The deficit

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Great post Embar. I agree with everything you said except the mortgage interest deduction. I think we should keep it forever and ever.

I'd go one step farther on the tax-and-regulate issue for illegal substances. I'd legalize them ALL and tax the shit out of them.

My reasons:

1. People are going to do them (meth, heroin, etc.) anyway, so society might as well see some money from it.

2. We save not only the money in enforcing unjust laws, but lots of the ancillary crime like burgleries go way down, not to mention being a death blow to the drug cartels.

3. We can use some of that money for education and treatment. We're more likely to help some of those people get clean when we can stop treating them like criminals and more like the people with an illness they really are.

[Kulaf]

You are never going to get rid of tax cheats however. Unless you control the supply through companies you cannot collect the taxes. If Jimmy meth-head can still brew up a batch in his house what incentive is there for him to pay taxes? He certainly might collect them from his end customers and just use it to fatten his bottom line. If you legalize pot you will see corporate farms raising the stuff and driving the price so low it won't make sense to grow your own. But can you really envision Pfizer making meth or heroin and selling it in a pharmacy? I can't.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I can grow as much tobacco I want without being taxed. I could also brew enough beer to keep the whole neighborhood drunk 24/7, so why should any other substance be any different?

I should be able to grow my own opium poppies, and hell, if I know what I'm doing then even meth should be no different. But I would see meth as an extreme case. Certainly any plant that can grow in my garden should be legal to grow in my garden. Heh, right next to the Cilantro and Lemon Basil.

I always found it ironic that good ole conservative, God-fearing folk should have a problem possessing something that was invented by God, while they're perfectly OK with a doctor prescribing nacotic pain killers made in a lab.

And I wouldn't see the big pharma companies having a problem with producing street drugs seeing that they already produce drugs very close in chemical composition. And I believe they do produce heroin in limited quantities. Certainly heroin's close cousins morphine and demerol are produced legally in massive quantities.

But someone will step in and fill the void if these things are ever legalized.

Certainly the war on drugs is a dismal failure. The amount of money wasted on it is completely staggering. And it's not even about anything to do with public welfare. That went out the window long ago. No, it's about local communities getting federal funding. I read somewhere where a politician said something like "the war on drugs isn't winnable, but it's infinitely fundable."

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Oh, and we're not just throwing away our money on our own war on drugs. We're giving countries like Columbia billions to fight their own war on drugs in an impossible attempt to keep drugs produced by those countries out of our country. The ironic thing is all we're doing is driving the prices up, which makes the cartels even richer.

We give Mexico billions for their war on drugs. Yeah, how's that working out.

So we have this dynamic where too many people have a vested interest (funding) in perpetuating the problem. The war on drugs literally creates the problems it was meant to solve.

[Ddrak]

Gas guzzlers is easy to fix - just add a $3/gal federal tax on all oil-based fuel, then rebate companies for their business-related costs. Divert at least 10% of that to public transport infrastructure and alternate energy research.

I dunno how much you'd save legalizing drugs (not that I'm against it, more neutral). Some costs would have to go to the increased medical costs as you'd see an increase in abuse cases in much the same way you see alcohol abuse. I also don't know if it would be a significant chunk of the budget.

Putting the screws on the Pentagon has always been top of my spending cuts. Everything else pales in comparison to that. They need to publish spending data as well that is at least broken down by non-secret projects. Screw the fact that it telegraphs military strength - does the US have a serious enemy that cares any more?

I would probably spend more on health - an efficient public system would be an awesome option for the US.

On tax graphs - all they really say is it's pointless taxing anyone but the top 5%. Everything else is really just making those top 5% feel not quite as picked on.

Dd

[Embar Angylwrath]

This might be a side topic, but its relative.

Another unneccessary cost is incarceration for non-violent drug offenses (possession, dealing, etc). And its hardest on this generation of black men, leaving broken families who struggle to make ends meet. And its an incredible waste of a human resource. When you have more black men ages 24-36 incarcerated than in college, thats a huge generational issue. I think Freecare mentioned this... just stop pretending that the war on drugs is working. Think of all the costs in prison space and diverted police resources. Think about how many , if not most, of those incarcerated are wasted.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

More on heatlth care, more on education, less on war of any kind, less on implements of war. We're flushing so much money down the toilet we could accomplish most of our goals if we were thrifty.

As a society we're penny wise and pound foolish. It's all about priorities, and we seem to be collectively selecting the wrong ones /shrug.

Oh well, at least we still have humor:

Article: "Should the government stop dumping money in a giant hole?"

http://www.theonion.com/video/in-the-kn ... mon,14289/

[Kulaf]

This might be a side topic, but its relative.

Another unneccessary cost is incarceration for non-violent drug offenses (possession, dealing, etc). And its hardest on this generation of black men, leaving broken families who struggle to make ends meet. And its an incredible waste of a human resource. When you have more black men ages 24-36 incarcerated than in college, thats a huge generational issue. I think Freecare mentioned this... just stop pretending that the war on drugs is working. Think of all the costs in prison space and diverted police resources. Think about how many , if not most, of those incarcerated are wasted.

That's a cop out. The issue there is one of opportunity not incarceration. If your urban youth saw a way off the "urban plantation" they would take it. The problem is it's not there. Rather than reduce drug sentencing divert money into creating opportunity.

[Lurker]

I feel like I've fallen through a wormhole and into another reality.

[Embar Angylwrath]

This might be a side topic, but its relative.

Another unneccessary cost is incarceration for non-violent drug offenses (possession, dealing, etc). And its hardest on this generation of black men, leaving broken families who struggle to make ends meet. And its an incredible waste of a human resource. When you have more black men ages 24-36 incarcerated than in college, thats a huge generational issue. I think Freecare mentioned this... just stop pretending that the war on drugs is working. Think of all the costs in prison space and diverted police resources. Think about how many , if not most, of those incarcerated are wasted.

That's a cop out. The issue there is one of opportunity not incarceration. If your urban youth saw a way off the "urban plantation" they would take it. The problem is it's not there. Rather than reduce drug sentencing divert money into creating opportunity.

By itself its a cop out, but re-read my post on providing incentives for better teachers to move into pooper performing districts. They key to breaking the cycle of institutionalized poverty is multi-fold for blacks, and involves
1. Stop treating them as if they need continued assistance, which just reinforces inferiority;
2. Get better teachers into the schools (but that means eliminating or radically changing the teacher's unions)
3. Putting a rehabilitation component back into the prison system for non-violent offenders.

[Jarochai Alabaster]

What's the existing issue with teacher's unions? All I've heard is that they enforce a "seniority" model in which teachers with seniority in the district get first bid on open positions, thus typically placing the most experienced teachers into the easiest schools.

[Embar Angylwrath]

What's the existing issue with teacher's unions? All I've heard is that they enforce a "seniority" model in which teachers with seniority in the district get first bid on open positions, thus typically placing the most experienced teachers into the easiest schools.

They vehemently resist any type of teacher evaluation criteria linked to student performance. And they resist the elimination of tenure, which makes it almost impossible to get rid of bad teachers. Its a pretty sweet deal... no real perfomance accountability, and once you make it past the tenure period (2-3 years in most cases), you're practically guaranteed a job, no matter how bad of a teacher you are.

[Kulaf]

I feel like I've fallen through a wormhole and into another reality.

Why? Because you never try to engage us on anything other than "Bush's reckless tax cuts" to find out how deeply we feel about other issues? I for one have posted many many times about creating urban opportunity. And while I am against dirrect redistribution of wealth like the Earned Income Credit I am all about taking money to revitalize our urban centers and previously impoverished areas to create the environment that gives people hope and affords them the oppotunity to succeed.. I am a big supporter of what Harlem has managed to do without a lot of federal assistance in retaking their community from the drug dealers and creating hope for its childern.

[Harlowe]

Why? Because you never try to engage us on anything other than "Bush's reckless tax cuts"

Well there goes Kulaf sending you back through the wormhole.

Come on Kulaf, first, that's not even remotely true. Second, you are just as guilty as anyone in not really trying to "engage" the other side. Lastly, the guy was making a light-hearted comment.

[Kulaf]

If it's not even remotely true......then how am I just as guilty?

[Lurker]

Why? Because you never try to engage us on anything other than "Bush's reckless tax cuts" to find out how deeply we feel about other issues?

I engage on all sorts of issues. I also talk about Bush's reckless tax cuts when the topic is taxes or deficits to highlight how stupid and hypocritical supporters of them are. That's not going to change.

Anyways, I'm interested in your thoughts on this "not Bush's reckless tax cuts" topic. So how much money do you want to divert into impoverished areas? Where is it going to come from? What will we do with it?

[Kulaf]

It can't start with us. It's sort of like an intervention. We can talk about it all we want, but bottom line is that the people in these areas have to want to change them. If we just try to toss money at the problem nothing will change. We've tried that policy over and over and it never works. It just keeps people in poverty. I would like to see the same thing happen with Welfare. Right now that system is another plantation. It gives you just enough money to stay afloat but offers no hope of getting off the program. It is institutional governmental dependency.

I would be more than willing to see a nice chunk of defense spending go to help communities that help themselves, and to get people off Welfare so that they can support themselves and their children.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

[Ddrak]

Taken out of context, that quote was clearly wrong. Look at any third world nation where the poor get less than nothing and see how "rich" they've become from it.

In truth, Franklin was actually using that as an argument to end protectionism on exports. Basically he was saying that the nation would do better selling wool overseas at a higher price than keeping it domestically to lower the local price. There's an interesting parallel there to the argument that the US should drill its own oil and sell it locally at a comparative loss to what could be gained by exporting.

Dd

[Partha]

I love the way ya'll crack on the poor to solve your budgetary problems and focus on ways to increase their problems.