I believe that economic issues are vitally important.
Here are my suggested solutions:
AFFORDABLE HOUSING
All future zoning changes and public sewer hookups should set price caps per unit/acre, say:
1 unit/2 acres at $700,000 2006 dollars per unit
1 unit/acre at $400,000 2006 dollars per unit
2 units/acre at $260,000 2006 dollars per unit
4 units/acre at $160,000 2006 dollars per unit
8 units/acre at $95,000 2006 dollars per unit
12 units/acre at $70,000 2006 dollars per unit
At least 65 percent of the price of new units should have to be construction costs.
Selling price caps should be reduced by 120 percent of the cost to bring the unit into code compliance and good condition.
All units should have to pay an annual property tax makeup fee devoted to school funding if the property tax on a unit would be less than 70 percent of the community residential unit average.
No price caps should be placed on parcels larger than 5 acres.
IMMIGRATION and a MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE and MEDICARE OPT-IN in one comprehensive reform bill
Any immigration proposal should be in a bill that includes immediately raising the minimum wage to $8 an hour and to $10 an hour in two years.
This will help counteract the depression in wages caused by the increased supply of labor and help to pay for the increased housing costs that result from increased housing demand.
Britain and a few other Western European countries already have minimum wages of over $9 an hour. America should be a first-rate country.
The bill should provide the ability to buy into Medicare at no more than $100 a month so older and/or sick Americans can economically compete against younger, healthy immigrants.
The bill should provide $20 billion a year in housing credits so college graduates can afford to live in the markets that need their talent [programmers in Silicon Valley, actors in NY and LA, public service workers in all expensive areas, etc.]
The immigrants will want to bring their children too. This will mean increased educational costs. The bill should provide money to train and pay the million or so new teachers who will be needed and to build about 800,000 new classrooms.
The bill should also pay for expensive transit improvements so people can get to work when their boss wants them there.
The rich are the main beneficiaries of the immigration wave that is supplying the carpenters to build enormous houses, the maids to tidy up inside, and the landscapers to tidy up outside.
Landowners are also major immigration beneficiaries. Capital gains from real estate should be treated as ordinary income except for the existing personal residence exception.
The existing top two tax rates should both be increased to 48% with half the increase going to the taxpayer's state to pay for the education of the children of these hard working people.
A fourth of the increase should be used to pay for the Medicare change.
Immigrants applying in the future for legal residence at their request should pay a $1,000 a year fee for a period of ten years for the use of the infrastructure the people already here have paid for through past taxes.
Those immigrants that receive income earned in a SMSA metropolitan area with local impact fees should pay one-fourth of the average metropolitan residential unit impact fee each year for each year up to a maximum of four for each SMSA to the Federal government. The Federal government should forward 95% of the received funds to the immigrant's state government for distribution to government agencies as it sees fit. A credit should be allowed for impact fees paid directly.
Immigrant applicants should have to sign a contract agreeing to the infrastructure and impact fee payments.
PATENT REFORM
It is time to replace the exclusionary patent system.
Right now, an inventor puts up his own money and gets to charge whatever he wants for a period of time.
If you don't pay what the patent holder wants, you don't get the product.
As drug companies and now patients know, it can be very lucrative.
This system made sense when there was no money in the Treasury in 1790.
In 2006, for American governments and American people to spend hundred of billions of dollars for medical technology development that is being rapidly outsourced is stupid.
Instead, any company that wants to sell a patented medicine should pay the FDA a fee [say $2 million] for Phase 2 testing and a fee [say $100 million] for Phase 3 testing. This would be conducted in the USA on Americans for the greatest possible scientific validity.
The patent holder would get a discount of around $20 million on the Phase 3 fee to reflect Phase 1, Phase 2, and other costs.
The NIH would then review applications of patent holders and if a medical product is needed, promising, and safe, it would conduct Phase 3 testing.
If satisfactory, the NIH would recommend FDA approval.
The FDA would simply pay the $100 million from a copycat into the Treasury.
This would create a level playing field between innovators and copycats at the lowest possible cost.
All non-chemical patent categories should be closed to new entries so the United States can revitalize its industrial base and cities and earn money to pay domestic and foreign creditors.
TAX SYSTEM ALIGNMENT
Eliminate the European VAT advantage by creating a VAT and reduce FICA taxes by the same amount so more taxes are paid on imports from Europe and China and less taxes are taken from American paychecks.
JOB TRAINING
Fight to modernize our educational system so every young adult not receiving disability payments is placed on the path to a decent middle class life or better.
Open up the professions so simple tasks like common dental work and legal work can be done by graduates of two and four year college programs open to the top twenty percent of high school graduates.
We can easily break off most of the work of dentists into two-year community college level specialties:
1. extractions, fillings, crowns, and bridges
2. dentures
3. implants
4. orthodontics (teeth straitening)
5. root canals
6. cosmetic dentistry
7. cleaning and checkups
The practice of law can be broken down so people can go to college for only four years and earn a living in probate, criminal defense, title search, etc.
Opportunity should be more than a word for your child.
DOCTOR TRAINING
I think all physicians should be trained as nurses first.
After four years of hospital practice they would be able to go on to medical school if they can pass the MCAT and have good evaluations for listening skills and compassion.
HEALTH CARE and PRODUCT PRICING
Healthcare providers need to be forced to post prices online in a standardized format and to only accept directly or indirectly a uniform amount (excluding interest at judgment rates) for every product or service provided except to government programs and to people making less than $10,000 a year in IRS taxable income that are given discounts off those prices or are given totally free charity care.
They should only be able to change prices on IRS estimated tax due dates and by no more than 5% quarterly except for those FDA regulated items not generally sold wholesale in the US for less than $50 that are irreplaceably unique and listed on the admission office walls and in a public notice printed in the local newspaper and individually approved by the prospective patient or guardian at the time of admission and subject to both prior and subsequent state administrative and court review for both fairness and competitiveness.
All natural persons should have the option of paying 1.3 times the DRG or product or service amount Medicare would pay at any time within 90 days of service and/or product provision or within a time frame and payment schedule their lawyer may reasonably specify. For items not coverable by Medicare, an amount reasonably based on a reasonably close mass market item selectable at any time prior to payment by the payer.
No more than 10% of the amount Medicare would pay shall be allowed as a collection fee and only on amounts over 90 days past due. On insured items, only a regulated insurance company may be charged a collection fee.
A natural person and/or his legal help should be allowed to recover at a legal priority just behind the IRS all amounts above $5,000 provided to a hospital and/or its third party collectors individually and jointly unless a mass mailing of less than 32 pages and 32,000 printed characters listing all the charge items has been sent within the past two years to at least half of all households for which the hospital is closest one except for such charges that are in connection with the new irreplacably unique FDA approved products that are also exempted by the FDA commissioner and that that are both fairly and globally competitively priced.
All non-hospital providers should provide a comparison list based on each proposed or actual charge item between it and the lowest priced provider as determined by the government within a five mile radius by government measurements to all natural persons at least five minutes prior to contract signing after January 15, 2010 or be legally required to refund within 14 days after receipt and demand all amounts paid above the lowest listed prices available within those five miles.
STOP HOSPITAL OVERCHARGING OF THE UNINSURED!
PRESCRIPTION RENEWAL
Most prescriptions should be indefinitely renewable at the pharmacy.
The only common exceptions should be most antibiotics and all addictive substances.
PRESCRIPTIONS BY DIAGNOSTIC CODE
Prior to 1948, only a few drugs required prescriptions.
I think doctors should diagnose a disease and securely post a diagnostic code on a personal medical history flash card.
This can be taken to a pharmacy and the appropriate medicine selected based on past medications, insurance formularies, AMA and NIH recommendations, and scientific evidence limited patient choice.
Drug companies would then be forced to wage a price war at the pharmacy counter.
Say you got a diagnostic code for depression. You would enter that code in at a computer terminal. You would then be offered a choice of drugs by class unless the doctor specified a specific drug or drugs only.
You would pick a SSRI, say Prozac, hoping you would get a deal on Zoloft. The machine would then probably offer you a deal on Zoloft. If not, you would have to back up to select the Zoloft.
You would get a radio box with the computer selected dosage selected. If your doctor recommended a different dosage, it would be selected automatically instead.
The machine would then check with your insurance company and with your past prescriptions.
You would then be allowed to pay with a credit/debit card. If you need to pay cash, you would pay the clerk after clicking CASH and then FILL PRESCRIPTION.
HOMEOWNERS INSURANCE
We need a national program to encourage insurance underwriting in the coastal market by imposing a 10% scaredy cat income tax surcharge on financial companies like banks and insurance companies that don't have at least 20% of their last five years of after tax earnings committed in the coastal insurance/reinsurance market.
We are facing a form of blind and irrational fear that needs to be firmly dealt with.
Millions of homeowners need:
1. a program in every Southeastern coastal state to accept and promote the interstate licensing of coastal construction contractors since the local licensed contractors can't rebuild alone
2. multi-state Federal coastal building standards
3. the right to rebuild homes to their previous state[so homeowners can do it themselves if no affordable contractors are available], the local building code, or the Federal coastal building code
4. the elimination of windfall sales and income taxes due to storms/earthquakes through a rebate program payable to participating insurers
5. the 50/50 state/Federal payment of all building permit fees associated with storm/earthquake reconstruction
DIVORCE REFORM
There should be a formula based mechanism to divide assets based individual incomes during the marriage as declared on W2s, tax returns, and financial statements prior to the union.
Each parent should be considered equally fit unless convicted in a court of law of a crime declared by law as likely to be harmful to children or charged with such a crime by a district attorney.
Things need to be determined by written law.
The states need to treat everybody as equally important: child, mother, and father.
The court should only use conviction records, government court documents, income tax returns, and third party financial institution records to make its decision.
MALIGNANT CONTRACTS
The interest rate on a loan should never increase except based on market factors such changes in the prime rate.
Contract prices should only increase by no more than:
1. the government CPI
2. underlying commodity prices
3. tax increases
4. postage increases
5. $1 a month
unless a new signature or legal equivalent is freely obtained without possible penalty.
OTHER ISSUES
Trade licensing laws need to be changed to create occupations like single-family residential plumber, electrician, contractor that would only require tests that most smart people could pass.
Occupation qualifications, such as four years as a real estate agent before you can be a broker, that require an unconstitutional previous condition of servitude need to be eliminated in favor of tests.
Usury needs to be outlawed by American governments as well as by God.
Zoning density laws need to adapt to local real estate needs by automatic formulas.
Contractual legal fees need to be eliminated in contracts for products or services provided by people who are not members of the bar.
Prospective plaintiffs should always have a right to effectively petition their government for the relief of grievances [no forced contractual arbitration].
Unusual or unfair contractual provisions must be illegal for the types of services listed in the 2006 Montgomery County, MD Yellow Pages [this copies a German law so the law doesn't have to catch up with new ways to cheat people].
Please recommend this diary so it doesn't disappear in five minutes.