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Where Should the Money Go?
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World governments take in an immense amount of money every year through taxes. What do you think they should spend it on?
Focusing on the United States, I'd like to see the money go to 4 places (gotten largely from increased taxes and a swift decrease in military spending):
1.) Conversion to a social democracy, with the ambition of giving all people the necessary supplies to live, including shelter, health care, and food if necessary, in an attempt to destroy poverty. Basically, get out of welfare dark ages and get on the same level as Europe.
2.) Eliminating energy dependence, where we could build an immense number of nuclear, solar, hydroelectric, and wind power sources, creating new industries to sustain job losses with the dying war industry. Could be done either by direct government construction or by hiring corporations.
3.) Education, for the country lies in the hands of the future generation, and if we raise a generation of brilliant minds the future will be bright no matter what.
4.) Probably the biggest change, I'd like to pour 10%-20% of the federal budget into scientific advancement, with a focus on space and clean energy.
Overall, I think that the key to economic prosperity isn't "magically creating jobs", but rather creating new industries. If we can make the clean energy industry become serious, and create new industries in science and engineering, I believe that the wealth of both the government and the nation will follow in close suit, particularly if the population is fed and educated. If America did this, it could become the leading nation scientifically, socially, environmentally, and economically.
Not sure how feasible this is from a monetary standpoint- they're all costly endeavors. Do you think that increased taxes and the elimination of, say, 1/3-2/3 of military spending could pull it off?
I think we should get rid of capitalism at all or at least convert it into a demurrage like the people did in the Wörgl experiment. I point both things out below:
The demurrage system will make sure that especially rich people will make sure that the money flows in both ways. For example all state depts of Germany can be amortized by the wealthy 10% of the population which have about - 50% of the states property - without sucking them dry! We could do so infinite much better, but we arent. Thats why I hate mankind and sometimes just wish we would blow up ourselves! But Im getting off the point here. The demurrage system supports the poor and the development of a country with great success. It would be a great improvement after all.
Destroying capitalism is what I prefer most: Getting rid of all those money systems. They failed as history often enough showed. I would love to see a more idealistic system taking its place, based on the motto "one good turn deservers another". We need to get rid of this dog-eat-dog mentality and its global brother called globalisation. We have the knowledge and technology to help each other, to advance not as devided nations but as a united species! We can have a more localized food and energy production without sucking other countries dry. I often saw how money was standing in our way to do this step, instead we are selling weapons to each other so we take the profit of their deaths... This is insane!
Money is great invention, problem is when there are people who love money more than anything they can buy. Money became goods. And the worst, debts became goods.
Well, I also would like to have social system. But people who took several loans and can't repay are responsible for their stupidity and in different system they would have another problems.
Education, education, science. Why do they spend more and more money in military department when they are the first nuclear superpower? Who would risk nukes, right? Educated population always gave benefit to it's country.
You may enlighten me on why money is a great invention? I dont see its use or its necessity. Sure for trading it is a good thing on the one hand. On the other hand it creates alot of the problems we have to day. I came to the conclusion that we are not suited for a money system, that it creates greed and shifts away our responsibility as most powerful species on earth.
Money allows humans to advance from a barter economic to the economy as we know it today.
Without something as a medium of exchange like money, it is a lot harder to get all the goods that one needs/wants.
And don't underestimate trade, the computer you are using to type that comment had parts made in all over Asia using resources from all over the world. It is the power of money as an medium of exchange that allows all those material and labor to combine into goods to be enjoy.
Trust me, I'm an econ major (wait... that's not help my cause is it?).
Im well aware of those things and what money does. I was on a buisiness school for 2 years and I was trained in a job called "buisiness (wo)man for office communication" - I dont know if there is a more proper word for it in English, I just translated the German term -, quite an allrounding office job.
As rational as the idea of money is, Im beginning to see flaws in the interaction between humans through that medium. To me it seems to become a blockade for further progress. You are absolutly right, that it allows us to trade, to gain goods from other nations and regions of this world. But as you can see, humans cannot really work well with this abstract medium or system to constantly gain profit. The profit should not be the benefit for a few successful corporations, but for the entire species. Money is a powerful tool that can easily be used as a weapon, all I want is that this money is used with responsibility for all of us - or replace be an idealistic system (as in star trek, just to name an example to avoid writing books of explanations about what I have in mind).
Because without money we won't ever get to some kind of factory. And those problems, well, invention is not responsible, people are responsible. You must change humans to change the Earth.
Im not so sure about the factory thing, it is also possible in a communistic-idealistic global society to build factories that not only produce things for a local group, but for an entire region if not for the world.
We already changed to planet for the bad, and we will see it going worse, Im afraid. It is about time to change.
Communism can't work with humans. We must change first.
Absolutely true. We have at least to change the way we are thinking.
I don't think it's either capitalism or money which is the problem; the two systems can work quite well, if REGULATED. See, that's the issue; the governments allow corporations free reign, those who exist well in the system live like kings, the people who don't exist well in the capitalist system are crushed underfoot. These are the worst aspects of capitalism- yet capitalism can also act as a force of innovation and, dare I say it, economic freedom. I ultimately don't dislike the system, I dislike its current form. What we need is not the destruction of capitalism or all money systems, just increased government regulation of them to defend the people. Essentially, a social democracy.
What you are suggesting is the social market economy as we had in Germany once from about 1950 to 1996 or so. It is in the huge gap between planing market and free market. To achieve it you need to reduce the economic freedom into a framework of rules and mechanics to control it. Social markets are also capitalism, I go further and assume that it would be a good compromise for the moment - until we can take anohter step forward. It would solve plenty of mess ups.
Even if we could make Communism work, I'm not entirely sure I'd want it. There is a certain lack of economic freedom which I'm not too pleased about. My theory is this: Make the economy as free as possible, as long as the lowest class of people still has security, shelter, food, health, and the ability to advance. Essentially, a relatively powerful welfare state.
I didnt said anything about communism in here, not even socialism. Social democracy is the proper name for it and as the German broker Dirk Müller says a social market economy was the best working thing we tried out so far.
I was referencing your earlier point on the destruction of Capitalism and your note on "going further" than the social democracy I presented earlier. If not capitalism, then what exactly :o ?
Oh, that. :D I thought we went off from that trough your first comment above.
Priorities
1. Education: Smarter populace, better country. Education cuts are likely why the US is so hopelessly incompetent and going the way of Rome.
2. Social Services/Benefits/Entitlements/Protections: This includes all basic important citizen supports and protections be it welfare, ensuring food safety, protecting the environment and providing the private citizen protections from large entities; primarily corporations. Corporations which would be taxed at a rate of 50% of their profits as will all making 200k+ a year.
3. Subsidizing scientific and overall technological development, mostly experimental tech. Along with standardizing tech, like making the internet as common and reliable a tool as the phone, maybe replacing it all together.
4. Modernizing Infrastructure: The place is falling apart and to advance tech you'll need a solid reliable infrastructure to build upon.
5. Changing the role of the military from global empire to a smaller highly mobile force capable of hitting any place in the world hard if need be.
The only way to build society is by empowering it through effective governance and direction of funds. Sitting on a mountain of money, waving a flag and chanting freedom will get no country nowhere. That tax thing above wouldn't have had to have been mentioned otherwise. Though an amendment disallowing a CEO from being paid more than 40x the wage of its lowest earning worker would probably get the same effect done better.
I was mainly offtopic with my previous post, so I know focus on this where the money should go to:
1. Education, obiously.
2. Green technologies. Solar energy is important and most of all we should decentralize our energy production so if one powerplant is failing, there are hundreds of other powerplants to take its place. Also we can expect a climate change for sure so we have to find a way to stabilize the global temperature or we will face a mass extinction on humanity and other species - it could also become the downfall of mankind.
3. Social Services/Benefits/Entitlements/Protections. I think I dont need to etend that point, since I aggree with most of you.
4. Airships as new way to relieve our infrastucture and reducing the number of casualties.
5. For the military I would extend the use of non-lethal weapon system like EMP weapons, guns with tazer-ammo, GPS scrambler and other nice hightech toys. I would also say electrified swords, but 1. its a lethal weapon and 2. its a bit too crazy - I would prefer swords over guns because they are easier to control, but thats irrelevant. The main reason why I suggest non-lethal war toys is because I want to avoid collateral damage. In modern wars many victims are caused through friendly fire, maybe FF is the main reason why US troops die in wars today - or am I mistaken? Also civillian victims are bad publicity, that should be obvious. With the present weapon technology the only way to avoid reports about mass murdered citizens is by lying to the people, however sooner or later the truth will come into the light. If the USA would have attacked Iraq and Afghanistan with non-lethal weapon technologies, the people there would appriciate the temporary occupation instead of fighting it. To show your enemy that you have evolved beyond stone-age-wars like we have today is the strongest weapon. A weapon that makes foes to allies.
Your plan includes airships?
... I'm in.
These are all just fantasies. Of course most of your ideas are good, but the chances that smart ideas would be listened to by hundreds of politicians getting paid large amounts of money for the interest of large corporations is 0.0000000000001% politicians win the same way people won in the Hunger Games, by sponsors. Presidents can only win by how much money they get from rich people's interest. There's no hope in this corrupt country called the United States. This so-called "greatest country" is the cheapest abomination of the ideal 1st world country. The vast majority of the population here is stupid, repugnant, arrogant, ignorant, and too ******* lazy to do anything to help the country.
It is not a problem of the US only. The US is only the worst example I know of in the 1. world. We are all condemning communism without thinking what it actually means. I think it is the way for us to evolve further, faster and more freely, not only as individuals, but as collective -> as species.
Of course they are fantasies. It's quite likely that every opinion expressed on this entire group, including yours, is utterly meaningless; we are all dreaming. However, such dreams may carry us into the future.
Every dream is the vision of a step into the future, philosophical speaking. Before we are willing to take that step as a society, we have to share the same or at least similar dream(s). This group is a tiny step into that direction.
If one does not dream what hope can there be in a hopeless world dominated by stupid people who often cling to impossible hope.
6. One of the greatest plague in the capitalistic system is how patent rights are handled today.
Patent rights are made with the intention of providing a holder of an invention to produce its product exclusively for 25 years or so. But it is often used store those invention for decades in a safe. That is one major reason why I say capitalism is holding us back - I forgot to mention it.
I would simply destroy this useless exploited system or at least modify it. Patent holders that are not using their rights on technologies, e.g. dont do proper research for mass production or improve the original concept, will lose their patent right to the government within a year or 2 and the state can resell it, give it back to the inventor of this technology or just creates research and production orders just like a corporation.
Education education education- especially higher.
The more education we have, the less need we have for wellfare and military spending, and the less idiots we have running around the world.
Overall, I'd say a healthy balance. Military can be cut, because in the event that we need it, US industry is strong enough to quickly mass up a force- one which will be fully modernized rather than using old equipment that eats up money to maintain.
Where have you been, US industry hardly exists. Last I remember Abrams tanks were importing their cannons from Germany.
Science.
Medicine.
Community (Policing, Hospitals).
Environment.