A Solution to Poverty in America

Just a 'heads up' to those who understand that this is a good plan and will work. The rich will make the fed useless in buying up 'stamps' either in bulk or as commodities. They will keep the exchange rate at their discretion, because the original definition of wealth is flawed.. Wealth=Power. Those who have power cannot, and will not, relinquish it voluntarily. You can find this statement in almost every religous/philosophical treatise, but I prefer this wording. "To him who has much, much will be given, to him who has little, it will be taken from him even that which he has." Until you find a way to safeguard the system against greed, it just won't work. If the currency be shoestrings, some people will have miles of them and some none. Another quote is "The poor you have with you, always." This means that in order to be rich, you MUST have poor. Until your wealth brings you power, it isn't wealth. Greed is the enemy here, and the desire to be able to make other people perform services for money that they actually don't want to do. In a perfect world, this would not happen, but then, a perfect world would be devoid of both rich people and laywers. :-D.

VeeRay, you may have hit upon one of the ultimate solutions to the wealth gap. How about some strict controls on lawsuits?

^ that and insurance claims.......

Maybe I missed this part of the thread, but where would the increased revenue come from to pay for all these stamps/food. It would seem a simple head tax would defeat the purpose, so what exactly did you have in mind.
* I assume the vendors (markets ect.) will be turning in these spent stamps for cash with the government.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by webby189

Maybe I missed this part of the thread, but where would the increased revenue come from to pay for all these stamps/food. It would seem a simple head tax would defeat the purpose, so what exactly did you have in mind.
* I assume the vendors (markets ect.) will be turning in these spent stamps for cash with the government.

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You have assumed incorrectly.

The extra income will be from the people who buy more "budget" food selling the excess to those with fancier tastes. The exchange is a free market that determines price with typical supply/demand rules. You don't turn in the excess stamps to the gov't for the money, you go to a bank or any participant of the exchange market. The government only gets involved when it decides prices are too low and buys stamps back off the exchange to reduce "supply," thus raising the price.


In response to Veeray's post earlier:
There's no doubt that some will try to control the market, but sheer size alone will make that task daunting. I also think that strict trade rules can easily remedy this. Don't allow stamps to bought/sold by investment banks for portfolios. Restrict transaction fees to 1%, though in committee I don't doubt 3-5% is a more likely outcome. There are lots of simple controls that can keep the transactions "as intended" for the most part. I don't deny, that it will be impossible to close every loophole people will find to make profit from this system. But as long as the little guy has the same opportunity to make small scale profit, then it's working.

Now, if only we could forward this to someone with a fair bit of power who would listen...

With the recent posting of my other scheme to rebuild the middle class and save social security, there may be renewed interest in checking this thread. So, I am bumping it to the first page. If anyone wants to respond to the opening post of this thread, then I would prefer that I am the one who takes the hit for any potential "necro" violation. Now others can reply freely.

The new "crazy scheme" of mine can be found here... :D
http://bbs.evony.com/showthread.php?t=99925

This is the official necro of this thread. I would like to thank Foxy for letting me do this. :cheer: :bunny: :cheer:

The forums have a completely different crowd of regulars now. Most of them have not seen this old thread. I will enjoy getting any new reactions and thoughts from people that have not seen this threads. Maybe even, the revival might spark new thoughts from people that have already seen them.

Besides the fact that feeding everyone equally is a communist idea, it is a good idea. I however think the only way an idea like this could work is using a flat tax. It has been proven by many economists and mathematicians that a flat tax would bring in far more revenue to our government and everyone would be taxed equally. This would help to close the gap that creates poverty, because as long as Your earned income was more than $5,700 for the year, you pay taxes in this country.

Now, that being said there are many loopholes for anyone who earns over $50,000 a yr.. For instance a lawyer can submit receipts for their clothing, for every meal they eat away from home, their vehicle, their cell phone, and so on and so on. I personally know a lawyer who makes six figures a year and pays as little in taxes as someone who makes about $30,000 a year. A flat tax with very few exceptions would stop all the loopholes and everyone would be paying on what they earned.

With the extra revenue you could support programs such as national health care and feeding the citizens of this country easily.

So the biggest problem I have with something like this is that it does smack of communism. However, I know how to earn money running a business and every business must evolve. The Government is a business of sorts and needs to evolve, becoming a hybrid of types of governments with a base of representative democracy as it is now might not be a bad step to take. We already have several programs that are considered social/ist(the filter won't allow the words C.I.alis lol), however they are badly run, abused and tax payer money is taken by the billions in fraud every year within these programs. Social Security and Medicare alone lose $40 billion a year to known fraud, it is estimated that over $100 billion is actually being lost. So my biggest worry would be the same with any new program instituted to help the people. Because the government is the easiest to steal from.

I know I need to go back and reread the original first few posts which explain this, but from memory what I liked about Rota's scheme was that it didn't just divide the pie, but it made the pie bigger. The issue with Communism is that it divides the pie, but as time gets on the slices look more and more meager because the pie isn't being expanded. That was one of the things which undermined the Soviet Union... that the Scandanavian countries were not only slicing the pie just as equally as the USSR but their slices were larger, healthier and tastier.

Anyway, if I remember correctly, Rota's scheme involves stamps and money functioning side by side in your wallet. I just wanted to say when I worked in Central Europe I got paid in local currency and in stravenky, which are supplemental vouchers that function in ways similar to some of those which Rota suggests. If I could figure it out, I'm sure most people could.