The United States is the worst economic recession since the great depression, with high levels of unemployment, a credit crisis, a housing crisis, a health care crisis and an energy crisis. These challenges require great investments by our government, whose main responsability according to our Constitution is to provide for the general welfare of its citizens. Nonetheless, in order for our government to invest in all these areas they need more tax revenue. There are two very simple ways in which we can assure our government the necessary funds to provide energy independence, health care to every American, a good paying job, and a safe and dignified retirement. The first one if by ending the war on drugs, legalizing marijuanna, and putting an excise tax on it. The second one is by closing all the international military bases which are not completely important and esential to our security, which will give our government billions of dollars it doesnt actually have.
- Legalizing marijuanna. Right now the United States of America is "fighting" hard to stop the carters from South America and Mexico from getting that drug to our country by investing billions of dollars into programs whose only purpuse is to stop the supply. Also, our government is investing billions in "educating"" our children into not using this drug. Empirical evidence suggests that these programs are not working and are actually increasing the amount of supply and demand of this drug. I propose ending the war on drugs which will safe our country billions and legalizing weed. By legalizing it we will create a unique business in our country, the business of producing, selling, improving the quality and safetyness of this drug. This business will create many jobs which will get people out of the unemployment sector, it will revilatize our manufacturing sector and it will create a lot of tax revenue. It is also important to understand that if marijuanna is legal the cartels would not have any reason to operate since its business would not be profitable anymore, which will cause less violence, less arrests, which would result in savings for our government in the penitentary system.
Also, I propose taxing the marijuanna, and the best type of tax for it is an excise tax, which will bring billions of dollars of revenue to our government.
- Closing our bases abroad. Right now the US spends more on military and defense spending than the next 55 nations combined. This type of wasteful spending is not helping improve our security but instead it is causing our government to have less resources in crucial areas of our society like education, energy, health care, among others. We have over 767 bases around the planet, in over 100 nations. This would only be needed if the US wants to built and mantain an empire. Evidently, this is not the purpuse of our country, so we should close all those bases which are not needed and use that saved money for DOMESTIC NEEDS.
The point I am trying to make with these two proposals is that they do not require RAISING TAXES on anyone, not even the rich people which I think should pay more taxes, by the way. Also, it would not get any constituency upset, except maybe the paper one because of the weed legalization.
Evidently, our country has myriad DOMESTIC NEEDS that require more money to tackle them. We can afford to close many bases abroad and legalize a plant which has been proven has less health effects than cigaretts to create a world class education, that will help people get good paying jobs, which will improve the health of our citizens, which combined with a single payer health care system will safe us billions of dollars. We need a 21th century New Deal, and these are easy ways by which we can pay them.