Tax Code That Encourages Manufacturing and Savings

[So rightwing that I broke the Political Compass!]

I personally would couple the replacement of private health insurance by Medicare(since health insurance significantly increases the cost of employment) with the replacement of all taxes with a VAT(since income taxes increase the cost of employment to an even greater extent). Additionally a VAT would fall on both imports and domestically produced goods equally(whereas corporate/income/cap gains taxes fall only on american produced goods and services).

I would also acknowledge that the manufacturing industry is shifting away from human labour towards mechanization and work to subsidize the development and adoption of technologies that enable that.

Given the substantial harm done to the poor by these policies, I would also create a negative income tax(or something comparable) to eliminate poverty and stimulate the economy through increased demand.

As for the savings side of things, the shift from income taxes to a VAT would encourage savings among the middle/upper class  while the NIT would enable savings by the poor.

[So rightwing that I broke the Political Compass!]

Sounds like Europe.

Not really. Europe has plenty of taxes on top of the VAT.... whereas I'd want to get rid of all other taxes(other then property taxes on a local and maybe state level, which I'd reform into Land Value taxes instead).

And my vision for a superior healthcare system is closer to Singapore's(the most efficient in the whole developed world at 4% of GDP) then Europe's.

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How could you start off with such a bad idea and end with such a good idea? A negative income tax would not eliminate poverty, but it would help alleviate it. I am not sure it would have much of an impact upon stimulating the economy, though.[/quote]
By definition a NIT set at the poverty line or above it would eliminate poverty. Of course this ignores the fact that cost of living varies from place to place(so a NIT set at the poverty line wouldn't lift the poor in New York out of poverty, but it would push those in suburban Utah quite far beyond poverty)... but I consider this a good thing because it would trigger the revival of the cities as the lumpenproletariat would flee urban areas for low CoL suburbs, thus triggering white flight from the suburbs into what were previously urban ghettos.

As for stimulating the economy? I'm a believer that the present economic problems can substantially be explained as a problem of insufficient demand. You presumably reject Keynesianism, so I don't think theirs much point continuing this dispute since neither of us will convince the other.

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This is my ideal, but yes I have serious doubts that anyone other then a dictator could implement it.

While we're talking my ideal it would also involve the purging of various forms of rentseeking: professional licenses, agricultural subsidies and tariffs most obviously.

Of course with the corporate tax abolished the whole "corporate personhood" idea falls apart, thus they can be stripped of their capacity to coopt and corrupt politics. And with the corporations kicked out of politics the unions can be kicked out as well(their presence only justified as a counterbalance against corporations.

While we're at it it might not be a half bad idea to obliterate the unions altogether, since with NIT and UHC they're no longer needed as a safeguard against poverty. The unions dismantled should be a major boon to industry.

Then their's the matter of education... I'd try to reverse the shift towards university degrees for jobs/fields that don't really need them; thus ending the qualification inflation throughout the econony and it's attendant consequences of increased student debt, lost years of productivity and declining quality of students on campuses

I'd also make a serious move towards upgrading the nations infrastructure.

[So rightwing that I broke the Political Compass!]

To start I too think that the Singapore system is the greatest healthcare system in the world. By any objective measure its not even close and completely trounces the one we have in the US and even more so most of Europe, but... its most definitely not Medicare taking over our healthcare system. Actually its what I call Medicare inverted because they don't have an equivalent in Singapore. Older age health costs are paid almost 100% through private money. Its young 18-20s or 30s(depending on your wealth/income) that is paid for by the government.

I agree that Singapore has the greatest healthcare system in the world. My reason for specifying Medicare is that the Singaporean method isn't even on the radar anywhere in the West while the single payer health model is, and I think that single payer is at least better then what America has now.

Also if you have the impression that Singapore's system is laissez-faire you're quite wrong. Singapore's hospitals are predominantly "government-owned corporations"(they service 70/80% of Singaporean patients) and since Singapore tightly contains their costs they function as a "public option" thats keeps the private 20/30% lean through competition.

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Yes it is: "Bill Archer, former head of the House Ways and Means Committee, asked Princeton University econometricists to survey 500 European and Asian companies regarding the impact on their business decisions if the United States enacted the FairTax. Of these companies, 400 responded that they would build their next plant in the United States while the remaining 100 companies said they would move their corporate headquarters to the United States". A VAT would of course be even better then the "Fair tax"

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I'm not an ideological Keynesian, which is to say I don't think it's 100% or even 50% of the problem... I think the best strategy is a combination of supply side and demand side strategies(coupled with methods that don't fit in either category).

Are you suggesting that lack of demand isn't a negative impact on the economy? Polls taken of American businessmen show a substantial number(can't remember the exact number but it was something like 30% or 40%) consider the no 1 problem for the businesses the fallen demand for the goods and services.

 

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I wouldn't say they're getting a "daily beating" considering how Greece's austerity strategy seems to be making it's economy weaker... my general impression is that the austerity states are getting hurt badly, while Iceland(which didn't go down the austerity root) has more or less recovered.