Post by bob hallera cut costs without concerns?
big budget boost?
a new partnership with russia for a manned mission to mars?
Budgets depend on money, and money depends on bankers and stockbrokers and people with money.
I was in New York, staying at the Waldorf Astoria the week surrounding election day in the United States. I was working on a business deal, but had time to meet with some old friends of mine in the business and government fields. Madeline Albright was staying at the Waldorf, (she's not a friend, but I did say hi to her!) and was very surprised by the election outcome! All the Clinton democrats were!
One thing that is of interest is that both Hillary and Donald agreed on the need for a Tobin Tax on stock trades! The media didn't cover this, but both candidates so the logic of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobin_tax
Now the US equities markets alone trade $6.8 trillion per day every day.
http://www.bats.com/us/equities/market_share/
That's $2.48 quadrillion per year. To collect say $4 trillion in Tobin Taxes each year requires 0.162% transaction tax. This allows the elimination of ALL OTHER TAXES and an increase in collections by $1 trillion per year!
That's because we collect $3 trillion per year currently and spend $3.5 trillion per year!
It makes sense too. An agrarian economy taxes land. An industrial economy taxes production. A consumer economy taxes income. What does a knowledge economy tax? Stock transactions. The USA is the world's largest and most powerful knowledge economy. It makes sense to preserve our land, industry and retailers by reducing taxes on them, and to tax fairly predictably and profitably, stock transactions.
Can we afford it?
Yes, as long as it is predictable and cannot increase or decrease over long time periods. (>10 years)
How can you say that?
Because stockbrokers charge FAR MORE than this per trade, and because insurers charge FAR MORE than this to cover FRAUD - which is greater than 1%.
A predictable and minor addition to transaction costs, is input into the models, and trading takes place carrying this added cost. If properly structured it also corrects some issues with respect to high frequency trading, but that's a nuance compared to the central achievement!
Any President that ended the direct collection of taxes from wages and business income and from inheritance taxes and property taxes and so forth, and ended deficit spending in the bargain, could be assured of re-election and of an economic boom! The boom increases stock values which more than compensate for the added tax - and increase the revenue as well.
Another thing both candidates looked at seriously was having the Treasury charge a fixed interest on money it printed to fund the Federal Reserve. This is how the founders set up our system of taxation. A system so subtle and indirect that people weren't aware of how our government was funded before the IRS.
At present the Federal Reserve gets money given it at no interest by the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve member banks then loan that money back to the government and to all other borrowers of US Federal Reserve notes. How crazy is that?
The most far reaching proposal I saw involved the government issuing bonds to buy out the Federal Reserve's $4.4 trillion in 'hot money' paying 1% per year over a 100 year term. This is $69.8 billion per year, a vast reduction to the over $128 billion now paid by the Feds for interest on their own money! The Federal Reserve still exists in this scenario, and the banks are paid more than they're paid now for the deposits they have made to the Reserve. The $19.8 trillion in public debt is paid off at a rate of $1 trillion per year, at zero interest, and this is added to the Reserve. The Reserve currently has $71 out for each dollar in Reserve. That's $321 trillion. Over $180 trillion is to the private sector, businesses, homes, furnishings, credit cards and so forth. The balance is money the banks loan each other to do credit default swaps! That is, they've arranged things so that if all hell breaks lose, they end up owning everything, and they're using Treasury money to pay for it. The trick is to peel away that machinations the banks have put in place to protect themselves from risk, without killing the real economy where people go to work every day. This is complex, but it basically involves reintroducing the Glass Steagal Act which was removed from the books at the end of the last Clinton Administration. This would make writing new credit default swaps illegal, and set aside the current ones, with the Feds buying them out. This is a little complex, but its doable with added revenue drawn appropriately from the wealthiest and most productive sectors of the economy. We existed from 1933 to 1999 without Credit Default Swaps, and we will exist well without them post 2016. The cost is $0.25 trillion per year - for this - which is enough to keep the European and Asian markets from imploding - and if they follow suit in Japan, Germany, Britain, with similar approaches, this can even be reduced as they get their houses in order.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Glass–Steagall_Act
So, with an extra 30% in your pocket at the end of each pay period, and an extra 45% in your pocket at the end of each quarter for your business, and with commercial interest rates tied to 1% to 1.5% base rate of cost of money issue by the Treasury, without being kicked around by quadrillions of dollars in CDS trades, significant money can flow into infrastructure projects of all types, including spending $200 billion or so a year on a programme of space development - along the lines of rail development, highway development, and aviation development throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
Another $500 billion per year for infrastructure development, rebuilding our highways, bridges, water ways, water works, supplying water and power at very low cost, and reduces unemployment to a minimum.
Finally, the UN has pointed to Denmark as being the happiest nation on Earth and pointed to the balance they have between public and private spending - the USA being a global super power has challenges Denmark does not, but with an extra $1 trillion per year, and no income taxes social security taxes or medicare taxes, we can tap our most powerful economic engine to lift us into the Denmark realm of public works!
Loading Image...Just as only Nixon could open to Communist China, so too, only Trump can open to businesses (after elimination of all business taxes, including sales taxes) and establish a $20 minimum wage, and a four day 32 hour work week from today's 48 hour work week with six days.
Average wage goes from $21 per hour to $30 per hour. Minimum wage rises to $20 per hour. The work week falls from 47 hours to 32 hours. Without income or sales taxes, businesses productivity gains balance wage increases.
This eliminates unemployment, and achieving the same efficiencies in US agencies as are achieved by Danish agencies, we actually spend less than we now spend on Social Security, Education, Medicare, Medicaid - before Obama care.
Minimum wage of $20 per hour along with the elimination of income and sales taxes, simultaneously increases profits and wages, ends social division, whilst a shorter work week ends unemployment.
Free health care, child care and college education, improves labour relations and makes everyone more productive.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/04/why-danish-students-are-paid-to-go-to-college/
Free college education, free health care, free child care, on the Denmark model would cost less than present methods used in the USA, and with an extra $1 trillion per year to spend following reorganisation of our antiquated taxation and banking systems, we have the following break down;
Child Care:
USD$488 per child/month through age three - 10.1 million - $59.1 billion per year
USD$284 per child/month aged three to five - 10.1 million - $34.4 billion per year
Health Care:
USD$3,512 per person - 308.8 million - $1,084.5 million per year.
College Education:
USD$900 per person/month - direct payment to students - 21.5 million - $232.2 billion per year
USD$1411 per person/month - tuition/books/labs - 21.5 million - $364.0 billion per year.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/02/for-pensioners-something-is-spot-on-in-the-state-of-denmark
Elder Care:
USD$1,002 per person per month - direct payment to elders - 40.3 million - $484.6 billion
Medicare is $951.6 B mandatory expenditure and $55.0 B discretionary expenditure. This is $1,006.6 B sufficient to fund a Danish style health care system - with only $80 billion in costs. There were 928 million patient visits to healthcare professionals last year. 3 visits per person in the USA. An $85 co-pay for all office visits would make up the difference. However, Danish people visit their doctors once a month! So, if we are to follower the Danish model, we can expect the number of office visits to rise four fold - and the cost of co-pay per office visit would drop to $21.25 per visit.
Social Security is $1,244.4 B mandatory expenditure and $66.0 B discretionary expenditure. This is $1,310.4 B total, more than enough to fund Danish style college education, child care and elder care.
Space Projects include;
Interplanetary Internet - landers and orbiters around every planet moon and major dwarf planet in the solar system. 181 known Moons, 8 known planets, over 300 dwarf planets - Setting aside $500 billion over 20 years for unmanned drones to establish their presence on all these places, providing a wide range of reports, and sustaining a solar system wide network of broadband communications - including world wide wireless broadband. Once established, these channels are auctioned off to commercial carriers who provide broadband services throughout the solar system.
Interplanetary Power Grid - solar pumped lasers provide beamed power on demand throughout the solar system. In addition to direct $1,000 billion support for R&D over 20 years, this also comes with a mechanism to provide commercial entities with a means to match power providers with power users, and spin off bonds against notional production to make use of the infrastructure developed.
Defence Commercialisation Act - here we review the secrets of the defence agencies with a view to commercialising them for off-world development. Research is sanitised and made available to qualified US users. We also provide direct subsidy with this act along with the ability to underwrite bonds between qualified providers and consumers of services.
Off World Development Act - to license and develop resources off world.
Space Transport Commercialisation Act - similar to the other acts above, focused primarily on improved propulsion and safe human transport.