How to save the US economy - plan A

This seems to be a pretty hot topic these days but if the politicians could look beyond politics and actually use this opportunity to REALLY fix the system they could come out smelling like roses. Never mind that the people on the hill have it pretty darn good no matter what as we, the people, pay for their every necessity and luxury.

Plan A:

1. Abolish income and corporate taxes
2. Abolish the IRS
3. Create a flat Federal CF (Consumption Fee)on all consumer goods of 5%
The US consumption is about 7 trillion dollars so 5% would represent $350 billion. This is about the same number as the tax gap (not collected taxes). Of course there would be no gap if we went to CF as the 5% will be part of the price we would have to pay for products. The big winner here would be lower income who couldn't possibly spend as much on goods and services to make the 5% come close to their current tax rate.
4. Make "Naked Shorting" illegal as it once was - this mechanism has only lead to a few making fortunes by driving down stock-prices selling shares that do not exist.
5. Look for alternative revenue sources government should try to focus on making money as opposed to taking money. Where is the Department of Business?
6. The exponential effect from zero taxation will come in the form of consumption rising, businesses growing and new businesses forming.

These are changing times and for the US to remain a superpower and a great place to live and work calls for drastic, yet simplistic and understandable, measures.

New Browsers - Google Chrome and Explorer 8

Google enters the market with a new browser pretty much at the same time as Microsoft releases latest beta of IE8. Of course I had to try both:

Chrome: Loved it at first, best feature being the combination of the search and url bar BUT as I found out that autofill, word memory and spelling was not available I had to abandon it. Spelling and autofill is something I use many times every day. This actually is a feature in the Google Toolbar I am now using in Firefox 3 (yeah, back to Firefox for now). I had some Java-problems at first but got that solved.

IE8: Downloaded but before I explored further I noticed that the same Google toolbar I use so much with IE7/Firefox was not available for IE8 I went back to Firefox again.

The lesson for users: Don't jump on the first releases

The lesson for Google/Microsoft: Don't release these products without features (at least electable features) that you KNOW are commonly used and how you grabbed, increased or maintained market share in the first place.

I did manage to test the WrapMail email marketing Control Panel with Chrome and found it to be 100% compatible so that was pleasing.