As things stand we have a de facto jobs tax. Shift that part of the cost of hiring someone to all income in general.

that it would level the playing field between the little startups with 3 employees & no negotiating power and the giants who can bargain for favorable terms based on their pools of thousands of employees.

The current health care system is one of the most potent tools in the arsenals of the Big Guys for squelching competition from newcomers.

I stayed years longer in a State job than I would have otherwise done because a bypass in 1992 gave me a pre-existing condition that made me uninsurable on my own. After early retirement from the state, I started my own practice that now generates more opportunities for work than I can handle.

because their ability to pay it gives them a competitive advantage.

by the need for insurance.

For a very primitive economy it would merely guarantee stagnation and entrenched inequality.

Almost all home owners have borrowed more than they makes in years.

All the states congratulating themselves on having mandated balanced budgets are surviving because the federal government picks up the tab for a lot of their roads and teachers.

Where would states and families be, on average, without the federal deficit currently funding food stamps, unemployment insurance, and a lot of the costs of local government?

If we had saved up the money in advance to fix highways, what is gained? The unfixed highways impose an ongoing cost.

We have a lot of problems but I cannot identify a single one that is due to borrowing too much over the last four years.

The cost of debt on our grandchildren is often cited, but it is nothing compared to the cost to our grandchildren over a life-time, as real individual persons, of not going to college or not getting some medical condition fixed.

Serious question. What actual problem do you think our borrowing is causing?

When the economy collapsed private borrowing went way down. Federal borrowing went up, but not as much as private borrowing decreased, with the result that total borrowing in the US was down. And it still is.

That is why mortgage rates are around 4%. There is very little demand for borrowing by credit-worthy parties.

I am speaking seriously, here. I cannot identify an actual real-world problem caused by our current borrowing.

The fact that our current borrowing would be a problem if we were Greece has nothing to do with our situation because we are not anything like Greece. We have our own currency and the world's largest economy.

The biggest immediate problem is not necessarily how much debt we have but where it is distributed. Today, much of the public debt is bought from abroad. Which means money from interest is not staying and being re-invested in America, it's going to China, Japan, UK, Russia, the mid-east, etc... both governments and foreign investors. It's also being bought by private banks here and abroad who are not re-investing that profit back into the America middle class. So its not necessarily a very good thing to have a lot of public debt since the taxpayer is sending out a lot of interest payments to possibly places and people that hate us with a passion.

In our economy, the chances of an all out default is slim at least in the short-term. No one can really say what the world will be like 50 years from now. But the consequence of too much public debt is not the slowing growth, but inflation. Which can be pretty deadly on the poor as the costs of goods and living continue to rise while the wages and jobs remain stagnant. That's probably our biggest problem in the short-term. And many Americans are seeing that issue right in front of their face. If inflation gets out of control, it will lead to increasing wealth disparity....a society like Mexico where the divide between the upper and lower class is gigantic.

Iceland's economy fell because it let itself become a playground for the banksters. Greece has a problem of massive tax evasion. Do some background reading before you spout AM radio talking points.

if their management insisted on that.

generally speaking, you need to borrow to invest in plants, equipment, promotions, etc.
obviously this doesn't much apply to mature, cash-rich companies, but most companies need to borrow to succeed.

They borrow every year against the value of their anticipated crops and sales of livestock.

Many very primitive societies (like Hadza) are very egalitarian (and yes, they have a rudimentary economy of shared labor and shared resources).

You say stagflation and I hear sustainability

We are getting played like Bain Capital plays corporations. We make them load up on debt as much as they can, and we sabotage them so they will go bankrupt. People are getting set up. I can live without taking out any debt, but I'm pretty wealthy compared to the vast majority of Americans. Most people can't pay for food, shelter, medical care, and heat/electricity, and expenses needed to get to and from work, without going into debt.

The OP is a better solution.

even if they never use credit cards.

Your "solution" is not realistic.

I would agree.

and having a guaranteed minimum income instead.

the difference?

I work in a public school where most of our teachers are in their 50s and at least half of them would retire tomorrow if it weren't for the health insurance. Multiply that by millions of older workers everywhere and imagine how many jobs would be freed up for younger people. And small business would boom as no one would be tied to their "real job" for the insurance.

there are lots of things we can do without forced abortions etc. Seems to me social pressure helped lower smoking and family size is shrinking, just not enough. When I was growing up 12 children was a large family, now 5 is.

I'd rather approach it this way:

1. Big tax deductions for all who have NO biological children.
2. Smaller deductions for all who have only one biological child.
3. A carbon tax for every biological child over 2.
4. Fair trade based on labor and environmental standards; birth rates count as environmental standards.
5. A massive, global effort to educate about the need for population control, and to provide means to those who need and want it.

The population problem will largely take care of itself.

Or at least 55%. And include ALL income including capital gains and dividends etc. THe investment class making up to a billion a year are paying less % than workers. Everything else will fall in line if we do this.

Farm subsidies etc.

Return to a 91% top marginal tax rate, lift the cap on payroll tax.

Those are additional steps at leveling the playing field. We won't need to raise minimum wage if we make the other adjustments.

Divert all the additional federal funds into taking better care of the working and middle classes. Invest in alternative energy and sustainable farming practices.

We still need low paying jobs for people newly entering the work force; we just need more good paying jobs.

When we rid the corporations of the incentive to pay the people at the top so much; they will pay workers more, or pay a higher corporate tax.

Most of our problems have the same source, rather. Solutions, well, thats a whole other game.

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Then with money in the treasury, we can talk about lowering the Medicare age so that everyone in the country is covered.

We can do it. We have the wealth in this country to do it. We just need to pry it away from the fat cats and generals and pay people enough that they can afford to pay their taxes, too.

never work for complex problems. Minimum wage should start at 13.50 per hour for those over the age of 21. 7.50 he is fine for those 18 and younger. 18 to 21 10.00 hr would work. Also the best solution would be a factual cost of living for a county and go with a percentage depending on those ages. The sooner we stop trying simplistic solutions for complex problems the sooner all will be better off.

these phat cat mo'fo got the money, they've got the resources to continue to get richer. The only thing standing between what you're proposing and what is right is greed

The problem with wages isn't the level of the minimum, they'll simply raise prices and cause an inflation spike that will destroy any wage gains. The problem is the amount of wealth that they are able to capture from their companies. We need to treat capital gains as income (with an exemption for inflation losses), and then raise upper tier taxes to the point that they serve as an income cap.

At this point the wealth should hopefully stop flooding out of the companies and back to the employees, the remainder will bleed out of the top if they desire to maintain their lifestyles. You'll have to make sure the government actually returns the top level incomes to the lower levels via benefits as well as smashing the budget deficit and the debt.

Once we've done that we can raise the minimum wage, but I'm not sure what the effect of that would be after we do all the prep work so it might be best to reassess.

But $10/hr would be a start.

And that might make them mad.

benefit-the-super-rich "free-trade" agreements.

In addition to single-payer health care and a $10/hour minimum wage, we need another solution.

When the upcoming Trans-Pac agreement is signed, more jobs will be shipped to China, Viet Nam, and other countries in the Far East. We need single-payer health care and a $10/hour minimum wage, and we also need to object to the planned shipping of jobs to foreign countries.