By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - General - Obama Approves Small Troop Increase in Afghanistan

I'd lol if someone complained that he broke his promise by not raising taxes like he said he would ^_^

instead of a % gas tax, I think they should just do a flat rate gas tax of like 15 cents or something, no matter what the gas prices are. That means your gas tax would be the same whether gas is 2 dollars a gallon or 4 dollars a gallon. The amount of tax you pay would be solely upon how many gallons you use on the road.

this is from playing my "democracy 2" game, but you can also tax people's carbon footprints. Find ways of using less CO2, pay less taxes!

Anyways, I'm glad I'm not making any of these decisions. It would make be go nuts. One thing I would cut right away is the Post Office. I'd say streamline it back so that the government still handles addresses, like zip codes and postal codes and whatnot, but leave it up to companies like Fed Ex and UPS or something to handle all the mail. the post office is ridiculous, and they're raising postage all the time. Their prices are pretty much comparable to UPS anyways, so lets just put the kibosh on that thing.



Around the Network

The USPS actually runs a profit sometimes.

And there are a lot of federal laws involving mail. Its easier in a sense for the USPS to handle the mail rather than having to have regulators looking over the shoulder of private industry. Not to mention there are a lot of privacy and security issues involved with the mail. I don't really think its that good of an idea to scale it back.



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson

furthermore, I don't understand why the government can't just do a scalable model of themselves. Instead of committing, say, 1 trillion dollars to Defense, why isn't the budget worded in a way so that it says "33% of tax revenues to Defense, with a base amount of X dollars", so that if tax revenue goes down 20%, then the budget is automatically scaled down 20% as per the wording of it?

That way you will always have a government that will be determined by the GDP of the country. The only catch is I would allow the writers to set a spending floor (X dollars has to be AT LEAST spend on Y), and also a spending ceililng (at MOST we should spend Z dollars on defense).

Also, I think the government should maintain a "rainy day fund" where they can reserve like 5% of their tax revenue so that they have extra money in the event of a disaster or a recession and they would have at least a couple months time before they have to start raising taxes or cutting programs or whatever