Sunday, April 04, 2010

Debt

The national debt is horrifying.  (Don't watch while operating heavy machinery; you might experience vertigo.)

Deficit spending is out of control. (That's less dramatic but might still make your head spin.)

And congress can't cut spending or raise taxes if its members want to be reelected.

What to do? I'm not an economist, mathematician, politician, or actuary. So maybe my thoughts are worthless. But we have to do something. Here's my idea:

1) Balance the budget, leaving out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

2) Pass a law saying that whenever congress sends troops to fight somewhere, we pay for it at the same time by instituting a "Freedom Tax" to support our troops while they're at war.

There are about 138,000,000 American tax payers. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost, say, $150,000,000,000 annually. I'm thinking the Freedom Tax should be $300 per year - per taxpayer - until the cost is paid in full.  ($41,000,000,000 per year or so. It's going to take a little while.)

Or maybe all this is wrong. I don't know. It turns out I don't like working with the national budget any more than I like working with my own household budget.  But shouldn't we all be concerned about this?



COSTOFWAR.COM - The Cost of War
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4 comments:

Unknown said...

I like the idea of a freedom tax...especially if we'd have to vote on it. It'd need to take into account the cost of post-war veteran needs, too.

I think we'd see a lot of true colors if this were in place.

Sarahlynn said...

Yep. Pro-war and anti-tax? Well, then where's the money coming from?

I heard a politician on the radio the other day complaining about the high cost to the government for VA benefits. "I mean, we've got children of service members receiving benefits. It's out of control."

pattinase (abbott) said...

It might be nice to make corporations pays some taxes. The list of huge corporations paying none is astounding.

Sarahlynn said...

Agreed!