It’s pretty simple, just have a new real estate investment tax that is only levelled on residential properties you own but do not reside in, and that tax needs to be set at a rate higher than the property market is expected to gain. E.g. (with made-up numbers) if the property market gains 5% value per year on average, set the tax rate at 10% of the value per year. There’s an insanely slim chance you can still make money on the investment, but 99+% of investors would dump their properties immediately, leading to a massive crash where average people could suddenly afford to buy the home they’ve been renting.
A policy this significant would cause a market crash so massive that it would entirely reshape the market. I don’t think any of us could genuinely guess how it will work out.
My hope is that it would cause a crash so significant that essentially all owned properties that are not lived in enter the market, causing homes to be sold for insanely low prices in order to avoid paying taxes, causing rates of home ownership to skyrocket. The government then needs to buy up anything leftover to rent as social and affordable housing to low-income people who can’t afford a mortgage at that time. Crashing house prices also mean that the value of these taxes drops in absolute terms as well.
Then we have a situation where everyone who has a stable income owns a home, and those who can’t will rent directly from the government at extremely affordable rates. Homes are the object we as humans own that we regularly lease to one another the most - particularly for profit or capital gain. It’s super weird and it needs to stop.
The main issue is that economists would shit their pants because so much GDP growth is locked up in our property markets. It would cause at least a recession, if not a depression, and depending on which country did it, the effects could ricochet throughout the global economy such as during the GFC.
Well, you're right about the epic market crash, also right that it's unpredictable, but then you go on to predict a bunch of things which seem extremely unlikely to me.
The thing is, a "crash" is not just a lowering of prices until everyone can afford the repayments on a house.
The kind of crash you're taking about here is more like a market failure. Yes all banks would become insolvent but that's kind of like saying the toilets on the titanic became "out of order" when it sank.
You'd basically revert to subsistence farming. Everyone living in a community of more than a few hundred would die of starvation or disease. Mexico, China, or Russia would roll in to permanently "provide aid".
What you say also seems extremely unlikely to me, given that humans who have sufficiently advanced to the state we live in now will be unwilling to accept subsistence lifestyle.
I didn’t predict anything; you’ll note I said that this is what I would hope happens.
I’m not talking about a market failure; I’m talking about trying to take away the whole concept of a ‘market’ applying to residential real estate altogether. Because it’s so intertwined with the value of our economies, taking it away will cause a significant, permanent shrinking of GDP and other economic measures, and I think that’s appropriate given the circumstances we’re in now.
It’s a big and bold move, and as I’ve said before none of us can be exactly sure how it would pan out, but nothing is gained in life if nothing is ventured. We need to try something. I say this as someone who is lucky enough to be able to have a mortgage: it’s inherently unfair that my fellow citizens have to miss out on that opportunity.
Sorry, I meant that subsistence agriculture would be the only possible lifestyle, not a chosen one.
Each of us are talking about a crash or collapse of completely different magnitude.
At the risk of sounding too preppy, I think societal collapse is absolutely possible due to what we might think is a fairly minor supply chain interruption.
Regardless, it's a moot point. No one is going to crash the economy so you can buy a house I'm sorry.
No one is going to crash the economy so you can buy a house I’m sorry.
I think you might have missed where I said this:
I say this as someone who is lucky enough to be able to have a mortgage: it’s inherently unfair that my fellow citizens have to miss out on that opportunity.
it's been a while since I've heard about it, but iirc LVT generally evaluates and decides on taxes based on proximity to other developments, so undeveloped land or poor density land that is close to more developed housing, is taxed more heavily, while land out in the boonies isn't taxed very heavily. it's supposed to incentivize development in more desirable places to live, and naturally eliminate situations in which higher value plots end up getting bought up by rich people for their whims.
at the same time, it's still a solution that's ultimately relying on the free market to maximize their profit margins, and that being good for society, it's just decreasing the relative profit margins for each plot of land through higher taxes. it still retains harmful forms of development, it just, potentially, eliminates them more naturally, compared to explicit bans.
It would still work with a heavily regulated market. And in my opinion would need to be paired with zoning regulations and environmental policy. For example a stretch of wilderness that happens to be on top of a vein of coal would have the same value and tax as the same land without the coal if regulations prevent coal mining, adjusting incentives away from the most harmful uses.
It would still work in a heavily regulated market, yeah, but the thing with georgism is that it tends to be advertised as a kind of one-size-fits-all solution to the housing market, as a highly sought after "single tax" or "perfect tax". If you look at the historical ties of georgism which I also kind of struggle to remember, I think I remember that being kind of, the thing about it, was that it was aligned with like, the dominant labor parties, but was kind of seen as too moderate and singularly committed of a position.
So, the tax itself is cool, and agreeable, but the georgists as a kind of, party, and georgism as a philosophy built around a singular tax, I'm still not sure about. I'm skeptical of silver-bullet solutions, which is what georgism is often made out to be. It also gives me bad vibes because anytime I hear someone talking so highly about some obscure 19th or 20th century political philosophy, it gives me the same alarm bells as people who want to be rhodesian infantrymen, or people who want to be dengists, or shit like that. I dunno. Henry george was an interesting and prescient dude but he was also in many ways a product of his time, I think. Here's marx talking about him in a letter I haven't read, might interest you I guess.
Good point about people speaking 'highly about some obscure 19th or 20th century political philosophy' ringing certain alarm bells. I certainly share your skepticism. I wouldn't call myself a 'Goergist'. I do think LVT is worth looking into when trying to solve land-hoarding and wealthy entities treating property as an investment portfolio at the expense of families in need of homes.
Yeah that is a good question. It is meant to tax strictly the value of the land. So undeveloped rural land will be taxed very low, vs say undeveloped urban land. The idea is to incentivize productive land use of more valuable land so that as the value of the land goes up, it becomes untenable not to put it to use. In your case, it the land is unbuildable then then the tax would be quite low, even if things to get built up around you. This is just the tip of the iceberg of an economic theory called Georgism, that I am still wrapping my head around.
The problem with that is there is a very clear policy purpose and interest in making housing an investment - the vast vast majority of people will eventually own a home, and it is a forced savings vehicle because people are REALLY bad at saving for retirement. Even if you fix our lack of a social safety net, home ownership is generally seen as a public good because it encourages people investing more in and caring about their community, being willing to pay higher taxes to support more services, etc. It's not a no brainer to make housing an investment (there are arguments against in a society with a good social safety net), but it is very purposeful through good public policy. It has little to do with the recent (very recent, relatively) buying up of single family homes by investment banks, etc, despite people implying all the time it's some secret cabal and shadowy wealthy figures doing it for their own benefit. Everyone sees conspiracies everywhere these days.
Of course, if we're going to say that home ownership is "good" and keep doing all the tax incentives for it, we do need to stop corporations speculating and driving up housing costs, and could do so by some targeted taxes on unoccupied properties in the same portfolio. But there's an argument to be made that that's a relatively small portion of the problem, since a lot of our housing stock issues can be traced back to single family zoning issues, as well as road and highway funding leading to suburban sprawl and unaffordable newly developed subdivisions while cheaper starter homes don't exist anymore...but either way affordable housing stock just hasn't kept up.
Why would you merge the Senate and the House, especially in the direction of the House? The Senate, being a statewide race, has a tendency to attract moderates as they need to appeal to a much broader group. The House, being significantly more local, more easily allows extremist views on both sides of the aisle. Expanding the seats and ensuring representatives represent roughly equal number of constituents as each other will itself go a long way.
The term limit of SCOTUS seems low. That almost syncs with a double run of a president allowing some to get potentially multiple appointments while others get none. That leaves the stability of the court left in some part to chance. Expanding the courts and setting the term limit in a way that each president generally gets an appointment per term would help deradicalizing the courts.
There should probably be some incentive to actually encourage domestic job production. In a global economic environment without such incentive there will continue to be job losses and even with UBI an unnecessary burden will increase over the years. That can threaten stability and lead to cutting life saving services. A CCC program can help a lot, but we also need private industry to seek domestic labor more broadly.
Municipalize infrastructure and health production. The government should actually own some factories and produce goods itself rather than the bloated bidding contractor stuff.
Don't let public employees leave their positions only to be immediately hired back as a contractor at a much higher rate. If you want to work for the public sector, work for the public sector.
Pay public sector workers (including academia) enough to allow people that actually want to pursue those careers to live comfortably and to entice more people to transition into those careers.
Fund education for all for as long as they want it. Educating your populace means you will have a more skilled and more innovative workforce which will lead to better outcomes for everyone.
Significantly reduce copyright protections. They should not let anywhere near a lifetime, and they just serve to hamper derivative innovation.
Every president appoints one justice, but only in their second term if reelected. Fuck cares how many justices there are at any given time.
Here’s the catch: There’s no term limit and technically no age limit… but in order to qualify, any nominee must have served at least 20 years as a federal judge and have another 15 years in the legal system (as a judge, attorney, whatever), for 35 years total experience. Oh and they should have a law degree, since that’s not a requirement right now lol.
This way you get someone with a judicial record to consider at confirmation hearings, and make sure they’re incidentally old enough that they’ll die or retire relatively soon in case they turn out to be fucking horrible.
What happens if you have a streak of single term presidents, with no new judges appointed?
I would rather see a lottery system implemented. Every year, the oldest standing percentage of judges gets retired and replaced with randomly picked judges out of a pool that meets certain requirements (these can be debated). No election, no appointment, using an auditable system, and participation is compulsory, with strict restrictions of what activities the judge is allowed to participate in while serving so that they're discouraged from staying on term too long.
What if we turned it into a virtual supreme court like that?
Every case gets heard 2-3 times, Judges are randomly assigned from the pool of federal judges that meet qualifications.
This body could vote to impeach their members, and courts are randomly assembled for a few months at a time
The idea being, the supreme Court has one job - to decide matters of law, meaning they decide edge cases and conflicts. They need to understand the law, not have power - the goal is consistency in applying the law. A method to find consensus among top judges seems a lot more stable and effective than individuals
second-term presidents having expanded power seems scary. otherwise this all seems cool. any ideas about reforming lower federal judge appointments by the president?
The problem with the Senate is that it gives land more power than people. The weight given to a Senate voter in a less populated state like Montana is like 40x that of a voter in a state like California. Abolishing the Senate would move the power of each voter closer to equality. Anti-gerrymandering measures would get you the rest of the way there.
You understand, I appreciate you. Realize you are thinking for yourself and you represent an individual who would make the world a better place if you speak loud.
Fund education for all for as long as they want it. Educating your populace means you will have a more skilled and more innovative workforce which will lead to better outcomes for everyone.
This needs to be more.
Fix the education system to promote children. Feed and nurture them. Give them healthy foods to fuel their minds. Feed them 3x a day if needed. Stop allowing the people to decide if this should be covered by taxes.
Eliminate grade blocks (tiers, years, whatever) so kids that excel and not be hampered by kids that don’t want to be there. I was so bored until grade 5, then someone recognized my abilities and fostered them. I was the class clown and acted out because i was bored until I was shifted into a different class which was advanced in every way. If I show top grades, maybe I shouldn’t be held back because little Tommy the bully is a dipshit (he deserves to learn at his own pace).
In later years, remove redundant classes and replace with trades for students that are not excelling. Teach them viable skills. No one needs to have history classes in high schools, unless it serves a purpose. The only option for someone with zero skills should not be military school.
And for the love that is all wholly educational, pay our teachers so much better. Promote teachers that show drive (regardless of student year). Also mandate continuing education for them.
You missed a very important one, fix the main reason billionaires don't pay any tax:
Using your unrealised gains (e.g. shares) as collatoral to take out loans should be considered realising those gains and thus subject to capital gains tax
I wouldn't set a hard number value for this. Make it based on how low income is defined, or something dynamic that can change over the years with inflation.
For example, in parts of California you could be making $80k and you would still be considered low income because of how expensive it is just to live there. After paying for housing, there won't be much left over.
The problem with that is that will cause areas to drive up housing prices to expand the untaxed group to general more "upper middle class" to price out undesirables and draw in higher earners as a form of tax break. This already happens without the tax bracket scaling and would probably get 10x worse.
I don't have a great alternative, but maybe a weighted CoL combined with 0% below median income in the district? Something like that, but that would probably cause low CoL areas to pay way more taxes. Maybe I am thinking of it wrong.
There are no financial reforms on this wish list, which are necessary to make these other reforms stick:
Abolish PACs
Implement campaign finance limits
Implement campaign public funding
Curtail/abolish lobbying
The lobbying one is prickly. Hiring an advocate for groups like homeless people, charities, minorities, protected classes, etc. may be a necessary evil to help ensure that people are heard out. At the same time, it leaves the door wide open for anyone with big piles of money to do the same thing. I suppose we could say that a repaired election process would provide all the coverage we need, but then we're probably back to "tyranny of the majority" arguments. I'm not saying it's solvable, but clearly something should be changed.
Hiring an advocate for groups like homeless people, charities, minorities, protected classes, etc. may be a necessary evil to help ensure that people are heard out
I think we already know what people have higher needs and have been historically marginalized and exploited. Instead of relying on private funding, we can have the state employ people to work on the project of "leveling the playing field". that committee or bureau would be transparent to the public and have elected positions within it but not be ultimately ruled by those elected officials. we could have people with verifiable community backgrounds employed on a regular and/or contract basis. this could allow work with regional groups and even more granular than that. basically i imagine providing them grants and resources to get the pulse of the communities they serve and channel that info back through. the people that know how best to serve local communities are the advocates within them.
You'll need a constitutional amendment or a radical change up in the Supreme Court to abolish PACs. That's considered a free speech issue. I am not sure I have high hopes of a constitutional amendment being passed in our lifetimes.
And shadow pools, and SEC very-obvious-not-even-hiding-it corruption, and financial institutions with way to high random frees, limit banks profiting short-term so much from eg monetary policy changes, etc.
Actually pretty close to the Electoral College part. The National Popular Vote currently has 205 EC votes across 16 states, it would need at least 65 more to go into effect at which point there would never be an outcome different than the national popular vote winner becoming president ever again.
Examples of presidents who lost the popular vote:
Donald Trump - Margin 2,868,686 (−2.10%)
George W. Bush - Margin 543,895 (−0.51%)
Benjamin Harrison - Margin 90,596 (−0.79%)
Rutherford B. Hayes - Margin 254,235 (−3.02%)
John Quincy Adams - Margin 38,149 (−10.44%)
For anybody wondering who won against Bush in the Good Timeline, it was Al Gore. The guy who realized Climate Change was an existential threat to us all back before the ice caps started flooding the atmosphere with methane.
Simply removing/raising the cap on House of Representatives would give us most of the benefit - representation could be closer to actual population and electoral college presumably matches.
I would add, "abolish gerrymandering," at the top of that list. I'm not entirely sure how, "merge Senate into the House," would work, but I think that's probably a bad idea.
Some people complain about the the Senate because it gives each state 2 Senators, so less populace states have outsized power, but that's kinda the point. It may not seem very fair, but neither is the 5 most populace states voting to strip mine the Midwest, which is the kind of thing the Senate is meant to be a bulwark against. The Senate does put too much power in the hands of too few, but I think a better way to fix that would be to take away the Senate's power to confirm appointments and shorten Senate terms, not abolishing it or, "merging it into the House," (though again, I'm not entirely sure what that would entail, so maybe it would work).
I would go with computer generated district lines based on population, with some sort of non-partisan or bipartisan zoning committee to review and approve them, but there are tons of workable solutions. The problem is both parties benefit from gerrymandering, so there's no political will to fix it. The solution is simple, but not easy.
Simplify and focus the list. It's too long and touches too many different topics. Also, when you do have a full list with every topic, separate them by category.
As stated above, use Approval Voting and Proportional Representation.
This is very interesting, but I'm struggling to see how it would work within our current system of single-district representatives. Would Congressional Districts be abolished, and each state pick their allocated Congressmen through Approval Voting? I also don't see what benefits Approval Voting has over Rank Choice Voting other than simplicity.
There's plenty of ways to do it. The simplest would be to quintuple the size of the house and elect five winners to every district. Literally nothing else would have to change. Five member districts are considered the smallest that are functionally immune to gerrymandering efforts.
A more reasonable suggestion is to start implementing these reforms on the state and local level, where referendums are possible and you have an easier time building a big enough organization to actually get shit done.
As for Approval vs RCV, the simplest answer is that they usually agree on the results [all the way down the line]https://electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/super-tuesday-deep-voting-methods-dive/), but approval is simpler and easier in every respect. Both systems tend to produce a candidate support graph that looks like exponential decay in real life. The complicated answer gets into voting theory/math and all sorts of technical criterion. While I think those arguments are valid, most poling and real world data seem to show that basically anything other than "choose one" is good enough, so I prefer the method that is easiest to explain to voters and hardest for candidates to claim shenanigans.
Interesting, I've never heard about this system before, it definitely sounds interesting. I think this will be my next rabbit hole, thanks for sharing!
The electoral college is a mostly separate problem. The biggest problem caused by gerrymandering is partisan divides in the House of Representatives. Congressional Districts are drawn to keep districts as red or blue as possible, so Congress gets made up by extremists. If districts were drawn fairly, politicians would need to appeal to a broader community, and their positions would be more nuanced. Gerrymandering essentially lets the politicians pick their voters instead of voters picking their politicians.
Ohh, right, yes, parties and polarisation that only benefits politicians. I always need some time to fully remember what I know about the USA political system.
I would have agreed on the Senate 20 years ago. But it has so clearly become the stick with which about 15 percent of the country beats the entire rest of the country.
At some point you have to call it as an abusive body.
Yes, but I think that's more of a problem with our politics rather than the senate. The Republicans have gone to political extremes that just aren't popular with the majority of the country, so they struggle to pass legislation that their base would approve of through the House. Instead, they adopted a culture of obstruction in the Senate, because blocking legislation is all they can do. There are ways that their ability can obstruct can be limited, like abolishing the filibuster, but changing the culture of extremism is the only long-term solution.
Ending gerrymandering is probably the biggest institutional fix towards that goal. Right now, Congressional Districts are basically giant echo chambers that amplify the most extreme voices. Breaking down those chambers and forcing politicians to appeal to a plurality of random voters should bring rhetoric down to sane levels, and that should apply to both the House and the Senate.
I know how it got that way but it's not going to change even with the filibuster removed. It needs to go. It was a great idea when we were more decentralized and we knew less about democracy. But we can replace it with a national proportionally representative body and leave the House as the geographical representative.
Hmm...that's definitely an interesting idea, but it still gives the highly populated states unchecked power over the smaller states. Either way, if the house remains the same, then gerrymandering will still need to end.
The idea of larger and smaller states is effectively dead. We're a centralized country and the only thing going on right now is the states that have made life too shitty for people to stay are holding the rest of the country hostage.
I don't think that's true at all. I'm not one of those, "states rights," guys that believes that every state should decide who gets basic human rights, but I do think there are tons of ways larger states could use their outsized power against smaller states. The one that comes to mind is nuclear waste storage, which was a huge fight in the 80s that required a lot of negotiation. Imagine if New York, Texas, California, Pennsylvania, and Florida just got together with and decided Montana just had to manage it all.
Also, considering the western states have a much higher percentage of federal land than eastern states, their communities are much more likely to get screwed by the federal government. If I lived in Utah, where the vast majority of the land in my state is under federal control, I would certainly want more than 3 out of 435 Representatives in the federal government.
You're forgetting that under this proposal we balance the House of Representatives with a national proportional representation legislature. And we can certainly uncap the house of representatives. So the "small" states can easily form a caucus in either chamber.
That said. Nuclear storage is actually a great issue to bring up. We're going to need to store it somewhere and that place needs very specific things. Using the Senate as a NIMBY method so hard it doesn't get stored anywhere is the perfect example of the dysfunction inherent in the Senate.
Making everyone vote even if they don't really care means that working your supporters up into a frothing rage doesn't work. They're already all going to turn up. If you want to actually win elections, you suddenly have to win over the middle.
the way this works in australia is that election day is always a sunday (i think? or saturday?) but you can early vote at any number of larger polling stations without giving a reason… also postal vote
It has more advantages than just the ones you describe, although even that alone is good enough reason to do it.
It also forces the government to make voting easy. To put them at a time when a maximum number of people can make it (in Australia elections are on a Saturday, when most people are not working—prepoll is also extremely easy to do they just ask you if you're unable to vote on election day, without requiring any actual proof, and postal voting not much harder than that). To have numerous places to vote within easy access of where everyone is.
It also forces the government to make voting easy.
No it doesn't. I could easily see Republicans making voting very difficult under such a system, particularly within zip codes that vote for Democrats. This would punish Dem supporters who failed to vote, and would generally make the public hostile to mandatory voting - which would help build public support for the abolition of such mandatory voting
The government is only incentivized to make voting easy if all major parties are loyal to the public. That isn't the case in the United States
I don't think mandatory voting is a good solution. This is mostly practices in autocratic/dictatorial states, and would have a bad taste to it.
What should be done is to either make voting day a public holiday (with mandatory "half day off" rule for anyone who would still have to work in retail or services), or just move it to a Sunday, like many other countries have done ages ago.
We have a small population and mandatory voting means everyone gets a vote by default. We also have a different culture around voting because the majority of us have to do it. We have sausage sizzles and democracy dogs. I've personally worked at polls all over my state and there's never been a line longer than 10 people. It takes most people like 5 mins max to vote. We make voting easy in Australia because everyone has to do it.
It's worth noting that it's not all that mandatory. It's relatively easy to simply avoid enrolling to vote. You're not automatically enrolled in other words. Also it's really easy to just sign your name off at the poll and hand in a blank vote. The worst outcome of not voting is a fine that you can pretty easily get out of as well.
there’s never been a line longer than 10 people. It takes most people like 5 mins max to vote. We make voting easy
In the US, this is also part of our divisiveness. I’ve always found biting to be quick, easy, convenient. Never much of a line and it moves fast. Registration to vote is by default at RMV or can be done directly. Mail in or absentee voting is trivially available.
Stories of people waiting in line for hours is just as alien to me as it is to you. You cant escape the obvious correlations where it is more difficult to vote depending on which political party is dominant, the wealth of the voting area, and racial makeup. It also strongly corresponds with gerrymandering.
No, obviously you have a dictator king with prima nocta in the constitution as an obligation - he now has to sleep with every single newly wed (separately) on their (same) wedding night or be executed.
But it's tradition, it would be wrong to change it now. If I was fucked by the king, so needs to be everyone else or it wouldn't be fair.
I think this is the wrong question. Why is voting optional? We can crow about nebulous "freedom", but we are forced to do much harder things all the time. Once every few years, we're asked to make a few decisions.
If the idea is that the citizens select leaders, but it's incredibly easy to opt out, what you have is a biased selection committee. We can argue all day about the various biases involved and if they matter, but the reality is that it's not burdensome on Australians and it actually makes sense to get your source election data as close to based on public sentiment as you can.
Rules adjudicated by whom? You'd need another independent judiciary specifically tasked with overseeing the SCOTUS, and there's a lot of reasons why that would be a dicey proposition.
Even if they’re responsible for policing themselves, you’d get a huge improvement by making them write it down. We shouldn’t have Clarence Thomas claiming he didn’t know that accepting $100k+ is an obvious conflict of interest.
My company has no problem writing down ethics policies for me - I’m sure they’d let the supremes copy it. We even have regular training to clarify edge cases that Clarence Thomas claimed to not understand. I’m sure they could subscribe to the same service
Even if they’re responsible for policing themselves, you’d get a huge improvement by making them write it down.
Would you? Do you seriously think guys like Kavanaugh and Alito would sincerely self-report? Or would they just lie with impunity and dare you to call their bluffs?
We shouldn’t have Clarence Thomas claiming he didn’t know that accepting $100k+ is an obvious conflict of interest.
Who holds Thomas to account when he's caught perjuring himself? What court do you put him in front of?
My company has no problem writing down ethics policies for me
Without a doubt, because you're staff and they're the boss. But there's no one to hold the owner of a company to its own internal policies. Not when the owner gets to author, adjudicate, and dictate the administration of those policies. No Twitter HR rep is going to rein in Elon Musk.
Currently, they not only judge themselves but decide what their standards are.
Clarence Thomas was found out, and we’re all outraged. So far, he’s claiming various versions of ignorance and there’s no rule against it. Writing down ethical standards mean he can no longer make those claims. He’d have no excuse, no way to delay.
You’re right that he still might not be held accountable, but it is a step in the right direction
Writing down ethical standards mean he can no longer make those claims.
Okay, sure. But then he just makes a new set of bullshit claims, and nobody exists in a position to call him on it.
You’re right that he still might not be held accountable, but it is a step in the right direction
If it was a step we were taking, I won't object. Part of the problem with this bullshit is that reforms are almost always DOA, outside of hypothetical debates. But if I'm starting from a blank slate and told "Fix the SCOTUS", I'd dream a bit bigger than a rule with no teeth.
Gerrymandering eliminated nationally with mathematically randomized district maps with approval required by all major parties and a non-partisan committee, not just the majority party. If no map can be agreed upon, the non-partisan committee gets final say.
(This is more of an amendment to the elimination of the electoral college one...) States do not vote for president, people do. And no person's vote should matter more or less than another because of the state they live in. Therefore, the person elected president is the one who wins the popular vote nationwide.
The sectors of medicine, pharmacy, education, produce, and communications (cellular and internet) should always have well-funded state providers in the same competitive space as any private option. No part of the nation should be without access to any of these public services in a reasonable distance.
Abortion is added as a constitutionally protected right.
An exact definition to the limits on the executive power, privileges and protections of the President.
Ethical rules for Supreme Court Justices with an oversight process (with teeth) to enforce them, with consequences ranging from mandatory recusals for conflicts of interest, to removal from the bench.
Single purpose bills without any tagalong laws attached to them only.
No bill should be brought to vote until enough time has passed since its publishing that both members of congress and the public have had time to thoroughly read and discuss its contents.
A naming convention for bills that does not allow for names that are blatantly attempts at misleading, meant to evoke emotion, or just marketing gimmicks and "clever" acronyms. No more "P.A.T.R.I.O.T.", "Stop W.O.K.E", or "D.R.E.A.M." acts.
A pathway to cutting the military budget to a fraction of what is is today. Maybe a 10 percent reduction in budget each year for 8 years?
The sectors of medicine, pharmacy, education, produce, and communications (cellular and internet) should always have well-funded state providers in
the same competitive space as any private option. No part of the nation should be without access to any of these public services in a reasonable distance
That's communism /s (or socialism? I don't know, I agree with you, I'm just thinking what the other side would parrot out).
Also, mu (lack of) competition! Think of the poor shareholders! (also /s of course)
An exact definition to the limits on the executive power, privileges and protections of the President.
with an added clause that says "if you look for a loophole, it means you're automatically wrong. Don't be a dick"
gerrymandering is rendered obsolete by points 1 and 2 on the list...so that's already included in the OP ;)
the reason gerrymandering is a thing, is because of the first-past-the-post/winner-takes-all voting system, which ranked choice replaces.
ranked choice allows propotional representation, which also fixes the 2 party problem!
edit, also fixes your point 2, because under ranked choice there is only a popular vote (also just known as "a vote", because there isn't any other one left)
nvm, got something mixed up...shouldn't comment when half asleep...
I think you misunderstand what ranked choice is. You may be thinking of proportional voting, where seats are divied based on the relative percentage of support a party has. That would eliminate Gerrymandering. Ranked choice is just a method of runoff voting for a single seat. It's still very much subject to Gerrymandering.
i got that mixed up; i thought ranked choice also includes proportional representation, because it frees up your secondary vote to be for whoever you want it to be, without pressure to vote for a canditate that "has a chance of winning", thus alleviating the issue of strategic voting...but that's pretty much the only thing it does.
but the proportional representation is tied to the way mandates/seats are distributed, which isn't tied to the how the vote works.
so if the senate still had the same number of seats per state, it wouldn't fix representation, because the weight of the votes still wouldn't be equal...
yeah, sorry for the confusion...long day...but thanks for the polite correction!
The 10 year term limit for the Supreme Court is trouble. With 9 justices, one party in power for 8 years, which happens often, is more than enough to ideologically set the tone.
I don't mind term limits per se, just not such a short limit.
Removing the house rep cap (more particularly adopting a plan similar to The Wyoming Rule) would be a fantastic idea and allow the house to return back to what it should be, populace representation. As the electoral college is based on combined reps and senators, this also does a fair bit towards resolving the underlying issue there.
Corporate personhood is what allows you to sue a corporation and enter contracts with it. Removing it would not be the best idea with that in mind. The courts have allowed that to go further then it should vis a vis allowing contributions to political campaigns etc. Revert Citizens United and we're largely good.
if one allowed the IRS to file taxes for citizens you wouldn't need to ban tax prep companies since the amount of people buying their products would fall off a cliff.
Police reform. Abortion protection. Web neutrality. Data privacy. Gender affirmative care protection. Legalized weed. Minimum wages tied to inflation, on top of UBU. If we're getting crazy.
substitute inflation with CPI: that’s what we do in australia… inflation is a finance term that kinda doesn’t represent cost of living: you’re seeing that in the US right now i believe where your inflation is actually not terrible, but your cost of living is crazy
CPI does introduce some BS though because it’s not exactly a specific set of rules… we had an issue recently where the govt set CPI lower than what people thought it should be and everyone was pretty outraged
I'd be okay with keeping the senate. I think the founding fathers had a good idea, Senate was meant to be more "Long term sustainability" while the House was meant to deal with the needs of now.
However, Term Limits. They didn't see senators sitting on their seats until they were over 90 years old. In their day if you made it to 40 you were apparently doing really well.
If you made it to 25 or 30 (age requirements for congress), 40 was not a surprise. A person then was considered old at 65-70, so younger than now, but not much
Rather than abolish the Electoral College and merge the House and Senate, I would suggest massively increasing the size of the House. This would increase the size of the Electoral College too, reducing the distortion of the population while still protecting less populous states. This also has the advantage of being something that can be done through ordinary laws instead of Constitutional amendments.
I think literally all you need is ranked choice voting and the abolishment of corporate personhood and for profit lobbying. The rest will take care of itself.
Ranked choice (also known as instant runoff or IRV) is barely better than first past the post (which is plurality voting). A better choice is 3-2-1 or STAR voting, both of which outperform IRV by a huge margin. But even if those are too complicated for people, Approval voting is still better than IRV.
Merging the two houses won't help. We need proportional representation. Make the senate 600 seats, and a national, proportional election (seats are given based on % of votes for the party). They're still 6 year terms, with elections every two years. Seats are given to any party that can clear 0.5% to start, then the threshold is increased to 2% after 12 years. Then expand the house. Now you have local reps and proportional reps. Much better than giving "states" reps, which makes almost no sense.
The house is Local Representation. You don't vote for what party you want to see control the house, you vote for a local representative to represent you and your neighbors.
Proportional representation is where parties get a number of seats proportional to the percent of votes they get.
Proportional voting methods are often nation-wide, although there's also e.g. mixed member proportional and local 3-5 member districts elected via STV like they do in Ireland.
By making them the same thing, you encourage gerrymandering. In the US, there's no way for a third party to gain any representation. A national, proportional election would force the issue and allow for more diversity in political thought.
But not in the same way that actual proportional representation works. They're distributed by population yes, but they're tied to a geographical location. Real proportional representation is national. So you have one legislative body tied to a district they're supposed to represent, and another tied to the base of voters across the country that elected them.
Most of this could be done with removing lobbying and just call it what it is: bribes. I bet you, once that (which would be extremely hard to pass congress) passes america would be a lot better
Instead we have sales tax, and that is actually assessed by the states individually. The Federal government's income is primarily from income tax and various business taxes.
What's a luxury good? A neckless? What about a cheap wedding ring? Okay fine all jewelry to make instead simple.
Cars? Just take the bus. Driving is a luxury and will make way more in revenue than jewelry, but that won't be passed.
Running shoes aren't a luxury. But what high end fashionable "running shoes"? What about a high end push bike used to get to work, what about the same bike used for fun.
Fuck man you would end up dealing will so much crap trying to work it out it would cost you more than it makes. Just tax rich people more for being rich and let them spend it how they like.
Missing a lot things. Gerrymandering can still occur without the electoral college, tax things seems neat in theory but need to deal with corporate taxes, term limits on the supreme court would make things worse (research indicates an age out system would be better), Police system will still be fundamentally broken, companies will still continue to maximize profit to everyone but the shareholder deficit, stock buybacks are creating major issues and allow companies to game Wallstreet, are just a few things that I think are missing here that need to be addressed.
Another one: jail employees of companies if they signed off on criminal activities. If I commit 1000 dollar fraud o go to jail, obviously. If a company commits a billion dollar fraud, they get a fraction of revenue fine, really? Jail the fuckers who made those decisions. If you signed off on that decision, then too fucking bad, you go to jail. If a company forces you to commit a crime then quit and report the crime.
Not any more than it does now. Ignorantia juris non excusat. Ignorance of the law excuses not. It is a primary doctrine in US law as it stands, I don't see why this case should be any different.
My personal flavor of this idea could down to this: if your company is found guilty of a criminal offense that would result in jail time for an individual, all board members and C-level executives are held accountable and face the same punishment as an individual would for the same crime. The only exceptions are:
There was an intentional malicious effort made on the part of a subordinate to use the law to attack their employer.
It can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the illegal activity was perpetrated on by a subordinate in a manner that would have expressly and reasonably obfuscated the activity from the notice of a rational, attentive observer.
The illegal activity brought lethal harm upon the company (meaning that the activity directly lead to the complete and total failure and dissolution of the organization and all subsidiaries and shell companies were dissolved as a result)
Outside of those 3, they asses go to jail, assets get seized, and yahts go up in police auctions.
I mean bigger things, like Philips knowingly selling CPAP machines they knew were defective and would cause cancer and god knows what else. They knew, didn't recall, continued selling anyway, people died. Nobody is in jail, though.
Fuck that, jail the fuckers.
A similar case can be made for Boeing and many others.
Start jailing execs and companies will start paying attention
Proposing IRV is nice and all, and definitely an improvement (whatever you do don't listen to nutters proposing range voting…it's trivially gameable…and personally I just don't think Approval's lack of ability to give a nuanced vote is very good).
But the real change happens when you move away from single-winner seat entirely. Use something like MMP or STV where the votes can be distributed proportionally.
Australia is a really good example, because we have a bit of both. Look at our House of Representatives. It uses IRV like you propose America switch to. Labor got 33% of the vote and 51% of seats. LNP got 35% of votes and 38% of votes. Greens got 12% of the vote and less than 3% of seats. Yikes. One Nation got almost 5% of votes and 0 seats.
Then look at our Senate. It uses STV so that in a normal election, each state elects 6 Senators and territories elect 1. Labor got 30% of votes and 20% of seats. LNP got 33% and 20%. Greens got 13% and 6%. One Nation, United Australia Party, independent David Pocock, and the Lambie Network each got 1 seat (1.3% of seats) on 4.3%, 3.5%, 0.4%, and 0.2% of votes, respectively. These numbers are obviously not perfect, but they're a hell of a lot better than the Reps' results. STV is a sort of quasi-proportional system, retaining local representation. In our case "local" means "at the state level", but you could also do it by taking 5–12 House of Reps districts and merging them into 1 district, returning 5–12 Representatives.
True proportional systems like MMP (look at NZ and Germany for examples of that in action) or direct proportional systems without a local member (like the Netherlands) get even closer to perfectly matching voters' will.
I broadly agree; if you're in the mood to give more detail about your problems with Approval Voting I'd value that input. It's a topic I have been casually glued to for years, without getting deeper on the analytic side.
That's literally my reason. Approval voting doesn't let you express any preference. If we had approval here in Australia, my vote for Labor would be exactly equal to my vote for the Greens. And I don't want that to be the case. I want my vote for the Greens to be worth more than Labor.
I think approval is likely to hard quite an extreme degree of moderating effect. Some moderation is good, for sure. Compulsory voting has a beneficial moderating effect. But with approval voting, it's likely that the Greens would never win a single seat, even when they're popular enough to win the election under IRV. Because all Greens voters will also approve of Labor, if they vote strategically in an effort to avoid the LNP winning. But some Labor voters might not approve of the Greens even if they would preference the Greens ahead of the LNP.
The other systems I mentioned disliking, "range voting" (one example of which is a system called "STAR") are worse, because they devolve into approval. If you could force everyone to sit down and vote 100% honestly it would be brilliant, but it's just as easy to vote strategically as FPTP is, by voting all maximum or minimum, with no nuance—i.e., approval. Only it's worse than approval, because some people might not recognise this and make their vote weaker by choosing not to vote strategically. Like how people in FPTP voting third party hurts their preferred major party.
Thanks, I think I get it. Proportional representation with 321 seems like something I could advocate for. I'll have to let this marinate for a minute, I've been advocating AV for over a decade now, so I'll need to find quiet time to reflect on it
Instead of all that, just one thing. Start there and everything else will unfold from it: remove private corporate money from politics. All contributions to a politician or political party to be public and capped, per citizen.
As a mathematician, I want to see this modified slightly (I will pair the original with my modification)
Income up to $50k is untaxed
Income up to $100k is untaxed (I have done the math, this would actually work with one of my other modifications)
VAT tax for luxury items
VAT for B2B sales based on the Value Added by their step in the production chain
Remove sales tax
Remove tax brackets - replace with a continuous function that has parameters to encapsulate the current credits and deductions, as well as new ones to encourage reasonable behaviors (green energy, having kids, not having kids, etc.)
Addendum to the above: business taxes fall get the same treatment, with parameters for things like the wealth/income gap ratio between the highest-paid employee and the median for the company, % of employees who reside in the United States, number of subsidiaries, number of technology acquisitions made. Oh, and companies that make more than $1M/yr never get a refund, period.
Require communities to cap rent, it is done by popular vote as a ballot measure, and the options are calculated based on local needs, cost of living, and median income for the town.
I haven't really seen it mentioned here yet but policy makers and judge rulings should either have additional schooling in the area they are making the policy/ruling on OR have a mandatory specialist/professional input throughout the process. So many of these brain dead policies come from not even know what TF they are talking about.
I want proper understanding from these people before they agree or pass something because "it sounds good" from lobbying
While this is true, I probably should have added additional context as it may be lobbying but differ in the way lobbying is currently done.
It would preferably be someone currently working in acedemia as well as holding an office (state or federally) subject to a code of ethics etc. With prerequisites within the field of question.
Now each judge or policy maker having their own expertise would be ideal, it's not really practical/feasible at this time. It's not necessarily lobbying in it's entirety that's an issue more so how it's done currently.
One could argue any person with any statement to a judge or policy maker (I'm context) classifies as lobbying since they are trying to sway the decision in their way. So by definition there's not really a way around "lobbying" but we can mitigate the (effectively) statement bribes we have screwing our system
Add winner takes all elections to this list. It always leads to a shitty two party system, exhibit a being the USA. Instead, have elections with 30 parties, each having a little bit of power, that have to work together. It gives people a chance to actually vote for the person they want, it stops the extreme swinging to left and right each time an election is won by the other side.
Add 100% income tax for those with a net worth over a certain amount, say 1 billion or so. If at some point you have souch money that you can impossibly spend it in your life time, you don't need to have it. Need investors? Make non profit investment funds, financed by the government taxes.
Add 100% gains tax for companies that have grown beyond a certain amount of employees. No extremely large company with 80.000 workers is a nice place to work at, they guaranteed fuck over the employees and customers because that's what they do. Simply cap companies on how big they can be.
Extending the previous one: prohibit companies from buying other companies. It always ends up stifling the competition, it pushes companies that wholly exist for being bought, nothing else, it's not healthy.
They don't address the main issue though. The wealthiest people hide all their money in stocks and then use those stocks as collateral to get incredibly cheap loans.
I think taxes on financial shenanigans like carried interest, inheritance, and capital gains would probably be more effective than taxing luxury goods. Most rich people don't actually spend the majority of their money on physical things. Mostly they just shuffle it around into various instruments to avoid taxes and maximize returns.
Yea that makes sense. There's around $8.5 trillion of untaxed capital gains. Inheritance tax would be good. Some type of interest tax on unrealized capital gains would be interesting. I still think VAT is still helpful, rich people do still spend money on expensive shit.
"Abolish corporate personhood" doesn't go far enough. Abolish corporations. Companies over a certain size should be forced to convert to either a worker-owned co-op or a non-profit organization. Human society needs to evolve past being centered around maximizing shareholder profits.
idk about merge the senate into the house. I like the idea that there is one chamber where each state has the same number of votes and one that goes by population. but hard agree on removing the house rep cap, as-is every branch of the fed is weighted toward smaller, more rural states (senate, house with rep cap, potus via electoral college, scotus because senate and potus pick scotus)
Not sure what is called, but ban and back tax/punish people/companies who use those foreign PO boxes and claim that that company owns the IP everything that they use, so they actually made no profit, all to avoid paying taxes. And then because "made no money" they get cash from the governments.
I don't know the answer in this specific case, my best guess is visibility, although you might read text posts I would take a guess and say the majority of users of sites such as Lemmy and Reddit only look at the images before interacting with a post. So an image of text would garner more interaction than the same content in a text post.
Wouldn't the ban on tax preparation companies hurt mostly the middle class? The rich can just get full time accountants to handle all their finances, and these accountants will also optimize their taxes as part of the general service they provide.
The IRS actually wants to make tax prep easier. Companies like TurboTax and the like are predatory.
They lobby congress to keep taxes complicated. All to milk people for $20-$35 each at tax time. Many countries either file taxes for you or make it super easy.
Think about it. You do your taxes and send them in... but the IRS sometimes sends out corrections. I've received MORE sometimes and others get audited to pay more. That means the IRS knows what you owe already...
The nonsense is there specifically to benefit the tax prep companies. Getting rid of one without the other isn't... Anything anyone is advocating for. You get rid of both, simultaneously, because you have to, and because it's right. How you make it work? Tax the rich, mostly
We should definitely give most people a better option for filing taxes but can’t imagine being able to get away from that as you get wealthier, have a business or certain non-salary income sources.
Tax prep services will always be necessary, but not for the majority of individuals
But there are very little income sources that the IRS couldn't have direct access to - just build a national system connecting banks, brokers, international transactions, etc. Put the reporting burden on companies and other gov bodies.
These are complex admin systems that wealthy counties build, part of an overall digitalisation of government systems. I mean, I can't think of a single government related thing I can't do online (or on the phone). Every citizen can be issued 2FA once identified (and/or a digital certificate), the rest we pay taxes for them to set up.
IRS has no reliable way of knowing my cash tip income, that I won the Irish lottery, that I sold my vineyard in France for a tidy profit, etc. without an audit, they have no way to follow a shell game of payments criss-crossing among my 500+ companies to be able to tax my real estate profits. They can’t know the depreciation I’m writing off for expensive office furniture is for my summer home
If I understand you correctly - isn't that profit tax? And companies have the burden and obligation to report.
And I was talking about common folk or like 95% of USA. You are right about cash-tips. We just dont pay taxes on it. But it's also not an integral part of, well, anything. Its more of a p2p transaction.
Companies have the burden to report but if you have many you can play games with payments across each other to concentrate the profit or loss to advantage yourself. Depending on how it’s incorporated m, that may belong to the business entity or you. As far as I know, IRS generally treats each business entity separately, so unless they have reason to audit, may not be able to follow a chain of payments across them.
Banning tax prep companies is a bad, poorly thought out idea.
Simplifying tax prep is the avert. Doing what the rest of the developed world does, where the IRS sends you a receipt and you can either accept that or manually file if you think you owe less.
Banning tax prep companies just hurts people who have a nonstandard tax situation. Small business owners, people with tax relief from disabilities, all manner of normal people in niche situations. Don't take away the tools they need, remove the opportunity for parasite companies to prey upon average people.
Change the tax law saying that under 1 million moneys individuals can't be held responsible for IRSs errors.
Also even complex income tax preparation should not take you more than an hour to fully review yourself. If it does, it's a bad system & probably like that by design.
Star voting to avoid some of the potential negative outcomes of RCV
Do not merge the house and Senate. They perform different, but equally important functions, once you remove the house cap and force them to start legislating again.
Remove the illegal revision done by a single person to statute 1983 of the federal code, in 1874. This removes Qualified Immunity, and resets the law back to, "naw fam, no one, not even a Sitting President, Congressman, or SCOTUS Justice is above the law, and no one has any sort of immunity." If you need immunity to do the job, the job shouldn't be done.
Star voting is just FPP dressed up in a costume. And RCV's prescribed problems only occur in strict math environments that don't look at why voters flow to the candidates they flow to. I wouldn't be surprised if Star was being pushed to kill RCV by the big parties because they know they can dominate it just the same due to the actual psychology of voting. (I want to vote for my favorite, but what if the guy I hate wins?)
Looking at it this is definitely the case, its no better than fptp because you're incentivized to give 5 stars to all candidates you can tolerate, and none to others.
VAT is just a shitty tax mechanisim, ends up being regressive (people with less money pay a larger portion of income), and really shouldnt be used. Land value tax + carbon tax is much better, and has nice side benefits like encouraging housing development and walkability.
Probably get rid of the supreme Court altogether and have cases that it currently hears be heard by a random selection of federal judges.
Probably also need to get some people smarter and more specialized than me to figure out how to capture the wealth of the wealthy. Like the whole "take out a loan against your assets, use that as money, pay no taxes" thing needs to go.
While we're having fantasies, can we expand the 14th amendment "no insurrection " bit to be more clear?
And if we're feeling spiteful, add a "no one who has held office as a member of the Republican party shall be eligible for any role in government, nor any role that engages with the government such as contractor, advisor, lobbyist." Just gut the whole party.
I would add patent law reform, and remove the ability to hold private and public office (ie you can't be a board member of Monsanto and be on the EPA), oh and no campaign donations allowed; everybody gets an equal stipend to campaign, we have the internet you don't need to go shaking babies and kissing hands.
Fully funded public news media with a legal firewall between government interests and that media. Controlled by journalists and representative members of the public. We desperately need to get working interests back into news media, nearly every flavor of our media is currently owned by corporate interests.
No tax reform? It’s a great start to make taxes easier for most individuals but we shouldn’t be allowing wealthier people to pay less percentage of taxes. There’s a bewildering array of complexity that doesn’t matter to most individuals but only serves to lower the tax rate if people who can afford to take advantage of it
That and I think the "no taxes for 50k and under" would be devastating to the budget, if the median income for a family is around 60k then that's a fuckton of tax income that is lost.
Ban political donations, all political parties get the same, small campaign budget and allotment of advertising space/airtime funded by the government instead
I mean, thats the same as with fossil fuels or taxing the rich - we are programmed to overreact to any economical instability even if none if it would affect 90% of pupation and turbulence lasting a couple of years would fade quickly from memory and get the results sooner. It's basically like any revolution. It's bad in the very short term, but not as bad as not changing much for decades.
Also historically, it's the 'sweeping changes' that get all the glory and results (and actual change in power).
Where I'm from judges have to be picked by a list prepared by the bar of that jurisdiction, IIRC. That way you can't just get any barely competent idiot who happens to be a good party man as a justice on the highest court of the land.
This is a great idea! Maybe im wrong but it seems like this wasn’t a problem historically. Even partisan judges were competent. It’s only in recent years that they dropped that pretense, so maybe it was one of those things where we just assumed you’d want someone who knew what they were doing.
One of the things that Trump was great at is clearly identifying places where we just assume anyone in that position would do the right thing, out of some duty to actually running the country. Fine, let’s drown them in paperwork
Out of these, unfortunately the only one that even has a chance of being realized is "IRS does taxes for everyone", and even that is more like "IRS provides official avenue to not have to pay a tax prep service"
The rest of these won't happen without a revolution, because the people with the power to make these things happen all directly benefit from them.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see even one or two things on this list become reality. Any two would make a ton of difference for a lot of people. But capitalism doesn't like it when you benefit the average Joe, and capitalism always wins here.
Any time a budget is not passed on time, House, Senate and Presidential/VP salaries are cut to minimum wage until a new budget takes effect.
(I say "cut to minimum wage" because unfortunately the Constitution has been interpreted as dictating that their pay never be interrupted. It does not, however, specify how much they have to be paid.)
I like almost all of this, but I disagree with merging the Senate and House as well as a VAT on luxury items. We already have tax on basically every transaction and the burden is on the consumer, that needs to change. What should happen is that all taxes on food items currently should be removed.
I believe the separation of Senate and House, while burdensome and inefficient at times, really does an essential good for American society. We would fare much better if we had term limits and more than two (essentially one) political party.
Edit: I want to continue with strickening the UBI from this list as well in exchange for significanly improving social services to make sure that everyone is guaranteed food, housing, medical, and security. I get that income is important and some people cant work, but inflation is real and that money has to come from somewhere not just the ether. It would be better to create/improve upon existing social safety nets to make sure everyone can contribute to society in some way rather than just giving everyone money for nothing.
Yes they are... They're reallocated every 10 years in response to the census as numbers change.
If you're talking about how Wyoming has more per person voting power than California that's more because of them having the same 2 senators as every other state.
The 50k and under untaxed I disagree with. It sets up for a possible scenario where those who are taxed get priority in policy. If you are able to be a productive member of society, you should pay taxes to support that society, and the infrastructure it provides.
Most of the others in the list I agree with or don't know enough about the case to comment
And another one: push cities (by carrot and sticks, financial incentives and penalties) to change their layouts and designs to be humans first, 15 minute cities, whatever you want to call them. Pedestrian areas and cycling infrastructure over cars, mixed use building areas, let's get rid of the suburb rot. It makes it that people don't need a car and if you don't need a car, why have an expensive piece of crap that costs a fortune to use and maintain? Cars will still be allowed, because of course. It's just that priorities have to change. People first, cyclists first. Cities will become more quiet, people will walk and cycle more, they'll be outside more, healthier, happier, safer, richer, safer.
Soapbox: You there! Are you tired of getting sand kicked in your face? I ask you: why does the US have public debt without public equity?
Public funding, subsidy, stimulus, and infrastructural spending should purchase public equity that can only be bought back from the public via surplus taxes. We don’t have to call it socialism. It can be capitalism proper. But it’s the people’s capital and labor being lent, interest-free. They should expect a return. Fair is fair.
It’s simpler and stronger than labor unions. There’s no collective bargaining for temporary compensation, no dues, no pickets, no fuss. The pension is paid from the start by public endowment as a matter of course, eliminating the underlying financial insecurity employers exploit. The free market is more free when poverty can’t dictate your fee.
And besides securing the future for so many people, it would change the way citizens see themselves and the world around them, the stake they have in their governance and economy, and would certainly reframe public discourse.
National healthcare is clearly overdue vertical integration that would curtail inefficiencies and improve outcomes.
Entitlements like UBI could then be ordinary financial vehicles, annuities of the ever-expanding public trust.
National debt would become leverage for a better future rather than a burdensome inheritance.
Conservative rhetoric would sound hopelessly plebeian against an owner-proletariat. Whining about unfair government handouts has no place where everyone is granted the same share of public dividends.
Many large private interests that have historically gobbled up public funds would quickly see the public become majority shareholders, effectively nationalizing many industries that should have been long ago. In particular, many nonprofits would coalesce into the bonafide public works they should have been all along.
It even allows the good intent of inheritance without compounding generational inequality, and your safety net is not contingent upon means testing or number of years working. Were you just born? Welcome. You’re covered.
Public equity unlocks the logical, humane, and sustainable version of capitalism in which every worker is vested and shares both the means of production and the value they produce.
Get rid of the EC entirely. The popular vote would work quite a bit better as a means of ensuring power is exercised with the consent of the governed.
Scotus and congress both desperately need oversight that is different from 'we oversee ourselves and find we did nothing wrong' when obvs. that doesn't work too well
Tax prep companies... I wish them a prompt and thorough viking funeral.
Fun fact about corporate power at the time of the framers: the colonists felt first-hand the abuse of being effectively governed by crown corporations and shortly after the founding of the USA, corporations were drastically limited in what they could do- for example, they could not engage in politics, they could not own other corporations, could not engage in activities not strictly related to their charters, had charters of finite span, and their charters could be revoked for any violations. If corporations are going to be people today, it's about damned time we started charging them with crimes when they commit crimes- and yank their charters if they re-offend.
One thing worth questioning: do we really need representative districts? Why not have at-large representatives on a per-state basis, with seats allocated to states/apportioned via census? It would be pretty hard to gerrymander an at-large system, I think
Another one: push cities to have green (as in trees) everywhere. Not only is it prettier, people will be more happy with loads of green everywhere, but it also lowers temperatures in cities. Better mental healthy better physical health.
I see the value in an odd number of branches. That’s the only one that I don’t support. Can’t have two branches fight. We need an odd number for a tie breaker.
What you're looking for is "the congressional apportionment amendment", and it was passed by congress with the bill of rights, and ratified by many states but every time they almost met the 3/4ths threshold a new state was admitted, and it always remained short. 11 states have ratified it. It had no expiry and as such is still waiting to be ratified by the states. It needs 27 more ratifications to become an amendment to the constitution.
RCV is the best available way to elect the president (afaik), but for the House I'd use full-on proportional representation. You could use the German or the Irish models, both of which still retain bonds between reps and their districts.
ALL sales tax needs to be replaced with value-added tax. Zero tax on used goods, including cars, if you actually want to reduce waste and related harm to the environment.
Social democracy leaves power in the hands of the capitalists, they only tolerate reforms like this when capitalism is threatened, and they will (and have) eroded as soon as the threat is gone.
Individual rights get eroded if people don’t keep the good fight. The hope for a system that can prevent the amassing of power in the hands of a few through no effort by the many is entitled childishness personified.
Might not be need anymore with a handful of the items listed but campaign finance reform to show where all of a campaigns money came from and went. Also thought there was a better term but can't fully remember.
You've got huge, earthshaking, constitutional-level changes here lumped together with minor stuff like tax-prep and tax brackets. There's no sense of scale here. (Also, forget tax increases, implement a wealth tax)
I agree with a lot of this, especially ranked choice voting. Don't agree with abolishing the electoral college though. Rural voters and urban voters are generally quite different, if you get rid of the electoral college the rural voters will be completely ignored by every politician simply because there are fewer of them and they are spread out more. I don't think that means their priorities should be invalidated.
That said, I would add one thing. Abolish primary votes. Political parties can nominate as many or as few people as they wish, anybody with enough signatures can get their name on the final ballot.
The current primary system basically disenfranchises voters in any state that isn't in the first 10 or 15 primary elections. Half the candidates will have dropped out by the time their state votes.
Establish new "Common Ground" party with a platform mandated to only reflect issues and positions with a 2/3rd majority support among the American public in multiple 3rd party polls from different pollsters
Political ideology falls along a normal distribution. Very dumb to draw the line down the middle rather than capturing the norm and excluding the edges.
Let's have progress demand a shift in the national attitudes over time rather than let minor shifts of a few percentage points every few years in a deadlock determine progress or regress.
President decided by sortition (like jury selection) with a less military-focused role, cabinet members decided by voting on a list of working professionals in the applicable field (aka someone who works in agricultural sciences to be secretary of agriculture), housing as a human right, functional petitions that can initiate a direct vote in a special election on any issue with enough signatures. Ban prison labor and for profit prisons. Ban private schools and invest heavily in public schools. Employees of public services like libraries, schools, gov jobs pay no taxes. De-militarize the police. Sever the relationship between police and current/former prosecutors (possibly by only getting out-of-county prosecutors to oversee cases involving police?), enshrine prisoner voting rights, enshrine Land back policy, no corporate ownership of single family homes. Rent for an apartment has to be split to be exactly what the mortgage currently costs for the owner of the building + overhead, repairs and community agreed upon updates (if the building has no mortgage anymore, it is lowered to be only what is needed for overhead etc.- being a landlord shouldn't be profitable, it should be a service), salary has to be clearly marked on every job posting and if it is found out that they are underpaying what they advertise, the labor board can fine the company by percentage of total profit increasing 2x every time it happens. All jobs are union eligible except for police. State tax benefits to influence city centers to become car-free. Loitering is a protected activity. Ban EULAs that can change at the will of the company. Force companies to pay out money to those they stole data from and sold. Ban the NSA, TSA, FBI, and CIA. Ban the stock market in some way that wouldn't be awful. Ban more performant car/truck tires that's causing our microplastics problem in favor of almost entirely naturally decomposing tire compounds. All vehicles and machinery are subject to the emissions standards of cars. Farmers are always allowed to set up a stand and sell products from their farm in parking lots (even parking lots of grocery stores). No unmarked police cars and no police sirens at night. No 24 hour news cycle. Crackdown on javascript's power on the internet. Break up apple, google, Microsoft, and any other behemoth I'm forgetting. Ban court fees. Ban non-competes. 3-4 day workweek. On top of location representation in our federal government, include wage representation and age representation as well. Surprise, all businesses are co-ops now! There's probably way more, but I can only fantasize so much lol
From an outsider perspective. Two houses/chambers are better than one. But the second should be a review chamber that sends amendments back to the first. If those amendments are rejected by the first then so be it.
Something like PAYE would be better than having your government work out the tax. It places the expanse on the companies rather than the government or the individual.
With a less convoluted tax system and businesses working it out you probably wouldn't need to ban those tax companies as market forces would make them no longer viable.
VAT should be on luxury goods, and ones that the government wants to discourage the use of for public health (500% vat on tobacco products, 300% VAT on vaping etc).
IRS shouldn’t be filing taxes for anyone, that just seems egregious given that there so many ways to justify lowering one’s tax burden. I am not sure if a third party bureaucracy would be incentivized to do that for tax filers.
Abolish corporate personhood? No. Someone obviously doesn't understand what corporate personhood is or how it exists.
If there is no such thing as corporate personhood, how do you tax a corporation? How does a corporation own any property? How does a hospital exist? How do groups of people pool capital? How does one sue groups of people who have pulled their Capital and caused harm?
The jurisdiction of all law is based on personal jurisdiction. Corporate personhood is considered a "legal fiction," it doesn't exist to protect corporations, although it sometimes does, it exists by necessity and by operation of law. It would exist even if you didn't want it to, it would just have to be called something else. The alternative is that groups of people cannot pool resources toward a common endeavor, or, they can, but it's a lawless and ungovernable enterprise, with nobody having any enforceable rights.
....
House and Senate merge? No. Read up on bicameral versus unicameral legislative power as limitations on power, and in America the Senate's role as a saucer. It makes sense especially when the Congress is a huge body to begin with and when dealing with classified information and covert matters of state; in which case a higher tier with a smaller group and longer terms makes sense to protect our secrets.
This is the also the only idea, along with Supreme Court term limits, that requires a Constitutional Amendment. The others are much more feasible and reasonable.
...
But yeah, other than that, this list makes too much sense for most people. they will shit on it because 1) they have no imagination and 2) they don't have enough knowledge to see that each point actually has a reason and seems to have been given a fair amount of thought
Great band-aids, but doesn't fix the core issue of Capitalism, and as such these changes are likely to be rolled back and exploitation, both local and global, will continue.
In addition, this says nothing of police reform, minority protections, worker democracy, abortion rights, and so forth.
Why? Explain your reasoning. Voting needs reformed, but this isn't the way. I certainly don't want NY and LA deciding every election ever.
No. Why? What on earth would this accomplish. The house and senate are separate for a reason. We need the checks and balances they provide.
Again, why? The house reps are by population of the state/district. We don't need MORE bureaucrats.
Yes, please. US "healthcare" is in shambles. It's a complete disaster and the only people that benefit are Insurance companies.
I get the idea, but it's a terrible idea. Fixing the rest will even out the income situation. Turning ALL your citizens into entitled brats is not a great idea.
Absolutely not. Eliminate mail in voting except in extreme cases that need to be applied for. Instead, institute a FREE Govt Issued photo voter ID. Expand voting areas and hours. Make Voting day a paid holiday. I don't wanna hear any racist shit about "poor black people can't find the voting places". Bullshit. Make AT LEAST one HS Gym a voting area in every county. Make it EASIER to vote in person. It's a duty, honor, and responsibility for people to vote.
, 9. , 10. , 13. Soft Disagree. Our tax system no doubt needs an overhaul. You'll have everyone "making" more than $50 getting around it somehow. Look into the Fair tax. Eliminate ALL taxes. embedded, import, state, local, federal, income, capital gains, etc. implement a level sales tax on everything. Don't want to pay taxes, don't buy shit. everyone pays their FAIR share that way, and there is no way for the rich to get out of paying. This would eliminate the IRS and 'tax preparation companies'. Which I don't really understand this issue with those companies. No one is forcing you to use them. And there is absolutely NO WAY i want the IRS doing my taxes FOR me. fuck all that noise. But again, implement the fair tax and IRS goes away anyway.
Lifetime appointments are bogus, but i think i a role like SCOTUS, longer terms are required. I read something here about aging out and I like that as an option.
sure, on board.
Guess i don't really understand this. Explain?
Plenty of other things. Term limits for congress.
Make congress abide by the rules they set for us including insurance, healthcare, stock trading etc. While we're at it, create a congressional village of sorts. You're assigned a house/duplex/dorm etc while you are SERVING in congress. no more "NEED" to have a house in DC and in your home state. If congress people can't survive on their $150k a year salary, what hope do the rest of us have?
Eliminate lobbyists. That's just "legal" bribery.
We need to fix immigration. having an unbridled flow of people come across the border isn't good. I have no problem with people wanting to come to this country, but there's a reason we have a limit. There needs to be a complete overhaul of the process.
Make secondary education WAYYYY more affordable, or free.
Stop giving out so much foreign aid, and close military bases anywhere they are not directly needed around the world. we are not the world police. you can't pour from and empty cup and our cup is empty to the tune of 30some TRILLION dollars. Once we fix our money problems, then we can start handing it out again.
Start holding government officials, included law enforcement accountable. End qualified immunity. Start enforcing laws we already have instead of the glut of new ones every single year.
DEMAND that congress pass a balanced budget every year. no more of this dog and pony show of 'govt shut downs'. If the govt shuts down, those in charge should be fired and replaced by people willing and able to perform the duties they were elected to do.
Allow Cities, Municipalities, States etc to SAVE money. By that I mean, don't treat yearly budgets as "use it or lose it". We as citizens are told to save, save, save, yet every govt entity spends every dime they have every year so their budget doesn't shrink the next year. Putting safeguards into place so the money can't be used as bonuses etc would allow govt entities to have a "rainy day fund" per se.
Eliminate the words "school lunch debt" from our vocabulary. Feed children that need it. and feed them good food. not the radioactive waste that gets slopped up in school cafeterias across the nation.
Eliminate the ability for the govt to use Social Security like their own little piggy bank. If they INSIST on using the money, it needs priority in repayment @ the tune of 150% of money borrowed. This would be the mandatory first thing on the following year's budget.
If we can afford to send people to war, we need to be able to afford to take care of them afterwards.
This is just off the top of my head. The problem is nearly every "solution" here would require people in power to give up that power. That's not going to happen easily or quitely.
Pay reparations to victims of Jim Crow/Segregation and descendants of those bound by the practice of Chattle Slavery.
Nationalize the telecom corporations. Use the profits to fund a Bell Laboratories type research institute as well as public college departments in the relevant fields.
Nationalize the freight railroads. Use the profits to fund a high quality bus system in rural areas, an "Interstate-style" 110-125 mph regional/commuter passenger rail system nationwide, and develop 155-200+ mph HSR corridors between appropriate city pairs.
Initiate planning for metro/light rail systems in every city with a population of 250k or higher.
End the Embargo on Cuba and fully normalize relations. Shutter and remove the facilities at Guantanamo Bay; return the land to the Cuban government and pay reparation for it's theft.
End NATO while helping the EU organize it's own native unified defense force. Form a new treaty with the EU for common defense.
Forgive all debt the US holds from co-called "third world" nations.
Remove all "NeoLiberal" stipulations and restrictions the IMF has placed on so-called "third world" nations.
Pass a federal law ending so-called "Right to Work" at the state level and triple the NLRB's budget.
End the funding of public schools through local property tax and replace it with a Federal tax on corporations.
Bust up Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet into their viable constituent parts.
Formally recognize the nation of Palestine at the UN.
Universal vote by mail? No. I can imagine several situations where votes "go missing" or "suddenly appear" and any investigation would have a really hard time finding evidence.
You missed step one, which is to not live in the United States. Alternatively live in a parallel universe where any of this would be politically achievable.
Ranked choice voting systems are cool but I have a lot of doubt about it actually changing much in the way of who ends up in government. The government is filled with people who align quite neatly with the people who participate in party primaries.
It always seems like a thing that people imagine is going to result in their preferred government. Really though it is the voters you disagree with and the system mostly (if somewhat imperfectly) reflects their desires.
If you want (for instance) more left candidates to get into office, you have to start at the bottom and build a big bench of left candidates with proven track records who have a base of support. You can’t air drop a socialist into the potus race and expect voters to catch up with you. Stategic voting is a small problem, not voting is a much bigger one.
Nobody votes third party because it's pointless. That in turn means new parties have no reason to exist. Once it was actually possible to vote for a third party while still making a choice between the top 2, people would do that, and options would appear.
Yeah, I understand how it works. I’m just don’t believe that strategic voting is really holding back candidates that I might like better. I think other voters are turning up to dem primaries in greater numbers.
Like I said, I like ranked choice, let’s do it. But, be prepared to see very little change.
Without switching to multi-winner elections, the voting system will do very little. My preference is Approval Voting for single-seat elections and Proportional Approval Voting for multi-winner elections.
I’m not even sure this is true. Certainly many people do vote third party, since they do get votes. Are there actual statistics on this or just online anecdotes?
I can only give personal anecdotes:
I’ve voted third party for President twice
My vote for one of the major parties is also pointless, since my state leans strongly in one direction
we don’t even get national campaigns, since we’re not a swing state. They also know my vote is pointless
I don't have statistics, but I see lots of Democrats voters saying "I don't like them but at least it's not Trump", and divisions among Republican voters as well. There does seem to be a lot of people who are "forced" to vote for a party even though it's not their ideal choice. A lot of the discourse isn't about what you want, but about making sure the other party won't win. With ranked choice you could actually choose what you actually want, because there is no risk of "letting the other party win".
I’ve voted third party for President twice
And so you ended up having no say on the actual choice. I applaud your idealism, but surely you can agree most people won't entertain that because they will think it's a wasted vote. All these people would maybe vote for your third party choice if they knew their vote won't end up helping the candidate they deem the worst.
My vote for one of the major parties is also pointless, since my state leans strongly in one direction
we don’t even get national campaigns, since we’re not a swing state. They also know my vote is pointless
It leans strongly on the D <-> R axis. If there were 10 other parties trying to get votes, they would campaign in your state to get them and your vote would matter. Even if the D or R is guaranteed to be above the other in your state, ranked choice would allow other parties to be above this pair, while still guaranteeing everyone's D/R choice is respected if it comes to it.
Exactly, where with the current system votes for a candidate may end up getting someone else elected, and you get strategic voting instead of voting for what you want.
For example you have a lot of expenses, but you also want to remove most VAT. But you're also freeing up income for the more poor. You don't need to overdo giving poorer people money, it needs to be enough, not too much. There's better ways to invest that money, for example into increasing the quality of said universally health care. You can always increase the tax on higher brackets to extreme numbers and making transferring money out more difficult.
Likewise, while I am fully behind abolishing company personhood, it is, sadly, absolutely impractical. It should happen, but it won't.
And likewise, a separate senate can be useful, it just needs to be used differently. The idea is to have a second - smaller - group that can essentially send bills back to the bill-writing group for purposes such as "this is worded too broadly" or "this is too partisan" and so on. They cannot actually change law, they're there to make sure that changes to law uphold a certain standard of writing and specificity.
So the system doesn't work (and didn't really in the best of times), everyone else successfully moved forwards - but because the system might work in theory, you should stick with it?
Ngl, sounds like copy-pasted from propaganda brochure.
Don't give "too much money to the poor"? What even is the worst case for that when you have production levels where a) there should be no poor people to even give them money and b) even giving "too much money" to everyone right now wound only marginally effect the economy.
Like, is there a threat that they will use that money to lobby the government to increase taxes for the rich?
Or perhaps that would make for a better world and kinder society which wound be absolutely terrible? Can't live in a society without poor people? Dude.
Americans like to argue that increasing taxes lowers GDP (but actually just short-term stock prices) yet I've never met anyone that in case of eg 90% average tax on their 10 million income would just say 'fuck it, one million is not worth it, it's basically the same as living homeless on the street so I'm just gonna do that'.
Don’t give “too much money to the poor”? What even is the worst case for that when you have production levels where a) there should be no poor people to even give them money and b) even giving “too much money” to everyone right now wound only marginally effect the economy.
How do you mean? Maybe that read wrong - again, not a native speaker - but I meant that instead of just giving everyone more and more free-floating cash, once you've tackled societal poverty to an acceptable enough degree, it seems far more important to transfer extra cash stripped from billionaires etc into projects that enhance the quality of life for everyone, like public free healthcare, free public transport, free internet access, etc etc.
Sure, everyone wants and frankly needs a certain amount of money they can freely spend on luxury items even beyond a basic need, but once a certain level of that is achieved, I feel there's so many society-benefitting projects that should get money first. That is to say, we should not try to repeat the same mistake that ultimate led to the shit we're in now, the whole "more money is more better" error. Enough money + not much need for money to begin with feels much more stable to me.
Oh, yes, I understand that as the same thing - giving money to people (negative taxes) and building them infrastructure (that they don't need to pay for as there isn't a profit invective).
And absolutely the second thing, building infrastructure for the people, is way better and more efficient. I don't need as much money/basic income to live in a world with good public transport, healthcare, housing, etc.
I'm not even a big advocate for money as a concept going forward actually.
Sorry if I misunderstood you (not a native speaker either), we are thinking the same thing, the function of basic income now (overcoming living costs greatly influenced by profit margins) is not the same as what it's function would be if companies had less power over people.
None of this is meant to be what I think is going to happen, it's what I think should happen. I like thinking about solutions. Congress isn't actually capable of implementing this stuff because it's corrupt as shit and we're headed towards a recession.
I consider it conservative to instantly dismiss a list of solutions to real problems. "That's impractical" is typically translated to "I'm far too fucking lazy to think about that topic, let's leave things how they are"
Hrm, okay? You yourself really drank the Conservative koolaid though if you can only think in black and white with no further nuance.
Everything is a trade-off in life. Every solution costs something else. Its funny that you accuse someone who couldn't be less conservative if they tried of that, just because I would like to actually change something, not just talk about it - and hence need workable solutions not utopian ideas. Though as I said to the op, on an utopian level I agree of course.
Yes, everything costs something, including inaction, and there is enough budget to cover that cost ... so instead of looking at it like a trade-off you might look at it like a purchase of 'a better life for most' with the 'money/labour you already made'.
I've always heard that abolishing corporate personhood would make them untaxable. I don't know for sure, but I imagine you'd have to be very careful with that one. That said, I understand the general goal, and I'm for it.
Treating juridical persons as having legal rights allows corporations to sue and to be sued, provides a single entity for easier taxation and regulation, simplifies complex transactions that would otherwise involve, in the case of large corporations, thousands of people, and protects the individual rights of the shareholders as well as the right of association.
Not American, but I would add some severe roadblocks to anything that makes basic housing an "investment".
Here here.
FYI, it's "hear, hear" as in, hear this, hear this.
Heir heir
Hair hair
Har har
Add in an office for a publicly owned rail system.
It’s pretty simple, just have a new real estate investment tax that is only levelled on residential properties you own but do not reside in, and that tax needs to be set at a rate higher than the property market is expected to gain. E.g. (with made-up numbers) if the property market gains 5% value per year on average, set the tax rate at 10% of the value per year. There’s an insanely slim chance you can still make money on the investment, but 99+% of investors would dump their properties immediately, leading to a massive crash where average people could suddenly afford to buy the home they’ve been renting.
Ooh ooh I love these.
Wouldn't this have the effect of increasing rent by 10% of the cost of the property each year?
A policy this significant would cause a market crash so massive that it would entirely reshape the market. I don’t think any of us could genuinely guess how it will work out.
My hope is that it would cause a crash so significant that essentially all owned properties that are not lived in enter the market, causing homes to be sold for insanely low prices in order to avoid paying taxes, causing rates of home ownership to skyrocket. The government then needs to buy up anything leftover to rent as social and affordable housing to low-income people who can’t afford a mortgage at that time. Crashing house prices also mean that the value of these taxes drops in absolute terms as well.
Then we have a situation where everyone who has a stable income owns a home, and those who can’t will rent directly from the government at extremely affordable rates. Homes are the object we as humans own that we regularly lease to one another the most - particularly for profit or capital gain. It’s super weird and it needs to stop.
The main issue is that economists would shit their pants because so much GDP growth is locked up in our property markets. It would cause at least a recession, if not a depression, and depending on which country did it, the effects could ricochet throughout the global economy such as during the GFC.
Well, you're right about the epic market crash, also right that it's unpredictable, but then you go on to predict a bunch of things which seem extremely unlikely to me.
The thing is, a "crash" is not just a lowering of prices until everyone can afford the repayments on a house.
The kind of crash you're taking about here is more like a market failure. Yes all banks would become insolvent but that's kind of like saying the toilets on the titanic became "out of order" when it sank.
You'd basically revert to subsistence farming. Everyone living in a community of more than a few hundred would die of starvation or disease. Mexico, China, or Russia would roll in to permanently "provide aid".
What you say also seems extremely unlikely to me, given that humans who have sufficiently advanced to the state we live in now will be unwilling to accept subsistence lifestyle.
I didn’t predict anything; you’ll note I said that this is what I would hope happens.
I’m not talking about a market failure; I’m talking about trying to take away the whole concept of a ‘market’ applying to residential real estate altogether. Because it’s so intertwined with the value of our economies, taking it away will cause a significant, permanent shrinking of GDP and other economic measures, and I think that’s appropriate given the circumstances we’re in now.
It’s a big and bold move, and as I’ve said before none of us can be exactly sure how it would pan out, but nothing is gained in life if nothing is ventured. We need to try something. I say this as someone who is lucky enough to be able to have a mortgage: it’s inherently unfair that my fellow citizens have to miss out on that opportunity.
Sorry, I meant that subsistence agriculture would be the only possible lifestyle, not a chosen one.
Each of us are talking about a crash or collapse of completely different magnitude.
At the risk of sounding too preppy, I think societal collapse is absolutely possible due to what we might think is a fairly minor supply chain interruption.
Regardless, it's a moot point. No one is going to crash the economy so you can buy a house I'm sorry.
I think you might have missed where I said this:
Agree a thousand percent. Some ideas:
No corporate home ownership
If multiple properties are owned they must be run as a non-profit
Move to a land-value tax so that holding undeveloped land as an investment is not viable.
it's been a while since I've heard about it, but iirc LVT generally evaluates and decides on taxes based on proximity to other developments, so undeveloped land or poor density land that is close to more developed housing, is taxed more heavily, while land out in the boonies isn't taxed very heavily. it's supposed to incentivize development in more desirable places to live, and naturally eliminate situations in which higher value plots end up getting bought up by rich people for their whims.
at the same time, it's still a solution that's ultimately relying on the free market to maximize their profit margins, and that being good for society, it's just decreasing the relative profit margins for each plot of land through higher taxes. it still retains harmful forms of development, it just, potentially, eliminates them more naturally, compared to explicit bans.
It would still work with a heavily regulated market. And in my opinion would need to be paired with zoning regulations and environmental policy. For example a stretch of wilderness that happens to be on top of a vein of coal would have the same value and tax as the same land without the coal if regulations prevent coal mining, adjusting incentives away from the most harmful uses.
Edit: grammar
It would still work in a heavily regulated market, yeah, but the thing with georgism is that it tends to be advertised as a kind of one-size-fits-all solution to the housing market, as a highly sought after "single tax" or "perfect tax". If you look at the historical ties of georgism which I also kind of struggle to remember, I think I remember that being kind of, the thing about it, was that it was aligned with like, the dominant labor parties, but was kind of seen as too moderate and singularly committed of a position.
So, the tax itself is cool, and agreeable, but the georgists as a kind of, party, and georgism as a philosophy built around a singular tax, I'm still not sure about. I'm skeptical of silver-bullet solutions, which is what georgism is often made out to be. It also gives me bad vibes because anytime I hear someone talking so highly about some obscure 19th or 20th century political philosophy, it gives me the same alarm bells as people who want to be rhodesian infantrymen, or people who want to be dengists, or shit like that. I dunno. Henry george was an interesting and prescient dude but he was also in many ways a product of his time, I think. Here's marx talking about him in a letter I haven't read, might interest you I guess.
Good point about people speaking 'highly about some obscure 19th or 20th century political philosophy' ringing certain alarm bells. I certainly share your skepticism. I wouldn't call myself a 'Goergist'. I do think LVT is worth looking into when trying to solve land-hoarding and wealthy entities treating property as an investment portfolio at the expense of families in need of homes.
Yeah that is a good question. It is meant to tax strictly the value of the land. So undeveloped rural land will be taxed very low, vs say undeveloped urban land. The idea is to incentivize productive land use of more valuable land so that as the value of the land goes up, it becomes untenable not to put it to use. In your case, it the land is unbuildable then then the tax would be quite low, even if things to get built up around you. This is just the tip of the iceberg of an economic theory called Georgism, that I am still wrapping my head around.
The problem with that is there is a very clear policy purpose and interest in making housing an investment - the vast vast majority of people will eventually own a home, and it is a forced savings vehicle because people are REALLY bad at saving for retirement. Even if you fix our lack of a social safety net, home ownership is generally seen as a public good because it encourages people investing more in and caring about their community, being willing to pay higher taxes to support more services, etc. It's not a no brainer to make housing an investment (there are arguments against in a society with a good social safety net), but it is very purposeful through good public policy. It has little to do with the recent (very recent, relatively) buying up of single family homes by investment banks, etc, despite people implying all the time it's some secret cabal and shadowy wealthy figures doing it for their own benefit. Everyone sees conspiracies everywhere these days.
Of course, if we're going to say that home ownership is "good" and keep doing all the tax incentives for it, we do need to stop corporations speculating and driving up housing costs, and could do so by some targeted taxes on unoccupied properties in the same portfolio. But there's an argument to be made that that's a relatively small portion of the problem, since a lot of our housing stock issues can be traced back to single family zoning issues, as well as road and highway funding leading to suburban sprawl and unaffordable newly developed subdivisions while cheaper starter homes don't exist anymore...but either way affordable housing stock just hasn't kept up.
Why would you merge the Senate and the House, especially in the direction of the House? The Senate, being a statewide race, has a tendency to attract moderates as they need to appeal to a much broader group. The House, being significantly more local, more easily allows extremist views on both sides of the aisle. Expanding the seats and ensuring representatives represent roughly equal number of constituents as each other will itself go a long way.
The term limit of SCOTUS seems low. That almost syncs with a double run of a president allowing some to get potentially multiple appointments while others get none. That leaves the stability of the court left in some part to chance. Expanding the courts and setting the term limit in a way that each president generally gets an appointment per term would help deradicalizing the courts.
There should probably be some incentive to actually encourage domestic job production. In a global economic environment without such incentive there will continue to be job losses and even with UBI an unnecessary burden will increase over the years. That can threaten stability and lead to cutting life saving services. A CCC program can help a lot, but we also need private industry to seek domestic labor more broadly.
Municipalize infrastructure and health production. The government should actually own some factories and produce goods itself rather than the bloated bidding contractor stuff.
Don't let public employees leave their positions only to be immediately hired back as a contractor at a much higher rate. If you want to work for the public sector, work for the public sector.
Pay public sector workers (including academia) enough to allow people that actually want to pursue those careers to live comfortably and to entice more people to transition into those careers.
Fund education for all for as long as they want it. Educating your populace means you will have a more skilled and more innovative workforce which will lead to better outcomes for everyone.
Significantly reduce copyright protections. They should not let anywhere near a lifetime, and they just serve to hamper derivative innovation.
Here’s my Supreme Court fantasy:
Every president appoints one justice, but only in their second term if reelected. Fuck cares how many justices there are at any given time.
Here’s the catch: There’s no term limit and technically no age limit… but in order to qualify, any nominee must have served at least 20 years as a federal judge and have another 15 years in the legal system (as a judge, attorney, whatever), for 35 years total experience. Oh and they should have a law degree, since that’s not a requirement right now lol.
This way you get someone with a judicial record to consider at confirmation hearings, and make sure they’re incidentally old enough that they’ll die or retire relatively soon in case they turn out to be fucking horrible.
What happens if you have a streak of single term presidents, with no new judges appointed?
I would rather see a lottery system implemented. Every year, the oldest standing percentage of judges gets retired and replaced with randomly picked judges out of a pool that meets certain requirements (these can be debated). No election, no appointment, using an auditable system, and participation is compulsory, with strict restrictions of what activities the judge is allowed to participate in while serving so that they're discouraged from staying on term too long.
Jury duty for judges. Interesting thought!
What if we turned it into a virtual supreme court like that?
Every case gets heard 2-3 times, Judges are randomly assigned from the pool of federal judges that meet qualifications.
This body could vote to impeach their members, and courts are randomly assembled for a few months at a time
The idea being, the supreme Court has one job - to decide matters of law, meaning they decide edge cases and conflicts. They need to understand the law, not have power - the goal is consistency in applying the law. A method to find consensus among top judges seems a lot more stable and effective than individuals
second-term presidents having expanded power seems scary. otherwise this all seems cool. any ideas about reforming lower federal judge appointments by the president?
The problem with the Senate is that it gives land more power than people. The weight given to a Senate voter in a less populated state like Montana is like 40x that of a voter in a state like California. Abolishing the Senate would move the power of each voter closer to equality. Anti-gerrymandering measures would get you the rest of the way there.
You understand, I appreciate you. Realize you are thinking for yourself and you represent an individual who would make the world a better place if you speak loud.
You can still expand the seats and ensure that reps have roughly an equal number of constituents for a state wide race.
This needs to be more.
Fix the education system to promote children. Feed and nurture them. Give them healthy foods to fuel their minds. Feed them 3x a day if needed. Stop allowing the people to decide if this should be covered by taxes.
Eliminate grade blocks (tiers, years, whatever) so kids that excel and not be hampered by kids that don’t want to be there. I was so bored until grade 5, then someone recognized my abilities and fostered them. I was the class clown and acted out because i was bored until I was shifted into a different class which was advanced in every way. If I show top grades, maybe I shouldn’t be held back because little Tommy the bully is a dipshit (he deserves to learn at his own pace).
In later years, remove redundant classes and replace with trades for students that are not excelling. Teach them viable skills. No one needs to have history classes in high schools, unless it serves a purpose. The only option for someone with zero skills should not be military school.
And for the love that is all wholly educational, pay our teachers so much better. Promote teachers that show drive (regardless of student year). Also mandate continuing education for them.
You missed a very important one, fix the main reason billionaires don't pay any tax:
Using your unrealised gains (e.g. shares) as collatoral to take out loans should be considered realising those gains and thus subject to capital gains tax
I wouldn't set a hard number value for this. Make it based on how low income is defined, or something dynamic that can change over the years with inflation.
For example, in parts of California you could be making $80k and you would still be considered low income because of how expensive it is just to live there. After paying for housing, there won't be much left over.
At minimum, tie it to inflation. But better yet, tie to cost of living and housing prices in a district.
The problem with that is that will cause areas to drive up housing prices to expand the untaxed group to general more "upper middle class" to price out undesirables and draw in higher earners as a form of tax break. This already happens without the tax bracket scaling and would probably get 10x worse.
I don't have a great alternative, but maybe a weighted CoL combined with 0% below median income in the district? Something like that, but that would probably cause low CoL areas to pay way more taxes. Maybe I am thinking of it wrong.
Or to GDP, so lower income people will benefit from increase in productivity via lower taxes?
There are no financial reforms on this wish list, which are necessary to make these other reforms stick:
The lobbying one is prickly. Hiring an advocate for groups like homeless people, charities, minorities, protected classes, etc. may be a necessary evil to help ensure that people are heard out. At the same time, it leaves the door wide open for anyone with big piles of money to do the same thing. I suppose we could say that a repaired election process would provide all the coverage we need, but then we're probably back to "tyranny of the majority" arguments. I'm not saying it's solvable, but clearly something should be changed.
I think we already know what people have higher needs and have been historically marginalized and exploited. Instead of relying on private funding, we can have the state employ people to work on the project of "leveling the playing field". that committee or bureau would be transparent to the public and have elected positions within it but not be ultimately ruled by those elected officials. we could have people with verifiable community backgrounds employed on a regular and/or contract basis. this could allow work with regional groups and even more granular than that. basically i imagine providing them grants and resources to get the pulse of the communities they serve and channel that info back through. the people that know how best to serve local communities are the advocates within them.
You'll need a constitutional amendment or a radical change up in the Supreme Court to abolish PACs. That's considered a free speech issue. I am not sure I have high hopes of a constitutional amendment being passed in our lifetimes.
And shadow pools, and SEC very-obvious-not-even-hiding-it corruption, and financial institutions with way to high random frees, limit banks profiting short-term so much from eg monetary policy changes, etc.
angry John Hancock noises
Actually pretty close to the Electoral College part. The National Popular Vote currently has 205 EC votes across 16 states, it would need at least 65 more to go into effect at which point there would never be an outcome different than the national popular vote winner becoming president ever again.
Examples of presidents who lost the popular vote:
Donald Trump - Margin 2,868,686 (−2.10%)
George W. Bush - Margin 543,895 (−0.51%)
Benjamin Harrison - Margin 90,596 (−0.79%)
Rutherford B. Hayes - Margin 254,235 (−3.02%)
John Quincy Adams - Margin 38,149 (−10.44%)
For anybody wondering who won against Bush in the Good Timeline, it was Al Gore. The guy who realized Climate Change was an existential threat to us all back before the ice caps started flooding the atmosphere with methane.
It hurts to see you have to explain the Bush v Gore stuff. I was a kid but I remember living through it pretty vividly.
Simply removing/raising the cap on House of Representatives would give us most of the benefit - representation could be closer to actual population and electoral college presumably matches.
I would add, "abolish gerrymandering," at the top of that list. I'm not entirely sure how, "merge Senate into the House," would work, but I think that's probably a bad idea.
Some people complain about the the Senate because it gives each state 2 Senators, so less populace states have outsized power, but that's kinda the point. It may not seem very fair, but neither is the 5 most populace states voting to strip mine the Midwest, which is the kind of thing the Senate is meant to be a bulwark against. The Senate does put too much power in the hands of too few, but I think a better way to fix that would be to take away the Senate's power to confirm appointments and shorten Senate terms, not abolishing it or, "merging it into the House," (though again, I'm not entirely sure what that would entail, so maybe it would work).
this is the easiest one to fix. Stop letting the current party draw voting districts.
Have a government bureaucratic department do it, like in civilized countries. Have rules for it, and have it be accountable to the DOJ (or similar).
I would go with computer generated district lines based on population, with some sort of non-partisan or bipartisan zoning committee to review and approve them, but there are tons of workable solutions. The problem is both parties benefit from gerrymandering, so there's no political will to fix it. The solution is simple, but not easy.
You're never going to eliminate gerrymandering without switching to proportional representation. I prefer to use Sequential Proportional Approval Voting, which is just Approval Voting with extra steps.
My two suggestions for OP are:
Simplify and focus the list. It's too long and touches too many different topics. Also, when you do have a full list with every topic, separate them by category.
As stated above, use Approval Voting and Proportional Representation.
This is very interesting, but I'm struggling to see how it would work within our current system of single-district representatives. Would Congressional Districts be abolished, and each state pick their allocated Congressmen through Approval Voting? I also don't see what benefits Approval Voting has over Rank Choice Voting other than simplicity.
There's plenty of ways to do it. The simplest would be to quintuple the size of the house and elect five winners to every district. Literally nothing else would have to change. Five member districts are considered the smallest that are functionally immune to gerrymandering efforts.
A more reasonable suggestion is to start implementing these reforms on the state and local level, where referendums are possible and you have an easier time building a big enough organization to actually get shit done.
As for Approval vs RCV, the simplest answer is that they usually agree on the results [all the way down the line]https://electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/super-tuesday-deep-voting-methods-dive/), but approval is simpler and easier in every respect. Both systems tend to produce a candidate support graph that looks like exponential decay in real life. The complicated answer gets into voting theory/math and all sorts of technical criterion. While I think those arguments are valid, most poling and real world data seem to show that basically anything other than "choose one" is good enough, so I prefer the method that is easiest to explain to voters and hardest for candidates to claim shenanigans.
Interesting, I've never heard about this system before, it definitely sounds interesting. I think this will be my next rabbit hole, thanks for sharing!
Doesn't removing electoral college remove the need for zones?
Or is that a problem on local county levels as well?
The electoral college is a mostly separate problem. The biggest problem caused by gerrymandering is partisan divides in the House of Representatives. Congressional Districts are drawn to keep districts as red or blue as possible, so Congress gets made up by extremists. If districts were drawn fairly, politicians would need to appeal to a broader community, and their positions would be more nuanced. Gerrymandering essentially lets the politicians pick their voters instead of voters picking their politicians.
Ohh, right, yes, parties and polarisation that only benefits politicians. I always need some time to fully remember what I know about the USA political system.
I would have agreed on the Senate 20 years ago. But it has so clearly become the stick with which about 15 percent of the country beats the entire rest of the country.
At some point you have to call it as an abusive body.
Yes, but I think that's more of a problem with our politics rather than the senate. The Republicans have gone to political extremes that just aren't popular with the majority of the country, so they struggle to pass legislation that their base would approve of through the House. Instead, they adopted a culture of obstruction in the Senate, because blocking legislation is all they can do. There are ways that their ability can obstruct can be limited, like abolishing the filibuster, but changing the culture of extremism is the only long-term solution.
Ending gerrymandering is probably the biggest institutional fix towards that goal. Right now, Congressional Districts are basically giant echo chambers that amplify the most extreme voices. Breaking down those chambers and forcing politicians to appeal to a plurality of random voters should bring rhetoric down to sane levels, and that should apply to both the House and the Senate.
I know how it got that way but it's not going to change even with the filibuster removed. It needs to go. It was a great idea when we were more decentralized and we knew less about democracy. But we can replace it with a national proportionally representative body and leave the House as the geographical representative.
Hmm...that's definitely an interesting idea, but it still gives the highly populated states unchecked power over the smaller states. Either way, if the house remains the same, then gerrymandering will still need to end.
The idea of larger and smaller states is effectively dead. We're a centralized country and the only thing going on right now is the states that have made life too shitty for people to stay are holding the rest of the country hostage.
It was a great idea in 1792. But not in 1992.
I don't think that's true at all. I'm not one of those, "states rights," guys that believes that every state should decide who gets basic human rights, but I do think there are tons of ways larger states could use their outsized power against smaller states. The one that comes to mind is nuclear waste storage, which was a huge fight in the 80s that required a lot of negotiation. Imagine if New York, Texas, California, Pennsylvania, and Florida just got together with and decided Montana just had to manage it all.
Also, considering the western states have a much higher percentage of federal land than eastern states, their communities are much more likely to get screwed by the federal government. If I lived in Utah, where the vast majority of the land in my state is under federal control, I would certainly want more than 3 out of 435 Representatives in the federal government.
You're forgetting that under this proposal we balance the House of Representatives with a national proportional representation legislature. And we can certainly uncap the house of representatives. So the "small" states can easily form a caucus in either chamber.
That said. Nuclear storage is actually a great issue to bring up. We're going to need to store it somewhere and that place needs very specific things. Using the Senate as a NIMBY method so hard it doesn't get stored anywhere is the perfect example of the dysfunction inherent in the Senate.
Don't forget mandatory voting.
Making everyone vote even if they don't really care means that working your supporters up into a frothing rage doesn't work. They're already all going to turn up. If you want to actually win elections, you suddenly have to win over the middle.
If you do that, make sure it's a guaranteed public holiday or have laws in place to ensure workers can get time off to vote.
the way this works in australia is that election day is always a sunday (i think? or saturday?) but you can early vote at any number of larger polling stations without giving a reason… also postal vote
but given your name, maybe you know that? :p
Or, you know, just have mail in voting available nationwide.
It has more advantages than just the ones you describe, although even that alone is good enough reason to do it.
It also forces the government to make voting easy. To put them at a time when a maximum number of people can make it (in Australia elections are on a Saturday, when most people are not working—prepoll is also extremely easy to do they just ask you if you're unable to vote on election day, without requiring any actual proof, and postal voting not much harder than that). To have numerous places to vote within easy access of where everyone is.
No it doesn't. I could easily see Republicans making voting very difficult under such a system, particularly within zip codes that vote for Democrats. This would punish Dem supporters who failed to vote, and would generally make the public hostile to mandatory voting - which would help build public support for the abolition of such mandatory voting
The government is only incentivized to make voting easy if all major parties are loyal to the public. That isn't the case in the United States
This website is disgustingly authoritarian. Force people to vote? Fucking christ.
I don't think mandatory voting is a good solution. This is mostly practices in autocratic/dictatorial states, and would have a bad taste to it.
What should be done is to either make voting day a public holiday (with mandatory "half day off" rule for anyone who would still have to work in retail or services), or just move it to a Sunday, like many other countries have done ages ago.
Australia is a dictatorship?
It is the surprising exception to the rule. I never questioned this, but are there any real reasons for mandatory voting in Australia?
We have a small population and mandatory voting means everyone gets a vote by default. We also have a different culture around voting because the majority of us have to do it. We have sausage sizzles and democracy dogs. I've personally worked at polls all over my state and there's never been a line longer than 10 people. It takes most people like 5 mins max to vote. We make voting easy in Australia because everyone has to do it.
It's worth noting that it's not all that mandatory. It's relatively easy to simply avoid enrolling to vote. You're not automatically enrolled in other words. Also it's really easy to just sign your name off at the poll and hand in a blank vote. The worst outcome of not voting is a fine that you can pretty easily get out of as well.
In the US, this is also part of our divisiveness. I’ve always found biting to be quick, easy, convenient. Never much of a line and it moves fast. Registration to vote is by default at RMV or can be done directly. Mail in or absentee voting is trivially available.
Stories of people waiting in line for hours is just as alien to me as it is to you. You cant escape the obvious correlations where it is more difficult to vote depending on which political party is dominant, the wealth of the voting area, and racial makeup. It also strongly corresponds with gerrymandering.
Is Belgium also a surprising exception?
No, obviously you have a dictator king with prima nocta in the constitution as an obligation - he now has to sleep with every single newly wed (separately) on their (same) wedding night or be executed.
But it's tradition, it would be wrong to change it now. If I was fucked by the king, so needs to be everyone else or it wouldn't be fair.
(This post was made with the help of /s)
I think this is the wrong question. Why is voting optional? We can crow about nebulous "freedom", but we are forced to do much harder things all the time. Once every few years, we're asked to make a few decisions.
If the idea is that the citizens select leaders, but it's incredibly easy to opt out, what you have is a biased selection committee. We can argue all day about the various biases involved and if they matter, but the reality is that it's not burdensome on Australians and it actually makes sense to get your source election data as close to based on public sentiment as you can.
Supreme Court should be subject to ethics laws and rules, not exempt from them
Rules adjudicated by whom? You'd need another independent judiciary specifically tasked with overseeing the SCOTUS, and there's a lot of reasons why that would be a dicey proposition.
Even if they’re responsible for policing themselves, you’d get a huge improvement by making them write it down. We shouldn’t have Clarence Thomas claiming he didn’t know that accepting $100k+ is an obvious conflict of interest.
My company has no problem writing down ethics policies for me - I’m sure they’d let the supremes copy it. We even have regular training to clarify edge cases that Clarence Thomas claimed to not understand. I’m sure they could subscribe to the same service
Would you? Do you seriously think guys like Kavanaugh and Alito would sincerely self-report? Or would they just lie with impunity and dare you to call their bluffs?
Who holds Thomas to account when he's caught perjuring himself? What court do you put him in front of?
Without a doubt, because you're staff and they're the boss. But there's no one to hold the owner of a company to its own internal policies. Not when the owner gets to author, adjudicate, and dictate the administration of those policies. No Twitter HR rep is going to rein in Elon Musk.
Currently, they not only judge themselves but decide what their standards are.
Clarence Thomas was found out, and we’re all outraged. So far, he’s claiming various versions of ignorance and there’s no rule against it. Writing down ethical standards mean he can no longer make those claims. He’d have no excuse, no way to delay.
You’re right that he still might not be held accountable, but it is a step in the right direction
Okay, sure. But then he just makes a new set of bullshit claims, and nobody exists in a position to call him on it.
If it was a step we were taking, I won't object. Part of the problem with this bullshit is that reforms are almost always DOA, outside of hypothetical debates. But if I'm starting from a blank slate and told "Fix the SCOTUS", I'd dream a bit bigger than a rule with no teeth.
Missing:
Disallow corporate campaign donations
Politicians prohibited from owning stocks
You're missing some voting reform, but full props for putting voting reform at the top of the list.
Some suggestions:
I have a few to add.
Gerrymandering eliminated nationally with mathematically randomized district maps with approval required by all major parties and a non-partisan committee, not just the majority party. If no map can be agreed upon, the non-partisan committee gets final say.
(This is more of an amendment to the elimination of the electoral college one...) States do not vote for president, people do. And no person's vote should matter more or less than another because of the state they live in. Therefore, the person elected president is the one who wins the popular vote nationwide.
The sectors of medicine, pharmacy, education, produce, and communications (cellular and internet) should always have well-funded state providers in the same competitive space as any private option. No part of the nation should be without access to any of these public services in a reasonable distance.
Abortion is added as a constitutionally protected right.
An exact definition to the limits on the executive power, privileges and protections of the President.
Ethical rules for Supreme Court Justices with an oversight process (with teeth) to enforce them, with consequences ranging from mandatory recusals for conflicts of interest, to removal from the bench.
Single purpose bills without any tagalong laws attached to them only.
No bill should be brought to vote until enough time has passed since its publishing that both members of congress and the public have had time to thoroughly read and discuss its contents.
A naming convention for bills that does not allow for names that are blatantly attempts at misleading, meant to evoke emotion, or just marketing gimmicks and "clever" acronyms. No more "P.A.T.R.I.O.T.", "Stop W.O.K.E", or "D.R.E.A.M." acts.
A pathway to cutting the military budget to a fraction of what is is today. Maybe a 10 percent reduction in budget each year for 8 years?
good luck with non-partisan
mu funding fathers! /s
That's communism /s (or socialism? I don't know, I agree with you, I'm just thinking what the other side would parrot out). Also, mu (lack of) competition! Think of the poor shareholders! (also /s of course)
with an added clause that says "if you look for a loophole, it means you're automatically wrong. Don't be a dick"
gerrymandering is rendered obsolete by points 1 and 2 on the list...so that's already included in the OP ;)the reason gerrymandering is a thing, is because of the first-past-the-post/winner-takes-all voting system, which ranked choice replaces.ranked choice allows propotional representation, which also fixes the 2 party problem!edit, also fixes your point 2, because under ranked choice there is only a popular vote (also just known as "a vote", because there isn't any other one left)nvm, got something mixed up...shouldn't comment when half asleep...
I think you misunderstand what ranked choice is. You may be thinking of proportional voting, where seats are divied based on the relative percentage of support a party has. That would eliminate Gerrymandering. Ranked choice is just a method of runoff voting for a single seat. It's still very much subject to Gerrymandering.
oh, damn, you're right!
i got that mixed up; i thought ranked choice also includes proportional representation, because it frees up your secondary vote to be for whoever you want it to be, without pressure to vote for a canditate that "has a chance of winning", thus alleviating the issue of strategic voting...but that's pretty much the only thing it does.
but the proportional representation is tied to the way mandates/seats are distributed, which isn't tied to the how the vote works.
so if the senate still had the same number of seats per state, it wouldn't fix representation, because the weight of the votes still wouldn't be equal...
yeah, sorry for the confusion...long day...but thanks for the polite correction!
MORE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
The 10 year term limit for the Supreme Court is trouble. With 9 justices, one party in power for 8 years, which happens often, is more than enough to ideologically set the tone.
I don't mind term limits per se, just not such a short limit.
Removing the house rep cap (more particularly adopting a plan similar to The Wyoming Rule) would be a fantastic idea and allow the house to return back to what it should be, populace representation. As the electoral college is based on combined reps and senators, this also does a fair bit towards resolving the underlying issue there.
Corporate personhood is what allows you to sue a corporation and enter contracts with it. Removing it would not be the best idea with that in mind. The courts have allowed that to go further then it should vis a vis allowing contributions to political campaigns etc. Revert Citizens United and we're largely good.
if one allowed the IRS to file taxes for citizens you wouldn't need to ban tax prep companies since the amount of people buying their products would fall off a cliff.
Police reform. Abortion protection. Web neutrality. Data privacy. Gender affirmative care protection. Legalized weed. Minimum wages tied to inflation, on top of UBU. If we're getting crazy.
substitute inflation with CPI: that’s what we do in australia… inflation is a finance term that kinda doesn’t represent cost of living: you’re seeing that in the US right now i believe where your inflation is actually not terrible, but your cost of living is crazy
CPI does introduce some BS though because it’s not exactly a specific set of rules… we had an issue recently where the govt set CPI lower than what people thought it should be and everyone was pretty outraged
You can cover a lot of gender and abortion issues, with a right to elective medical care.
I'd be okay with keeping the senate. I think the founding fathers had a good idea, Senate was meant to be more "Long term sustainability" while the House was meant to deal with the needs of now.
However, Term Limits. They didn't see senators sitting on their seats until they were over 90 years old. In their day if you made it to 40 you were apparently doing really well.
If you made it to 25 or 30 (age requirements for congress), 40 was not a surprise. A person then was considered old at 65-70, so younger than now, but not much
Rather than abolish the Electoral College and merge the House and Senate, I would suggest massively increasing the size of the House. This would increase the size of the Electoral College too, reducing the distortion of the population while still protecting less populous states. This also has the advantage of being something that can be done through ordinary laws instead of Constitutional amendments.
i think one small addition
bribinglobbyingI think literally all you need is ranked choice voting and the abolishment of corporate personhood and for profit lobbying. The rest will take care of itself.
Ranked choice (also known as instant runoff or IRV) is barely better than first past the post (which is plurality voting). A better choice is 3-2-1 or STAR voting, both of which outperform IRV by a huge margin. But even if those are too complicated for people, Approval voting is still better than IRV.
https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/
I'm a big advocate for approval voting.
I have been also, but I'm open to STAR and 321. The main reason I like AV is because it would short circuit two party dynamics completely.
Or even the D'Hondt method
Merging the two houses won't help. We need proportional representation. Make the senate 600 seats, and a national, proportional election (seats are given based on % of votes for the party). They're still 6 year terms, with elections every two years. Seats are given to any party that can clear 0.5% to start, then the threshold is increased to 2% after 12 years. Then expand the house. Now you have local reps and proportional reps. Much better than giving "states" reps, which makes almost no sense.
That's what the House is for.
The house is Local Representation. You don't vote for what party you want to see control the house, you vote for a local representative to represent you and your neighbors.
It is also that. The two are by necessity the same thing.
No?
Proportional representation is where parties get a number of seats proportional to the percent of votes they get.
Proportional voting methods are often nation-wide, although there's also e.g. mixed member proportional and local 3-5 member districts elected via STV like they do in Ireland.
By making them the same thing, you encourage gerrymandering. In the US, there's no way for a third party to gain any representation. A national, proportional election would force the issue and allow for more diversity in political thought.
But not in the same way that actual proportional representation works. They're distributed by population yes, but they're tied to a geographical location. Real proportional representation is national. So you have one legislative body tied to a district they're supposed to represent, and another tied to the base of voters across the country that elected them.
Most of this could be done with removing lobbying and just call it what it is: bribes. I bet you, once that (which would be extremely hard to pass congress) passes america would be a lot better
Your list implies the US does VAT. It's one of the only places that doesn't.
Instead we have sales tax, and that is actually assessed by the states individually. The Federal government's income is primarily from income tax and various business taxes.
Sales tax has quite a different origin and reasoning behind it than VAT, though.
I'm sure it does, but at present it's something we don't have in America.
Not having VAT is stupid.
Only having it on luxury goods is a ballache.
What's a luxury good? A neckless? What about a cheap wedding ring? Okay fine all jewelry to make instead simple.
Cars? Just take the bus. Driving is a luxury and will make way more in revenue than jewelry, but that won't be passed.
Running shoes aren't a luxury. But what high end fashionable "running shoes"? What about a high end push bike used to get to work, what about the same bike used for fun.
Fuck man you would end up dealing will so much crap trying to work it out it would cost you more than it makes. Just tax rich people more for being rich and let them spend it how they like.
Missing a lot things. Gerrymandering can still occur without the electoral college, tax things seems neat in theory but need to deal with corporate taxes, term limits on the supreme court would make things worse (research indicates an age out system would be better), Police system will still be fundamentally broken, companies will still continue to maximize profit to everyone but the shareholder deficit, stock buybacks are creating major issues and allow companies to game Wallstreet, are just a few things that I think are missing here that need to be addressed.
Oohh this is fun!
Another one: jail employees of companies if they signed off on criminal activities. If I commit 1000 dollar fraud o go to jail, obviously. If a company commits a billion dollar fraud, they get a fraction of revenue fine, really? Jail the fuckers who made those decisions. If you signed off on that decision, then too fucking bad, you go to jail. If a company forces you to commit a crime then quit and report the crime.
the only danger of that is it requires a populace to be aware of ALL crimes, which usually isnt realistic.
oops you didn't put a litium ion battery warning on a box and it shipped on a plane? go to jail.
Not any more than it does now. Ignorantia juris non excusat. Ignorance of the law excuses not. It is a primary doctrine in US law as it stands, I don't see why this case should be any different.
My personal flavor of this idea could down to this: if your company is found guilty of a criminal offense that would result in jail time for an individual, all board members and C-level executives are held accountable and face the same punishment as an individual would for the same crime. The only exceptions are:
Outside of those 3, they asses go to jail, assets get seized, and yahts go up in police auctions.
I mean bigger things, like Philips knowingly selling CPAP machines they knew were defective and would cause cancer and god knows what else. They knew, didn't recall, continued selling anyway, people died. Nobody is in jail, though.
Fuck that, jail the fuckers.
A similar case can be made for Boeing and many others.
Start jailing execs and companies will start paying attention
It works really well for Venezuela.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Venezuela
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Proposing IRV is nice and all, and definitely an improvement (whatever you do don't listen to nutters proposing range voting…it's trivially gameable…and personally I just don't think Approval's lack of ability to give a nuanced vote is very good).
But the real change happens when you move away from single-winner seat entirely. Use something like MMP or STV where the votes can be distributed proportionally.
Australia is a really good example, because we have a bit of both. Look at our House of Representatives. It uses IRV like you propose America switch to. Labor got 33% of the vote and 51% of seats. LNP got 35% of votes and 38% of votes. Greens got 12% of the vote and less than 3% of seats. Yikes. One Nation got almost 5% of votes and 0 seats.
Then look at our Senate. It uses STV so that in a normal election, each state elects 6 Senators and territories elect 1. Labor got 30% of votes and 20% of seats. LNP got 33% and 20%. Greens got 13% and 6%. One Nation, United Australia Party, independent David Pocock, and the Lambie Network each got 1 seat (1.3% of seats) on 4.3%, 3.5%, 0.4%, and 0.2% of votes, respectively. These numbers are obviously not perfect, but they're a hell of a lot better than the Reps' results. STV is a sort of quasi-proportional system, retaining local representation. In our case "local" means "at the state level", but you could also do it by taking 5–12 House of Reps districts and merging them into 1 district, returning 5–12 Representatives.
True proportional systems like MMP (look at NZ and Germany for examples of that in action) or direct proportional systems without a local member (like the Netherlands) get even closer to perfectly matching voters' will.
I broadly agree; if you're in the mood to give more detail about your problems with Approval Voting I'd value that input. It's a topic I have been casually glued to for years, without getting deeper on the analytic side.
That's literally my reason. Approval voting doesn't let you express any preference. If we had approval here in Australia, my vote for Labor would be exactly equal to my vote for the Greens. And I don't want that to be the case. I want my vote for the Greens to be worth more than Labor.
I think approval is likely to hard quite an extreme degree of moderating effect. Some moderation is good, for sure. Compulsory voting has a beneficial moderating effect. But with approval voting, it's likely that the Greens would never win a single seat, even when they're popular enough to win the election under IRV. Because all Greens voters will also approve of Labor, if they vote strategically in an effort to avoid the LNP winning. But some Labor voters might not approve of the Greens even if they would preference the Greens ahead of the LNP.
The other systems I mentioned disliking, "range voting" (one example of which is a system called "STAR") are worse, because they devolve into approval. If you could force everyone to sit down and vote 100% honestly it would be brilliant, but it's just as easy to vote strategically as FPTP is, by voting all maximum or minimum, with no nuance—i.e., approval. Only it's worse than approval, because some people might not recognise this and make their vote weaker by choosing not to vote strategically. Like how people in FPTP voting third party hurts their preferred major party.
Thanks, I think I get it. Proportional representation with 321 seems like something I could advocate for. I'll have to let this marinate for a minute, I've been advocating AV for over a decade now, so I'll need to find quiet time to reflect on it
Careful with the acronym AV! It more often refers to the "alternative vote", which is what they call IRV in the UK.
Gadzooks 😑
Instead of all that, just one thing. Start there and everything else will unfold from it: remove private corporate money from politics. All contributions to a politician or political party to be public and capped, per citizen.
As a US senator, that list looks like COMMUNISM to me.
As a mathematician, I want to see this modified slightly (I will pair the original with my modification)
Income up to $50k is untaxed
Income up to $100k is untaxed (I have done the math, this would actually work with one of my other modifications)
VAT tax for luxury items
VAT for B2B sales based on the Value Added by their step in the production chain
Remove sales tax
Remove tax brackets - replace with a continuous function that has parameters to encapsulate the current credits and deductions, as well as new ones to encourage reasonable behaviors (green energy, having kids, not having kids, etc.)
Addendum to the above: business taxes fall get the same treatment, with parameters for things like the wealth/income gap ratio between the highest-paid employee and the median for the company, % of employees who reside in the United States, number of subsidiaries, number of technology acquisitions made. Oh, and companies that make more than $1M/yr never get a refund, period.
Require communities to cap rent, it is done by popular vote as a ballot measure, and the options are calculated based on local needs, cost of living, and median income for the town.
I have more, but I also have a headache.
I haven't really seen it mentioned here yet but policy makers and judge rulings should either have additional schooling in the area they are making the policy/ruling on OR have a mandatory specialist/professional input throughout the process. So many of these brain dead policies come from not even know what TF they are talking about.
I want proper understanding from these people before they agree or pass something because "it sounds good" from lobbying
People on the internet don't like to hear this, but that's called Lobbying.
While this is true, I probably should have added additional context as it may be lobbying but differ in the way lobbying is currently done.
It would preferably be someone currently working in acedemia as well as holding an office (state or federally) subject to a code of ethics etc. With prerequisites within the field of question.
Now each judge or policy maker having their own expertise would be ideal, it's not really practical/feasible at this time. It's not necessarily lobbying in it's entirety that's an issue more so how it's done currently.
One could argue any person with any statement to a judge or policy maker (I'm context) classifies as lobbying since they are trying to sway the decision in their way. So by definition there's not really a way around "lobbying" but we can mitigate the (effectively) statement bribes we have screwing our system
Forced retirement of politicians at whatever the national retirement age currently is
Add winner takes all elections to this list. It always leads to a shitty two party system, exhibit a being the USA. Instead, have elections with 30 parties, each having a little bit of power, that have to work together. It gives people a chance to actually vote for the person they want, it stops the extreme swinging to left and right each time an election is won by the other side.
Add 100% income tax for those with a net worth over a certain amount, say 1 billion or so. If at some point you have souch money that you can impossibly spend it in your life time, you don't need to have it. Need investors? Make non profit investment funds, financed by the government taxes.
Add 100% gains tax for companies that have grown beyond a certain amount of employees. No extremely large company with 80.000 workers is a nice place to work at, they guaranteed fuck over the employees and customers because that's what they do. Simply cap companies on how big they can be.
Extending the previous one: prohibit companies from buying other companies. It always ends up stifling the competition, it pushes companies that wholly exist for being bought, nothing else, it's not healthy.
Also tax the rich.
The last 2 items on the list help with that.
They don't address the main issue though. The wealthiest people hide all their money in stocks and then use those stocks as collateral to get incredibly cheap loans.
I think taxes on financial shenanigans like carried interest, inheritance, and capital gains would probably be more effective than taxing luxury goods. Most rich people don't actually spend the majority of their money on physical things. Mostly they just shuffle it around into various instruments to avoid taxes and maximize returns.
Yea that makes sense. There's around $8.5 trillion of untaxed capital gains. Inheritance tax would be good. Some type of interest tax on unrealized capital gains would be interesting. I still think VAT is still helpful, rich people do still spend money on expensive shit.
Chuck it in again for good measure. You can never tax the rich enough.
You forgot abolishing slavery.
"Abolish corporate personhood" doesn't go far enough. Abolish corporations. Companies over a certain size should be forced to convert to either a worker-owned co-op or a non-profit organization. Human society needs to evolve past being centered around maximizing shareholder profits.
All excellent ideas.
Now how do we afford to bribe all of the politicians to make this happen?
There should be something in there about universal free education
idk about merge the senate into the house. I like the idea that there is one chamber where each state has the same number of votes and one that goes by population. but hard agree on removing the house rep cap, as-is every branch of the fed is weighted toward smaller, more rural states (senate, house with rep cap, potus via electoral college, scotus because senate and potus pick scotus)
Term limits on SCOTUS should be 18 years, with one Justice retiring every other year.
Unless the court expands, then the term limits could be shorter
Not sure what is called, but ban and back tax/punish people/companies who use those foreign PO boxes and claim that that company owns the IP everything that they use, so they actually made no profit, all to avoid paying taxes. And then because "made no money" they get cash from the governments.
Why do you post an image of text?
Stonks.
I don't know the answer in this specific case, my best guess is visibility, although you might read text posts I would take a guess and say the majority of users of sites such as Lemmy and Reddit only look at the images before interacting with a post. So an image of text would garner more interaction than the same content in a text post.
Op, next time please post text of an image that has just text in it.
You forgot land value tax. Otherwise it's looking good.
Abolish capitol punishments
Codify body autonomy
Wouldn't the ban on tax preparation companies hurt mostly the middle class? The rich can just get full time accountants to handle all their finances, and these accountants will also optimize their taxes as part of the general service they provide.
The IRS actually wants to make tax prep easier. Companies like TurboTax and the like are predatory.
They lobby congress to keep taxes complicated. All to milk people for $20-$35 each at tax time. Many countries either file taxes for you or make it super easy.
Think about it. You do your taxes and send them in... but the IRS sometimes sends out corrections. I've received MORE sometimes and others get audited to pay more. That means the IRS knows what you owe already...
Ideally it would be similar to basic online tax prep. But posted by the IRS (which has started already!!!)
Most countries don't require the nonsense you go through at all.
The nonsense is there specifically to benefit the tax prep companies. Getting rid of one without the other isn't... Anything anyone is advocating for. You get rid of both, simultaneously, because you have to, and because it's right. How you make it work? Tax the rich, mostly
We should definitely give most people a better option for filing taxes but can’t imagine being able to get away from that as you get wealthier, have a business or certain non-salary income sources.
Tax prep services will always be necessary, but not for the majority of individuals
But there are very little income sources that the IRS couldn't have direct access to - just build a national system connecting banks, brokers, international transactions, etc. Put the reporting burden on companies and other gov bodies.
These are complex admin systems that wealthy counties build, part of an overall digitalisation of government systems. I mean, I can't think of a single government related thing I can't do online (or on the phone). Every citizen can be issued 2FA once identified (and/or a digital certificate), the rest we pay taxes for them to set up.
IRS has no reliable way of knowing my cash tip income, that I won the Irish lottery, that I sold my vineyard in France for a tidy profit, etc. without an audit, they have no way to follow a shell game of payments criss-crossing among my 500+ companies to be able to tax my real estate profits. They can’t know the depreciation I’m writing off for expensive office furniture is for my summer home
If I understand you correctly - isn't that profit tax? And companies have the burden and obligation to report.
And I was talking about common folk or like 95% of USA. You are right about cash-tips. We just dont pay taxes on it. But it's also not an integral part of, well, anything. Its more of a p2p transaction.
Companies have the burden to report but if you have many you can play games with payments across each other to concentrate the profit or loss to advantage yourself. Depending on how it’s incorporated m, that may belong to the business entity or you. As far as I know, IRS generally treats each business entity separately, so unless they have reason to audit, may not be able to follow a chain of payments across them.
Banning tax prep companies is a bad, poorly thought out idea.
Simplifying tax prep is the avert. Doing what the rest of the developed world does, where the IRS sends you a receipt and you can either accept that or manually file if you think you owe less.
Banning tax prep companies just hurts people who have a nonstandard tax situation. Small business owners, people with tax relief from disabilities, all manner of normal people in niche situations. Don't take away the tools they need, remove the opportunity for parasite companies to prey upon average people.
Change the tax law saying that under 1 million moneys individuals can't be held responsible for IRSs errors.
Also even complex income tax preparation should not take you more than an hour to fully review yourself. If it does, it's a bad system & probably like that by design.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting
Star voting to avoid some of the potential negative outcomes of RCV
Do not merge the house and Senate. They perform different, but equally important functions, once you remove the house cap and force them to start legislating again.
Remove the illegal revision done by a single person to statute 1983 of the federal code, in 1874. This removes Qualified Immunity, and resets the law back to, "naw fam, no one, not even a Sitting President, Congressman, or SCOTUS Justice is above the law, and no one has any sort of immunity." If you need immunity to do the job, the job shouldn't be done.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/us/politics/qualified-immunity-supreme-court.html
It also follows that congresspeople can now be prosecuted for insider trading, and SCOTUS justices can be prosecuted for accepting bribes.
Star voting is just FPP dressed up in a costume. And RCV's prescribed problems only occur in strict math environments that don't look at why voters flow to the candidates they flow to. I wouldn't be surprised if Star was being pushed to kill RCV by the big parties because they know they can dominate it just the same due to the actual psychology of voting. (I want to vote for my favorite, but what if the guy I hate wins?)
Looking at it this is definitely the case, its no better than fptp because you're incentivized to give 5 stars to all candidates you can tolerate, and none to others.
Yup. Why would I give even one point to the guy I hate?
Don't forget to abolish slavery.. wait forgot they call it prison now.
Whats a luxury item for purposes of VAT? You’ll be hung up forever on that.
For example cars:
VAT is just a shitty tax mechanisim, ends up being regressive (people with less money pay a larger portion of income), and really shouldnt be used. Land value tax + carbon tax is much better, and has nice side benefits like encouraging housing development and walkability.
Probably get rid of the supreme Court altogether and have cases that it currently hears be heard by a random selection of federal judges.
Probably also need to get some people smarter and more specialized than me to figure out how to capture the wealth of the wealthy. Like the whole "take out a loan against your assets, use that as money, pay no taxes" thing needs to go.
While we're having fantasies, can we expand the 14th amendment "no insurrection " bit to be more clear?
And if we're feeling spiteful, add a "no one who has held office as a member of the Republican party shall be eligible for any role in government, nor any role that engages with the government such as contractor, advisor, lobbyist." Just gut the whole party.
One more.
Now that corporations aren't people, only people can own residential land.
Can we also ban stock buybacks and limit CEO pay?
Wealth tax. You forgot that one. Otherwise every billionaire will suddenly make $49,999 in salary.
I would add patent law reform, and remove the ability to hold private and public office (ie you can't be a board member of Monsanto and be on the EPA), oh and no campaign donations allowed; everybody gets an equal stipend to campaign, we have the internet you don't need to go shaking babies and kissing hands.
Fully funded public news media with a legal firewall between government interests and that media. Controlled by journalists and representative members of the public. We desperately need to get working interests back into news media, nearly every flavor of our media is currently owned by corporate interests.
I'd vote for you
No tax reform? It’s a great start to make taxes easier for most individuals but we shouldn’t be allowing wealthier people to pay less percentage of taxes. There’s a bewildering array of complexity that doesn’t matter to most individuals but only serves to lower the tax rate if people who can afford to take advantage of it
That and I think the "no taxes for 50k and under" would be devastating to the budget, if the median income for a family is around 60k then that's a fuckton of tax income that is lost.
Ban political donations, all political parties get the same, small campaign budget and allotment of advertising space/airtime funded by the government instead
Depends on what time-scale. Sweeping changes all in one go would be asking a lot, and none of these are minor changes on their own, either.
RCV first. After that, everything gets easier.
I mean, thats the same as with fossil fuels or taxing the rich - we are programmed to overreact to any economical instability even if none if it would affect 90% of pupation and turbulence lasting a couple of years would fade quickly from memory and get the results sooner. It's basically like any revolution. It's bad in the very short term, but not as bad as not changing much for decades.
Also historically, it's the 'sweeping changes' that get all the glory and results (and actual change in power).
Roleplaying as Decronym bot for a moment:
:::spoiler Acronyms, initialisms, and other phrases seen in this thread:
Where I'm from judges have to be picked by a list prepared by the bar of that jurisdiction, IIRC. That way you can't just get any barely competent idiot who happens to be a good party man as a justice on the highest court of the land.
This is a great idea! Maybe im wrong but it seems like this wasn’t a problem historically. Even partisan judges were competent. It’s only in recent years that they dropped that pretense, so maybe it was one of those things where we just assumed you’d want someone who knew what they were doing.
One of the things that Trump was great at is clearly identifying places where we just assume anyone in that position would do the right thing, out of some duty to actually running the country. Fine, let’s drown them in paperwork
Out of these, unfortunately the only one that even has a chance of being realized is "IRS does taxes for everyone", and even that is more like "IRS provides official avenue to not have to pay a tax prep service"
The rest of these won't happen without a revolution, because the people with the power to make these things happen all directly benefit from them.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see even one or two things on this list become reality. Any two would make a ton of difference for a lot of people. But capitalism doesn't like it when you benefit the average Joe, and capitalism always wins here.
Any time a budget is not passed on time, House, Senate and Presidential/VP salaries are cut to minimum wage until a new budget takes effect.
(I say "cut to minimum wage" because unfortunately the Constitution has been interpreted as dictating that their pay never be interrupted. It does not, however, specify how much they have to be paid.)
I think I'll add "abolish the filibuster" on v3. Senators make more money from their owners/donors than their salary anyway.
I like almost all of this, but I disagree with merging the Senate and House as well as a VAT on luxury items. We already have tax on basically every transaction and the burden is on the consumer, that needs to change. What should happen is that all taxes on food items currently should be removed. I believe the separation of Senate and House, while burdensome and inefficient at times, really does an essential good for American society. We would fare much better if we had term limits and more than two (essentially one) political party.
Edit: I want to continue with strickening the UBI from this list as well in exchange for significanly improving social services to make sure that everyone is guaranteed food, housing, medical, and security. I get that income is important and some people cant work, but inflation is real and that money has to come from somewhere not just the ether. It would be better to create/improve upon existing social safety nets to make sure everyone can contribute to society in some way rather than just giving everyone money for nothing.
I agree with most of these. Key differences that'd I prefer:
Lots of good stuff here, and I agree with others to keep the senate. Abolish the filibuster!
I will take 1 of those, watered down and neutered, and it would still make more sense than the landfill fire we live in right now.
Why do you want more than 435 reps? How does that benefit anyone? They're doled out in proportion of population.
The number of reps is limited and hasn't been raised in a very long time. The ratio of constituents to reps has increased drastically over the years.
No they aren't.
Yes they are... They're reallocated every 10 years in response to the census as numbers change.
If you're talking about how Wyoming has more per person voting power than California that's more because of them having the same 2 senators as every other state.
No, they aren’t. It’s basic math if you count how many House reps each state has by their population, it’s not equal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment
By the 2020 census:
Delaware has 1 House rep and a population of 989,946.
Alaska has 1 House rep and a population of 733,391.
Way way way better than the first one!
No more first past the post elections and so break the duopoly
The 50k and under untaxed I disagree with. It sets up for a possible scenario where those who are taxed get priority in policy. If you are able to be a productive member of society, you should pay taxes to support that society, and the infrastructure it provides.
Most of the others in the list I agree with or don't know enough about the case to comment
And another one: push cities (by carrot and sticks, financial incentives and penalties) to change their layouts and designs to be humans first, 15 minute cities, whatever you want to call them. Pedestrian areas and cycling infrastructure over cars, mixed use building areas, let's get rid of the suburb rot. It makes it that people don't need a car and if you don't need a car, why have an expensive piece of crap that costs a fortune to use and maintain? Cars will still be allowed, because of course. It's just that priorities have to change. People first, cyclists first. Cities will become more quiet, people will walk and cycle more, they'll be outside more, healthier, happier, safer, richer, safer.
Not just bikes on YouTube :) he's heavy on good public transport and well... Bikes.
I'm a Dutch guy living in Canada, the opposite of him, but I'm all aboard with him, love the channel, he's awesome
Soapbox: You there! Are you tired of getting sand kicked in your face? I ask you: why does the US have public debt without public equity?
Public funding, subsidy, stimulus, and infrastructural spending should purchase public equity that can only be bought back from the public via surplus taxes. We don’t have to call it socialism. It can be capitalism proper. But it’s the people’s capital and labor being lent, interest-free. They should expect a return. Fair is fair.
It’s simpler and stronger than labor unions. There’s no collective bargaining for temporary compensation, no dues, no pickets, no fuss. The pension is paid from the start by public endowment as a matter of course, eliminating the underlying financial insecurity employers exploit. The free market is more free when poverty can’t dictate your fee.
And besides securing the future for so many people, it would change the way citizens see themselves and the world around them, the stake they have in their governance and economy, and would certainly reframe public discourse.
Public equity unlocks the logical, humane, and sustainable version of capitalism in which every worker is vested and shares both the means of production and the value they produce.
Ranked Choice Voting? 100% approve.
Get rid of the EC entirely. The popular vote would work quite a bit better as a means of ensuring power is exercised with the consent of the governed.
Scotus and congress both desperately need oversight that is different from 'we oversee ourselves and find we did nothing wrong' when obvs. that doesn't work too well
Tax prep companies... I wish them a prompt and thorough viking funeral.
Fun fact about corporate power at the time of the framers: the colonists felt first-hand the abuse of being effectively governed by crown corporations and shortly after the founding of the USA, corporations were drastically limited in what they could do- for example, they could not engage in politics, they could not own other corporations, could not engage in activities not strictly related to their charters, had charters of finite span, and their charters could be revoked for any violations. If corporations are going to be people today, it's about damned time we started charging them with crimes when they commit crimes- and yank their charters if they re-offend.
One thing worth questioning: do we really need representative districts? Why not have at-large representatives on a per-state basis, with seats allocated to states/apportioned via census? It would be pretty hard to gerrymander an at-large system, I think
If you could achieve 1 thing on this list you could do all of them.
Money =/= speech
Death penalty for lobbyists.
Another one: push cities to have green (as in trees) everywhere. Not only is it prettier, people will be more happy with loads of green everywhere, but it also lowers temperatures in cities. Better mental healthy better physical health.
I see the value in an odd number of branches. That’s the only one that I don’t support. Can’t have two branches fight. We need an odd number for a tie breaker.
They don't really directly "vote" like that though
What you're looking for is "the congressional apportionment amendment", and it was passed by congress with the bill of rights, and ratified by many states but every time they almost met the 3/4ths threshold a new state was admitted, and it always remained short. 11 states have ratified it. It had no expiry and as such is still waiting to be ratified by the states. It needs 27 more ratifications to become an amendment to the constitution.
RCV is the best available way to elect the president (afaik), but for the House I'd use full-on proportional representation. You could use the German or the Irish models, both of which still retain bonds between reps and their districts.
Both can be proportional in terms of peoples (ranked) votes counting the same.
ALL sales tax needs to be replaced with value-added tax. Zero tax on used goods, including cars, if you actually want to reduce waste and related harm to the environment.
At the bare minimum force states to proportionally allocate electors. I know this is realistically impossible.
@3volver Hope you do a v3. There are some good ideas in these comments. It's been a good read.
twenty year old me “heck yeah”
Forty year old me “never going to happen.”
Social democracy leaves power in the hands of the capitalists, they only tolerate reforms like this when capitalism is threatened, and they will (and have) eroded as soon as the threat is gone.
Individual rights get eroded if people don’t keep the good fight. The hope for a system that can prevent the amassing of power in the hands of a few through no effort by the many is entitled childishness personified.
If you prevent the swelling of power Capitalists regularly achieve, then people can maintain that good fight.
Begging the capitalist class to give you more crumbs is not the good fight.
The good fight involves distributing the source of their power, control over the means of production, to the people.
Term limit for congress
Might not be need anymore with a handful of the items listed but campaign finance reform to show where all of a campaigns money came from and went. Also thought there was a better term but can't fully remember.
Just add tax brackets up to 99% and have graduated lending taxes
You've got huge, earthshaking, constitutional-level changes here lumped together with minor stuff like tax-prep and tax brackets. There's no sense of scale here. (Also, forget tax increases, implement a wealth tax)
Pipe dreams
In other words: delete the GOP
What would it take to actually get ranked choice voting? That would need a constitutional amendment right?
I agree with a lot of this, especially ranked choice voting. Don't agree with abolishing the electoral college though. Rural voters and urban voters are generally quite different, if you get rid of the electoral college the rural voters will be completely ignored by every politician simply because there are fewer of them and they are spread out more. I don't think that means their priorities should be invalidated.
That said, I would add one thing. Abolish primary votes. Political parties can nominate as many or as few people as they wish, anybody with enough signatures can get their name on the final ballot. The current primary system basically disenfranchises voters in any state that isn't in the first 10 or 15 primary elections. Half the candidates will have dropped out by the time their state votes.
I'd suggest adding:
Political ideology falls along a normal distribution. Very dumb to draw the line down the middle rather than capturing the norm and excluding the edges.
Let's have progress demand a shift in the national attitudes over time rather than let minor shifts of a few percentage points every few years in a deadlock determine progress or regress.
President decided by sortition (like jury selection) with a less military-focused role, cabinet members decided by voting on a list of working professionals in the applicable field (aka someone who works in agricultural sciences to be secretary of agriculture), housing as a human right, functional petitions that can initiate a direct vote in a special election on any issue with enough signatures. Ban prison labor and for profit prisons. Ban private schools and invest heavily in public schools. Employees of public services like libraries, schools, gov jobs pay no taxes. De-militarize the police. Sever the relationship between police and current/former prosecutors (possibly by only getting out-of-county prosecutors to oversee cases involving police?), enshrine prisoner voting rights, enshrine Land back policy, no corporate ownership of single family homes. Rent for an apartment has to be split to be exactly what the mortgage currently costs for the owner of the building + overhead, repairs and community agreed upon updates (if the building has no mortgage anymore, it is lowered to be only what is needed for overhead etc.- being a landlord shouldn't be profitable, it should be a service), salary has to be clearly marked on every job posting and if it is found out that they are underpaying what they advertise, the labor board can fine the company by percentage of total profit increasing 2x every time it happens. All jobs are union eligible except for police. State tax benefits to influence city centers to become car-free. Loitering is a protected activity. Ban EULAs that can change at the will of the company. Force companies to pay out money to those they stole data from and sold. Ban the NSA, TSA, FBI, and CIA. Ban the stock market in some way that wouldn't be awful. Ban more performant car/truck tires that's causing our microplastics problem in favor of almost entirely naturally decomposing tire compounds. All vehicles and machinery are subject to the emissions standards of cars. Farmers are always allowed to set up a stand and sell products from their farm in parking lots (even parking lots of grocery stores). No unmarked police cars and no police sirens at night. No 24 hour news cycle. Crackdown on javascript's power on the internet. Break up apple, google, Microsoft, and any other behemoth I'm forgetting. Ban court fees. Ban non-competes. 3-4 day workweek. On top of location representation in our federal government, include wage representation and age representation as well. Surprise, all businesses are co-ops now! There's probably way more, but I can only fantasize so much lol
100% yes!
Land back
From an outsider perspective. Two houses/chambers are better than one. But the second should be a review chamber that sends amendments back to the first. If those amendments are rejected by the first then so be it.
Something like PAYE would be better than having your government work out the tax. It places the expanse on the companies rather than the government or the individual.
With a less convoluted tax system and businesses working it out you probably wouldn't need to ban those tax companies as market forces would make them no longer viable.
VAT should be on luxury goods, and ones that the government wants to discourage the use of for public health (500% vat on tobacco products, 300% VAT on vaping etc).
If we just had term limits things would already be better!
IRS shouldn’t be filing taxes for anyone, that just seems egregious given that there so many ways to justify lowering one’s tax burden. I am not sure if a third party bureaucracy would be incentivized to do that for tax filers.
Abolish corporate personhood? No. Someone obviously doesn't understand what corporate personhood is or how it exists.
If there is no such thing as corporate personhood, how do you tax a corporation? How does a corporation own any property? How does a hospital exist? How do groups of people pool capital? How does one sue groups of people who have pulled their Capital and caused harm?
The jurisdiction of all law is based on personal jurisdiction. Corporate personhood is considered a "legal fiction," it doesn't exist to protect corporations, although it sometimes does, it exists by necessity and by operation of law. It would exist even if you didn't want it to, it would just have to be called something else. The alternative is that groups of people cannot pool resources toward a common endeavor, or, they can, but it's a lawless and ungovernable enterprise, with nobody having any enforceable rights.
....
House and Senate merge? No. Read up on bicameral versus unicameral legislative power as limitations on power, and in America the Senate's role as a saucer. It makes sense especially when the Congress is a huge body to begin with and when dealing with classified information and covert matters of state; in which case a higher tier with a smaller group and longer terms makes sense to protect our secrets.
This is the also the only idea, along with Supreme Court term limits, that requires a Constitutional Amendment. The others are much more feasible and reasonable. ...
You want a really ambitious one that would help, abolish the states.
TIL america has a VAT..?
But yeah, other than that, this list makes too much sense for most people. they will shit on it because 1) they have no imagination and 2) they don't have enough knowledge to see that each point actually has a reason and seems to have been given a fair amount of thought
No it doesn't, I think it should have a VAT that is specifically for luxury items like yachts and private jets.
I see. I read it as "make the vat only apply to luxury goods"
Lul.
But still - abolish sales tax and get on the VAT train to join the modern economies.
Great band-aids, but doesn't fix the core issue of Capitalism, and as such these changes are likely to be rolled back and exploitation, both local and global, will continue.
In addition, this says nothing of police reform, minority protections, worker democracy, abortion rights, and so forth.
Agreed, but in the short term just managing capitalism goes a long ways for people living their lives.
And giving power to the people is the only way to eventually change the system & move from capitalism (and it's main problems).
Ranked choice voting is great, yes please.
Why? Explain your reasoning. Voting needs reformed, but this isn't the way. I certainly don't want NY and LA deciding every election ever.
No. Why? What on earth would this accomplish. The house and senate are separate for a reason. We need the checks and balances they provide.
Again, why? The house reps are by population of the state/district. We don't need MORE bureaucrats.
Yes, please. US "healthcare" is in shambles. It's a complete disaster and the only people that benefit are Insurance companies.
I get the idea, but it's a terrible idea. Fixing the rest will even out the income situation. Turning ALL your citizens into entitled brats is not a great idea.
Absolutely not. Eliminate mail in voting except in extreme cases that need to be applied for. Instead, institute a FREE Govt Issued photo voter ID. Expand voting areas and hours. Make Voting day a paid holiday. I don't wanna hear any racist shit about "poor black people can't find the voting places". Bullshit. Make AT LEAST one HS Gym a voting area in every county. Make it EASIER to vote in person. It's a duty, honor, and responsibility for people to vote.
, 9. , 10. , 13. Soft Disagree. Our tax system no doubt needs an overhaul. You'll have everyone "making" more than $50 getting around it somehow. Look into the Fair tax. Eliminate ALL taxes. embedded, import, state, local, federal, income, capital gains, etc. implement a level sales tax on everything. Don't want to pay taxes, don't buy shit. everyone pays their FAIR share that way, and there is no way for the rich to get out of paying. This would eliminate the IRS and 'tax preparation companies'. Which I don't really understand this issue with those companies. No one is forcing you to use them. And there is absolutely NO WAY i want the IRS doing my taxes FOR me. fuck all that noise. But again, implement the fair tax and IRS goes away anyway.
Lifetime appointments are bogus, but i think i a role like SCOTUS, longer terms are required. I read something here about aging out and I like that as an option.
sure, on board.
Guess i don't really understand this. Explain?
Plenty of other things. Term limits for congress.
Make congress abide by the rules they set for us including insurance, healthcare, stock trading etc. While we're at it, create a congressional village of sorts. You're assigned a house/duplex/dorm etc while you are SERVING in congress. no more "NEED" to have a house in DC and in your home state. If congress people can't survive on their $150k a year salary, what hope do the rest of us have?
Eliminate lobbyists. That's just "legal" bribery.
We need to fix immigration. having an unbridled flow of people come across the border isn't good. I have no problem with people wanting to come to this country, but there's a reason we have a limit. There needs to be a complete overhaul of the process.
Make secondary education WAYYYY more affordable, or free.
Stop giving out so much foreign aid, and close military bases anywhere they are not directly needed around the world. we are not the world police. you can't pour from and empty cup and our cup is empty to the tune of 30some TRILLION dollars. Once we fix our money problems, then we can start handing it out again.
Start holding government officials, included law enforcement accountable. End qualified immunity. Start enforcing laws we already have instead of the glut of new ones every single year.
DEMAND that congress pass a balanced budget every year. no more of this dog and pony show of 'govt shut downs'. If the govt shuts down, those in charge should be fired and replaced by people willing and able to perform the duties they were elected to do.
Allow Cities, Municipalities, States etc to SAVE money. By that I mean, don't treat yearly budgets as "use it or lose it". We as citizens are told to save, save, save, yet every govt entity spends every dime they have every year so their budget doesn't shrink the next year. Putting safeguards into place so the money can't be used as bonuses etc would allow govt entities to have a "rainy day fund" per se.
Eliminate the words "school lunch debt" from our vocabulary. Feed children that need it. and feed them good food. not the radioactive waste that gets slopped up in school cafeterias across the nation.
Eliminate the ability for the govt to use Social Security like their own little piggy bank. If they INSIST on using the money, it needs priority in repayment @ the tune of 150% of money borrowed. This would be the mandatory first thing on the following year's budget.
If we can afford to send people to war, we need to be able to afford to take care of them afterwards.
This is just off the top of my head. The problem is nearly every "solution" here would require people in power to give up that power. That's not going to happen easily or quitely.
I mean, I could add to it...
Universal vote by mail? No. I can imagine several situations where votes "go missing" or "suddenly appear" and any investigation would have a really hard time finding evidence.
This same argument over and over again. My state has had mail in ballots by default since before I was voting age and we never seem to have a problem.
You missed step one, which is to not live in the United States. Alternatively live in a parallel universe where any of this would be politically achievable.
Ranked choice voting systems are cool but I have a lot of doubt about it actually changing much in the way of who ends up in government. The government is filled with people who align quite neatly with the people who participate in party primaries.
It always seems like a thing that people imagine is going to result in their preferred government. Really though it is the voters you disagree with and the system mostly (if somewhat imperfectly) reflects their desires.
If you want (for instance) more left candidates to get into office, you have to start at the bottom and build a big bench of left candidates with proven track records who have a base of support. You can’t air drop a socialist into the potus race and expect voters to catch up with you. Stategic voting is a small problem, not voting is a much bigger one.
Nobody votes third party because it's pointless. That in turn means new parties have no reason to exist. Once it was actually possible to vote for a third party while still making a choice between the top 2, people would do that, and options would appear.
Yeah, I understand how it works. I’m just don’t believe that strategic voting is really holding back candidates that I might like better. I think other voters are turning up to dem primaries in greater numbers.
Like I said, I like ranked choice, let’s do it. But, be prepared to see very little change.
Without switching to multi-winner elections, the voting system will do very little. My preference is Approval Voting for single-seat elections and Proportional Approval Voting for multi-winner elections.
I’m not even sure this is true. Certainly many people do vote third party, since they do get votes. Are there actual statistics on this or just online anecdotes?
I can only give personal anecdotes:
I don't have statistics, but I see lots of Democrats voters saying "I don't like them but at least it's not Trump", and divisions among Republican voters as well. There does seem to be a lot of people who are "forced" to vote for a party even though it's not their ideal choice. A lot of the discourse isn't about what you want, but about making sure the other party won't win. With ranked choice you could actually choose what you actually want, because there is no risk of "letting the other party win".
And so you ended up having no say on the actual choice. I applaud your idealism, but surely you can agree most people won't entertain that because they will think it's a wasted vote. All these people would maybe vote for your third party choice if they knew their vote won't end up helping the candidate they deem the worst.
It leans strongly on the D <-> R axis. If there were 10 other parties trying to get votes, they would campaign in your state to get them and your vote would matter. Even if the D or R is guaranteed to be above the other in your state, ranked choice would allow other parties to be above this pair, while still guaranteeing everyone's D/R choice is respected if it comes to it.
great news, the only votes that help any candidate are votes for that candidate!
Exactly, where with the current system votes for a candidate may end up getting someone else elected, and you get strategic voting instead of voting for what you want.
yea. biden voters better get their head out of the sand and enroll in the cornel west campaign.
They probably could if it was ranked choice, but it isn't.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_third-party_and_independent_performances_in_United_States_presidential_elections
A lot of these are impractical.
For example you have a lot of expenses, but you also want to remove most VAT. But you're also freeing up income for the more poor. You don't need to overdo giving poorer people money, it needs to be enough, not too much. There's better ways to invest that money, for example into increasing the quality of said universally health care. You can always increase the tax on higher brackets to extreme numbers and making transferring money out more difficult.
Likewise, while I am fully behind abolishing company personhood, it is, sadly, absolutely impractical. It should happen, but it won't.
And likewise, a separate senate can be useful, it just needs to be used differently. The idea is to have a second - smaller - group that can essentially send bills back to the bill-writing group for purposes such as "this is worded too broadly" or "this is too partisan" and so on. They cannot actually change law, they're there to make sure that changes to law uphold a certain standard of writing and specificity.
So the system doesn't work (and didn't really in the best of times), everyone else successfully moved forwards - but because the system might work in theory, you should stick with it?
Ngl, sounds like copy-pasted from propaganda brochure.
Don't give "too much money to the poor"? What even is the worst case for that when you have production levels where a) there should be no poor people to even give them money and b) even giving "too much money" to everyone right now wound only marginally effect the economy.
Like, is there a threat that they will use that money to lobby the government to increase taxes for the rich?
Or perhaps that would make for a better world and kinder society which wound be absolutely terrible? Can't live in a society without poor people? Dude.
Americans like to argue that increasing taxes lowers GDP (but actually just short-term stock prices) yet I've never met anyone that in case of eg 90% average tax on their 10 million income would just say 'fuck it, one million is not worth it, it's basically the same as living homeless on the street so I'm just gonna do that'.
How do you mean? Maybe that read wrong - again, not a native speaker - but I meant that instead of just giving everyone more and more free-floating cash, once you've tackled societal poverty to an acceptable enough degree, it seems far more important to transfer extra cash stripped from billionaires etc into projects that enhance the quality of life for everyone, like public free healthcare, free public transport, free internet access, etc etc.
Sure, everyone wants and frankly needs a certain amount of money they can freely spend on luxury items even beyond a basic need, but once a certain level of that is achieved, I feel there's so many society-benefitting projects that should get money first. That is to say, we should not try to repeat the same mistake that ultimate led to the shit we're in now, the whole "more money is more better" error. Enough money + not much need for money to begin with feels much more stable to me.
Oh, yes, I understand that as the same thing - giving money to people (negative taxes) and building them infrastructure (that they don't need to pay for as there isn't a profit invective).
And absolutely the second thing, building infrastructure for the people, is way better and more efficient. I don't need as much money/basic income to live in a world with good public transport, healthcare, housing, etc.
I'm not even a big advocate for money as a concept going forward actually.
Sorry if I misunderstood you (not a native speaker either), we are thinking the same thing, the function of basic income now (overcoming living costs greatly influenced by profit margins) is not the same as what it's function would be if companies had less power over people.
None of this is meant to be what I think is going to happen, it's what I think should happen. I like thinking about solutions. Congress isn't actually capable of implementing this stuff because it's corrupt as shit and we're headed towards a recession.
Yeah fair. On an utopian level I agree with virtually all things 😁
Conservatives are poisonous
What do you mean? I don't disagree, but it's not easy to convince them of that, sadly.
I consider it conservative to instantly dismiss a list of solutions to real problems. "That's impractical" is typically translated to "I'm far too fucking lazy to think about that topic, let's leave things how they are"
Hrm, okay? You yourself really drank the Conservative koolaid though if you can only think in black and white with no further nuance.
Everything is a trade-off in life. Every solution costs something else. Its funny that you accuse someone who couldn't be less conservative if they tried of that, just because I would like to actually change something, not just talk about it - and hence need workable solutions not utopian ideas. Though as I said to the op, on an utopian level I agree of course.
Yes, everything costs something, including inaction, and there is enough budget to cover that cost ... so instead of looking at it like a trade-off you might look at it like a purchase of 'a better life for most' with the 'money/labour you already made'.
Right you instantly dismissed solutions but I'm the conservative. I understand tradeoffs but I read your comment. It was dismissive
Okay, well then in that case it really wasn't meant that way but I'm also not a native English speaker. 😞
Thanks for clarifying. I appreciate this response and I hope I wasn't too rude with mine.
I've always heard that abolishing corporate personhood would make them untaxable. I don't know for sure, but I imagine you'd have to be very careful with that one. That said, I understand the general goal, and I'm for it.
Edit: That was a lazy comment. Wikipedia:
Whoever you heard that from knows even less about tax law than I do.
"I've always heard..." followed by "I don't know for sure..." are the hallmarks of a comment that should have never been written in the first place.
See edit.
Not a single comment here has said give up the guns. It's like everyone is fine with the uniquely American problem of mass shootings...