Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

On the cover of the Time magazine I got this week is my name and the fact that I owe $42,998.12.  This is the amount that every American man, woman and child would need to pay to erase the $13.9 trillion U.S. debt.  There were a few pages inside devoted to how we got here.  But there wasn't any good solution from the author that I can see.  Forget about the presidential candidates.  Independent analysis found that the policies of the remaining candidates, if enacted, would increase the debt and/or decrease the GDP.  I am no economist but I understand that economists believe that debt as a percentage of GDP becomes dangerous if over 90%.  We are at 73.6%, according to the article.  So it is not panic time yet, but it will be if we don't do anything about it.

The argument from the GOP is cut spending.  The argument from the Democrats is raise taxes.  Neither by itself will work as demonstrated by the analysis that none of the candidate's policy would work.  And there are tons of arguments about what to cut.  Also our tax codes are ridiculous with millions of pages that even accountants have trouble understanding.  I propose that we do an across the board cut of 5% and an increase of 5% taxes. To reach the 5% increase, we use a flat tax with no loopholes or exceptions.  We then calculate the flat tax rate that would give 5 % more total than we get now. 

Of course the above will never get passed in real life as both sides will be against it.  One more thing that I feel strongly about is that we have to find a way to get rid of all those off shore accounts.  Money going into those accounts are worse than any domestic spending for our bottom line.  For example, a person on welfare gets his check will likely use all of it in the domestic economy.  This money will circulate, creating more economic activity and taxes.  The money in a Swiss bank account does not circulate here and taxes are avoided.  So cleaning out these accounts is more important than any budget cuts we can make.  Of course again, this will never happen.