For the public debts, the deficits, entitlement and welfare debts, and pension obligation debts will be solved by (1) imposing a Value Added Tax of at least 10% on all commercial transactions, (2) rationing government (i.e., taxpayer) funded medical care (and all medical care will be wholly or partially, directly or indirectly, government funded, and (3) means testing for all medical, welfare, Social Security, and pensions.
The income taxes will not be fundamentally changed, except perhaps to be increased.
Those draconian measures will however make worse the private debt crisis. The private debt crisis includes the money the private citizen needs to pay for the means-test shortfall in government (remember, tax payer) funded welfare, medical care, and pensions, and also the money the private citizen needs as income for retirement-age life. There is really only one source of such income--owning a small business. Older employees, at what-would-have-been retirement age, will be shoved out to make way for new, younger employees at lower salaries and benefits. The only way these shoved-out employees will survive will be by starting small businesses they will own. Only ownership will permit them to work and control at last some of the working conditions.
I don't see how the small-producer, small-government movement with the aid of the GOP can fundamentally alter this onrushing mess; at least, I haven't heard any ideas on how to do it. It's okay to talk replace-and-reform, but we've got to have some notion of how and what to reform. I believe the motivation to reform will be strong as the authoritarianism, essentially the dictatorship of the executive branch, in medicine becomes apparent to everyone; but we still need ideas.
So, in an unlucky age (VAT on top of other taxes), we will be lucky if our social old age produces a renaissance of small business.
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