I’d flip the entire budget process on its head and create an economy where needs are examined before sources. Our current budget process projects how much money we’ll get from various sources, then we try to stay within that budget, and that’s good when you’re doing a budget for yourself, but when you’re the government and you can essentially set your own salary (unlike you and me), a lot of needs are going unmet which don’t need to.
I’d say, let’s look at our priorities, what do we need to invest in education to ensure that everyone has access to whatever standard we think should be a birthright for all Americans. What do we need to invest in public health and well being (insurance or whatever)? What do we need to invest in infrastructure (transportation and roads, etc.)? What do we need to invest to make sure that if everyone who is willing and able to work can find work that pays for a standard of living outside the poverty line at minimum (even if that means the government needs to employ them)? How can we ensure that if you get too sick or old to work your needs will still be met? What do we need to do in order to ensure that in one of the richest nations in the world, everyone who is born here can live free from fear that they will be left behind…that they will be able to grow up healthy, with access to the same education that everyone is able to obtain, that they will be able to put their education to use when they are done, that they will be able to commute to their jobs safely and efficiently, they will always make enough money to eat, buy clothing and put a roof over their heads and their families heads, they will be able to see a doctor if they get sick or injured and they will never fall through the cracks, and that they will have a strong military in place to keep them safe from foreign threats.
That’s what I’d want to see, and I think we get there by determining how much it would cost to create this society. Then we know what we need to do in terms of taxation. We then structure taxation in a manner so that your income up to a certain point (the point at which you will have enough money to support yourself) is not taxed, but every dollar thereafter is taxed at the same rate for everyone. That is, we only tax discretionary income, but we tax it all equally, no special exemptions or write offs, we’ll just say, for example, it costs $20 grand a year to live a life of any discernable quality, so everyone who works should make at least $20 grand, but the first $20 grand isn’t taxed. You make $100 grand, pay taxes on $80 grand…you make $100 million, pay taxes on $99,980,000 of it. I’d find a way to balance out the taxation collected by local and state municipalities, usage taxes and such, those taxes which are regressive in nature as well, even if it meant I had to revoke rights of anyone but the Federal government to collect taxes and finance each state via direct Federal aid.
I don’t know exactly what the ultimate solution would look like, i.e. how much tax is collected at each level of government, who pays for what things ultimately, what portion of taxes are collected on business profits vs. what’s collected from personal income, but my goal would be to make it as simple and transparent as possible and to make total revenues be sufficient to do everything the people should be able to rely on their government to provide (i.e. the things they can’t simply provide for themselves), and government would essentially ultimately only be an intermediary as everyone would collectively be paying for these things by paying taxes on their incomes. You do better, you pay more in taxes, it’s the price of being allowed the opportunity to prosper in a capitalist society.
And I’d legalize a whole slew of “victimless crimes”, i.e. rules against what chemicals you can put voluntarily into your body, or what parts of your body you can put voluntarily into other people’s bodies and whether or not compensation can be involved.
Composing members:
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Composing members:
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