We hear little about the money the corporations vanish into offshore tax havens. The amounts challenge belief. If a good portion of that money could be returned and be properly taxed, none of us would have to pay taxes at all. Corporations have historically been held accountable to the charters they are given by the states where they are registered, but I haven't heard of any charters being revoked lately. Maybe it's time.

Obama gets their money whether he does this stuff or not.

The downside of later retirement is that with the old people clinging to their jobs, there are less openings for younger people.

Gee, more crap. "Tackle health care in a serious way"?

If taking it over completely isn't serious what is?

WHY must health care be a government job? I guess people are just awed by how well Congress does everything else!

1. Sure. Enough blood and treasure has been wasted on these wars.

2. No. The last thing we need is yet another big government program.

3. Of course. We can be energy independent. Let the Greens howl.

4. No. Government needs to shrink, not just grow more slowly.

5. Inevitable.

6. No, the tax structure is already too progressive and punitive. Stop punishing small business.

7. No, no, a thousand times no. A 5% VAT will become a 25% VAT in an eyeblink. This is the dream of every big government progressive. Starve the beast, don't feed it more.

8. What does that even mean?

9. Don't know enough to comment.

My question on #5 -- what is hard labor, who will determine it, and how will it be annotated?

If I work construction until I'm 60 but am now a supervisor, do I now have to wait to 70?

What if I work as a computer programmer until age 63. Then I become a janitor -- will I now qualify for early SS?

But he seems in the ball park. Not as good as Ron Paul, but ...

So the idiot voted for Obama, now he's upset - why should we take him seriously?

What recommends his opinions other than the fact that he has a lot of money?

Deer Lee Cooperman,

The government doesn't have an income problem. It spends too damn much money in places it should never have ventured.

That's the problem. The solution isn't more money. We need to cut spending. We need to have a discussion on the proper role of government in our daily lives.

I'll offer a counter-proposal: the government, federal, state, local, will not be permitted to take taxes directly from one's employer for a period of let us say, 5 years. Individuals will have to write a check biweekly or monthly to the relevant tax agencies and pay all their taxes themselves.

That way, they can actually see how much they get, and more importantly how much gets taken away.

Anyone self-employed, like our lovely hostess, Amy, knows this already.

Lastly, Mr. Cooperman, if you feel you're not taxed enough, the IRS will cheerfully take donations. You can have an assistant google the address.

Between DrMaturin and whatever, they've pretty much covered my thoughts on this.

Not sure why this has been made into such a big deal. The energy point aside, this basically just sounds like a disgruntled leftist who's pissed that the one promise Obama is actually making good on is the whole "redistribution of wealth" thing. Nothing new here.

We have to pass #8 before we know what's in it. Some people don't learn. It'll be the Health Care TSA.

Just another leftist with buyer's remorse because Obama hasn't been lefty enough.

Here's my solution:

Cut the federal government by 50%. Pull all our troops out of Europe, Korea, and Japan. Institute a "nuclear-first" defense policy for any attacks against the US and our allies.

After we've pared the federal government's influence back to pre-1900 levels, we can start to have a civilized discussion on what government ought to do.

#1 Make it illegal to increase a companies profits and thus line the shareholders pockets by laying off workers, cutting wages or cutting hours. Yes, labor is generally the biggest expense, but there are usually many more money sucking areas of a company to look at first.

#2 Nobody (including government workers) gets a penny more of their pensions until they can pass a test demonstrating they know where their pensions come from. (Hint: mostly from the blood, sweat and tears of current workers paying into the system and investments. They are not just collecting the money they paid in.)

I'm sick to death of people who simultaneously benefit from the system and refuse to admit that they are also part of the problem. Collect your money and then go thank the current workers and please to be shutting up.

"We hear little about the money the corporations vanish into offshore tax havens. The amounts challenge belief. If a good portion of that money could be returned and be properly taxed, none of us would have to pay taxes at all." -- Jefe

But we would still have to pay those taxes. We'd pay them in the form of higher prices on the products and services we buy.

Corporations don't actually pay taxes. They pass costs of doing business to their customers (or they go out of business). A company that does not recoup its costs in the revenue it receives does not stay in business very long.

That money moved offshore enables corporations to avoid high US corporate taxes (costs) which enables them to reduce costs and keep their product prices competitive and stay in business and employ people.

If they can't keep their money offshore, they'll keep their operations offshore ... and your job offshore.

A company may decide to get by with slightly lower profits, but not for long. Companies can't afford to give up profits. Profits are rolled back into the company to invest in research and development of new products or sources of revenue, upgrading old equipment and facilities, or paying dividends to encourage outside investment. There's not some Scrooge McDuck rolling around in piles of money giggling insanely.

You the end-user pay all the taxes, whether in income taxes or sales taxes or higher product prices.

His number 4 says there should be a cap on the rate of growth of government spending.

What we need is a cap on government spending.

Historically since 1946 the feds have managed to pull in about 18% of GDP. That's all revenue sources - income tax, tariffs, use fees, payroll taxes, leasing resource rights, etc. . .

That tells you how much the feds can afford to spend.

This would work better than a Balanced Budget Agreement, because it would act as a decision forcing measure rather than a reason to raise taxes.

Congress would have to choose where to spend the money. This is a big change from today's, "spend the money now and worry about paying for it later." mindset.

To add to what Conan said about corporations not paying taxes, their customers do...

There is a kind of involuntary hypocrisy running around the country. It's displayed by those complaining about corporate or other foreign bank accounts being used to shield against taxes -- while wearing clothes made overseas. Never thought about that, did you? Just looked at the price at WalMart, and went, "I gotta have one of those!"

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By the way: I got a look at another facet of the effects of automation on the workforce last weekend, at the Performance Racing Industry trade show in Orlando. Robotics is down to the low six figures for more and more repair, painting and custom parts manufacturing tasks. I saw a scanner plot the coordinates of car sheetmetal within .001", and another set of robots from ABB was doing a show-n-tell for the audience, while dispensing drinks and key rings.
What this means is that as time goes by, even in the USA fewer and fewer actual workers are needed, and that conventional monetary measurements of work, like hourly wages, are inching towards uselessness.

It is a waste of time to apply band-aids.

The problem is too much federal govt. This means restoring the constitution. 1) Repeal the amendment that allows the federal govt to levy income tax 2) Repeal the amendment that allows the popular election of senators (senators use to be designated by state legislatures. Both those amendments made a dramatic power shift to Wash DC. Until that power shift undone everything else is a band aid applied to arterial bleeding.

By the way, you don't want Number 7 ... ever!

Even a 5% VAT can end up costing a consumer 20%-30% when all the added taxes are rolled into the final product cost.

In a simple models, a Value Added Tax (VAT) means that the producer of the raw materials adds 5% when he sells it to the processor. Then the processor adds 5% (based on the "added" value) when he sells it to the manufacturer. Then the manufacturer adds 5% on the "added value" when he sells it to the retailer. And, of course, the retailer adds 5% when he sells it to the consumer.

Just to calculate the "added value" and report to the government means a lot bookkeepers (more costs for the consumer to pay).

European companies spend a great deal of money and effort tracking and reporting (and often avoiding) the VAT. And the consumer ultimately pays the cost of the additional accountants and lawyers required.

And if you think a VAT will "get at" the underground economy, you're dreaming. Avoinding the VAT is the prime reason Europe has an underground economy.

Smuggling to avoid the VAT is a major industry in Europe. You, the taxpayer, pay for the customs agents, police, and other machinery of tracking and investigating smuggling; plus the costs related to the violence that always comes along for the ride.

"Historically since 1946 the feds have managed to pull in about 18% of GDP. "

I don't think that will work as a standard. All it will do is lead to the definition of GDP being gamed, as we're seeing the definition of unemployment being gamed now. I'm pretty well convinced that the only thing that will work is a no-exceptions hard limit. My proposal is a limit based on population, with no adjustments for inflation allowed. Last year's federal per capita spending was $737,000. If we assume that current spending needs to be cut by, say, 20%, we get $590,000.

(Incidentally, income tax accounted for 55% of last year's revenue. FICA tax accounted for 35%. All of the other taxes, fees, and fines that the federal government collected amounted to 10%.)

Radwaste, your comments on automation are interesting. I'm just curious, what do you see the USA being like in 25 years or so?

Cornerdemon:

I have no idea. If we were sitting at a sidewalk café in Frankfurt in 1937, and I told you that in ten years everything around us would be rubble and tens of millions dead because the guy yelling about hope and change was nuts to blame Jews and the financial market for everything bad, you'd have me forcibly medicated.

Every generation has thought itself too smart to get into war.

The dollar won't be anything like we think now, because we have allowed derivatives and speculation to influence it.

I've never bought the idea that we would have flying cars by {name year here}, because I know something about people. They do not want to learn. Anything. Agent K was right: "A person is smart. People are dumb, dangerous, panicky animals and you know it."

That's the long way to say, "police state". Look at California, where a people claiming to be "free" prohibits the purchase of PVC without a license and shouts down the politically incorrect.

I dunno.

The fact that you quoted Men in Black in your response makes me love you. So much.

I don't think we're too smart to get into war. I think, in fact, that we're coming up on the dumbest generation yet. There's going to be a worldwide catastrophe that future generations will be able to point to and say "Hey, look at what those idiots did and how they ignored the warning signs." I just hope that I'll still be alive to see the world start fixing itself. Doubt it. I think I'll be long dead before everything comes to rights.

But money and currency is changing so fast and I do wonder what the state of it will be come 25-50 years. I agree with you - it won't be the way it is now.

I'll make a couple of predictions... some of which are already partly true.

Dire consequences will do nothing to discourage those people convinced that if you just call the turd by a different name, you can polish it. These people will have to be ignored instead of elected just because they tell pretty stories.

Pensions will go away. Those that are fully funded will reduce services from public agencies so far that people will flee the area they serve (think Flint, MI).

Gas will not be for sale to private citizens. While American measures to force Americans to abandon the dually pickup for getting groceries succeeds, demand everywhere else on Earth will meet capacity. Think $9/gallon for police and ambulance fuel.

As a result of the fuel thing, somebody will finally wise up and notice that office workers don't have to leave the house. Company multimedia computers (already capable) will take the place of all but special occasions for personal travel. Yes, the camera in your home office will tell them when you're at work.

Somebody will notice that CNN and its ilk just provide entertainment, and that 20 talking heads just repeat what one guy on the scene found out - but they do it breathlessly! and! its! important! that! you! hear! this! this! way! - so viewership dies entirely, replaced by Twitternews.

I have hope that the geniuses will not be killed, as they have for millennia, by mobs. I came along after radio was invented, but I've seen the laser and the ion drive deployed. A Next Big Leap, I hope, regards either reactionless drive or access to other-than-normal space, because the fastest we can go in this realm is about 1/3C - or induced gammas from incidental collision with interstellar gases irradiates the crew. If there isn't a Big Leap, nobody is getting off this rock before either the majority of us die from the expenditure of natural resources or the ability to escape is lost due to the same depletion. Remember that 9 of 10 of us can do nothing to help while eating, eating, eating those resources. The majority of us aren't leaving, period, for the same reason Noah didn't do anything for real: mass.

Maybe, just maybe, an extinction event occurs, letting the planet start to recharge; we're using resources which took billions of years to deposit. It takes a guy with a saw thirty seconds to undo a tree that took 200 years to build, etc.

Because the public itself has rewarded goon after goon for selfishness and partisanship, the number of laws and regulations will reach the point enforcement is not possible except arbitrarily. This results in widespread disregard for any process of law. Oddly, one result of this is the return of law and order, based on individual value to a community; no longer are the thug and the saint treated the same.

An election is invalidated because the candidate is revealed to be a clone. Of Al Gore. The natural choice.

Popular vote is removed from Presidential elections, thus conforming to the Constitution.

Apple stock passes $1000/share. People marvel at the idea Microsoft used to have, that it was a good idea to have 100 different vendors build, really, the same damned thing, leaving users to figure out problems. People laugh at the idea that an industry developed to deal with computer problems was a good idea, instead of abject quality-control failure.

With the death of the private gas-powered automobile and the advent of cheap robotics, custom shops provide accessory packages to the three vehicles now made - the Car, the Van, the Truck. After all, there was really only one engineering solution to a given automotive task. The electric cars now map terrain, talk to each other and to the traffic system, even recognizing stop signs and lights. This really irks people who bought big trucks to make fashion statements or assert things about their penis, but speeds traffic in town to the point people are scared at first.

A breakdown in the American fiscal system means a halt to food production and marketing to much of the world. Already over two billion people depend on Western systems, and they face starvation. Actions modeled on the currently popular scheme, "feed the needy", fail because this, as always, merely produces more mouths to feed who also cannot feed themselves.

An atom bomb detonation without the ability to determine its source panics the entire USA, and a million die in the rush to leave cities, as mobs do not care at all that no place else is ever ready to accept them.

There's more, but now I'm depressed. Ick.

Well, except for one thing: Law schools will teach the Thedala Magee case as an example that quasi-legal forces, however uniformed, do not convey special rights or powers to their agents in violation of the Constitution; comparisons are made to the Nuremburg trials to point out what any educated, responsible citizen should have known: you cannot be ordered to perform an illegal act, and if you do, the penalty can be extreme based on the idea that if you knew enough to exercise the powers of office, you were obliged to observe limits on them.

VAT's a bad idea for several reasons. Additional bookkeeping and it will swell to 25% instantly. And expect it to be progressive: "luxury" goods will be taxed at 50% or higher. You're thinking, "so what? I don't own a yacht!" but how about... cell phones? While most people are dropping their landlines which are more expensive now than many basic mobile plans, they are taxed as "luxury" goods. This is how the AMT was introduced and will soon include most middle class Americans.

The best simple law is a property tax. It's hard to shelter as well since you can't "smurf" your property through multiple dummy corporations or trusts. However, it would have a significant impact upon bank deposits. I would pull out all my money out of a bank if I was LOSING money per year in property taxes versus gaining it in interest. But then, would the IRS come after me if I bought something in cash and demanded to know where the money came from and whether I could prove I paid "property" taxes on it?

The idea of using defense department cutback "savings" to pay for intrastructure is nothing new. The left has for years proposed that if they eliminated the defense department, they could all have Swedish style socialism for "free". Not so. There's just not that much money there.