What are you ideas to help the country turn around

[Jdriller]

I am tired of liberals and conservatives bashing each other, complaing about things and not doing anything to turn the ecomony around. What we need are ideas to improve things, to get jobs created, to really stimulate the economy. What are your ideas to help make it better.

I had a dream once. If I work hard, and smart, get an education I could make a lot of money and live the good life. Little did I know that my taxes would be 35% or so for income tax, almost 13% more for self employment tax, plus probably 25% more for real estate taxes on my properties and home. Add it up, that’s about 75% of my income that goes to the tax man. So if I make 275,000 before taxes, about 206,000 goes for taxes and leaves me about 70,00.00 spendable money. 75.00 out of every 100.00 I earn goes to some form of tax payment. The so called rich do pay 85% of the taxes paid to the IRS each year.
Imagine…..if you could keep 85% of what you make. You could expand your business, hire more people, buy new equipment, splurge and buy a newer, nicer car. Save money for your old age or to leave to your kids (although if Obama and the Demos get their way the money you saved but already paid taxes on, the investments you made but already paid taxes on will be taxed via the Estate tax at 80%, so they (the kids) end up with next to nothing from the life time you spend building a nest egg for your family) If you could expand your business, hire more people, buy lots of things then the economy would rebound, jobs would be created, factories would make stuff and they would hire more people.
I own a business. In the process I support via a payroll 16 employees. I also help out a half dozen or so friends and people I know on a regular basis when times get tough for them. I hire several people to repair and maintain my rental properties. All in all I probably help support more than 25 other people.
I don’t mind my taxes helping people in need or in trouble for awhile until they get back on their feet. But I do mind supporting them for the rest of their lives, and their kids grow up expecting the government to support them too. People get fired, lose their homes and can’t get on housing because there are 10,000 on the waiting list and they don’t have anything for more than 2 years. Those people need help now, not two years from now. But the people that got there first have it all tied up and stay on the program for years and years I don’t know the answers. Maybe time limits for welfare for able bodied healthy people (not the disabled though). Maybe we should not build million dollar elementary school buildings. Maybe there are too many administrators in the schools systems compared to teachers. Maybe we should not spend over $100,000 to change the signs on Delarosa Street (especially when 75% of the people don’t want the name change). How many billions of dollars go to support people in this country illegally. How many billions of dollars are wasted supporting wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya . How many roads could be built, how many student grants could be made with all the wasted tax dollars. How many tax dollars are wasted subsidizing ethanol made from corn, thus creating a food shortage worldwide, just to make a fuel that is 25% less efficient than gasoline while giving tax credits to people to buy cars they would not otherwise buy. (let the market determine what people want to buy when it comes to cars and lots of other things). Why should companies that take their factories to China, or Mexico get tax breaks for those investments. I think they should disallow tax breaks, if they are made to build factories overseas and give more breaks for expanding here in this country. If you want to stimulate the country (1) do not raise taxes, lower them (2) reduce waste where ever you can (3) eliminate tax breaks for investments made overseas and raise them for investments made in the USA (4) expand our domestic oil production….we can produce enough to be free of foreign oil (5) stop the inflex of illegal immigrants by catching them and sending them back, by going after the companies that pay them low wages under the table (fine the shit out of them, send some management to jail, make it unwise to hire illegals) (6) get rid of socialized medicine and Obamacare….it is wasteful, unhealthy and not needed (maybe a group of PPO plans, bid out by the insurance companies with pre existing conditions accepted without more than a 10% surcharge, and available to everyone at a group rate would work better) There is a lot right with this country, but there is a lot going wrong too. 3 years after Bush unemployment is still about 9% (if you count the people still trying to get a job and closer to 16% if you count the ones who have given up). Factory orders are down or sluggish, salaries are frozen or reduced for those who are lucky enough to have a job. History tells us eventually the economy will rebound and good times will return, probably in spite of what the politicians do.

[incognito isis]

I think we need to get off oil dependency as much as possible.

[Jdriller]

But how do we get off oil dependancy. Drill in the gulf, drill wherever there is oil, build refineries. What about all the red tape, restrictions? More Nuclear plants?

[Sidewinder]

Somehow, every other nation in the free world that operates nuclear reactors manages to demonstrate that nuclear power is by far the safest power technology known to Man, and one of the most economical. It is some kind of commentary on the United States government that we have allowed lawyers to make it the most expensive technology here, and it is some kind of commentary on our educational system that we have allowed the Greens to convince everyone that nuclear power is horribly dangerous, far more dangerous than coal.

(One organic farm in Germany has killed more people than Fukushima Daiichi and the recent Gulf oil spill COMBINED.)

Some years back, I saw an interesting chart. It showed US domestic oil production and consumption. Interestingly enough, if we could find a way to roll our domestic oil consumption back a few years, while keeping production where it was at that time, we would have been able to supply ALL of our oil demands with ONLY domestic oil. (This would have had the nice side-effect of allowing us to tell the entire Middle East to eat their sand and drink their oil. Or go get in bed with China.)

It has been documented for years, and it is FINALLY starting to get general airplay, that coal-fired plants emit FAR more radiation than nuclear plants are allowed to emit. If coal-fired plants were required to observe the radiation limits imposed on nuclear plants, there would not be a coal burner running anywhere in the country.

[Marshall]

repeal 17th Amendment and impose term limits

[Iaintliein]

1. Legalize and tax non-man made recreational drugs.

2. Replace income tax with federal sales tax.

3. Sell all federal assets not directly needed to fulfill only those functions specifically enumerated in the Constitution for the federal government. Use the proceeds to pay current commitments in SS and Medicare/

caide, and discontinue the programs.

4. End all foreign aid.

5. End all "humanitarian" missions for the US military outside the borders of the US.

6. Mothball six carrier battle groups. De-emphasize development and deployment of manned combat aircraft in favor of unmanned combat aircraft.

7. Publicly and officially proclaim our willingness to use both tactical and nuclear weapons to re-establish their deterence.

8. Face up to the fact that all world currencies, de facto, are on the petroleum standard and remove all unreasonable obstacles to becoming a next exporter of oil.

9. Return all armed forces from advance bases and re-task them to patrol our borders.

10. Impose import tariffs on all trading "partners" who do not open their markets to US goods and to those who use what is essentially slave labor.

11. Re-establish the republic by repeal of the 17th amendment.

12. Combine and streamline the command structure of the US military away from the separate branch system toward a unified defense force model.

13. Repeal Obamacare, eliminate HUD, DEA, Education Dept, BLM, BATF, Fannie, Freddie, and the Federal Reserve. Forcefully reacquaint EPA and FDA with their core missions.

[Houman]

Some fine ideas I concur with many, most especially the repleal of the 17th ammendment. I belive Paul Ryan has shown true moral courage by taking the first step presenting his plan. His plan would be a fine common sense first step. Many more after that.

[KristenDiAngelo]

That's right....buy American!

[John Bull]

by Sidewinder: Somehow, every other nation in the free world that operates nuclear reactors manages to demonstrate that nuclear power is by far the safest power technology known to Man,

It is so hard to make sense of a statement like that. Do you remember Chernobyl! Three Mile Island? Japan? The cleanup messes in Piketon OH? The mountain out west that won't be clean of radiation for over 200,000 years? The close calls that the govt hid until years later?
Yeah boy! Let's have some more of those so some poor bastard 10000 years from now can trip, fall down an unmarked hole and come up glowing like the sun. Oh yeah, I really want more of those.

[Iaintliein]

Originally Posted by John Bull

It is so hard to make sense of a statement like that. Do you remember Chernobyl! Three Mile Island? Japan? The cleanup messes in Piketon OH? The mountain out west that won't be clean of radiation for over 200,000 years? The close calls that the govt hid until years later?
Yeah boy! Let's have some more of those so some poor bastard 10000 years from now can trip, fall down an unmarked hole and come up glowing like the sun. Oh yeah, I really want more of those.

Far, far more people have died in coal mining, oil and gas drilling that all of the instances you site, combined. In fact, over the last several years more people have been killed by accidents involving wind turbines than nuclear plants. The poster you quote said nothing about "cost" he said it was safer.

[Fast Gunn]

I think what we need to do most as a country is to restore our financial house.

Like an undisciplined consumer who keeps adding to his balance, this country is doing basically the same thing and borrowing more to pay the minimum on the massive debt we have piled up.

As maligned as he was, Clinton left this country with a surplus. A surplus now only seems like a distant memory.

Unfortunately, the idiot cowboy who came after him spent all that money and much more we did not even have on foolish wars that we had no business entering in the first place.

The entire world seems to have gone insane.

Greece is on the verge of bankruptcy and the EU is still trying to figure out how to bail that country out of the mess it is in.

We need to start living within our means and remember what it means to be thrifty again.

No other country can bail out the United States.

We have to do that Herculean task ourselves, but at least President Obama has finally pointed us in the right direction.

. . . Now we need to finish the job and restore order to our financial house.

[Iaintliein]

Originally Posted by Fast Gunn

I think what we need to do most as a country is to restore our financial house.

Like an undisciplined consumer who keeps adding to his balance, this country is doing basically the same thing and borrowing more to pay the minimum on the massive debt we have piled up.

As maligned as he was, Clinton left this country with a surplus. A surplus now only seems like a distant memory.

Unfortunately, the idiot cowboy who came after him spent all that money and much more we did not even have on foolish wars that we had no business entering in the first place.

The entire world seems to have gone insane.

Greece is on the verge of bankruptcy and the EU is still trying to figure out how to bail that country out of the mess it is in.

We need to start living within our means and remember what it means to be thrifty again.

No other country can bail out the United States.

We have to do that Herculean task ourselves, but at least President Obama has finally pointed us in the right direction.

. . . Now we need to finish the job and restore order to our financial house.

Neither Clinton nor Bush ever wrote a budget.

And your contention that we must "get our financial house in order" by following the most worst offender of fiscal common sense in history is just beyond the pale.

[Fast Gunn]

I consider myself an independent thinker, but you sir, sound like a dyed-in-the-wool Republican.

It always surprises me when people vociferously do not support President Obama, but then there many people who did not support President Lincoln or President Kennedy at the time either.

. . . It took many generations for the common people to finally realize how good some Presidents were for this country.

[guest061212-1]

Get out of all these wars, get off our dependency on foreign oil, legalize/decriminalize drugs like Portugal did, legalize the hobby, bring our education system back up to high standards, and make myself czar of the country.

[JONBALLS]

J.G., I need cash NOW!!!