Soundwave said:
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. |
None of these come close to addressing the deficet. That's a drip in a giant bucket of water.
Honest truth that is if you want to "fix" the debt you'd have to basically slash social security, medicare, and military spending by 1/2 at least.
Good luck with that.
The US is too big and too vital to the global economy to be allowed to fail it's that simple. Who's going to buy all that crap made in China? Who's going to eat all those cheeseburgers and get 100 pounds overweight? The world needs the US, lol. If the debt ever got to a point where it serious impacted the US' vitality, basically what I think would happen (someone else mentioned it) is that debt would just be wiped clear and everyone would agree to start at 0, because the alternative is simply non-feasible.
|
These changes can't eliminate the deficit today, but you would expect to see the deficit eliminated over the next few years ...
The initial cuts would just reduce the deficit to 5% to 6% of GDP, and you would probably see this fall by 1% to 2% of GDP every year. When you're in a surplus position that money needs to be spent to pay down the debt or to fund unfunded liabilities, and over the next few years the financial outlook of the country would change dramatically.
In many ways Canada was in worse shape in the late 1990s but a combination of policies enacted at the end of the Mulroney years as well as the actions of the Cretien government reshaped Canada's financial position in the world. The same basic policies can be enacted in the United States.
