More Easy to Solve Problems

Occasionally, only very occasionally, I'll read about a problem facing society and think, well that has an easy solution. I'm sure the solution is so obvious that others have thought of it as well. For example, here are two societal problems with incredibly easy fixes.

Problem number one. Runaway executive pay and our culture of greed. Solution? Bring back a progressive tax structure.

The rise of outrageous pay for CEOs and financial funds managers came about when Reagan drastically reduced tax rates for the wealthy. Before that time, it was considered a waste to offer multi-million dollar salaries and compensation packages because taxes were so high. Taxes essentially put a cap on mega-income.

Nowadays, the executive pay racket is an industry unto itself. People are paid to be on boards to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a year or more for the sole purpose of rubber stamping outrageous pay for CEOs. It's a nice side income. My old boss, Nan Keohane, has made on the order of one million dollars by being a rubber stamp on several corporate boards. When I asked her about this, she said needed the money for her retirement. When you ask her about pay for executives, she'll put her brain on the shelf and recite the mantra that those executives are so important and make such difficult decisions, yada, yada, yada. So much for self respect. Whoops that was a tangent! Now back to the matter at hand.

If we brought back a progressive tax - taxing those making millions at a rate of seventy percent or more once again - we'd end runaway executive pay. We might also have enough revenue from standard taxes to get away from the gimmick of lotteries, which are essentially a tax on the poor. The income gap between the rich and the poor would narrow.

Ronald Reagan was like crystal meth for this country. He was a mood elevator. But ultimately, his policies were destructive. The decline of our intellectual capital, the rise of "greed is good" as a way of life, the abandonment of the less fortunate all stem from the Reagan years. Our manufacturing base declined, our dependence on the sketchy financial instruments of Wall Street increased, and our government's efforts at fiscal restraint were abandoned. If you want a change in economic values, we need to turn our backs on the Reagan years.

Problem number two. Apathy on the part of our youth. Solution? Bring back the draft and add a public service option.

When I was growing up, young people read the news. They paid attention to politics. Why? Because the political decisions that were made by our leaders might have forced them into a uniform dodging bullets in hot steamy rice paddies on the other side of the earth. When your ass is on the line, you pay attention.

The abandonment of the draft transformed our army; it is now dominated by the poor and undereducated. The middle class and rich knew the military was a bad deal for them. Since they could avoid the army, they did. Since they didn't have to worry about coming home in a casket, they stopped caring and worrying about what Congress was doing. Apathy among the young rose.

If we brought back the draft, the young would pay attention again. Their parents would pay more attention as well. They'd would all be checking out the news worrying about the next war we're going to start (and the two that we're already involved in). To ease the sting, I suggest adding a public service option in addition to the military. There aren't any good jobs for 18 to 20 year olds anyway. They might as well work on the cheap for the government in exchange for some decent benefits. We should also make sure that there is no college deferment like there was in the Vietnam era; every 18 year old, male of female, in decent physical and mental shape should give something back to the country before they make their mark in the world.

There I've done it. I've solved two major problems in this country without even breaking into a sweat. Everything in life should be so easy! The only hiccup is that these solutions - simple though they may be - are politically untenable. With regard to executive pay, people still buy the idea that the crystal meth Ronald Reagan sold to us was good stuff. Plus the class of the newly created mega-wealthy have Congress in their back pocket.

With regard to political apathy among the young, the public doesn't want their children doing public service of any kind. Plus the military is scared stiff of politically involved youth staging Vietnam-like protests the next time it decides we need to go to war for no reason except to use all those toys of destruction building up in military warehouses; the military actually likes the apathy of youth.

So, in the end it isn't solutions that are hard. It's the politics of those solutions. Damn. Now I know why these problems aren't so easy to solve after all.