Economist: civilization may not survive "death spiral"

[Mr Khan]

HappySqurriel said:
It is easy to fix these problems but the solution requires something sadly missing in the United States, leadership ...

You have to start off by eliminating the number of government departments by merging departments with similar responsibilities and closing departments of questionable value. Job cuts would be involved in merged departments, mostly in administrative positions.

After that the size of government needs to be frozen (probably for a decade) while total costs can only increase at the rate of inflation. The population of the country has to grow, and the GDP of the country has to increase, in order to support the size of the government. Most of these departments will learn to "do more with less" as most private companies have, and over time will become remarkably efficient.

The tax code has to be simplified, and the average person should be able to do their taxes on one side of a single sheet of paper. Overall, taxes should increase because there will be massive reductions in subsidies, tax credits, deductions and loop-holes but the tax rates should be decreased.

The regulatory system needs to be simplified so that the average business doesn't have to worry about multiple regulatory standards set by multiple regulatory bodies.

Social spending should be reformed, and it makes far more sense to spend twice as much money for six months supporting and training the unemployed than it does paying them to do nothing for 2 years; and watching them become dependents on the system.

Oddly i agree with much of this. The question comes in with defining who needs to be cut and what needs to be done to make things simpler, as i'm generally pro-regulations (but agree that said regulations could be managed by one one-size-fits-all federal regulatory bureau which could enforce different regulations within states and between them)

Also its largely acknowledged by all sides that this needs to happen, but you see the tremendous political capital that needs to be mobilized to get anything done (e.g. the half-assed Affordable Care Act).