After the horrific Newtown shooting that took the lives of 26 people, including 20 children, there has been a national debate on gun violence and on gun control. President Obama has proposed the most sweeping gun legislation in decades, while the NRA has been ferociously fighting the new legislation. President Obama wants to reinstate the ban on assault weapons, limit the size of magazines, and create universal background checks. Of the three, only the universal background checks seem to have any chance of passing. However, to understand how best to fight gun violence, we must first understand what happens during a gunfight. Think about this: in the NYC police department, officers involved in a gunfight where the subject fired back only hit their target 18% of the time. Plus, they ended up frequently hitting innocent bystanders. When you are in a gunfight, your amygdala (located deep in the brain's temporal lobe, this small, almond shaped mass of neurons controls the fear response) kicks in, and a surge of adrenaline is released in order to fight or flee. During a gunfight, instinct overcomes reasoning, and the "shoot first, ask questions later" response kicks in. However, that is not the only change that occurs. A tunneling effect occurs, and the brain begins to distort reality and time, making everything seem to be in slow-motion. Also, some humans can lose some basic motor skills when in life-threatening situations. Combine all of these, and even police officers are generally not ready for a showdown with a gunman. Now, think about what the NRA is proposing. They think that a teacher in every school should be armed with a gun. That teacher would effectively go through a month of training (hopefully) and then be shoved out into the real world. How do you think they would fair when a police officer with much better training than them only hits his/her target 18% of the time, and often hits bystanders? Most likely the teacher would end up hurting multiple students before hitting the shooter. At the same time, President Obama's proposals may not be the right proposals. The background checks are a step in the right direction, but we need to rethink the entire gun debate. I would love to see what everyone thinks. Leave a comment and maybe we can have a debate.
We need stimulus. It is as simple as that. Half our deficit would be gone if only we had a strong economy. So, how do we make stimulus work? Obama's stimulus didn't really work, so how will this stimulus be any different? Well, as long as the stimulus targets certain sectors with the highest potential for job growth, the stimulus will work. Here are some ideas:
1. Update our 1950's era power grid Our power grid is so outdated it's sad. We need to update the power grid. If we update the power grid, we will have less power outages, and an estimated 4 million new jobs will be created. That would cut our unemployment rate by over a percentage point and would save us money in the long run. We need to make the power grid more efficient, which will save money, and put much more of it underground, in order to lessen the impacts of power outages created by storms. While it will cost us a lot of money (It's estimated that it will cost hundreds of billions of dollars), the extra tax revenue from all those people who now have jobs will help pay it back, and the cost will be paid back in about 4-6 years. 2. Build a Transcontinental Maglev system Let's face it, when people look at the infrastructure in America, they are not impressed. Our train system is obsolete and we need to update it. By building a transcontinental maglev system to replace our current trains, we will be able to make transport easier, and we will also create millions of new jobs. It will also be expensive (about $1 trillion), but it will create millions of jobs and all those people paying taxes will help pay for the cost. The jump start to the economy by creating all those jobs will also help other people as the newly-employed start to purchase more goods and in turn, more people will have more money, and more money means more taxes. 3. Create a Cap-and-Trade system/Carbon tax I know a lot of people have been talking about this, but not in the right way. Whenever you hear "cap-and-trade, people are generally talking about helping te environment. It's true that any cap-and-trade system will help the environment, but we need to use it as a tool to jump start the green energy sector and create jobs. Basically, what we do is that we give every household and corporation a certain number of credits. These credits are not going to be incredibly expensive. They will be just expensive enough to make people and corporations want to go green, while not being expensive enough to cause them economic pain. There are many benefits to this. 1. There will be a push for green energy and eco-friendly products. 2. Households who are poor will get an extra boost of money as they will most likely not need to use all their credits and they can sell the rest of them to other people who do. 3. We would no longer need to give people loans. We could just give them credits! 4. There would be an intended shortage of credits, so corporations and households who need more credits would have to come to the government to buy more, which would give the government more revenue. Institute this and we would see marked growth in the green energy sector which could create millions of jobs along with a push to go green by corporations and consumers Every year, less and less credits would be handed out and the credits would get more and more expensive, so consumers and corporations will eventually decide they need to go green. 4. Privatize the U.S. Postal Service What?!?!? That's ridiculous! Well, it's actually not. The U.S. Postal Service has been losing money for years now, and it has created a drag on the government. Why do we need a postal service operated by the U.S.? Will they necessarily be able to run it better than a private company? No, they won't. By privatizing the postal service, companies like FedEx and UPS might get involved and create their own mailing services, and regional companies might pop up. Perhaps these regional companies would only operate in the northeast, or just in Texas, but they might be cheaper. We could see lots of competition as private companies lower prices in order to stay competitive. It would take a burden off the U.S. (a $15 billion burden to be exact), and it might also create cheaper mail. The government could out the postal service up for sale (it has many advantages for a buyer, including the largest fleet of vehicles in the world), creating even more revenue. 5. Rethink military spending We need to cut military spending, but not drastically. Instead, bring troops home from all non-vital areas where we are not immediately needed and cut deployment costs. Next, we need to buy new weapons and make sure our arsenal is the most cutting-edge up to date military force in the world. Put lots of money into research and development and into buying new products. Also, we are going to have to cut jobs. Unfortunately, that is the only way this can work. Perhaps we can try and find a way that we can create a private company that helps the military, so that all those people can keep their jobs, and sell it. One huge thing we need to work on: our ballistic missile defense system. It's flawed and needs to be updated. 6. Reform entitlements Because this is such a big topic and is open for so much debate, I will be writing a separate article about it. 7. Copy the Europeans On health care, of course. We have some of the highest health care costs, and yet our health care system isn't even close to being the best. We need to look at what other countries (namely the Europeans) are doing and implement their ideas into our system. I know this has been a long article. If you read the entire thing I thank you and I hope we can have a discussion/debate in t The citizens of the United States don't want to feel any fiscal pain, and that view is portrayed in the decisions that our representatives are making. A measly $600 billion dollars saved over 10 years is nowhere near enough to solve our rapidly growing deficit. Unfortunately, we have dug ourselves into a hole, and to get out, we need to feel some pain. I read a very good analogy somewhere. We, the United States of America, are in a car that is speeding down a hill at 50 mph. There is no way to brake, and we cannot put the car in park, neutral, or reverse. We have two options: 1. veer into a ditch on the side of the road, which will hurt, but we will survive. Or 2. crash into brick wall at the bottom of the hill at 100 mph with no chance of survival. The correct option is clear. We are going to have to go through some pain in order to fix our problems. On the other hand, we cannot move too quickly. The fiscal cliff would have been disastrous because it stabilized the debt too quickly. We need o stabilize the debt at about 75-80% for the next 5-10 years. That will give us some breathing room in order to make some policy decisions and slowly raise taxes and cut entitlement spending. Also, in 5-10 years, our economy will have gone through much more of a recovery and therefore, the debt as a percentage of gdp will actually decrease over 10 years (hopefully). Also, to stabilize the debt, we only need another package worth about $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. That, hopefully will not be too hard for our representatives
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