Strategy Page - Taxation

As a party we have one goal: Promote Freedom and Liberty. This needs to be kept simple and straightforward. There will be plenty of complexity and there will be opportunities to pursue other goals by individuals. But the party needs ONE thing it can back up to and considering the current political situation the average citizen will support any candidate that will stand up for their freedom.

From here on this post will be a very brief discussion of individual strategies. They will correspond with a specific topic. Each one of these will get it's own page with a plan to move forward and implement the tactics that will support that strategy.


Strategy: Shift taxation from labor to capital.

Payroll taxes retard job growth and punish the people who actually work. They raise the cost of employment for employers who will rationally choose to invest in capital instead. In addition as we use more robotics and AI our labor participation rate will approach 0 and that tax base will disappear. As the labor participation rate approaches zero there needs to be a clear plan to move towards a universal basic income. This is how it will be funded.

This means taxes on robots, machinery, and AI/software services.

On this issue we can look forward and be the party of the future. This policy will be extremely popular with the working class. It really is a no brainer.


Strategy: Develop a Universal Basic Income.

I know that this will be counter-intuitive to conservatives and people who believe in self reliance and individuality. I understand. The alternative is worse.

We are heading quickly to a time when the vast majority of people do not have to work. In fact there will be no point for them to work. Taxi Drivers and Truck Drivers are soon going to be unemployed in mass. Within 10 years. Farms that produce our food are almost totally automated now. It just will not be long before most of us don't have a job. Within a few years there will be machines printing houses in lines. Robots will be making the Robots. Pick any profession and within 20 years a robot/AI will do it better. If you want to quibble I will give you 30, 40, 50 years. At some point within our lifetimes this will happen.

What are the alternatives at that point?

A system that taxes capital, driverless Taxi's for example, and distributes a universal basic income will maintain autonomy of the individual.

The alternative will be a concentrated elite that can produce products very cheap and very fast and a lot of people who have no job or income or way to pay for those products and no place in society. In this situation the elites will be able to come up with ways people can "pay" them for those goods.


Strategy: Eliminate mass transit. Support driverless vehicles and an open vehicle control grid.

This isn't just because Mass Transit is a moving force behind central planning. Mass Transit is just going to be a total waste of resources within 10 years. Period.

The future of transportation is a grid of driverless vehicles that come to any point you are at and take you to where you are going with no stop lights, parking lots, or traffic jams. No mass transit system will be as convenient or as cheap. We will not have to build anymore roads than we already have unless it is to expand to a new area. No eminent domain issues is another bonus.

There will also be almost zero traffic related deaths/accidents. This reason alone is going to set off a preference cascade towards a driverless automated system. I have heard it dozens of times: "They will pry this steering wheel out of my cold dead hands!" During the transition some kid is going to get run over by a human driver and her mom will be on TV crying and they will start calling the holdouts awful things not starting or ending with "murderer." It will happen overnight. Book it. They will have special tracks and preserves for people who want to self drive.


Strategy: Flatten the tax code. Eliminate all diversions, deductions, distortions, subsidies and loopholes.


Strategy: School Choice Now.


Strategy: Universal Health Care 

Universal Health Care. Not single payer.

Turn Medicare/Medicaid into a universal catastrophic coverage that covers all costs over $100,000 in a calendar year and build up an emergency room system that does not accept walk-ins. Force providers into a cash price/reimbursement system rather than a 3rd party payer. Have a government match on Health Savings Account deposits. Provide a voucher to current medicare recipients to get supplemental coverage.

Politically more people are insured than Obamacare. You are also supporting a free market. Something like this should be on Trump's desk tomorrow.


Strategy: Learn and speak to the Science of "Climate Change"

We have over 4 billion years of climate evidence. Ask the people pushing this theory what the correlation coeffecient is between CO2 levels and Temperature? Ask them how much a 50 parts per million change in CO2 levels is supposed to increase temperature globally based on that correlation coefficient. Ask them what the confidence interval is on this statement. These are the scientific values you need to have to make a scientific conclusion. Otherwise you are just spouting nonsense.

Talk about the actual Scientific Method. The Scientific Method is based on skepticism. You produce a hypothesis, or theory, based off of observation. You test the hypothesis with gathered evidence and you produce a conclusion. You then open up all of your research and conclusions to peer review. Your peers attempt to recreate your results and try to find error in your conclusions.

None of this has happened with climate change. Original data has been hidden and destroyed. Purveyors of this theory have been caught multiple times "adjusting" the data in dubious ways. Most importantly anyone who demonstrates skepticism inherent in the actual scientific method is blacklisted from all government grants and if they do not have tenure are fired. Climate change is acting like a religion and the scientific method is purposely being killed off in primary education to turn science in this country into a cult.

It must also be pointed out that companies like GE have made billions off of green subsidies. Al Gore is a billionaire now. Climate Change has and always will be a hoax that was created to make wealthy connected people rich off of government money and take control of hydrocarbons and by extension the entire economy and every citizens livelihood.

There is a wide variety of actual data out there that doesn't need to be "adjusted" into a hockey stick. And to answer my question above about a correlation between temperature and CO2? Real scientists have done the actual work and it shows that over the last 400,000 years temperature changes and CO2 levels do correlate. CO2 levels change 400-1000 years AFTER the temperature changes.


Strategy: Put an automatic sunset on every law and every program.

As we move forward society is going to change more and more rapidly. Technologies are going to disrupt current systems and government programs that were useful, or not useful, 10 years ago will no longer be anything other than a complete waste of resources. Our government is currently is infested with useless government programs and 80 year old laws. Force congress to do it's job.


To be continued...

Mission Statement

Mission: The Republican Party will promote and defend economic, social, and personal Freedom. The Republican Party believes that individuals and social groups will make better decisions for themselves and we will foster an environment where citizens can make decisions that affect their lives and their families and their communities for themselves.

The Republican Party right now is lost. It has failed it's voters for decades and a political class that is detached from the voters had taken over. They have backed their way into power at every level in DC and they still cannot unite behind anyone or do anything the voters who put them there want. Nobody can name a single policy or guiding principal the republican party stands for. Over the last 6 years you would have thought it was repeal of Obamacare. Welp! That betrayal is the catalyst.

The Republican Party needs a purpose and a principle going forth. Freedom and Liberty are what this country was founded on. The Republican Party needs to be more forward facing. Conservatives always look to the past for answers. The technologies and disruptions that are coming are going to be deep and they are going to come fast and a party looking to the past will not be able to keep up. We need to be creative and innovative in defending Freedom and promoting Liberty.

Donald Trump won the nomination running against the deepest field of republican candidates ever. He didn't just get lucky. Every faction had their shot. He started out the front runner and as the field narrowed he gained more votes from departing candidates than the other remaining candidates. He received a record number of votes in the republican primary. He did this despite an almost complete lack of any detectable ideology. Make America Great Again is an inspired and brilliant campaign slogan. It is also empty which is a part of why it worked. Trump's victory should be used and analysed to understand the voting base and what the voters really want.

What do citizens want? In general the normal people: Want to go to work, make enough money to support their family, go home and watch a _____, and go out on the weekends with social groups. They want to be able to make these decisions feeling morally sufficient and reasonably secure and free to do what they want to do without having someone or some government steal their stuff. If they feel like someone will go to DC to protect their interests and fight for them so they don't have to deal with that they will support them. There are no complicated ideologies here. These people really just want to be left alone whether they go to church on the weekends or go to the BBQ at the park.

Those citizens described above are under assault and they know it. The problem for them is they see decisions made in DC about their lives and they feel no connection or input. They vote for politicians who almost immediately go to DC, get a bunch of money for their re-election campaign from donors, and promptly forget about them. Obamacare has kicked these people in the nuts. But we elected Republicans to fix this right? RIGHT?!

We need to be able to tell them what we are doing for them in clear statements. Our words and our actions must match. A big part of this is having a simple and clear message and purpose. Just like government growing less responsive and effective as it gets larger so does a party need to focus on a narrow set of principles or it loses clarity. These must be broken down into goals. We must develop strategies that support these go and use tactics that match our strategies.

Goal: Promote and protect Freedom and Liberty.

Strategy: Understand current and imminent technological advances and disruptions to society and proactively place policies that promote and protect Freedom and Liberty.

This strategy will foster numerous tactics. For example:

Tactic: As robotics and AI displace human labor shift the tax burden from labor and income to capital and consumption.

There will be a post where strategies will be brainstormed, vetted, edited and weeded out. Each strategy will have it's own set of tactics.

Our principles need to be Freedom and Liberty and moving forward we need to understand where society is going and find new and innovative ways to promote and protect freedom. The rest of these posts are taking individual policy areas and discussing what they will look like and what our tactics need to be. The messaging needs to be simple and our actions must match our words: We support Freedom.

Funding the Federal Government by taxing State Governments

The federal government is limited in the ways it can affect state governments by the constitution but t is allowed to tax. Because you get less of things you tax by nature we should be looking to tax state government programs. There are several pernicious things I would like to see taxed out of existence.

Property Taxes. A person's principle residence should be exempt from property taxes. We didn't leave England because we wanted to live on the King's Land. Therefor I propose the federal government levies a 99% tax on revenues to the States and Counties from taxes on principle residences.

Other things that should be taxed at 80%:

Income lawyers earn from percentage based settlement/jury damage rewards.

State Gas taxes.

Revenues on fees/permits for occupational licensing.

This is certainly not an exhaustive list. It can easily be expanded.

Transportation Policy

You cannot design a policy without first understanding where we will be in 10-20 years. There are two shibboleths in our transportation system that need to be eliminated: Gas taxes and Mass Transit. Not only are they currently ineffective, inhibitive, and regressive as policies now they will be completely moot and vestigial to society in 20 years.

Right now most of our transportation funding is derived from gas taxes. Even without massive disruptions our aggregate vehicle usage patterns and improvements to vehicle gas efficiency have reduced the efficacy of this as a funding mechanism. This trend will rapidly accelerate over the next 20 years. Even if only 20% of the vehicle fleet becomes electric this is a massive disruption. Within 20 years it will be much more than 20%.

Beyond the efficacy of raising funds is the effect the gas tax has on the people and the economy. Energy is the lifeblood of the economy. It is the most regressive form of taxation in existence. Every aspect of a persons life is affected by the price of fuel. Home utilities, transportation costs, food costs, and all of the basic necessities of life are affected by the rise or fall of gas prices. The gas tax hits an average family dozens of times every month.

Lately the proceeds of this regressive atrocity have been going to mass transportation projects. This has turned into a giant wealth transfer from suburban/rural areas to the urban elite. Not only is this an immoral policy on its face it is pure stupidity for any Republican or conservative to allow to continue.

Taxation needs to be transitioned into a usage model. That means tolls. These tolls need to be ubiquitous and evenly distributed. The only areas that should have an unequal distribution of tolls are government seats and capitols. There needs to be a mandate that these areas and cities face at least double the concentration so they feel the demands of their policies.

The other major policy shift needs to be in the discouragement of mass transit and expansions thereof. Self driving vehicles are going to make mass transit completely useless. First you have to understand what the transition from human drivers to automated vehicles will do to traffic systems. There will be no street lights. There will be no street parking. There will be no stop signs. There will be no traffic jams. There will be no rush hour. You will get in your car at your house and you will travel 20-50 mph to your destination with no stops or pauses until you get to your destination. Some vehicles will move off to pick up the next passenger while personal vehicles will drive themselves to the nearest very large centralized parking garage with open capacity.

Humans cause all of the distortions in traffic that cause rush hour. Traffic moves like a sign wave because enough of us suck at driving to cause problems. We need stop signs and traffic lights to bring order. There will be none of this soon.

People will not tolerate centrally controlled train stations and scheduling issues associated with mass transit when the option to be picked up anywhere at anytime and direct fast transport to your destination is available without the overhead costs. A driverless Uber variant will be cheaper and more convenient. All investment into mass transit should be discouraged and frankly mocked. It is just plain stupid.

As we move into this new traffic system vehicle mileage will be easily tracked and we can allow a pay by mile option that ignores tolling. Eventually everyone will be paying by the mile and tolls will be unnecessary. This is the system we should be implementing now.

Taxation

Tax Reform

The first section of this policy paper is on what we tax. Off the top of my head I have paid Sales Tax, Property Tax, Income tax, Social Security Tax. Business and Operations Excise Tax, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment tax and Labor and Industry Insurance Tax in the last year. In addition I paid two different CPA's to help me prepare taxes for a business and my personal taxes.

This is by all means not a complete list. There are all manner of application fees and processing fees and licensing fees. This also does not cover regulatory compliance costs. Rather this is about how the government generates the revenue it uses to pay for it's budget.

In general we need to move away from taxing Labor to taxing Capital.

Right now a construction company gets a contract to build a building. If the company hires an employee, labor, it has to pay a wide variety of taxes and fees to the state for every hour that employee works. The direct wages can be deducted but for every $1 an employer pays an employee $.25 goes to the government. In other words to pay one of my employees $100 I have to actually pay $125 dollars because of taxes and government related compliance costs. But if the company buys a new backhoe, capital, it gets to deduct the entire cost and there are no similar taxes or compliance costs. $100 dollars spent on capital costs $100.

As time passes we are investing more into capital and less into labor. Artificial Intelligence and Robotics are going to hasten this trend. Within most of our lifetimes the number of hours humans need to work is going to approach zero. This goes beyond "flat" tax or "fair" tax or even minimum wage. Our system of taxation needs to tax things that exist if it is going to be useful. In the example above w need to shift the burden off the employee and onto the machine because shortly it is only going to be machines doing the work.

Not only do we need to consider the changing ratios between capital and labor we need to think about what we want to encourage. Everyone talks about wanting more jobs. If you want more jobs reduce the cost of employment for employers. The best way to accomplish this is to eliminate payroll taxes and replace them with taxes on robots and automated systems.

Self driving vehicles are already outperforming human drivers and it is only a matter of time before Truck Drivers are replaced. Truck Driver is the most numerous job in most states. For all of the reasons above we need to start taking the tax burden off a career and family supporting job and placing it on the new technology that is going to disrupt this industry.  We want to incentivize maintaining jobs and keep pace with changing technology.

In the end when there are no truck drivers or construction workers or doctors or lawyers or hair stylists or fast food servers the tax base will still be there and we will be able to implement a universal basic income program.

Health Care Position - Universal Health Care

We need to fix our Health Care System. It needs to be taken out of the hands of the DC uniparty and serve the people of this country rather than the insurance company donors. The government's role in Health Care is to create a safety net for the people and a framework for the marketplace to foster innovation, drive down costs, and improve quality of service.

 Outline:

1. Create a safety net: Medicare becomes universal catastrophic coverage for everyone. Current medicare recipients receive a voucher to purchase supplemental plans to cover the rest. They can stay with government care if they want but there will be much better options in short order. All costs over $100,000 in a calendar year are covered for anyone by this universal catastrophic plan. In addition people with true congenital pre-existing conditions will be covered.
2. Take the existing emergency room system and add support to rural and low income areas by adding more locations. Take the existing emergency room system and stop serving walk-ins. Redirect walk-ins to an urgent care system. 
3. Turn medicaid into an Health Savings Account grant support program. Give every American an account where they can deposit money for their and their family's health care use. This account will primarily be used to purchase supplemental coverage up to $100,000 for each member of the family. Owners can spend the money on whatever health care related thing they want or roll it over if they want. Every American will get a matching amount from medicaid for the first X number of dollars they put in. 
4. Change to a higher standard for successful litigation to reduce lawsuits and also make it automatic loser pays all court costs. 
5. Create a national marketplace for supplemental insurance. Anyone in the country can buy insurance from any insurer that posts there. Insurers can post plans that limit health care network choices. They will compete against insurers who do not limit networks. Create a system similar to the FDIC banking insurance system and allow more entry into the health insurance market with regulation and reserve requirements like banks. The limit is $100,000. 
6. Eliminate state licensing requirements on health care establishments. Institute national standards. Hammer states that protect large providers. Allow more options into the market. 
7. Enforce open pricing. Cash and insurance pay the same price. Move to a reimbursement model rather than a third party payer model. 

Everyone will be covered. Costs of coverage will necessarily go down. The free market will reduce costs and new innovations will flourish. Administrative costs will be reduced greatly and pricing will be clear and open. The left gets universal health care. The right gets a free market. This is what a health care compromise looks like.

Microsoft Azure vs. Amazon AWS comparison from the perspective of a new developer with ADD

AWS free tier vs. Microsoft Azure Free tier.

First point I want to make is I don't like solving problems for the sake of solving problems. The other is that I wanted to use MS Azure. After reading those two sentences you can probably figure out which service I got my site up on. I am not a good programmer yet and I am doing this by myself while at home watching the kids. All I have are docs and youtube.

As of now I got my 0.6.0 version site up at http://sample-env.bfa2ww7dhi.us-east-2.elasticbeanstalk.com/. 0.6.0 is absolutely arbitrary. I will make it a deployment version at some point and take the console logs out but it is up now. It is a node.js stack. One little hitch where I zipped the entire project file that housed server.js and package.json and my environment couldn't find them.

Previous to this I spent 2 days reading docs on the MS Azure website. I was watching the kids and it isn't like I was focused like a laser beam and for a developer I am probably terrible at reading docs. That being said there was not even a start point. I eventually figured out I needed Powershell and only because another website told me to. I think I need it but it also may already be installed. So I find out it is and start it up. Kids come and... That's how far I am. I may try that path again. I have been working off of a few sites describing their experience. One is this one: One does not simply run node.js on ms azure.

That site and this site are starting about the same time. Here goes.

Welcome to my weblog.

A link to a current devel project

This is going to be a weblog where like everyone else I type a bunch of stuff that I am interested in and I blab it out here to pretend everyone else is interested. One of my current interests is app development and I work with javascript and CSS. If I start venting on blogger about lack of documentation and a lack of customization I realize at this point it is silly. But you will see posts about my maneuverings through the development environment. I may also post some documentation here so I can refer users to readmes.

Other topics you may see:
• Army stories
• Politics and Spleen
• Future comings in Tech
• Fighting, Training, Fitness
• Random because I am too lazy to type more topics

A lot of this post is an attempt to see what my posts will look like. Another is I am wasting time while my MS Azure account updates. All hail the cloud. This is what a youtube embed video looks like:

Ok I am off to mess with cloud account again bbl.