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.
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.
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.
Actually pretty close to the Electoral College part. The National Popular Vote currently has 205 EC votes across 16 states, it would need at least 65 more to go into effect at which point there would never be an outcome different than the national popular vote winner becoming president ever again.
Examples of presidents who lost the popular vote:
Donald Trump - Margin 2,868,686 (−2.10%)
George W. Bush - Margin 543,895 (−0.51%)
Benjamin Harrison - Margin 90,596 (−0.79%)
Rutherford B. Hayes - Margin 254,235 (−3.02%)
John Quincy Adams - Margin 38,149 (−10.44%)
For anybody wondering who won against Bush in the Good Timeline, it was Al Gore. The guy who realized Climate Change was an existential threat to us all back before the ice caps started flooding the atmosphere with methane.
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).
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.
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?
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MORE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
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.
I'd be okay with keeping the senate. I think the founding fathers had a good idea, Senate was meant to be more "Long term sustainability" while the House was meant to deal with the needs of now.
However, Term Limits. They didn't see senators sitting on their seats until they were over 90 years old. In their day if you made it to 40 you were apparently doing really well.
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.
Ranked choice (also known as instant runoff or IRV) is barely better than first past the post (which is plurality voting). A better choice is 3-2-1 or STAR voting, both of which outperform IRV by a huge margin. But even if those are too complicated for people, Approval voting is still better than IRV.
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.
Oohh this is fun!
Another one: jail employees of companies if they signed off on criminal activities. If I commit 1000 dollar fraud o go to jail, obviously. If a company commits a billion dollar fraud, they get a fraction of revenue fine, really? Jail the fuckers who made those decisions. If you signed off on that decision, then too fucking bad, you go to jail. If a company forces you to commit a crime then quit and report the crime.
Proposing IRV is nice and all, and definitely an improvement (whatever you do don't listen to nutters proposing range voting…it's trivially gameable…and personally I just don't think Approval's lack of ability to give a nuanced vote is very good).
But the real change happens when you move away from single-winner seat entirely. Use something like MMP or STV where the votes can be distributed proportionally.
Australia is a really good example, because we have a bit of both. Look at our House of Representatives. It uses IRV like you propose America switch to. Labor got 33% of the vote and 51% of seats. LNP got 35% of votes and 38% of votes. Greens got 12% of the vote and less than 3% of seats. Yikes. One Nation got almost 5% of votes and 0 seats.
Then look at our Senate. It uses STV so that in a normal election, each state elects 6 Senators and territories elect 1. Labor got 30% of votes and 20% of seats. LNP got 33% and 20%. Greens got 13% and 6%. One Nation, United Australia Party, independent David Pocock, and the Lambie Network each got 1 seat (1.3% of seats) on 4.3%, 3.5%, 0.4%, and 0.2% of votes, respectively. These numbers are obviously not perfect, but they're a hell of a lot better than the Reps' results. STV is a sort of quasi-proportional system, retaining local representation. In our case "local" means "at the state level", but you could also do it by taking 5–12 House of Reps districts and merging them into 1 district, returning 5–12 Representatives.
True proportional systems like MMP (look at NZ and Germany for examples of that in action) or direct proportional systems without a local member (like the Netherlands) get even closer to perfectly matching voters' will.
Missing a lot things. Gerrymandering can still occur without the electoral college, tax things seems neat in theory but need to deal with corporate taxes, term limits on the supreme court would make things worse (research indicates an age out system would be better), Police system will still be fundamentally broken, companies will still continue to maximize profit to everyone but the shareholder deficit, stock buybacks are creating major issues and allow companies to game Wallstreet, are just a few things that I think are missing here that need to be addressed.
As a mathematician, I want to see this modified slightly (I will pair the original with my modification)
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Income up to $50k is untaxed
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Income up to $100k is untaxed (I have done the math, this would actually work with one of my other modifications)
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VAT tax for luxury items
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VAT for B2B sales based on the Value Added by their step in the production chain
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Remove sales tax
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Remove tax brackets - replace with a continuous function that has parameters to encapsulate the current credits and deductions, as well as new ones to encourage reasonable behaviors (green energy, having kids, not having kids, etc.)
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Addendum to the above: business taxes fall get the same treatment, with parameters for things like the wealth/income gap ratio between the highest-paid employee and the median for the company, % of employees who reside in the United States, number of subsidiaries, number of technology acquisitions made. Oh, and companies that make more than $1M/yr never get a refund, period.
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Require communities to cap rent, it is done by popular vote as a ballot measure, and the options are calculated based on local needs, cost of living, and median income for the town.
I have more, but I also have a headache.
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Add winner takes all elections to this list. It always leads to a shitty two party system, exhibit a being the USA. Instead, have elections with 30 parties, each having a little bit of power, that have to work together. It gives people a chance to actually vote for the person they want, it stops the extreme swinging to left and right each time an election is won by the other side.
Add 100% income tax for those with a net worth over a certain amount, say 1 billion or so. If at some point you have souch money that you can impossibly spend it in your life time, you don't need to have it. Need investors? Make non profit investment funds, financed by the government taxes.
Add 100% gains tax for companies that have grown beyond a certain amount of employees. No extremely large company with 80.000 workers is a nice place to work at, they guaranteed fuck over the employees and customers because that's what they do. Simply cap companies on how big they can be.
Extending the previous one: prohibit companies from buying other companies. It always ends up stifling the competition, it pushes companies that wholly exist for being bought, nothing else, it's not healthy.
I haven't really seen it mentioned here yet but policy makers and judge rulings should either have additional schooling in the area they are making the policy/ruling on OR have a mandatory specialist/professional input throughout the process. So many of these brain dead policies come from not even know what TF they are talking about.
I want proper understanding from these people before they agree or pass something because "it sounds good" from lobbying
You forgot abolishing slavery.
All excellent ideas.
Now how do we afford to bribe all of the politicians to make this happen?
There should be something in there about universal free education
I also want: nationalize all shores
I'm sick and tired that rich fuckers can kick me off the ocean shore. Ocean shore, lake shores should belong to all citizensidk about merge the senate into the house. I like the idea that there is one chamber where each state has the same number of votes and one that goes by population. but hard agree on removing the house rep cap, as-is every branch of the fed is weighted toward smaller, more rural states (senate, house with rep cap, potus via electoral college, scotus because senate and potus pick scotus)
"Abolish corporate personhood" doesn't go far enough. Abolish corporations. Companies over a certain size should be forced to convert to either a worker-owned co-op or a non-profit organization. Human society needs to evolve past being centered around maximizing shareholder profits.
Nationalize all oil/gas natural resources. Why are private corporations making money from resources in us? It must belong to all citizens.
Abolish capitol punishments
Codify body autonomyYou forgot land value tax. Otherwise it's looking good.
Not sure what is called, but ban and back tax/punish people/companies who use those foreign PO boxes and claim that that company owns the IP everything that they use, so they actually made no profit, all to avoid paying taxes. And then because "made no money" they get cash from the governments.
Don't forget to abolish slavery.. wait forgot they call it prison now.
Fully funded public news media with a legal firewall between government interests and that media. Controlled by journalists and representative members of the public. We desperately need to get working interests back into news media, nearly every flavor of our media is currently owned by corporate interests.
Whats a luxury item for purposes of VAT? You’ll be hung up forever on that.
For example cars:
- some consider all cars a luxury we need to step away from
- some see the reality that cars are required for most of us
- where do you draw the line between a “necessary” car and a “luxury” car?
- for the love of god, no special treatment for light trucks
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting
Star voting to avoid some of the potential negative outcomes of RCV
Do not merge the house and Senate. They perform different, but equally important functions, once you remove the house cap and force them to start legislating again.
Remove the illegal revision done by a single person to statute 1983 of the federal code, in 1874. This removes Qualified Immunity, and resets the law back to, "naw fam, no one, not even a Sitting President, Congressman, or SCOTUS Justice is above the law, and no one has any sort of immunity." If you need immunity to do the job, the job shouldn't be done.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/us/politics/qualified-immunity-supreme-court.html
It also follows that congresspeople can now be prosecuted for insider trading, and SCOTUS justices can be prosecuted for accepting bribes.
I would add patent law reform, and remove the ability to hold private and public office (ie you can't be a board member of Monsanto and be on the EPA), oh and no campaign donations allowed; everybody gets an equal stipend to campaign, we have the internet you don't need to go shaking babies and kissing hands.
Probably get rid of the supreme Court altogether and have cases that it currently hears be heard by a random selection of federal judges.
Probably also need to get some people smarter and more specialized than me to figure out how to capture the wealth of the wealthy. Like the whole "take out a loan against your assets, use that as money, pay no taxes" thing needs to go.
While we're having fantasies, can we expand the 14th amendment "no insurrection " bit to be more clear?
And if we're feeling spiteful, add a "no one who has held office as a member of the Republican party shall be eligible for any role in government, nor any role that engages with the government such as contractor, advisor, lobbyist." Just gut the whole party.
No tax reform? It’s a great start to make taxes easier for most individuals but we shouldn’t be allowing wealthier people to pay less percentage of taxes. There’s a bewildering array of complexity that doesn’t matter to most individuals but only serves to lower the tax rate if people who can afford to take advantage of it
Lots of good stuff here, and I agree with others to keep the senate. Abolish the filibuster!
I will take 1 of those, watered down and neutered, and it would still make more sense than the landfill fire we live in right now.
Roleplaying as Decronym bot for a moment:
Acronyms, initialisms, and other phrases seen in this thread:
Shortform Likely Meaning VAT Value-Added Tax IRS Internal Revenue Service UBI Universal Basic Income CPI Consumer Price Index GDP Gross Domestic Product FPTP/FPP voting First-Past-The-Post, or First-Past-Post voting STAR voting Score Then Automatic Runoff voting RCV Ranked Choice Voting IRV Instant-Runoff Voting STV Single-Transferable Vote AV Approval Voting 321/3-2-1 voting 3 Semifinalists, 2 finalists, 1 winner via rating candidates MMP Mixed-Member Proportional (Representation) PAC Political Action Committee CCC Civilian Conservation Corp EC Electoral College NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization EU European Union US United States SCOTUS Supreme Court of the United States RMV Registry of Motor Vehicles IIRC If I Remember Correctly TF The Fuck UBU Universal Basic UwU Out of these, unfortunately the only one that even has a chance of being realized is "IRS does taxes for everyone", and even that is more like "IRS provides official avenue to not have to pay a tax prep service"
The rest of these won't happen without a revolution, because the people with the power to make these things happen all directly benefit from them.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see even one or two things on this list become reality. Any two would make a ton of difference for a lot of people. But capitalism doesn't like it when you benefit the average Joe, and capitalism always wins here.
Any time a budget is not passed on time, House, Senate and Presidential/VP salaries are cut to minimum wage until a new budget takes effect.
(I say "cut to minimum wage" because unfortunately the Constitution has been interpreted as dictating that their pay never be interrupted. It does not, however, specify how much they have to be paid.)
I like almost all of this, but I disagree with merging the Senate and House as well as a VAT on luxury items. We already have tax on basically every transaction and the burden is on the consumer, that needs to change. What should happen is that all taxes on food items currently should be removed. I believe the separation of Senate and House, while burdensome and inefficient at times, really does an essential good for American society. We would fare much better if we had term limits and more than two (essentially one) political party.
Edit: I want to continue with strickening the UBI from this list as well in exchange for significanly improving social services to make sure that everyone is guaranteed food, housing, medical, and security. I get that income is important and some people cant work, but inflation is real and that money has to come from somewhere not just the ether. It would be better to create/improve upon existing social safety nets to make sure everyone can contribute to society in some way rather than just giving everyone money for nothing.
Something something.. gerrymandering
I agree with most of these. Key differences that'd I prefer:
- Approval instead of ranked choice voting (easier auditing, simpler to explain)
- Get rid of pretty much all taxes, and replaced it with a land and carbon/pollution tax
- Mandate all companies be employee owned
- Abolish the stock market
- Ban on corporations from owning single family unit homes, every citizen capped to 3 residences, and all multi-unit homes must be non-market housing
- Massive public investment into housing construction
No more first past the post elections and so break the duopoly
And another one: push cities (by carrot and sticks, financial incentives and penalties) to change their layouts and designs to be humans first, 15 minute cities, whatever you want to call them. Pedestrian areas and cycling infrastructure over cars, mixed use building areas, let's get rid of the suburb rot. It makes it that people don't need a car and if you don't need a car, why have an expensive piece of crap that costs a fortune to use and maintain? Cars will still be allowed, because of course. It's just that priorities have to change. People first, cyclists first. Cities will become more quiet, people will walk and cycle more, they'll be outside more, healthier, happier, safer, richer, safer.
The 50k and under untaxed I disagree with. It sets up for a possible scenario where those who are taxed get priority in policy. If you are able to be a productive member of society, you should pay taxes to support that society, and the infrastructure it provides.
Most of the others in the list I agree with or don't know enough about the case to comment
Soapbox: You there! Are you tired of getting sand kicked in your face? I ask you: why does the US have public debt without public equity?
Public funding, subsidy, stimulus, and infrastructural spending should purchase public equity that can only be bought back from the public via surplus taxes. We don’t have to call it socialism. It can be capitalism proper. But it’s the people’s capital and labor being lent, interest-free. They should expect a return. Fair is fair.
It’s simpler and stronger than labor unions. There’s no collective bargaining for temporary compensation, no dues, no pickets, no fuss. The pension is paid from the start by public endowment as a matter of course, eliminating the underlying financial insecurity employers exploit. The free market is more free when poverty can’t dictate your fee.
And besides securing the future for so many people, it would change the way citizens see themselves and the world around them, the stake they have in their governance and economy, and would certainly reframe public discourse.
- National healthcare is clearly overdue vertical integration that would curtail inefficiencies and improve outcomes.
- Entitlements like UBI could then be ordinary financial vehicles, annuities of the ever-expanding public trust.
- National debt would become leverage for a better future rather than a burdensome inheritance.
- Conservative rhetoric would sound hopelessly plebeian against an owner-proletariat. Whining about unfair government handouts has no place where everyone is granted the same share of public dividends.
- Many large private interests that have historically gobbled up public funds would quickly see the public become majority shareholders, effectively nationalizing many industries that should have been long ago. In particular, many nonprofits would coalesce into the bonafide public works they should have been all along.
- It even allows the good intent of inheritance without compounding generational inequality, and your safety net is not contingent upon means testing or number of years working. Were you just born? Welcome. You’re covered.
Public equity unlocks the logical, humane, and sustainable version of capitalism in which every worker is vested and shares both the means of production and the value they produce.
Way way way better than the first one!
Ranked Choice Voting? 100% approve.
Get rid of the EC entirely. The popular vote would work quite a bit better as a means of ensuring power is exercised with the consent of the governed.
Scotus and congress both desperately need oversight that is different from 'we oversee ourselves and find we did nothing wrong' when obvs. that doesn't work too well
Tax prep companies... I wish them a prompt and thorough viking funeral.
Fun fact about corporate power at the time of the framers: the colonists felt first-hand the abuse of being effectively governed by crown corporations and shortly after the founding of the USA, corporations were drastically limited in what they could do- for example, they could not engage in politics, they could not own other corporations, could not engage in activities not strictly related to their charters, had charters of finite span, and their charters could be revoked for any violations. If corporations are going to be people today, it's about damned time we started charging them with crimes when they commit crimes- and yank their charters if they re-offend.
One thing worth questioning: do we really need representative districts? Why not have at-large representatives on a per-state basis, with seats allocated to states/apportioned via census? It would be pretty hard to gerrymander an at-large system, I think
You have a point of merging the Senate into the House.
I'm a fan of Australia's federal voting system. We have a house of Representatives where the country is divided into 151 regions by geography of roughly the same number of people. One in Sydney is a few suburbs, the one in the south of northern Territory is almost the whole territory excluding Darwin.
Then there's the Senate, where each State gets to elect twelve(six every 3 years[1]) Senators. Territories (Australian Capital Territory & Northern Territory) elect Two Sentors every election.
Everyone in the state gets a say in who represents them as Senators and allows minor parties to get representation as only 16% of the total vote is needed to get a seat. (The Greens typically get 1-2 of seats in each State)
So for areas with geographic issues get to have a say (rural people vote for the National party who represent farmers interest).
And there's the occasional independent who gets in too and some other minor parties.
The other major difference is we have optional fully preferential voting. You can nominate anyone running in your seat as your first preference on voting day and you give everyone on your ballot a number from 1 to however many. When the Australian Electoral Comission counts the votes if the person you put first is eliminated from the count (they only get 175 votes from the 110,000 who cast a ballot), then your voting slip still counts and your vote transfers to your second choice.
Also we have compulsory* voting here. If you are enrolled, you are required to vote and will get a small fine if you don't. *You might think all politicians are bastards and cast an unfilled ballot paper into the box, but you have had your ability to have a say. I'll also note that people may take the time in the polling booth to draw a penis on their slip which isn't illegal and doesn't invalidate the vote a long as the intention for who is being voted for is clear. There are also prepoll stations and an option to postal vote exists.
We also have a tradition of voters getting a "Democracy Sausage" after voting. It's common that voting stations (elections held on Saturdays) are schools and local clubs have barbecues and sell cakes etc as part of fundraising.
In summary, I like out two house system as the Senate allows minor parties to get representation where they wouldn't otherwise if we just had the House of Representatives. [1] we sometimes have double disillusion elections where the government has the options to call one if they keep passing legislation in the house and the Senate keeps rejecting it and in that case all seats are vacated and the states elect 12 Senators, but it's not normal.
If you could achieve 1 thing on this list you could do all of them.
Another one: push cities to have green (as in trees) everywhere. Not only is it prettier, people will be more happy with loads of green everywhere, but it also lowers temperatures in cities. Better mental healthy better physical health.
state rep cap
What you're looking for is "the congressional apportionment amendment", and it was passed by congress with the bill of rights, and ratified by many states but every time they almost met the 3/4ths threshold a new state was admitted, and it always remained short. 11 states have ratified it. It had no expiry and as such is still waiting to be ratified by the states. It needs 27 more ratifications to become an amendment to the constitution.
Money =/= speech
Death penalty for lobbyists.
twenty year old me “heck yeah”
Forty year old me “never going to happen.”
@3volver Hope you do a v3. There are some good ideas in these comments. It's been a good read.
ALL sales tax needs to be replaced with value-added tax. Zero tax on used goods, including cars, if you actually want to reduce waste and related harm to the environment.
At the bare minimum force states to proportionally allocate electors. I know this is realistically impossible.
Term limit for congress
Might not be need anymore with a handful of the items listed but campaign finance reform to show where all of a campaigns money came from and went. Also thought there was a better term but can't fully remember.
Pipe dreams
You've got huge, earthshaking, constitutional-level changes here lumped together with minor stuff like tax-prep and tax brackets. There's no sense of scale here. (Also, forget tax increases, implement a wealth tax)
I think you missed the most important one, remove lobbying and treat it as it is. Bribes.
I'd suggest adding:
- Establish new "Common Ground" party with a platform mandated to only reflect issues and positions with a 2/3rd majority support among the American public in multiple 3rd party polls from different pollsters
Political ideology falls along a normal distribution. Very dumb to draw the line down the middle rather than capturing the norm and excluding the edges.
Let's have progress demand a shift in the national attitudes over time rather than let minor shifts of a few percentage points every few years in a deadlock determine progress or regress.
From an outsider perspective. Two houses/chambers are better than one. But the second should be a review chamber that sends amendments back to the first. If those amendments are rejected by the first then so be it.
Something like PAYE would be better than having your government work out the tax. It places the expanse on the companies rather than the government or the individual.
With a less convoluted tax system and businesses working it out you probably wouldn't need to ban those tax companies as market forces would make them no longer viable.
VAT should be on luxury goods, and ones that the government wants to discourage the use of for public health (500% vat on tobacco products, 300% VAT on vaping etc).
If we just had term limits things would already be better!
- Introduce a corporate death penalty for grave offences: a business is declared bankrupt and sent in to liquidation even if it is financially sound.
Just add tax brackets up to 99% and have graduated lending taxes
In other words: delete the GOP
President decided by sortition (like jury selection) with a less military-focused role, cabinet members decided by voting on a list of working professionals in the applicable field (aka someone who works in agricultural sciences to be secretary of agriculture), housing as a human right, functional petitions that can initiate a direct vote in a special election on any issue with enough signatures. Ban prison labor and for profit prisons. Ban private schools and invest heavily in public schools. Employees of public services like libraries, schools, gov jobs pay no taxes. De-militarize the police. Sever the relationship between police and current/former prosecutors (possibly by only getting out-of-county prosecutors to oversee cases involving police?), enshrine prisoner voting rights, enshrine Land back policy, no corporate ownership of single family homes. Rent for an apartment has to be split to be exactly what the mortgage currently costs for the owner of the building + overhead, repairs and community agreed upon updates (if the building has no mortgage anymore, it is lowered to be only what is needed for overhead etc.- being a landlord shouldn't be profitable, it should be a service), salary has to be clearly marked on every job posting and if it is found out that they are underpaying what they advertise, the labor board can fine the company by percentage of total profit increasing 2x every time it happens. All jobs are union eligible except for police. State tax benefits to influence city centers to become car-free. Loitering is a protected activity. Ban EULAs that can change at the will of the company. Force companies to pay out money to those they stole data from and sold. Ban the NSA, TSA, FBI, and CIA. Ban the stock market in some way that wouldn't be awful. Ban more performant car/truck tires that's causing our microplastics problem in favor of almost entirely naturally decomposing tire compounds. All vehicles and machinery are subject to the emissions standards of cars. Farmers are always allowed to set up a stand and sell products from their farm in parking lots (even parking lots of grocery stores). No unmarked police cars and no police sirens at night. No 24 hour news cycle. Crackdown on javascript's power on the internet. Break up apple, google, Microsoft, and any other behemoth I'm forgetting. Ban court fees. Ban non-competes. 3-4 day workweek. On top of location representation in our federal government, include wage representation and age representation as well. Surprise, all businesses are co-ops now! There's probably way more, but I can only fantasize so much lol
100% yes!
I agree with a lot of this, especially ranked choice voting. Don't agree with abolishing the electoral college though. Rural voters and urban voters are generally quite different, if you get rid of the electoral college the rural voters will be completely ignored by every politician simply because there are fewer of them and they are spread out more. I don't think that means their priorities should be invalidated.
That said, I would add one thing. Abolish primary votes. Political parties can nominate as many or as few people as they wish, anybody with enough signatures can get their name on the final ballot. The current primary system basically disenfranchises voters in any state that isn't in the first 10 or 15 primary elections. Half the candidates will have dropped out by the time their state votes.
Land back
Permanently Deleted
Abolish corporate personhood? No. Someone obviously doesn't understand what corporate personhood is or how it exists.
If there is no such thing as corporate personhood, how do you tax a corporation? How does a corporation own any property? How does a hospital exist? How do groups of people pool capital? How does one sue groups of people who have pulled their Capital and caused harm?
The jurisdiction of all law is based on personal jurisdiction. Corporate personhood is considered a "legal fiction," it doesn't exist to protect corporations, although it sometimes does, it exists by necessity and by operation of law. It would exist even if you didn't want it to, it would just have to be called something else. The alternative is that groups of people cannot pool resources toward a common endeavor, or, they can, but it's a lawless and ungovernable enterprise, with nobody having any enforceable rights.
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House and Senate merge? No. Read up on bicameral versus unicameral legislative power as limitations on power, and in America the Senate's role as a saucer. It makes sense especially when the Congress is a huge body to begin with and when dealing with classified information and covert matters of state; in which case a higher tier with a smaller group and longer terms makes sense to protect our secrets.
This is the also the only idea, along with Supreme Court term limits, that requires a Constitutional Amendment. The others are much more feasible and reasonable. ...
You want a really ambitious one that would help, abolish the states.
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.
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.
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Ranked choice voting is great, yes please.
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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.
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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.
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Again, why? The house reps are by population of the state/district. We don't need MORE bureaucrats.
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Yes, please. US "healthcare" is in shambles. It's a complete disaster and the only people that benefit are Insurance companies.
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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.
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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.
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, 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.
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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.
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sure, on board.
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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.
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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...
