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.
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Ranked choice voting is great, yes please.
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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.
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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.
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Again, why? The house reps are by population of the state/district. We don’t need MORE bureaucrats.
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Yes, please. US “healthcare” is in shambles. It’s a complete disaster and the only people that benefit are Insurance companies.
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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.
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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.
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, 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.
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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.
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sure, on board.
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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.
My state hired a bunch of rich people to run a hedge fund. They’re making us a ton of money.
Could you imagine if your state owned like 10%, Facebook, Google or something?
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.
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.
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”
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.
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.
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.
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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. …
