FRANK MOOREāS ECONOMIC POLICIES
Frank Moore for President 2008
Iāll do away with welfare and social security. Instead, every American will receive a minimum income of $1,000 a month. This amount will be tied to the cost of living and will not be taxable. (See Guaranteed Minimum Income below for an expanded view.)
We will have universal prenatal-to-the-grave health care and universal free life-long education with equal access. Everyone will have equal access to health care; everyone will have the same health coverage as the President has.
Public mass transit will be free, 24/7, and reliable.
The minimum income and the minimum/livable wage, linked to the cost of living, will rise every time the congress members vote themselves a pay raiseā¦will rise by the same percentage of their raise.
Prisons should be only for violent or otherwise dangerous criminals. Prisons should be a part of the health and educational system and should include drug rehab programs. This should also be true for the new creative in-community programs for non-violent criminals for paying-back, rehab, and education sentencing. These programs will be more effective and much less expensive and harmful to the community on every level than the current human warehouse system. Flexibility of sentencing should to be returned to judges. I will ban the death penalty.
The use of drugs should be legalized and taxed. Pot and spirits should be sold over the counter to adults only. Tobacco and other addictive drugs should be sold by prescription only. Free drug rehab programs should be readily available.
I will forgive the loans to the so-called third-world countries over the original principle.
How will I pay for all of these new programs?
Iāll do away with all tax deductions for over $12,000 income. Instead, there will be a flat tax of 10% on annual income of less than one million dollars for an individual and less than five million dollars for a corporation. But the flat tax will jump to 75% on annual income exceeding these limits. An individual taxpayer will be able to direct her taxes to what functions she wants to support. But corporate taxpayers should not have this option.
Iāll cut the military budget by at least half.
I will reduce the federal government while raising services to the people by getting rid of welfare, social security, the so-called war on drugs, etc., and by the cuts in the military, the I.R.S., prisons, etc. The Department of Homeland Fearā¦ I mean Securityā¦has been a disaster, a con job on a massive scale. I will junk it.
Community-based health services will create jobs, and increase quality of life for patients and the community itself, especially the elderly. It will be more effective, more humane, and cheaper.
Preventative medicine will cut costs. School meals should be part of the health system. Growing food in schools, and healthy meals in schools will cut medical costs and improve kidsā performance in school. This will also make schools more a part of their communities, increasing the overall health of the communities.
Today, because of monopolies, we pay much more for drugs and have less access to drugs than most Western nations. The drug companies are searching for what will generate the largest profits, and that dictates the research. This means many problems that are deemed unprofitable are left unexplored. With profit/greed no longer the driving force in the health care system, medicine and coverage for the so called ānon-profitableā diseases and services would be better funded and much improved. There will be much more funding available for things like primary care, immunizations, basic health care ā¦ things for the public good.
We will use half of the money we will save by cutting the military budget to pay down the national debt. I will shrink the federal bureaucracy and again use half of the savings for this pay down. I will reduce the pollution caused by obscene corporate profits.
Basically the problem is not a lack of money, but what we have spent our money onā¦war, pork, waste, etc. It has been a standard trick to distract us with supposed waste, fraud, etc. in the social programs while milking us out of billions in military waste, corporate welfare, etc.
On the bailout, let me get this straight…we are bailing out these companies to the tune of $700 billion because they are “too big to allow them to fail because if they failed, the whole global economy will crumble!” If this is true, if the global economy is that fragile, we are in deep shit. A bail out will not get us out of this deep shit. I would down size these companies to more sane sizes…I would break them up. I would make the selling of debt illegal. I would set an interest rate ceiling of 5% on all loans. I would bring back pre-Reagan regulations on banks, etc. If I were going to bail out these companies, they would have to provide full and free medical coverage to every American for 25 years!
Again, the selling/buying of debt should be illegal. Moreover, there should be a maximum interest rate of 10 percent on the original principle over the life time of a loan.
Royalties from medicines and devices that were developed in public universities or by the government will be returned to the public by way of funding the health care system. So the public will see a return on their investment in these public institutions. These funds could also help the education system I propose. All patents and copyrights will expire in 20 years. Inventions, products, etc. which are developed with governmental money and/or public institutions can not be patented.
It is to get back to common wealth rather than wealth, to induce the break up of the big corporations, to bring back the control of our society to us the people, to turn away from greed and distorting huge profits, and shift the burden of paying for our common good to those who have the ability to pay. All of this will open up a great wealth of new opportunities for everybody.
Frankly, most of “the rich” make out very well under my plan. In your personal life, do you know anybody making a million dollars a year? I don’t. But I would call that person RICH. and that person would pay at the 10% tax rate. Not bad! The rich…like everybody else…will get $12,000 tax-free each year, free health-care and education, etc. Businesses won’t have to provide health-care or pensions to their workers. Yep, the rich will do quite well. and the wealth junkies can still make as much money as they want. They will keep 25%!
All businesses selling their products in the U.S. will have to certify that their products were manufactured in accordance with this countryās labor, wage, environmental, and safety laws … that they meet or exceed these … no matter where they were produced. This would curb peopleās desire to come to this country for a better life. It would also remove the corporationsā motivation for draining jobs from this country. Businesses would pay non-citizen workers at least the minimum wage which would be tied to the cost of living. Businesses that hire non-citizen workers would pay a tax to cover the additional costs to our educational and health systems. This tax couldn’t be taken out of the wages of the workers.
Guaranteed Minimum Income, an expanded view
The guaranteed minimum income is meant to be a safety net rather than a replacement of work. I think most want to workā¦in an expanded concept of work. But to get a true feeling of what it would be like if you had to live on your minimum income, you have to crank in that you wouldnāt pay for health care, education, mass transit, etc. It all adds up. The combined minimum income coupleā¦or a single parent with a childā¦would be $2,000 a month. This should provide a realistic basic living. This allows the single parent the option of being home doing the important work of raising a child. But free childcare provided by the universal free education system would open a whole host of new possibilities to the single parent.
The minimum income would encourage people to form the cooperative communal family [of all kinds] groupings who pool their incomes togetherā¦using their minimum incomes as a base to create more nourishing homes, to start and maintain small businesses. These communal groupings will be much more financially stable, emotionally nourishing, and environmentally friendly than todayās common isolating model of living.
It is all about caring and choice. If a senior wants to stay in her own home, the $1,000 a month will make that possible as will the home attendants provided by the health care system. This is also true if she wants to live with her family or in communal housing. This will actually be much cheaper than the scary mess we have now. The warehouse nursing home will be a thing of the past. Seniors will be an important, active element of every part of our society. We need everyone actively involved. We simply cannot afford on any level to warehouse portions of our population. It is a waste of potential!
Some people have expressed concerns that the guaranteed minimum income would drain peopleās productivity. They ask why people would work. What they are really asking is why people would work without the whip of fear of hunger and poverty. They never ask this about the rich or the corporations, only about the working class and the poor. In reality most people want to work, want to contribute, want to improve their lives. Hunger, poverty, and fear drain productivity. If we are to survive, we need to end hunger, poverty, and fear.
The guaranteed minimum income will tend to keep wages in general higher and working conditions safer and more worker-friendly. This was also true for welfare and was the true root of the capitalist opposition to welfare.
The guaranteed minimum income will be very different from welfare. Everyone will get it. So there will be no stigma attached to getting it. There will be no red tape, no entrapping rules, no case workers drained of their humanity, and the rest of the demeaning rituals of enforced head-bowing associated with getting public assistance. The guaranteed minimum income will be something you get as a citizen, something you can depend on.
