Quote: Original post by Talroth
Combine all businesses into sector based monopolies. Streamline everything for highest levels of productivity and public health and safety. Cut the standard work week to less than 30 hours.

Costs drop, quality improves, and people have more free time for themselves.

Creating those monopolies is basically the single best way to ensure you DON'T have high productivity, low costs, or quality products.

Quote: Original post by capn_midnight

Quote: Original post by Talroth
Combine all businesses into sector based monopolies. Streamline everything for highest levels of productivity and public health and safety. Cut the standard work week to less than 30 hours.

Costs drop, quality improves, and people have more free time for themselves.

Creating those monopolies is basically the single best way to ensure you DON'T have high productivity, low costs, or quality products.

Have you looked at the amount of crap produced with the expectation that it will be tossed in the garbage within 6-24 months? Clearly all these little companies competing against a handful of larger companies doesn't provide it either. You remove the desire for a company to make nothing but profits (Legal caps), and give them only the options of satisfying their customers or losing control of their company (Minimum quota and standards), and the only real option is things get better.

Quote: Original post by ChurchSkiz
If anyone of us was in charge of the budget for a day we could cut billions of waste.

I think the problem with that would be no two people would make the same cuts. One man's waste is another man's vital program, after all.

This FiveThirtyEight post has some analysis on the subject of government waste (or least people's perceptions of it) that you all might find interesting.

Quote: Original post by nobodynews

Quote: Original post by ChurchSkiz
If anyone of us was in charge of the budget for a day we could cut billions of waste.

I think the problem with that would be no two people would make the same cuts. One man's waste is another man's vital program, after all.

This FiveThirtyEight post has some analysis on the subject of government waste (or least people's perceptions of it) that you all might find interesting.

I'm not even talking about cutting programs, I'm talking about simple things like extending payment terms, not paying contractors who haven't delivered products, not spending money on assetts that go unused, better contract negotiations, etc.

If you've ever been involved in a government contract you know that the government always pays quickly and pays too much. Something as simple as a 5-10 day payment term increase can save billions without any political controversy.

Change the tax laws.

They need to either eliminate or remove tax breaks.

The claim is that all these tax breaks help the poor. In theory that is fine.


During the election cycle the candidates released their tax documents.

From 2001 to 2007, the Clinton's form 1040 tax returns totaled 210 pages. They also partially released their estate foundation's tax returns --- over 300 pages, plus whatever they kept back. That's an average of over 63 pages each year.

McCain's 2007 form 1040 return was 21 pages. His estate foundation was an additional 24 pages. That's 45 pages in a year.



The problem is that every tax break requires receipts and other paperwork. Poor people either cannot or do not keep the records and find every possible tax loophole. Many poor and uneducated people just fill out the simple form and take the minimum default deduction. In other words, they don't take advantage of the tax breaks. Others, especially the mainstream middle class, keep some records and take some deductions, but only a small portion of what they can probably qualify for. Even people taking boxes of receipts to a tax preparer to find all the loopholes they qualify for, and discover that they could have done things slightly differently in order to take more deductions.


A few states have eliminated tax breaks (which resulted in increased revenue) and then decreased the general tax rates. Colorado's legislature eliminated just 13 of them this year, with an estimate of an extra quarter-billion dollars in the budget.

If there were no or few tax breaks available then the overall tax rates could be greatly reduced. (Google for quite a few evaluations of it.)

Quote: Original post by ChurchSkiz
I'm anti-taxes, but I'd be just as happy if they stayed the same and we cut wasteful spending instead.

If anyone of us was in charge of the budget for a day we could cut billions of waste.

Just by practicing some basic business concepts we could cut our budget drastically.

The problem is that unlike a business, there is 0 accountability or incentive for financial savings in the government. People that waste money don't get voted out of office. There is no CEO demanding cost reductions or threatening job cuts.

If voters put pressure on fiscal responsibility and raises/bonuses were based on financial savings, we might have an entirely different country.

I think there is a lot we can agree on. Check this out: 12 No-Brainer Govt. Fixes Congress Should Implement in 2010 (Project On Government Oversight). You might not agree with every item on that list, but I bet you agree with some of them.

Quote: Original post by ChurchSkiz
I'm not even talking about cutting programs, I'm talking about simple things like extending payment terms, not paying contractors who haven't delivered products, not spending money on assetts that go unused, better contract negotiations, etc.

If you've ever been involved in a government contract you know that the government always pays quickly and pays too much. Something as simple as a 5-10 day payment term increase can save billions without any political controversy.

Yep. You would definitely agree with some of them. To wit:

Quote:
12. And of Course: Fix the Broken Federal Contracting System

Since 1981, POGO has exposed numerous problems that are the result of so-called procurement or acquisition "reforms," including cozy negotiations, inadequate competition, lack of accountability, little transparency, and risky contracting vehicles that are prone to waste, fraud, and abuse. While there have been some fixes to the federal government's contracting systems, there are many more that must be implemented.

* Increase the scope of civil, criminal, and administrative cases included in the federal contractor responsibility and performance database. Cases should include civil, criminal, and administrative proceedings resulting in the payment of a monetary fine, penalty, reimbursement, restitution, damages, or settlement of $5,000 or more to a government—even when there is no admission of guilt or liability, and even when it isn't related to a contract or grant.
* Require contractors to provide cost or pricing data to the government for all contracts, except those where the actual goods or services being provided are sold in substantial quantities in the commercial marketplace.
* Require that all administrative agreements are shared among agencies and are made publicly available.
* Reverse the philosophy of quantity over quality in getting contracts out the door. Acquisition is now about speed, and competition is considered a burden, which is a recipe for waste, fraud, and abuse.
...

That's only a third of the recommendations under that point.

Quote: Original post by nobodynews

Quote: Original post by ChurchSkiz
If anyone of us was in charge of the budget for a day we could cut billions of waste.

I think the problem with that would be no two people would make the same cuts. One man's waste is another man's vital program, after all.

This FiveThirtyEight post has some analysis on the subject of government waste (or least people's perceptions of it) that you all might find interesting.

Yes, that's very interesting. It's also sad that there's no way to tell what the actual amount of each dollar spent is wasted (or to provide an estimated range).



Amy Goodman interviewed Joseph Stiglitz today. He had a lot of interesting things to say about the state of the economy.

Quote:
...
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Joe Stiglitz, you’ve also urged a second stimulus package, especially focusing on the problems that state governments are going through, because, obviously, as real estate has collapsed, the value of real estate throughout the country has collapsed, that means that property taxes, which are a huge portion of local state revenues, have also collapsed. And this is going to be a problem for years to come, in terms of states being able to balance their budgets.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: That’s exactly right. And the important point is that the states have what are called “balanced budget framework.” That means that the revenues are going down, and they’re going down by over $200 billion a year. As the revenues go down, they either have to cut back spending or raise taxes. This is a negative stimulus to the economy. So the stimulus at the federal level is being offset by the negative stimulus at the state level.

Same problem happened in the Great Depression. One of the reasons the Great Depression lasted as long as it did was that as the New Deal kicked in, the states were contracting. And the result of it was that we didn’t really recover for years from the Great Depression.
...

I think that describes the situation here in California.

Yeah that interview was great.

Buy fewer guns.

Offer low-friction, high-accountability small-medium business loans ($50K-$500K) with the difference. Administer these loans through city-run offices purpose-built for the task of attracting new jobs through building new local businesses.

Quote: Original post by Silvermyst
I had hopes for the Tea Party, but just heard Rand Paul tell

">Anderson Cooper on 360 that "Sarah Palin could be a great president" of the US. Sure, he gave a non-answer the first time around, but... Sarah Palin? I was already surprised when he readily accepted Palin's endorsement, but... president? I have a feeling that if Cooper has asked Paul sr. the same question, the answer would've been very different (and more entertaining).

The Tea Party of 2010 is not the Tea Party that formed around Ron Paul's candidacy for President. You can see that in statements made by Sarah Palin at their convention mocking the right to due process for alleged terrorists and in her statements of fealty to Israel. She even wore an Israeli flag lapel pin (along with a US flag pin). I think the whole flag lapel pin thing is dumb, but imagine the phony uproar if, say, Joe Biden wore a Mexican flag lapel pin (along with a US flag pin) at an AFL-CIO convention. There would be no end to questions about his loyalty and calls for his resignation, yet she gets a pass for putting the interests of a foreign country ahead of the country she wants to represent. That's very odd. Anyway.

I think today's Tea Party is an attempt by GOP insiders to co-opt the Ron Paul Revolution. Consider the crossover between CPAC and the Tea Party. Dick Armey, who works for Freedom Works which sponsored the Tea Party Express rallies, spoke at CPAC today to the same crowd that wildly cheered Dick Cheney. I can't imagine Dick Cheney getting an enthusiastic reception at a Ron Paul Revolution convention.