Removing barriers for work on SSDI

WM WW SS: Untapped Talent in America: Removing Barriers to Work and Supporting Opportunity for Individuals with Disabilities, September 9, 2025

We urge caution in dealing with this subject, as what is of academic interest for social commentators is a matter of life and death for those who live it. People are on disability for two reasons. The first is that work has become a struggle for either physical or mental health reasons. The second is that dealing with disabled workers has become a burden to employers and their supervisors.  This is even the case where workers are extremely talented, especially for those with mental illness, who may be more intelligent than their supervisors but unable to effectively deal with the social situations faced in the workplace.

Start by ending the penalty on working for those who receive retirement or disability benefits prior to full retirement age.

There are two main reasons to encourage the disabled (and the aged) to work. The first is to increase their incomes, primarily because current benefits are too low and there is little appetite for increasing them and the second is to increase the number of low wages into the economy for the benefit of such employers. Neither reason has merit. Workers with untapped talent should be given the opportunity to contribute, but this should not put their current situations at risk. It is much too hard to get onto disability for the risk calculus to make sense.

One way to deal with this is to make getting assistance easier for both having a disability or to simply leave a bad job. In June of 2024, the Center provided comments to both subcommittees on how to do this by creating a program of long-term unemployment insurance, which I will repeat here.

Please see the attachments for more information on how to fund this spending through a system of consumption taxes on both consumers and employers (while decreasing other taxes on the latter).

Taken together, these reforms will remove the punitive features from anti-poverty programs, especially those which require an excess of red tape to participate - especially the earned income tax credit and supplemental security income. By basing benefits on long term unemployment insurance, the period of precarity applicants face while applying for benefits is ended. This experience colors both the desire to return to work and the need to justify continued benefits

Returning to work from disability also has a psychic cost. Participation in psychiatric rehabilitation programs on a longer-term basis than Medicaid Eligibility, as well as educational benefits, will mitigate these fears and, in the post-pandemic world, get people used to leaving home again on a regular basis. Medicare solvency must be discussed within the larger context of health care reform.

If work paid better, going back into it would be easier - even for a shorter period of time. Like the current ticket to work program, benefits should remain in place for a period of months but after that period, should be very easy to restart. Talented individuals could respond to short term opportunities - or even seek them - without having them lead to a long-term obligation for employers.

Supplemental Security Income should be entirely replaced with LTUI as described above. This will end onerous requirements on both recipients and on the government. Individuals with a more substantial work history who have had higher contributions could apply for higher benefit levels or save such advantages for when they reach retirement age.

Individuals on long-term disability or recipients of old age and survivors insurance need more money. Many are in poverty - primarily because they never had a job that was adequate to make the necessary investments that would, in theory, allow Social Security to be a supplement to income rather than its sole source - which is the case for the vast majority of cases.

Under no circumstances should precarity be increased in order to encourage more work. That this is no idle concern, as the recently passed reform did just that regarding both Food Stamp and Medicaid benefits. This is exactly the wrong approach. It also will not work out as planned.

For forced work to be feasible will require forcing employers to hire individuals whose productivity may not justify their efforts and to retain employees who may have challenges. Anti-discrimination laws (including those regarding age) will not only need to be strengthened, doing so may even require criminal enforcement. The other alternative is to provide vastly increased subsidies for employers.

Taking the necessary actions to require that employers actually disabled workers would be the logical outcome of encouraging more work for talented (and less talented) disabled individuals. These committees, especially members of the majority, need to be clear about this fact. So far, efforts to increase requirements on SNAP and Medicaid has included actions to assure that jobs are available - especially those that pay well.

A related subject are disincentives on retirement prior to the full retirement age.

Economists who study the future of work are currently dealing with the question of the decreasing need for workers as artificial intelligence expands.  We believe this concern is overblown. More workers are required to double check the results of generative AI, which can turn out to be questionable. 

Improvements to productivity in general are making the eight hour day unnecessary. More people could have good jobs, rather than marginal ones, if pay rates were increased while hours were cut. Working class, and even factory wages have not kept up with those of management - a product of percentage wage adjustments for inflation being done on a percentage basis rather than distributed in equal dollar amount increments. Because prices follow the 90th percentile of income, most of the nation barely keeps up, with low wage workers, often those with some disability or lack of education, actually losing ground.

Some, if not most, white collar jobs exist to serve the advancement interests of their management, as their pay is increased by having more people to supervise while they look busy. Especially in high skill industries, having people on call to face periods of work - such as the time between the actual enactment of the federal budget and the end of the fiscal year - lead to the kind of bloated payrolls Elon Musk feared but did not understand. The problem is not employees, it is Congress not being able to pass a budget. Shorter work days, with the understanding that extra time may be required at certain times of the year, is a better alternative than having people babysit their computers.

Age discrimination is often a factor in being encouraged to retire early or at all. It is, in fact, implicit. As productivity in the economy advances, discouraging earlier retirement may be counter-productive. Creation of long-term unemployment insurance and making sure it provides adequate income while reforming how both it and Social Security as a whole is funded allows a reconsideration of both the ages for retiring at 62 and for having the full retirement age occur at 67 for those who are now retiring. 

Shifting the funding of what has been the employer contribution to one funded by a goods and services (value added) tax, with equal dollar crediting, ends the question of whether the program includes a subsidy. It does now and certainly will if the program provides adequate income for retirees. Providing higher wages will, as history demonstrates, will result in higher consumption. 

Adding a consumption tax (rather than having be implicit when buried in income taxes) will provide adequate funding to lower the early retirement age to 60 and reduce full retirement age (with the implicit encouragement to keep working without penalty) while removing the penalty for working after early retirement.  Shift full retirement age to 64 as a start, as many who retire early do so at this point anyway, and adjust until there is no bump in when people retire between early and full retirement ages.

Attachment: Consumption Taxes

Keynes vs MMT: which economic theory fits our world?

This gets MMT close to where it needs to be. Taxation, especially of high incomes, must be seen as a way to regulate the excesses of capitalist speculation - which often leads to dangerous investment products that the originators pump and dump, while the top 25% of households is left holding the bag - while the liquidity of the bottom 75% is severely damaged in the dislocations.

An Asset Value Added Tax, as a replacement for capital gains taxes, with marking to market at Option Exercise, IPO and first sale after inheritance, gift or donation - and with an expansion of the ESOP sales exclusion to all stock purchases - not just privately held firms - (a tax cut) - will unwind capitalism so that a more cooperative economy can develop - including worker control over consumption, finance, social services and housing - as well as retirement savings and CEO recruitment (open auction).

Until taxes are adequate - that is - until we take the money we would otherwise borrow - running deficits is actually essential for capitalism to be liquid. Since the 2018 Trump cuts - there has been too much liquidity leading to asset bubbles in crypto, housing, commercial property, consumer debt ownership, etc. 

When the crash happens, the best cure would be a doubling or tripling of the child tax credit, shifting  COLA bonuses to an equal dollar pay bump (not a percentage based on) and a higher minimum wage. Then, the pay bump will be enough for the median to keep up, low enough to end the salary pull on price levels - especially for housing and durable goods - that all goes toward the top 10%. The minimum wage needs to double, as well as an increase to the poorest retirees. A VAT scheme would then eat some of the excess price inflation that will happen when the working class gets lots more money.

2026 Healthcare Agenda

Finance: The President’s 2026 Health Care Agenda, September 4, 2025

I. Vaccines

There are two aspects to vaccination policy that must be considered: those which represent the best scientific knowledge and those that represent values held by American citizens. The election of President Trump came with the promise, which was kept, to appoint the Secretary - in part to implement certain values regarding individual autonomy. 

The Secretary’s personal views on the relationship between vaccines and any complications are not his call as the political leader of the Department. The extent to which the statute creating and authorizing the Department vests decision authority in the Secretary is not the fault of Mr. Kennedy - it is the fault of the Congress. To those who believe in a unitary executive, the status quo is a feature, rather than a flaw. Recent experience, as well as the views of members of the Committee on both sides of the aisle show that this belief is misplaced. 

At some point in the future, possibly as early as 2027, a firewall preventing partisan interference with scientific decision making must be put in place - either by enacting professional requirements for departmental leadership or for certain components within it. While partisan political leadership is essential to our system of governance, like the First Amendment, it should not be a suicide pact.

As important is the fact that the presidency is not the only method by which the American people put their values into the law. It was not designed for that purpose. Rather, it is the Congress of the United States who has the obligation to bring our nation’s values into public policy. Like any American, the President can certainly share his views with Congress, but such views cannot be allowed to override them, lest single party tyranny put the views of some Americans over the views of the rest. 

Note that in our correspondence with the Committee regarding the Secretary’s confirmation, we registered our support. This was not an endorsement of his views on vaccinations, but to further his agenda into the health effects of the American diet, especially with regard to ending the marketing of high fructose corn syrup as a healthy substitute for natural fats. While food additives that may be carcinogenic have gotten Secretary Kennedy’s attention recently, the affect the diet food industry has had in creating our crisis of obesity, diabetes, heart attack, stroke and dementia is more important - regardless of the interests of farmers in producing it.

II. Health care reform

We have included modified comments on lowering health care costs first submitted in September of last year, as well as our option paper on health insurance reform delivered with our comments on the FY22 HHS budget testimony to this committee - both of which highlight the use of a Public Option for those who cannot afford the plans offered by health insurance exchanges. We now offer the following new observations on health care reform. Please share these Secretary Kennedy, as your contact list is better than mine.

The concept of a Public Option came from the health care reform enacted by then Massachusetts Governor, now Utah Senator, Mitt Romney.  

The Romney public option provisions are superior to the combination of catastrophic insurance and health savings accounts (possibly including tax free flexible spending accounts) associated with Senator Dole in opposition to President Clinton’s reforms. The Dole proposals were so unpopular that they were not offered by Republican members as an alternative to the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act, even though they would have been the most effective means of lowering health care costs.

This approach was supported by the Center for Fiscal Equity - provided that flexible spending accounts could also be used as a line of credit that would not expire from year to year - and with credit v. saving account percentages tailored to meet the economic demands of each family - in other words, that they be means tested - with very poor households receiving a much higher HSA and no requirement to purchase a flexible spending plan to offset catastrophic expenses.

We now support the Romney version of the public option. His version of the proposal should be studied by the Department and brought forward as soon as possible by the Administration for enactment before the 2028 election.

We must note that the Affordable Care Act could only be passed by baseline manipulation adding all student borrowing to the Department of Education, taking it from the private sector. As a consequence, student loan borrower difficulties were magnified - which led the Biden Administration to repair the damage to student borrowers by forgiving packets of student loans held by the government.

The Act must be repealed, in parts, to

1. Lower premiums and eliminate co-pays for the individual plan.
2. Replace Medicaid for non-retirees with a subsidized Public Option.
3. Abandon funding through a tax on investment income over $400,000, replacing it with either a subtraction value added tax paid by employers - with partial offsets for any coverage provided to employees and retirees - or by enactment of a national goods and services (value added) tax (GST) or a stable general tariff adequate to replace the current subsidy for health insurance coverage; full funding of Medicare - including that portion of Medicaid paid to the disabled and retirees so that the states can be relieved of this obligation; and to fully fund the public option.
4. Replace employer-paid contributions to Social Security with the GST or tariff and credit  each worker the same dollar amount rather than an amount matching their contribution, which makes the eventual establishment of personal retirement accounts possible without damaging the redistributional aspects of the program.
5. Replace pre-existing condition reforms with universal enrollment of those denied coverage due to such conditions with automatic enrollment in the Public Option.

Attachment: Lower Healthcare Costs for Americans

Attachment: HHS Budget, FY22

Why do We Still Need to Work?

A better option is 6.5*4 days or a 26 hour week (one third less), with a one-sixth decline in salary levels - but with a doubling of the minimum wage from 7.25 to 14.50 and a long-term unemployment insurance rate of 13.25 - with recipients required to be in school, caring for a child, or participating in a drug, psychiatric or physical disability rehabilitation program. This would result in a 82.5-65-100 deal, rather than 100-80-100. 

Manufacturing and service industries would have a two (or four) shift system - with a 43% bonus for second shift labor (working 52 hours in a week) or 200-130-200.  LTUI would pay 1481 per month.  Full time minimum wage would pay 1621 per month. Average Social Security would be 2494 (pegged to FT Min wage 40 hour work week).

Current min wage work is often for 29 hours a week, so real min wage job pays 904 per month.

COLAs are currently a fixed percentage of last year's wage, which causes inequality because prices chase wages at the 90th percentile. If they are granted on an equal dollar basis, management will give themselves the number of dollars that they need, with the understanding that everyone under them gets the same raise in dollar terms.  Managers and professionals will have to settle for less - and executives much less - but the economy would grow with less inflation (because it is ex-comp and professional salaries that drive up prices - especially for housing).

Trump's Tax Cuts Were Worse than We Thought

The Trump cuts to corporations without matching loophole closures were ill-advised, leading to job losses as I also predicted in 2017. In 2019, the year after the Trump cuts made it through the economy, GDP growth went down a full percentage point. Then we had COVID, which the Fed used to hold all the bad investments from the TCJA harmless. When the economy started toward normality, the Trump cuts - as well as pandemic transfers to the fourth quintile - boosted the stock market as more investment income chased the same assets (or created junk assets - like ETFs with Crypto and Mortgage Securities baked in).

Keeping most of the Trump cuts were necessary for most people, even if the highest income households, who pay most of the taxes, got bigger dollar cuts. A huge number of the tax cuts changed the system - and should have been permanent in the first place. They were not so as to require a tax bill this year. Had they not expired, there would have been no vehicle to work with. Because the changes are now permanent, letting anything temporary die will have no impact.

Biden should have dealt with this issue, but did not find the votes - and the WH was as occupied with hiding is problems as the Trump 45 WH was in hiding Trump's. Now, they are letting Trump be Trump.

Taxes on capitalism (corporate, individual, partnership, Part S) did not change - and they need to because that is where the money is.

Crypto

WM Oversight:  Making America the Crypto Capital  of the World: Ensuring Digital Asset Policy Built for the 21st Century, July 16, 2025

The GENIUS Act has passed both Chambers and has been sent to President Trump. The House has passed the CLARITY Act and sent it to the Senate, both on a bipartisan basis. An additional bill barring the Federal Reserve from establishing its own digital currency has also passed the House. The reality is that Federal Reserve Notes are already traded on many platforms as online banking and purchases - so the dream of electronic commerce has already been realized.

Stablecoins, which are pegged to a real asset, is a form of cryptocurrency that has the potential to be real money - which can be defined as a form of exchange that can be used to satisfy debts to the public - both in the form of taxation and the ability to be seized as the result of civil and criminal judgments - including seizures to claw back transactions subsequent to criminal activity.

Frankly, no other form of digital currency should be allowed. It should certainly not be encouraged by the United States Congress. 

Experts, such as Warren Buffett, see no value in such currency investments because they are not tied to any form of productive activity. In essence, those who trade in these currencies seek to be the second to last person owning them before the market corrects itself. It is the kind of Ponzi scheme from which economic collapses result.

This Committee has shown concern in the past on overpayments surrounding Pandemic relief. These are less worrisome than the fact that many households invested such payments in cryptocurrency - a junk asset - because families who had high enough incomes to not need the aid used it to gamble instead of meeting basic needs in an uncertain economy. These events demand oversight much more than misuse of Unemployment Insurance.

Historically, money exists in order to pay taxes, as mentioned above. For this asset, taxes should be remitted, not at the end of the year as a capital gain (or loss), but with each transaction, in the form of an asset value added tax. Would this destroy crypto? If only it could. Imposition of this tax would make such transactions accountable, especially if imposition were coordinated across borders so as to prevent “market shopping” for a lower tax rate.

Attachment: Asset VAT

Big Beautiful Bill Gets a B

This bill is largely ministerial and optics. Biden could have gotten a tax increase, plus extension of the good parts of the bill (which preserve tax rule changes that were bipartisan and should not have been time limited for ten years) but he did not. Had he been successful, the upcoming depression due to housing prices would not have already started. I say depression because prices will be lower than the debt backing the assets - not merely a slowdown in consumer spending.

The debt is mostly sucked up by retirement funds, money and mutual funds, as well as by the rich, and it makes capitalism possible. Unless there is a major push for employee-ownership, there is no other alternative (TINA). Not now does not mean never.

The Medicaid and SNAP cuts are back loaded and will be abolished by the next Democratic Congress after the 2026 election. AARP will do its job - either loudly or quietly - depending on how Trump or Vance feels. Vance will let it happen quietly.

The immigration pieces that are unconstitutional will not take effect, those that are show that elections matter.  Oddly, Trump is going after human trafficking in Big Agriculture and Food, Inc., which his capitalist friends do not like. Immigration reform may one day happen if enough pressure is applied. Big Food stopped it by funding the whole birthright citizenship issue - they liked having a pliant trafficked workforce. Trump is ruining this for them, so maybe they will have to back reform.

Progress cannot be stopped forever.

What you own or owe of the national debt, within class averages

We do not owe the national debt or own debt assets on a per capita basis. What you owe is based on income tax paid (not social security, that is an asset you buy). What you own is based on your money, retirement, pension or social security program's debt assets (you don't own them, they provide you with income later) and high yield assets (savings bonds, T-Bills, mutual funds - but not stocks as they are not backed by debt). 

This video explains what you owe (gross and net) or own by income class.

If you are in the bottom 80% (making under $117K), your family owes $61 K and nets 16.3K - for a family of 4, that's $15K owed, but once assets are added, you own 4K. That is most people, just by being born, the government owes you, on average $4,000.

On the other end, if you are in the top 0.1$, making $3.3 Mil per year, your family owes $39M and you owe 9.8M - but adding back assets, your family nets $19M if all debts were paid and debt assets distributed. That's $4.75M per rich person, when born.

The upper middle, from 0.1% to 2% make over $439K, owe $2.8M ($701K/person) and, even when assets are settled, still owe $1M ($271/person).

The middle ($117K to $439K, from 2% to 20%) owe $370K ($92/person) and have a net debt of $31K ($7,9K/person).

The top 0.1%, 153,000 families, don't get most of their money from wages or even profits from businesses they own - although it is not a small amount. The vast majority of that money is capital gains (long and short term) for the sale of either direct or mutual fund asset sales - net of losses (if you lose big, you move down in class for that year - so you owe and pay less).

This gives us the answer on how to give the very reach less of a share of the net debt - so that all of the upper and middle classes "break even." Raise the capital gains tax rate - particularly the long-term rate - which is 20% now on (and 37% for short term). Each year, your share of the capital gains for your fund is a taxable event - and they disclose that amount to you and the IRS if you are in a fund (and not cheating - and some do). There is a 3.8% Obamacare surtax as well - and that revenue should be broad-based, not a tax on the wealthy. Biden wanted to raise the tax (including Obamacare) to 28.8%. 

Under Reagan, it was 28%, Papa Bush raised it to 31% , with Clinton making it 39.6% before he cut it back to 28%. W made it 20% and Obama added the surtax of 3.8%, with Trump and Biden leaving it there with no talk of changing it in the Big Beautiful Bill. Letting the Trump 45 tax cuts expire does not change it at all. B3 largely keeps tax policy on capital income and gains where Obama left them and extends the tax fixes that made things simpler. Trump's cuts to corporate income taxes were allowed to become permanent in 2017 - meaning Dems did not stop them - even in private - and the whole thing was negotiated in private - as is the BBB).

IT WILL TAKE REAL REFORM TO FIX THIS.

On the whole, government spending on entitlements, the military, domestic non-military and net interest cannot be changed much - or at all in any meaningful way. Most tax rates, including the 37% rate at the top, are not going anywhere - (the 37% rate is fairly bipartisan, falling between the rates set by Clinton/Obama and Bush).

That leaves business taxes - all of which should move at the same rate.

It's where the money is. The current level is between 22% and 24%. Biden proposed 29%.

So, lets VAT or tariff fund Obamacare or have employers pay for it as a subtraction VAT item. Kill the income tax and establish subtraction VAT surtaxes for high incomes and dividends, paid for by companies based on wages and dividends paid to individuals and mutual/retirement funds - but let them prepay these taxes and trade them as bond assets. Pay for other spending the same way EXCEPT

Create an asset value added tax - 26% is the sweet spot between where the Democrats and Republicans would put it. Repeal corporate profits taxes on a worldwide basis and have the world sign onto the AVAT at about the same rate.

Use the funds for overseas military expenses, net interest and - when the budget goes into balance - debt reduction.

THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE

If you zero rate public stock sales to an qualified employee stock ownership program - so that heirs who sell the company shares pay no tax if you mark taxes to market after death, gift, or donation, plus IPO and Option exercise) - and repeal the death tax (while enacting VAT and/or decent tariffs), then the size of the capitalist sector goes down while the employee-owned share goes up - as does the demand for government. Again, TINA. They used to use TINA to say capitalism will never go away. Now, TINA if we want to keep the dollar solvent.

Letter on tariffs to Ways & Means and Finance Trade Subcommittees

We strongly recommend that a baseline tariff amount be enacted as proposed here, giving the Administration limited ability to negotiate on specific products based on these amounts and removing blanket authorization to declare an emergency to work around the enactment of detailed tariff policies.

These proposed tariff rates are based on the value added taxes of our trading partners. We have also provided information on national gross domestic product in purchasing power parity terms (based on data originally calculated by the International Monetary Fund for 2022, the most recent year available in the vast majority of countries). These percentages were used to adjust the balance of trade figures currently available from the World Population Review. 

As we explained in April,  until the United States adopts its own Value Added Tax System, as we have proposed for the past ten years, it could fund domestic military and civilian discretionary spending - with the higher rate including what is now collected by employers for Old Age and Survivors Insurance. Without such a tax, the enactment of tariffs is necessary to compensate for the lack of one, while those nations who use this levy zero rate it at the border, which damages U.S. competitiveness.  

Dealing with this issue is a main driver behind the President’s efforts to impose a tariff policy. Sadly, the Administration’s imposed tariffs were initially based on total trade amounts by a logic that I cannot understand. The proper metric, if dealing with the national economies of our trading partners, is to adjust trade margins as explained above, but this calculation would mainly be to use tariffs to increase their economies for the benefit of their citizens, while holding American firms harmless from trade relationships that exploit overseas workers, while robbing American workers their jobs. 

Correcting this circumstance was one of President Trump’s main promises, although most of his base did not realize that this would be inflationary unless other taxes were reduced through tax reform. Imposing tariffs before tax reform is enacted has put the cart before the horse. This is why tariff policy should move back to Congress, which should also engage in bipartisan reforms along the lines that we first proposed in 1998.

Sadly, the horse has already left the barn, so tariffs need to be rationalized as soon as possible. They should be based on the exporter's value added tax rate that was zero rated at the border. Let us offer some examples. Canada has a Goods and Services VAT at the Dominion and Provincial levels. The tariff for each trading partner needs to be at least that much. Most Canadian provinces have a 5% rate, while Ontario’s rate is 13%. I offer these in case we wish to enact rates for each province.

The proposed rates in the attachment largely mirror VAT rates for each nation, although different rates were proposed for some nations. If our trade surplus, adjusted as described above, is less than the VAT, the proposed rate is decreased by that amount. If we run a larger surplus, the VAT rate is used as our trading relationship will not be damaged by enacting the higher amount.  

Tariffs for most developing nations were based solely on their VAT rates, as increasing tariff rates to purchasing power parity/trade deficits would effectively stop trade with these economies. The exception to this is for major importers, such as China, Taiwan or Bangladesh, where armies of exploited low wage workers dump products on the American economy.

GDP, adjusted for purchasing power parity and the size of the American economy as expressed as an inverse relationship are provided. Thus, if an economy is only 10% of the American economy, the percentage difference in the table is 90%. This is most of Africa and much of the world. Tariffs on these nations should not include this adjustment in raw form, as this would result in trade embargos without helping overseas workers at all. 

These percentages were used as an adjustment to trade deficit percentages with the U.S., with positive numbers showing a U.S. surplus and negative indicating a trade deficit. Even these amounts would severely damage trade, but because they fit, in general, with the President’s apparent rationale as first proposed, they are provided for information.

Attachment - Long-Term Unemployment Insurance

Social services, especially Unemployment Insurance, need a major overhaul.  The categorical grant approach reinforced a provincial view of federalism; one which created regional economies, especially in the South, with a barely hidden racist intent. The result of these policies has been to keep the region in a state of sustained poverty. Alabama Wealthy is not wealthy in the larger economy. This wound was self-inflicted.

Family incomes must be guaranteed, although not with a one size fits all subsidy. Our proposal has three components; two of which should be familiar to the Committee: 

1. An increase in the minimum wage to at least $11 per hour (if not more to account for pandemic inflation), with a $12 wage for a shorter work week.  This distributes the burden of higher wages for less work with employees and employers.
2. Increase the Child Tax Credit to levels passed by the House, with increases to at least twice that in fairly short order.
3. Replace the current menu of social programs with long term unemployment insurance at below minimum wage levels, which would be supplemented with additional funding for participation in basic education (especially for ex-offenders), employment training, psychiatric or addiction rehabilitation programs. Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance would start with this amount as a minimum, with higher benefit levels based on employment history. Dependent payments would be made through the child tax credit once it has been increased to current survivor benefit levels. 
4. Long term unemployment insurance would be awarded on a no fault basis, ending the need for eligibility investigations beyond verification of identity and for punitive disciplinary systems by employers designed to avoid paying benefits. This payment, which would be indexed for inflation, would be $10 per hour for a 28 hour week, would be tax free and funded by a national goods and services tax. States could enact higher benefit levels funded by a local GST.
5. Most, if not all, anti-poverty programs would be discontinued, although programs to increase rental housing supplies would be expanded.

Attachment: Consumption Taxes

Background on Consumption Taxes

Eventually, the United States needs to join the rest of the developed world and enact consumption taxes on consumer goods and services, net business receipts and an innovative tax on asset sales - which would replace capital gains taxation and would require negotiation of an international rate to prevent rate arbitrage. 

The first two would make it easier to pay taxes in general because the simplicity of the first and the fact that the second would replace the business income tax while becoming a conduit for employee health and family support benefits - and would entirely replace the need for most families to pay personal income taxes (if not all) - which would greatly cut down on paperwork requirements businesses currently face. 

The reality is that business collects the revenue and submits it to the Treasury, along with a mountain of information to subsidize the tax preparation industry - who are consistent donors to both Chambers - especially the revenue committees. 

Credit Invoice Value-Added Tax (CI-VAT). Border adjustable taxes will appear on purchase invoices. The rate varies according to what is being financed. If Medicare for All does not contain offsets for employers who fund their own medical personnel or for personal retirement accounts, both of which would otherwise be funded by an S-VAT, then they would be funded by the I-VAT to take advantage of border adjustability. 

CI-VAT forces everyone, from the working poor to the beneficiaries of inherited wealth, to pay taxes and share in the cost of government. As part of enactment, gross wages will be reduced to take into account the shift to S-VAT and CI-VAT, however net income will be increased by the same percentage as the CI-VAT. Inherited assets will be taxed under A-VAT when sold. Any inherited cash, or funds borrowed against the value of shares, will face the CI-VAT when sold or the A-VAT if invested.

The proposed Fair Tax’s use of a retail sales tax, rather than use of a value added tax at each purchase (but note - the tax is only paid on the base markup  - not the taxes owed because of the markup) will lead to fraud as retail purchase are credited as wholesale - which under the FT is not taxed. This is a huge potential loss. This schema is proposed by Fair Tax sponsors because they misunderstand how a CI-VAT works. For the Fair Tax to ever pass, rather than being a talking point for fundraising, it must work the same way..

When CI-VAT is paid by a merchant or manufacturer, the CI-VAT that they paid for that good or service supplied is refunded to them.

These taxes will replace the web of tariffs currently in place, ending what amounts to domestic industrial policy.

Subtraction Value-Added Tax (S-VAT). Corporate income taxes and collection of business and farm income taxes will be replaced by this tax, which is an employer paid Net Business Receipts Tax. S-VAT is a vehicle for tax benefits, including

• Health insurance or direct care, including veterans' health care for non-battlefield injuries and long term care. 
• Employer paid educational costs in lieu of taxes are provided as either employee-directed contributions to the public or private unionized school of their choice or direct tuition payments for employee children or for workers (including ESL and remedial skills). Wages will be paid to students to meet opportunity costs.  
• Most importantly, a refundable child tax credit at median income levels (with inflation adjustments)  distributed with pay. 

Subsistence level benefits force the poor into servile labor. Wages and benefits must be high enough to provide justice and human dignity. This allows the ending of state administered subsidy programs and discourages abortions, and as such enactment must be scored as a must pass in voting rankings by pro-life organizations (and feminist organizations as well). To assure child subsidies are distributed, S-VAT will not be border adjustable.

Under the current income tax regime, for middle income taxpayers whose increased credits are less than their annual tax obligation, a simple change in withholding tables is adequate. Procedures are already in place to deliver refundable credits to larger families. 

Employers can work with their bankers to increase funds for payroll throughout the year while requiring less money for their quarterly tax payments (or estimated taxes) to the IRS. The main issue is working out those situations where employers owe less than they pay out. This is especially true for labor intensive industries and even more so for low wage employers. A higher minimum wage would make negative quarterly tax bills less likely. Again, no one should have to subsist mainly on their child tax payments.

Higher tiers of the subtraction VAT would collect taxes on salaries with a 6.5% rate on income over $85,000, with increments of that amount to a top rate of 26% starting at $340,000 in salaried income. Salary surtaxes, with an option to purchase tax prepayment bonds, would start at $425,000 at 6.5% to a top rate of 26% starting at $680,000. Employers could also be given the option to buy tax prepayment bonds - which could be marketable.

Taxation of dividends will be included in surtaxes to the Subtraction VAT for payments over $85,000 in taxes plus dividends in a given year, however individual filing for wage. dividend and interest income under $425,000 will not be required. Again, the capital gains tax will be abolished.

Carbon Added Tax (C-AT). A Carbon tax with receipt visibility, which allows comparison shopping based on carbon content, even if it means a more expensive item with lower carbon is purchased. C-AT would also replace fuel taxes. It will fund transportation costs, including mass transit, and research into alternative fuels. This tax would not be border adjustable unless it is in other nations, however in this case the imposition of this tax at the border will be noted, with the U.S. tax applied to the overseas base.

Debt Ownership - TY2022 Debt June 2025

Visibility into how the national debt, held by both the public and the government at the household level, sheds light on why Social Security, rather than payments for interest on the debt, are a concern of so many sponsored advocacy institutions across the political spectrum.

Direct household attribution can be made by calculating  direct bond holdings, income provided by Social Security payments and secondary financial instruments backed with debt assets for each income quintile.

Responsibility to repay the debt is attributed based on personal income tax collection. Payroll taxes create an asset for the payer, so they are not included in the calculation of who owes the debt.  In 2019, just after the President’s tax cuts were passed, the ratio was 19 dollars of debt for every dollar of income tax collected. The 2022 ratio was 13 - so our financial position is actually improving - largely because post-pandemic inflation grew the economy.

The bottom 80% of taxpaying units hold few, if any, public debt assets in the form of Treasury Bonds or Securities or in accounts holding such assets and only take home one-third of adjusted gross income. Their main national debt assets are held on their behalf by the Government. They are owed more debt than they owe through taxes. The next 10% (the middle class), hold more in terms of long term investments and mutual fund and bond assets. They hold a bit under a fifth of social insurance assets.

The top 10% pay more than half of income taxes (the dividing line is about 97.5% - and has been for a while). Asset shares within the top 10% are estimated using the same breakdown as the entire population, that is, the top 1% hold 54% of Federal Reserve and Long Term Investment Assets and 77% of mutual funds and bonds as held by the top 10%. A similar fraction is used to estimate holdings by the top 0.01% - which is consistent with how much income they receive (note that I did not say earn. 

This illustration shows who benefits the most from having a national debt, therefore who has the most to lose through default. The relative shares of debt ownership, however, are current as reflected in the 2022 Federal Reserve Survey.

Additional charts on debt ownership.

Attachment: Social Insurance Taxes

WM Social Security and Welfare & Work: Hearing with the Commissioner of Social Security, Frank J. Bisignano

There are two ways to define solvency: budgetary and adequacy. Solvency is willingness to raise income taxes to honor Social Security Trust Fund obligations as they come due and to continue to use personal income and consumption or payroll taxes to provide adequate funding for retirees. The second way to see solvency is in the adequacy of benefits. The current system leaves most seniors and the disabled barely solvent, which requires them to use food stamps, energy assistance, assisted housing and homestead exemptions for property taxes. This inadequacy threatens state and local finance as well.

Most seniors run out of their savings or simply have not built them up in the first place. Leaving payments low is a cruel joke, because savings is not neglected because of indolence or overspending during our working years, but because incomes have been inadequate. Inflation follows the median dollar, not the median income. Percentage based COLAs, rather than equal dollar ones, magnify inequality. Most families cannot keep up.

The wealthy and their pet non-profits don’t fund studies warning about the accumulation of publicly held debt but fund numerous efforts to get entitlement spending under control. CBO projections show the biggest driver of future debt is the continual rolling over of net interest. The demands of retirees are stable, not so the demands of bond holders. When the nation stops rolling over the interest, the wealthy can talk about the health of federally held trust funds.

The debt assets owed to the bottom 60% (indeed, to the bottom 90%) are sacrosanct, as they paid for it with regressive payroll taxes while they were working. Others had to shift from the Civil Service Retirement System to the Federal Employee Retirement System which required savings rather than a defined benefit and included Social Security. 

Forty years ago, the decision was made to advance fund the retirement of the baby boomers, rather than immediately begin subsidies from the general fund. Doing so would have required repealing the tax cuts on the rich enacted by President Reagan, the Senate and just enough conservative Democrats in the House to do damage.  They also gave us the ill-advised 1986 tax reform. 

Now that it is time for the wealthy to pay what they owe to the trust fund (or rather, the children of the wealthy of the 80s), people are talking about means testing Social Security and were talking about making it attractive to upper classes by investing it. The desire to invest Social Security accounts in Wall Street died in 2008. Private accounts held by Wall Street would again make the working class fix the debt liability of the top 10%. Means testing benefits would also rob the bottom two quintiles of their most effective voice – higher income taxpayers who do receive benefits. As long as the higher quintiles get benefits, the program is safe.

The very rich have the data on their own wealth and know what they pay in taxes.  They won’t like the implication that the rest of us now know how closely the two figures are related. They certainly won’t like it shown that they are on the hook for paying back Social Security and the U.S. debt held for the world. 

Individual payroll taxes. A floor of $20,000 would be instituted for paying these taxes, with a ceiling of $115,000. This lower ceiling reduces the amount of benefits received in retirement for higher income individuals. The logic of the $20,000 floor reflects full time work at a $10 per hour minimum wage offered by the Republican caucus in response to proposals for a $15 wage. The Democrats need get the offer back on the table and take the deal. Doing so in relation to a floor on contributions makes adopting the minimum wage germane in the Senate for purposes of Reconciliation. The rate would be set at 6.25%.

Employer payroll taxes. Unless taxes are diverted to a personal retirement accounts holding voting and preferred stock in the employer, the employer levy would be replaced by a goods and services tax addition of 6.25%. Every worker who meets a minimum hour threshold would be credited for having paid into the system, regardless of wage level. All employees would be credited on an equal dollar basis, rather than as a match to their individual payroll tax. The tax rate would be adjusted to assure adequacy of benefits for all program beneficiaries. As the results of Asset Value Added Tax exclusions for ESOP sales build up that sector, funding this revenue obligation will move to employer-paid Subtraction Value Added Taxes.

Disability and Survivors Insurance: Baseline disability and survivors benefits will be moved to the Long Term Unemployment Insurance Program, which will be funded by employer paid subtraction value added taxes. Payments may be higher based on employee-paid contributions.

Health Spending and Taxes: Medicare, Senior Medicaid, Affordable Care Act subsidies, subsidies for health insurance collected under corporate income taxes and the Public Option will be funded through both the Credit Invoice Value Added Tax and/or the employer-paid Subtraction Value Added Tax.

Pension Reform: Increased saving requires relatively safe investment options; those relatively free of speculative junk. ETFs are not free of junk. They merely hide it until it rots. MBS, crypto, under regulated commodity markets, as well as new technology - such as AI - are the usual suspects.

Pensions are safer, especially when they are not required to be "fully funded." Such a requirement ruined these instruments, forcing workers into defined contribution plans. Such plans are, by their very nature, inadequate for most workers. They can also hide junk. 

Encouraging the return of pensions by reforming solvency requirements is an essential step. Encouraging the expansion of Employee Stock Ownership Programs is another. Please see our attachment regarding asset value added taxes as a replacement to capital gains taxes, the death tax and to prevent any kind of wealth tax.

Long Term Unemployment Insurance: The general approach to reform social services is to provide a form of guaranteed income, but not through a general subsidy for all households. We do not propose free money for all households - which is the gist of basic income proposals. Our approach addresses individual needs, but uses similar tools. 

Until Congress increases the minimum wage, and as importantly, abandons percentage based cost of living adjustments for federal direct and contract employees in favor of a specific dollar amount, the country will face deepening poverty for some and high inflation for others. Prices  chase the wage given to the 90th percentile - which is where the median dollar of income is paid. 

The reforms below will prevent the boom-bust cycle which we seem to be trapped in of late. They will also provide resilience against the next pandemic.

1. An increase in the minimum wage to at least $12 per hour (if not more to account for pandemic inflation), with a $14.50 wage for a shorter work week.  This distributes the burden of higher wages for less work with employees and employers.
2. Increase the Child Tax Credit to levels passed by the House, with increases to at least twice that in fairly short order.
3. Replace the current menu of social programs with long term unemployment insurance at below minimum wage levels, which would be supplemented with additional funding for participation in basic education (especially for ex-offenders), employment training, psychiatric or addiction rehabilitation programs. Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance would start with this amount as a minimum, with higher benefit levels based on employment history. Dependent payments would be made through the child tax credit once it has been increased to current survivor benefit levels. 
4. Long term unemployment insurance would be awarded on a no fault basis, ending the need for eligibility investigations beyond verification of identity and for punitive disciplinary systems by employers designed to avoid paying benefits. This payment, which would be indexed for inflation, would be $13.25 per hour for a 28 hour week, would be tax free and funded by a national goods and services tax. States could enact higher benefit levels funded by a local GST.

Taken together, these reforms will remove the punitive features from anti-poverty programs, especially those which require an excess of red tape to participate -  the earned income tax credit and supplemental security income.

Attachment: Consumption Taxes

FY26 Treasury Budget and Tax Reform

WM:  Hearing with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, June 11, 2025

Finance: The President’s Fiscal Year 2026 Budget for the Department of Treasury and Tax Reform, June 12, 2025

The revenue issue dominating the headlines are the President’s tariff policies, which are dynamic rather than according to a master plan. In real life, that is how the world works in the President’s experience. We have developed a systematic approach to bring order into the chaos. It is based on how most nations deal with value added taxes - which we do not follow because we don’t use this as a revenue source. The President’s tariffs are a response to the fact that in every other nation, exporters benefit from the zero rating of these levies at the border while fully burdening imports with these taxes. 

This is the basis for our proposal, which is to link tariffs to the VAT rate of the exporting country, adjusted, where appropriate, to the trade balance they have with the United States and the per capita gross domestic product of these nations. When nations are too poor, no adjustment is made for trade balance issues (with the exception of high volume exporters from Asia). For nations where the United States has a trade surplus, the tariff is adjusted by reducing it to not overly burden American exporters. For example, we have 3.8% trade surplus (adjusted to the size of their economy) with Bahrain and 1.4% surplus with Belgium. Bahrain’s VAT is 10%, and Belgium’s is 21%. The resulting suggested tariffs are 6.2% and 19.6%, respectively. A comprehensive listing of tariff rates would push out all of the other attachments and will be provided separately to the Trade Subcommittee.

Another important issue is the national debt. America’s bond rating has been damaged - not because of the size of the debt but because of the Majority’s reticence to keep reauthorizing debt limit increases and to raise taxes on those who benefit from net interest payments - which is a major drain on the budget. Firstly, the limit needs to be abolished. It was only established because previously, each bond issue was authorized by Congress. That day has long since passed. Secondly, there is a misunderstanding of who is receiving the benefits from net and governmental account interest expenditures. 

The bottom 60% of households own the debt held by Social Security as beneficiaries. The top 0.1% of households hold about a third of managed fund and bond assets, with the rest of the top 10% holding half and the bottom 90% one sixth. Federal Reserve, bank and long term assets are divided in roughly half between the top 20% and the bottom 80%. If the debt were to be defaulted on, a great deal of the damage would be to the top 10% of households. Managed fund and bond holders in the top 1% would take the biggest hit. 

The debt itself is owed by income tax payers (not families or individuals per capita - as most could not pay and we should not scare them by saying they do). For every dollar of income tax paid, thirteen are owed. Due to the expansion of the economy (especially workers wages) since the pandemic, the factor of gross debt to income tax collections has fallen from 19 to 13. The reduction of the debt held by the public because of the retirement of the Baby Boomers also contributes to this statistic. 

The Majority needs to take note that those who pay and those who owe are the same people: capitalists. Without the national debt, leveraging private banking, debt and investment - especially  the intrinsically worthless assets in secondary markets - is impossible. For the investment economy to grow, a deficit is necessary unless the economy is driven to employee-owned financing of the retirement funding and debt management of employee-owned firms - ending securitization of both assets and consumer and housing debt. Please see the first attachment for more detail, including our latest table which includes how ownership of the debt is currently held.

The strangely named Big Beautiful Bill contains increased subsidies for families through the expansion of the Child Tax Credit (which partly offsets the continued repeal of personal exemptions). Some of the bipartisan opposition in the Senate in the prior Congress came from those who consider direct subsidies from the IRS to have the “stink of welfare.” I advise such Senators in both parties to raise the minimum wage so that no one is having to work just to receive this credit and that the best way to distribute the credit is with wages rather than individual tax filing.

Current law makes the credit (as well as the earned income credit) seem like free money. Under the tax reform proposals attached, a subtraction value added tax paid by employers moves the distribution of family based subsidies out of personal income taxes to payroll or additions to government beneficiaries.

We also propose gutting the current social service structure and replacing it with long term unemployment insurance, a feature of which will include the retirement to improve literacy, engage in further education for some and occupational therapy, drug and alcohol treatment and use of psychiatric rehabilitation services. The army of tax preparers and benefit analysts would be retrained to help people navigate through long term payments toward work. Our LTIU proposals can be found in a second attachment.

Our tax reform proposal is in two parts. The first is a menu of consumption taxes paid by consumers (credit invoice value added tax), subtraction VAT (with a surtax on higher salaried workers and dividend/interest recipients) and a carbon added tax. The second is the proposal for an asset value added tax to replace all forms of the capital gains tax. Rates for this tax will be higher (but with expanded zero rating of sales to ESOPs) to reduce the deficit in a way that slowly decreases securitization so transition to a new economy is evolutionary, not revolutionary. These are detailed in the third and fourth attachments.

Until tax reform occurs, IRS Statistics on Income tax tables  should be adjusted for inflation to get a better idea of the distribution of income. Between $50,000 and $100,000, there should be five groups. Between $100,000 and $200,000, there should at least be four so that the border between the fourth and fifth quintiles can be more adequately expressed. Every tax wonk in the nation will appreciate this. Tax Administration post reform is detailed in the last attachment.

Attachment: Debt Ownership Tax Year and SCF 2022, June 2025 Treasury Bulletin

Attachment: Social Services and Solvency: Long Term Unemployment Insurance

Attachment: Consumption Taxes

Attachment: Asset Value Added Tax

Attachment: Tax Administration Video

Futures for (Foster) Youth

WM Work & Welfare: Aging Out is Not a Plan: Reimagining Futures for Foster Youth, June 12, 2025

As we suggested last year, to better meet the needs of the non-college bound, expand the Job Corps program, especially those centers with residential facilities. The program has been a demonstration project for long enough. It needs to be expanded and devolved to the states, but with sufficient block grant support.  

Students on an academic track should be enrolled at a four-year university or college (including private colleges) for the semester during which they age out. “Aging out” of both foster care and parental care should be an option at age 16 - not on one’s birthday but after grade 10. Students on the academic track should switch to community college courses when ready. Students who seek non-academic careers should be allowed to attend either a technical high school or enter a trade school or apprenticeship program. 

One year ago this month, we provided the subcommittee with a proposal for Long-Term Unemployment Insurance. This included changes to minimum wage, payment of the child tax credit (increased to $750 per year), payment for ongoing training from ESL to trade school or an Associates degree, adoption of no-fault long-term unemployment insurance and the ending of the current suite of social programs that will no longer be necessary due to these changes. Please see the first attachment for these comments.

The semester after 10th Grade, everyone should be included in this program - which requires some form of education for those who are not working. This is especially the case for young adults. The level of support suggested here should be due to anyone until full retirement age.

Funding for this subsidy will be provided by a combination of tariffs or a credit invoice VAT and an employer-paid subtraction VAT at both the federal and state levels. Please see the second attachment for our latest proposal for these consumption taxes.

Attachment: Long-Term Unemployment Insurance

Attachment: Consumption Taxes

The Big Beautiful Bill - a letter to my Senators

 Please share the following in a Dear Colleague letter.

The June Treasury Bulletin is hot off the presses. Using information in this document, along with information from the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finance, I have calculated the distribution of ownership of high yield debt assets, which include mutual funds, individual bond holders, US savings bonds and bonds held by individuals and foreign entities in tax shelter countries - not including those funds held by governments. 

The gross debt is $36 trillion dollars. Of that, $7 trillion is held by foreign governments, state and local governments and federal accounts not including retirement funds (which can be attributed to individuals in Social Security, federal retirement and related health care trust funds - which is another $5 trillion). 

Long term investments and bank assets hold $8 trillion. The top 10% of the $11 trillion dollars in federal retirement accounts hold 54% of these funds. The top 1% hold 54% of that 54%, so 27% in the top percent and 26% in the remaining 9%. The top 0.1% hold 54% of that 27% comes out to 14% - or roughly $1.7 trillion for 154 thousand households earning more than $3 million per year.

The top 10% of households hold 77% of high yield assets, with the top 0.1% holding 46% of these assets. The total amount of debt backing these assets is a bit over $15 trillion.  The top 0.1% therefore hold $7 trillion of this debt - which is the engine of capitalist investment in debt backed funds - or a total of $10 trillion - a third of the $29 trillion of the national debt held by households.

Put another way, the efforts by members of the Senate to reduce the deficit (and ultimately the debt) will reduce the ability to leverage it to create assets - which means that assets that are created will be riskier to the economy at large. When Alan Greenspan warned against paying down the debt in 2001, it was this pool of money he was talking about.

Applying these formulas to the top 001% - or 1,500 households, results in debt holdings of roughly $5 trillion in both high yield and long term assets. These individuals pay about $80 billion in taxes annually. If the obligation for repaying the national debt is a factor of income taxes paid, these households owe $1 trillion, so they hold over $3 trillion more than they owe. Note that the IRS reports that these families earn $347 billion per year, of which all but $23 billion is from salaries. The rate of return on debt assets (not including assets not backed by the national debt) is about 5.5% of capital assets (excluding business returns). This shows that the debt ownership calculation offered here  for the top 1500 households is within reason.

The remainder is earned from capital and business income - which is taxed at preferred rates. These rates are in the permanent law - they are not adjusted in the Big Beautiful Bill. Perhaps they should be. Ultimately, it would secure these assets to do so. Reducing debt by raising taxes on capital income is the only way to reduce the debt without hurting the economy at large (as this simply reduces speculation). As they are by far the chief beneficiaries of this debt reduction - by trillions of dollars - they should shoulder most of the burden. Note that when the debt is paid down, the households holding this debt will get substantial payouts from doing so. Heads they win, tails we lose.

White Shirt Video - More on Tariffs

Over the past few weeks, I have been writing about the tax aspects of tariff policy - how because we do not have a Value Added Tax, we need either a generalized tariff based on the amount of VAT that is zero rated by exporting countries or a specific tariff to match the rates our trading partners have. Germany has a 13% VAT, so we need a 13% tariff to establish equivalency.

To make VAT, Carbon taxes and tariffs available, as well as life in general, we need a subtraction VAT on employers which they can offset by paying $700 or so per child or non-working parent per month - or more (whatever amount they pay to Social Security dependents - with wages or on top of any basic benefits paid by government (from UI to a potential long term UI that is no fault and would replace disability insurance and would be equal 75% of full-time minimum wage work -which also needs to be raised to $13/hour).

There is another reason to do tariffs. It is because standards of living vary for workers from country to country. In many cases, comparative advantage is really comparative slavery. This gives us a hint as to why we have a trade surplus with Europe. Their standard of living for workers is better than ours - much better if you include social benefits. They give us Euros to get stuff made by our workers.

In a cooperative economy, employee-owned firms would pay all workers the same wage in terms of standard living, even if they take a loss on the transfer price. This is probably illegal now, because it trades worker justice for fiduciary gain.

The tariff, therefore, must provide overseas workers and suppliers with the same standard of living overall - as productivity differences between goods should even out. If they do not, the tariff must fill in the gap.

This type of adjustment is what Donald Trump is unconsciously attempting, although if he thought it through, he would see it as socialist (because it is socialist - or at least anti-capitalist. This type of tariff adjustment is the ultimate cure for the neo-liberalism that populists hate. 

Let's do it - and if we don't do it, we should at least calculate and publish the difference between standards of living of workers in similar jobs and how that calculation interfaces with both tariffs and currency prices.

Trade Policy 2025

Finance, April 8, 2025; WM, April 9, 2025

Trump has broken the back of neoliberalism - as his voters wanted. He mimics their social biases (which he does not believe privately - except the racism) and has essentially thrown the wealthy and upper middle class under the bus (unless they contribute). As I commented during the first Trump Administration, he practices brinkmanship. Sadly, he does this without a destination, save the desire to get as much ground as he can - even if that is too much.

As I stated in February, he has also created industrial policy using tariffs which, with correct support, can be used to provide what his voters want while making prices rise for everyone else. He has also created conditions for value added taxes. The question is whether he or a successor will adopt this solution and the extent to which exemptions and exclusions from the VAT are allowed and, if so, who controls them. The Congress cannot really do the fine work on doing this fairly that the executive branch can - like tariff policy.

The question that must be asked in response to these policies is whether or how to give more money to the bottom third of income holders - which is about 77% of the population - either through a higher minimum wage & higher child tax credits - distributed through wages rather than either the IRS directly or indirectly through individual tax filing.

As the markets decline, the financial assets that hold pensions are not doing poorly because they provide dividends rather than relying on capital gains. The speculative side is losing money. His voters don't care. I don't either. 

My research on debt holdings and adjusted gross income show that the bottom 77% of households have tax free income (and if they are invested in speculative assets, they are getting what they deserve) or are temporarily poor because they have had business losses - including those carried over. Switching to a VAT economy eliminates these advantages - especially if an ASSET VALUE ADDED TAX allows for employer based taxation of high wages, dividends and interest and ignores individual capital gains and losses. This feature is the only way to abolish direct income taxation - which is a long-term libertarian goal that I also share.

A tariff policy favors workers (and by implication overseas workers) over capital. Because it (or VAT) can be manipulated by the executive branch, using them (or VAT exemptions) creates industrial policy that the Soviets and Chinese would envy. 

While Trump voters do not understand this, the Russian and Chinese systems where the connected have the power are the same as the old Soviet system. Oligarchs and senior party members have the same crony relationships with the supreme leader  (and his secret policy) in either case. For some reason, American conservatives don't get the joke. The irony is thick.

The question then arises on what tariff rates should be. If we wish to go country by country, the tariff should at least be equal to the exporter's value added tax rate that was zero rated at the border. Canada has a Goods and Services VAT at the Dominion and Provincial levels. The tariff for each trading partner needs to be at least that much. Most Canadian provinces have a 5% rate, while Ontario’s rate is 13%. The highest proposed Chinese rate is 13% as well. European rates average over 21%, although Germany comes in at 19%. Mexico’s rate is 16%. My proposed rate is between 13% and 19%, which would fund domestic military and civilian discretionary spending - with the higher rate including what is now collected by employers for Old Age and Survivors Insurance.

If we want a general tariff, simply count up the benefit all countries extend when exporting to us by zero rating and divide it by total imports. Canada, China and Mexico would have the biggest weighted impact - although this does not justify the large rates the Administration has imposed.

Good trade policy will exempt those products which we simply cannot make here at any time during the year. If we don't make something but could do so, then the tariff needs to be set high enough to make cost a wash - with the tariff funding subsidies to develop the industry - say growing cherry trees in California and Florida on a year round basis rather than importing them from Chile in the winter.

If we wish to expand tariffs against us, we can raise rates high enough to pay for health care subsidies that go beyond what employers could be incentivized to provide - say coverage of their retirees or long term care. Obamacare is crap - premiums and deductibles are too high for the working poor. Medicaid, Medicare and a cost-free public option to cover care for pre-existing conditions should all be VAT or tariff funded.

The portion of Social Security Old Age, Survivors and Disability premiums now paid by employers could also be funded by tariffs or a value added tax and be credited to each eligible worker on an equal dollar basis (which removes an objection to personal retirement accounts). 

Both healthcare and retirement funding inclusions - which may result in higher tariffs - will lower the costs paid by employers while allowing poorer workers better coverage. A win-win.

And that is how to set tariff rates and what to spend them on.

Attachment: Trade Modernization

Attachment: Trade Policy Video

Attachment: Tax Reform Videos included

VAT, Tariff and industrial policy

Trump and his supporters have, as a matter of policy, rejected what was the Neoliberal consensus. Elections matter. See my video on this at

https://youtu.be/ELEjSnXOmpQ 

The question then arises on what tariff rates should be. If we wish to go country by country, the tariff should at least be equal to the exporter's value added tax rate that was zero rated at the border. Canada has a Goods and Services VAT at the Dominion and Provincial levels. The tariff needs to be that much.

If we want a general tariff, simply count up the benefit all countries extend when exporting to us by zero rating and divide it by total imports. Canada, China and Mexico would have biggest weighted impact.

Exempt form tariffs those products which we simply cannot make here at any time during the year. If we don't make something but could do so, then the tariff needs to be set high enough to make cost a wash - with the tariff funding subsidies to develop the industry - say growing cherry trees in California and Florida on a year round basis rather than importing them from Chile in the winter.

Tariffs (or a VAT replacing them - and exclusions can be used to do industrial policy as is suggested above - or could be policy free - should pay for health care subsidies that go beyond what employers could be incentivized to provide - say coverage of their retirees or long term care. Obamacare is crap - premiums and deductibles are too high for the working poor. Medicaid, Medicare and a cost-free public option to cover care for pre-existing conditions should all be VAT or tariff funded.

Domestic military (non-nuclear) basing should be tariff or VAT funded. If people want lower tariffs, they need to quit seeking defense facilities and contracts. This would be more useful if tariffs and VAT could be regionalized rather than uniform in all 50 states.

The portion of Social Security Old Age, Survivors and Disability premiums now paid by employers should be funded by tariffs or a value added tax and be credited to each eligible worker on an equal dollar basis (which removes an objection to personal retirement accounts).

A subtraction VAT should fund childcare and child tax credit subsidies so that employees need not file personal income taxes - with a VAT surtax collecting revenue in lieu of progressive rate structures for income from salaries, interest and dividends.

Capital gains taxes should be replaced by a separate value added tax at an internationally agreed upon rate (to prevent exchange arbitrage) and end the distinction between long and short term gains - as well as letting people hide profits by offsetting them with losses. That rewards failure and automatic trading scams that verge on insider trading.

Some of this has likely been heard before by policymakers. The question of using tariffs to account for the lack of a domestic VAT  should be discussed in the media. Ask members of the administration if this is part of the agenda. If not, it should be. This kind of policy should not be spit-balled. I suspect that part of the tariff calculus includes a VAT question. If not, it should.

And that is how to set tariff rates and what to spend them on.

Trump Ends Neoliberalism

Trump has broken the back of neoliberalism - as his voters wanted. He mimics their social biases (which he does not believe privately - except the racism) and has essentially thrown the wealthy and upper middle class under the bus. 

He has also created industrial policy, with tariffs which, with correct support, can be used to provide what his voters want while making prices rise for everyone else. He has also created conditions for value added taxes. The question is whether he or a successor adopt this solution and the extent to which exemptions and exclusions from the VAT are allowed and, if so, who controls them. The Congress cannot really do the fine work on doing this fairly that the executive branch can - like tariff policy.

The question is whether or how to give more money to the bottom third of income holders - which is about 77% of the population - either through a higher minimum wage & higher child tax credits - distributed through wages rather than either the IRS directly or indirectly through individual tax filing.

Also, the financial assets that hold pensions are not doing poorly. The speculative side is losing money. His voters don't care. I don't either. The bottom 77% of households have tax free income (and if they are invested in speculative assets, they are getting what they deserve) or are temporarily poor because they have had business losses - including those carried over. Switching to a VAT economy eliminates these advantages - especially if an ASSET VALUE ADDED TAX allows for employer based taxation of high wages, dividends and interest and ignores individual capital gains and losses. The latter can also lead to employee ownership - an essentially cooperativists concept that libertarian socialists support.

A tariff policy favors workers (and by implication overseas workers) over capital. Because it (or VAT) can be manipulated by the executive branch, using them (or VAT exemptions) creates industrial policy that the Soviets and Chinese would envy. 

While Trump voters do not understand this, the Russian and Chinese systems where the connected have the power are the same as the old Soviet system. Oligarchs and senior party members have the some crony relationships with the supreme leader  (and his secret policy) in either case. For some reason, American conservatives don't get the joke. Too funny.