(11-09-2016 08:56 AM)CardFan1 Wrote: Trumps Job #1 is getting folks back to work in real jobs. Not the low pay part time jobs Obama call employment.
To do that, you've got to change the economics for employers. Lowering the corporate income tax to world standards and implementing a consumption tax would do more to accomplish that than anything else. First thing that would happen is that about $3 trillion of overseas profits would come back to the US, and that cash would fund a huge expansion of the economy.
15% consumption tax, 15% tax on all business and investment earnings (corporations, partnerships, S Corps, LLCs, dividends, interest, capital gains), and removing the cap on social security wages/salaries would produce enough revenues to eliminate the individual income tax altogether. With a consumption tax and competitive corporate tax rates (and particularly with no individual tax rates) we would have nothing to fear from NAFTA or TPP or any other trade agreement. Do that plus the prebate/prefund and Bismarck health care and you could get rid of Medicaid, cut the cost of Medicare and Tricare, and farm all the focused and means-tested welfare programs out to the states (who could fund them out of the savings generated by getting Medicaid off their backs). Get regulators off people's backs by imposing sunset review every 10 years, providing for congressional review of any new rulemaking, and moving adjudication of disputes from ALJs who report to the executive director of the agency to independent Article III administrative law courts. Trim defense mainly by getting us out of all wars that we don't intend to win, replacing half a million active personnel with a million reserve personnel, reforming procurement to get us out of expensive mistakes like the F-35, the LCSs, and the Fords, focus on combat, combat support, and R&D and cut everything else substantially, and cut back the number of people in and around the Pentagon to the number that it took to win WWII (without automation to do a lot of the grunt work). As for climate change and energy and the environment, focus on things that actually have a material impact, instead of things that make us feel good but at the end of the day don't really accomplish much in the grand scheme of things. Privatize a bunch of current government functions (Interstate highways as toll roads, TVA, western water and power authorities, postal service, more), set user fees to generate a profit, and used the profits to shore social security up further. We'd have a leaner, meaner, and more competitive economy governed by a leaner, more efficient, and more effective government.
