1. Return to more of our roots: constitutional principals and societal "moral and ethical" moorings. After 1963, things like birth rates for single parents, capital crime rates, drop-out rates, STD disease rates skyrocketed (see the Statistical Abstract of the United States).
2. Simplify the tax code like a flat tax (to be honest - I need to research the "fair tax" more. But to add a VAT tax on top of an income tax is economically stiffling; every country that left the income tax and also added a VAT tax added to the cost of everything and still had additional taxes. This stops the "favoritism" in the tax code by politicians and will encourage more tax payers and not tax "dodgers".
3. Reign in runaway government spending by revising entitlement programs and getting rid of "baseline budgeting" which has many entitlements on auto-pilot regardless of economic realities.
4. Examine our total military committment worldwide: do we need to be in all the places we are in? We need to be in some (like South Korea), but where can we cut back. It is also a poignant historical fact that we were not in Afghanistan or Iraq when we were attacked and more people died that died in Pearl Harbor. But, we are not the world's "police force".
5. Fire the people in government who disregard what their constituents want in favor of being re-elected. Find genuine statespeople, not politicians. To say, "This is the way politics is" is a cop-out for "I am ignorant of the facts" and " I'm uninvolved in the process".
6. Combine or disolve some government agencies. The Department of Education, for instance (with its 82 duplicate programs for evaluating teacher effectiveness) could be folded into another agency and their focus narrowed from dictating what is taught in our local schools and be more active in being a clearing house for ideas that really work in diverse areas of the country. They should be less ruled by the public teachers' unions (which is really ruled by a few and not the "shoes on the street folks", and more active in promoting things like getting rid of tenure (promotes mediocrity and lack of creativity and keeps bad teachers), helping to get creative teachers paid for coming up with creative and innovative teaching solutions that engage students and don't "bore the dickens" out of them, and promote merit oriented pay plans. You could achieve this by attrition and not having to fire people. 7. Reduce capital gains taxes. The people who benefit from these (in better economic times for sure), are seniors and people like us with 401Ks, etc. that have our investments in mutual funds, etc. It is mostly "middle America" that benefits. By the way, when Clinton raised capital gains taxes, the government lost 600+ billion in revenues over the subsequent five years. 8. I am not in favor of the "estate or death" tax. Why should someone who gets up off the couch, starts a small business, works their butts off for 15 or 20 years and finally builds a good small business (that hires people), have to pay the federal or state governements up to half of their net worth (even though we have an exemption) and not pass it along to their chidren (who may work in the business). This is nothing but Marxist in its roots (see the number two pillar of the Communist Manifesto), and discourages productivity, personal investment and entrepreneurship. Why should someone who is not as motivated to invest their own time "leech" off of the efforts of the producer - this is fundamentally wrong and even Jefferson (along with most of the founders) was emphatically opposed to this and the "progessive concept" of wealth re-distibution. 9. Work to teach fiscal responsiblity in our high schools and colleges (nobody ever taught me or anyone I know how to handle income, debt, and manage finances on a personal level). and get something like the Dave Ramsey approach to debt and financial responsibility. 10. Encourage the concepts of personal responsibility, hard work, and good diligence and not the "entitlement" mentality and "someone owes me because I got born" mentality. In reality, nobody "owes" you anything - period". You are responsible for you (when you are grown up of course). Let's get more common sense in all levels of life and government.