G5000's 5 Point Plan For Economic Prosperity And Better Cable Reception

g5000

Diamond Member
Nov 26, 2011
123,316
50,071
2,290
Thought I'd copy this over from another topic and make it a topic by itself.

After all the hot air rises into space, there is no substance left to the candidates' aspirations. No one really knows what they plan to do.

So here is something for you to really sink your teeth into and tell me how unbelievably ridiculous these ideas are. You need some real balls to kick? Here you go.


1. Raise the retirement age. When Social Security was enacted, the average life expectancy was 60 and only 6 percent of Americans were over the age of 65. Today, average life expectancy is 78 and 13 percent of Americans are over the age of 65. We have literally doubled our "entitlement" load.

We are living longer, we should be working longer.

Social Security was insurance. Not everyone was expected to collect. Now it is an entitlement.

We need to index the retirement age to either life expectancy or back to 6 percent of the population.

When we average life expectancy to 100 years, are we going to live one third of our lives on Social Security? I don't think so! We clearly need to raise the eligibility age.

Raise the eligibility age to 70. That's not even life expectancy, but you would be paying into Social Security and Medicare five more years and drawing out five less years. That's an astronomical savings of federal outlays right there.

2. Reform financial services regulations. We can start by repealing the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank), the Commmodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA), and the Financal Services Modernization Act of 1999 (FSMA).

The CFMA and FSMA completely deregulated the financial services sector and brought us the worldwide derivatives bubble and crash, which we are still going through. See Greece, Spain, Italy, Irleand, Eurozone, QE I, II, III, Infinity, etc.

Dodd-Frank is a weak and ineffective attempt to gum the financial institutions into sane and non-fraudulent behavior when what we need is some legislation with teeth.

There is good regulation, and there is bad regulation. When we are talking about something as important and with such a high potential for corruption as money, our economy cannot afford NO regulation.

We have a lot of bad regulation that needs to go. The CFMA and the FSMA are two examples.

So what kind of good regulation do we need?

An outright ban on credit default swaps, for starters. Credit default swaps allow you to bet your neighbors mortage will burn down. Not only that, you can build your neighbors mortgage and then bet it will burn down. How'd that turn out for ya?

There's a reason insurance has an insurable interest requirement. CDS must go. Those who have legitimate insurable interest requirements on their over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives should be allowed to buy insurance, but no one else.

Next regulation: all OTC derivatives are to be sold on exchanges. Dodd-Frank attempts to do this, but the visitor's log at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau shows that the big Wall Street firms are doing their level best to undermine the "end user" definition so the entire insurance protection framework of the securities exchanges will be rendered moot. They are building the loopholes they will drive their trucks full of money through.

Next, limit the size of the GSEs portfolios so they are not systemic risks. The GSEs have served a very important function in our economy. We don't need to eliminate them, we need to reform them.

Next, consolidate all federal financial regulatory authority under one roof so there can be no regulator shopping.

Next, return to the states their authority to prosecute financial fraud that was taken away by the CFMA and the OCC. This is an absolutely critical states right which needs to be restored.

3. Send fraudsters to prison. Enough with this "paid out some lunch money with no admission of wrongdoing" bullshit.

The financial services industry has become an oligarchy with 40 percent of all the corporate profits in our entire economy going to that one sector. This is a MASSIVE redistribution of wealth going on, from the pockets of the common man into the bank accounts of a tiny number of your fellow Americans. The money you pay for your health, auto and life insurance; your college tuition; your 401k; and even your taxes are going to Wall Street brokers' pockets. I kid you not.

How? By way of the sale of financial derviative products to the customer (your insurance company, public employee pension plan, city treasurer, etc.) who has no way of understanding them. For each product sold, there are several financial institutions which make fees off them. Because of this, they are heavily incentivized to makes these sales and to never let the gravy train stop. So when they ran out of credit-worthy customers, they threw the underwriting laws of the universe out the window and began inventing more and more toxic derivatives and selling them to more and more risky customers in order to keep those fees flowing into their pockets.

How'd that work out for you? Has your insurance gone up? College tuition gone up? Taxes gone up?

It is time to stop defending the crooks and time to start sending them to prison.

4. Allow big businesses to fail. It is not capitalism if you aren't allowed to fail. Period.

The government propping up of failed businesses is REAL socialism, and it leads to more and more inefficiencies, corruption, and has created bigger and bigger and bigger successive failures. One day will be talking about Too Big To Save corporations, at which point we will be well and truly screwed like you can't even imagine.


5. Reform the tax code.

Every tax deduction, loophole, subsidy, credit, collectively known as "tax expenditures", is regressive. Every expenditure has to be made up for by someone else.

For example, the mortgage interest deduction. You only get it if you are monied enough to be able to buy a house. This one deduction reduces federal revenue by $100 billion each year. That $100 billion is then going to have to come from someone else's hide.

If you think of tax expenditures this way, then it becomes crystal clear that removing all expenditures makes the playing field completely flat. Some people get all bunched up over "fairness". Taking away all tax expenditures is as fair as it gets.

Then we can lower tax rates, and everyone in each bracket pays the exact same amount of tax.

And think about this added benefit: It's a lot harder to corrupt a Congressman if he isn't allowed to mess with the tax code by adding special tax expenditures for his friends.


So that's it. I actually have other ideas which would greatly benefit our economy, but I promised only five.

You won't find many politicians these days who actually propose specific ideas. Instead, they say what they WON'T do. "I can tell you this, I won't turn our economy into a socialist paradise!"

Okay, but what WILL you do?

They don't tell you because they know they will be attacked. Our politicians today are a collection of chickenhearted cowards.

There's my 5 point plan. Here's my balls. Go ahead and kick 'em!

.
 
Last edited:
"allow big business to fail"

Sounds great, love the concept. However when I read about the bailouts, 2 issues keep poping up.

1) too big to fail

If the collapse of one company can cause a catastrophic economic issue, how can we not intercede?

2) unfair foriegn advantage

Can our big companies compete globally if our competitors are backed by their governments, but ours aren't?
 
"allow big business to fail"

Sounds great, love the concept. However when I read about the bailouts, 2 issues keep poping up.

1) too big to fail

If the collapse of one company can cause a catastrophic economic issue, how can we not intercede?

The banks had become too big to fail due to previous government interference. This was not the first time our government interceded to save a failed model. Each time the government has done so, the next failure was even more catastrophic until we finally arrived at a point where the failed institutions could bring down the entire global economy.

In the 90s, the Long Term Capital Management hedge fund also presented a systemic risk. Today, LTCM looks like a pimple on an elephant's ass. However, it was certainly the biggest warning flare about the dangers of unregulated OTC derivatives trading for its time, and we ignored it.

LTCM was rescued by the government, but then it was dismantled, the pieces sold off, and everyone was sent packing.

The banks which failed this time should no longer be around, either.

We need banks, so new ones would open their doors. Ones with sounder management and smarter people. That's how capitalism works. You let the dipshits die and don't prevent efficient ones from taking their place.

We have nationalized incompetence.

2) unfair foriegn advantage

Can our big companies compete globally if our competitors are backed by their governments, but ours aren't?

In the short term, countries which cheat this way have a slight advantage.

But three things happen when a country subsidizes its businesses.

First, those businesses become more and more dependent on government support, which makes them lose their innovative edge. Instead of constantly working to improve to make them more competitive, they quickly become obsolete.

Second, government subsidies are inviting the devil into your home. The moment you become dependent on the devil's money, he begins dictating how you will run your business.

Third, as the dependence on subsidies breeds incompetence and inefficiency, it creates a snowball effect requiring more and more monetary support. And then, sooner or later, the government runs out of money. Then everything implodes.

.
 
Last edited:
"allow big business to fail"

Sounds great, love the concept. However when I read about the bailouts, 2 issues keep poping up.

1) too big to fail

If the collapse of one company can cause a catastrophic economic issue, how can we not intercede?

The banks had become too big to fail due to previous government interference. This was not the first time our government interceded to save a failed model. Each time the government has done so, the next failure was even more catastrophic until we finally arrived at a point where the failed institutions could bring down the entire global economy.

In the 90s, the Long Term Capital Management hedge fund also presented a systemic risk. Today, LTCM looks like a pimple on an elephant's ass. However, it was certainly the biggest warning flare about the dangers of unregulated OTC derivatives trading for its time, and we ignored it.

LTCM was rescued by the government, but then it was dismantled, the pieces sold off, and everyone was sent packing.

The banks which failed this time should no longer be around, either.

We need banks, so new ones would open their doors. Ones with sounder management and smarter people. That's how capitalism works. You let the dipshits die and don't prevent efficient ones from taking their place.

We have nationalized incompetence.

2) unfair foriegn advantage

Can our big companies compete globally if our competitors are backed by their governments, but ours aren't?

In the short term, countries which cheat this way have a slight advantage.

But three things happen when a country subsidizes its businesses.

First, those businesses become more and more dependent on government support, which makes them lose their innovative edge. Instead of constantly working to improve to make them more competitive, they quickly become obsolete.

Second, government subsidies are inviting the devil into your home. The moment you become dependent on the devil's money, he begins dictating how you will run your business.

Third, as the dependence on subsidies breeds incompetence and inefficiency, it creates a snowball effect requiring more and more monetary support. And then, sooner or later, the government runs out of money. Then everything implodes.

.
I approve this message
 
My 2 point plan -

1: Don't vote Democrat

2: Don't vote Republican

Most problems solved, sadly most of our population is overly educated but politically inferior.
 
Those are some real good ideas.

But one question; how you gonna get the people (Congressmen and women, lobbyists, bankers, Wall Street traders etc) who are well satisfied with the status quo, to change in a way that would not be beneficial to them? You just mentioned how much wealth they have. Why would they want to make less money? Or be controlled more?

The only way I could see much of any of your ideas implemented is IF we had a complete economic collapse and disruption of government.

And the new rules would have to be dictated by a new, different ruling class. One that shouldn't be so greedy.

But that's a lot to hope for.

Good ideas, not to hard to come by, implementation of same, almost impossible IMO.
 
My 2 point plan -

1: Don't vote Democrat

2: Don't vote Republican

Most problems solved, sadly most of our population is overly educated but politically inferior.

You see the debate in Chi. of the "other" Presidentail candidates.

Is it Gary Johnson, former Guv. or AZ? He is an interesting candidate I think.
Made way to much sense to get elected to anything. But he is definitely thinking about things in a way that I liked.
 
Those are some real good ideas.

But one question; how you gonna get the people (Congressmen and women, lobbyists, bankers, Wall Street traders etc) who are well satisfied with the status quo, to change in a way that would not be beneficial to them? You just mentioned how much wealth they have. Why would they want to make less money? Or be controlled more?

The only way I could see much of any of your ideas implemented is IF we had a complete economic collapse and disruption of government.

And the new rules would have to be dictated by a new, different ruling class. One that shouldn't be so greedy.

But that's a lot to hope for.

Good ideas, not to hard to come by, implementation of same, almost impossible IMO.


Big money certainly has the momentum in their favor. But I think the biggest obstacle is getting Americans to tear their eyeballs away from Kim Kardashian's ass and start focusing on what is going on.

Our national attention span is frightfully shortened, and we have the memory retention of a goldfish. We have people retroactively inventing history, and the masses are guzzling it down by the barrelful. And that scares me. A lot.



.
 
Last edited:
Where's the bit about better cable reception?

:lol:

If we allow America to get down to the business of business, you will have better cable reception. Or satellite reception. Or multimedia brain implant reception. Whatever those guys come up with next. Economic freedom brought a lot of technological leaps and bounds to us.

I think it would be cool if you had a cellphone in your brain. Then you could call a friend just by thinking about them. :lol:

"That fricking Joe really gets on my nerves! What? Oh, hi Joe!" :redface:

.
 
Last edited:
Those are some real good ideas.

But one question; how you gonna get the people (Congressmen and women, lobbyists, bankers, Wall Street traders etc) who are well satisfied with the status quo, to change in a way that would not be beneficial to them? You just mentioned how much wealth they have. Why would they want to make less money? Or be controlled more?

The only way I could see much of any of your ideas implemented is IF we had a complete economic collapse and disruption of government.

And the new rules would have to be dictated by a new, different ruling class. One that shouldn't be so greedy.

But that's a lot to hope for.

Good ideas, not to hard to come by, implementation of same, almost impossible IMO.


Big money certainly has the momentum in their favor. But I think the biggest obstacle is getting Americans to tear their eyeballs away from Kim Kardashian's ass and start focusing on what is going on.Our national attention span is frightfully shortened, and we have the memory retention of a goldfish. We have people retroactively inventing history, and the masses are guzzling it down by the barrelful. And that scares me. A lot.



.


BUtt butt butt. Us Americans, we like teams. You pick yours and I pick mine and we shall defend them to the end of time. For some strange reason.

So to have the change you propose, us regular people are going to have to quit either supporting our team or at least kicking some off the team. And that is hard for us Americans to do.

We love our "teams". Right left wrong or whatever. We support their right to stupid decisions that negatively effect us to the bitter end. Even if they enrich themselves at our expense, we support them. Even if the are caught lying, cheating and stealing, the team rallies round and keeps them on the team. Starting lineup in many cases.

We're weird like that I think.
 
Where's the bit about better cable reception?

:lol:

If we allow America to get down to the business of business, you will have better cable reception. Or satellite reception. Or multimedia brain implant reception. Whatever those guys come up with next. Economic freedom brought a lot of technological leaps and bounds to us.

I think it would be cool if you had a cellphone in your brain. Then you could call a friend just by thinking about them. :lol:

"That fricking Joe really gets on my nerves! What? Oh, hi Joe!" :redface:

.


Will Obama be offering free cable soon? I bet he will. Just before election day.
 
Those are some real good ideas.

But one question; how you gonna get the people (Congressmen and women, lobbyists, bankers, Wall Street traders etc) who are well satisfied with the status quo, to change in a way that would not be beneficial to them? You just mentioned how much wealth they have. Why would they want to make less money? Or be controlled more?

The only way I could see much of any of your ideas implemented is IF we had a complete economic collapse and disruption of government.

And the new rules would have to be dictated by a new, different ruling class. One that shouldn't be so greedy.

But that's a lot to hope for.

Good ideas, not to hard to come by, implementation of same, almost impossible IMO.


Big money certainly has the momentum in their favor. But I think the biggest obstacle is getting Americans to tear their eyeballs away from Kim Kardashian's ass and start focusing on what is going on.Our national attention span is frightfully shortened, and we have the memory retention of a goldfish. We have people retroactively inventing history, and the masses are guzzling it down by the barrelful. And that scares me. A lot.



.


BUtt butt butt. Us Americans, we like teams. You pick yours and I pick mine and we shall defend them to the end of time. For some strange reason.

So to have the change you propose, us regular people are going to have to quit either supporting our team or at least kicking some off the team. And that is hard for us Americans to do.

We love our "teams". Right left wrong or whatever. We support their right to stupid decisions that negatively effect us to the bitter end. Even if they enrich themselves at our expense, we support them. Even if the are caught lying, cheating and stealing, the team rallies round and keeps them on the team. Starting lineup in many cases.

We're weird like that I think.

Yep. That part is depressing.

But I see some rays of sanity starting to shine through. It is taking way longer than I thought it would, though.


.
 
Gonna get me sum of dat free cable. Along with my cellular my fone.
 
Big money certainly has the momentum in their favor. But I think the biggest obstacle is getting Americans to tear their eyeballs away from Kim Kardashian's ass and start focusing on what is going on.Our national attention span is frightfully shortened, and we have the memory retention of a goldfish. We have people retroactively inventing history, and the masses are guzzling it down by the barrelful. And that scares me. A lot.



.


BUtt butt butt. Us Americans, we like teams. You pick yours and I pick mine and we shall defend them to the end of time. For some strange reason.

So to have the change you propose, us regular people are going to have to quit either supporting our team or at least kicking some off the team. And that is hard for us Americans to do.

We love our "teams". Right left wrong or whatever. We support their right to stupid decisions that negatively effect us to the bitter end. Even if they enrich themselves at our expense, we support them. Even if the are caught lying, cheating and stealing, the team rallies round and keeps them on the team. Starting lineup in many cases.

We're weird like that I think.

Yep. That part is depressing.

But I see some rays of sanity starting to shine through. It is taking way longer than I thought it would, though.


.


Sounds like you and I would vote for a better deal. Got any ideas who is making that offer?
And has the proverbial snowballs chance of winning.
 
Thought I'd copy this over from another topic and make it a topic by itself.

After all the hot air rises into space, there is no substance left to the candidates' aspirations. No one really knows what they plan to do.

So here is something for you to really sink your teeth into and tell me how unbelievably ridiculous these ideas are. You need some real balls to kick? Here you go.


1. Raise the retirement age. When Social Security was enacted, the average life expectancy was 60 and only 6 percent of Americans were over the age of 65. Today, average life expectancy is 78 and 13 percent of Americans are over the age of 65. We have literally doubled our "entitlement" load.

We are living longer, we should be working longer.

Social Security was insurance. Not everyone was expected to collect. Now it is an entitlement.

We need to index the retirement age to either life expectancy or back to 6 percent of the population.

When we average life expectancy to 100 years, are we going to live one third of our lives on Social Security? I don't think so! We clearly need to raise the eligibility age.

Raise the eligibility age to 70. That's not even life expectancy, but you would be paying into Social Security and Medicare five more years and drawing out five less years. That's an astronomical savings of federal outlays right there.

2. Reform financial services regulations. We can start by repealing the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank), the Commmodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA), and the Financal Services Modernization Act of 1999 (FSMA).

The CFMA and FSMA completely deregulated the financial services sector and brought us the worldwide derivatives bubble and crash, which we are still going through. See Greece, Spain, Italy, Irleand, Eurozone, QE I, II, III, Infinity, etc.

Dodd-Frank is a weak and ineffective attempt to gum the financial institutions into sane and non-fraudulent behavior when what we need is some legislation with teeth.

There is good regulation, and there is bad regulation. When we are talking about something as important and with such a high potential for corruption as money, our economy cannot afford NO regulation.

We have a lot of bad regulation that needs to go. The CFMA and the FSMA are two examples.

So what kind of good regulation do we need?

An outright ban on credit default swaps, for starters. Credit default swaps allow you to bet your neighbors mortage will burn down. Not only that, you can build your neighbors mortgage and then bet it will burn down. How'd that turn out for ya?

There's a reason insurance has an insurable interest requirement. CDS must go. Those who have legitimate insurable interest requirements on their over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives should be allowed to buy insurance, but no one else.

Next regulation: all OTC derivatives are to be sold on exchanges. Dodd-Frank attempts to do this, but the visitor's log at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau shows that the big Wall Street firms are doing their level best to undermine the "end user" definition so the entire insurance protection framework of the securities exchanges will be rendered moot. They are building the loopholes they will drive their trucks full of money through.

Next, limit the size of the GSEs portfolios so they are not systemic risks. The GSEs have served a very important function in our economy. We don't need to eliminate them, we need to reform them.

Next, consolidate all federal financial regulatory authority under one roof so there can be no regulator shopping.

Next, return to the states their authority to prosecute financial fraud that was taken away by the CFMA and the OCC. This is an absolutely critical states right which needs to be restored.

3. Send fraudsters to prison. Enough with this "paid out some lunch money with no admission of wrongdoing" bullshit.

The financial services industry has become an oligarchy with 40 percent of all the corporate profits in our entire economy going to that one sector. This is a MASSIVE redistribution of wealth going on, from the pockets of the common man into the bank accounts of a tiny number of your fellow Americans. The money you pay for your health, auto and life insurance; your college tuition; your 401k; and even your taxes are going to Wall Street brokers' pockets. I kid you not.

How? By way of the sale of financial derviative products to the customer (your insurance company, public employee pension plan, city treasurer, etc.) who has no way of understanding them. For each product sold, there are several financial institutions which make fees off them. Because of this, they are heavily incentivized to makes these sales and to never let the gravy train stop. So when they ran out of credit-worthy customers, they threw the underwriting laws of the universe out the window and began inventing more and more toxic derivatives and selling them to more and more risky customers in order to keep those fees flowing into their pockets.

How'd that work out for you? Has your insurance gone up? College tuition gone up? Taxes gone up?

It is time to stop defending the crooks and time to start sending them to prison.

4. Allow big businesses to fail. It is not capitalism if you aren't allowed to fail. Period.

The government propping up of failed businesses is REAL socialism, and it leads to more and more inefficiencies, corruption, and has created bigger and bigger and bigger successive failures. One day will be talking about Too Big To Save corporations, at which point we will be well and truly screwed like you can't even imagine.


5. Reform the tax code.

Every tax deduction, loophole, subsidy, credit, collectively known as "tax expenditures", is regressive. Every expenditure has to be made up for by someone else.

For example, the mortgage interest deduction. You only get it if you are monied enough to be able to buy a house. This one deduction reduces federal revenue by $100 billion each year. That $100 billion is then going to have to come from someone else's hide.

If you think of tax expenditures this way, then it becomes crystal clear that removing all expenditures makes the playing field completely flat. Some people get all bunched up over "fairness". Taking away all tax expenditures is as fair as it gets.

Then we can lower tax rates, and everyone in each bracket pays the exact same amount of tax.

And think about this added benefit: It's a lot harder to corrupt a Congressman if he isn't allowed to mess with the tax code by adding special tax expenditures for his friends.


So that's it. I actually have other ideas which would greatly benefit our economy, but I promised only five.

You won't find many politicians these days who actually propose specific ideas. Instead, they say what they WON'T do. "I can tell you this, I won't turn our economy into a socialist paradise!"

Okay, but what WILL you do?

They don't tell you because they know they will be attacked. Our politicians today are a collection of chickenhearted cowards.

There's my 5 point plan. Here's my balls. Go ahead and kick 'em!

.

Where's the stuff on better cable reception?

Never mind. I don't watch TV. I gave it up. First cable, then the whole kit and caboodle.

Actually, that's not a bad idea since it will likely both improve (partially, at least) family finances AND boost the economy. Ditch the TV, especially CABLE TV. Get rid of those payments. Get out and start doing stuff. Get outside. Ride a bike. Take a walk. Go somewhere. Buy a book. READ the damn book. And then get ANOTHER book. Take a class. Take up a hobby. Do stuff with your kids. Help them with THEIR homework. All of these things will likely improve your health, help the economy, and enrich your life and your relationships.
 
Where's the stuff on better cable reception?

Never mind. I don't watch TV. I gave it up. First cable, then the whole kit and caboodle.

Actually, that's not a bad idea since it will likely both improve (partially, at least) family finances AND boost the economy. Ditch the TV, especially CABLE TV. Get rid of those payments. Get out and start doing stuff. Get outside. Ride a bike. Take a walk. Go somewhere. Buy a book. READ the damn book. And then get ANOTHER book. Take a class. Take up a hobby. Do stuff with your kids. Help them with THEIR homework. All of these things will likely improve your health, help the economy, and enrich your life and your relationships.

See post #12.

.
 

Forum List

Back
Top