entice and introduce more GPs, funded by a tax or a levy payable by each person earning over a threshold. Subsidised appointments to the GP will reduce the load on your hospitals for basic problems, allowing them to focus on more urgent and pressing cases, for which they were designed.

I’ve touched on taxation, so I’ll continue now. Federal government should tax citizens only on essential items, for which the nation as a whole benefits. Poorly worded I know, but I’m at work and can’t think it through properly. Essentially, things such as Defence, Health, Welfare, Customs, and interstate roads/rail links. I can’t think of anything else which belongs on that list at the moment although I’m sure there are some others. Most other areas can (and in my opinion, should) be governed by the States, which will give you the people more chance to have a say in the way things are run. Obviously this runs a bit of a risk of some states going under financially, and there would need to be provisions for Federal aid in that instance but it would need to be strictly regulated. The only other thing I’d be happy with is a low tax for disaster relief. Everybody contributes, everyone receives help when disaster strikes them.

In terms of foreign policy, I’d reduce monetary aid to Israel, but keep the tight defence ties. I’d probably install strict regulations and criteria for the receipt of aid money. If you can’t prove that the money is going towards good for everyone, then you don’t get anything. I know that wouldn’t be absolutely popular, but hey, how long can you yanks keep throwing away money better spent where you can see the benefits in your own community. Charity starts at home, after all. Pakistan & Afghanistan are tough, you’d have to toe a hard line against the militants, and go after them harder. Everywhere they poked their heads up, hammer it back down. Other than that, I’d adopt a much less active role. Maintaining the bases, and the gear, and the people, but otherwise sitting there benignly. If some form of action is needed, take it as hard and as quick as possible, then back away and go back to a watchful outlook. You yanks can’t be expected and frankly shouldn’t want to play copper everywhere. But it is important that if anyone mistakes this attitude as weakness, you have the ability and willpower to prove them painfully wrong.

Hows that all go down with you blokes?

We don't have to compete with it, we just have to own it. The more money we can pump into low-income economies, the better off they'll be. It wasn't so long ago that people worked for pitful wages in this country.
Remember sharecroppers?
Economic growth, even in foreign nations, lifts people out of poverty. As the demand for products increases, so does the demand,and competition, ($$$) for labor. Just look at China, a huge Communist nation bisected by free-market trade zones because of the demand for labor and the fallacy of wages below the market average.
Obviously, we are not going to gut our labor laws to match those of China, and even if we did, industry couldn't sink to that standard because there would be a massive labor shortage. We'd end up with a black-market labor force.
Conversely, we can't hold other nations to our standards because we would incur tremendous labor expenses,(and probably military expenses enforcing such a policy) as well as a black-market labor and product market.
Just leave other nations alone. Their problems are their problems. We can't fix them or mitigate them without pissing off the whole world(and harming our economy), so just let them be.


Thanks. Now I get to pay your entitlement as well as my own, plus your interest. Bear in mind that under my plan, you get to keep whatever benfits you claim over the next twenty years, whereas I have to pay for twenty years and still get nothing.
Quite frankly, it is not your money because your generation didn't take it back. The government spent it as soon as you surrendered it. Now you are saying that if my generation did try to abolish this destructive system you would voluntarily bankrupt the whole country by demanding interest on top of the already unsustainable entitlement budget, which you would get standard benefits from anyways!?
Under my plan, current generations, including my own, would be giving up 20 years' worth of SS taxes to support the entitlements that older generations were promised. And you still want interest?
Are you kidding me!? :-?
Unbelieveable. I thought I actually had a plan that would satisfy the AARP, but I can't even get it past you!


I cede the point because you're sort of right and because an impotent federal government wouldn't garner much party interest, anyway. However, the federal government has no power to prohibit political parties within the states, so have fun banning that inevitable mess.

Ha ha nice but man what a pipe dream none of us will ever get this type of power. And some say no more US bases over seas. But you have to have allies and if you are the most strong military nation you will have to at least provide aid that you pay for to them if you dont guess what?And as to bases in Japan and South Korea what do you think China would do if they knew that we where on the other side of the Pacific? You need tohave some military bases overseas to have some established forces the guy that dosent like you will crush them or they will side with him aginst you in since time of Ancient Egypt even it has been very important to show all comers that you have a military force that will protect its intrests and some things that you nation needs to survive will come from another nation and you have 2 options to have this you either have them as an ally or you control that nation yourself if you dont the guy that doesnt like you will. We thought being isolationest was so great in the 1920s-1941 and look what good that did us we still got into a war. As to SS if people used it the way it was meant to be used there would be no problem it was never supposed to be the only or primary source of money for most retires. To solve this we can do what they do in some asian nations they require by law that every working person put a certain amount of there money into a secure form of savings(it is thier money not the govs so they get all of it) we do not do that here.

Thank you very much. :yep: If we dismantle SS, then I have receipts, I want my contributions back, plus interest, as August said.

What? :o Does that apply to our money invested in banks? It's not our because we haven't withdrawn it?

It's not an entitlement when you are the group funding it.

That's fine with me Lance but while I see your point of helping others it makes no sense to me to do it at the expense of our own people. Besides pollution does not recognize international borders. There is a reason we enacted our environmental laws and I don't see how letting our business leaders bypass them by moving plants overseas helps anyone in the long run.

What? Hey just because I don't exercise a right does not mean I surrender it. What you're advocating is to spend my money but not your own. If the Federal government can crap out trillions of dollars to bail out car companies it can also return my money.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul is partly what got us in this mess already.
That money was taken with a promise that it would be paid back, with interest.

I'm joining AARP this year. :DL

Political parties within a state is fine. Out entire political system is based around states so i see them as a natural extension of that.

Didn't mean to.

That's the popular theory but had we not been isolationist how would that have prevented ww2 from occurring? I mean do you seriously think the depression era USA would have been able to project enough military and/or political clout to prevent the nazis from coming to power or Japan and Italy from militarizing?

Oh, this won't be at the expense of our own people. My plan is designed to make the U.S. a major tax haven/investment center, helping to ensure that any business that wants to be competitive is based here.
True, some factories will move to other countries, but only the ones that can profit the most from cheap unskilled labor or lax environmental regulations. We don't want those anyway, and they can help other nations build their economies. Besides, the companies that own those factories will be based here, so most of the profit comes back here for reinvestment or domestic spending.
You have a point with the pollution thing, but I don't think that is the most pressing concern, nor do I have an acceptable solution for it yet. Tariffs certainly aren't the way to go, though. They have a history of poor results as agents of foreign policy.




You and Neal are killing me:O:
You'd still get the same social security that everyone else has gotten, whereas I'd be getting nothing, because I won't qualify for retirement benefits within 20 years.
The vast majority of working Americans never get back what they put into social security, and now that I want to get rid of it, you suddenly feel like you should get back everything you put into it, plus interest?
That's not fair, and it certainly isn't feasible. SS spending is like a quarter of the national budget all by itself. If we were to pay back all SS contributions to persons eligible within twenty years, plus the accumulated interest, it would destroy the country. We'd have to borrow or print about.... my god I don't even know.... a very conservative estimate (42,000(avgincome)x.25(FICA)x.15(SS)x30(years worked)x100,000,000(people eligible within 20 years) works out to about 5 trillion without interest! At even 3% interest it comes out to a further 4.5 trillion for a total of 9.5 trillion!
There you go. You almost managed to double the national debt, and that has interest, too. How are we gonna pay that off?:dead:

Can't you just take the same benefits everyone else got and be happy?:DL
Please?:D

Politics is the art of compromise. Never start negotiating from the place you want to end up at... ;)

BTW in trade for my agreement on dissolving Social Security all congressional health care benefits must expire when they leave office and they get no pensions either. I'd prefer they also be tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail but i'm willing to compromise on the rail part... :D

We were not really isolationists, Roosevelts agressive foreighn policy almost guaranteed our involvment in foreighn wars. Violating neutrality acts byarming combatanys and escourting. Lets also not forgett that we claimed 1/2 of the Atlantic ocean as soverghn U.S. territory and fired on German subs without legal merit...hardly isolationists. Roosevelt almost lost his political career and there were strong bodies in government that opposed him.

Good point, but all that occurred after the nazis got into power and at that point war was pretty much inevitable.