1. Tax corporations as individuals. After all the wise men on the supreme court have decreed that our constitution protects their rights as individuals to bombard their favorite politicians with cash, so why should they not be taxed as individuals too? Dump most of the loophole exemptions that have accumulated over the years and set a flat tax on profits based on income brackets much like us working stiffs have to pay. And don’t listen to the b.s. about a 35% statuary corporate tax in the U.S. Practically no company pays that, certainly not the largest of the international corporations. Once all the tax breaks and exclusions are filtered in the actual average effective tax rate is somewhere around 13.5% and often much less for the largest companies.
2. If you think making big companies pay their fair share in of the cost of running their country would hurt United States businesses too much in our globally competitive economy how about lowering the corporate income tax instead? We could set it somewhere around 25% , a little under the declared rate in the top European economies thus making them competitive with the major industrialized economies because they would be paying practically no taxes on 25% instead of 35% of their profits.) We’d also have raise the ridiculously low 15% capitol gains tax to, say 30 – 35% and revamp the code eliminating all of the loopholes that allow the rich to ride almost free on the backs of the middle classes. This would shift a larger share of the tax the burden to those who benefit most economically from the American way.
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3. Hire more bureaucrats and pay enough to get expert people to clean up and police the government contracting mess. Give them the clout to police contracts and to write out the nonsensical clauses that have become part of government contracting boilerplate and are costing us billions every year. (i.e. Waste and fraud in military contracting) ··· enough said!
4. Get serious! Support the Peoples Budget as proposed by the Progressive Party The Peoples Budget It’s not perfect, but even though you may not agree with all of the party’s inclinations, the proposal is a sensible effort to begin to return the country to fiscal responsibility. I doubt if you’ll be seeing much about it in the mainstream media, however and it probably has less chance of being given serious consideration in government circles than my labrador retriever has of climbing a tree. It proposes ways to balance the budget without cutting services to the poor and middle classes by:
⁃ “Reducing unemployment—and thus the deficit—through extensive investment in infrastructure, clean energy, transportation and education; Ending almost all the Bush tax cuts, creating new tax brackets for millionaires and new fees on Wall Street; A Full American military withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other reductions in military spending; Ending subsidies for non-renewable energy; Lowering health care costs through a public option and negotiating Rx payments with pharmaceutical companies; and raising the taxable maximum on Social Security”.
Everyone must know by now that the party is over. We must begin to pay the bills amassed by our excesses and return to financial sanity. There are almost as many proposals for balancing the budget and beginning to draw down the national debt as there are senators and congressmen. In general it seems that the Republicans would finance them by decimating all social programs while the Democrats are in favor of some form of wealth redistribution that will keep the social contract basically intact. The Peoples Budget attempts to find a viable road between the two that would lead us back sanity in our national finances. But everybody would have to sacrifice something and, in the words of the Bard, therein lies the rub.
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Four ways to balance the federal budget without wiping out the social contract.
1. Tax corporations as individuals. After all the wise men on the supreme court have decreed that our constitution protects their rights as individuals to bombard their favorite politicians with cash, so why should they not be taxed as individuals too? Dump most of the loophole exemptions that have accumulated over the years and set a flat tax on profits based on income brackets much like us working stiffs have to pay. And don’t listen to the b.s. about a 35% statuary corporate tax in the U.S. Practically no company pays that, certainly not the largest of the international corporations. Once all the tax breaks and exclusions are filtered in the actual average effective tax rate is somewhere around 13.5% and often much less for the largest companies.
2. If you think making big companies pay their fair share in of the cost of running their country would hurt United States businesses too much in our globally competitive economy how about lowering the corporate income tax instead? We could set it somewhere around 25% , a little under the declared rate in the top European economies thus making them competitive with the major industrialized economies because they would be paying practically no taxes on 25% instead of 35% of their profits.) We’d also have raise the ridiculously low 15% capitol gains tax to, say 30 – 35% and revamp the code eliminating all of the loopholes that allow the rich to ride almost free on the backs of the middle classes. This would shift a larger share of the tax the burden to those who benefit most economically from the American way.
.
3. Hire more bureaucrats and pay enough to get expert people to clean up and police the government contracting mess. Give them the clout to police contracts and to write out the nonsensical clauses that have become part of government contracting boilerplate and are costing us billions every year. (i.e. Waste and fraud in military contracting) ··· enough said!
Everyone must know by now that the party is over. We must begin to pay the bills amassed by our excesses and return to financial sanity. There are almost as many proposals for balancing the budget and beginning to draw down the national debt as there are senators and congressmen. In general it seems that the Republicans would finance them by decimating all social programs while the Democrats are in favor of some form of wealth redistribution that will keep the social contract basically intact. The Peoples Budget attempts to find a viable road between the two that would lead us back sanity in our national finances. But everybody would have to sacrifice something and, in the words of the Bard, therein lies the rub.
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