We need to raise, not lower short-term capital gains taxes.

Republicans keep pushing for reduction in short-term capital gains taxes. I believe we should be doing exactly the opposite. Raise short-term capital gains tax and lower long term capital gains tax. I'd like to see something like this:

• Capital gains for investments held less than one year taxed at 90%.
• Capital gains for investments held at least one year but less than two years taxed at 30%.
• Capital gains for investments held at least two years but less than five years taxed at 10%.
• Capital gains for investments held at least five years exempt from tax.

I know the day traders are gonna be upset at this. They make their money by taking advantage of market volatility and they make it in the short term, hence the term day trader. While this might be a good thing for day traders it is absolutely bad for the rest of this country and for international community.

The officers of corporations usually receive stock options as part of their compensation. Without any disincentive to short-term trading, officers are forced to think in terms of this quarters results and not in terms of where the company will be in five or ten years because their primary interest is in making their stocks worth more in the very immediate future, selling, and getting out.

Our nations priorities are so driven by corporate interest that this short-term corporate culture drives a short-term national culture and the USA has such a pervasive financial and media presence throughout the world that our short-sighted national culture is negatively affecting the rest of the globe.

Short-term trading creates a large amount of volatility in our stock markets. Stock markets were originally intended to be a venue by which the public can invest in legitimate business ventures. But it has become something akin to a Las Vegas casino, a place for wildly speculative short-term gambling and this is detracting from the markets original function.

We need to return the stock markets function to that which it was originally intended, providing for the capitalization of legitimate corporate business ventures by allowing public investment.

We need to return corporate thinking to the long term. We need companies to think about how they're going to remain viable for the next five, ten, twentyfive years, instead of how to maximize this quarters returns. We need companies to start thinking about how they're going to provide services and manufacture products when cheap fossile fuels are no longer available. We need companies to think about the long term consequences of their activities on the environment.

Foreign investors want long-term stability. The US dollar has become a global currency standard because of it's past stability. Foreign investment has been strong because of long term financial and political stability, but recently our national financial situation has become unstable. For the good of our nation we need to address this situation.

Examples of Short-Term Thinking

Farm Irrigation

Our farm irrigation methods are not sustainable. 97% of the water used in California is used for irrigation. We over-irrigate, and more specifically we are not intelligently irrigating crops. The result is that we leach all the minerals from the soil turning rivers into salt water. Then we dump chemical fertilizers on the soil to replace the minerals that have been leached out. The original leached out minerals and the artificial fertilizers are washed down the rivers and into the ocean. When the mineral nutrient rich river water enters the ocean it stimulates algea growth very near the surface, preventing light from reaching deeper into the water. As a consequence oxygen is not generated deeper in the water where it is required by fish and other marine life, resulting in huge dead zones.

There is a solution to this problem in the form of drip irrigation. You start by installing sensors in the field at a depth that is as deep as the particular crop roots typically grow. That is, if the longest roots are say 14 inches then you put these sensors at or just below 14 inches. Then you use something similiar to a garden soaker hose though it often takes the form of PVC pipes with small holes drilled in them and you have the water to these pipes under computer control, or even simply analog control based upon the output of the buried sensors. The water is turned on long enough for the buried sensors to detect it, then it's turned off. After a period the cycle is repeated. This keeps the soil in the range that the plant roots grow moist but prevents water from going beyond this zone and thus prevents minerals from being leached out and transported beyond this zone. It provides just the amount of water the crop needs, and no more, also no less.

Beyond the use of drip irrigation, there is the common sense approach of choosing crops that are appropriate for the region. If you're going to grow crops in the desert, then it makes sense to choose crops that are adapted to dry climates rather than trying to grow something adapted to growing in wetlands. This should be obvious, but highly subsidized irrigation water has skewed the economics in favor of growing the crop that produces the most dollars per acre rather than crops suited to the local climate.

Energy

Inexpensive fossile fuels are running out. That's not to say that all the oil will be gone soon, but oil and other hydrocarbons that are inexpensive to recover are almost gone. Oil that is inexpensive to recover is oil that is on land or under shallow water, near the surface, not mixed with sand, clay, or other materials from which it must be seperated, in large fields. These reservoirs are running out. There is still a lot of oil left in small fields but this requires a very large number of exploratory wells to find and extract it. Much of that oil is mixed with sands and techniques such as steam injection are required to extract it. If you're willing to drill eight miles down or drill far off-shore there is still a lot of recoverable oil but it is expensive and environmentally risky to recover. We are fighting wars over existing oil supplies, and as demand from India and China increase, the pressure on existing supplies will only increase.

Natural gas has become the preferred fuel for electricity generation because it is hydrogen rich, burns relatively clean, and until recently it was abundent. However, electricity generation has created so much demand for natural gas that there is now a shorting in the US, this is a production and distribution problem presently, but eventually it will be a resource exhaustion issue as well. So not only is oil running short, but so is natural gas.

The burning of hydrocarbons is releasing a huge amount of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere adding to global warming and affecting the PH of the worlds oceans. In addition, oil contains sulfer, coal contains mercury and radium, and these things are being released into the atmosphere creating acid rain, toxic neurological damage, and cancers. So even if we had an infinite supply of hydrocarbons, the environmental consequences will still eventually force us to look towards other energy sources.

In 1974, when we suffered high gasoline prices and long lines because of an artificially created shortage, the infamous Arab Oil Embargo, arguably, we didn't have the technology to switch to alternatives, but this is no longer the case. But moving from a reliance on fossile fuels to sustainable renewable energy sources requires an investment and long term commitment, something difficult to do in a nation focused on this quarters results.