No. of Recommendations: 13
In some sense, I kind of agree with this. Conceptually. At some point, math and the "physics" of economics will eliminate options from the table and force things previously unobtainable via politics to occur.
But...
The public has great difficulty in understanding a few key factors:
* how big a $23 trillion dollar economy truly is
* how small percentage shifts in allocations of money compound QUICKLY with $23 trillion in inertia
* how special interests have used those factors to steer so much to the top 0.1%
Some examples.
By enacting policies in healthcare that protect beds producing REVENUE and focus on safety net hospital beds for cost savings, America has simultaneously WORSENED public health (which DOES come back to cost us via Medicare and state Medicaid spending) while SUBSIDIZING corporations owning major hospitals and insurance companies.
By starving the IRS for funds to spend on system modernization and -- yes -- audits, our tax collection system is failing to collect BILLIONS in legitimately owed taxes while making taxes a total hassle for individuals and small businesses and wasting money on tax filing services and accountants. The average individual tax payer should not require the services of an accountant to file their taxes.
The war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza are providing deafening alarms that American priorities in defense spending are seriously misguided in the modern era of GPS targeted drones and GoPro cameras for real-time human remote control. America's brand new "Gerald R Ford" class carrier now dispatched to the middle cost THIRTEEN BILLION DOLLARS to build. It can fit up to 90 fighter planes aboard, each costing about $75 million dollars for another $5 to $6 billion of cost on board. With 5-10 planes on deck and armed, despite all of our sophisticated radar monitoring, it seems possible that an adversary could simply build about 60 drones costing as little as $200,000 or as much as $1 million each and launch them simultaneously to overwhelm air defenses, take out a couple of planes on deck with shells dropped from the drones and trigger a larger conflagration that could destroy everything else on deck if not the entire ship, killing thousands and destroying $18 billion of investment. $18 billion in damage from only $12 million to $60 million in unmanned, throwaway drones. That's a 300x to 1500x return on investment for adversaries. America could repurpose BILLIONS in defense spending and improve national security. But that cannot be done in a climate when defense jobs building billion dollar weapons systems are an easy way to be "tough on defense" and "boost local economies."
Correcting the horrific economic path America is on does not require raising everyone's taxes to 37 percent and eating rocks for two decades. It only requires stopping the feedback cycles that are siphoning cash out of vital spending on infrastructure, education and health and funneling it to the 0.1 percenters who already have enough money to never worry about anything. And stopping forces who are committing so many unforced errors in public policy that create multi-generational blow-back.
WTH
