Comments on: Ideas From You

By: girl games

girl games — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 14:55:15 +0000

Hundreds of critical thinkers, from inventors to philanthropists, were in the city on the weekend to share ideas and engage each other in dialogue about ideas and their place in the world. What can you say in 10 minutes? Those who attended the IdeaWave …

By: Fertility Drugs

Fertility Drugs — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 05:30:17 +0000

But if you're stuck for ideas, or you just really love to make muffins, you can't go wrong with a cookbook devoted entirely to the easiest of little quick …

By: Morrislisaa

Morrislisaa — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 19:48:13 +0000

1. Create an income tax lottery where for every X number of dollars your tax refund/amount owed is, you get 1 ticket in the lottery. Then have a drawing each week from FEB 1 to APR 15 and the winner doesn't have to pay their taxes or in the case of a refund, the refund is doubled. For those filing early, the program might want to put 2 tickets for ever X number of dollars in, to encourage people to file/pay early. This idea uses carrots/incentives to motivate taxpayers to file and pay their taxes instead of penalties/sticks if they don't file/pay.

2. Remove the state gasoline tax as funding for highway infrastructure/maintenance and replace with a state wide toll system using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) or Global Positioning System (GPS) technology to log the way points as a vehicle travels our state and county highways, local roads, etc. This would be a pay as you use program and could be billed each month in conjunction with your utility bill or like your monthly cell phone bill. Gasoline tax is a declining revenue as vehicles become more efficient and as gas prices rise, people purchase less gas. All vehicles, whether gasoline powered or not would provide revenue. Gasoline purchased for non-highway use (ie: lawn mowers, etc.) would not pay tax for highway maintenance they didn't use. The pay as you go fee would be an increasing revenue stream. Different vehicles would pay different rates based on their weight category, since weight is the primary factor in road deterioration. The technology exists to implement this plan and would create jobs to implement and maintain the technology as well as revenue. This would also be a great example of how Hi-Tech Michigan can be!

By: Mike Ennis

Mike Ennis — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 01:53:14 +0000

Volunteer to help a child with their homework through a tutoring organization so the future citizen will not be a burden but a contributor to society.

Shut off the television and invest in productive and self-improvement activties.

Shop smarter and do with less. Make do with what we have. During WWII consumer's did not have as many choices and we did with less. Greed is the cause of much unhappiness.

By: Tony menyhart

Tony menyhart — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 01:26:25 +0000

IMprove our economy by looking at the biggest expenditures that we have out of state.
Carbon in the form of Oil, Gas, and Coal are teh biggest drains. We should develop our wind and solar and hydro power to clean the air, and to keep our money circulating here.
Secondly, the next biggest cost is food. We can grow more of our own in your backyard, and at community gardens, and we encourage diversity on commercial farms.
Tjhird, We can bring more tourists from Europe, Asia and the Americas to Michigan. Our beautiful state park infrastructure is crumbling, but if we bring in tourists, we can use the tax money to rebuild the parks for all of us. All foreign visitors I bring in are amazed at the Great Lakes.

By: Rhonda Hoffman

Rhonda Hoffman — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 23:42:50 +0000

Here is ONE thing…

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/1...

By: Judy

Judy — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 18:39:10 +0000

I heard that the Pure Michigan ad campagin has a 30 million dollar budget.What is the How about start a grassroots effort to have everyone in Michigan invite their friends from out-of-state to visit them in Michigan. I'm sure the ROI would be much higher, there is more of an incentive to visit. Put some of the 30 million into creating things that people would want to do/visit. Just a thought.

By: John Stivers

John Stivers — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:44:05 +0000

1. Reduce the role of townships in Michigan. Eliminate the duplication of administrative overhead (from staff to facilities) and free up funds that could be used to improved services and lower taxes. Why do counties, like Lake, with populations around 10,000 need 15 townships, each with a hall, an assessor, treasurer, clerk, etc.? Why should cities such as Grand Rapids be landlocked by a ring of fiefdoms that stop logical annexation, require additional licenses (for everything from cable TV to trash collection) and complicate needed regional planning?

2. Restructure the laws covering public school districts to provide incentives to eliminate their prolific number. Eliminate the dozens of expensive redundant administrative positions and underutilized facilities and equipment, and free up the funds needed to offer a higher quality curriculum. Kent County, which includes Grand Rapids, has nearly twenty districts, some of which cover only K through 8. Oceana County, according to the Public School Review Web site, has 257 high school seniors, but they are split up into four different high schools. The state’s current public school structure must become more efficient, and in doing so could create need opportunities for the students, such as advanced-placement classes in subjects from Latin or calculus. This change would be one important step in improving the quality of the education our youth need to reestablish America’s place in the world.

3. In exchange for consolidation of school districts, eliminate the current requirement for periodic millage reauthorization elections, a practice found in few other states. Provide a uniform state wide property tax levy that covers a reasonably percentage of the per student costs. This rate should be set by the state legislature and be distributed uniformly on a per student basis.

By: Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson

Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 15:42:48 +0000

1.Michigan sends approximately $1.4 billion dollars per year to other states to buy coal that our power companies burn. We rank 9th highest nationally among states that import coal–a large sucking sound from our collective economic welfare. Yet we have one of the best opportunities to produce energy from wind, especially putting wind turbines way,way off shore in the Great Lakes. This is easier for us than from states along the east and west coasts because the floor of the lakes drop off more gradually than does the continental shelf. We need a moratorium on coal plants in this state and to shift aggressively to wind power.
2. We need to restructure our taxes: limiting the sales tax to goods and not services means that a single parent buying boots and a winter coat for a child pays the sales tax, but someone playing golf or buying sports tickets does not. This makes our sales tax very regressive, imposes a heavy burden on those who can least afford it, and limits the ability of our sales tax to reflect the changes in our economy to a service economy. This has major consequences for school funding, revenue sharing that paid for police and fire protection and so on. Not only do we jeopardize the quality of our schools, but we raise our personal costs for auto and homeowner's insurance when police and fire protection services are cut. We need to break this negative cycle and expand the sales tax to services–all services except a few such as medical care. The model needs to be the same as the current sales tax on goods, which exempts food. The list of exemptions should be limited, but clearly a few items will need to be exempt.
3. We have to improve our infrastructure. Numerous studies show that taxes are a small part of business costs and hence of business decisions. Infrastructure on the other hand is a major consideration. This includes broadband access, roads and bridges, mass transit–both light and heavy rail, and so on. The American Civil Engineering Society estimates that the average Michigan driver spends $350 to $500 per year on ADDITIONAL car repairs due to the poor quality of our roads. So we buy tires more often, replace tie rods, etc. more than we need to as individuals. But for a company with a fleet of cars and trucks, this is an huge cost–and reportedly a major consideration in whether to locate in a particular area. A 2-cent per gallon increase in the gas tax would cost the average Michigan driver about $60 per year. Dedicating that revenue to improving the quality of our roads would save tax payers hundreds of dollars and convince businesses that our infrastructure will facilitate the flow of commerce. We simply cannot afford to leave federal highway dollars and federal rail transit dollars on the table because we lack the small amount of money we need for our share of these projects. This is a crucial business decision for our state and for its citizens. Whether it involves raising gas taxes, floating bonds, or other methods of raising the matching revenue, we need to do all we can to improve our infrastructure before it drives business from the state.

By: Skweezed

Skweezed — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 13:43:30 +0000

Three things to help Michigan during this economic downturn:
1. Recycle. If you have something you no longer need or want and its in good shape, post it on a recycle board. I use "freecycle" a Yahoo group to post. There are plenty of people out there with needs. You may have something they can use.

2. Barter. Yes, good old fashioned bartering. Everyone has a talent, trade, product or otherwise that they can barter. Start up a bartering system in your community. Help each other out until the economy comes back. When it does, then you have faithful customers that will purchase locally and drive the economy.

3. At the end of the year, many of us consider donations. I suggest keeping these local. If you are fortunate and can afford to contribute to charity, keep it in Michigan, and better yet, in your own community!