Just so we are clear on the debt crisis:
1. Social Security hasn't caused it. Hasn't even come close to causing it.
SS shouldn't be privatized because it has caused the debt... it should be privatized because it is a rip off Ponzi scheme. If you tried the same thing privately, you'd be in jail with Maddoff.
2. Medicare spending could be curtailed by a National Health Service, and greatly reduce bills.
Simply put... this is stupid. It is the inefficiency and interferrence of gov't that causes most of the problems we have now.
3. This is a manufactured crisis (by both parties, although one, of course, is being nutty extreme) in order to cut social programs which are not breaking the bank.
That's interesting because pretty much every study out there says that SSI, Medicare, and Medicaid will drive us into bankruptcy.
You see gibbs... it is simple math. You need enough producers of wealth to support everyone living off that wealth. You also have to let them keep an increasing amount so that they stay motivated to continue producing... and producing more.
Pretty much everything you propose here would have the exact opposite effect. You ideas would swell the ranks of consumers and shrink the ranks of producers. Eventually the consumers would see "no choice" but to enslave the producers to force them to provide what they need. Unfortunately for them, that enslavement would come at a price of their own liberties... forcing them to either do without anyway or become producers against their wills.
4. There has been no austerity for the bankers, industrialists, capitalists who have gutted the economy. In fact, money cannot be found fast enough or long enough for these Captains of Mismanagement.
The tax code should be simplified... but preferrably eliminated in favor of a consumption tax. That tax taxes the act of consuming wealth rather than taxing an inidividual. It promotes investment and savings and conservation while also assuring efficiency on the consumption end. IOW's, it shifts that consumer/producer balance back toward its natural and sustainable equillibrium.
These are the End Times of Late Capitalism. I can't help but look at what happened in Norway and ask - was he crazy? No crazier than the system which spawned him, that is the real answer.
Norway? The sterling example of capitalism? LOL@U
We need new ideas. Neoliberalism has no legitimacy. Capitalism has no legitimacy. The Bronze Age has no legitimacy in our own historic time.
Freedom works. It works everywhere and everytime it is tried. Optimize freedom in the market. Make gov't the referree again instead of a player or picker of winners/losers... effectively decentralize power contrary to what you advocate.
It isn't a "new" idea.... but it most definitely works everytime it is tried.
