"Voodoo Economics"

Way back in 1980 (how it seems like only yesterday to me), Ronald Reagan ran for his party's nomination on the threefold promise of cutting taxes, increasing military spending and balancing the budget.

George H.W. Bush, who was running against him, called Reagan's promise, "Voodoo economics."

It was the truest thing he ever said.

So here we are 31 years later, most of it lived in terms of voodoo, with our government on the edge of economic collapse. I expected it sooner than this. But I knew that 2011, the year the first of the baby boomers turned 65, would be the year that we would discover voodoo doesn't really work all that well.

I suggest increasing taxes on the wealthy, simply because our government needs to increase its revenue, and the wealthy are the ones who can most easily afford to help out.

We could also increase revenue by increasing tariffs on imports. No doubt this would result in trade wars. But since we import much more than we export, I don't see how this would really hurt us all that much. We would simply buy more domestic products, which would increase domestic employment, which would increase tax revenues, which would decrease the deficit. A win-win-win situation.