Government and Taxes

Congress couldn't decide who should see their personal taxes hiked so they just raised the debt ceiling instead. The problem is that government taxes are based largely on economic production rather than wealth or profit. Most economic production today is done by machines and robots who don't pay income taxes. As the population of economic output consumers is increasing, the amount and relative value of human economic output produced is decreasing. You can't have an economy just selling stuff to each other. Someone needs to be producing something. Anyway, there is no one left now to pay for the government.

In theory, a wheat farmer with 1000 acres of wheat should pay a tax based on the number of workers that would be required to plant and harvest the 1000 acres. An acre is defined as the amount of land a farmer with a yoke of (2) oxen can plow in a day. A thousand acres is a thousand man-days of work to plow. That and every other potential tax option is extremely inflationary.

I have a very simple plan to make minor structural changes now which will facilitate flexibility for future tax policy decisions. This isn't tax reform but it paves the way for sensible tax reform that is desperately needed. There would be no immediate change to business payroll expense, government revenue or worker’s take home pay. Most workers would no longer file tax returns. People with investment income, capital gains and self-employment income would still file returns and pay taxes on that income.

The underlying concept is to uncouple and break the link between taxes and earned income without changing either of them. By uncoupling these, we can remove politics from our tax policy decisions and just do what is best for the U.S. economy.

The resulting paradigm eliminates any need for Congress to waste time debating over raising taxes on the rich or the middle class. It eliminates any need to debate over who should pay more taxes for our needed infrastructure investment. And, it permanently eliminates the burden of the government budget, budget deficit and government debt from the backs of current and future generations of workers.

My plan uses existing state and federal tax systems, forms and rates. It costs almost nothing to implement, nothing to operate and actually saves billions of dollars per year in unnecessary and redundant paperwork by business, the government and their workers.

Legislation required at the state and federal level would simply allow responsible businesses to gather accurate dependent information for healthcare benefits and tax purposes, electronically file the tax returns and pay any taxes due, for the worker’s benefit, using the correct exemptions, dependents, and the standard deduction. Businesses would not be required to participate in this program. Responsible business can provide the same benefit to their workers by pledging to absorb any personal income tax increases and not reducing their take home pay.

Once uncoupled, any future increases or decreases in tax rates on wages should no longer affect worker’s gross earned income and will affect business expenses and profits instead.

Workers whose tax returns were filed by their employer would also be provided with a W-2 information statement for their personal records, showing earnings and taxes paid by the business for the worker, and they can use it to file an amended 1040 return to itemize deductions, and/or for reporting additional self-employment, investment income or capital gains that were reported on 1099s.

Until union and other employment contracts and income tax tables are updated to the new gross wage paradigm, companies can add the worker's share of the prior employee deductions being paid by the employer, to compute a virtual gross wage for meeting those requirements and needs.

Once taxes have been uncoupled from worker’s paychecks, we can do some real tax reform, such as a flat tax on wages, a value added tax on all forms of production or increase taxes on business profits to encourage more long-term investment or more profit sharing.

We need to have all the leaders and representatives of the largest U.S. corporations attend a “corporate responsibility” virtual conference to discuss and decide how they plan to tax themselves to fund the government while eliminating personal income tax on human earned income and permanently removing the cost of the government from the backs of current and future generations of workers. 

I strongly oppose allowing self-driving trucks on public highways. The last thing I want to see is a loaded semi barreling down the highway with no one on board.

I have a design for a pandemic-era passenger and freight long-haul transportation system that uses electric self-driving, self-isolating rail cars on our existing rail infrastructure by simply adding a third rail for power, monitored and controlled by Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories equipment, on about 20,000 miles of track. The center rail would only be hot during the moment the "smart" vehicle is on that section. 

The tracks form a mesh network so there is more than one way to get between any two hubs. There would not be a central control system. The track controllers form a neural network that knows the condition and capacity of each section of track. The smart rail vehicles know where they are going and the track knows the best way to get there.

Passenger pods could be coupled together for larger isolation groups and/or freight pods can be added for carrying your personal car or other supplies to your destination. This would not be nearly as costly to build as high-speed rail, and really, what is your hurry? In wide open areas, we could safely be going around 100 mph, while enjoying the scenery and the fresh clean air or sleeping, working, watching movies and playing games on the internet. Rail pods could also be privately owned and parked in smart-rail parking lots until needed.

Initially, there would be about a dozen smart-rail hubs around the country near major cities where passenger pods and freight pods can be unloaded to conventional highway vehicles or self-coupled to conventional trains for transit to the destination terminal. Self-driving “engine” vehicles will also be able to haul conventional rail cars between smart-rail hubs across the country. At seaports, containers would be offloaded directly onto flat-bed freight-pods and sent on their way.

We need a 3-lane highway from Emmett to Council. It makes no sense to leave all of the northern Idaho economy disconnected from Boise.

All transportation infrastructure exists primarily for commercial purposes and therefore are the responsibility of business. This includes public transportation systems that convey workers from their homes to their place of employment. Commuting to work will now be a business expense rather than a worker expense. It is not the responsibility of the worker to deliver himself to your place of business. Brick and mortar retailers will need to pay for customer commuting costs to compete with online retailers. For these reasons, it may make sense to make all public transportation free for workers, students and customers. New infrastructure projects would be funded through business taxes or business user fees.

Urban population densities are unnatural, unhealthy, obsolete and exist solely for commercial purposes and as such, all sanitary water and sewer system infrastructures, which are required to support healthy urban population densities, exist solely for commercial purposes and therefore are the responsibility of business for funding.