Back when I was a retail marketing analyst, I used to make formal presentations to my clients about every month or so, each aimed at different audiences within the company — buyers / merchandisers, operations, marketing / advertising and senior management (the last being more of an annual high-altitude presentation, of course).
Because of the volume of data I had on hand it was almost impossible to show all of it, so I would provide summaries, but with all the data on hand in case there were any questions requiring a deep dive into the supporting numbers.
I would then make a summary of the summary, and give each executive an action plan consisting of three, and only three things that had the highest priority with the greatest impact, with the suggestion that they tackle those three items immediately after the meeting. (Their bosses, of course, got the list of all the departments’ action items so that they could follow up to make sure that they’d been addressed.)
That habit has stayed with me ever since, especially when, as today, I see an enormous problem that needs fixing. What spurs me on to even greater efforts is when I see that the people who are supposed to be fixing the problem either not doing anything (a massive clue that they don’t know what to do), or are timidly tinkering around the edges of the problem when in fact, the remedies are quite simple, but usually radical.
Here’s what I’m looking at right now. Read this article first, please, and then come back below the fold.
Whenever economists start blathering on about interest rates and the money supply, my eyes start to glaze over. There is a very simple fix to the economic problem facing the United States, and it requires that government do three things immediately. They are:
1.) Lower Tax Rates
This means lowering the top individual rate (from its current 40%) to 30%; corporate taxes to 5%; and capital gains taxes to 5%. Every time these tax rates have been lowered, the tax receipts (what the government actually takes in) have grown exponentially. It happened with JFK, with Reagan, with G.W. Bush and even with Trump, and there is absolutely no reason to suspect that the same wouldn’t happen now.
2.) Energy Indepence:
a.) Increase Domestic Oil & Gas Production (and Exploration)
The government needs to open up the oil / gas fields, encourage the oil companies to get more out of the ground by releasing the many existing oil and gas leases, and fast-track the building of at least four more refineries to handle the increased output. Needless to say, all pipeline systems should be expanded, beginning with the reinstatement of Keystone XL.
On a parallel track:
b.) Build 10 New Nuclear Generating Facilities
If we are going to go all-electric eventually, there is one and only one way to ensure that the national demand is met, and that’s through nuclear power. This would require that government relax or abolish most of the pre-construction regulations that the Greens have encouraged. It goes without saying that the existing nukes facing closure should be brought back up to speed ASAP.
3.) Freeze Government Spending for Five Years
By this, I don’t mean “cutting the increase” (which passes for budget cuts in Congress-speak), I mean freezing all spending at 2021 levels. The only exception is defense, which has to be allowed to grow. (All those Javelin missiles taken from our armory and given to Ukraine, for example, have to be paid for.)
Excluding defense spending therefore, I expect government spending to look like this: 2021: $1 bazillion (whatever it was); 2022: $1 bazillion; 2023 $1 bazillion etc.
This does two things: it encourages government to keep inflation down (i.e. print less money) and it forces government to do what every U.S. citizen is required to do: make do with less. It will also force government to stop getting loans from overseas, which lest we forget, would be a Good Thing.
Taken in conjunction with the increased tax revenues (see above), this would restore the national balance sheet to at least something approaching sanity, as opposed to what it is now: a bubble waiting to burst.
Of course, the current government will have nothing to do with the above, in that their existing actions (you can’t call reckless destruction “policy”) are in fact diametrically opposite to what I’m demanding. Instead of lowering taxes, for example, the government is talking about windfall corporate taxes, high individual tax rates, and “a billionaire super tax” — all of which have historically failed to do anything to boost the economy. The same is true of oil and gas production and government spending.
So we’re faced with the fate of lemmings as we all happily plunge over the precipice together.
If I’d ever had a client in a similar situation, and who refused to take my advice to correct it, I’d have resigned the account.
The problem is that all of those things will fix the problem and that isn’t the goal.
Massive incompetency and unaccountability while criminally grifting is the goal, silly.
you’re absolutely right
As already noted, spot on, which is why none of it will happen under the current regime.
Literally–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPtjyqgZAUk
2-a) – it takes anywhere for 5 to 10 years start to finish to get a new refinery built and running at design rates. It takes another 5-10 years of running at rates to pay back the investment. It’s not just enough to encourage companies to build. Everyone knows that today’s bureaucracy and regulations can change every four years on Jan 21st simply with a flurry of EO’s. We actually need congress to do their job and pass legislation – real details spelled out, not just guidance for bureaucrats to improvise from – that set a solid and stable stage for companies to trust. They need to know that the regulations and market will not change on a whim every four years before investing billions of dollars to build new capacity.
2- b) also need to re-open Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site. And any greenies that object should be given a 1-way tour and locked inside.
3) Not just freeze, but actually cut. Start by firing 50% of the personnel who live in DC and work outward. Yes, their salaries are a drop in the bucket overall, but the harm they do to the country is horrific. Eliminate whole departments. Dept of Education? State function, eliminate every single one in that dept. Next? Pick any and cut.
I mean, as long as we’re dreaming.
Not a bad start at all
re — Education department
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Education is the primary responsibility of both parents, their parents, friends and extended family, inter-connected mentors for the budding apprentice.
These role-models establish the foundation and are witness to their success.
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Education cannot be delegated to a stranger, some bureaucrat with zero-zero-zero accountability.
That would be a recipe for disaster.
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Oh, we can allow the Education bureaucrats to keep their jobs, but we just made it a ‘volunteer’ position.
No compensation, no benefits, no cush pension… nobody paying much attention to anything they say.
Seems fair to me.
10 new nuclear plants?
More like 50. Of course we may be thinking along different lines. I don’t think we should build a single “old school” water cooled nuclear plant–they’re overly expensive, refueling is a problem, and they aren’t as safe as more modern designs.
Modern designs (either Molten Salt or Helium Cooled) reactors are safer (at the physics level), can be mass produced in factories and trucked to location, use fuel sources that are harder to weaponize, are less expensive to produce, and can be scaled from low to high output.
Scattering dozens of these around the country would provide more resilience and cheaper electricity.
Fully support more nukes. Come up with a solid design for a small-ish plant and build a lot of them. More smaller plants may be less efficient, but will add redundancy to the system.
Along with that, we do need to look a power distribution. That system is, from what I’ve read, running without a lot of reserve capacity. Seeing odd comments about things like taking a year to replace a transformer makes the engineer in me fret about large scale reliability.
Huh. That was supposed to be a comment on the main level, not a direct reply William’s comment.
Recessions come and go; it’s inflation that scares the bejesus out of me.
And nuclear power? Bring it on.
NO, the first thing that needs to be done is to elect fiscal conservatives to the House and Senate this fall swinging both bodies over to the GOP – with instructions to those new Members that the Business-As-Usual Regime of the GOPe must end immediately.
If that means Congress being stalemated, well, it’s a start.
On a non-serious note: Kim, if you’re going to piss into the wind, first you need to shut off the wind. Yes, what you propose is doable, but you’ll need to hire a troupe of “cleaners” because the aisles of Congress will get very messy, very fast.
The Enviro’s need to be told in no uncertain terms that what they’ve advocated for lo these many decades has been wrong in virtually every instance, that they need to go over to the corner (or leave completely), sit down, shut up, and if they behave, lunch might be brought to them occasionally (and asked why they haven’t cleaned up the King Mine disaster yet, and paid reparations to the affected Indian Nations?).
I’m glad to hear that you have been working to develop and support fiscal conservative candidates in your State for the last ten years. (If you haven’t been doing so then quit whining and get to work.) I’m sure you are aware of the pitfalls and messy nature of electoral politics. None of us get to unilaterally control who will be chosen in the election. Even the nominating process is quite messy with a large random component.
In my home state of Minnesota we recently had a convention to endorse candidates for Governor and other State Offices. There were several candidates seeking the gubernatorial endorsement. They all made similar promises on all the conservative hot button issues. Any of them would be far better than the incumbent Democrat. The two with a solid record of holding the line against liberal overreach in the legislature for the past ten years were smeared as Rinos, which couldn’t have been further from the truth. The three “outsiders”, businessmen with little or no political experience eventually lost support as their amateurishness and inexperience became obvious. We wound up endorsing the guy with the most financial backing. While he seemed pretty good on a couple of issues, he also had a history of trying to work across the isle and compromise with Democrats. He declared that he had learned his lesson and would never again support “universal background checks” or red flag laws, but I am skeptical.
It gets messy and you can’t always get what you want.
Regarding taxes, I’d keep it simple: cut all taxes by 50%. All taxes (and any “fees” that look like taxes), across the board.
Then cut all government salaries by the same amount – 50% across the board.
If the gov’t employees don’t like it, they can go get a real job.
Add to your proposal a reduction in the pension calculation multiplier for Federal employees. At the current 2.5% x highest salary x years of service lets the drones retire at 40 years service at 100% salary with a COLA forever.
One person I know, the biggest airhead ditz in the family, spent 40 years at Social Security passing paper around, retired at age 58 and is now making more than $120K/year + medical + the government equivalent of a 401K. That is not sustainable. No wonder the Beltway crowd loves to grow government.
Who the hell deserves more in a pension, for doing nothing, than someone still producing?
My multiplier for a pension (no longer offered at my old employer) was 1.25%, and capped at 35% of salary no matter many years employed. My pension fund, unlike the vote-buying fairy tale unicorn farts offered to union and govt employees, is more than 100% funded.
I have a friend and she is a Social Security Judge about to retire in a few years when she has 20 years in. Five years ago she came to visit us and told us with all of the new hires no one has any idea what they are doing because diversity. Explains why the IRS is two years behind on my small refunds.
1994.
Red Bluff, California.
After 34 years, my buddy ‘Greg’ retired from the Highway Patrol… at us$9,400 a month, every month for doing nothing.
Utterly Real-World clueless, he often muttered to me “I don’t know where this money is coming from…”.
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‘Greg’ died a couple years ago, after flying to Hawaii for lunch on a whim… just like he did hundreds of times.
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1994-2020 is a lot of months at us$9,400 plus soda-pops.
Add to your proposal a reduction in the pension calculation multiplier for Federal employees. The current 2.5% x highest salary x years of service lets the drones retire at 40 years service at 100% salary with a COLA forever.
One person I know, the biggest airhead ditz in the family, spent 40 years at Social Security passing paper around, retired at age 58 and is now making more than $120K/year + medical + the government equivalent of a 401K. That is not sustainable. No wonder the Beltway crowd loves to grow government.
Who the hell deserves more in a pension, for doing nothing, than someone still producing?
My multiplier for a pension (no longer offered at my old employer) was 1.25%, and capped at 35% of salary no matter many years employed. My pension fund, unlike the vote-buying fairy tale unicorn farts offered to union and govt employees, is more than 100% funded.
We build nuclear power plants that float and submerge on boats with people living and working a few feet away from them already. How about if we crank out a few more like those?