I got alot of positive responses to a comment I made pointing out how ending the Iraq war, Bush's tax cuts & corporate pork would raise enough money to fund renewable energy, global anti-poverty campaigns, universal healthcare, affordable tuition, paid-FMLA and various other programs like balancing the budget.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
So I decided to expand my original point into an entire posting.
This is a list of economic policies I feel we should be pushing for because they are good ideas for the economy and the middle class.
Most involve redistributing current tax income into other areas. Most would probably never happen (democrats are wimps who won't do anything radical, the GOP and their media arm would throw a fit), but a person can dream.
I have put alot of links in my post, but that is just to show that I am not making figures up. You don't have to read all 20-30 of them. I like URL links.
If my math is wrong or presumptuous let me know.
Things to do:
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Adopt HR 676 (expanding medicare to all 300 million of us) and save $387 billion a year in less medical overhead and via bulk purchases.
HR 676 will be paid for by a 6.6% payroll tax, progressive income tax, cutting Bush's tax cuts, a stock transfer tax and cutting corporate welfare.
http://www.house.gov/...
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Make aggressive attempts to promote IT, efficiency and healthcare prevention in our healthcare system. Potential savings: up to $346 billion a year (up to, mind you and probably not near that in reality). I will say $200 billion with an extremely aggressive policy and will improve healthcare quality.
http://www.healthaffairs.org/...
"RAND’s review of the impact of information technology in other industries suggests that the savings could even be larger. "If health care in the U.S. was transformed sufficiently to generate the 1.5 percent annual productivity gains from information technology–enabled efficiencies in the retail and wholesale industries, the annual cost of health care could be reduced by $346 billion or more. But the dramatic transformations and productivity gains seen in other industries resulted from both large investments in information technology and other factors such as deregulation, value-based competition, and system integration," says RAND, adding that "almost none of these factors are at work in health care."
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End the war in Iraq (Savings: $100-200 billion a year. $100 billion a year in direct cost, an extra $100 billion in hidden costs and lost productivity)
http://www.informationclearinghouse....
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Make oil companies spend a fraction of their record profits on alternative energy, maybe $10 billion. Impose a cap/trade carbon tax system as well as a gas tax of 5 cents a gallon to get to $30 billion a year. Enough to pay for the Apollo alliance.
http://www.democrats.org/...
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Ending Bush's tax cuts on the wealthy is included in HR 676, and will raise up to $251 billion (probably less).
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Support Obama's middle class tax plan.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/...
http://www.qctimes.com/...
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Before anyone says 'that is soaking the rich' (several of these programs involve raising taxes on the top 10%) you have to understand that most of the benefits of the last 30 years of economic growth have gone to the top 10%. Workers are far more productive than they've ever been, but wages have stagnated for the bottom 80-90% while middle class expenses (education, healthcare, real estate, energy) have skyrocketed. The only benefit I know of for workers is cheaper goods/services. Wages have stagnated and taxes are the same or higher in the middle class.
So trying to reverse the trend of wealthy people see their incomes grow dramatically while their taxes are cut and at the same time the middle class sees their incomes stagnate while real estate, medical care, energy and college cost many times what they did (inflation adjusted) and their taxes basically stay the same as in the 70s and 80s is not 'soaking the rich'. It is basic fairness.
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Great charts showing the lopsided economics of the last 30 years and quashing the 'unfairly soaking the rich' argument. Income has doubled/tripled for the top 10% while taxes have dropped dramatically for them:
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/...
http://www.democraticunderground.com...
http://one-simple-idea.com/...
http://rdanafox.blogspot.com/...
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http://www.cepr.net/...
http://multinationalmonitor.org/...
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Basically what has happened is this.
Top 10% - incomes grew 50-200% in the last 30 years while taxes have been cut
Bottom 90% - Some regressive state taxes have gone up (Social Security, sin taxes, gas taxes, state taxes) wages have stagnated and expenses on healthcare, education, energy, real estate have gone up.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/...
http://www.coxwashington.com/...
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Now pursue these programs:
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Reinvest in college. Put money into public 4 year universities (not community colleges since they are already fairly cheap, and not private 4 year universities). If we put an extra $50 billion into public 4 year colleges, and there are about 10 million students in them then that is a savings of about $5,000 a year per student. That means you can cut the cost of college down to about $3,000 a year (down from roughly $8,000 a year now). I am only discussing public 4 year colleges because
- Community college is already affordable.
- Private 4 year college is not 100% necessary if you can go to a public four year university instead in my view.
The benefits of college are massive. College grads have lower unemployment, collect less welfare, vote more often, pay more attention to politics, commit fewer crimes, etc.
http://www.collegeboard.com/...
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Put $30 billion into fighting poverty overseas which will build our reputation, cut support for terrorism and save millions of lives. Preferably use matching funds (offer $1 for every other individual or country that offers $1 to raise $60 billion). Read up on terrorfreetomorrow. Poverty fighting programs cut support for Al Qaeda from 60% down to 28% in Indonesia & Pakistan. Fighting poverty will save millions of lives, help build a global middle class which is necessary for democracy, human rights, and help create a market for US exports (our trade deficit is nearly a trillion).
http://www.terrorfreetomorrow.org/...
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Invest $30 billion a year for 10 years in the Apollo alliance for renewable energy, which will grow the economy by 1.4 trillion dollars within 10 years, add an extra $300 billion a year in tax revenue and save americans $284 billion on energy spending.
http://www.buildinggreen.com/...
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make broadband and other IT technology universal, which may grow the economy by half a trillion dollars. I'm guessing $20 billion will cover this (that is a guess).
http://money.cnn.com/...
http://www3.brookings.edu/...
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An extra $50-100 billion to fix infrastructure (again, matching funds from private or state gov. would work well). This will promote health, prevent events like Katrina, the bridge collapse, excessive traffic and will improve the economy (infrastructure is vital to trade).
http://www.asce.org/...
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An extra $50-100 billion into R&D which plays a big role in economic growth. This would raise R&D spending from 2.5% of GDP to 2.9-3.3% of GDP. Probably more if you used matching funds from corporations.
http://www.nsf.gov/...
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Various small programs (paid FMLA, public funding of elections, etc) $10 billion
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All these programs (infrastructure, science, education, IT, energy, fighting poverty) will cost $240-340 billion. Savings from Iraq, revenue from the apollo alliance and the captrade system, 5 cent gas tax and oil profit distribution are only $180 billion or so. So the extra 60-160 bilion could come from a 2% tax hike on the bottom 80% of incomes to raise $140 billion. That and the 5 cent a gallon gas tax shows that this isn't a pure 'soak the rich strategy' as the middle class will be paying an extra bit for gas and a 2% tax hike.
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As a result of this middle class families would get:
higher quality, cheaper universal healthcare they have access to and cannot lose
affordable college ($3,000 a year)
a meaningful global anti-poverty program that rebuilds our reputation, saves millions of lives, help to build a global middle class (which is necessary to build democracy, human rights and fix our trade deficit) and combats terrorism
universal broadband and IT access which will build the economy and connect America better to the world.
A meaningful energy independence program that will end dependence on mideast oil, cut carbon emissions and set us on the road to 70% cuts in CO2 emmissions by 2050.
millions of decent jobs in energy, fighting poverty, infrastructure repair and telecommunications.
Faster economic growth (due to more IT, more college graduates, democratic leadership and the apollo program)
http://bp0.blogger.com/...
http://angrybear.blogspot.com/...
More tax revenue because of the bigger economy, maybe (as a guess) several hundred billion a year in increased revenue due to economic growth based on better R&D, IT, education and infrastructure.
A citizenry that is slighly less prone to crime and slightly more prone to vote and not collect welfare due to more education, better infrastructure and healthcare improving.
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Here are my numbers (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure I'm making mistakes).
A family with a household income of $50,000 would get:
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$1000 from Obama's middle class tax plan
$1000-2,000 in lower energy costs (this will take a while, but due to apollo alliance and more R&D it is feasable that energy costs will drop. We currently spend $5,000 per family on energy. With dramatic R&D we can cut energy costs with better efficiency, higher MPG cars, plug in hybrids, cheap alternatives, etc).
$2,000-3,000 savings on healthcare per family. Since healthcare would cost up to $600 billion less and the costs would be distributed across society (employees, employers, the well off, taking funds out of other programs, etc) the final cost to the middle class individual would drop dramatically.
$20,000 savings for anyone who goes to a 4 year university.
Minus about $1100/year in extra gas taxes & the 2% tax.
So a middle class family may save 6-10% of its income while getting great healthcare, seeing the economy grow, getting access to education and decent infrastructure and a growing the economy.
My big concern is unemployment. All this money saved from healthcare or energy programs has to come from somewhere. A few million jobs in infrastructure, energy, communications and science will be made, but I'm sure a few million in healthcare or fossil fuel energy will be lost. So programs to help redistribute people in the new economy would be necessary.
And again, as for the 'soak the rich part' that I'm sure I'll get (even though the well off have experienced most of the economic growth and taxcuts of the last 30 years, unlike the middle class), if the economy does grow an extra $500 billion a year or so via the increase in R&D, infrastructure, energy, education and communication technology we can give a $150 billion taxcut to the top 90-99%.
The funny part will be when someone points out how all this turns out to be BS based on bad math. And it would never happen (talk radio and FoxNews would have a fit). But it looks great on paper.