Is the United States bankrupt? — This paper, written by a Boston economist and published by the Federal Reserve has apparent been ignored by the media. Who can blame them? It’s a hair raising paper.
Is the United States bankrupt? Many would scoff at this notion. Others would argue that financial implosion is just around the corner. This paper explores these views from both partial and general equilibrium perspectives. It concludes that countries can go broke, that the United States is going broke, that remaining open to foreign investment can help stave off bankruptcy, but that radical reform of U.S. fiscal institutions is essential to secure the nation’s economic future. The paper offers three policies to eliminate the nation’s enormous fiscal gap and avert bankruptcy: a retail sales tax, personalized Social Security, and a globally budgeted universal healthcare system.–
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, July/August 2006, 88(4), pp. 235-49.
found by Rob Sanchez
It comes down the the POOR paying off the debt..
Why not Make SURE taxes from Corps GET to the gov FIRST.
2nd, Find out WHERE our taxes are really going.
Jackson said, that 50+% of taxes is paid out to GET the tax..
3, Start DEALING with business, NOT paying it..
If they want our business they have to PAY for it.. All City, state and fed services are FREE. If they want that cities business.
4. FIX the business tax, hire investigators/bookeepers…
5. Fire all the representitives and their flunkies….Hire someone that will do the job for less. I know ALOt of smart persons that would do the job for 1/2.
6. ISNT DC a low cost living area, It used to be a slum…It used to be a Swamp.
7. Insted of a Terriff that is paid by the consumer, on import, Pass a MAX MSRP on the goods.. Money stays HERE.
Before we try the retail tax lets try a few other things:
Reduce Senator and Representatives wages at least by half. Have all Senator’s and Representatives that have other income that is greater than the congressional salary or net worth of $3+ million to reimburse the government for that salary, and most other expenses that the Government currently provides for them.
Stream-line the Government Agencies and make them more efficient and reduce some top level salaries. Find ways to cut costs throughout the government while increasing funding to education, health care, and public safety. If increases or new taxes are needed, apply them first to those individuals who by paying more taxes will not affect their standard of living. (The richest members of congress are Dems, and the Dems have said TAX the rich. If the richest say, tax us, and the slightly less rich Republicans say tax the poor not us, I must agree with the Dems on this one). Also Companies with large record breaking profits should be taxed more, before a tax that will reduce the standard of living for the poor and middle classes.
Once we have a nice streamlined efficient government, where those elected are there to serve the people and not make money, and those who can afford to be taxed more without affecting their standard of living are, then and only then impose taxes that reduce will reduce the standard of living for the rich, middle class, and poor.
I’d like to see my elected representatives have their pay tied to the average income of the entire nation. They would then have a reason to make everyone better off.
Increasing funding to education and healthcare is what got us on this track to begin with. narrow spending to military, and federal highways CUT EVERYTHING ELSE. Your food, housing and healthcare and education should not be the federal governments problem. The nanny state, not the war or Bush brought us to this point.
Social Security and Medicare are what’s going to blow everything up. The interest payments on the debt are going to be nothing compared to that fiasco.
Were doomed! Were doomed! Oh noes! It’s about damn time. Bring it on.
Solution: Have the republicans and THEIR future generations pay for this mess over 100 years. That way, the burden to pay for plundering the US treasury is spread out so it won’t be too painful.
Other ideas to pay up….
* Place a lien over their suburban McMansions, his SUV, her SUV and the children’s SUV’s.
* Sell off their Exxon, Haliburton and Fox news securitities.
* Sell off the fish boat docked in the Galapagos Islands
* Safari home in Kenya
..just some ideas but I think that’s not enough.
The government would mess up all 3 of those suggestions. The best solution is for the government to go broke and set lower expectations 🙂
The big ticket items are defense and entitlements. To touch SS has always been political suicide. Most of our allies has drastically cut their defense spending. We as the last remaining superpower still maintain the assets for extending force abroad, and it’s very expensive.
Have the republicans and THEIR future generations pay for this mess over 100 years
Other ideas to pay up….
* Place a lien over their suburban McMansions, his SUV, her SUV and the children’s SUV’s.
* Sell off their Exxon, Haliburton and Fox news securitities.
* Sell off the fish boat docked in the Galapagos Islands
* Safari home in Kenya
Yeah, and I’m sure none of this applies to Democrats.
what do you expect?
1. Federal Reserve is a private bank, not the government
2. Our government borrows money from afore mentioned private bank at interest
3. The money is printed with zero backing (i.e. no gold).
I’d like to see my elected representatives have their pay tied to the average income of the entire nation. They would then have a reason to make everyone better off.
Comment by Cognito — 12/3/2006 @ 4:43 am
I suggested years ago that Congressional (and Judicial and Executive)pay be directly linked to the Minimum Wage (min. X constant).
I believe I saw one article that Hillary (not a fan….) made the same suggestion. (!)
J/P=?
Hmm, it’s Republicans that have proposed the first two, with Democrats energbetically opposing both. Does globally budgeted universal health care mean world-wide? How does the US paying for other countries health care help?
8 trillion debt versus 2.5 trillion in revenues, a 12 trillion dollar economy, and trillions in assets. I wouldn’t call that bankrupt.
It’s still true that eight years ago we were operating with a surplus, and the debate was about whether to use it to make people’s lives better (infrastructure, rainy day fund, pay down debt borrowed against money people had deposited toward their own retirement in Social Security), or cut the taxes of the rich. We can all see where that debate ended, whatever our ideological leanings.
Holding the Republican Party blameless for what has been done to us is just stupid. If we’re in a mess, it only make sense to, as one suggestions put it, hire inivestigators and accountants and start by seeing to it that the corporations and the other rich actually start paying what they owe. We might then be is less trouble, financially, than we think we are.
Of course that won’t fix things like the EPA shredding six years of accumulated research so the Democratic congress can’t find out what they’ve been sweepig under the rug. Too bad nobody’s going to enforce existing laws about destroying government records, either.
TJ, revenues are higher now than 2000. It’s spending that pushed the deficit higher.
OK, I didn’t see global health care written in his paper. He’s calling for mandatory enrollment in an insurance plan with a voucher given out to everyone to be spent on health care. The government only pays up to a specific amount per person, and it’s up to your insurance company to deal with the rest. A good start, but in practice I think it would lead to insurance companies denying benefits left and right, though if they let individuals keep part of any ‘surplus’ this might work.
Ok,
somehthing to remember..
they passed that fun law about Commercial developement of property…
How they can take your property IF they can find away to make more money with it??
Wellllll, Wash DC has alot of property going to waste, dont ya think…
NONE of it is being taxed… can you say Disney universe??
Actually the growth/bloating of the federal govt and its accompanying power grab post depression is what is to blame here.(both sides are guilty dems and republicans)
The designers of the this country wanted the man spending your tax dollars to be as close to your house as possible .( it is much harder to waste and screw off your money when he has to see you on streets and answer for it ) That is why the federal gov had little power and the states had the most power.Your taxes stayed in your state and were distributed to your local county and city and the man spending your money was local not some idiot you see every 4 years promising more stuff so he can get your vote. If we can get closer to that set up again it would solve many of our countries woes (think if roe vs wade were a local issue ) you want abortion legal live in a state where the voters made it so if not go to the state where they said no, don’t let some unelected official tell you how to live, thats not how the USA was meant to be
Why pay our elected representatives such miserly wages? I want the best person for the job, and I expect them to not have to refuse the job because they won’t be paid. Tying their pay to the minimum wage is just stupid and short sighted.
It is my unscientific theory that people who propose such stupid ideas also can’t be bothered to vote because they believe all politicians are crooked / thieves / incompetent / paying back their friends / etc. Regardless of their political affiliation, I have much more respect for those who want to make the country better then those who sit on their strategically placed thumbs and complain.
Remember this when the decision to make the tax cuts permanent comes up…
Remember how they want to “starve the beast”, to force an end to big government… what better way to starve it than to run-up huge deficits?
Remember that surplus SS payroll taxes have been funding this mess for decades, and the only crisis is that there will no longer be a surplus…
The chickens are finally coming home to roost. I hope you like chicken shit… because there will be plenty for everyone.
Does this mean they will reduce President Bush’s salary down to minimum wage? If so, he’d then be worth every penny.
Easy – Stop Spending….
@20
Why pay them more? If you want to be a senator you should not be in it for the money. You should be in it because you want to help the nation and are interested in influencing the decisions made by the government.
I do however find it funny that one of our State Paid Superintendent for our school district gets paid about the same as a federal senator and that the presidential salary is less than four times what a Senator makes, and theres 1 president and 100 senators.
When Jimmy Carter was president, we had high oil prices and resulting stagflation. Jimmy’s answer to the dilemma was to say that we had to accept the fact that we were going to have a lower standard of living. The voters disagreed and voted him out.
The politicians took that lesson to heart; the voters are greedy and will vote for whoever promises to give them the most goodies. The bench mark was, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” There was no regard for where the politicians got the money or how they got it — just get it.
If you hire someone to lie for you, they will lie to you. If you hire someone to steal for you, they will steal from you. And I mean both parties. Welfare was robbed to keep the standard of living up. Economic indicators and the stock market are gimmicked to make it look like the country is doing okay, until you ask the people directly involved. The Dollar is hugely inflated to pay for everything. It will fall off the cliff shortly.
What happened to Argentina three years ago will happen to us. The middle class were shoved down into poverty. The plutocrats of the left and right were fine. They had a strong police so they were able to minimize the violence.
America has its own problems. Unemployed people who are taking AIDS drugs have six months to find a job before they must resort to crime to live. Racial problems will explode when the middle class aren’t there for the poor to sponge off of. Suicides in the World War 2 generation will skyrocket when they no longer have a retirement. The Army will be patrolling America’s streets, but it won’t be called “martial law.”
Merry Christmas, yall!
I can see that the Democrats agenda is more about using a Federal sales tax to control society. Look at how hard it is to control the income tax levels from the Feds, with a Federal sales tax we’ll have taxes on different items as the left choices which way to push society.
There is nothing that a sales could accomplish that can’t be accomplished by a income tax. What a sales tax would do is push almost the entire tax burden upon the poor and middle class.
Do the rich eat more than the middle class or poor.
Will the rich buy more that the middle class or poor, how many TVs do they need, how many shirts.
The rich, might pay the same amount of Tax or perhaps a little more, but they will have more to pay those taxes and it will be a significantly smaller amount of their income, it’s the middle class and poor that will bear this burden.
What this type of taxing plan will do is bring us in line with Europe, the EU and the Globalist agendas. It’ll help bring about the Neo-Dark Ages that the Global Elite plan for those of us in lower 80% and out of the Global economy. It’s a conflict between globalist and nationalist, between popularist and elitist, between those seeking to become the new nobility and those who seek to retain their freedom and human dignity.
Uh, this won’t delay the Rapture will it?
I liked post #21 a lot.
yeah, i like that anology #21 – way to break it down!
#24, So you expect all the Civil Servants to volunteer? What an idiot !!! Why don’t you tell your boss you volunteer to work for nothing.
Your School Superintendent has a demanding, responsible job. With his education is quite likely they could earn much more in the private sector, so he should be given credit for the low pay he does receive.
I know, why stop with the Superintendent. The teachers are all over paid as well. And the police. And the Military. And the Firefighters. And the Nurses. I wonder, is any Civil Servant who isn’t overpaid?
Six years ago, this country had a surplus budget and booming economy. Today, after six years of a Republican White House and the check and balance Republican led Congress, the deficit has ballooned. Yet as soon as the Democrats try to tackle the deficit, they will immediately be attacked by the Republicans. Did we really need that $1billion “bridge to nowhere”.
I can put it simply by quoting the movie “sneakers”
“the simple problem is money . . . Politicians are bought and sold like so much cattle our problems multiply. Pollution, crime, poverty, disease, hunger, despair, we throw gobs of money at them and the problems get worse why is that ? because money’s most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue to do bad things at the expense of those that don’t have it. . . . I learned that everything in this world operates not on reality but, the perception of reality.. . .
posit: people think a bank might be financially shaky. Consequence: people start to withdraw their money. Result: pretty soon it is financially shaky
Conclusion: you can make banks fail”
the point is that todays monetary system is not based on anything else other than that dollar bill you have in your pocket, is of value to the rest of society (i.e U.S. money is not based on reality, but the perception of reality ). if society started to lose confidence in the monetary system then there would be serious problems.
as long as people in society still value the Dollar, Euro, Pound, Peso etc. etc. I don’t see anything going to happen. Iran and other nations can try to force society to move to a gold standard but it won’t work. too many safeguards against that ever happening again
6 years ago, the economy wasn’t booming. We were already in recession.