If you had to prioritize one major policy reform to start moving the U.S. toward a social democratic model, what would it be and why?
If we did more to address wealth inequality, a lot of other problems get better. Like, it could be technically legal to spend a billion dollars on advertising a campaign, but that won't matter if no one has a billion dollars to spend.
I had a half joking conversation with some friends at the bar a while ago where we had this idea: every year we calculate the 10 richest people who have more than some factor more than the poorest people. If they don't give up their wealth to get under the threshold, then we kill them, and distribute their stuff.
That's it. It's really just "eat the rich" with extra steps.
Policy follows deeper social power structures, not the other way around. Moving the US to a social democratic model requires the difficult work if ground-up organizing principled anticapitalist formations. Social democracy has always been a capitalist attempt to head off socialist power, to coopt the workers' organizations into legalized structures that can be controlled by a capitalist-owned state. If you want social democracy, the way is to apparently organize with a communist party in a movement that fails to innoculate itself against capitalist cooption.
So, it is actually the antithesis of waiting for a policy change or announcing a desire for one. If you simply say, "this is a good policy for us workers", the ruling class will say, "you and what army?" and they will correctly call your bluff just like always. They have to be unable to call your bluff because you straight-up are not bluffing.
For me number one would be to let trade unions do their job without restriction. In the US I think that would mean abolishing so-called 'right to work' laws as a priority.
Actually, what would probably be required would be the complete and utter destruction of the right-wing propaganda machine; Fox news and so forth. Even good counterprogramming by itself is probably not enough. A pretty heavy lift unfortunately, but I can dream.
Getting everyone on better platforms such as Bluesky, Lemmy, Spark, & Revolt apps
Can't be unite just in person have to be united online too. To have discussions, inform each other, inspire each other, grow, take action, & collaborate on everything countrywide. Also, to work with allies internationally too
Its the foundation of everything. If everyone isn't on platforms that value privacy, & freedom not much can be built
Campaign finance perhaps.
That would be my answer as well. Followed by ranked choice voting during federal and state elections.
So citizens united and super pacs?
Campaign finance was already an issue before citizens united and super pacs. It's an order of magnitude worse now, but just rolling those back doesn't solve the problem.
I heard an idea that I liked. Give everyone the first $50 of their taxes back as a token usable only as a political donation. That would be more than enough money to swamp the political funding that existed prior to citizens united. I'm not sure how it would stack up now, though, and am too tired at the moment to go figure it out.