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This seems like a no-brainer to me: if there is one thing this country needs to do as soon as possible, it is balance the budget! Unless we want to end up like Greece and many other countries, this needs to happen now. We all know what happens to us personally if we continue to spend more money than we have. There are three basic things that must be done to balance the budget without taking away essential programs from the needy.
SOCIAL SECURITY
Everyone talks about how social security is going to implode in about 20 years. This is the easiest of all our problems; raise the taxable social security amount a whole bunch, say to a million dollars. Us middle class folks are the backs the rich stood on to make their fortunes, why can’t they pay a little more? Last time I checked the maximum salary to contribute to social security is $117,000, everything made over that amount is social security tax-free. Change that!
MILITARY
Reduce the military budget by a mere 10%. You could even do it over a couple of year period so as not to impact the economy too severely. That would amount to $60,000,000,000 (that’s billion). Do you know that 20% of every dollar we pay in taxes goes to the military, of which 4% is spent on veterans from our many conflicts? And that is just the part that shows up in the budget. No wonder there is little money left for education or roads or most everything! Does that seem nuts to you? It does to me. According to a survey done in 2015 by Ashley Kirk, with The Telegraph, we spend more than the next 10 civilized countries added up! There is no doubt that we need to remain a strong military force on the planet but at what point does this become absurd! If you look at the chart you can see how crazy it is.
The world’s 25 largest defense budgets
| Country |
Defense budget |
| United States |
569.3 |
| China |
190.9 |
| United Kingdom |
66.5 |
| Russia |
53.2 |
| France |
52.7 |
| India |
49.7 |
| Japan |
49.3 |
| Saudi Arabia |
46.3 |
| Germany |
43.8 |
| South Korea |
35.7 |
| Australia |
34.3 |
| Brazil |
30.7 |
| Italy |
29.0 |
| Canada |
17.2 |
| Turkey |
15.9 |
| Israel |
15.6 |
| United Arab Emirates |
14.7 |
| Taiwan |
14.5 |
| Spain |
13.9 |
| Algeria |
12.4 |
| Poland |
12.2 |
| Netherlands |
10.6 |
| Singapore |
10.4 |
| Pakistan |
10.3 |
| Iraq |
10.3 |
Last on my BIG THREE LIST is health care. We spend almost 18% of our Gross Domestic Product on health care. Most every country in the civilized world has a form of the single payer plan in which the government is in charge of health care. These countries spend between 8% and 13% of GDP on this and every citizen has full medical benefits. Many people I have talked to from these other countries love their health care systems. Here in the USA we have the most expensive health care in the world and we don’t cover every American! Hell, a 200 mg ibuprofen costs $10 when you are in the hospital.
So, there you have it. We spend over 1 trillion dollars on health care every year. If we were to reduce it to 10% of GDP instead of 18% we would save almost $400,000,000,000 in one year, (again, that is billion) AND, every person in the USA would be fully covered for their health care! The one problem, or should I say benefit, to this idea is that the insurance companies, medical instrument companies and pharmaceutical companies would all suffer greatly from this change. Oh no, I believe my eyes are tearing up…
So, lets wind things up. We can realize a $400 billion savings from healthcare by going to the same basic plan that Trump claims is better than ours, the Australian health care plan. Save 60 billion by cutting the military by a mere 10% and stop the drain on the federal government by fixing social security. That is in excess of $500,000,000,000 or 1/2 trillion dollars!
Let me tell you why this probably won’t happen.
First, the rich folks do not give a rat’s ass about your social security because they already have plenty of money and don’t want to part with any of it!
Second, many decisions made by politicians are influenced by insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and medical instrument companies and they do not plan on pissing off the hands that feed them.
Third, the largest, and most lucrative industry in the world that benefits from human suffering and war, the military industry, sways almost every government in the world and is going to make sure we continue to produce countless devices to kill fellow humans.
So, there you have it, a simple cure to our financial problems. Will it happen?…probably not. Will we become a financially crippled country?…probably yes. Does anybody care? probably not, as long as the gas stations are open, phones work, there is electricity, and there is some food in the stores. But take heed, you can not continue to print worthless money forever, someday you have to pay the fiddler.
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