patrick.net

The big political discussion, over and over again, is about more or less spending.
Broadly:
(D) same or more spending largely by natural expansion of existing programs, to be covered by higher taxes and (inevitably) further borrowing as even somewhat higher taxes are not enough.
(R) less spending by reducing/eliminating many/most existing programs and cut taxes. Still more borrowing, too.
This goes in circles: (D) scream why cherished programs can't be cut, (R) argue why taxes can't be raised. Smth. gotta give.
I honestly don't know if we need more or less spending. I know we need a completely DIFFERENT spending, truly slashing "consumptive" spending [more drastically than almost all (R) dare to suggest] and hugely skyrocketing the "investment" spending [more dramatically than almost all (D) would hope].
Such as:

Wrto REDUCTIONS on "consumption":

1. Slashing Medicare/Medicaid spending while improving public health:
- limiting covered treatments based on QUALY, say 20 K/year of life. No "life-saving" 100 K/year drugs.
- only strictly life-necessary treatments. No joint replacement and other lifestyle enhancements.
- only emergency and perhaps some other cheapest care to self-inflicted sufferers such as active smokers and morbidly obese. Smoking cessation and diet to reasonable weight first.
- agressive war on smoking. Ruinous taxation, ban on smoking in all public places (incl. streets), in own home or car if children in the family under criminal charges of child abuse, moving toward total ban
- No extended heroic end-of-life care. If recovery medically most unlikely, move to hospice for palliation.
- No new children while on Medicaid. Violation to result in coverage loss.

2. Slashing welfare spending while improving the lot of poor children:
- No new children on welfare under threat of benefit loss and cancellation of parental rights with child removed for adoption
- Serious and regular scrutiny of the situation of children in drug addict/permanent welfare families. Substantially lower the bar to cancellation of parental rights and moving kids out for adoption. Many US families pay ~30 - 50 K to corrupt foreign entities to adopt kids from those countries. Instead, they could adopt kids removed from bad US "families" for free. Better for kids, better for adopters, better for US economy and lower welfare spending - win/win/win/win

3. Slashing prison costs:
- no healthcare beyond emergency and other simple treatments for those in for serious crime (say, >5 years sentence)
- prisoners for serious crimes sent for hard labor in mines, logging, Arctic oil drilling, etc. Reduction of sentences for good work. Dirt-cheap prison labor can substantially improve international competitiviness of those industrial sectors (just ask Chinese).
- self-management of prisons by prisoners. Guards only control external perimeter, otherwise prisons are run by prisoners chosen amongst themselves and/or appointed, with reduction of sentences and other small benefits
(more calls, visits, etc.) for those who execute their roles well. This is practiced in many foreign countries, reduces prison costs by ~80 - 90%.
- Empty death rows into execution chambers. Broader use of capital punishment beyond murder: for incorrigible and violent prisoners, habitual violent offenders. No forever appeals: after conviction, one appeal and the process done in 1 year. Taking example from PRC with ~5 K executions per year, a proportional number and a reasonable target for US would be ~1,000 -1,500 annually.
- Organs of executed should of course go for transplants, as another source of prison income. Waste of this resource is criminal.
Overall, prisons should be a source of INCOME, not expense. They are in many foreign countries.

4. Greatly reducing useless higher "education":
No federal grants/loans/subsidies of any sort for gender studies, women's studies, theater/acting, and other such majors, very substantially reducing and capping the same for other humanities majors and law. Most such departments would close or slash the number of faculty/students - good riddance.

5. Instead of food stamps, able-bodied recepients should be required to do ag. labor for part of harvest.
This would help reducing the number of illegals, too.

6. Only healthy low-calorie food on food stamps. Would help to reduce obesity.

7. Tort reform, cap punitive damages to 2X actual or 100 K, whichever is less.
Ban class-action lawsuits.

8. Cut defense and also require foreign nations that we protect (Japan, S. Korea, Germany, Iraq, Afganistan, etc.) to contribute MUCH more. If not, withdraw bases, troops, and protection guarantees (incl. NATO guarantees). Then Japan could resolve their territorial disputes with nuke-armed Russia and S. Korea with nuke-armed NK all by themselves. I'd think they'll pay.

9. Nearly eliminate foreign aid. That's a remnant of times when we were the richest nation in the world by far. May be some countries who we helped in the past and who now do well (Germany and S. Korea come to mind) can now return the favor.

10. Comprehensive immigration reform to cancel all family preferences (except spouses and underage children)
and replace by a point system as in Canada or Australia. Drastically reduce the refugee/asylee numbers.

11. Stomp down on illegals. Huge fines/property confiscation/deportation. "Sanctuary cities" have ALL federal funding denied. Borders to be protected by armed force/shoot on sight. This would actually cut the cost of border protection a lot.

12. Legalize all sex work. This would reduce law enforcement and welfare costs while yielding major tax revenue.
Balance of payments would also improve, as Americans would spend less $$ for that abroad.

All the above should easily cut spending by 30 - 50%

Now the "INVESTMENTS" where we need to RAISE spending equally dramatically:

1. Transport infrastructure.
- First and foremost, freight and passenger railroads, incl. high-speed rail.
- Roads/bridges.
- Free, broad wi-fi coverage over significant cities nationwide.
- Airports and seaports.
This would suck up all idle construction workers, unemployment goes down a lot.

2. Energy, energy, energy.
- Major program of nuclear reactor building, to reach 50% of electricity
from nuclear by 2020 and 75% by 2030. (France has ~80%, btw). Nuclear dump in Yucca mountain
re-activated and completed, objections from NV be damned. States and locales that object on
whatever grounds have their electricity deliveries cut by the % obtained from nuclear nationwide
(currently, ~20%). That's fair: if you don't like nuclear, don't use the energy from it.
- Hydroelectric construction where possible (Alaska especially?).
- Use nuclear and hydro energy on-site to produce artificial "oil" from coal as Germans did in WWII
- Require 50% of new cars to be plug-in hybrids by 2015, 100% by 2020
- Impose severe and increasing taxes on gas, use $$ for credits to buy hybrids and set up ubiquitous
rapid charging/battery swapping stations nationwide
- Allow deepwater drilling on both coasts as a stopgap measure. Tariffs on oil imports to promote domestic energy exploration.

3. Huge funding increases for space exploration, but disband NASA and start from scratch or via competitive contracts to private companies. Re-capture the US pre-eminence in space, humans back to Moon, Mars, and beyond.

4. Major new funding for education and research in STEM subjects. Free tuition and living wage stipend to STEM undergrads, conditioned on consistent excellent performance on tough exams.

5. Really improve HS education (esp. in STEM) through recruitment of teachers (incl. with Ph.D) at seriously raised wages (comparable to university faculty or private industry) at least in a good fraction of schools.
That's a real (and perhaps only long-term) solution to the persistent Ph.D overproduction problem, also.
Institute serious payments/prizes to HS school students for exceptional performance in STEM subjects
based on state and national competitions. Use serious money to make "nerds" more popular than "jocks".

6. National technology policy.
In particular, a large pool of govt. money to be available for start-ups. Such as, upon technical panel review (with, say, 25% passing rate): 1st stage (up to 4 M) - 100% govt. funding, 2nd stage (4 to 20 M) - 60% govt. co-funding, 3rd stage (20 to 50 M) - 30% govt. co-funding. Such programs now exist in other countries incl. Canada (Vitesse Canada), Russia, and China.

7. Get tough on foreign infringers of US property, physical or intellectual, using armed force if necessary. Protection of US property abroad against "nationalization" etc. should be at least a higher military priority than sundry nation-building projects.

Total spending in the end might not greatly differ from today, but the return in a few years would be so much better, wouldn't it?

I wonder, how many people agree at least on the majority of above points?
Am I a (D) or (R), btw?

#crime