ex-idaho

I found this listing of ideas to be very interesting. I have never been a fan of Gephardt mostly due to a total lack of charisma and absolutely zero passion. I have never known him to be a man that formulated any major policy inititaves but I must admit these ideas impress me.

The notion that we could set a international minimum wage has been something that I have believed was needed to protect the maufacturing base of the developed world for some time. WHether or not it is feasable is another thing altogether.

A simplified tax code with a 10% rate is a great idea and another one that I have thought was workable . The trick to this is making sure that we are not passing the burden on to some other income bracket. If we reduce the tax burden to 10% then it should be reduced across the board. Like a flat tax that exempts those living below the poverty line.

Hopefully the Dems will use the last election to motivate themselves to innovate. They have not been a party of ideas or ideals for quite some time and I hope that is about to change.

Here is a link to the NY Times article this quote was taken from:
Veteran Lawmaker Is Restyling Himself as Can-Do Candidate

Grad Student Humanist

I think the listing of ideas is interesting as well, but since when did a candidate's ideas matter a whit to the voting public?

The majority of the electorate vote A) along party lines and B) for the candidate they think is a "nice" guy that they could go have a beer with (I can't count how many times someone's said that about Bush II). And of course the candidate also has to believe in Jesus since it's a well-known fact that you need to be a Xtian in order to be patriotic and a good politician.

Krieger

I'm skeptical, very skeptical.

Why wasn't Gephardt a "man of ideas" when he was the Democratic leader in the house for all that time? Where were all of his ideas then?

Autonemesis

Well, there's the Bush/Gephardt Doctrine of Total World Domination. He deserves some credit for that.

HaysooChreesto!

Maybe desperation will provide some incentives for the Dems to come up with some good workable ideas.
However, I don't think Gephart stands a snowballs chance in hell. He makes Al Gore look like black southern preacher on a fire and brimstone tirade.
But I'm always interested in someone who's promoting a flat tax.

Just Another Infidel

Dick Gephardt on the issues... here . A left leaning, populist moderate.

JAI

Loren Pechtel

However, when such proposals result in a substantial decrease in the tax rate (such as a 10% flat tax would) then they never bother to indicate what they are going to do on the spending side of the equation.

I do agree about the problem of poverty, most flat taxers generally handle this by having some sort of standard exemption--but this defeats the biggest point of the flat tax--the elimination of a need for a tax return. If you're going to have to report income anyway then a tiered tax system isn't substantially more complex than a flat tax. Those of you who do your own taxes--note how little of the tax return is actually devoted to figuring tax, it's almost all devoted to figuring out the income on which the tax is to be applied.

Also, I've *NEVER* seen a flat-taxer reasonably address the issue of how a flat tax should be applied to business. It *DOESN'T* work!

AnaniasNin

Whatever his ideas, having to listen to that guy every night on the news would be worse than (deep breath) that unelected lightweight we have now. Democrats are short on workable ideas right now. Republicans are unfortunately long on workable and bad ideas, what with the 'mandate' and all...

John Hancock

Sen. John Edwards a reason to vote clue Democratic Leadership.

Martin Buber