5 Ways the Next President Can Fix the Economy

Social Security Indexing

Unless the author is advocating a reduction in benefits for future generations, the author should familiarize himself with Social Security benefits. Benefits are indexed to wages and, consequently, standard of living.

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/AWI.html

Love America, like Europe

I love America but like Europe. That is, emotionally I'm invested in this country, but mentally I can't help but admire the European model of social stability that creates sustainable economic growth.

America is an unbalanced machine that will tear itself apart if we do not impose balance in our energy policy, education system, and financial rewards structure - and that balance comes from science and derived regulation. The infrastructure of America, the institutions, have been notably weakened by deregulation, and lax oversight where regulation still exists.

Regulation offers a baseline for innovation while protecting society from the excess that can result from private experimentation run amok. Airlines thought they could push maintenance schedules. Legislators thought education could be funded primarily by local and state taxes or the individual. Wall Street thought derivatives would allow for whole new ways of valuing debt. Energy companies...well, they just elected one of their own and didn't pretend to care. In any event, all deregulation efforts have been proven to provide minimal short term gain and maximum long term chaos.

Regulation offers stability, and Europe knows well that a country must be stable to offer true business and individual success - one follows the other.

Social Security indexed to wages not inflation

Wages go up faster than inflation, so fixing the real benefit (instead of growing it) could allow us to make SS solvent, and perhaps as Pethokoukis suggests even cut the pay roll tax.

I would go one step further and eliminate the regressive payroll tax cap, index to inflation and then cut the payroll taxes. So rich people (those with high wages) would get a tax increase, but middle class people would see a cut.

author needs a dose of real world.

If you want more scientists and engneers you need to:

1) stop calling them "geeks"

2) stop giving business big tax breaks to build new outsource facilities in India

3) stop sending these jobs to India. Average engineer especially computer and electrical has a job, not a career, a job for 5-7 years, until he makes too much money and a corporation saves money by sending the jobs to India. Northern Virginia has the highest scientifically educated real estate agents and used car salemen in the world, this is the job you get when that engineer job not career goes to India.

4) Pass a TREASON SURTAX, tax companies that send jobs overseas in the middle of a war, especially to India which is next door to the war zome.

Extended retirement age will not work!

The laborer and those who toil in the blue collar sector and even service sectors are unlikley to continue to lay bricks, work in a factory, construct buildings, wait on tables into the "past 65 age".

The toll this physical labor takes on the body's bones, joints and overall health precludes the ability to extend retirement much past 65.

We have to accept that Seniors work past retirement age because they need to afford health care and "supplemental costs". Therefore, extending the retirement age is not the solution--pursuing meaningful health care reform is more credible!

Getting Employers out of Health Care replaced by whom? Government as the Payer? I am not sure I like that either.

Yes, Let's Enslave the Working Class

So you want to get rid of corporate tax, get rid of employer-paid health benefits and move back the age of retirement? WOW

Re: Social Security Indexing

I think you need to reread the article. He suggests moving away from a system that indexes to wages and instead indexes to inflation. Wages, historically, rise faster than inflation. Hence the savings.

Since indexing SS benefits to inflation ensures constant purchasing power of the SS benefit, the recipients' purchasing power simply gets "locked in" to the current amount.

Help the American Economy

1- Social Security: By the SS's own numbers, SS is NOT in trouble. Using the low cost estimates which uses the highest projected GDP growth numbers (which are still below the 50 year average), SS never runs out of money. But if you insist, remove the cap where individuals stop paying at about $100K. They could also means test so that anyone making more than $1 mil / year does not get SS at all.

2- Education. Free education for anyone who can do the work for as long as they want it. Extra benefits for those who take science and engineering. We need a different school system. The one we have does not work to our best advantage. 1/3 of inner city kids dropping out before high school graduation really weakens America and our economy.

3- Single Payer health care. Increase the health of the population while lowering the amount of money going into health care. The cost goal would be like Medicare for everyone (This alone lowers health care costs by 15%, maybe more).

4- Improve the infrastructure. Europe and Asia has wide band communications infrastructure that makes ours look 20 years old. Google it and find out what they have. Our roads and physical infrastructure are old and crumbling. Our schools are part of the national infrastructure, too, and they are a travesty.

5- Government needs to stop being pro-management and become pro-labor when it comes to unions. To really improve the economy, money needs to be put into the hands of the middle class so they can spend and improve the TOP-LINE (sales) of companies. Unions help this. Improving the bottom line by squeezing the employees is a losing proposition in the long run.

6. Tax the top 1% a LOT. The Estate Tax. High taxation rates to incomes above $1 mil / year (50% is a good start. I like 70%). Tax wealth as much as labor (15% on dividends is BS).

7. Stop deficit spending and pay down the national debt. One reason why Canada's dollar rose so much against the US dollar is that they have an annual budget surplus. The third largest item on the Fed Budget is INTEREST on the National Debt, some $420 bil in 2006. That is Interest only. We finance that debt by weakening the dollar, and that erodes the buying power of the middle class.

Taxation

James Pethokoukis you are absolutely correct. The U.S.corporate tax is exporting capital and jobs abroad at the expense of working Americans. The best way to promote growth and innovation and generate good jobs for working Americans is to eliminate the corporate income tax. The tax reform proposal @ WWW.SHAREDECONOMICGROWTH.ORG is a relatively simple proposal that would eliminate the corporate tax in a revenue neutral way so that the US can be an economic powerhouse again.

social security and retirment

The bottom line is: This country has been too generous to umeployed non-citizens. A lot of soc sec benefits have been distributed to people (who have never held a job in this country or contributed to the fund) through SSI (Welfare). Get rid of welfare. Provide tax incentives to businesses willing to hire and train people with high school educationsl, and offer the employees incentives to obtain college degrees in their job fields. And please don't raise the retirement age, decrease it. Doing so may encourage people to save and plan better for retirement in younger years - freeing up the job pool for those much younger.