The last chapter section introduced DOTS: Defined Optional Spending. Now we will show you how it all comes together into a working policy program.
This DOTS system by ROOPA is a unique feature unmatched by the cookie cutter tax policies of the day. DOTS gives us a mechanism that is interactive to our own life style. The young, gay man can designate his ‘extra taxes/cash’ towards AIDS funding. Your every day American, Catholic dad can direct his ‘extra’ tax funds towards his kid’s education. The Cathlic Dad need not sponsor AIDS programs while the young gay man need not sponsor Catholic charity programs. DOTS removes the moral conflicts we have with our taxes while boosting the very things of our own passions. Here’s how it would work.
We will now complete our policy example on alcohol started in the first chapter section. We therefore use the same ‘ROOPA Policy Chart for Alcohol’ used before. It is listed again below.
ROOPA Policy Chart for Alcohol
Post Card Policy: Quantifying ROOPA’s policy for entire alcohol industry.
(Sorry, this website does not yet take graphs and charts. You can get this with graphs for free at lulu.com and search for Raghu roopa. You can down load the free copy from there. It has the entire summary of the book there.)
Figure A6 (Taken from Section III, Chapter 2?)
Earlier in the chapter, we talked about how alcoholics are responsible for 45% of alcohols social cost. This is shown in the first line in the chart above: Figure A6. The first chapter section presented a budget and policy platform for tackling the social cost of alcoholics. Here, we move to the 2nd and 3rd part of the industry’s social costs. This is shown on the second and third Rows of the chart.
The chart identifies DUI’s as the next major area of alcohol’s social cost after alcoholics. The total related cost of a DUI is up to $60 billion a year or $50,000 per DUI offender. (DUI: Driving Under the Influence of alcohol.)
($50,000 is the ‘worse case scenario.’ In the chart below, we use the Average social cost or $30,000 per DUI.)
ROOPA partitions off this DUI expense from the industry’s tab and hands it back to the DUI offender. How this works is discussed in Section II Ch. 2(?) and again in SectionIII (?), Ch. 3? Here we present a small explanation how this works.
(This is where the 2nd chart would be, but not avaible on this site.)
How Barata & DOTS Work with a DUI
Figure A5 (Taken from Section I, Chapter 2)
ROOPA reduces taxes by as much as 50%. Today’s highest tax rate stands at 33%. ROOPA’s tax rate could be as low as 15%. This 18% difference would now be used to pay the DUI. This fee is called DOTS (Defined Optional Tax Spending). It will take less than 3 years to pay off this entire DUI using little more than this 18% difference in tax savings. In other words, the DUI offender pays little more under ROOPA then they pay in taxes today. The big difference: the DUI offender reverts back to this low 15% income tax bracket once the bill is paid.
Gov’t won’t give us permanent tax relief unless, of course, you have the political connections of special interests. ROOPA allows every American access to this (50%) lower tax rate. These savings are on top of fully funded social services. ROOPA is the alternative paradigm to today’s higher taxes or inferior services. This either or choice has trapped our political options into America’s two party system. ROOPA will finally free us to a whole new world of choice.
ROOPA has now accounted for 85% of all alcohol related social cost. 85% of this cost lies with just 2 industry parties: alcoholics and DUI’s. This leaves us a social cost of just $40 billion to be divvied up between all the remaining consumers of alcoholic beverages. This $40 billion comes to 33 cents per can of beer. These figures are taken from the ‘worse case scenario’ shown in the third column of the chart called ‘High.’ ROOPA generally works from the AVERAGE social cost shown in the second column called ‘Median.’ Using the ‘average’ cost reduces this tax to just 7 cents a can (shown at bottom of second column). 7 cents is less then we pay in alcohol tax today.
ROOPA gives us lower taxes for all drinkers, smarter spending by gov’t, better programs for alcoholics and greater financial responsibility by DUI offenders. Ta Da! We have a comprehensive program that fits on a post card and still demonstrates fair, savvy policy with a tax rate that has reduced taxes and higher premiums alongside upgraded services.
