What have months of brainstorming sessions among some of the braininest American minds from the world of economic academia and bazillions of dollars thrown at “zombie” banks brought us? (and we are all in this one together, no matter where we live)
The NYT writes today that after a brief respite, home prices have continued their downward spiraling trajectory and foreclosures have risen again with no end in sight. One dude bid $30,000 on a golf-course adjacent property just outside Boca Raton, and won. That’s not a typo - not $130,000 - but thirty thousand dollars.
So, since we’re clearly not getting anywhere, I propose the following stimulus plan to save this sinking economy. I know I’m just some yahoo (yahette, actually) with an internet connection and a pink laptop, but it seems to me that the nerdy set need all the help they can get.
Here’s what I propose:
Step 1:
“Claw back” any money used by banks to pay bonuses and other such bullshit, or from banks that have cooked their books to show a profit (Goldman Sachs, I’m talking to you) and use it to pay for… wait for it… regular people’s mortgages! THAT’S RIGHT - entire mortgages. Instead of handing cash to banks who refuse to lend it out to people and small businesses, cut out the middleman and PAY THE PEOPLE DIRECTLY.
Imagine that - owning your house outright… what would millions of people DO with all that security???
Step 2:
Bring back decent (mandatory) pensions! I like the Cayman Islands pension system - every company that operates here MUST contribute 5% of the value of an employee’s salary towards a pension plan that may not be cashed out before retirement, and the employee matches another 5% for a total of 10% going towards retirement savings for the entire length of a person’s career.
But this ain’t no AIG handout - there are conditions involved.
They are:
1) Raise income taxes significantly for a really, really long time. Seriously. Don’t even ask for how long, because you’ll probably be dead by the time this proposal breaks even (what… thought your house would be free?)
2) Tax undesirable behavior (smoking, fuel consumption, fast food, etc) and give tax breaks on things like “greening” your house, investing in a fuel-efficient car, organic food, etc)
Step 2:
Spend tax proceeds windfall on:
a) Public transportation infrastructure (will create jobs in the short term AND give people cheap transport options in the long run)
b) UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE. If you want top-of-the-line treatment, great. Pay for it. But if you just want reliable, good (if annoyingly slow and inefficient) health care because otherwise you might die or be in debt for three generations, then universal healthcare is for you.
c) Paying teachers a competitive salary so good they don’t do it because they have a fascination with living like impoverished monks, or because they married money. This one will also pay dividends when the kids who benefit grow up to be better citizens, and will encourage really competent people to consider teaching as a viable career choice.
As for your kids, well, they’ll be left with universal healthcare, a great (or better, anyway) education, less college debt, efficient public transport, cleaner air and water, and better prospects for renewable energy.
That, and really high taxes. Which they’ll eventually vote to eliminate, and then be free to ride this economic roller coaster all over again.
And that’s it. That’s my plan.
What do you think - if you could have a free (or nearly free) home, if you weren’t afraid of getting sick and had the option of taking a heated/air-conditioned light train to work, would you mind terribly if your tax rate went up by 10 or 15 or 20%?
April 23rd, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Nadine, tell me, why you didn’t go into politics again?? I love your novels and don’t want you to stop writing, but I do believe you have a second passion–perhaps you can combine these two loves somehow??
My feelings toward the American education system are, at times, laced with such a sense of futility that I’m not sure anything can save it. We pay very high taxes where we live right now, so the schools have a lot of income coming in from that–the problem is that, once they have it, it’s often misued, since the people running for school-board offices have proven themselves to be motivated by some pretty hefty personal agendas. So, IMO, raising taxes wouldn’t be an issue for me if the people in the positions to distribute the money were actually going to handle it responsibly. No matter what is promised, however, the people elected tended not to follow through (at least in the years we’ve lived here). It’s that kind of corruption across a number of fields (not just in education but in healthcare and other areas, too) that continues to worry me…
April 23rd, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Ha! My dream is to grow up to be Maureen Dowd. If you haven’t read her (at the NYT), she’s like a modern day Liz Bennet in the wit department, and her favourite punching bag was G.W. Bush. She was at her best when she wrote opinion pieces about him and his messed up relationship with his dad.
But what does she write about these days? How her job - hardcore journalism - is going the way of the dodo.
All this to say I don’t know how I could ever get into politics while avoiding actually being involved in policy decisions… I believe that is the way to Hell. It’s much safer to criticize from the sidelines : )
I didn’t realize you paid high taxes where you are - I just assumed Americans pay low taxes in general (in Puerto Rico, my sister is taxed at 20% - in Quebec, it starts at 32% after your first $10,000 earned and goes all the way to 50%, plus 15% sales tax) But I think you’re absolutely right about mismanagement - in Quebec, we have an issue with roads. For as long as I can rememeber, every summer, half the roads in Montreal are dug up, driving us completely insane, only to be full of potholes a few months into winter, and require digging up all over again the follwoing summer. I used to think it was a weather issue, until people noticed that next-door Ontario doesn’t have that problem. So what’s the theory? That corruption has resulted in deliberately botched-up jobs, so that the contractors keep getting their contracts renewed year after year.
No, I think I’ll be staying far, far away from politics!
September 9th, 2010 at 4:30 am
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