Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Unwinding The Debt Clock

Unwinding the Debt Clock


The steps, in no particular order:
· Craft policies to alleviate the debt crisis and give politicians an easy way to claim they are tackling the debt by making the policy risk free. Lob them a softball.
· Educate people, through the policy, as to what propelled the debt crisis. Proponents call it Progressivism, detractors call it Socialism, but whatever it is named it can be boiled down to simple neighbor robbing. “Neighbors” is defined broadly to mean your fellow Americans. Politicians are skilled at robbing neighbor Peter to pay neighbor Paul, but they’re even better at robbing Peter, Jr. Hence, the debt crisis.
· Give people altruistic motivation. One of the most perplexing ironies is that the Neighbor-Robbing-State grew, in part, because of altruism - albeit a lazy altruism.

For instance, we can apply these recommendations to Social Security. People want to know they will have Social Security for the duration of their retirement, besides they’ve paid in and they want a return. But there are many people who were thrifty enough. Allow them to give up collecting their Social Security for a year at a time. It could be like the check-box on you income taxes that asks if you want to pay more taxes. But unlike choosing to pay more taxes, the retirees will get to pick their beneficiaries directly, by getting to select two workers. The selected workers/neighbors do not have to pay Social Security for the same year. We may want to limit the number of years the same worker can be selected. That can be debated.
This actually will help the debt crisis (the huge unfunded-liability part) because of the worker-per-beneficiary ratio. In the 1950’s there were 16 workers per beneficiary, today there are 3. Because the thrifty and altruistic retiree can only select two working neighbors, the third is freed up. His contribution is now another step toward financial solvency for The United States.
At its worst, the proposal is a dud. But it causes little harm. At its best, it will open up people’s eyes as to why we have a debt crisis – the omnipresent Neighbor-Robbing-State.
It could be applied to other government sectors. It would also empower some Americans with the capacity to help save the Country.
Politicians will be faced with some tough decisions to avoid default of our debts and the calamity that will follow. Will enough politicians have the courage to make those decisions, or will they care more about their temporary political careers? We need more options.












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