Tag: national debt

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  Here are my six suggestions for how we might be able to fix our country and its politics:

  Note: These thoughts are rough around the edges and need to be challenged and refined. I believe, however, it's this kind of creative thinking that can allow us to solve our incredibly serious problems.

  First: Toss all Political Action Committees (PACs). Elected officials must fairly represent the wishes of all individuals not the wishes of only the very wealthy and corporations.

  Second: Have term limits (only one) so we can avoid the problems that come into play with reelection campaigns. And limit all campaigns to a specific, very nominal yet appropriate budget which only the government supplies.

  Third: Require federal fiscal budget to be balanced (via a constitutional amendment) every year. Want to understand our fiscal budget deficit better? Read this.

  Fourth: Replace our overly complicated tax code with a simple flat tax. I think Ross Perot proposed 17%. And Forbes is doing the same now. It's fair for everyone.

  Fifth: Because our annual spending is 3.83 trillion, there is no simple and easy solution for paying down this black hole of a national debt we have created for ourselves. Even if we were to throw a full 25% of our annual spending or upwards of 1 trillion dollars at this, annually it would take over 15 years to pay it off. And, I know that we are not in a position to do that, not even close. So, here is some really out of the box thinking, that needs more consideration and certainly constructive feedback from you!

  Legalize marijuana. According to NOML (which has a site by the same name), Marijuana is the third most popular recreational drug in this country (alcohol and tobacco are ahead of it). Approx. 100 million Americans have used it at one time or another. Approx 25 million Americans have smoked marijuana in the past year. And approx. 14 million people use it regularly.

  NOML also says marijuana is a lot less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. About 50,000 people die each year from alcohol poisoning. And over 400,000 deaths each year are attributed to tobacco smoking. Contrast this with marijuana which is considered to be nontoxic and cannot cause death by overdose.

  Business Week's web site has an article: Legalize Marijuana for Tax Revenue. It starts with "The entire U.S. should follow California's lead—introducing referendums to make marijuana legal, thereby putting the current criminal drug producers and sellers out of business and enabling government to collect tax on pot sold via legitimate channels."

  Want to know more about our national debt? Read this.

  Sixth: Have a viable plan to go back to the gold standard (or something similar). Printing and spending money that is only backed by gold (vs. nothing) will let us reestablish and maintain the integrity of the dollar.

  We do not want to loose our international dollar standard. A number of sources believe that this is at risk now, because of our seemingly "out of control and irresponsible" printing of US dollars. It appears that if we loose this standard, we loose control we've been enjoying since the early 1970s. Here's more info on the international dollar standard. Loosing this could all by itself drastically and negatively affect our quality of life going forward.

   

  July 27, 2012

  budget deficit, democracy, democratic, fix, gold standard, got guts, government, national, national debt, party, political, politics, problems, republican, solve

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• Simple Way To Understand Our National Debt and Budget Deficit

  Overall, we've have had a very good quality of life in this country  for 6 to 7 decades now.  And, I think we all take this for granted to varying degrees.  If we don't address our national debt  effectively soon,  the wonderful quality of life we enjoy in this country will be lost.   If people can understand a few important concepts related to this crisis, I think we can begin to do what we are able to do so well in this country of ours, work together to address the underlying problems and heal the situation.

  At the end of  December  2011, the Treasury Department spent $148 billion dollars of our tax revenue on our national debt.  And that was ONLY an interest payment! To put it in perspective, NASA cost $4 billion dollars.  The  Department of Education cost  $17 billion dollars.  And the Department of Transportation was $21 billion dollars.

  Our national debt is 15.5 trillion dollars.   Our total revenue annually is only  2.57 trillion dollars. There is no word or phrase that begins to describe just how disgusting this situation is!   

  Total government spending a year is 3.83 trillion dollars.  The difference between 3.83 and 2.57 trillion dollars is 1.27 trillion dollars.  So, on top of everything else, we have a budget deficit of 1.27 trillion dollars for the year!  

  In the early 80s our national debt was about 3 trillion dollars.  We had about 250 million people in the country.  At the time, I calculated how much this would be per person. It was $12,000 per person. Now, we are at about 310 million people. It's now $50,000 per person.   And every year we don't balance the budget and/or don't pay down the principal on the national debt, that amount goes up, significantly.   Note that the national debt  is not allocated across people this way.  But, I think this view helps you to easily understand it.

  I've been voting since the age of 18.  It is such a wonderful privilege.  Not everyone in the world is able to influence how their government is run.  Unfortunately, most of the candidates we can vote for today seem to care about their political power and wealth more than getting our precious country on a solid and healthy track. 

  I think it's counterproductive to point fingers at who might be more to blame for how we got here. I also believe that each of us needs to take some responsibility for where we are right now.  What matters now is to address this effectively NOW.  If we don't, the price will be the quality of our future.

  We need to take drastic action on a number of fronts.  Here's MY  six suggestions.

  Note: This site contains the detail for a lot of the data I used here: 

  http://www.federalbudget.com/

  March 7, 2012

  balanced budget, constitutional amendment, deficit, flat tax, marijuana, national debt, PAC, term limits

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