By service I am talking about engineers, doctors, managers - so on and so forth. It's hard to predict the future - if companies replace humans and are 100% automated - and the economies collapse because no one can make a living...just think about that for a minute - how could you ever get to a fully automated state? It's all about balance. There is a price for having technology and maintain it - just there is a price for human labor. They key is to encourage a healthy economy by keeping a balance - and that's a role gov't can play.
No, that's more targeted to the lower-middle class that can not afford most 4 year institutions. In my time working with students I have met many who are incredibly smart but don't have the means to pay for college even though they are great students. They need a place to go to college they can afford. The poor need better basic education which they are not getting. There are many many reasons for this that goes beyond money but money is part of it. The problem is with urban school which get very little for students - those classes are crammed pack and are more day-care centers than places of learning. That needs to change.
Here are the things I would do to help balance the budget. Get rid of the cap on payroll/SS taxes. Everyone pays the 15 percent tax on their entire income. Tax capital gains at the same rate as regular income. Inheritance tax should be at the same rate as income above a certain value (maybe 5 million) Government pensions including military shouldn't be paid until people are at retirement age. Paying pensions to people for the rest of their lives starting at age 38 is fiscally irresponsible especially when people are living until their 80's. Reduce the size of the military headcount and spend the money on training and technology. Let everyone buy into medicare for the actual cost of administration. If private companies can't compete with big 'ol inefficient guberment, then they don't deserve to exist. Education for 2 years after grade school at a community college or trade school should be funded by federal and state governments. Force all public universities to take credits from certified community colleges.
Noticed you didn't put lawyers which was one of the big service jobs even 10 years ago. You could probably replace 70% of GPs right now with computers. I don't think make more engineers will help with anything either. Here is what happens when you produce 1.5 million engineers a year: http://abhisays.com/india/4000-engineers-join-sbi-as-clerks.html http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/engineering/1/579010.html http://english.sina.com/china/2012/0611/475714.html If everyone has an education the value of an education is no longer useful.
Is that why it is more competitive to get into college now than any time in history? Even UT is much harder to get into now that it was 10 years ago. Most of the people there come from public school.
Too much of any one field isn't a good thing, but the idea that too many educated people is bad for a country makes no sense. Look at a country like Sweden and tell me that an education there is not useful.
A lot of good ideas in here but no one will pass them because those with money make the rules and our government will bow to their corporate masters as usual. until you fix that i don't think you can pass any revolutionary meaningful legislation.
Our government spends way too much of money WE dont have. Its gotten too large and we need to make hard choices on both sides of the isle.. Spoiler 4.1 TRILLION Budget...And most of it is WASTED...
That can only be fixed by an educated electorate. Unfortunately we have built a culture based on sensationalized news and 150 character tweets. There is a large part of the electorate that cares more about memes and clever names like Killary and Drumpf than actually understanding problems. The politicians perpetuate it with their stupid games to divert attention and maintain power.
Except in your analogy when a business is really struggling it turns to the government for aid by filing bankruptcy. The pie chart is pretty bad though. Putting more into education would help with the unemployment labor chunk of the pie. An actual universal healthcare system would just eat up the pie that takes up Medicare plus make that chunk bigger.
I really hate these comparisons because the government isn't a business. It's not trying to create a profit, it's not trying to grow revenue, and it can print it's own money. The government's role is provide infrastructure and stability for the country. But if you have to compare the government to business, you should take the advice of probably one of the top business people in the world in Warren Buffet. He says we should strive to run a deficit during growth periods of 3 percent of GDP.
Ok, let's assume that everyone here has already started with self. Now that we have that out of the way, back to the discussion.
The problem is that the major parties we have to choose between are a fiscally irresponsible party and a REALLY REALLY REALLY ridiculously fiscally irresponsible party. Neither of them will ever "make the hard choices", their idea of that would be to cut money from a program the opposition party supports and then increase spending for their pet projects or for special interests that support them more than what they cut, sometimes several times more than what they cut. When the Republicans took back over congress, they put an end to deficits that were 1 trillion dollars a year or more....but they only scaled it back to having deficits of 500 billion dollars a year, that's simply not enough but they felt like they really did something and the president felt like there would be dead bodies in the street as a result of scaling back spending as much as they did.
This is a great topic! At work, so want to wait until I have the proper time to devote to a response. Wish more threads were like this...much better to have real discussions on the problems than bickering about politics.
Businesses and governments are different things with different purposes. The comparison made in the cartoon above is pretty weak.
