Free education.
No private/charter schools.
Religions are businesses and pay taxes.
Ban religious-justified discrimination.
Religion is private between you and God.
Absolute separation between church and state.
Repeal all religion based laws.
I dont understand why Americans are horny for mandatory voting. Voting is mandatory in Greece, it makes no difference. It is theoretically illegal to not vote but are you going to imprison people for not voting? So it isnt enforced, at all.
No one is voting because it is mandatory. Greece has 60% participation.
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 that 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?
Yeah except increase taxes on highest income bracket by 65, not 5%.
I don’t like a 15 year term for scotus.
A term limit does make sense, but either in the form of a forced retirement age or a 36 year term. They should also be barred from collecting a wage or benefits from any employer after the end of their term (they should get a damn good retirement package, too).
There are good reasons for SCOTUS to be a life appointment. You don’t want them being bought out with lucrative cushy job offers once they leave. 36 years ensures one appointee per presidential term.
Reverse Harlow V Fitzgerald, that illegally set up Qualified Immunity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/us/politics/qualified-immunity-supreme-court.html
What about making the highest tax bracket immutable.
Basically, anyone earning more than that amount, for every dollar of earnings above that amount, taxes cannot be exempted, refunded or otherwise redirected.
Say that tax bracket is 500k/yr, and some rich fuck earns 2M. They must pay the tax, whatever percent of tax that is, on the final 1.5M of earnings. So if it's 50% taxes, they must pay $750k, plus whatever taxation is applicable to the first $500k. They can't skirt it by putting that money into a tax shelter or by donating it to the corrupt charity that they run.
Not sure if your list is ordered or not, but I would order it in a way where the top N can be implemented sensibly.
For instance, banning tax preparation companies is a bad idea if you haven't first made the IRS file your taxes for you, but your list had the former above the latter.
Likewise, the voting stuff only makes sense if implemented backwards from how you have it:
- national holiday first
- mail in for all second
- mandatory third (this is getting a bit...overreachy?)
- ranked choice voting - ok I think we can agree here
- Mandatory voting - how? Currently voting is handled state by state, you want to make the federal government take that over? What would the punishment be for not voting? Frankly I disagree with this
- Universal vote by mail - even more how? Again, federal takeover of voting process? How do you ensure no votes are lost especially when someone will be punished for not voting?
- Voting day national holiday - definitely agree.
- Legalize marijuana - this takes a lot more than just saying "marijuana is legal now." Are previous marijuana related convictions going to be overturned, if so how? Are marijuana sales going to be regulated? If so how?
- Legalize prostitution - similar questions as with marijuana
- Revert citizens United - certainly agree here but that's a big fuckin how? It was explicitly the supreme court overruling a law passed by Congress. Amend the Constitution to say something explicit?
- Abolish corporate home ownership - very strange stuff here because you start touching on the above, too. Maybe more you're looking to cancel corporate personhood but that comes with a huge amount of problems too
- Abolish electoral college - sure why not if you've solved the voting issues above
- Abolish gerrymandering - this is what made me make this response in the first place. You can't just say "abolish gerrymandering" without some plan for it. That's like saying "abolish borders" like it's meaningful. How? Who decides what districts look like? Will there still be districts? If not how will representation be determined?
- Abolish filibuster - I think the filibuster is fine. If everything else on this list goes through, hopefully we have meaningful ways of ousting useless obstructionist politicians instead
- Merge Senate into house - why? What does this solve?
- Remove house rep cap - FUCKING agreed. The cap is unconstitutional and absurd
- Universal healthcare - lots of hows here too but Obamacare was a good start and I'm down with single payer
- Universal basic income - how much? Does it count toward the 50k below?
- Income up to $50k untaxed - fine. I also think any monetary amount in the legislature should be increased by the CPI automatically every year. Fines, limits, payouts, etc.
- Ban tax prep - hmm ok
- IRS files taxes for citizens - how does this work? Is tax code flattened to make it so citizens have no choices to make? Do things like tax credits for buying solar panels go away?
- Vat for luxury items - who decides what's luxury?
- Supreme Court 15 year limit - disagree, the whole point of lifetime terms is to prevent getting what's yours and getting out.
- Increase highest bracket tax - sure why not
- Collateral for loan is realized gain - expand?
- Abolish PACs and lobbying
- Politicians banned from stocks - so they can't own shares of any companies? Or they just can't trade while in office? Does this go for any elected official? More than just elected officials?
- Municipalize Internet - at a minimum declare it a utility. What's the rest of the plan?
- Abortion constitutional right - I'd argue it already is one, though the supreme Court evidently isn't in agreement. An explicit "bodily autonomy" amendment would be nice. Add a right to privacy to that too, expanding on the 4th.
- Ban tipping - idk if I agree with trying to codify what should be a cultural change, but I'm generally on board with the Idea. There's a million loopholes to close in any language to this effect
- free financial education - just like... Government funded seminars? Mandated high school courses? What do you take out to fit this in?
A commendable attempt at building the foundations of a progressive movement that breaks the current political stagnation we have endured for the past forty years or more.
Unfortunately the majority of people are inexplicably content to be shafted by successive governments whatever their political persuasion.
I'm still on team Approval Voting and Proportional Approval Voting.
End qualified immunity for law enforcement!
- 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?
Ranked choice is quite terrible actually, barely better than Plurality (also known as FPTP). The center for election science has a whole article on it here. https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/
3-2-1 voting and STAR are the best choices, but the CES actually advocates for approval due to logistics and people getting confused by 321 and star.
How you gonna afford all the social schemes with no tax under $50K? I have "free" healthcare but it's 2% of my taxable income. The taxable brackets start at $18,200 ($11,880 USD) here. You'll need to ensure there is finance for social services else you'll be bringing harm to your society in the form of failed infrastructure.
Decommodify housing as well
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.
Dude I'm voting for you
Ranked choice voting is clearly a better choice than plurality voting, but if you're not familiar with STAR voting, please check it out:
i think your biggest problem is how you are getting any of this done with opposite financial incentives in the way without a literal revolution.
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.
Can you please create a community for this? I'd love to be able to discuss each point separately, and suggest others.
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.
Sure, but be careful with "universal basic income" ,"taxes" and actual national expenses.
What you have there is a wish list. It's a good wishlist, but an actual plan requires planning. Including how the math works out. Which can be done, but you still need to do it.
Are you trying to fix systemic problems of government structure or pass laws? They are different things.
Making election day a holiday probably won't have the effect you're hoping for.
Best case: Almost everybody goes to work as usual. A few of them get a pay differential for working the holiday.
Worst case: Holiday means holiday. We'll give all bus drivers the day off to vote -- and hope the bus riders live within walking distance of their polling location.
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.
It has no chance of becoming a reality without the help of moderates and liberals who have made it very clear they would rather lose to MAGA than compromise with leftists and progressives.
People have yet to acknowledge the first implications of this. If we believe the numbers of progressives and leftists are growing there will come a time when we begin winning primaries but will lose general elections consistently because moderates and liberals suddenly won't "vote blue no matter who". Which means fascism isn't just a possibility, it's guaranteed.
If moderates and liberals don't make different choices there's nothing we can do.
Thank you for this approximate description of most Nordic countries.
Again, replace the senate with proportional representation. Bicameral legislatures work, there's no reason to be rid of the senate. Just give it a purpose beyond "you represent a state". Expand the senate to 600 seats, National votes for party reps, 0.5% threshold to gain a seat, 6 year terms, rotate every two years. Then we'll get actual third parties into office, which will break up the two party strangle hold.
I am actually not sure about the coroprate home ownership point. Here in Germany renting is much more common and accepted compared to the US, and i think there are lots of situations where this makes sense. However both in the US and here in Germany the systems need changes. And i think they should mostly target land ownership rather than the houses themself. What drives up the prices in desired areas are mostly increases in land value, not that building houses got that much more expensive (although that is also a factor).
And most of that value gain are from external factors rather than the owners own merit. If someone builds an architectually great and energy efficient house or develops land, then it is fine if he gains value from it. But if simply owning the property improves the value over time, because society around it builds nice schools, parks and so on. Then the owner hasn't done anything and that profit should be taxed completely away. If that makes sense.
That said there probably should also be a mechanism to support the first home people own to counteract scale efficiencies that corporations might be able to leverage.
Not sure if outright banning stocks for politicians is the way to go, but there should be more points regarding transparancy and conflicts of interest. Also not just during their time in office, but after that aswell.
I'd have no issue with politicians holding a borad market index fund.
You could pay for a whole bunch of that with a Land Value Tax.
Needs more limitations on investment in the stock market, more investment into co-ops and employee owned businesses, and more investment into rail infrastructure and other good civic infrastructure at the federal level. Also, change from general ranked choice voting, to the schulze method.
Also I wanna see a real move towards taco tuesday. We think it's a meme or whatever, but like an experimental free food day, or free single meal, for at least one day a week, seems totally achievable, and like it would do some good. Maybe try to integrate some community gardening into it or something, set up some federal system for that, that would be fucking sick dude hoo lee.
Edit: If you're getting rid of states, or like, trying to rethink them, I think I remember seeing some maps redrawn with states if they all had totally equal population, which you could do, and I've also seen some maps that allocate states based more on natural resources, than just having like, a lot of the western states be shitty squares and stuff. I think I saw one based on water tables, but I can't seem to find it or remember the name of it. You'd probably wanna go in for stuff like that, if you wanted to still retain the idea of states, and give them a reason to exist but also be fair and not lame.
Permanently Deleted
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.
not sure about the mandatory voting and outlawing tipping. Just compliance wise. Not voting itself can be a intended thing and I can't think of any country where you have a gun to your head to vote taht is a place I would want to live. As for tipping you will just turn it into bribery. No place should be allowed to pay with the expectation tips is part of compensation. Tips are a gift basically.
Excellent project OP, this is cool
I would add:
Equal Rights Amendment
Reverse Shelby County v Holder
Reverse District of Columbia v Heller
Add ethics code for Supreme Court with enforcement authority
Discharge federal student loan debt and regulate higher education costs
Demilitarize police
Ban property tax based school funding
Abolish the death penalty
Federally mandated paid vacation, paid sick leave, overtime over 40 hours, and a ban of right-to-work laws.
Allow the Army Corps of Engineers to repair and maintain infrastructure.
You have about 25 items too many on this list.
Ranked choice voting
I agree. However, I'm curious exactly what type of ranked voting system you would advocate for — Instant Runoff, Single Transferable Vote, etc.
Mandatory Voting
I disagree. The right to vote also encompasses one's right to not vote. Even if one ignores the freedom aspect of it, an argument could be made that mandatory voting would actually have a negative effect: forcing people to vote, who otherwise wouldn't've, will likely cause them to choose whomever they are the most familiar with — essentially, this means that the person who can afford the most advertising is the most likely to win. Furthermore, as pointed out in this comment, there are potential privacy risks associated with tracking voters.
Universal vote by mail
I disagree. There is too much potential for abuse.
Voting day national holiday
I agree.
Legalize marijuana
I agree — granted, I would legalize all drugs. However, I'm of the opinion that selling it to minors should still be illegal. I've also been considering the idea that any entity that wants to engage in the sale of addictive substances must also provide, proportional to their sale volume, rehabilitation centers. There would also need to be strict regulation, such as there is with the sale of food, on their production, and composition.
Legalize prostitution
I agree. Of course, this would then mean that prostitutes would be entitled to the same employee protections, and rights as anyone else.
Revert Citizens United v. FEC
I'm not very familiar with this court case, so my answer isn't thoroughly thought out, but, if I understand it correctly, that ruling overturned a previous ruling that prohibited some forms of election spending. If so, I would agree with such a ruling — I believe that people have the right to spend their money where they see fit. It is the voter's duty to determine whether the person should be elected.
Abolish corporate home ownership
I disagree. I'm not sure I understand your rationale behind this one. Why don't you think this should be allowed? As long as the land-value taxes are being payed, the people are being justly compensated for the ownership of that land.
Abolish the electoral college
I haven't come to a firm decision on this matter. Would you mind elaborating on your rationale?
Abolish gerrymandering
While I agree with the sentiment that gerrymandering is bad, what would you suggest should be done to "abolish" it?
Abolish filibuster
I disagree (I don't disagree with the idea that filibustering is bad. I disagree that it should be prohibited). It is the duty of the voters to hold their representatives to account.
Merge senate into house
I disagree (from the perspective of the U.S. Congress). I would like to know your rationale for why you want them merged. The intent of a bicameral legislature is to act as a sort of "check and balance" on new legislation — it plays an important role in a federation. Do you disagree that this is the case? If so, why?
Remove house rep cap
I've never thought about this. I'm inclined to agree. I can't think of, nor can I find, any good reason for why there is a cap beyond the arbitrary.
Universal healthcare
This a tricky one. I'm not yet convinced that it is as cut and dry as many people make it out to be — there are many caveats. I, at the very least, am strongly inclined to favor a hybrid system. There are also certain circumstances where a free market is simply not compatible (e.g. emergency departments).
Universal basic income
While I understand the rationale that it would effectively cover one's right to life, I have economic concerns. Primarily, I am concerned that it would lead to runaway inflation. I have considered other options like breaking down the necessities for life into categories and apportioning them equally (e.g. foodstamps). I have not yet come to a conclusion on this matter.
Income up to $50k untaxed
I'm more of the thinking that income taxes should be abolished.
Ban tax preparation companies
...why? I suppose there is some lobbying risk, but, beyond that, I don't understand this one. However, even if there was lobbying risk, they are within their rights, imo.
IRS files taxes for citizens
This may only be possible for simple taxes. Anything more complicated than simple income tax would not really be feasible, I think. Also, it is important to note that the IRS does already offer this, to an extent. I could be mistaken, though. In all honesty, I think the solution is to just simply taxes, rather than trying to obfuscate away their unnecessary complexity. This, most likely, will just lead to more bloat, and money wastage.
VAT for luxury items
Generally, I would disagree with the implementation of a VAT. The only tax on products that I would support is one that is in the form of compensation to the public for damages (e.g. environmental taxes).
Supreme court 15 year term limit
I'm not certain on the exact number, but I am in favor of the idea of term limits for non-elected officials.
Increase highest bracket tax (+5%)
Again, I'm more in favor of abolishing income tax.
Collateral for loan is realized gain
I don't understand the rationale for this. Would you mind elaborating?
Abolish PACs and lobbying
This is similar to the point about Citizens United v. FEC. It is the voter's job to hold elected officials accountable.
Politicians banned from stocks
I think this is sort of missing the point. What you're effectively getting at is that insider trading should be illegal, which it is. The real question is why the SEC, or related government agencies in other countries, doesn't seem to go after some people when it seems obvious that they are engaging in insider trading.
Municipalize internet service
Hm. I'm generally against adding any more government bloat unless absolutely necessary. One of the main issues with how ISPs are structured is that they somewhat currently function as an monopoly — due to intrinsic factors. This is the main reason, in my opinion, why prices are high, and why the service is often bad. Intrinsic monopolies are a tough issue to solve. I'm not sure that creating a government run ISP would make the problem any better. If anything, it might actually get worse. A cooperatively owned ISP may work, though.
Abortion constitutional right
This will always be a tricky issue. In my opinion, both sides of the debate have fair arguments. The main question is "whose rights trump whose?" Is it the baby, or the mother? Whichever one that one chooses, I would like to know their rationale. It is not an easy question to answer, imo. It most likely will always lie more in the realm of philosophy than in hard fact, which, of course, doesn't lend itself well to legislation. If I were pushed to side with a group, I would most likely side with the mother.
Ban restaurant tipping
I disagree. That being said, I certainly would like for tipping culture to die. It is not my job to ensure that an employee is payed well — that is between them and their employer.
Free financial education
I'm more in the camp of wholly restructuring how education is done, but that is out of the scope of this comment. I agree that economic literacy is important, but my beliefs on the matter of education go far beyond only that — I believe that we need a fundamental restructuring of the education system.
Limit the age for candidates, to the pension maximum
UBI requires such a large reorganization of the economy that you may as well add democratization of the workplace, and it would get done earlier. I think both would be great personally.
You forgot to add abolishing slavery.
Considering that lemmy.world is pretty much just a ball of pearl-clutching white liberalism these days it's not very surprising.
Stop I can only get so erect
I’d personally abolish the senate and leave the house alone, or change the house to one rep per every x number of people instead of whatever we do now.
I like a lot of your proposals,but I don’t think they will fix everything. Certainly an improvement though.
I don’t think the supreme court changes would fix issues with the court, and I think a 15 yr. limit could make it worse.
Each presidential term would get 2-3 nominations per term, allowing them to establish a majority if elected for 2 terms. Considering how powerful the court is, allowing a president to establish a majority simply by being in office for 2 terms isn’t great.
mandatory voting is not something i agree with.
The house and senate should both exist, they both serve a purpose. The senate gives every state an equal footing, the house gives every state representation in regards to population, so they both serve a very explicit purpose.
idk about house rep cap. There are already so many, perhaps improve the makeup of the reps though? That's pretty messy.
on the supreme court term limit, include an age limit as well.
That's it, everything else would be fine probably?
Does this make sense? Some points do, some don't. But you know why this could never work? It's called the political spectrum.
Yeah, I could get behind 90% of this. Find me that candidate/party and I would vote for them!
Amerikkka should not exist. It must be abolished. There are concessions the State & capital will adhere to when we mobilize, but revolution will never be on the ballot.
Domination is a byproduct of coercive hierarchy. To free ourselves from domination we have to be strategic in how we interact with systems of power. Non-reformist reforms can improve our material conditions in the short term, but true liberation is only achieved when we abolish all States, abolish Capitalism and abolish hierarchy.
We don't have to bargain for our humanity. We have the capacity to collectively organize and care for ourselves and the environment.
One thing I’ve been mulling over is “tax stock dividends at source.” So if a company is paying out dividends to stockholders, there’s no hiding it, the tax to the IRS is paid up front.
I’m happy if the mail comes on time. I don’t think the government could properly manage these broad sweeping programs especially with radical changes to the legislative and judicial branches and elections.
Nor do I think you’d be able to get the states on board with this much radical change. Everything sounds ok on a surface level but rather than thinking pie in the sky, pragmatism would be needed on just the most important issues such as a universal health plan or education plan
I'd rather focus on ripping cars out of cities, promoting mixed use zoning areas, removing regulations on food service (which is the reason small American food vendors need food trucks, instead of "street food" like the rest of the world.
The disjointed, car based, child hating society we have is a big problem.
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.
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.
Crack down on monopolies, as well as sex work and drugs, both of which should stay illegal, and get rid of a 2 party system so people stop hating the other side
Maybe abolish slavery? Perhaps actually honor treaties with indigenous people?
Abolishing corporate ownership is stupid. What does that even achieve?
If you trying to fix the housing market this is completely the wrong way to go about it. The issue is the value of the land isn't correctly valued. Things like LVT, density minimums (increasing with population growth), good rail links again with dense redevelopment near the stations.
Things like this will fix the housing market.
Unless you worried about landlords being dicks you just need better laws. Like what are you actually trying to achieve? I don't get it.
I would love most of these to be implemented. But I wouldn't want the Senate to be merged because of separation of powers. Better to have a mandatory retirement age or term length for all politicians.
Also, I would like every law that has been and will be enacted by the Senate, that only affects the Senate and other positions of power, to be voted by the people in a popular vote. This way corruption by conflict of interest wouldn't happen so blatantly like it has in the past.
