One of the most pressing issues during the past year and a half is the deficit. No one can deny that the United States has been spending far, far more than it can afford, and has not been doing enough to recoup the money it spends.
My task here is not to laugh at conservatives as they take $1.2 billion in earmarks after campaigning heavily upon the promise to cut or eliminate them entirely, but rather to figure out a way to make serious headway into this enormous problem.
I am guided by two facts: 1) There are things the government needs to spend money on, and 2) We are in a recession. Ideally, I would recommend that we wait until the economy recovers before we attempt to fix this problem (a suggestion advanced by Paul Krugman of the NYTimes), but I will do my best considering the fact that circumstances are less than ideal.
The first thing I would do is order a massive government study of the effectiveness of all programs over the past 20 years. I would use this to decide which programs to cut entirely. Then I would ask which programs could be reduced by 10-25% with minimal impact to society (under this category would be Social Security, Medicare, Disability, and Prescription Drug programs for the elderly).
Also on this point, the fact remains that Medicare fraud is an enormous problem that costs the government a significant amount of money. To combat this, a comprehensive database should be set up in order to check the frequency of prescription refills and doctors visits complaining of similar symptoms. For example, certain medications are given in certain amounts. The medication I took for a long time gave me 30 pills per prescription. Now, using this knowledge, it would be quite easy to figure out who is either abusing their medication--or, worse, selling it--by the frequency with which they had their prescription filled and how many pills were dispensed, and the frequency with which these pills should be taken (X times/day). All of the information required is already available, but we currently do not combine it in a way such that we could effectively combat fraud.
Before anyone makes the outlandish claim about the government tracking them, this would apply for people who registered for the program, ie it is voluntary, and the government should take responsibility to protect public money from fraud. No one's access to medical services would be severed until there was justification to do so (evidence of fraud).
On the other side, there is a way to prevent doctors from over-prescribing procedures and medications unnecessarily, and this is quite frequent where the elderly are concerned. While the elderly do need medical services more than any other demographic, it is also true that doctors do wish to see them more than necessary. As an example, my grandmother, who has, as of yet, short-term memory loss, had three physicals and two flu shots in one month, and then her GP asked her to return again two weeks later even though there were no outstanding physical problems.
To correct this issue, my father provided an excellent suggestion: Give general practitioners a yearly spending threshold--not a cap, because I don't think money should be cut off if someone does has a serious problem--and give them an incentive for staying below that threshold. It would be, as I described the idea back to my father--as he is a salesman--the inverse of a sales goal: Instead of a sales goal like he has, where he is rewarded for surpassing it, doctors should be rewarded for staying below the threshold. What this threshold should be would of course be left up to experts who understand the medical profession, but, ideally, not be beholden to it.
I would cut some military spending. I realize that R&D is vital to the military, as it is in civilian science, but it is also true that the military develops things that it doesn't use, such as the Crowd Disperser weapon, which relies on microwaves to make people uncomfortable. I would fund only the most essential projects that the military is most interested in with a guarantee that they would see use on the battlefield.
We would have to remove our soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq entirely as soon as humanly possible. The current cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is $1.08 trillion. This is a little less than half of total healthcare costs in 2009 ($2.5 trillion)1. This analysis is not taking into account the political consequences of premature departure in the region, but is merely interested in the war's monetary cost for the sake of the analysis of the deficit.
I would use the same guiding principle in civilian science: Only the most promising and the most useful studies--such as those pertaining to cancer research, transplants, and AIDS--would be funded.
I would massively cut foreign aid. Keep in mind that the United States gives a lot of money to countries that abuse their power in the region, and/or hate the hand that feeds them. I would cut all foreign aid to the Middle East--especially to Israel, whom we now recognize as an oppressor and is undeserving of the blank check it receives from us.
I would revoke the subsidies given to the oil industry, and invest that money into clean energy. This would, in a decade or two, give the United States significantly more leverage in the Middle East.
Now for the most uncomfortable aspect of this issue. I agree that it would be unreasonable to expect a surplus after cutting spending alone. I further believe that the wealthiest Americans should pay more in taxes, as they also derive benefits from society. On page 135 of Hot, Flat, & Crowded , Tom Friedman puts the problem in perspective by comparing the American War for Independence with the oil states in the Middle East, advocating a kind of pay-to-play system: Paying one's taxes ensures that he has a say and can be represented in government. This is kind of an offshoot also of Social Contract Theory in the way that representation is established. To demonstrate, Tom Friedman writes, "The motto of the American Revolution was 'No Taxation Without Representation.' The motto of the petrolist authoritarian state is "No taxation, so no representation, either.' Oil-backed regimes can just drill an oil well and sell the oil abroad--also they do not have listen to their people or represent their wishes."2
Alexis de Tocqueville spends a lot of time in Democracy in America talking about the lack of influence the aristocracy has in the government, but by now it should be immediately obvious to anyone who pays attention to current events that what would be considered the aristocracy has gotten involved in politics to an unprecedented degree. This is not to say that rich people have themselves personally been elected to office, but they have more or less bought candidates wholesale. No other explanation is sufficient enough to justify why the current GOP senators are holding tax cuts we should put in place (those for middle-class Americans) hostage in exchange for tax cuts for people who not only do not need them, but will not use them to stimulate the economy (a fact we have known since the 1980s; specifically, Trickle-Down Economics).
Furthermore, the wealthiest Americans are not working for the society at large, but are merely manipulating the system in order to preserve themselves, often at the expense of the rest of the population. It would be naive to say that the wealthiest Americans really think that deregulation will help anyone else but them, because where they sit, no one else even exists. They are protected against the hardships of unemployment and even their own employees, who now possess little or no job security at all. Furthermore, the wealthiest Americans absolutely fail to recognize that the decisions they made during the previous two decades which plunged the nation--and the world--into a maelstrom of economic catastrophe warrant punishment.
Also of significance is the fact that most businesses in the United States pay no income tax. The NYTimes states that "Two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005, according to a report released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress."3 And yet businesses are still outsourcing overseas. They do not contribute to the system. Critics say that higher taxes will force businesses to leave the United States, but it really doesn't matter, as they outsource even when they don't pay income taxes. I doubt arguments from nationalism could work on such people, as all they seem to care about is the profit margin. If I am again to use Social Contract Theory as the basis for my system, I would have to say that in order to stay, they should have to pay their share.
But that's just it: They don't care where they go as long as they don't have to pay, and for this society generally should feel the most profound disgust, but like anything else that isn't green and made of paper, that too means nothing.
Of course, none of this helps society. If they have to pay taxes, they will leave, but if they don't pay taxes, they aren't helping. And yet they are still able to gear the system to their own ends.
However, to characterize the aristocracy as a greedy class callous and even destructive toward democracy is unfair, but only slightly; there are a few wealthy Americans who understand that they must do something to help the rest of the nation, and here I give them special mention. But it is also true that they are a very small minority among this class. For every 1 Warren Buffett, there are about 10 Donald Trumps.
The extent to which the aristocracy should have to pay taxes should be determined mostly by the difference in spending cuts in order to reach a reasonable goal that would get us on track to regaining a significant surplus in the next 10-15 years, and by the extent of the damage done to the economy. I make no pretensions that the aristocracy should be severely punished not only for their responsibility for economic catastrophe, but also their willful impotence in fixing it.
All of the measures I have thus far provided restricting in military and science spending would be in place for a projected 10-15 years. Foreign aid programs would be restricted temporarily, but with scrupulous oversight, taking into consideration its effectiveness and the politics of the region, especially in the Middle East, where money intended for aid is returned to us in bullets.
This is not to say that I am comfortable with all of these measures. I deem science to be extremely essential to our society, and to see it be restricted in this way--even temporarily--is very painful. But it is something I would be willing to support if it meant the preservation of our superpower status in the future. We would also, of course, feel extreme pain as the subsidies given to oil are revoked. This is something I would also be willing to do. I would personally be willing to pay more for energy in the short term to gain cheaper energy later, and as well be assured that I would be contributing far less to the destruction of the environment. Furthermore, this short-term pain would lead to greater national independence in the future, as I have often said: We would no longer be so dependent--or at all dependent--on energy that poisons the environment and comes from people who want to kill us. By relinquishing oil for cleaner energy, our leverage on the international stage would be enormous, and no longer would we be drawn into conflagrations that are the indirect result of our consumption habits. Not only would we have almost nothing to do with the Middle East, but I dare say that our roles would be reversed: They would either depend upon us for foreign aid to even survive, or forced to become democratic as the despotic regimes failed to support themselves. If the former occurred, terrorism from the region would cease almost overnight.
As I am willing to give, the aristocracy and its representative party must also be willing to give. If the aristocracy is not able or willing to contribute to society, then I very much doubt that we would be at all successful--or at least to the degree that we desire.
1) http://www.prohealthlab.org/prohealth-lab-newsletter/newsletter-archive/141-us-healthcare-costs-rise-sharply
2) Friedman, Tom Hot, Flat, & Crowded Picador Press New York 2005
3) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/business/13tax.html
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