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Approximately 43% of American taxpayers pay nothing in Federal Income taxes (I know they pay Social Security, but that is not what the 40% covers). More than 7 million families, (12%) live below the poverty line; more than 33 million Americans receive food stamps.
Today’s column is not to disparage those people but instead to ask, “How can we enable these people to become productive citizens that make a net positive financial contribution to the costs of running our nation and boost our Gross National Product?”
This is an important question for a variety of reasons.
• Our national debt is more than $11 trillion. That’s a lot of money.
• Economies and the people within those economies fare far better in a dynamic, growing economy than in one where a significant portion are unable to actively participate. We need to grow the U.S. economic pie.
• Various surveys taken recently show that Americans overwhelmingly believe we need healthcare reform, yet most of those people are also concerned with the current level of federal spending and the cost of healthcare reform.
• The House of Representatives passed Cap and Trade legislation that is expected to cost Americans upwards of $3,000 per year per household after 2021.
• U.S. debt holders are growing nervous about our economic stability. At the same time, at least one of these debt holders could benefit in the long run if our economy is unstable.
• More and more of the work that used to be done by Americans is now done in Asia by Asians.
In sum, the dynamo that once powered the U.S. economy seems to be slowing. Only sixty percent of Americans are powering the economy at a high enough level to help support the demands our nation is placing on our economy. Individuals are struggling, transactions of all kinds from consumer purchases to business purchase have shrunk, and tax revenues are dropping while government’s thirst for money has soared. We need to reinvigorate the core of the U.S. economy, not settle for short term stimulus.
The current approach to spur the slowing economy is a collection of wealth transfers to assist the needy with food, clothing, housing, utilities, healthcare, and more. These transfers help people in the short term but they do little to move these people into the category of net financial contributors to a robust economy and the cost of running the nation. Wealth transfers do not increase the total wealth of the nation; they simply transfer control of that wealth.
America needs to increase its wealth to pay for national healthcare, cap and trade, reduce our debt, and the create jobs and opportunities for us to thrive.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently wrote that “recessions have been a time when new companies get born and good companies separate themselves from their competition. Necessity breeds invention.”
Friedman points out that we have been too busy printing the money to bail out “two dinosaurs: General Motors and Chrysler,” to focus on the kind of actions that will reinstate the U.S. as a dominate economy. Friedman offers five steps we should be using in this crisis; including benchmarking education to international standards, doubling spending on scientific research, lowering corporate tax rates, revamping Sarbanes-Oxley which has grown into an enormous impediment to small business, and finding a cost-effective route to national health care.
I don’t agree with all of Friedman’s points but those are details (Thomas, I am happy work out our differences, just let me know me know where and when) that can be fixed. My point is that Friedman is incredibly accurate in his overall concept; we need everyone at every level to get smarter – more effective. I have only two points to add to Friedman’s list.
I have written several articles insisting that the first step toward fixing our economy is an immediate, across the board tax cut that is implemented through a freeze of withholding taxes. This is the true “Trickle Up,” economics that President Obama supposedly wanted with his stimulus plan (a plan that is in reality trickle down not trickle up). We need this tax relief now.
Further, President Obama has the unique ability to inspire our nation to place much greater respect on education than what we have today. Friedman points out that the countries that use this crisis to make people smarter and more innovative will thrive in the future.
Americans today seem intent on growing dumber and dumber. That is by personal choice and thus can be reversed, if people are inspired to Change. President Obama can Change this nation in bigger ways than any of his individual programs will ever do. He can use his presidential bully pulpit for Educational Accomplishment. Educational accomplishment means enabling the remaining 40% of Americans contribute to the costs of running our nation. That will lead to the kind of lasting financial, economic change our children can believe in.
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“The House of Representatives passed Cap and Trade legislation that is expected to cost Americans upwards of $3,000 per year per household after 2021.”
Republican congressmen produced the $3000 number from some very unscrupilous umber crunching of their own that they with great license made out of thin air from an MIT study that produced neither that number nor that overall result. The author of that study has publicly confirmed that it is a dishonest manipulation of the numbers in his study. Either you are willfully passing on a statistic that you know to be false, or you are not educated on the issue.
It is problematic enough to have a debate on the issue of climate change when people are even somewhat operating with real information. It is altogether impossible when drivel like this (created for pure disinformational purposes and with no mind either to scientific rigor or truth) continues to be spouted by someone like yourself as fact.
“The House of Representatives passed Cap and Trade legislation that is expected to cost Americans upwards of $3,000 per year per household after 2021.”
Republican congressmen produced the $3000 number from some very unscrupilous number crunching of their own that they with great license made out of thin air from an MIT study that produced neither that number nor that overall result. The author of that study has publicly confirmed that it is a dishonest manipulation of the numbers in his study. Either you are willfully passing on a statistic that you know to be false, or you are not educated on the issue.
It is problematic enough to have a debate on the issue of climate change when people are even somewhat operating with real information. It is altogether impossible when drivel like this (created for pure disinformational purposes and with no mind either to scientific rigor or truth) continues to be spouted by someone like yourself as fact.
Unfortunately, the same can be said of the other side too. There’s also a lot of disinformation put out by the people that drive that agenda. True debate about it is leaving us; didn’t Al “The Father of The Internet” Gore just re-iterate that people opposing this to be similar to Hitler?
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/gore-hitler-47121101
I absolutely find the Gore “inventor of the internet” canard absolutely charming. He actually never said that, but again that matters not once a cherished argumentative dart finds its way into the right’s arsenal (like Reagan’s “welfare queen”) it matters not whether it is true or not, just that it is satisfying to repeat over and over and over and over again. All the better that regurgitating it continuously like some mantra actually frees the speaker from having to do any actual thinking. As to Gore and his comment in your link, you have that incorrect as well. He describes the threat of climate change to the well being of the world as being similar to that posed by Hitler, and thus ignoring it akin to appeasement. Not that denying it is Hitlerian. The distinction might have been lost on you, but it is important in what and who is being demonified. I don’t think I would have used that language, but again if one subscribes to the incredibly huge scientific consensus that sees climate change as an existential threat, I think I can forgive his hyperbole.
Now on the other hand, if you do not believe that climate change is real, then I guess it would be easy to find all of this much ado about nothing. But know this, of the two sides: environmentalists concerned about cataclysmic alterations to the earth’s ecosystems or corporate financed think tanks and scientists for hire who are paid to deny climate change to protect profit margins….which one of these has an agenda deserving of more immediate doubt and scrutiny?
Sorry for the delayed response on this put I have been out of town.
First, Gore’s actual comment was, “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp
Brett’s use was close though not directly on. Gore did deserve some credit for his legislative work. However, just as most politicians do, Gore was very much, intentionly exagerating his record. He lost the respect of a lot of people that saw this interview and he deserved to lose that respect. It helped cost him the presidency. What he said, clumsy or not, was nonsense and we don’t need that kind of nonsense in the White House – we have had enough there without his addition.
In Gore’s continued efforts at extrememism on climate he has lost credibility with vast numbers of people. That’s a shame because he has something to say on this issue. It is however, a fact.
Unfortunately, as I have written before, the environmental challenges we face today are far too important for us to allow environmentalists to work on them. Gore is the perfect example. His extremism has done more harm to the cause than it has done good. He needs to go back to Tennessee and stay there if he really wants to help the fight against global warming.