How Would You Make A Better USA

Great idea! Then all those folks making good salaries can go on unemp & welfare and all the lefties will be so happy!

 

Yup! Then we can return the profit of labor to the laborer!

 

What laborer? There will be no good jobs, so we can all sit home and draw govt checks!

Yay! Liberal utopia!

 

Don't argue in the street with fools, passersby will not be able to discern who is who...

You have often been a poster of some insight.

What top 5 things would you do to improve America?

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Sorry, that one is too easy a target.

1. Revamp campaign finance laws so no one can 'buy' an election.
2. Set term limits for all elected offices to 8 yrs.
3. Dissolve the Dept of Educ, restore agencies like the EPA to its original purpose (major spill cleanup/not regulatory).
4. Reform tax laws so every American pays the same percentage of income.
5. Return decisions for moral laws (gay marriage, abortion, etc) to the states.

Just a few off the top of my head. Notice I refrained from saying, "ship all the libs to Canada?" Took great restraint. LOL

 

http://treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm

The Interest Expense on the Debt Outstanding includes the monthly interest for:

•U.S. Treasury notes and bonds
•Foreign and domestic series certificates of indebtedness, notes and bonds
•Savings bonds
•Government Account Series (GAS)
•State and Local Government series (SLGs) and other special purpose securities.

Interest for fiscal 2013 will be around $444 billion.

This debt interest 'expense' is approximately 13% of the annual budget...13% is a big chunk! and we get absolutely nothing for this.

Regarding your 'intra-government' debt, if you cannot foresee budget surpluses in the near future to fund Social Security, etc., for the shortfalls, then you must raise more cash which means selling more T-bills and bonds which is public debt. So...IMO...debt is debt and ALL debt comes at a cost...

 

Which has more of a voice in politics;

1. One rich person worth $50 billion?

2. 500,000 individual voters?

If the 500,000 votes cannot trump 1 vote, then your problem is not with the rich person but with the other 500,000 idiots...

 

I'd make everyone except the bed-ridden report for calisthenics every morning at 7AM.

 

Trust me, when you look at our actual government expenditures they credit and debit intragovernmental interest expenses. It's a wash and no one pays anything for it. And the Fed which has $2 trillion worth of treasuries gives back 95% of their interest earnings back to the Treasury. Our net interest expense is far less than $444 billion.

 

The problem is that your idea of the world
#1: assumes that private citizens are too stupid to think for themselves, and will vote based on a tally of how many ads they see (you have shown disdain for the regular voter)
#2: you want to revoke fundamental rights without changing the Constitution, not even based on some higher moral or principal, but for expediency.

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not exactly in those terms, but yes, our world today is littered with hypocrites and liars who will uphold a principal only so long as it's expedient in the moment. The greatest political weakness of conservatives is that they tend to uphold a principal even when it hurts them.

 

Yeah, it's getting kind of ridiculous. I really want to see us draw back. Anything more than 3000 miles from continental shores we should stay out of.

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Yes yes, we all know that you envision a world where rights and freedoms are stripped away because you view them as politically inconvenient. I know your sort, and I don't much care for it.

 

Not when those "rights and freedoms" only apply to some and boil down to a form of tyranny. Corporations and organizations are not people and do not deserve rights that are equal to or greater than those given to people.

 

#1: Workers arguing for 'right to work' policies is an example. Anyone that voted Romney or Obama is perfect example. I don't know how much you listen around you at work, in stores, etc. but just listen a little bit. You'll be surprised by how intelligent someone seems until they spout a lie as a fact because they simply don't question, they just absorb and squirt it back out.
#2: Again, this thread wasn't about the technical aspects of how to get our proposals done, it was 'what are your proposals'. In order to get money out of politics, it must be stated in the constitution that groups of people, alliances, teams and any other formation of multiple individuals to form a single entity whether for business or pleasure is not a person and shall not have the privileges nor rights of an individual at any time and that money is not free speech and shall not be used to acquire it in unlimited quantities. Currently, several states have passed specific election laws for their own elections that omit candidates from a ballot if they don't have a specific percentage of donations to representative PACs and themselves from individuals or meet a threshold of donations from a specific amount of people or both. This is good, but I think it should be extended to stating what everyone knows is common sense which is corporations are not people. This would also have some other side effects such removing the cap on punative damages because they're 'a person', etc. I always thought that if they wanted to be treated like a person, they should go all the way and face the death penalty for killing people with sloppy and shady practices, but they only want to be a person when it allows them advantages.

 

A return to the time when Nelson Rockefeller was about. The GOP of today seems to insist on pushing away more and more voters while following an ever more extreme agenda.

 

Trust me, if you look at the current fiscal budget you will see the 'net interest' expense climbing to $915 billion/year by 2022 and who knows the accuracy of this number? The bottom line is interest expense on debt comes with a cost that should not be ignored. Between now and 2022, according to Obama's budget, the US will 'expense' $5,889,000,000,000 in debt interest payments...yes this is $5.889 TRILLION in interest payments! And the ONLY thing we get for this $5.889 trillion is the privilege today, and years to come, of being fiscally irresponsible.

I'm not against government stimulus spending with the caveat that >95% of the stimulus spending provides something tangible that continues to serve all Americans for decades to come...like we did with the WPA program. But I don't want government becoming a long--term employer for unemployed Americans...

 

Let me enlighten you about the phrase 'corporations are people.' It should be expanded to read 'corporations are the people's bread & butter.'

If you look at just a few:

American Airlines employs nearly 90,000 people. IBM employs 400,000 people. Wells Fargo Bank employs over 270,000 people. GM employs 200,000 people. GE 300,000 people

The list goes on and on... but the point is... these companies all have one thing in common. Good paying jobs with benefits and real opportunities for advancement -- for the PEOPLE who work there. Your fellow Americans. Millions of them. What do you think will happen to those PEOPLE if your wish comes true and all those evil big corporations go away... along with their good jobs?

Corporations are people. They're sure not a few rich guys in expensive suits.

 

Trust me, interest is the least of our worries. Why do people care so much about interest expenses? It's no different than any other expense the government has. And if interest is so ridiculous you should buy tons of treasuries and sop up that amazing 1% a year!

 

Oh that's funny! Thanks for the laugh!

 

Your argument contains a couple of assumptions and faults.

1.) I didn't advocate removing corporations from existence. They have their place and their place is in business, not policy. Policy is for people and corporations are not people, it's a contractual agreement which forms a legal entity. Clearly not *A* person.

2.) These companies do not have that in common. The current model suggests that the workers are not treated fairly. In capitalism, it is necessary for both the employer and employee to have equal leverage when deciding on an agreement. As it stands, removing Unions removes power from the people since a single person does not have the power to negotiate effectively the terms of a contract. This becomes exacerbated when that corporation is one of few choices of employment, such as a 2 horse town win a Wal-Mart Supercenter employing half of the town.

3.) The free speech they employ through money does get reciprocated to the employers as is evidenced by the growth of business owner and CEO salaries in comparison to the stagnation of worker salaries. Again, there's not an equal amount of leverage on both the employer and employee. I would go out on a limb and say that everyone expects CEOs and business owners to have larger salaries. They worked for that position and they deserve it. However, when the people who are actually making their capital are ignored, this is where the fit hits the shan in terms of workers rights. Once you start factoring in that if the people want to make a difference in their salary that companies threaten to take away insurance, reduce their hours or simply close up shop and move their factory or business overseas where the cost of living on average is much lower therefore they can increase their profits on American soil by both sacrificing the jobs of the citizens and exploiting lack of regulation of humane conditions in another country, then obviously, the people, the workers have no leverage.

I'm very well enlightened on the sentiment of corporations are people by those who don't understand that the average joe does not belong in that equation. If this were the case, then corporations would be pushing for more workers rights rather than tax breaks and complaining about having to provide health insurance under the ACA for the people for whom it could not exist.

I'm not anti-capitalism. However, capitalism has serious flaws in it's ideology that should and must be corrected if it is to ensure the prosperity of both the country, the people and the business which operate under it's philosophy.

 

No problem, thanks for keeping me entertained by pretending you know what you are talking about!

 

Getting the big money out of politics is easy. Attack the underlying disease - not the symptom.

All you have to do is diminish the ability of government to mess with people's incomes and the money goes away.

 

You get NOTHING for the interest paid...just pay money out with nothing in return...this is why 'some' people care about interest expenses.

And if your 1% interest rate goes up to 3-5%, the $5.889 trillion increases to $11 trillion...

 

Um getting money out of politics doesn't mean cutting funding of the government.

 

Actually I do think it's a good idea. Corporations are legal structures created by the state, and I've always felt that if a blue state would just forbid incorporating within it's borders, it would be a great object lesson for the rest of the country. Hopefully all of the people who say, "Abolish all corporations" would move to that blue state and show us all how it's done.

 

Nope. I'm talking about drastically cutting the power of government. Without the power, government spending will naturally taper off and political contributions would drop off the table.