Forum Post: Proposed list of Demands from a SocioEconomist
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 15, 2011, 12:46 a.m. EST by RobertDangerAllen
(14)
from Vero Beach, FL
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Our rallying cry: “No taxation without representation!”
Our quandary: If our government has been acting in direct opposition to the wishes of its people for as long as anyone can remember, whose interests are they acting on behalf of? Are we even sovereign?
Our demands:
1-Require the immediate return of all bailout capital, and use it to pay off all education & mortgage debts, even if at deep discount.
2-Expand antitrust laws to include any single company that makes more than 2.5% of the US Government's one-year revenue for three consecutive years. (~$112bil/yr)
3-Designate lobbying and filibustering as forms of treason.
4-Limit congressional appointments to 2 terms.
5-End both wars, redeploy all US troops as humanitarian aid for the next 3 years.
6-Establish a flat tax with no exceptions, all people and corporations taxed evenly.
7-Increase public education salaries by 50%, double the budget for teachers nationally.
8-Invest Gov't funds ($bil) into Venture Capital firms in the nation.
9-End all non-essential subsidies; Outlaw all GM foods & terminator seeds.
10-Restrict profits on all medical services & products. Subsidize all of it for everyone, immediately.
Details:
1-Paying off education & mortgage debts will free up spending money to cover living expenses for those who pursued the American Dream – helping those who deserve it! The bailout money would end up in the same place, but no one would be paying interest on it. This also frees loan capital for new credit.
2-Breaking up conglomerates will produce more mid-management and upper-management jobs, as well as increase competition, increase supply-chain diversity, increase product selection – All of which helps stimulate economic growth. Any company that generates that much revenue exists as a threat to our sovereignty. We cannot permit our nation to persist as a puppet government.
3-Lobbying is thinly veiled bribery, filibustering is a means of stymieing the legislative process. Both should be obvious to anyone as violations of due process, attempts to subvert the legal system against the tenets of our great nation. Treason.
4-Professional politicians ruined Rome. They have ruined America. We need a constant stream of new blood in congress to prevent
5-Ending both wars will relieve our national debt fears, and sending them to perform humanitarian aid will show the world that Americans do have souls. If we bring them home immediately, they will be unemployed and their families will suffer.
6-A flat tax for all people and corporations would make our national tax revenue explode, even with a tax rate below what the non-rich already pay. The tax code could be as simple as one page. No loopholes, no bastions, no funny business.
7-Enhancing public education salaries and budgets would allow for more teachers to be hired, meaning more college grads are employed everywhere, and they get paid enough to live on.
8-Venture Capital funds invest in startups and small businesses, which account for the vast majority of companies in the US and produce many, many jobs. The returns on these investments will provide additional revenue, perhaps even enough to save Social Security.
9-Subsidies drain the gov't, but some industries need them, such as agriculture. GM food causes a whole host of direct environmental problems and indirect health dangers, and terminator seeds harm farmers, costing them so much that they need subsidies – meaning taxpayer funds are going to cover the profit margin of ConAgra in producing non-essential foodstuffs.
10-Restrict profits on medical services and products, healthcare costs will plummet, making government-subsidized healthcare a feasible option.
Response from a struggling small businessman with degrees in history and polisci.
1) The worst offenders have already returned the capitol to get out from under pay limits. Doing anything financial "immediately" with capitol is disruptive. That being said, a reasonable time frame for implementation could be set up.
2) You aren't making sense. If the company is dodging the taxes then they are exempt. Anti trust law has to do with market share for a reason. Your solution doesn't match your argument.
3) Lobbying is just asking your leaders to do something, it is free speech. The problem is paid lobbyists giving money to the politicians in a "pay to play" creating bribery. Filibustering at one time was very rare and is only an internal rule of the Senate that they can get rid of by a simple majority at the beginning of each congress. The republicans have so abused it in the last few years that I'm betting it will be gone.
4) We've had the term limits in Michigan for a while now and it has destroyed our legislature. There is no professionalism, institutional knowledge, or collegiality. The ultimate term limiter is the voter. The problem has more to do with corporations and the rich buying the elections which keep getting more and more expensive. Public financing would be a better solution.
5) Iraq is almost over anyways, and your argument on employment is well put.
6) The wealthy have been calling for a flat tax for decades from because they know that for the poor to be able to afford it, they would get a huge tax break. The flat tax is hugely regressive and extremely unfair.
7) You need to increase the budgets by more than 50% to account for the increase in infrastructure required as well. To fix the education system you need to pay enough to keep good teachers, but also insure smaller class size and relevant curriculum. Just getting a college degree doesn't insure a job in even the best economy. If the colleges are spitting out lawyers and english majors instead of the programmers and quality techs that industry needs you will still have unemployed.
8) Venture Capital has been one of the ways the wealthy have been taking over. Did you see what they did to Chrysler??? They don't invest in small business, its not worth their time. This sounds like the wallstreet talking point of putting the Social Security money into the stock market. BTW minor tweaks will fix social security if done now.
9) Subsidies should be for promoting transition to new industries that promote the public good like renewable energy, not for propping up established industries like oil and coal. Agriculture should have access to crop insurance, but that's different from a subsidy.
GM and terminator is a whole different debate.
10) Just go to government run. Restricting the profits just means they get to pay the CEO a higher salary to keep from hitting their profit max.
1)Agreed
2) I'm assuming the number is arbitrary, but I like the idea. Agreed.
3) I'd like to see corporate lobbying in the form we currently have today pretty much outlawed, and we all know what you mean by it, but individual citizens do have a right to petition that's technically included in the term "lobbying." As far as filibustering goes, I wouldn't designate it as treason, but what I would do is actually hold legislators to their filibusters. You want to read out of the phone book until we fall asleep or leave? Fine. I'll do an LBJ and lock everyone in the room until we get a vote one way or the other. One taste of an actual filibuster and everyone's enthusiasm for doing it should dampen considerably.
4) Not completely convinced about term limits. Cleaning house up there? Yes. However, if you get money and special interests out of Washington then long-term politicians become career statesmen instead of whores and they possibly become a good thing.
5) I'm not completely sure how redeploying our troops as humanitarian aid would work, nor how much authority those troops would have to use force to protect civilians in situations where war and humanitarian need tend to run side-by-side (i.e. south Sudan). If those issues can be resolved it is a laudable idea, as on the flip side of that we now have boots on the ground in some of the neediest (which are often the most volatile) parts of the world.
6) The flat tax idea I'm going to have to disagree with you on; flat taxes by their very nature are regressive, hitting the poor and middle class much harder than they hit the wealthy. I'd advocate instead letting the Bush tax cuts expire, remove shelters, tax havens, and other odd loopholes used by the wealthy and corporations to dodge the IRS. Restore income and corporate tax rates to those of the 1960s and 1970s, uncap the FICA so that it applies to all income (not just the first $106,000) and do what I described above, and that should do you fine.
7) Agreed. We've needed better investment in education for the past thirty years.
8) Nice idea, but not quite. Instead of putting the money in private venture capital funds I'd use the money to create a public option in venture capital in which the government puts in the money directly into startups and then reaps the benefits thereof should the firms take off. I would, however, have independent body assess each company to prevent favoritism.
9) I don't know about GM food, but the idea of patenting plants, seeds, etc. is absurd. Let companies design whatever kind of seeds they want, but no longer allow them to patent the products of such designs. Also, who determines what's essential and what's not?
10) Agreed.
11) Definitely agreed.
12) I'm OK with that; I'm actually drafting a proposal on campaign finance and lobbying reform with a couple of other people right now.
11-Restrict interest on debt to 5%, instead of the present 20% APR.
12-End all direct contributions to campaigns for public figures. End the electoral college.
~~~
11-Debt on interest inflates the money supply, devaluing our currency. Additionally, it reduces the speed at which consumers regain equity. That interest rate is unsustainable and our present economic condition is largely a result of it. APR of 20% is infeasible, 5% is manageable.
12-Direct contributions create a system that is 'rigged'. The electoral college is a broken system – Every vote must count!
Why do you have the part about venture capital? Isn't that the problem? Wall St., with its venture capital, gets to decide which companies will survive the first year, and which ones won't. We need a better system than VC.
VC is the free market. If we expand those funds, more startups will get funded.
The first thing you need to do is fix the political system. Or people are going to have occupy every time they feel changes need to made.
http://occupier777.angelfire.com/
Demand #2,4,5 specifically addresses these problems. and puts the power back in the hands of the people. THEN we can fix what is wrong in the system.
how did you come up with 2.5% for 2? 1 is very complicated. According to some accounts, they bail out money has mostly been repaid. The government is supposed to have made money from it.
Most government bills are hundreds of pages. Don't tell me you are overwhelmed by a single sentence.
I understand what you believe would be good demands. However, why not start with something everyone, the 99%, can agree on. End corporate contributions in campaigns, and restrict lobbyists access to congress. That way you sever the chords that bind Wall Street and Capitol Hill. I'm pretty sure both conservatives and liberals can agree on this, which is in itself kind of a miracle.
Great! The list of demands doesn't have to be accepted altogether, but these are some of the most substantial demands I've seen that would solve the threats to: -National Security/Continued Sovereignty -Public Welfare -Economic Recovery & Sustainability