Okay for Non-Libertarians (Libertarians can come here too)

Great Debates
1

Since the Libertarian threads (those “opposed”) seem so hell bent on ripping apart the philosophy I threatened to start this thread.

So here it goes, you are obviously politically thinking and potentially actively participating in politics as they are today, so I ask each of you this:

“What things about the current government would you like to see change?”

This question is open ended and could be anything that you see as wrong with the system as it’s run today. I do ask do consider one thing though, look at your answers before posting and see if this falls within the means of the Constitution. If you don’t, well then I can’t bash you for it, but it’s a respectable request.

I’ll give you a start of which things you might like to change:

  1. Taxes
  2. Foreign policy
  3. Social Security
  4. Property Rights
  5. Education
  6. Corporate welfare (Lobbiests)
  7. Government agencies (CIA, BATF, NSA, etc.)

It’s up to you, but this is something that I think should be discussed here as the focus seems to be on “what’s wrong” with the Libertarian philosophy and there is little discussion as to the issues that face us everyday in the real world.

Please, I am honestly asking this question in an attempt to see where people stand in the realm of the current political climate.

I could sit here and right you a 100 page essay in my Libertarian view as to what is wrong and how I think certain issues can be solved. But obviously the topic has become an issue of what wrong with a non-existant government philosophy (yet, hey gimme a break I am starting this topic) and there doesn’t seem to be one person out there on the the “other” side that has brought up inherant flaws of our current system.

Any takers?

2

BTW, I made a few typos, pardon me. And my sentence:

Should have basically said, the non-existant government meaning under the Libertarian views regarding our current system.

3

Damn, I forgot to post a Constitution link for those that need a little help in this area, it’s:

http://www.ourconstitution.com/Const.html

4

Taxes: while the Federal Income tax is a graduated tax, the tax structure overall is fairly flat. (See my discussion of tax rates on the Firefly Challengethread for some numbers. Other posters contributed some very useful links, too.) As one’s income goes up, one’s Federal income tax bracket goes up - but to make up for that, payroll tax and sales tax, as a percentage of income, diminish. Also, more of your income is likely to be capital gains, which are taxed at a much lower rate than such a person would pay on regular income. And you tend to max out your state tax rate before you get to a middle-class income: in Virginia, for instance, you reach the top rate at $17,000 of taxable income.

So we’ve already got a fairly flat overall system of taxation; a flat Federal Income tax would actually make the whole structure regressive.

I’m all in favor of a tax system that is more progressive than the present one. There are a lot of good ways to do that; I’m not wedded to one way in particular.

Property Rights: rights to unfettered use of real property are an anachronism we can no longer afford.

The physical health of the planet is shaky, to say the least. We’re trashing our ecosystems because there’s short-term money to be made from it. But in the end, we all lose. The well-being of our planet is a commons, but what individuals do with their real estate has a lot to do with the health, or lack thereof, of that commons. If you pave paradise and put up a parking lot, we’ve found that the parking lot gets less rain than the paradise did, and gets it in a more erratic fashion. When we change the face of the world, each individual landowner gains a lot, and loses little; overall, we get in trouble.

We soon need to manage real estate - public and private - in a way that sustains ecological health. We will all have to learn to live with more restrictions on what we can do with our property.

Labor-Management Relations: Bring back the forty-hour week.

The working world is an important part of our lives, but so is the rest of it - especially as life gets more complex, tasks outside of work require more time, and most families don’t have a full-time, stay-at-home spouse to deal with those tasks. When the forty-hour week was instituted, back in the New Deal era, it applied to the vast majority of workers; that’s no longer true. I propose that time-and-a-half over forty hours apply to everyone, professional or not - but we cap overtime compensation at a wage level that matches the line separating the top quintile of income-earners from everyone else.

What’s more, I’d extend the law to require double time after fifty-five hours, and triple time after seventy. People need time of their own; the more work demands that they give it up, the higher the cost should be to the employer.

I’d also toss in a mandatory minimum of two weeks’ paid vacation for the first year on a job, going up to three weeks after that, with vacation hours accruing at least quarterly (twenty years ago, my employer’s accounting system could give me x hours’ vacation every two weeks; it can’t be much of a burden for everyone to do it now), and with a minimum ceiling of four weeks’ carryover from one year to the next.

Also, given the way peoples’ careers are ever less tied to a single employer for long periods of time, the time is overdue for some system of portability of benefits from employer to the next. For instance, if you’ve accumulated a year of sick leave with one employer, it might not make sense to be able to carry most of it over to the next job, but starting over at zero hours of sick leave at the new job is just as ridiculous.

That’s a start. I’m sure I’ll have far too much to add later. :wink:

5

Taxes - The first and biggest required change is simplification. I hate it when I have to stand in line at the checkout at the supermarket because they are inconveniencing me when I am trying to give them money. The same applies to the government – I should not have to wade through complicated forms or obscure rules to figure out what I should pay. I concede that taxes are a necessary evil, but it should be as painless as possible to pay them. Similarly, since taxes are complex, there is an intrinsic suspicion that “everybody else” is manipulating the tax code to their advantage, and thus screwing me over by not paying their fair share like I am. If the tax system were simple enough for everybody to understand, this suspicion would be erased.

The second area of tax reform must be to eliminate all hidden taxes. The “employer pays half” social security tax is the worst offender here. If we want to elect representatives that give us high tax rates, that is fair under our democratic system, but that high tax rate should be reflected in every paycheck, so the voters have a chance to see if they really did the right thing… I would be in favor of rolling the current Social Security tax and the federal income tax into a single income tax. (See below for Social Security reform). In the long run, I’d like to see a relatively flat (e.g. one rate with a big deduction) income tax be the sole federal tax. Sales taxes are evil, and should be avoided at all cost.

Tax rates are unpleasantly high right now, but so is the national debt and so is the risk of bankruptcy to social security, medicare, etc. Since we are in good economic times right now, we can afford to get rid of these liabilities before lowering taxes, which will allow us to get taxes lower faster in the long run.

Social Security - The current Social Security system is a pyramid scheme. These are illegal in the private sector, but this one is mandatory in the public square… The notion of having an adequate retirement for everybody is a laudable goal, but the only fair way to do it is via real savings. I like most of the things I have heard about the privatization plans that have been talked about (most of which also include a “safety net” in case things don’t go right for some participants). We must, however, keep paying benefits for those people who either currently need or have been banking on Social Security payments. We as a society may have entered into a bad contract, but we have to live up to our end of the bargain. The current debates about trust funds and bookkeeping are distracting us from the real issue that the system is inherently unworkable in the long run, and we need to move to a real retirement system with real (private) savings in the future.

Education - Education needs to be improved, but I don’t know exactly how. I think the current debates over who pays what to whom are a distraction from the real issue, which is that we don’t really know how to improve education. I think that public schooling in general is a good idea, and privatization or voucher schemes make me nervous. The “free market” position is that somebody will figure out the right answer, and then everybody will flock to them. My position is “let’s figure out the right answer first, and then we’ll figure out who pays and who administers later”. The current left/right debate of vouchers and privatization is counterproductive. Vouchers don’t solve the problem, they just distribute it into millions of little problems – how do you improve the education of particular students?

Corporate welfare (Lobbyists) - Tax breaks are, in general, a bad idea. A simplified tax code will improve this problem, because then preferential tax treatment of a particular group or company will stick out like a sore thumb, and allow voters to vote out representatives who give away tax breaks like christmas presents. When you get to “broad based” tax breaks, like a research and development credit or something, then the issue is not as clear cut. In general, I don’t like legislating behavior via the tax code, but I also understand the thinking that says there is some behavior that we want to encourage… Possibly a necessary evil, I’m not sure.

Those are all of techchick’s issues that I care about. I can’t think of any others off the top of my head. I don’t think the nation is in any sort of crisis which require radical reform. In general, I’d like a leaner, meaner federal government which was more efficient and cost less. I’d like to end programs which aren’t best done by the federal government, but I don’t want to do it over night to limit shocks to the nation. I do think that the government has a role to play in our society, and I think a “government = evil” mindset is foolish and counterproductive. I think the antidote to bad government is good government, not no government.

6

[standing… cheering…]

Bravo! Bravissimo!

7

RTF- please make sure to get your terms right. A REGRESSIVE tax system means going backwards, i.e. charging the poor more than the rich. That’s not gonna happen. If it was up to me, I would eliminate deductions across the board and make everyone pay a flat rate-15-20% seems right, but I’d have to look closer at the raw numbers. Everyone paying the same percentage is as fair as can be, and eliminating all deductions eliminates all the loopholes that now exist. As it stands now, we have a hodgepodge of tax laws, all of which were put in place to either win political favor, or by one group to manipulate things so they had to pay less. It’s a mess.

Cecil said it. I believe it. That settles it.

8

Dave - that’s what I meant, and, off the top of my head, I think I’ve got that right: given that the Federal income tax is essentially the only progressive part of the overall taxation system we have, and other parts (sales and payroll) are regressive (no payroll tax after the first X dollars income, in high 5 or low 6 figures - I’ll try to get a number and a cite; and as income increases, lower % of income spent on stuff that sales tax applies to), off the top of my head, I’d have to argue that a flat Federal income tax would make Fed/state/local overall taxes regressive in most jurisdictions. There’d be nothing left to balance out the regressive taxes.

9

Firefly is right on this one. The Federal income is one of about a kazillion taxes in this country. Very few of these are progressive. The Fed income tax is one of them; luxury taxes might be progressive as well but I suspect they are really very inconsistent - wealthy people do buy more gems or yachts or whatever it is, but not consistently.

Anyway, all the other taxes are flat (like most state income taxes) or regressive (like FICA, sales taxes) or just kind of “bumpy” and incosistent (cigarette taxes, tariffs, property taxes, etc.) The bumpy taxes hit people differently at different income levels, poor smokers may spend a larger percent of their income on cigarettes than rich smokers, but poor non-smokers don’t spend a dime. And so on.

To be regressive, a tax doesn’t have to be directly on income. It just has to take a bigger fraction of the average poor person’s income than the average affluent’s.

10

I think all laws should expire every ten years. That way our representatives could spend their time renewing laws instead of always coming up with new laws to regulate our lives. It would also eliminate old laws lingering around once there was no real support for them. (ex: local blue laws)

Obviously laws against murder, rape, stealing etc…etc… would always get easily renewed. More controversial laws like gun control, speed limits :), tax laws, term limits and other “subjective” laws would come up for review regularly. Maybe the length of the law could even vary from 3 to 10 years based on how much of a margin it was passed by.

Basically this is just a way to try and cut out some of the bloated government. Maybe if they were more concerned with real issues, we wouldn’t find them encroaching into every aspect of our life.

11

One of the items on the Libertarian agenda I most favor is the idea of decriminalizing victimless crimes. I written before that I favor the removal of all laws against drugs, sex work, gambling, consensual sexual activity, “blue laws”, censorship, helmet and seat belt laws, and whatever else I’m not thinking of at the moment. (I’ll add the necessary caveat that I would support controlling many of these actions with regards to minors or the mentally handicapped.) I feel that eliminating these laws, in addition to being in accordance with the principle of personal liberty, would also benefit society in more tangible ways. It would allow law enforcement assets to be reapplied towards real crimes (or allow law enforcment assets to be reduced if you prefer); it would remove a number of income sources from organized crime; it would allow a lot of underground economic activity to enter the mainstream and assume its fair share of the tax burden; it would reduce the temptations of police corruption; it would allow people having problems related to one of these actions to seek help without worrying about legal issues; and would reduce much of the public stigma associated with people who are involved in these actions.

12

I’d like to see some initiatives designed to make government more democratic by increasing individual participation. I want to be consulted. I want my opinion to count.

Being asked every 4 years which of two idiots I want to make my decisions for me does strike me as the pinnacle of democracy.

Designated Optional Signature at Bottom of Post

13

weirddave wrote:

In my opinion, everyone paying the same dollar amount would be as fair as can be, but I realize that this isn’t practical, so I’d be willing to compromise on everyone paying the same rate.

But which deductions and loopholes are you talking about? They disappeared in the 1986 tax reform. A few have crept back in, such as deductions for medical expenses in excess of 20% of your gross income, but there are actually very few deductions available nowadays.

And if you say that the deduction for interest paid on a mortgage is one, then you need to re-think your definition of “income”. No rational taxation scheme could tax interest income and not allow interest paid out to be deductible.

14

Obviously we’re in agreement that the thing needs changing. Equally obviously, we’re in disagreement about how, specifically, to change it. Sounds like the democratic process at work to me.

One small caveat to Weirddave’s remarks at RT: While it’s vanishingly rare for a true regressive tax to be passed, a per capita tax or a equal-action tax such as the sales tax tends to operate regressively, in that the proportionate impact rests more heavily on the poor than on the rich, simply on the inarguable proposition that the rich have more disposable income. If X makes $500 after withholding and must spend $400 before sales tax, while Y makes $2000 and must spend $600, a 5% tax eats 25% of X’s disposable income, and only 2.2% of Y’s. Even presuming that Y will spend another $1000 frivolously, he still is not impacted nearly so hard as is X.

This is one strong argument against the flat income tax. Stephen Forbes, whom I consider despicable on several grounds, has no concept of the microeconomics of the average citizen. And while the 7% figure has been bandied around, political history indicates that the likelihood of a flat tax remaining stable at that rate is about equivalent to that of an ice cream cone remaining stable on the floor of a steel foundry.

15

Since most focus has been on taxes, here’s a link for a commentary in WorldNetDaily 2/15/00.

WorldNetDaily

(hope the link works correctly, still mastering the UBB codes :slight_smile:

16

From the op-ed piece Techchick linked to:

I guess Linda Bowles, the author of the piece, missed my Firefly Challenge thread. Such is life. :slight_smile:

“Born in diversity and fired by determination, our society was endowed with a flexibility designed to contain the most fractious contentions of an ambitious, individualistic and adventurous breed.” - Sen. Adam Sunraider

17

Curt,

While not actively disputing your point, I am currently doing my taxes, and believe me, there are a lot of deductions available-and I’m taking all that I’m eligable for :). I may advocate a better system, but I’m not too dumb to use the one we’ve got to my best advantage. :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

18

However, I’ve had some additions in mind unrelated to taxation. Here are three:

The Right to Vote inexplicably has a lower status in our democracy than, say, the right to free speech or freedom of religion. Convicted felons, for instance, can lose the franchise for life, if the state they reside in is inclined to deprive them of it. Would we dream of depriving them of the right to free speech, once their sentence was served? Of course not. Then why the vote?

One reason this matters is that recent law-enforcement initiatives, notably the War on Drugs (and its buddies, Zero Tolerance and Mandatory Near-Maximum), have hit certain populations harder than others. In Virginia, for example, one-fourth of adult black males have lost the right to vote due to past felony convictions. It’s unreasonable that one of the consequences of low-level crime should be permanent disenfranchisement, resulting in a particular ethnic group suffering a significant loss in voting strength.

Once felons have served their time in prison, they should regain their right to vote. Period.

The First Amendment should be modified to apply only to flesh-and-blood human beings, and to nonprofits financed primarily by flesh-and-blood human beings.

The logic behind this is that, for for-profit corporations, speech is not what it is for us: for them, it’s a financial investment that they can expect a substantial return on. This allows them to overwhelmingly outspend private citizens to get their ideas out, and allows them to dominate the ‘marketplace of ideas’ regardless of the relative strength of their ideas.

The stockholders, execs, employees, etc. of any for-profit corporation, as flesh-and-blood people, would have every right to speak up for the corporation’s interests where necessary. Consequently, this would hardly deny anyone any meaningful speech rights.

For-profit corporations wouldn’t automatically lose their free-speech rights, but the Federal and state governments could regulate their speech rights as they chose.

I’ve discussed this further in the Campaign Finance Reform thread.

I’d like to overhaul the Second Amendment, in a way that would be a sort of tradeoff between the pro-gun folks and the pro-gun-control side.

The Supreme Court ruled, earlier in this century, that the Second Amendment isn’t an individual right; rather, it protects the right of the well-ordered militia. That rankles the gun people.

The gun-control folks, OTOH, would like a bit more leeway to regulate guns in this country.

The gun folks say, hey wait a minute, are you going to take away our hunting rifles and our right to defend ourselves and our families?

Hence, I propose the following compromise rewriting of the Second Amendment: redraft it to specifically state the right to bear arms as a right held by individuals, but only insofar as that right applies to weapons appropriate for hunting non-threatened species residing in the US, or for self-defense at short to medium range (e.g. under 100 yards). The various levels of government would have the right to restrict or ban guns that they considered to be too powerful for such uses - for instance, the rifles that can pierce metal at a distance of 2000 yards.

That should get some non-tax debates going… :slight_smile:

19

RTF,

That’s why I posted it, I thought you might pick up on that < grin >. I saved the article on my hard drive so I can go hunt down the information that she reported.

20

::tips his hat to techchick::

Thanks, tc, it’s most kind of you to think of me! :slight_smile: