How would you fix America's economic problems if you had the authority to do it?

kmguru said:
The real solution is producing goods again while keeping subsidized goods imports out of the way for at least 5 years. That is a short term remedy for the greater good. Granted China will howl, but a tapered off imports could let them adjust to increase their domestic consumption.

Better yet, make a law to balance the trade deficit starting in 60 days. Meaning you import what value you export. So if China wants us to buy their crap, they have to buy our crap equally.

That is the best way. There is a slow reckoning of this in the economists circles and perhaps white house (National Export Initiative)
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Free trade agreements...

where we are at...
labour law becomes more strong insisting that a fair days work gets a fair days pay.
company owners profiteering fly by night con artist profit margins drop to long term profit margins(smaller and more consumer responsive with quality of customer service).
babyboomer company owners do not want to give good service or sacrifice their unrealistic profiteering profit margins and become part of the community so they then outsource their labour to a third world country(or illegal migrant workers) which in turn takes money away from the economy.
the down turn in economy is then seen in all sectors and the government then suggests free trade to try and make up for it as if it is going to suddenly reverse this already processed greed and unpatriotic mercenary business practice.

free trade kicks in and then sucks all the existing profit margins out of the economy by outsourcing liquid capital through point of sale to more third world no human rights slave wages.

it is a vicious cycle and all because the babyboomers do not want to be part of a community.

the word communist is thrown around the idea of socialist public schooling and health and used as a whipping boy for all possible solutions involving collective accountability on a cost factor thus RECYCLING again the ability to resolve the problem.

soo...
the only answer is socialist reform which has been quite clearly outlined by the massive bail outs of these same anti community babyboomer company owners like GM, ford and chrysler etc... AIG etc etc etc...

now we see the next round of possible stop gap profit rebalance going back into fostering more greed with these non performance based bonuses.

free market capitalism is a sinking ship and it seems the political right wing are determined to take everyone down with them, starting with the countrys agricultural economy.
then what ?
food riots ?
 
Norsefire said:
How about, instead of that, we just cut that Federal program altogether and reduce the number of Federal employees by 75% or more?

Not to mention abolishing Social Security and the other aspects of the New Deal that are still around.
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There are about 2 million federal civilian employees. Where do you want to start? About half of that number is tied up in the Defense Department - including the Department of Veterans Affairs. The next largest department is the Department of Homeland Security - 171k.

http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs041.htm

So you are going to have to say who. It is real easy to pull a number out of the air, but much more difficult to put some specifics around it. Do you think all the medical benefits provided to federal workers should be revoked? Should we not also revoke federal pensions?
 
joepistole said:
There are about 2 million federal civilian employees. Where do you want to start? About half of that number is tied up in the Defense Department - including the Department of Veterans Affairs. The next largest department is the Department of Homeland Security - 171k.

http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs041.htm

So you are going to have to say who. It is real easy to pull a number out of the air, but much more difficult to put some specifics around it. Do you think all the medical benefits provided to federal workers should be revoked? Should we not also revoke federal pensions?
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Yes to both. However, I am of the opinion that although we need to cut these programs and departments, we can't do it overnight. People are too addicted to government to just cut it overnight. We should have a gradual plan to "phase out" the government to a more constitutional-sized government that interferes little to none in the economy and lets the states and the free markets handle everything.

The military is a good place to start. We spend too much on it... nearly $1 trillion annually...if we ended the wars and stopped spending so much, we could just about abolish the income tax or corporate tax.

Think of it this way: the income tax brings in about 30% of annual revenue; government spending has increased about 30-40% since 1990. So, if we can get spending levels back to what we had them (and even less, preferably, in the long run), then we can get rid of the insidious income tax altogether. We didn't even have an income tax until 1913.
 
Norsefire said:
How about, instead of that, we just cut that Federal program altogether and reduce the number of Federal employees by 75% or more?

Not to mention abolishing Social Security and the other aspects of the New Deal that are still around.
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Why do you hate the middle class so much?
 
yep great lets do that norse, lets abolish the millatry, the emergency services, the roads, schools, the department of trade which helps companies market overseas, the police which hunt sex offenders and the worst criminals, the finantial regulators which could have prevented the GFC and could prevent the next one, the NTSB and the FAA who are there to make sure that plane crashes arnt repeated, the FDA who protect the US food surplie and the saftey and efficasy of medications, the water authorities who protect the water surplie ect ect. YOUR AN IDIOT
 
Asguard said:
yep great lets do that norse, lets abolish the millatry, the emergency services, the roads, schools, the department of trade which helps companies market overseas, the police which hunt sex offenders and the worst criminals, the finantial regulators which could have prevented the GFC and could prevent the next one, the NTSB and the FAA who are there to make sure that plane crashes arnt repeated, the FDA who protect the US food surplie and the saftey and efficasy of medications, the water authorities who protect the water surplie ect ect. YOUR AN IDIOT
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You're putting words into my mouth. How about you stop resorting to childish name-calling and start using your brain for once?



The government can and should have safety regulations for medicines and foods, a national defense, and police and firefighting services.

Schools can be voucher-supported or private. The rest can be left to the state governments and the free market.

Nobody is advocating anarchy. We're advocating constitutional, limited Federal government that doesn't interfere in peoples' sovereign right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and doesn't interfere in their rights to property.
 
why are not all schools in the USA private ?

can someone answer me that question please and then use that to validate free market capitalism ?

just asking...
surely its not a big ask ?
 
Norsefire said:
You're putting words into my mouth. How about you stop resorting to childish name-calling and start using your brain for once?

The government can and should have safety regulations for medicines and foods, a national defense, and police and firefighting services.

Schools can be voucher-supported or private. The rest can be left to the state governments and the free market.

Nobody is advocating anarchy. We're advocating constitutional, limited Federal government that doesn't interfere in peoples' sovereign right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and doesn't interfere in their rights to property.
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What is consitutional? I am not aware of any restrictions on the size of government in the Consitution. The reason the Consitution was drafted and adopted was to give the central/federal government more power. And subquent admendments to the Consitution further centralized power in the Federal government by expanding the central governments ability to tax. So I find the arguement that the founding docments favor a weaker central government a little weak.

That said, one could reduce federal spending much faster by making the federal government act more like a private employer, disrobe itself of costly pension plans, eliminate healthcare benefits for current and retired federal employees. Private companies face these issues every day. It is high time the federal government faced those same issues especially when the deficit and debt has reached these levels.
 
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Joe, the Founding Fathers were all about constitutional government, and that means limited government. I could list a million quotes if you'd like.

Your idea is okay, but only if it were temporary. Eventually, we should just go back to states' rights and the free market
 
The bottom line is that America imports everything it uses and exports very little. What made America great in the 50's was that there were plenty of jobs overproducing products for the rest of the world to consume. We simply need to export more than we import.
 
joepistole said:
If you eliminate healthcare and pension expenditures, you eliminate 1.6 trillion dollars out of the budget this year alone and every year thereafter.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/
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Okay, so I agree with you, we should eliminate health and pension expenditures. 1.6 trillion in cut spending means abolishing the income tax and significantly reducing the corporate tax (which screams "come set up here!" to international companies, which means jobs and growth)
 
Norsefire said:
Okay, so I agree with you, we should eliminate health and pension expenditures. 1.6 trillion in cut spending means abolishing the income tax and significantly reducing the corporate tax (which screams "come set up here!" to international companies, which means jobs and growth)
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well right up until we go back to corporate towns which would eventually happen in your glorious ideas.
 
Norsefire said:
Joe, the Founding Fathers were all about constitutional government, and that means limited government. I could list a million quotes if you'd like.
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With today's technology, the government can be small and yet efficient. Our revenue service is more efficient than Greek's. But our government is 20 years behind in technology and business processes.

Our founding fathers were good men that did not anticipate Bernie Madoff type parasites mushrooming everywhere. Too many middle layer between production and consumption.
 
jmpet said:
The bottom line is that America imports everything it uses and exports very little. What made America great in the 50's was that there were plenty of jobs overproducing products for the rest of the world to consume. We simply need to export more than we import.
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I think Warren Buffet got it right when he said, "The U.S trade deficit is a bigger threat to the domestic economy than either the federal budget deficit or consumer debt and could lead to political turmoil... Right now, the rest of the world owns $3 trillion more of us than we own of them."

And that is why we need to do the things that make the US more competitive:

- healthcare reform, getting our healthcare costs more in line with other competitors
- reduce our energy costs (Cap & Trade)
- enforce existing trade agreements
- drafting better trade agreements
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/business/05trade.html

The bottom line is about half the trade deficit is from oil imports.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_trade
 
joepistole said:
If you eliminate healthcare and pension expenditures, you eliminate 1.6 trillion dollars out of the budget this year alone and every year thereafter.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/
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How about this

Reduce defense budget to 6% as need for major wars with standing armies are no longer applicable due to atomic weapons, Cruise missiles and drones

Savings = $522 Billion

Cut out Health Care to 7% due to veteran and government workers

Savings = $653 Billion

Cut out Federal Education to 6%

Savings = $653 Billion

Cut out Miscellaneous to 17%

Savings = $653 Billion

Total savings = $2.481 Trillion
 
joepistole said:
And that is why we need to do the things that make the US more competitive:
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- healthcare reform, getting our healthcare costs more in line with other competitors

Agreed, but the Health Care reform needs to take a look at the entire healthcare and not just hospital, drugs and doctors. It needs to look at how we educate our doctors to testing, prescription drugs, consumer education, health care education in schools, etc. That is not happening.

- reduce our energy costs (Cap & Trade)

No one talks about remote work, yet we outsource our work to another country. That would save major energy. We need to promote more natural gas use that we have plenty and use home based fuel cells such as Bloom Energy boxes. That will save billions in transmission costs and in massive infrastructure.

- enforce existing trade agreements
- drafting better trade agreements

Trade agreements are nice but do not provide any restriction to the freedom of a company to go overseas. We do not want to make low value products that the Vietnamese want to make. What we are missing in the process is the infrastructure to be innovative and thus stay one step ahead of the third world countries in technology. Lawyers drafting such policies have no idea what these infrastructure should look like.


The bottom line is about half the trade deficit is from oil imports.

This can be solved in many ways:

Fuel Cell technologies
Natural Gas
Flexible Solar cells on roof tops
Wind energy on roof tops
Battery (power storage) technologies
Nuclear fission and fusion
Changing the way we work and move point A to B

 
kmguru said:
How about this

Reduce defense budget to 6% as need for major wars with standing armies are no longer applicable due to atomic weapons, Cruise missiles and drones

Savings = $522 Billion

Cut out Health Care to 7% due to veteran and government workers

Savings = $653 Billion

Cut out Federal Education to 6%

Savings = $653 Billion

Cut out Miscellaneous to 17%

Savings = $653 Billion

Total savings = $2.481 Trillion
Click to expand...

I don't think you could realistically cut defense spending that low. You have to have platforms to launch those weapons you referenced and today warfare is more about troops on the ground. Additionally, the one thing that keeps US influence alive in the world is our military...sad but true. There are still a lot of bad people out there and I don't see anyone taking over our roll as global policeman. Were it not for our military, the dollar probably would have collapsed during our current fiscal crisis. I think the crisis would have been much worse were it not for the strength of our military.
 
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