I read the entire treatise.
Clearly a lot of work went into it. It has a fair amount of detail although a lot of dirty economic tricks are played in it. It shows how much wages have increased over a number of years but says nothing about how much the cost of housing has increased. It laments the rise in healthcare costs but does not acknowledge that treatments for many diseases that were in the past quick and certain death sentences are now treatable -- but at great cost. The problem with healthcare costs is not the doctors' increasing the number of procedures or patients seeking unnecessary care but the fact that the technology and other medical tools now in the hands of doctors cost a lot. Lives are saved or extended but at great cost.
Getting the for-profit motive, the for-profit health insurance companies out of the mix is not mentioned, but that is the key to reducing our healthcare costs. Bernie Sanders' plan acknowledges that fact. Other countries have cheaper healthcare because they either severely limit the amount of healthcare that includes in its cost a profit for "investors" to either nearly nothing or a very, very small portion of the cost. Bernie Sanders' proposal for Medicare for all is far more efficient and far less costly than the proposal in the OP treatise. I know. I've lived in several European countries. It's the care your doctor provides, not the role of the insurance company that determines the quality of your care. Medicare for all means that doctors are not quite so dependent on pro-treatment pay and thus give better and ultimately less expensive care.
The first portion is pro-corporate to the extent that it insults us mere human Americans.
In that portion, math is played with so as to create a picture of America that is downright dishonest in part.
Social Security's future problems will be solved by a) raising the cap on the income subject to payroll taxes -- which goes up to about $113,000 or thereabouts per year. Bernie's plan does not raise the payroll taxes on people earning less than that in order to fully fund Social Security although he has talked of a very tiny increase in order to fund pre-school education. The treatise makes it sound like Bernie wants to increase payroll taxes on those already paying the tax on all their income. That is not my understanding. Bernie wants everyone to pay the tax on their income and not just those of us who earn under $113,000 or so (I may be wrong on that exact amount) per year. How about the stock options of the CEOs of the investment firms? How about capital gains? Why shouldn't they be taxed to pay for our social safety net.
You can tell that this proposal is written with hoped-for future donations from Wall Street in mind. The pension proposals all suggest less money in Social Security kinds of government programs that are reliable and really pay out and more on "investment" programs. Let me tell you about 401(K)s for us little folks. First, once you reach 65, the lucrative, risky investments are ill-advised for us. That means that you basically will get a return on your "private" investment close to the current interest rate. Right now that is a trickle of money. Also, picture yourself at the age of 85 reading investment charts and trying to make decisions about your retirement fund. My mom lived to the age of 98. She was a teacher and a brilliant woman. She managed money well, but she hated doing it after she reached about 85. It is unrealistic to expect us to do that as we age. I'm 72 and already I can read the writing on the wall. Now, where did I put my glasses? My keys were supposed to be hanging on that hook on the wall? Where did they go? No to these private retirement accounts to replace Social Security. And no cuts for anyone receiving Social Security.
This plan advocates for means-testing Social Security. That is wrong. Not at today's cap on $113,000. Everyone should be treated the same. Means-testing will require a lot of paperwork, a huge amount of bureaucracy. Rather than means-testing, simply charge people who have an income over a certain amount regardless of their age a higher tax. It's called progressive taxation. There is nothing new about it. It's fair. We are already doing that. The billionaires who "receive" Social Security should and do just pay it back to the general fund in taxes. And from the general fund we pay benefits to the disabled, and others who need help. We just do not need the bureaucracy and confusion of means-testing Social Security. Let the IRS do its job. Social Security is, bar none, the most successful and best program in the US. Don't mess with it. Raise the cap. That's all.
The portion on trade deserves a fools gold award. It does not begin to talk about why our trade balance is in the negative. It talks about how we are exporting more and then kind of mentions that we are importing far more than we export. The numbers on the percentage of companies that are headquartered in China is humiliating considering that we are supposed to be the capitalist country, and China is supposed to be the Communist country. I thought capitalism was the only way to build a strong, entrepreneurial economy.
Some explanation of the seeming disparity between China's reality and our American belief system is needed at least for me. I realize that China allows a lot of free market theory in practice, but what is really going on?
The real problem is the disparity in wages not only within the US but between the US and foreign countries. Another problem is the lack of proficiency in foreign languages and the lack of understanding of culture in general and foreign cultures in particular on the parts of Americans. The education proposals in the treatise are very weak in this regard. They focus on technology, STEM, etc. and leave out the education for human values, improvement in communication skills which are not just reading and writing, but the communication of the entire person. Literature is important. So are the arts. The proposal seems to ignore the fact that education must be broad in its scope if it is to raise society. A great technician can grab a gun and kill a hoard of his/her fellow students. We need a humanistic (or spiritual if you will) education to accompany the technology. Otherwise our society is doomed. I do not mean any particular religion or philosophy but rather a study of all of them.
The article acknowledges that fact in the last portion -- but without stating that outright.
As you can see, I could go on all day about what is wrong with this treatise. There are a lot of good proposals in it, but the analysis of why we are where we are has flaws, big ones, conservative ones.
One thing I would like to mention is that we pay for the cost of healthcare and education -- in part with money but also because of our inefficiency.
Corporations, businesses need to pay a much higher part of the cost of training people -- and they should do it by paying their taxes without receiving direct favors or compensation from the schools doing the training.
The final list of proposals includes some excellent ideas. Too bad that the tone is so demeaning to the American people.
I had to laugh when the treatise bragged at how educational "reforms" or as my children used to say, "deforms," of the past decade or so have improved educational performance only to, a few paragraphs later, admit that SAT and ACT scores have actually declined in recent years.
All state colleges including junior colleges should be free. Allowing poor students who owe loans to indenture the first years of their working lives to school administrations is a really bad, again, demeaning idea. Horrors!
I could go on and on. One thing I have to mention. The reason that Social Security benefits are taking such a large portion of our national income is that people are living longer and the baby boomer generation was much larger than preceding generations. Those facts are, to a great extent, benefits we owe to the wonders of science. The polio vaccine, the discovery that tobacco kills, that we need to exercise, so much that science and medicine have taught us in the last 40 years on top of birth control and women in the workplace have contributed to our longevity.
But -- no one has found a way to increase the energy of the average 70-year-old so that he/she can compete with the average 25-year-old. And the best of medical discoveries have not strengthened the legs and hearts of our 70-year-olds to the point that they can, most of them anyway, wait tables in a restaurant from 9-5 and sometimes stay over the supper hour to help out. Just not realistic.
I will not vote for any candidate who thinks means-testing Social Security or cutting its benefits are plausible ideas. The average Social Security benefit is about $1300-$1400 a month and the top rate a year ago was around $2200. I'm writing that off the top of my head, so I may be mistaken. I am 72, so my memory may be failing me. But look it up. Social Security is a rock bottom amount of money. And those seniors who managed to save as they worked should not be subject to a cut in that small amount from Social Security.
Let's help our young people in ways that don't penalize the elderly on Social Security. Remember. Social Security is how senior housing, nursing homes, etc. are funded. It is not a place to cut.
This proposal suggests cutting nominal corporate tax rates. We have heard that before. It leads to even less government money to fund the kinds of great infrastructure projects this treatise proposes.
Until we have corporate money out of our elections, it is my firm conviction that we will not be able to have meaningful tax reform.
Personally, I favor doing away with our international trade agreements and returning to import duties on goods. I was not so sure about that before reading this treatise, but the picture it paints of our place in the world in terms of trade is so bleak that I cannot see that more trade or even continuing the trade policy we now have will save us from ruin. We need to protect our industry. Sorry. But we do. It's either that, or forget about maintaining the sewers under our cities. We are on the road to ruin if we keep buying more trash from Asia than we sell to them.
My coarse, rather angry opinion about this treatise which will dazzle many who will not see its weakness and depressing view of our future.
The trade portion says nothing about the threat that our trade agreements pose to our legal system, especially our jury system in cases involving foreign corporations suing our governments.
More another day.
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