General Discussion

TIL america has a VAT..?

But yeah, other than that, this list makes too much sense for most people. they will shit on it because 1) they have no imagination and 2) they don't have enough knowledge to see that each point actually has a reason and seems to have been given a fair amount of thought

IRS shouldn’t be filing taxes for anyone, that just seems egregious given that there so many ways to justify lowering one’s tax burden. I am not sure if a third party bureaucracy would be incentivized to do that for tax filers.

You want a really ambitious one that would help, abolish the states.

1. Ranked choice voting is great, yes please.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. Again, why? The house reps are by population of the state/district. We don't need MORE bureaucrats.

5. Yes, please. US "healthcare" is in shambles. It's a complete disaster and the only people that benefit are Insurance companies.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. , 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.

9. 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.

10. sure, on board.

11. 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.

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.

Universal vote by mail? No. I can imagine several situations where votes "go missing" or "suddenly appear" and any investigation would have a really hard time finding evidence.

You missed step one, which is to not live in the United States. Alternatively live in a parallel universe where any of this would be politically achievable.

I mean, I could add to it...

• Pay reparations to victims of Jim Crow/Segregation and descendants of those bound by the practice of Chattle Slavery.
• Nationalize the telecom corporations. Use the profits to fund a Bell Laboratories type research institute as well as public college departments in the relevant fields.
• Nationalize the freight railroads. Use the profits to fund a high quality bus system in rural areas, an "Interstate-style" 110-125 mph regional/commuter passenger rail system nationwide, and develop 155-200+ mph HSR corridors between appropriate city pairs.
• Initiate planning for metro/light rail systems in every city with a population of 250k or higher.
• End the Embargo on Cuba and fully normalize relations. Shutter and remove the facilities at Guantanamo Bay; return the land to the Cuban government and pay reparation for it's theft.
• End NATO while helping the EU organize it's own native unified defense force. Form a new treaty with the EU for common defense.
• Forgive all debt the US holds from co-called "third world" nations.
• Remove all "NeoLiberal" stipulations and restrictions the IMF has placed on so-called "third world" nations.
• Pass a federal law ending so-called "Right to Work" at the state level and triple the NLRB's budget.
• End the funding of public schools through local property tax and replace it with a Federal tax on corporations.
• Bust up Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet into their viable constituent parts.
• Formally recognize the nation of Palestine at the UN.
• Join the International Criminal Court.

Ranked choice voting systems are cool but I have a lot of doubt about it actually changing much in the way of who ends up in government. The government is filled with people who align quite neatly with the people who participate in party primaries.

It always seems like a thing that people imagine is going to result in their preferred government. Really though it is the voters you disagree with and the system mostly (if somewhat imperfectly) reflects their desires.

If you want (for instance) more left candidates to get into office, you have to start at the bottom and build a big bench of left candidates with proven track records who have a base of support. You can’t air drop a socialist into the potus race and expect voters to catch up with you. Stategic voting is a small problem, not voting is a much bigger one.

I disagree with the tax thing.

regular people who actually have to work shouldn't pay any taxes, only people who make multiple millions of dollars per year or more should pay taxes.

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.

I've always heard that abolishing corporate personhood would make them untaxable. I don't know for sure, but I imagine you'd have to be very careful with that one. That said, I understand the general goal, and I'm for it.

Edit: That was a lazy comment. Wikipedia:

Treating juridical persons as having legal rights allows corporations to sue and to be sued, provides a single entity for easier taxation and regulation, simplifies complex transactions that would otherwise involve, in the case of large corporations, thousands of people, and protects the individual rights of the shareholders as well as the right of association.

Not a single comment here has said give up the guns. It's like everyone is fine with the uniquely American problem of mass shootings...