You want to balance the United States budget, create universal healthcare and cut back drastically on poverty and unemployment? Well, who doesn’t? Here’s some suggestions that nobody seems to be thinking about:
Abandon the Empire: The United States has over a half million troops stationed in 150 countries throughout out the world. Why? There’s only 192 countries in existence. Are we looking to make it unanimous? Is it safe yet to end the occupation of Germany and Japan 64 years after their unconditional surrender in World War 2? At least those two nations were ones we actually conquered. The others? Who knows what the hell we’re doing there? We have no business being a damned empire when we didn’t conquer the world like the Romans and the British did. What’s in it for us besides a huge expense? At least the Romans and British called a spade a spade and stole everything they possibly could from their empires. So if we are an empire, we’re the lamest one that ever was, since ours costs us money! We should quit that expensive racket.
Declare war on war: Make it against the law to go to war. It won’t work any better than the war on drugs, but at least it will identify war as an illegal activity. None of them ever work out, even the ones we win. If we cut our military by 25%, that will save us trillions annually and we will still be spending more on our military than the next 20 nations combined. As it stands now we spend more than the entire rest of the world combined! That’s ridiculous. And the hell with Iraq and Afghanistan, two of the crazier wars in that most insane area of human endeavor. Put some politicians and generals in jail and see how fast the next guy decides there’s a pressing reason to get a bunch more of us killed.
End the war on drugs: Another war we lost before it began. People like drugs and will obtain them under any circumstances. The prisons are full of the proof of that statement. If it were a moral issue then alcohol would be banned too but it is not even though alcohol addicts far outnumber drug addicts. The fact is that 10% of the population is addictive, and there would not be one extra drug addict tomorrow if drugs were legal, any more than there is a single extra alcoholic because booze is legal. And like alcohol, drugs are cheap to make and will bring in incredible amounts of taxes to the treasury, as well as the agricultural jobs and benefits to states whose climates are suited to growing the plants that produce drugs.
The prison system expenses will be more than halved and the drugs can be monitored to ensure they are made in a clean environment, just like the government inspects whiskey distilleries. Who are we kidding when we demonize one vice and legally sanction another? To legalize drugs is not to condone their use, anymore than anyone condones cigarette smoking. Cigarettes, by the way, produce more income for governments through taxation than is earned by all the tobacco companies combined. Or do we continue to send these potential tax billions to Columbia and Afghanistan and having drug problems anyway? End the 30 Years War.
Legalize prostitution: See above. See Scandinavia. And what’s wrong with one of the strongest natural urges we humans possess? Might as well outlaw getting hungry or breathing for all the good it will do. Neither prostitutes nor their patrons are doing anything wrong, and like using drugs, no one will be forced to participate in this activity.
Tax corporations: In the 1930s, during the height of The Great Depression, corporate taxes made up over 30% of Federal tax revenues. Today that figure is less than 10%, even though the United States economy since then has grown into the largest the world has ever seen. What’s the deal there? Corporate welfare has far outstripped welfare payments for the needy. There are instances of profitable multi-billion dollar corporations legally paying no income tax at all. There’s something wrong when a bus driver pays more income taxes than the corporation that manufactured the bus.