Category: Social Commentary

A Federal Tax Plan

June 16, 2020

by James C. Benerofe
If I were President, this is what I would propose as a tax cut.

Anyone with W-2 income of $50,000.00 or less would pay ZERO Federal Income Tax. They would continue to pay Social Security.

They would still file a tax return. If states that have an income tax wished to participate they could offer the same tax cut. This plan would not require any elaborate legislation and would likely create an immediate stimulus to the economy. There would also be written into the legislation a qualification gap so that individuals earning say $51,000.00 would still qualify. Reasonably, the gap would be limited to $5,000.00. After five years, an economic review of how effective this was in stimulating the economy would be undertaken. If it was determined successful, it would be permanent. It might also be considered at that time to apply it to higher income levels (although there should be a limitation on how it should go, perhaps based on the cost of living index).

Dealing with Devastation

June 16, 2020

by James C. Benerofe

With the onslaught of natural disasters in recent months, there are practical steps that we could take to make recovery easier and allow for dealing more effectively with long and short term recovery. We have been faced with hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes. Hurricanes and floods have devastated island and coastlines.

Why don’t we have some large cruise ships come into places like Puerto Rico and other tropical islands and house thousands of people until construction of infrastructure can be completed.

This would be an immediate interim solution–an obviously temporary measure.

For the long term, FEMA should consider and evaluate building disaster recovery ships that would essentially be floating cities. These ships would be designed like cruise ships. FEMA might also explore buying and modifying existing cruise ships. These ships would have the ability to move to a disaster area within a matter of days. The ships would be designed with all of the facilities that a community has–apartments, retail stores, medical services, recreational services, and a lot of other necessities. The ship would be stocked and maintained at all times. The ships would vary in size starting at accommodating 500 to 1000 people and going to as large as 5000 to 6000 people.

The objective of this concept would be to bring families and individuals back to some kind of normal lifestyle as quickly as possible.This kind of program will require extensive evaluation.

We are dealing with catastrophic events involving millions of people and we need to do something.

Where Do All The Pictures Go?

June 16, 2020

A new security trend got started in the 1990s aided by new technologies. It was adopted early and widely in many places, like Britain, and it now peers from cameras on public and private buildings all over the United States. The trend I am referring to is the use of closed circuit television systems (CCTV), recording all that goes on in the public space and billed as a crime deterrent. Is it?

A report, on February 24, 2005 by Ben Leapman, the Home Affairs Correspondent for the Evening Standard, suggests there is more hype than substance in the crime deterrent abilities of CCTV.
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