We need a total overhaul, Zeitgeist style.

Resource Based Economy FTW!

I could see arguing that it would reduce mortgage debt and therefore promote more stable housing prices, but it’s not like people that own are getting the benefit of something that people that rent aren’t.

Get the stock markets back to being for investing in companies by putting a 1/10th cent per share traded fee on transactions. If you’re investing in a company this will have effectively no impact on you; similarly if you’re divesting. If a company’s stock is priced so low that 1/10th cent is a significant percentage of the share price, the company should be doing a huge reverse split.

Eliminate the mortgage tax credit (and yes, that would also hit me).

Remove the cap on FICA-eligible earnings.

It would be seriously annoying to have to go through that, but it would probably cut down on posts that ask a question like “What policies do you support that work against your best interest?” being full of responses that amount to “Abolish taxes! Leave my money alone!”.

Yeah, punish success! Eat the rich! Who cares that it will affect more retirees and small business owners than evil billionaires, it makes some people feel better!

“Make credits progressive: more mortgage deductions for less valuable homes, more education credits for people with smaller incomes.”

This doesn’t even make sense. The Mortgage deduction is for interest paid on your mortgage, not for the principal. So to do this you would have to either jack up interest rates on small mortgages or give tax credits for buying less expensive homes, which will make those homes more expensive.

“Take five percent of the Pentagon budget and give it to NASA. Nobody wastes money more than the Pentagon.”

Why? Why can’t you just take 5 percent of the Pentagon budget and cut it? You know, not spend it, not borrow it, and not have to pay back twice as much over the next 30 years?

“Legalize victim less crimes and tax them. Make as many non-violent crimes as possible result in fines, not prison time.”

This first sentence sort of makes sense, but fining people for non-violent crimes is not much better than imprisoning them. If you’re willing to sacrifice other peoples’ freedoms for fundraising, why not just institute more taxes? Why the punishment?

“There, I just balanced your stupid budget.”

No you didn’t. Oh, I see, you’re 12 and your parents just let you on the internet unsupervised for the first time. Congratulations! But you should probably shut up and just read for a while until you gain some actual understanding of the things you are talking about.

“Nobody wastes money more than the Pentagon.”?

I expect that that depends a great deal on what you mean by ‘waste’. When I’m in an especially grouchy mood I feel that you could take the entire budget of Health and Human Services (or whatever the heck they are calling it now if they’ve changed again) and pound it down a rat-hole without affecting much. The military at least buys neat toys that have some physical existence.

Make credits progressive: more mortgage deductions for less valuable homes, more education credits for people with smaller incomes.

Take five percent of the Pentagon budget and give it to NASA. Nobody wastes money more than the Pentagon.

Legalize victim less crimes and tax them. Make as many non-violent crimes as possible result in fines, not prison time.

There, I just balanced your stupid budget.

A MUCH better idea would be to get rid of the income tax altogether.

This, of course, is the better solution. Get rid of the estate tax, too. I find it amazing that people support the USG taking a massive % of your wealth instead of allowing you to give it to the people you love. Cynically, I believe people support this just because they jelly. Shame on them all.

And, apparently, I directly benefit from billions of $$ being given to countries like Israel, UAE, and Japan. I can do without all that goodness.

There are exceptions, of course–it seems that whether or not you’re a smoker strongly determines, on average, your opinion on anti-smoking laws. I have a great (but hard to find) paper on the subject I’d be happy to email you, if you’re interested. It’s “Self-Interest in Americans’ Political Opinions” by Sears and Funk. Shoot me an email if you want it. (I presume you have access to it from this comment’s info.)

Of course, you can always define self-interest more broadly or precisely, but that makes the question harder if not impossible to study. Tax incidence is too complicated a subject to do a person-by-person cost-benefit analysis.

I work in patent law, I’d lose a little business over it, but boy are they dumb.

Eliminating mortgage loans, or eliminating government-guaranteed mortgage loans? One is a reasonable restriction on government, the other is just stupid and pointless.

(Thanks, TomPaine4!)

Copyright only applies once the work is completed and thus is ready for market, and now goes for an effective 100 years. By comparison, patents only get 20 years from filing the application, but it may take serious $ to put it in practice (e.g. a drug, or a piece of high technology). Copyrights are also easier to get and enforce than patents. Why do we make it so much easier for writers, artists and film-makers than we do for engineers and scientists.