Fair and Simple Taxation

Our tax system is complicated and unfair.  We all know that.  Individuals and businesses with very similar incomes pay very different taxes based on their tax “strategies.”  It’s all legal but unfair.  When state taxes, user fees, social security taxes, Medicare taxes, property taxes and sales taxes are counted most of us have 40-45% of our incomes going into our over $4 trillion state and federal tax machine.  And the people who pay the biggest percentage of their incomes are the poorest, those who work for a paycheck, and the middle class.  Most of us want to have a federal income flat tax and a state consumption tax that ensures every person equitably pays and every business that sells goods or services to our citizens pays.  Make it simple.  These two taxes and a legacy tax.  No social security, Medicare, or state income tax.  (The legacy tax is explained at www.americandreamproject.org/bigideas.)  And finally we need civil servants that have incentives to be efficient.  What if we distributed $1 million for every $20 million saved from public budgets as bonuses to entrepreneurial bureaucrats who are dedicated to efficiency and quality.  What’s the cumulative tax savings effect of having every letter carrier deliver mail to five extra homes than they currently are?   The only way to take the waste out of government is to reward our government employees for innovating more efficiency.  We need to raise our voices for tax reform.

This is our agenda.  And now we need you.  We need your best most thoughtful ideas about how we as a nation might create laws and establish policies to make these imperatives rise again in American life.  Every so often we’ll all vote on the best ideas and send them to our elected representatives and hold them accountable for real action. It’s past time.  Let’s put the future in our hands.

Strong, Wise and Good Foreign Policy

It’s time to reexamine our nation’s “foreign entanglements.”  Our founders knew our best defense was a strong civil society and a productive economy.  What if we spend some of our defense dollars on providing worldwide education to global citizens in dozens of languages to promote tolerance, self-reliance, collaboration, integrity, and the thirst for learning in an effort to reduce worldwide violence?  Then what if we modeled these virtues?  As long as we depend on oil from tyrants and money from communist dictators (China) our foreign policy will never be wise or good leaving us weak and vulnerable. Our greatest export should not be weapons but rather noble, inspiring leadership.  We need to stand for more than global materialism and a high tech military.  We need to be the future of civilization.

This is our agenda.  And now we need you.  We need your best most thoughtful ideas about how we as a nation might create laws and establish policies to make these imperatives rise again in American life.  Every so often we’ll all vote on the best ideas and send them to our elected representatives and hold them accountable for real action. It’s past time.  Let’s put the future in our hands.

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