Bum on the deficit:

Let's take on the big three of the deficit Medicare, Social Security and "Defense."

1) Medicare: The issues with medicare are a subset of the broader issues with healthcare. There are three major prongs to filling the medicare gap. A) End of life planning. Every person enrolled in Medicare needs to have on file a living will, or end of life care instructions. You can say whatever you want in the instructions, e.g., fight til my last dying breath or kill me now, but you have to fill it out when you enroll in the program. B) Broadening the base. Allow anyone who wants to to enroll in the Medicare program with people under 65 (or their employers) paying their own way (plus a little). By essentially offering insurance to the whole nation through a medicare for all option, the program will be able to fund a greater proportion of senior care through premiums paid by younger, healthier Americans, who will still be getting coverage cheaper than they can now. If the insurance companies don't like it, TS. C) Attack healthcare costs at their roots. Far and away the major cause of unhealthy Americans is our food system. Either eliminate highly processed foods from the diet or tax processed foods heavily to discourage their consumption. I actually prefer the terms "internalize the costs" of these foods to tax so take your choice.

2) Social Security: I am not convinced that there is a social security crisis but to the extent there is . . . if Americans are living longer on average, the gains (like many gains of the last 35 years) have greatly benefitted wealthier Americans. Poor and lower-middle-class Americans continue to experience life expectancies not much improved over those that existed at the time Social Security was enacted. Once you understand the statistics that way (and I would love to have Nate Silver do a little regression on the data), the fair solution is clear. Since wealthier Americans are using more Social Security resources at the end of life, they should be paying more into Social Security throughout their lives. Eliminate or raise the cap on Social Security taxes. Fund the program into perpetuity with no other changes.

3) "Defense": First of all we should call this department what it is -- the Killing Department. We have gone far beyond defense of our nation within its own borders, if we were ever there. (My analysis indicates that we have not been defending against threat of actual invasion to our territory since The War of 1812 or so.) A) No resource wars. While my preference would be for no killing department budget at all ($0), I am willing to allow that we should perhaps occasionally enter into a conflict to stop a genocide. We should not, however, be in the business of destabilizing regimes for the sake of better access to cheaper oil, food, heavy metals, etc. If American ingenuity is so great, let's learn how to power our economy, feed ourselves, manufacture our goods, etc. using solely resources within our own borders. B) Vastly reduced (or eliminated) weapons procurement budgets. Arms companies and dealers are taking too much out of our economy and putting very little back, unless you count campaign contributions and lobbying fees. C) Redeployment of resources to image enhancement. Use 1/2 of the savings effected by drastically cutting the spending on killing to promote (basic -- reading, writing, arithmetic) education, local food self-sufficiency, clean drinking water, sound humanure management programs, etc. Being known as the sponsor of the local safety net rather than the anonymous killer from the sky will go far toward eliminating the causes of our national insecurity.

Finally -- there is currently no reason whatsoever that the government/federal reserve cannot just print the money to wipe out the deficit. If that causes inflation . . . well, right now our society could use a little inflation, couldn't it?

But for those who favor a more traditional approach to these things, I have no issue with raising revenue by asking the wealthiest Americans to pay the same tax rates that they were paying during every period of economic boom in our history. Return the top rates to the levels they were at during the Clinton Administration.