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
Add in an office for a publicly owned rail system.
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.
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
And while we’re at it, let’s take into account the total wealth of your stock holdings when you realize gains. There’s no reason poor and middle Americans should pay the same tax on their capital gains as billionaires.
Oh god yes
Why stop there? Why keep the stock market at all? It’s only real purpose is for the rich to play games with their wealth, to distribute wealth towards themselves, etc. People shouldn’t be making a living off of speculative investment at all. Jobs should contribute to society. Owning is not a job.
That’s an interesting idea. I’ve found personally that every time I’ve worked for a publically traded company I’ve hated it because everything is just about increasing share price no matter what. OTOH I think investment is very useful for progress though… I’m not sure how investment would work without ownership
every time I’ve worked for a publically traded company I’ve hated it because everything is just about increasing share price no matter what.
This matches my experience quite well. I’m currently working at a place that isn’t traded publicly for the first time ever, and it is significantly better. Granted, it isn’t perfect, I still have plenty of criticisms that are separate issues. And many of those issues could be solved/lessened by workplace democracy, but that’s a different conversation.
OTOH I think investment is very useful for progress though… I’m not sure how investment would work without ownership
End goal would be at most investment works through loans. Somebody has a business and wants to expand, or wants to start a new one? Get some loans, and the interest is how you would “invest”. I am sure there would be loopholes around this to end up with lots of stupidity, but it would be a better system.
It would be a lot slower growth though. And IMO that’s a good thing given that the planet is on fire. Policies and institutional changes that will lessen our impact on the environment is a good thing. We ultimately need de-growth to an extent, and slower growth at a minimum.
The bigger issue here is how to abolish a stock market. When investors catch wind of this happening, they’ll sell as hard and fast as possible, and move their wealth to overseas stock markets. A slow and steady abolishment would probably make it a bit better, but it’s probably worth a scientific study or twenty to look into the long term effects/potential solutions for this.
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.
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.
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.
Income up to $50k untaxed.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- Ban variable width fonts
angry John Hancock noises
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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.
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.
You’re missing some voting reform, but full props for putting voting reform at the top of the list.
Some suggestions:
- Make voting day a national holiday.
- Make absentee voting without an excuse a national standard.
- Enable repeat voting where only your last vote “counts”, allowing absentee voters to change their minds.
- Ban states from announcing vote totals until all votes are in, preventing people from voting with more knowledge than others.
- Make allowing people who have served their time in prison to vote a national standard.
- Overturn the recent SCOTUS ruling about the 14A actually applying to Federal office.
Yeah, would probably like to see ranked choice swapped out for something else too. My preferred tool is STAR, but there’s a lot of other options. The biggest benefit of RC is it isn’t as bad as what we have, which is good, but it isn’t great.
There are multiple kinds of ranked choice voting. The “popular” one in America right now is IRV, but you shouldn’t assume all ranked choice voting algorithms are IRV and hence share its flaws (and benefits). My personal favorite RC algorithm is Ranked Pairs. I am not familiar with STAR.
I have a few to add.
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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.
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(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.
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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.
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Abortion is added as a constitutionally protected right.
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An exact definition to the limits on the executive power, privileges and protections of the President.
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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.
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Single purpose bills without any tagalong laws attached to them only.
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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.
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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.
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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 non-partisan committee gets final say.
good luck with non-partisan
States do not vote for president, people do
mu funding fathers! /s
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.
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!
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Missing:
Disallow corporate campaign donations
Politicians prohibited from owning stocks
Not just owning stocks but prohibited from all markets. The options market is not the stock market, neither are futures or currency markets, bond markets, etc. They have the power to manipulate all of these and should be barred from all forms accordingly.
Gotta include their spouses/immediate families, honestly should probably have audits on close family/friends who may be a proxy for their investments.
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
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.
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.
This is only workable if you also eliminate gerrymandering. Otherwise The party that’s in charge initially will turn it into an enduring uni party across the whole country.
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
Exactly. NOTHING can be done without abolishing lobbyist bribery first. Also, reps must answer constituents first. Corporations last.
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.
We need proportional representation.
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.
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.
