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(and I just read a few negative comments about him)... he did get most of the economy right (should have pressured Greenspan MORE to deflate the overblown tech bubble).
Anyway, YES, we rescind the tax cut for the wealthy. Supply side was bogus in the eighties, and it's bogus now. Consumers drive the economy, not investors. If Consumers have extra dollars, they will spend them... and the investors will come crawling out of their mansions to invest their money, EVEN at higher tax rates!
We need to recreate the middle class here (it used to be union jobs in manufacturing). We do this by taking the service sector jobs and paying those people a *lot* more money. Service sector is hard to outsource, unfortunately its not skilled, so there aren't barriers to entry (which means lower wages for everyone).
We invest in new technologies (as a federal FUNDED programs). 1. renewable energy 2. Nanotechnology 3. Biotechnology
We retrain our computer scientists to get the skills to move into these areas (Info tech is, for the most part, done).
And we reduce spending on the military (and we CAN do this without reducing our ability to wage war... it's just that any war we wage in the future should have a majority of the population of the PLANET behind us... sharing the costs and the risks)... which implies a sensible and sane foreign policy.
Also, while we are talking about welfare (sort of), let's start eliminating corporate welfare. We do not need to pay farmers to not grow things, nor do we need to subsidize them growing things where Nature did not really intend things to grow. Like, say, rice in California... actually, a whole LOT of stuff in California. That's not to say farmers shouldn't farm, we just need to be more rational about WHAT they try to farm, and the amount of water needed to farm in certain regions.
Within a period of 8 years we will be back to running a surplus and reducing the debt. And we should be able to afford a basic universal health care... but we should spend on preventative health care... it's a whole lot cheaper to prevent than treat.
Oh, yeah, and we should start thinking about modifying some very silly tax laws, like the basic home mortgage deduction. It has artificially inflated the basic cost of home ownership (because you can write off up to 40 percent of your payments)... this has to done carefully to not cause a housing collapse, but we really shouldn't have the federal gov doing social engineering.
And let's not let corporations avoid taxation by moving operations overseas. In fact, let's tax them on what they SELL to U.S. consumers, not on what they make or where they are based. Hmmm. I also want to tax profits too, so this needs some thought. You can't tax corporations too much as we need them, just as they need us... I just don't want to see "them" turn into a bunch of stockholders in developed nations around the world plus a bunch of (pick your favorite overpopulated 3rd world country) folks building the stuff to sell here and handling the service calls, etc.
Mind you, I *want* India and China to do well, we just need to move a lot more gradually into the global economy thing. But I don't have the answer to that.
Oh yeah, we should have automatic bracket adjustments built into the income tax code based on inflation, as well as regional adjusters. You cannot live in the Bay Area (northern California) on less than $36,000 per year. That's poverty line here. We shouldn't even tax people making this much. After rent and car and insurance, gas, food, and electricity (thanks, Enron), $3,000 a month is gone. And that's long before savings or kids or school. My pet peeve.
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