Blog by Aleostax

I believe the US should implement a policy of mandatory military service. I personally have not had any military training but from my perspective the military adds several positive aspects to a young person’s life. Naturally some will reject the concept of serving as I did earlier in life. I rejected for two main reasons. First, I have no interest in dying for a country that is quick to insert themselves in hostile situations, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Secondly, I have little American pride.

Do I think it was right to go into those countries, yes. I just don’t feel we should have taken them both on at the same time. Nor do I feel the concept of a few soldiers here and there will effectively solve anything. If they want Iraq stabilized, issue a half million soldiers to the region and get shit ironed out. I can’t see it taking 100 years, but it very well could take 5 to 10. Oh you don’t like Americans in your country, did you prefer your genocidal ex-president? We are spending tons of money on their country and it’s stability. No we should not be hoarding their oil, but I highly doubt they intend to repay the cost of their liberty at 1:1 ratio. As such, I believe we should be able to recoup over time 50-70% of our losses from their exports, in this case oil.

Why do I have little or no national pride? Well, why should I? People always talk about how great America is. Sadly I don’t see these awesome differences between the US and say France or China. I see an America that fails many of it’s people and continues to divide it’s classes. The electoral college is bogus as is the health system. Education sucks across the board and our dollar continues to dwindle. Sure we are the global police, but nobody asked us to be. If you want pride in your Americans show us why we should be proud. Why show the government respect when it doesn’t seem to respect us?

Back to the mandatory military service thing. I purpose we issue the following:

Every citizen must begin serving 2 consecutive years in the military between the ages of 18-25. By default, mandatory service would be non-combatant in the branch of their choice with additional benefits for serving in combat or potentially hostile environments. Citizens would receive training in their preferred fields and serve in their preferred state. Financial aid would be available for any post-service college education.

I apologize for this post. This was something of a simple and poorly constructed post, but that is in part, due to the fact that I think this link summarized the majority of my views on the subject.

Consider that having a trained nation allows for fast response militias to be formed for local defense and overall military awareness of the public.

I find it interesting the sums of money we pay our athletes and CEOs. What dictates the size of our paychecks? Why is it that athletes in different sports get paid such a wide array of money? Furthermore, how is it that people get paid more to play a game on TV than those that save lives, educate our nation or invent new technology that affect future generations? Oh that’s right we are Americans, it’s all about the individual and getting ahead of everyone else. Money is a means, it’s not an end.

There is something to be said for those willing to take the chance to bring something new to market. Willing to put in 16 hour days to make a business a success or leave their homeland to try and make something for themselves. It’s a whole different thing when money motivates you to do immoral, irrational, or illegal things. This happens on both sides of the spectrum, the poor (think Alladin) and the rich (think Enron). How someone can sleep at night knowing they literally took the life savings of multiple people is beyond me. I’m thinking some public flogging should take place on that one.

In my head I came up with a concept that could be used to help dissuade that type of activity by removing the motivator, greed. Set an income cap so that when you hit max wages all excess income is a tax liability, such that you must then donate it to charity or be penalized the amount in the following year’s tax. This would include all taxable income such as: Capital Gains, Investment growth, and any gift that can be used more than once. Imputed Rent and unpaid work would not be counted. This would be a fixed value say 1 million per year. This forces something of an umbrella effect where moneys beyond that will then fall to the non-profit organizations helping those in need. This will help businesses focus less on the individuals payroll and more on R&D or employee benefits. Without the ability to wave large sums of cash at a competitor’s employee to bring them on board, they will have to make a case for themselves by providing a better work environment or other non-monetary incentives. Granted this would only affect a small portion of people but given compound interest with investments it could help equalize the economy.

That being said, these two main posts regarding taxation may be for naught. I believe I have found a solution considerably more simple and effective than the flat tax solution. It even has my (what I thought was a semi-original) idea of not taxing Exports but raising taxation on Imports. It’s called the Fair-Tax Resolution and I’ll post on this more in the future.

A friend of mine was discussing my first post about flat taxes and was in fact one of the people that pointed out that poor people are more greatly affected by these concepts than the rest. He seemed to think I had no concept about what being poor was or that I was dismissing legitimate claims. Later in an effort to enlighten me, he sent me the following link: http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003704.html

This is a good look into the life of a poor person, so much so that it stirred some memories from my own childhood. Although some of these lines are particularly disturbing, none quite so much as this.

• Being poor is having to live with choices you didn’t know you made when you were 14 years old.

This is the one line that has incredible truth for me. I made many mistakes around this age and looking back I did a great deal of teetering and somehow managed to avoid the pitfalls I toyed with. A great deal of things “worked out” for me for no apparent reason. Was it karma, upbringing or perhaps God? I can’t say, but I can say having been through some of that shit, it sucks…Hard!

It’s not fair to say I know being poor, because every degree of poor is different and we all have personal weaknesses in specific areas. However, before any more of you start thinking that I had it easy and that I don’t fully appreciate the poor’s position in life, let me give you a few gems from my life.

• Being poor is having to crap in a hole in the ground and when the tp runs out, use a leaf.
• Being poor is eating ramon noodles for three meals a day.
• Being poor is learning the park ranger schedules so that you can take a shower with warm water.
• Being poor is taking cold showers under a spring fed water fall when the park is closed.
• Being poor is sleeping in a tent 4 feet from a dirt road, with a nice comfy tree root for a pillow.
• Being poor is having to walk 8 miles home after the 1.5 hour bus trip after school.
• Being poor is feeling fortunate enough to be treated to a fast food restaurant for my 16 birthday.
• Being poor is behaving yourself when all the adults go to work. Social Services be damned!!

Perhaps because I was a kid it was little different for me, but I’m going to take a wild guess and say that besides the stress of having to provide for others, I experienced some pretty bad shit that most people never know. It’s one thing to have roaches in your home, it’s a whole other thing not to have a home. Even so, my short time being houseless is nothing compared to those that spend decades that way without the use of a tent and reasonable personal safety.

• Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so.

I am guilty of thinking this about the poor. Perhaps it’s because I’ve  seen people dismiss their opportunities over and over.  Others completely mismanaging what income does come in. People complicating their lives by making bad choice after bad choice. The great majority of poor people I knew were victims of their own behavior. People that blew all their money on name brand name  junk food, cigarettes, alcohol, TVs, movie rentals and Lotto tickets.  People that seem to seek out the worst possible people to be around and get taken advantage of. People that can’t keep a job they are perfectly capable of doing. People that keep producing offspring even though they can’t provide for those already here.  Get a clue people, if you can’t afford clothes you can’t afford to pickup Sonic for the family!

Now, I’m not saying all poor people are this way but a great many I’ve known have suffered from one or more of the problems listed above.  The other poor people? In my experience these are generally the people that life smacks in the face. Sometimes it’s one big thing like teenage birth or perhaps cancer in a spouse that leaves a lifelong struggle to recover from. Other times it seems that whatever they do they just can’t get ahead. Loss of primary provider’s job, divorce, medical problems, loss of a child, loss of retirement funds, subsequent foreclosures, bankruptcy, perhaps even a victim of Hurricane Katrina. There will always be legitimate cases that need assistance and special circumstances to account for but it seems to me if you allow these cases to create the focal point of your decision making you are losing focus on the big picture of making the best decision for the nation as a whole.

The best way to approach the poor is to become facilitators and not just throw money at the problem. I perceive the government is treating the symptom and not the problem.  The government should create methods and agencies designed to provide for those that are trying to get out of the rut. Heavily regulate those businesses that feed on the suffering of the poor. Educate and provide carefully constructed solutions per individual.

I don’t think poor people want to be poor and I’m sure if you ask one, they’d much prefer to be rich. The thing about a poor person winning the lottery is that often within a few years they are back in trouble because they didn’t have the tools necessary to maintain and grow their finances.

It is my opinion that the tax system should be changed to a flat tax system.

I believe simplifying income tax so that 5% of your annual income goes to the state and 5% to federal is an excellent way of providing equal taxing to all classes of people while providing appropriate funding to your local and national governments. That’s 10% regardless of how rich or how poor you are. This would apply to the individual entity and would not be effected by many of the irrational tax breaks given currently. The only break I would think might be feasible is the low/no-tax poverty line.

Opponents of Flat Taxes have expressed that in reality the poor people feel the tax burden more than the rich, due to the fact that products and services cost more (percentage wise) for the low income persons than that of the higher income. However the reality is that we are all being taxed the same and while it doesn’t feel fair, it is. For those that are particularly underprivileged the poverty line would help them maneuver into a better income situation with a low/no-tax solution. However we have a lot of people in the poverty level and comfortable. Poverty should never be comfortable and creating tax breaks and welfare systems that promote laziness and incompetence isn’t the best solution. We need a solution which promotes education and self-motivation.

While I believe the costs of some products and services should be regulated differently, it isn’t part of my flat tax solution.

Businesses are entities and they too should pay taxes. They should be paying the same 10% income with 5% to state and 5% to federal just like any citizen.

Naturally there would need to be a period if transition, where those taxed above and below the mark would slowly move toward the middle. I’m thinking this should be doable within 10 years but again that’s a fairly arbitrary number, I don’t know if the economy could sustain that much change that quickly.

Due to the nature of this blog, you may find that I don’t post often or that my posts may become contrary to previous posts. Please disregard this inconsistency and post any comments on the opinions I present.

Thank you for visiting.