three bad ideas which I think would be political winners for Democrats
Matthew Yglesias commands,
I obey. Now I just have to come up with three bad ideas.
1) $25 minimum wage. I am not sure about the $15 dollar proposal. I’m pretty sure that $25 would be too high. I guess it would be popular too.
2) Protection that’s what you’re here for . I am sure that total protectionism is a bad idea, and hinting at it worked pretty well for Trump.
3) Eliminate all taxes on the lower 99%.
I tend to wonder if maybe this isn’t such a bad idea, but I suspect that it would imply either huge deficits, undesireable cuts to Federal spending, or taxes on the top 1% which are higher than optimal.
In any case, I am rock solid certain that many Republicans are sure that Democrats are soon going to propose this and win all future elections. They wouldn’t argue against class warfare in the complete absense of any class warfare (except for theirs on behalf of the rich) if they weren’t terrified.
4) I would say health care reform with coverage of pre-existing conditions, gauranteed issue, Community rating and no mandate (to promise all the nice things without the necessary costs and destroy the individual insurance market entirely) except that Obama has already done that (the Barack Hussein Obama Jr was elected president of the USA, so don’t even think of tyring to tell me that bad policy is bad politics).
There is a way to make #3 work. Replace personal income taxes with corporate taxes. The corps are the first to tell you that their taxes will be passed on to their customers (and employees) in the form higher prices and lower wages.
That’s fine. The advantage would be that it would take away taxes as an issue for demagoguery. The corps would find their free market equilibrium: people would continue to buy at the higher prices to the extent they valued the product, and work for the lower wages to the extent they couldn’t find a better job.
The corps would undertand the taxes (and reason for them) better than “people” and could more efficiently pay them (hire the accountants), and the government would know where to go to collect the taxes.
I guess i’m serious enough about this to want to try it. but i wouldn’t be surprised to be surprised by unintended consequences.
The thing I hate to hear is the screaming coming from people who think I am hurting the corporations.
Of course, without taxes, no one would bother to vote.
Note this is not the same as “taxing the rich” which i am sorry to say is evidence of bad character and political silliness by the hard left.
coberly,
just replace all personal income tax on incomes below 200,000 with a national dividend of (initially) 750 a month, institute a VAT of 7.5% and raise gas taxes 10%. And promise to increase the national dividend, the VAT and gas taxes over 10 years.
reason
i’m all for raising the gas tax. as well as the bottle deposit. but you’d have to explain to me what each of your suggestions would accomplish in order for me to understand what you are trying to say.
i’ve gotten myself into an anti “tax the rich” mode because of the very bad effect that will have, is having, on “fixing” (in ain’t broke) Social Security, but it’s not because i love the rich. And it is very easy for me to go from Social Security to seeing how “pay for it ourselves” would work for medical care (not pay through the market, but pay for by using the advantages of scale and information the government alone can provide. i’d even be willing to put the government into direct competition with private providers… that is government program paid for by the “customers” and not by general taxes.