Why are they in a position to demand anything?
Something about them being citizens and that this is a democratic republic.
I can appreciate where you're coming from on this and many of these demands look reasonable on the surface. I'd just like to add my objections
I thought part of the justification for some subsidies was to provide smaller farms with a living return on investment and as a consequence stem the tide of the agri-business.
Of course one of the problems with any subsidy is that the canny learn to take advantage of them and that big business benefits best.
If agricultural subsidies are withdrawn then there'll be a lot of hardship for family farmers in the short term which will allow big business to pick up farmland more cheaply and benefit even more from economies of scale
The small family farm may have to go the way of the Dodo. We do need agriculture and if the most efficient way to deliver it is from a series of large corporations then so be it.
I find it hard to argue against this one but presumably the spending goes to someone and helps to pay someone's salary. If DOD spending is cut significantly, US manufacturing is going to take a major hit. That's what has happened here in the UK, the upshot of the defence cuts is putting thousands of skilled engineers on the dole.
This is why I proposed to bust up the contractors simultaneously. Doing this will require seed money to establish numerous new businesses or allow existing ones to diversify. Maybe Lockheed and Northrop would get into the commercial airliner game? That might be bad for Boeing but would probably be better for everyone else.
Otherwise I'm pretty sure the DOD can absorb a 20% cut and still remain functional in it's missions. We'd have to refocus some. Keep more troops home and rely more on prepositioning and fast sealift.
I'm sure they'd love to, but it's very difficult to do.
If you insist that US based companies pay US tax on all their earnings then this will unfairly penalise companies with international business.
If you insist that all companies with a US presence pay US tax on their US (or all) income then that'll result in a major international hoo-ha
I always hear this argument. I'm not convinced. Major corporations need the stability and economy of societies with strong government social support.
That's a great idea, where does the money come from ?
From the money freed up from the cuts to the DOD and agriculture.
Oh, ending oil subsidies would be nice too.
So now you're placing an unexpected demand on US banks that their international competitors don't have. US banks would be placed at a significant disadvantage which will just make things worse for them
Well right now they are dealing with more and more defaults. This might actually help the banks.
So instead of objective testing you end up with subjective assessment which will necessarily be subject to political pressure. The committees (full of government fat cats) will find that schools with a religious slant are doing fine while secular schools are mysteriously found wanting.
Maybe that isn't the right thing to replace it with. But what I do know is that the current paradigm is insane. Schools no longer teach they just prepare kids to pass the seemingly endless tests. As if they were the same thing.
It's nuts and needs to stop immediately before we screw up even more generations.
Which will inevitably mean that the rich seeking election will be operating at an even greater advantage than Joe Public. The rich can meet many costs out of their own pocket (especially "soft" costs like travel), the rest of us cannot.
That is one possible side effect. Everything has it's price.
Even I cannot come up with an argument against this one, so long as the infrastructure improvements don't turn into a huge boondoggle. The investment should deliver high requirement infrastructure, develop required technologies and deliver required skills.
Very few infrastructure projects are actual boondoggles. Even ones that are much maligned like the Big Dig were actually net benefits to their communities once finished.
I can really only name one complete boondoogle off the top of my head, The Bay Bridge East Span replacement. For the price we're paying we could have retrofited the existing one and built an entirely new bridge parallel to the old one. Of course when they started building it over ten years ago no one knew that steel and concrete would triple in price thanks to demand in China.
The cost of developing any aerospace system these days is so ruinously expensive that there's only space for a handful of companies globally. Forcing US companies to split would put them at a significant disadvantage globally.
I don't know about that. We have companies building space delivery systems using the amount of money that Boeing probably spends on styrofoam coffee cups in any given year.
Almost all of what you say are laudable objectives. I just think that there are significant consequences associated with each that need to be thought through.
Indeed there are always consequences. Doing nothing has it's own set of them.
