Political Propositions:Ongoing
First Round January 9, 2012
A. Bald Proposals
1. The United States should have a 100% Inheritance (death) Tax.
2. The United States should prohibit the formation of all Private Insurance Companies.
3. The United States should establish a Public Trust Fund which will begin by endowing each Citizen of the United States with $250,000 at birth. This endowment can be used for the kinds of emergencies usually covered by insurance (health emergencies, natural disasters, to pay for liabilities incurred by activities of the cirtizen that damages others- for example automobile "accidents"), to fund education over and above that provided by various levels of government, for investment in economic enterprises, to support "retirement".
B. Disclaimers
1. Our collective, societal interdepencey has become so large and complex that it is vey difficult to manage with the mental resources we bring to bear upon it. Any particular proposal may be rational and be able to be defended logically and morally. That doesn't insure that it will work, when implemented on the scale of a nation with 50 states, desserts and swamps, mountains and plains, 3 Coasts, 2 very long boarders with other nations, 350 million people.
2. The question of how to bring about change is even more complex than the question of what to change to. I believe we have to rule out the use of bodily harm in our interactions with one another and that the ends don't justify the means. If violent revolution is not the solution, and if morality and logic aren't likely to be the decisive elements in how we decide things as a nation, what kind of change processes are likely to lead to improvement? I will think about this and write about it later.
C. Theoretical Meanderings
1. Balance is the principle of health in Human Existence. This applies to each of us as individuals. Human welfare and well-being also depend upon the proper balance of power between the individual and the collective.
2. How smart are Human Beings and how Stupid. In what ways are we smart and in what ways stupid? what are our inherent capabilities and limitations? What is our educability?
a. for consideration: Our biggest limitation is that most of us don't understand at all the complex nature of the relationship between our own thinking (or thought or cognitiion) and whatever reality there is independent of our thought, but which we can only know through our senses and our cognitive system (of perception and thought).