The most important thing is that without taxes on savings accounts and investments, it essentially ends the financial advantages of "offshoring" your assets. This means we could see a huge fraction of that US$11 trillion to US$16 trillion come back to the USA, not to mention several trillion more coming in from overseas! An injection of way over US$10 trillion into the US economy will zap our economic ills in no time flat.:-)
I'm surprised you didn't suggest the idea of imposing an excise tax based on engine displacement and car physical size like they do in Europe and Japan. It's those taxes that made it possible for all those great small cars from Japan.
I find it sad that nobody seems to realize that a huge proportion of our economic mess is caused by one factor: the completely unwieldy Federal income tax system. Consider the following:
1) We have 35,000 lobbyists trying to "warp" the income tax code to satisfy narrow constituencies.
2) As a result, we have a Federal tax code of over 60,000 pages that is not very comprehensible even to seasoned tax professionals.
3) The "warping" of the tax code often leads to serious economic consequences, as the sub-prime mortgage fiasco is only the latest of them.
4) Americans spend US$265 billion per year in compliance costs and US$300 billion per year in pre-compliance economic decisions.
5) Because of all those taxes, Americans don't have the incentive to save and invest (we have some of the lowest savings rate in the world).
6) Corporations find it cheaper to locate facilities outside the USA just to lower the income tax cost to the company.
7) Higher-income Americans are legally "offshoring" their assets in places like the Bahamas, Bermuda, Grand Cayman Island, Panama, Singapore, Switzerland, etc. to keep their assets from the clutches of the IRS. The amount "offshored" is mind-boggling: estimates range from US$11 TRILLION to US$16 TRILLION.
It is more than high time to phase out the current, completely unwieldy tax code in favor of a consumption tax system such as FairTax or something similar. Under such a tax system, we get the following advantages:
1) We save US$565 billion per year in compliance and pre-economic decision costs.
2) Americans will have all the incentive to save and invest (there's nothing wrong with that!).
3) Since paychecks no longer have withholding taxes and FICA taxes, this means Americans can actually afford to save up at a faster rate to buy a home or a car.
4) Americans will bring back to the USA a huge fraction of that estimated US$11 trillion to US$16 trillion "offshored" under favorable tax conditions. Just this return will inject a HUGE amount of liquidity into our financial system, which means an immediate stop to the stock market slide and a new base of liquidity for new loans and lines of credit.
5) Because there is no such thing as income tax, alternative minimum tax, taxes on interest and dividends, capital gains tax and FICA tax, this could encourage foreigners to invest several more trillion dollars in to the USA, as the USA effectively becomes the world's biggest legal tax haven.
6) Because American companies no longer have to worry about corporate income taxes, capital gains taxes, and FICA taxes, this increases the incentive to keep jobs in the USA. Economically-depressed cities like Detroit and Cleveland could experience a rebirth as jobs lost to foreign production come back to the USA under more favorable tax conditions.
In short, why try to fix a broken system of Federal income taxes when we can kibosh that and come up with something better, saving Americans the exorbitantly expensive aggravation of doing income tax forms due every April 15th and providing a potential huge boost to the economy far beyond any Federal government bailout?
I don't want the old mechanical voting machines because they too can be rigged and trying to maintain those things is almost akin to a Rube Goldberg nightmare.
The mark-sense paper ballot filled out in permanent ink pen or marker is probably the best way to go--such a ballot is easily machine-read and also relatively easy to do hand counts if necessary.
That would be great except for one thing: ballot MUST be filled out using a permanent ink pen or marker. There's good reason for this: pencil marks can be erased or smudged, and we'll be back at the "hanging chad" fiasco from 2000 all over again.
Airship Ventures is flying a Zeppelin NT airship (no Windows jokes here!;) ), which is larger than the small blimps we often see over major public events like college and NFL football games.
Well, the system planned for California will use a variant of the same trainsets used on the TGV system in France, which will allow safe operations at speeds around 200 mph, the near practical limit for steel-wheel electric trains.
Here's the problem with Amtrak's Northeast Corridor service--too much of the tracks used for its Acela service has to be shared with much slower local commuter and freight trains. As such, Acela trains have to travel a lot slower than dedicated high-speed lines like you see in Japan and France. If Acela trains had their own dedicated lines the transit times on the Northeast Corridor would be a lot lower.
Actually, here in the USA there are corridors that make maglev quite viable if track construction costs are reasonable:
Boston-Providence-Hartford-New York City-Philadelphia-Wilmington-Baltimore-Washington, DC Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison-Eau Claire-Minneapolis/St. Paul Chicago-Rockford-Des Moines-Omaha Chicago-Champaign-St. Louis-Kansas City-Wichita Chicago-Grand Rapids-Lansing-Detroit Chicago-South Bend-Toledo-Cleveland-Erie-Buffalo Chicago-Indianapolis-Cincinnati Nashville-Chattanooga-Atlanta-Savannah-Jacksonville New Orleans--Biloxi/Gulfport-Pensacola-Tallahassee-Jacksonville Jacksonville-Orlando-Miami (with spur to Tampa) Dallas-Houston Dallas-Austin-San Antonio Sacramento-Stockton-Fresno-Bakersfield-Palmdale-Los Angeles-Anaheim-San Diego Los Angeles-Barstow-Las Vegas Eugene-Portland-Tacoma-Seattle-Bellingham-Vancouver, BC
Chicago would be strong candidate for a big maglev train hub since with maglevs capable of 500 km/h, many large cities are reachable within two hours' transit time on maglev from Chicago.
I think the issue of the relatively slow write speed of the new 1.5 TB Barracuda drive comes down to this: they're still using 7200 rpm for the spindle speed of the platter drive motors. Because of this, we're not going to get much in the way of write speed improvements compared to the smaller 1 TB drive.
Given the state of materials technology nowadays, I'm surprised that most Serial ATA-2 drives haven't increased their spindle speed to 10,000 rpm outside of a few specialized drives like the Western Digital Velociraptor series. At 10,000 rpm, both sustained write and read speeds will be substantially higher than 7200 rpm drives.
Actually, there's more interest in LCD's than plasma displays because plasma displays consume a huge amount of power, while even a 50" widescreen LCD panel with florescent backlighting uses even less power than a 27" CRT television set. And this will drop substantially when LCD panels start to switch to LED backlighting over the next few years.
Anyway, even desktop computers are starting to really cut power consumption. My old home-made Athlon XP machine running Windows XP Professional (SP3) needed a 500-watt power supply to run properly; my current HP Pavilion a6400f only needs a 160-watt power supply to run, thanks to much more efficient power usage on the motherboard itself.
...It's still a not-so-great idea for home desktop machines.
Since servers tend to require a lot less in terms of end-user experience, you can get by with a lot more command-line operations to get the server to work correctly in the first place. That's why you see IBM being perhaps the world's largest distributor of "big iron" minis and mainframes that run modified versions of various commercial Linux distributions, since it wasn't that hard to port Linux to them.
But a home user desktop machine is a completely different thing altogether. For home computers, not only you do need full software driver support for various hardware out there, but also make it relatively easy for end users to update their operating system to support any new added hardware. While Linux is getting better at this it's still behind both Windows and MacOS X in terms to full-function support for hardware out there. I mean, does the Linux driver for the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series of sound cards offer the same full functionality as the Windows XP/Vista driver?
The biggest problem with the new iGoogle is the fact that at resolutions lower than 1280x1024 for regular monitors or 1440x900 for widescreen LCD's, the new interface just looks very cluttered and unreadable. I think Google needs to rethink iGoogle so it looks better at 1024x768 and 1280x768 (widescreen) resolutions.
I actually like the look of the new iGoogle--provided you have a higher resolution monitor. I've tried iGoogle on a resolution lower than 1280x1024 and gawd, the clutter is terrible, to say the least.
In short, you want at least 1280x1024 resolution (4:3 aspect ratio monitor) or 1440x900 resolution (16:10 aspect ratio monitor) for iGoogle to be decently readable.
Actually, the Logitech MX500 wired mouse (and its MX518 current production descendant) is probably one of the best mouse pointers I've ever used--comfortable enough to hold in your hand easily, really nice positioning of additional buttons for various navigation needs, and enough "heft" to encourage accurate movement of the device. The only downside with the MX500 right now is that Logitech still hasn't see it fit to update their SetPoint software to support the full functionality of the MX500 under Windows Vista.:(
I don't see that many digital camcorders using IEEE-1934 connections nowadays, especially with most new computers on both the PC and Mac side sporting USB 2.0 ports that actually work decently fast.
With the lower-end MacBooks, I just don't see that many people wanting IEEE-1394 ports anyway, especially now with faster machines USB 2.0 ports work well even for backups into external hard disk drives.
Most digital still cameras now use USB 2.0 connections, and even digital camcorders mostly use USB 2.0 connections, too.
However, somebody may snap up the Tesla technology and use it on their own. I wouldn't be surprised that either Honda or Toyota may bid on this, since both companies are heavily involved in hybrid drivetrain technology and could use Tesla's drivetrain technology to develop more advanced hybrid drivetrains, include plug-in hybrids.
Interestingly, I see Ford better surviving in this new, leaner climate for auto sales.
The reason is simple: Ford already has a product line (the European Ford division) that can within a few years be the backbone of most of their sales in the USA. We're stating to see the fruits of that change now: the 4th-generation Ford Fiesta will arrive in the USA around January 2010, the third-generation Ford Focus will arrive in the USA probably summer 2010, and Ford has begun work to essentially merge the European Mondeo and US-market Fusion into a single model.
I would agree, but there is one single issue that could have significant impact: what to do with our unwieldy, incomprehensible Federal income tax system that ends up wasting hundreds of billions of US dollars per year in compliance costs and discouraging people from saving and investing, both of which have massive effects on the US economy? (The current sub-prime mortgage meltdown is only the latest fiasco from our unwieldy tax code.)
This is why everyone regardless of political affiliation should consider ditching the current tax code in favor of something that is much simpler and encourages people to actually save and invest. FairTax and the flat tax are only a few of the proposals around to correct this problem.
You won't get modded troll, because in a way Ron Paul's message is simple: government is getting way too unwieldly and expensive to run.
That's why I support the consumption-based FairTax, because frankly, it is of my personal belief that our current income tax system is a massive contributing factor in our current economic chaos. The current income tax system has caused the following:
1) We have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington, DC trying to "warp" the tax code to support their narrow constituencies. The current sub-prime mortgage meltdown is only the latest of the issues that the "warping" of the income tax code can do. 2) The result is a totally unwieldy, 60,000-plus pages of tax regulations that are incomprehensible even to seasoned tax professionals. We hear around tax time every year a news reporter sending a "dummy" tax return to several different tax preparation firms and they all came up with different-looking completed tax forms. 3) We're spending over US$500 BILLION per year in tax compliance costs and pre-complicance economic decisions. That type of money could be way better spent than doing this, especially at the corporate level (I read that General Electric's corporate tax return was over 50,000 PAGES long!). 4) Because of our tax laws, many Americans are "offshoring" their liquid assets completely legally to avoid the IRS. How much much "offshored"? Try an estimated US$14 TRILLION. Why do you think places like the Bahamas, Bermuda, Grand Cayman Island, Panama, Singapore, Switzerland and so on are doing well with "offshore financial centers" holding this US$14 trillion?
Not one wants to dismantle the IRS and give us a fair flat tax.
I read that and I say HOORAY!!
In fact, I've argued that the very income tax system is causing much of the mess we're now in. Think about it:
1) We have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington, DC trying to "warp" the tax code to support their narrow constituencies. 2) The result is a totally unwieldy, 60,000-plus pages of tax regulations that are incomprehensible even to seasoned tax professionals. 3) We're spending over US$500 BILLION per year in tax compliance costs and pre-complicance economic decisions. 4) Because of our tax laws, many Americans are "offshoring" their liquid assets completely legally to avoid the IRS. How much much "offshored"? Try an estimated US$14 TRILLION.
#4 is a particular problem because that is US$14 trillion out of circulation in the US economy, an amount that if invested inside the USA would have effectively avoided all the economic chaos we had lately.
This is why I support FairTax. By switching to consumption based taxation instead of income taxation, we actually encourage people to save and invest in our own country, which does huge wonders for our economy in general.
As the increasing fiasco with with the ACORN organization shows (when even CNN and MSNBC are wondering what's going on with ACORN's voter registration policies, something big is up), we may have to clamp down on voter verification procedures to stop or minimize problems such as:
1) Voters registered in more than one precinct. 2) Dead persons still registered to vote. 3) Persons not eligible to vote still being able to vote (convicted felons and non-citizens).
While the Linux-based system for electronic voting is all fine and dandy, until we cure these problems (most likely by requiring strict verification procedures such as showing US passport, US birth certificate or US naturalization certificate plus proof of current residence address before getting voter registration). I know I'll be modded WAY down for saying this, but voter fraud is turning into a serious problem, as the current election cycle shows all too clearly.
I actually prefer pen and paper. There's good reason for this: pencil marks can be erased or smudged, and that causes no end of problems for both machine and hand reading of ballots. (It's the "hanging chad" problem all over again.)
The reason why I don't like Keynesian economics are two facts:
1) It caused the Great Depression to last longer than it should have, especially with the confiscatory level of income taxes after FDR came into power in 1933, which did a lot to discourage economic expansion.
2) Britain tried Keynesian economics after World War II, and while it had early success in the end it nearly drove the British economy into ground. It took former PM Margaret Thatcher's privatization of many British companies for the British economy to finally grow again during the 1980's.
Slashdot Mirror
The most important thing is that without taxes on savings accounts and investments, it essentially ends the financial advantages of "offshoring" your assets. This means we could see a huge fraction of that US$11 trillion to US$16 trillion come back to the USA, not to mention several trillion more coming in from overseas! An injection of way over US$10 trillion into the US economy will zap our economic ills in no time flat. :-)
I'm surprised you didn't suggest the idea of imposing an excise tax based on engine displacement and car physical size like they do in Europe and Japan. It's those taxes that made it possible for all those great small cars from Japan.
I find it sad that nobody seems to realize that a huge proportion of our economic mess is caused by one factor: the completely unwieldy Federal income tax system. Consider the following:
1) We have 35,000 lobbyists trying to "warp" the income tax code to satisfy narrow constituencies.
2) As a result, we have a Federal tax code of over 60,000 pages that is not very comprehensible even to seasoned tax professionals.
3) The "warping" of the tax code often leads to serious economic consequences, as the sub-prime mortgage fiasco is only the latest of them.
4) Americans spend US$265 billion per year in compliance costs and US$300 billion per year in pre-compliance economic decisions.
5) Because of all those taxes, Americans don't have the incentive to save and invest (we have some of the lowest savings rate in the world).
6) Corporations find it cheaper to locate facilities outside the USA just to lower the income tax cost to the company.
7) Higher-income Americans are legally "offshoring" their assets in places like the Bahamas, Bermuda, Grand Cayman Island, Panama, Singapore, Switzerland, etc. to keep their assets from the clutches of the IRS. The amount "offshored" is mind-boggling: estimates range from US$11 TRILLION to US$16 TRILLION.
It is more than high time to phase out the current, completely unwieldy tax code in favor of a consumption tax system such as FairTax or something similar. Under such a tax system, we get the following advantages:
1) We save US$565 billion per year in compliance and pre-economic decision costs.
2) Americans will have all the incentive to save and invest (there's nothing wrong with that!).
3) Since paychecks no longer have withholding taxes and FICA taxes, this means Americans can actually afford to save up at a faster rate to buy a home or a car.
4) Americans will bring back to the USA a huge fraction of that estimated US$11 trillion to US$16 trillion "offshored" under favorable tax conditions. Just this return will inject a HUGE amount of liquidity into our financial system, which means an immediate stop to the stock market slide and a new base of liquidity for new loans and lines of credit.
5) Because there is no such thing as income tax, alternative minimum tax, taxes on interest and dividends, capital gains tax and FICA tax, this could encourage foreigners to invest several more trillion dollars in to the USA, as the USA effectively becomes the world's biggest legal tax haven.
6) Because American companies no longer have to worry about corporate income taxes, capital gains taxes, and FICA taxes, this increases the incentive to keep jobs in the USA. Economically-depressed cities like Detroit and Cleveland could experience a rebirth as jobs lost to foreign production come back to the USA under more favorable tax conditions.
In short, why try to fix a broken system of Federal income taxes when we can kibosh that and come up with something better, saving Americans the exorbitantly expensive aggravation of doing income tax forms due every April 15th and providing a potential huge boost to the economy far beyond any Federal government bailout?
I don't want the old mechanical voting machines because they too can be rigged and trying to maintain those things is almost akin to a Rube Goldberg nightmare.
The mark-sense paper ballot filled out in permanent ink pen or marker is probably the best way to go--such a ballot is easily machine-read and also relatively easy to do hand counts if necessary.
That would be great except for one thing: ballot MUST be filled out using a permanent ink pen or marker. There's good reason for this: pencil marks can be erased or smudged, and we'll be back at the "hanging chad" fiasco from 2000 all over again.
They may want to avoid this thing that will soon operate from the same Moffet Field:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/19/BUVD13JIMG.DTL&hw=airship+ventures&sn=001&sc=1000
Airship Ventures is flying a Zeppelin NT airship (no Windows jokes here! ;) ), which is larger than the small blimps we often see over major public events like college and NFL football games.
Well, the system planned for California will use a variant of the same trainsets used on the TGV system in France, which will allow safe operations at speeds around 200 mph, the near practical limit for steel-wheel electric trains.
Here's the problem with Amtrak's Northeast Corridor service--too much of the tracks used for its Acela service has to be shared with much slower local commuter and freight trains. As such, Acela trains have to travel a lot slower than dedicated high-speed lines like you see in Japan and France. If Acela trains had their own dedicated lines the transit times on the Northeast Corridor would be a lot lower.
Actually, here in the USA there are corridors that make maglev quite viable if track construction costs are reasonable:
Boston-Providence-Hartford-New York City-Philadelphia-Wilmington-Baltimore-Washington, DC
Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison-Eau Claire-Minneapolis/St. Paul
Chicago-Rockford-Des Moines-Omaha
Chicago-Champaign-St. Louis-Kansas City-Wichita
Chicago-Grand Rapids-Lansing-Detroit
Chicago-South Bend-Toledo-Cleveland-Erie-Buffalo
Chicago-Indianapolis-Cincinnati
Nashville-Chattanooga-Atlanta-Savannah-Jacksonville
New Orleans--Biloxi/Gulfport-Pensacola-Tallahassee-Jacksonville
Jacksonville-Orlando-Miami (with spur to Tampa)
Dallas-Houston
Dallas-Austin-San Antonio
Sacramento-Stockton-Fresno-Bakersfield-Palmdale-Los Angeles-Anaheim-San Diego
Los Angeles-Barstow-Las Vegas
Eugene-Portland-Tacoma-Seattle-Bellingham-Vancouver, BC
Chicago would be strong candidate for a big maglev train hub since with maglevs capable of 500 km/h, many large cities are reachable within two hours' transit time on maglev from Chicago.
I think the issue of the relatively slow write speed of the new 1.5 TB Barracuda drive comes down to this: they're still using 7200 rpm for the spindle speed of the platter drive motors. Because of this, we're not going to get much in the way of write speed improvements compared to the smaller 1 TB drive.
Given the state of materials technology nowadays, I'm surprised that most Serial ATA-2 drives haven't increased their spindle speed to 10,000 rpm outside of a few specialized drives like the Western Digital Velociraptor series. At 10,000 rpm, both sustained write and read speeds will be substantially higher than 7200 rpm drives.
Actually, there's more interest in LCD's than plasma displays because plasma displays consume a huge amount of power, while even a 50" widescreen LCD panel with florescent backlighting uses even less power than a 27" CRT television set. And this will drop substantially when LCD panels start to switch to LED backlighting over the next few years.
Anyway, even desktop computers are starting to really cut power consumption. My old home-made Athlon XP machine running Windows XP Professional (SP3) needed a 500-watt power supply to run properly; my current HP Pavilion a6400f only needs a 160-watt power supply to run, thanks to much more efficient power usage on the motherboard itself.
...It's still a not-so-great idea for home desktop machines.
Since servers tend to require a lot less in terms of end-user experience, you can get by with a lot more command-line operations to get the server to work correctly in the first place. That's why you see IBM being perhaps the world's largest distributor of "big iron" minis and mainframes that run modified versions of various commercial Linux distributions, since it wasn't that hard to port Linux to them.
But a home user desktop machine is a completely different thing altogether. For home computers, not only you do need full software driver support for various hardware out there, but also make it relatively easy for end users to update their operating system to support any new added hardware. While Linux is getting better at this it's still behind both Windows and MacOS X in terms to full-function support for hardware out there. I mean, does the Linux driver for the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series of sound cards offer the same full functionality as the Windows XP/Vista driver?
The biggest problem with the new iGoogle is the fact that at resolutions lower than 1280x1024 for regular monitors or 1440x900 for widescreen LCD's, the new interface just looks very cluttered and unreadable. I think Google needs to rethink iGoogle so it looks better at 1024x768 and 1280x768 (widescreen) resolutions.
I actually like the look of the new iGoogle--provided you have a higher resolution monitor. I've tried iGoogle on a resolution lower than 1280x1024 and gawd, the clutter is terrible, to say the least.
In short, you want at least 1280x1024 resolution (4:3 aspect ratio monitor) or 1440x900 resolution (16:10 aspect ratio monitor) for iGoogle to be decently readable.
Actually, the Logitech MX500 wired mouse (and its MX518 current production descendant) is probably one of the best mouse pointers I've ever used--comfortable enough to hold in your hand easily, really nice positioning of additional buttons for various navigation needs, and enough "heft" to encourage accurate movement of the device. The only downside with the MX500 right now is that Logitech still hasn't see it fit to update their SetPoint software to support the full functionality of the MX500 under Windows Vista. :(
I don't see that many digital camcorders using IEEE-1934 connections nowadays, especially with most new computers on both the PC and Mac side sporting USB 2.0 ports that actually work decently fast.
With the lower-end MacBooks, I just don't see that many people wanting IEEE-1394 ports anyway, especially now with faster machines USB 2.0 ports work well even for backups into external hard disk drives.
Most digital still cameras now use USB 2.0 connections, and even digital camcorders mostly use USB 2.0 connections, too.
However, somebody may snap up the Tesla technology and use it on their own. I wouldn't be surprised that either Honda or Toyota may bid on this, since both companies are heavily involved in hybrid drivetrain technology and could use Tesla's drivetrain technology to develop more advanced hybrid drivetrains, include plug-in hybrids.
Interestingly, I see Ford better surviving in this new, leaner climate for auto sales.
The reason is simple: Ford already has a product line (the European Ford division) that can within a few years be the backbone of most of their sales in the USA. We're stating to see the fruits of that change now: the 4th-generation Ford Fiesta will arrive in the USA around January 2010, the third-generation Ford Focus will arrive in the USA probably summer 2010, and Ford has begun work to essentially merge the European Mondeo and US-market Fusion into a single model.
I would agree, but there is one single issue that could have significant impact: what to do with our unwieldy, incomprehensible Federal income tax system that ends up wasting hundreds of billions of US dollars per year in compliance costs and discouraging people from saving and investing, both of which have massive effects on the US economy? (The current sub-prime mortgage meltdown is only the latest fiasco from our unwieldy tax code.)
This is why everyone regardless of political affiliation should consider ditching the current tax code in favor of something that is much simpler and encourages people to actually save and invest. FairTax and the flat tax are only a few of the proposals around to correct this problem.
You won't get modded troll, because in a way Ron Paul's message is simple: government is getting way too unwieldly and expensive to run.
That's why I support the consumption-based FairTax, because frankly, it is of my personal belief that our current income tax system is a massive contributing factor in our current economic chaos. The current income tax system has caused the following:
1) We have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington, DC trying to "warp" the tax code to support their narrow constituencies. The current sub-prime mortgage meltdown is only the latest of the issues that the "warping" of the income tax code can do.
2) The result is a totally unwieldy, 60,000-plus pages of tax regulations that are incomprehensible even to seasoned tax professionals. We hear around tax time every year a news reporter sending a "dummy" tax return to several different tax preparation firms and they all came up with different-looking completed tax forms.
3) We're spending over US$500 BILLION per year in tax compliance costs and pre-complicance economic decisions. That type of money could be way better spent than doing this, especially at the corporate level (I read that General Electric's corporate tax return was over 50,000 PAGES long!).
4) Because of our tax laws, many Americans are "offshoring" their liquid assets completely legally to avoid the IRS. How much much "offshored"? Try an estimated US$14 TRILLION. Why do you think places like the Bahamas, Bermuda, Grand Cayman Island, Panama, Singapore, Switzerland and so on are doing well with "offshore financial centers" holding this US$14 trillion?
Not one wants to dismantle the IRS and give us a fair flat tax.
I read that and I say HOORAY!!
In fact, I've argued that the very income tax system is causing much of the mess we're now in. Think about it:
1) We have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington, DC trying to "warp" the tax code to support their narrow constituencies.
2) The result is a totally unwieldy, 60,000-plus pages of tax regulations that are incomprehensible even to seasoned tax professionals.
3) We're spending over US$500 BILLION per year in tax compliance costs and pre-complicance economic decisions.
4) Because of our tax laws, many Americans are "offshoring" their liquid assets completely legally to avoid the IRS. How much much "offshored"? Try an estimated US$14 TRILLION.
#4 is a particular problem because that is US$14 trillion out of circulation in the US economy, an amount that if invested inside the USA would have effectively avoided all the economic chaos we had lately.
This is why I support FairTax. By switching to consumption based taxation instead of income taxation, we actually encourage people to save and invest in our own country, which does huge wonders for our economy in general.
Legitimate voters.
As the increasing fiasco with with the ACORN organization shows (when even CNN and MSNBC are wondering what's going on with ACORN's voter registration policies, something big is up), we may have to clamp down on voter verification procedures to stop or minimize problems such as:
1) Voters registered in more than one precinct.
2) Dead persons still registered to vote.
3) Persons not eligible to vote still being able to vote (convicted felons and non-citizens).
While the Linux-based system for electronic voting is all fine and dandy, until we cure these problems (most likely by requiring strict verification procedures such as showing US passport, US birth certificate or US naturalization certificate plus proof of current residence address before getting voter registration). I know I'll be modded WAY down for saying this, but voter fraud is turning into a serious problem, as the current election cycle shows all too clearly.
I actually prefer pen and paper. There's good reason for this: pencil marks can be erased or smudged, and that causes no end of problems for both machine and hand reading of ballots. (It's the "hanging chad" problem all over again.)
The reason why I don't like Keynesian economics are two facts:
1) It caused the Great Depression to last longer than it should have, especially with the confiscatory level of income taxes after FDR came into power in 1933, which did a lot to discourage economic expansion.
2) Britain tried Keynesian economics after World War II, and while it had early success in the end it nearly drove the British economy into ground. It took former PM Margaret Thatcher's privatization of many British companies for the British economy to finally grow again during the 1980's.