Debt Ideas?

[anvi]

So, I'm in the mood to hear ideas about how we can best pay down our debt and reduce our budget deficits effectively enough to prevent long-term economic stagnation and yet cause the least plausible amount of economic disruption and carnage for the middle-class and poor.  Reducing budget deficits and rolling back our massive debt will obviously cause pain for a long time, but would like to hear your ideas about our most viable options.  Thanks. 

[© tweed]

nationalizing health care is a requisite for anything.

[opebo]

Taxation, a neglected power of the State.

[So rightwing that I broke the Political Compass!]

Shift the ratio of taxation away from labour and capital and onto higher consumption and land taxes.

[Beet]

Well, the top Keynesian ideas are as follows:

[1] Nominal increase of incomes and wages (e.g., wage-price inflation)

[2] Real economic growth, specifically, the full employment of labor

[3] Stop building up so much debt in the first place

[4] Consider private sector debt as well as public, since the two are related

[5] Avoid too much austerity all at once

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Paring down our war spending and returning to levels consistent with defense spending are one place to start, but there's not enough there to cut without being excessive.

We need to pare back on the big three of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  Implementing a gradual rise in the eligibility age of Social Security and Medicare to age 70 for both would be a start.  (Or if we do keep Medicare eligibility at age 65, increase the premiums for those under age 70.)

As for Medicaid, two big items on the Medicaid budget are long-term care for the indigent elderly and cancer treatment.  In the former, we probably should consider including the income and assets of their kids in determining whether they are actually indigent.  Granted, Medicare currently has rules intended to prevent simply giving the kids their inheritance early and then heading for the nursing home, but still, transferring assets to the kids early remains a popular estate planning mechanism, since Medicaid only considers transfers in past few years.  Second, given the high cost and low chance of success in treating certain cancers, I think we should seriously consider having Medicaid only cover palliative care in such cases.

[anvi]

I certainly agree with much of what you suggest, Ernest.  The last item about Medicaid really hits about assets of kids of the indigent elderly.  If I might be permitted a moment of personal indulgence in order to demonstrate the point:  Two of my brothers and I teamed up in January to move our mother from an assisted living arrangement into the nursing home, at her own request, as she was no longer able to accomplish even the most basic daily routines for herself.  She signed land rights for a small North Dakota family farm plot over to two of my brothers acting on the family's behalf four and a half years ago, and Medicaid asked us to pony up the market value of that transfer when she was admitted, an amount that was to be, and has since been, depleted in payment to the nursing home before Medicaid starts to pick up the tab.  An oil company has since leased the land (though they haven't found anything yet).  Speaking for myself, I'd be willing to just sell the whole plot of land to contribute to my mother's care, but my older brothers of course don't want to do that.  In any case, Medicaid constantly coming up with new hoops for us to jump through, even sometimes hoops we have already jumped through, to make sure mom qualifies for care is scary, since my family is not wealthy at all, and all my brothers and I would probably be totally busted in less than a year if we had to continue to pay for mom's chronic care out of our pockets.  I mention all this not to attention-whore or as a plea for sympathy or anything, but only to show that some of the cuts that may be deemed necessary are going to be really, really tough on people.  They may very well be necessary, though.  

[Torie]

Start with the Bowles Commission anvi, and then mix in my ideas about how to restructure healthcare and public employee pensions, and the hybridized creation will make life beautiful (well as long as you don't think to much about the public school systems) - sort of like many Eurasians. Just a thought.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

If there were easy solutions, anvi, they'd likely have already been tried.  I don't see any pain-free methods of accomplishing what needs to be done.  I picked the specific oxes I'd like to see gored first mainly because they are fairly large oxes.

[anvi]

Yeah.  I know.

[Redalgo]

Raise taxes, cut over 50% of defense spending, and enact a second round of health care reforms.

[Yelnoc]

We need to pare back on the big three of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  Implementing a gradual rise in the eligibility age of Social Security and Medicare to age 70 for both would be a start.  (Or if we do keep Medicare eligibility at age 65, increase the premiums for those under age 70.)

That's ridiculous.  If you make old people work another five years, it becomes that much harder for younger people to find jobs.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

We need to pare back on the big three of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  Implementing a gradual rise in the eligibility age of Social Security and Medicare to age 70 for both would be a start.  (Or if we do keep Medicare eligibility at age 65, increase the premiums for those under age 70.)

That's ridiculous.  If you make old people work another five years, it becomes that much harder for younger people to find jobs.

Then we either have to raise taxes or reduce the monthly and medical benefits as the current system is not sustainable. Which is your preference?

[The Simpsons Cinematic Universe]

Taxation, a neglected power of the State.

This ofc.

Crises are natural under capitalism and what's more concerning to me is whether or not the current crisis will somewhere erupt into a revolutionary situation.