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I think the actions on this list would improve economic conditions for the middle class.
I’ll just say if prostitution is legalized, then there needs to be something that ensures that someone isn’t coerced into it somehow, or sex trafficked into it.
It can’t be regulated until it’s legalized. Once it is it should be.
No, I think passing legalization for anything doesn’t make sense unless you have a framework in place (even if imperfect) for regulating some negative externalities of it. I think that’s pretty routine, and there are already examples we can use from other places so the same mistakes are not made again
Here’s an interesting report: https://journalistsresource.org/economics/legalized-prostitution-human-trafficking-inflows/
And this one: https://journals.law.harvard.edu/crcl/to-protect-women-legalize-prostitution/
Policy makers just have to understand the data and frame a policy using what we already know
Yeah, correct. But you can’t implement that framework on anything until it is legalized. It can be your very next action. But the lawful government cannot, by definition regulate illegal activity, so first you pass one legal motion and then you do the next. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a plan for move 2 before you make move 1.
Per my understanding it’s all usually part of the same legislative action
I’ll just say if prostitution is legalized, then there needs to be something that ensures that someone isn’t coerced into it somehow, or sex trafficked into it.
How is it currently done in Nevada?
Convert corporations into Worker Consumer Cooperatives to prevent investor wealth accumulation and regulatory capture and align business towards worker and consumer interests rather than short-term profit seeking.
Ok so…
Mandatory voting
I think this can get messy. It would require a system to prosecute those who don’t vote. That kind of registry can be very easily used for nefarious purposes by politicians or just anyone with access to that information. Also, it would really depend on what degree of mandatory this is. If you get thrown in jail then we are going to see a lot of poor people in prison for no reason. If you get just a fine then we are essentially introducing the inverse of a poll tax. Not voting is a protected form of free speech for a reason and can be interpreted as protest.
Merge house into senate
Last time something like this was posted I got flamed for asking what the point of this one is. The Senate is a representation of the states rights we have in our constitution. It serves as a safeguard against heavily populated areas dictating the laws for much less populated states. I’m all for reform but eliminating the Senate all together seems like a step backwards.
Ban tipping
I think this is another one where the spirit of the idea is right but the execution is wrong. What we need to ban is allowing restaurants to pay tipped positions far below minimum wage, and stop allowing restaurants to take a cut of the tip at all.
The act of tipping itself is a cultural thing it needs to be addressed culturally. If you can’t tip someone for something, complications in the law arise that may disallow giving money to people in general. For example how do you distinguish between tipping a server for a meal and giving the server a dollar as a gift?
The act of tipping itself is a cultural thing it needs to be addressed culturally. If you can’t tip someone for something, complications in the law arise that may disallow giving money to people in general. For example how do you distinguish between tipping a server for a meal and giving the server a dollar as a gift?
If you are a customer at a food or retail business and opt to give one worker there a cash gift while they are on the clock, how can that not be a tip? Current US laws like FLSA already have a very clear definition of tipped wages which would include anything matching that description.
Even if you want to allow that sort of cash “gift”, eliminating tips for credit card payments should be enough to shift the norms and expectations. Namely, prohibit payment terminals from prompting for a tip as part of the same credit card transaction and prohibit the tip lines on receipts. Majority of Americans don’t pay with cash. If a business says they accept credit card, customers clearly aren’t expected to give a decent tip and by extension the advertised meal prices and wage amounts should reflect what the customer is expected to pay and what the staff should expect to earn independent of customer whims.
I can see the argument for credit card tips not being necessary, especially given that it puts the onus on the restaurant to be honest and distribute that tip correctly instead of just pocketing it (thanks subway).
But if I choose to give a server a dollar, that should be my right as an individual. Micromanaging who I’m allowed to give cash to is a step in the wrong direction.
+1 on the senate, it serves a purpose, if you don’t think it does you clearly don’t understand why it exists lol.
It exists because there was a time when we needed buy in from states, not just people. The Senate was how that was accomplished.
It’s a way of ensuring our democracy isn’t too democratic.You can understand the point of the Senate without thinking that we need to ensure that land is adequately represented in our government.
legislatively it makes sense. it removes a significant portion of say from large states, like texas and california, over small states like wyoming, who have comparatively little say. The trick is that it’s application specific. Unless we’re restructuring the entire government the senate does exist for a pretty explicit purpose.
I think it only makes sense if you think that it matters that Wyoming is fairly represented, and not the people in Wyoming.
I don’t particularly care about the representation of the land, only the people who live on it, where each person should have as much say as any other.The Senate is explicitly antidemocratic, and since I’m a fan of fair representation, I’m not a fan of the Senate.
Well, I suppose you could also make it so states get equal numbers of senators and representatives. That would also be fine, since there’s a slight use for the Senate having a longer election cycle.
Since this whole thread is basically playing and dreaming, I’ll easily agree that you can’t just drop the Senate without at least giving a look at how that impacts the rest of the government organization.
it depends on the legislation. If it’s something that the states are involved in, and it isn’t particularly relevant to the people of the state like most legislation probably is. And in that scenario, it would be beneficial for wyoming to not be overshadowed by.
Also i dont think you understand how senate seats work, they’re literally popular votes. We put them there. That’s at least following the basic principles of democracy. I’m not sure how one would argue against that, unless you have a massive problem with the electoral college, would which would be fair i suppose.
This isn’t a supreme court situation where they’re appointed magically.
What? No, I understand how Senate seats work. It’s not undemocratic because they’re not voted on, it’s undemocratic because they over represent some people over others. Wyoming and California should not be on equal ground because California has 80 times the population.
All issues that impact a state impact the people of the state. States don’t have interests, they’re just collections of people living on a piece of land.Giving votes to land is an artifact of getting the country started.
The problem here though is that the US doesn’t work like the EU does for instance. The EU is the US if it were less federally controlled, and more “formally agreed upon” rather than legislated and codified into law.
While it is true that most issues of the state are related to the people, it’s also true that each state government is independent from the federal government. And they do need some level of individualism, in order to function appropriately, without the ability for larger states to pull a shenanigan that can negatively affect smaller states. It’s not about representation of the land, it’s about equal representation of the individual components of the hierarchical government body.
This is like saying that because America is 75% white people, that they should have 75% control over everything, which by nature, is true to a degree, but this creates a problem where the majority, can overrule anything a minority says. And they have no course of action in response.
A lot of legislation in the government is highly isolated from the average citizen. That’s kind of the whole point of the government, if you truly wanted democracy. Wouldn’t it be prudent to delete both the house and the senate? So that way we truly have democratic rule over the county? Seems like the better option here. Not to mention the fact that the house and senate co-exist in a similar space, and can be utilized to prevent further shenanigans. If we only had the house, it would only take the house in order to push through bullshit legislation that nobody wants. They exist as two separate entities, operating in two independent manners. With a reasonable level of democratic influence over the two.
While technically not democratic, the US doesn’t advertise itself as democratic, merely a democratic republic.
Tipping is really hard to rein in. Your suggestion of banning the “tipped wage” is good, but the regular minimum wage is so far below living wage already that paying people minimum wage still leaves them relying on tips.
As a Canadian I refuse to participate in the “tip for everything” grift that has sprung up recently. However when we’re down at the local bar and the service is great, the food is good, the waitress is friendly and cheerful, I want to leave a tip.
Also as a Canadian, the Canadian Senate is an irrelevant relic that doesn’t serve the same purpose as the US Senate, and should totally be abolished. But it’s a totally different situation.
Why would a two party system implement ranked choice if everyone is stupid enough to keep voting for them? They’re not going to shoot themselves in the foot.
the problem is that we have to vote, one of the two of them is going to get into office, that’s just how it works. Ranked choice would likely involve repealing that as well.
That’s the issue isn’t it
If people aren’t voting is that a protest or apathy? How would you tell?
A vote for third party is a vote for Democracy
Are you trying to fix systemic problems of government structure or pass laws? They are different things.
I like where you’re going here, and the only things I disagree with are the Senate merge and Electoral College as these still serve a purpose. The removal of the House cap will rebalance there, and if anything the Senate could be reverted from popular election back to being appointed by the State Legislatures so they rebalance back to being actual actors for the State as intended vs overpowered Representatives.
The Electoral College helps balance democracy being 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner, but maybe get some math experts to review the equation for apportionment and/or set all electors to be proportional to the vote percentages in every state.
Three the most important things are missing:
- abolish home education;
- mandatory elementary education;
- get rid of multiple-choice tests.
Most of the changes won’t matter if people are uneducated or easily misled.
eh… is there a reason why “abolish slavery” happens to NOT be on that list? i’ld put it right on top!
Not necessary, already solved with the 13th amendment. This is a list of solutions which have not yet been implemented.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Slavery is still legal in prisons.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Oh fuck all that shit. I’ll add “ban private prisons and penal labor” to v4.
which part of “except as a punishment” was actually unclear in those laws that currently still “protect” slavery since how many centuries now? did you already ask your gov how many are enslaved due to this slavery protection law today? do you know how many are today tortured because slaves still do not have any laws protecting them? tell me which laws you think would protect slaves today from torture? could they call a lawyer? by which law if they dont have rights? this “don’t have rights” was a huge part of slavery, right? so tell me, as this law clearly states the possibility of slaves, which laws would protect them? how could you tell if there are no other mentionings in any other law? i guess you just can’t, because this law protects slavery but no law protects the victims of it.
so if you did not ask your government yet about the total numbers (which could be 0 of course as you claim), on what “knowledge” are your believes based on then? pls let me know!
i remember news about children put into cages at the southern border, i remember that originally a five digit number of families was in the news, later on claims, that those kids were sexually abused instead of beeing taken care for, they tried to find them but only got a low 4 digit number of them back. what would you say happened to those at “unknown locations”? i do see a “possible” direct link to the slavery-protection by law you seem to believe would actually “prohibit” it.
Just having this exception in the laws degrades the credibility of the whole country. Why not get rid of this shit then?
And thus if you were right that slavery does not happen any more (wow cool, a real step towards civilisation) then it should also not be of any problem of any kind to remove that exception from the laws right today before sunset, right? who would even hesitate?? if there are none who currently “profit” from that law, or who are already planning to profit from it by creating false evidences of “crimes” sufficient to apply this laws to innocent ones in front of some of those “secret courts”, if none of such exists, why not just remove this exemption then and if only to really have more civilized law afterwards ???
IMHO “abolish slavery” needs to be on that list, so this list could have any meaning at all.
Mostly. I’m fine with some of these being left up to the states, like prostitution and marijuana, although I do think marijuana’s federal status should change (from schedule 1, to a much lower schedule). Also, I think the highest tax bracket should be 99%, or even 100%. But that highest bracket should be a very high number, like 0.001% of GDP.
IRS filing taxes for us could lead to unintended consequences, like them just saying “yep, everything’s in order here. you’re all paid up. What’s that? Tax return? No, you paid the exact amount you owed in taxes, so you get no return.” and probably you’d have to do a FOIA request to get a copy of the return, then you could probably fight it, but it’d cost more to fight it than you’d get back in the return in the first place.
Most countries that do this send an itemized tax bill showing how everything adds up and you are given time to dispute it before paying.
oh that’s kinda cool then.
I believe most Americans don’t realize that this is possible, thanks for mentioning that. This is how it should be in the US as well.
- Democratize the workplace.
There are probably many ways you could go about this: Requiring that employees have a representative on the board of all corporations, forcing companies to give a certain amount of equity to employees, all businesses have to be worker co-ops, maybe some kind of automatic unionization? The point is to give workers more say in how businesses are run and a fairer cut of the value they produce, which would probably end up fixing some of the other things on this list as a byproduct.
- News reporting must be factual and clearly distinguishable from opinion and other non-news programming.
Something needs to be done about deliberate propaganda and misinformation. I’m not sure what the answer is here, but maybe having some rules for what can be called “news” would be a start.
- Enumerated right to bodily autonomy
This would cover abortion, prostitution, and marijuana consumption, and would also cover many forms of trans healthcare that are currently under attack. Speaking of which…
- Strengthened protections for minorities, including legal recognition of trans and intersex people. Something like the Equal Rights Amendment but for all minorities. Let’s explicitly get it into law that you can’t discriminate based on something people are born with.
I don’t agree with merging the House and Senate; uncapping the House fixes the proportionality issue and the Senate is a useful check to ensure that smaller states still have a voice.
Adding 5% to the highest tax bracket seems way too low. There should be a new top bracket with a rate so high it’s almost confiscatory; anyone earning that much is a resource hoarder and should be made to share with the rest of society. We used to have a top tax rate of 95%, so this isn’t unrealistic.
Banning tax prep is redundant if the IRS is calculating it for you, and I wouldn’t want to outright ban it for those whose financial situations may be complicated enough to actually need it.
Why are we including a ban on tipping? I feel like we’re getting lost in the details here. This should be a shorter list of high-level changes. If you don’t like tipping, wouldn’t it be better to do something about employers not giving fair wages in general?
Wow man you must be reading my mind. Was actually working on a website to do something like this with civil discussion. There are a ton of things missing to this list but it’s a good base line.
Edit: website will include the milestones required to complete each change including why important and potential impact, negative and positive, and difficulty of task.
No employee, owner, shareholder, investor, contractor, etc. can make more than 50 times the amount of the lowest paid employee, contractor, supplier employee, supplier’s supplier employee, etc. (Including all of the foreign slaves).
Tim Cook wants to earn 50M per year? Then all of those Foxconn guys that they need nets to stop from suiciding need to make at least 1M. All of the guys making chips have to make 1M. All of the guys mining coal to produce the electricity have to make 1M.
Income inequality problems would be abated. “Dey took our yobs.” would be less of a problem because you would save money by using local labor due to lower shipping costs. Poverty would eventually be eliminated.
Probably communism with extra steps, but maybe it would be less prone to party dictators.
5% tax on highest bracket not nearly enough. Normal citizens pay like 30%, they should reduce the normal bracket to somewhere around 10-15 percent, raise top bracket to about 49%, and tax businesses at the same rate.
#1. Truly abolish slavery. #2. Change the legal system from punishment to rehabilitation. #3. Congress gets minimum wage. #4. Minimum wage and unemployment must be a livable wage.
