Dear Fellow American:
Are you concerned about America’s future? Most Americans have come to understand that something is wrong with America – even if they don’t know what it is. The purpose of Fix America’s Future is to explain the challenges facing America and propose solutions to America’s challenges. Fix America’s Future is a book (technically, an unpublished manuscript) that is divided into three sections: key challenges, policy principles and policy reforms (i.e., solutions). There are five key challenges facing America:
- Demographics and entitlements: An aging society with fewer workers relative to retirees resulting in massive unfunded liabilities for entitlements like Social Security and Medicare.
- Economy (including finance): Huge imbalances between debt and income, in trade, etc.
- Environment: Adverse ecosystem impacts on biodiversity, land, fisheries and nutrient cycling; limits to (physical) growth (including natural resource depletion); the possible long-term impact of global warming and ocean acidification; and the generation of large waste streams with insufficient treatment and natural recycling capacity.
- Energy: The beginning of the end of cheap fossil fuels, starting with crude oil.
- National interests: Manage great power relationships; nonproliferation and/or deterrence of WMD; terrorists and other transnational threats; and cybersecurity. Prepare for natural and man-made disasters. Help settle conflicts. Promote justice, liberty and sustainable development.
Each of these challenges must be solved successfully or America’s future – and the future of every American – will be in jeopardy. But what to do? Many currently proposed changes are driven by politics and/or ideology and won’t solve America’s challenges. Most will make things worse. By contrast, the analysis in Fix America’s Future is data-driven. However, the proposed solutions can never be fully divorced from the analyst’s values. The section on policy principles connects the section on key challenges with the section on policy reforms (i.e., solutions) and reflects the values of the author. Those values are conservative with a strong libertarian bent. There are seven policy reforms with detailed proposed solutions to the key challenges:
- Reform government: Reform regulatory and legal systems; eliminate fraud and abuse; increase efficiency; and restore genuine authority to management.
- Reform human capital, immigration, innovation and trade:
- Education: Enact nonrefundable tax credit-funded grants for grades K-12 ($5,200-10,800/year); a student’s first associate’s or bachelor’s degree ($15,000/year); and technical and vocational education and training (TVET): $15,000/person for student-directed grants plus state-directed grants primarily for retraining.
- Immigration: Augment domestic human capital with legal immigrants using a merit-based system. Resolve the illegal alien situation. Make illegal immigration less attractive.
- Innovation and trade: Enact 18% R&E credit plus 18% credit for medical development. Adopt a “quid pro quo” trade policy.
- Retirement reform: Make Social Security solvent through the “infinite horizon” by letting Social Security keep Medicare premiums and reducing benefits, offset by higher welfare benefits and making benefits nontaxable. Tax all compensation at these rates: employees, 7%; employers, 0%. Make public pensions solvent via higher contributions.
- Health care, disability, long-term care and welfare: Improve competition by auctioning health care one person at a time and stopping local health care provider monopolies by grouping auctions by community. The government pays 100% of the low bid for each individual. Individuals pay: 100% of the amount over the low bid if they choose a bid other than the low bid; a deductible of 10% of income for adults (may be lower for certain individuals) but no deductible for children; and small copayments.
- Maximum disability benefit: $10,000 including SIF.
- Long-term care covers all expenses except those unrelated to care (e.g., food and facilities). Additional copayments and deductibles may be assessed.
- Supplemental Income for Families (SIF) replaces current welfare programs. Maximum annual benefit: Child: $6,000; adult: $3,600; parent of minor(s): $3,000; senior: $9,850. Phased out at 4-50¢ per dollar of income. No time limit or work requirement to receive benefits. No marriage penalty.
- Credit for child care expenses: Lesser of 34% or $1.70/hour/child up to $3,400/year ages 0-4. No means testing.
- Tax reform: 18% corporate and maximum individual federal income tax. 24% VAT. End state and local income and sales taxes. Replace real estate tax with land value tax.
- Energy and environment: Cut per capita energy use by 60% and use sustainable nuclear, geothermal, wind, solar, etc. energy. Fund infrastructure program. Protect ecosystems.
- Financial markets reform: Properly relate risk-to-reward over time; implement monetary reform; get government out of the mortgage market; enact a “balanced” budget amendment.
The reforms improve the economy, jobs and the trade deficit; reduce the federal deficit by $1 trillion per year while being revenue-neutral; and reduce the federal debt.
Each of the topics can be accessed directly by using the menu on the right side or bottom of the page. Each topic page contains the following resources (not every page contains every resource):
- A video summary of the selected topic. The time index of the video is set to begin at the selected topic. The video below begins at time index = 0 (i.e., the beginning). The entire video is about 1 hour 41 minutes in length.
- A transcript of the video’s audio sound track for the selected topic.
- The slide show (in PDF format) opens to the beginning of the selected topic.
- The cost estimate document opens to the beginning of the selected reform (only reforms have cost estimates).
- The book (manuscript in PDF format) opens to the beginning of the selected topic.