Vote for Jane Galt

If I were in charge of the budget, we would massively reform entitlements, transforming Social Security into a system of forced savings combined with a means-tested fallback for those too poor to save, or whose investments tanked at the wrong time. We would kill the whole Medicare/Medicaid debacle, along with the tax deduction for corporate-provided health care benefits, replacing it all with catastrophic federal insurance for those whose medical bills exceed 15-20% of gross income (phasing out for those whose incomes put them in, say, the top .1% of earners) and another means-tested benefit for those who genuinely cannot afford to spend 15% of gross income on health care benefits. I would combine this with the Jane Galt Tax Plan to save the government a whole mess o' money, while making the economy more efficient, and increasing the incentives for everyone, rich and poor alike, to create value for society. Forget Win-Win . . . that's like Win^win!

But I'm not in charge of the economy, and I never will be, in part because I advocate things like scrapping Medicare and Social Security and the corporate income tax. Living, as I do, in a representative democracy, spending will be higher than I would like it to be for . . . well, forever, frankly. That means that taxes are also going to be higher than I would like them to be.