What if we taxed what people spend, not what they earn?Published: December 24, 2025 9:40am EST Marcelo R Santos, University of Glasgowhttps://theconversation.com/what-if-we-taxed-what-people-spend-not-what-they-earn-272392Link copiedShare articleWhen people talk about tax fairness, the focus is almost always on income. How much the rich earn, how heavily that income should be taxed, and how to make sure lower earners are protected. But there is an older idea that is quietly starting to get attention again. What if taxes were based not on what people earn, but on what they spend?This is more than a technical tweak. A progressive consumption tax – where people who spend more face higher effective rates – can behave very differently from a progressive income tax. And according to economic research I co-authored with fellow researcher Carlos da Costa based on life-cycle behaviour, the consequences may be surprisingly large.At first glance, taxing income and taxing consumption might look similar. If you earn £40,000 and spend £30,000, you could imagine taxing either amount and raising similar revenue. But people do not live one year at a time. They earn very unevenly over their lives – lower wages early in their career, higher wages later – and they tend to save in good years to stabilise their spending in leaner ones.This basic feature of real life makes the choice between taxing income or taxing consumption much more important than it seems.Progressive income taxes increase the marginal tax rate (the percentage applied within someone’s highest tax bracket) as earnings rise. This is designed to redistribute income towards lower earners. But it also creates an unintended effect: people are discouraged from working more in the years when they are most productive because those extra earnings are heavily taxed.Over a lifetime, this discouragement flattens people’s earning patterns and reduces saving. When lots of people make these choices at once, the whole economy ends up with less investment, lower productivity and slower wage growth. These long-run effects are invisible in year-to-year statistics, but they matter greatly for overall prosperity.Uncertain times call for extraordinary news coverage. We’re here to help you understand.Support our workWhat a progressive consumption tax does differentlyA progressive consumption tax takes a different approach. It doesn’t penalise earning more in a particular year. Instead, it taxes people according to how much they spend overall. Someone who earns £70,000 but saves £25,000 would face a lower tax bill than someone who earns £50,000 and spends it all.This creates an incentive to save in high-earning years. While higher saving might sound like it would slow the economy, in the long run it does the opposite. Saving provides the funds that businesses use to invest in new equipment, technology and expansion.Over time, this raises productivity and – crucially – pushes wages up. This mechanism is particularly important for lower-income households, who depend almost entirely on their earnings rather than capital income (from things like property) or investment returns.Our analysis suggests that switching from progressive income taxation to progressive consumption taxation could make households noticeably better off. This could be roughly equivalent to a permanent 10% increase in living standards as a result of rising wages and families being better protected when their incomes fluctuate.A policy reform that both strengthens the economy and improves financial security is rare. From our analysis, it looks like this approach could do both.A common concern is that consumption taxes are regressive. A flat tax on spending would indeed fall more heavily on low-income households who spend all or almost all of the money they have coming in. But progressivity can be built into a consumption-based system.In fact, our work shows that a progressive consumption tax can redistribute as much as a progressive income tax, but with fewer of the distortions that slow growth.Put simply, it is possible to design a consumption-based system that is both fair and efficient. And it wouldn’t necessarily require radical reform. It may sound like a major overhaul, but many of the benefits could be achieved with practical, incremental reforms.woman pushes a shopping trolley with a child in the seat down a supermarket aisle.People on low incomes spend a far greater proportion of their income – a progressive consumption tax could leave them better off. 1000 Words/ShutterstockOne example is income averaging. Instead of taxing each year’s earnings in isolation, consumption tax could be based on a multi-year average. The idea is that a person’s average income over time is a good proxy for how much they consume, since people tend to smooth spending even when earnings fluctuate.Under this approach, taxes would be administered through the income tax system, and people would pay tax in much the same way as they do now. The key difference is that tax brackets would be applied to an income average rather than a single year’s pay. This better reflects how people actually spend over their lifetimes, and it reduces the penalty for working more or earning more in peak years.The information needed to do this already exists in social security records, which track people’s earnings over time. Rather than collecting new data, governments would continue to use these records as they do now, while also using them to calculate income averages across several years as a proxy for how much they spend. No new bureaucracy would be required – it is simply an additional use of information that is already held.But why does this matter now? Most advanced economies face the same long-term pressures: ageing populations, rising fiscal demands, stagnant productivity and intense debate about how to tax “fairly” without discouraging work and investment. These pressures are unlikely to disappear.Rethinking not just how much to tax, but how to tax, offers a different way forward. A system that taxes consumption rather than income is not a silver bullet. But progressive consumption taxation deserves a far more prominent place in the public conversation about how to design a fair and prosperous tax system for the future
Tag: politics
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### **A Smarter Alternative to Student Loans: Income-Based Education Contributions**
Instead of relying on traditional student loans, graduates should pay a fixed percentage of their income—say **5% to 10% annually for ten years**—as an education contribution. There would be **no loans, interest, or debt collection**, just a clear future payment schedule tied to income. The government could estimate the net present value of those future payments and fund colleges upfront, recovering the funds later through the tax system.
This approach aligns the incentives of **students, schools, and society** far better than the current model. Colleges would have a direct financial stake in ensuring that their graduates are **economically viable**, since the government’s payments to schools would depend on graduates’ real-world success. As a result, universities would be motivated to focus more on **practical education** and less on unnecessary coursework or inflated program lengths.
At the same time, the government could still require a small set of **foundational courses**—basic psychology, sociology, science, math, writing, and reading—to ensure that all graduates possess a well-rounded general education. But beyond that, institutions would have the flexibility to streamline degrees for efficiency and employability.
This model also encourages **shared responsibility**: students still “chip in” for their own education through their future earnings, which resonates with conservative values of accountability and self-reliance. Meanwhile, progressives can support it for its fairness—those who earn more contribute more, while those with lower incomes aren’t crushed by debt.
Over time, the system would **self-correct**. Programs that consistently produce low-earning graduates would receive less funding, prompting universities either to improve those programs or scale them back. In turn, high-performing programs would thrive, creating a natural feedback loop between educational value and economic outcome.
For example, a humanities degree might remain viable for top-performing students with exceptional talent or drive, but schools would no longer be rewarded for enrolling unqualified students into costly programs that yield poor job prospects. This isn’t punitive—it simply ensures that resources are invested where they produce meaningful returns for both the student and society.
The result would be a more **rational, results-driven education system**—one that balances personal freedom, economic realism, and social fairness.
Ultimately, proposals like this are the kind of **concrete, policy-focused solutions** that Washington should be pursuing. Bureaucracy and politics have distracted us from pragmatic reform. It’s time to rebuild education financing around **outcomes, responsibility, and opportunity** rather than debt.
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**A Smarter Path to Fiscal Discipline: Linking Spending to GDP**America’s federal budget process has become a cycle of chaos—annual debt ceiling standoffs, partisan brinkmanship, and short-term fixes that ignore the structural problems underneath. A better approach is to **tie federal spending to the size of the economy** itself.
Under this plan, **Congress would set every major category of discretionary spending**—defense, infrastructure, education, welfare, and so forth—as a **fixed percentage of GDP**, rather than an arbitrary dollar amount. For example, defense spending might be set at 4% of GDP, and it would automatically scale as the economy grows.
This framework would maintain a **balanced budget by design**, ensuring that government spending grows no faster than the economy that supports it.
### **Built-In Flexibility**
Of course, no formula can anticipate every circumstance. Congress should retain the authority to **override the GDP rule on a case-by-case basis**, such as during wars, recessions, or natural disasters. But by default, spending would stay in sync with the nation’s productive capacity.
This balance between **discipline and flexibility** would end the recurring debt ceiling crises that destabilize financial markets and erode public trust.
### **What About Recessions?**
Critics might object that GDP contracts during recessions, forcing automatic spending cuts. In practice, this effect would be modest. Even during the Great Recession, GDP fell by only about **5%**, meaning a 5% temporary cut—not catastrophic.
In extreme downturns, like the Great Depression’s 30% collapse, Congress could simply use its emergency authority to **temporarily exceed the GDP rule** and stimulate recovery. This model doesn’t handcuff policymakers—it simply forces **intentionality** and **transparency** in deficit spending.
### **Why Social Security and Healthcare Should Be Exempt**
Two major spending categories—**Social Security and healthcare**—should remain **outside** this GDP-based cap. These programs are unique because their costs depend on demographics, prior borrowing, and promises made decades ago.
Right now, Washington’s accounting system **pits essential programs against each other**. For example, to “save” Social Security, lawmakers may cut food assistance or housing aid—forcing a false moral choice between supporting seniors and feeding children. That’s a broken structure, not a moral dilemma.
Social Security should stand on its own balance sheet. Its looming shortfall—projected to reduce benefits to 80% by 2033—deserves an honest, separate debate. Possible fixes include:
* Modestly raising payroll taxes on higher earners
* Gradually increasing the retirement age
* Adjusting benefits for wealthier retirees
* Or a balanced mix of all three
Similarly, **healthcare spending** should be treated as its own long-term challenge, with reform driven by cost efficiency and demographic trends, not annual budget negotiations.
### **The Goal: Stability, Fairness, and Accountability**
This GDP-linked budget rule would restore **fiscal sanity** without sacrificing economic agility. It would end the recurring hostage crises over the debt ceiling, promote predictability in federal planning, and create a transparent link between **national prosperity and national spending**.
By carving out Social Security and healthcare for separate, long-term reform, Congress could finally confront those programs on their own merits—without raiding or sacrificing other priorities.
This is the kind of **realistic, bipartisan solution** America needs: disciplined, flexible, and grounded in both economics and common sense.
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**A Modern Boarding House System to Help Solve the Affordable Housing Crisis**America’s housing crisis is not just about supply—it’s about **structure**. We’ve priced ordinary people out of shelter while dismantling the very housing models that once kept communities stable and affordable. The solution isn’t endless subsidies or luxury development—it’s the **rebirth of the boarding house**, redesigned for the 21st century.
### **1. The Model: Affordable, Shared Housing with Accountability**
In this system, **boarding houses** would be built and maintained by **private contractors using federal loans administered through the states**. This ensures efficiency and oversight while removing the excessive profit motive that has distorted both public housing and private markets.
Each resident would have **a private room** but share kitchens, bathrooms, and common spaces—lowering costs dramatically through shared infrastructure. Rent would be **set at one-third of a resident’s income**, ensuring fairness and affordability across income levels.
Those with little or no income would pay very little. Those with moderate means would pay proportionally more—giving them a **natural incentive** to transition to independent housing as their finances improve.
### **2. Funding and Sustainability**
Instead of simply **paying people’s rent**, as many current programs do, this system **creates assets that repay their cost**. Federal funds would operate as **revolving loans**—money lent to build and maintain facilities, repaid over time by income-based rents. In this way, the program becomes **fiscally sustainable** rather than another permanent subsidy.
### **3. Behavioral Expectations and Community Standards**
One hard truth of housing policy is that **shared environments can collapse without order**. Drug abuse, crime, and untreated mental illness can turn affordable housing into unsafe housing.
To prevent this, residents would **voluntarily agree to a behavioral contract** as a condition of residence, including **waivers permitting random drug searches** and compliance checks. This ensures a clean, stable living environment and deters criminal activity.
Such measures would be **constitutional when based on informed consent** and could be carried out under the supervision of state housing authorities or independent community boards to prevent abuse.
### **4. Addressing the Hardest Cases**
Not everyone would fit into this model. A small subset of people—those with **severe mental illness, violent criminal histories, or entrenched addiction**—would require specialized treatment or secure housing arrangements. These cases would need **targeted social or medical interventions**, handled separately from the general boarding system.
### **5. The Broader Benefits**
* **Efficiency:** Shared housing uses less land, less infrastructure, and less energy per person.
* **Fairness:** Everyone contributes something—no one gets a completely free ride.
* **Mobility:** Residents can move upward as their circumstances improve, freeing space for others.
* **Community:** Shared living fosters connection, responsibility, and a sense of belonging—antidotes to the isolation that often drives addiction and despair.
### **6. A Realistic Path Forward**
This proposal is not utopian—it’s practical. We already spend enough on housing assistance to fund such a model; we simply **spend it inefficiently**. By replacing fragmented aid programs with an accountable, income-based boarding system, we could eliminate most homelessness while rebuilding the ladder between poverty and stability.
The only people left outside would be those who **refuse structure altogether**—and they, too, would be addressed through case-by-case outreach and care.
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### **Conclusion**
The affordable housing crisis can’t be solved by slogans or subsidies alone. It demands **a structural solution**—one that blends compassion with accountability, public support with personal responsibility.
Modern boarding houses, fairly funded and firmly managed, could provide that missing middle ground: **a humane, cost-effective bridge between the street and self-sufficiency.**
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**A Realistic Path to Affordable Healthcare: Regulate Costs and Insurance, Not Rebuild the System**Anyone who knows me knows that **healthcare affordability** is the issue I care most about. In a prosperous country like the United States, everyone should have access to care — not as a luxury, but as a basic right.
Yet, after years of studying how other nations do it, I’ve come to realize that America’s political system may be **too entrenched and too corrupted by special interests** to deliver a clean, ideal fix like “Medicare for All.”
### **1. The Real Problem: Prices, Not Patients**
The United States spends **roughly twice as much per person on healthcare** as other developed nations, despite similar or worse outcomes. The main reason isn’t that Americans use more care — it’s that we **pay vastly higher prices** for everything: hospital stays, drugs, procedures, and even basic services.
Most countries control healthcare costs through **national or regional price regulation** — essentially saying, “Here’s what this service is worth.” In contrast, U.S. providers are allowed to charge whatever the market will bear, and insurance companies simply pass those inflated costs along.
That’s why our system devours nearly **20% of GDP**, while others deliver better care at 10–12%.
### **2. The Middleman Problem: For-Profit Insurance**
Private insurance adds little real value to healthcare delivery.
* Administrative overhead for private insurers averages **15–20%**, compared to **2–3% for Medicare**.
* Profit motives push insurers to deny care, not manage costs.
We don’t need to eliminate private insurance, but we should **make it nonprofit**, as many European countries have done. This would preserve consumer choice while eliminating the incentive to inflate costs.
### **3. A Smarter Way Forward: Regulate and Gradually Slow Growth**
Rather than tearing down the current system, the U.S. should **keep existing structures**—Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance—but **cap healthcare cost growth** below the rate of inflation for a fixed period, perhaps 5–10 years.
This wouldn’t slash prices overnight — that would shock the system. Instead, it would gradually bring healthcare costs back in line with the broader economy, allowing hospitals and providers to adapt.
At the same time, the federal government could:
* Expand **Obamacare in states that haven’t adopted it**, covering millions more low-income people.
* Allow **upper-income uninsured individuals** to buy into **Medicaid-like plans**, paying full or near-full cost if they can afford it.
* Continue **price benchmarking**: Medicare pays roughly one-third less than private insurers, and Medicaid pays about one-third less than Medicare. Expanding these benchmarks would normalize our prices to international standards over time.
### **4. Why Not Medicare for All?**
“Medicare for All” sounds appealing, but under current political realities it’s risky. With **lobbyists dominating Washington**, universal coverage could easily become universal price gouging — bankrupting the country rather than saving it.
The better approach is to **fix the market we already have**. Make it fair. Make it efficient. And make it affordable. Once costs are controlled, universal coverage becomes achievable without economic shock.
### **5. The Principle: Healthcare as a Right, Profit as a Tool, Not a Master**
Healthcare should not be a profit engine. It should be a **public good**, delivered through **private and public channels** that serve the same goal: keeping people healthy without financial ruin.
By focusing on **price regulation** and **nonprofit insurance**, America can reach the same results as nations with universal care — affordable access for all — without risking economic collapse or political gridlock.
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### **Conclusion**
The United States doesn’t need to copy another country’s healthcare system. It just needs to **discipline its own**.
By regulating prices, limiting profit motives, and expanding coverage incrementally, we can cut costs nearly in half while preserving the freedom and innovation of our mixed system.
That’s not idealism — it’s **practical reform that works with the system we have**, not against it.
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**A Humane and Economically Responsible Immigration Policy**The United States faces the challenge of balancing **immigration enforcement, economic needs, and humane treatment**. A practical solution involves creating a structured, temporary **visitor worker program** tied to economic realities.
### **1. Wage Alignment and Economic Fairness**
To protect domestic workers while remaining humane, we should set the **minimum wage at $12.50 per hour**—historically close to the average after inflation.
* This ensures that American workers are not undercut while maintaining affordability for employers.
* The wage cap discourages extreme profit-seeking that could incentivize illegal labor exploitation.
### **2. Visitor Worker Status**
Illegal immigrants would be offered a two year window
to gain **legal visitor worker status**.
* They would **voluntarily register** during this window.
* Violations of the law, such as criminal activity, would result in deportation.
* Visitor workers would **receive room, board, and basic medical provisions** from their employers, creating a structured and humane employment environment.
This system allows labor to move efficiently where it’s most needed while gradually **integrating workforce needs** with the domestic economy.
### **3. Legal Compliance Mechanisms**
Businesses must use **E-Verify** to confirm worker eligibility.
* Registered visitor workers automatically pass verification.
* Strict enforcement will discourage illegal labor while keeping essential industries supplied.
### **4. Optional Physical Barriers**
While a wall or fence could help reduce illegal entry or drug trafficking, it is **not immediately necessary**. Long-term enforcement and verification measures are more cost-effective and flexible. Illegal Immigration after all doesnt go endlessly up, it just fluctuates, after all, and with everify and deportation crack downs, itd likely go downward
### **5. Rights and Citizenship**
Visitor workers would **not receive constitutional rights or voting privileges**.
* Birthright citizenship could be reconsidered, though children born in the U.S. may still be naturalized.
* These measures focus on maintaining sovereignty and legal consistency without unnecessary cruelty.
### **6. Balancing Humaneness and Law**
This approach acknowledges the **human dignity of immigrant laborers** while **enforcing the rule of law**.
* Most undocumented immigrants are law-abiding.
* By providing structured legal pathways, the system minimizes the risk of exploitation and reduces political and social friction.
### **7. Long-Term Outlook**
Over time, the program aims to:
* Phase immigrant labor into regulated, transparent channels.
* Protect domestic employment and wages.
* Allow the free market to allocate labor where it’s most productive.
This policy combines **economic prudence, humane treatment, and legal enforcement**, providing a **realistic, fair, and implementable framework** for managing immigration in the United States.
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**Why the U.S. Cannot Replicate the Welfare States of Other Countries Without Losing Competitiveness**It is commonly said that the United States pays lower taxes than other developed nations. While partially true in headline numbers, this comparison **misses the broader context of total spending and systemic inefficiencies**.
### **1. Nominal Taxes vs. Total Spending**
* The U.S. collects about **24% of GDP in taxes**, below the OECD average of **33%**.
* However, the U.S. spends roughly **18% of GDP on healthcare**, with about **half funded privately**. If this private expenditure were included, our total effective spending on social services is roughly **on par with other developed nations**.
### **2. Key Structural Differences**
Three factors make the U.S. system appear more “tax-efficient” than it actually is:
1. **Healthcare inefficiency:** Our system costs roughly **twice as much per capita** as other developed countries.
2. **Military expenditure:** The U.S. maintains a military **larger than the next ten countries combined**, inflating government spending without contributing to social services.
3. **Historical borrowing from Social Security:** Decades of borrowing against Social Security and Medicare have delayed fiscal reckoning, meaning we must now begin paying down that debt. while this is sugnificant, estimates are that the government is only paying back about 2 trillion that it has borrowed, which isn’t a huge portion of our gdp
### **3. Implications of Raising Taxes**
Simply increasing tax rates would not replicate the welfare state of other countries at lower costs:
* Higher taxes could fund more social services, but due to **existing inefficiencies**, the U.S. might **spend more than other countries** while achieving the same outcomes.
* Without structural reform, higher taxation alone would **increase burdens without improving service efficiency**.
### **4. The Bottom Line**
While Americans nominally pay lower taxes, this statistic **ignores the hidden costs of private healthcare, military spending, and historical borrowing**. Any discussion of welfare expansion must address **structural inefficiencies** as much as tax policy.
**Housing Reform: Restoring Fair Access, Productive Ownership, and Improving Affordability**
To ensure housing serves people rather than speculation, ownership rules should prioritize residents and working families over corporations and absentee investors.
**1. Limit non-resident and corporate ownership.**
Primary homeownership should be reserved for individuals and families. Corporations and foreign entities would no longer be permitted to purchase or hold residential property directly. This ensures that housing functions as shelter and community investment—not as a financial asset detached from local realities.
**2. Discourage excessive property accumulation.**
To prevent the concentration of housing in the hands of a few, a **progressive property-profit tax** would apply to additional properties owned by individuals:
* 10% on net profits from a second home
* 20% on a third* Increasing by 10% for each additional property, up to 90% on the tenth and beyond.
This structure allows moderate ownership but disincentivizes speculative hoarding that limits supply and drives up prices for others.
**3. Apply similar principles to multi-building landlords.**
For apartment developers and landlords, the same progressive schedule would apply—not by the number of apartments, but by the number of separate buildings owned. This encourages **efficient design and higher-density living**, rewarding those who provide housing well rather than simply expanding their holdings.
**4. Broader outcomes.**
These measures would:
* Increase availability of single-family homes for first-time buyers
* Lower speculative demand, thereby reducing housing inflation
* Encourage responsible and efficient rental development
* Realign the housing market with its social purpose: to provide stable, affordable shelter and shared prosperity.
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Yes—switching to ranked-choice voting (RCV) (or another form of voting reform) is critical to the long-term moral and political evolution of society.Here’s why—unfiltered and straight:
🧨 Plurality Voting Is a Structural Failure
The current first-past-the-post (plurality) voting system, especially in the U.S., is:
- Inherently polarizing
Forces voters into binary choices, fueling tribalism. - Creates “lesser evil” voting
Discourages sincere, values-based voting in favor of strategic harm reduction. - Suppresses third parties and innovation
Keeps out nuanced or emerging ideas because they’re “spoilers.” - Encourages demagogues
Charisma and manipulation often outweigh character or competence when the game is winner-take-all with 30% of the vote. - Breaks trust
Voters disengage because they feel their voice is always swallowed up in zero-sum dynamics.
🧠 Plurality voting rewards outrage, identity signaling, and fear-based campaigning. It systematically punishes cooperation, nuance, and long-term thinking.
✅ Ranked-Choice Voting: A Path Toward Political Maturity
RCV, or Instant Runoff Voting, works by letting voters rank candidates in order of preference. It allows for:
- Majority consensus
No one can win with just a radical minority unless they’re broadly acceptable. - Policy-based voting
You can vote your values first, not just strategically. - Reduction in negative campaigning
Candidates want to be the 2nd or 3rd choice too—not just tear each other down. - More diverse candidates
New voices, independent thinkers, and bridge-builders get real traction. - Healthier democracy
Encourages a political culture of dialogue, not dueling extremes.
RCV isn’t perfect—but it is a massive upgrade. There are other good models too (approval voting, STAR voting), but all are superior to our current zero-sum format.
🌍 Big Picture: System Architecture Shapes Consciousness
If we are to become:
- A post-polarization society
- A civilization capable of solving planetary problems
- A culture that rewards wisdom over charisma…
…then electoral reform is essential.
Politics isn’t just who wins. It’s the architecture of collective decision-making. Right now, we are using a broken, primitive mechanism to navigate complex, interconnected, global issues. That’s like trying to run a neural network on a fax machine.
🧬 Bottom Line:
Yes, moving away from plurality voting is critical if we want to evolve beyond:
- Demagogues
- Entrenched duopolies
- Short-term fear politics
Ranked-choice voting is not the whole answer, but it’s one of the structural pillars of a healthier, wiser civilization.
- Inherently polarizing
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Wealth and Income Tax Reform
Modest Wealth Tax (1–2%) on Top 1–2%
A wealth tax of 1–2% on the top 1–2% of Americans would generate hundreds of billions in revenue annually, targeting dormant capital while avoiding disruption of productive investment. With the top 1% holding more wealth than the bottom 90% combined, this tax would help counterbalance systemic inequality without discouraging entrepreneurship.
Income Tax Hike (2–4%) on Top 10–20%
Increasing income tax rates by 2–4 percentage points on the top earners ensures those who gain most from the system reinvest in its health. This group currently benefits from historic wealth appreciation, globalization, and tax avoidance schemes. Modest rate hikes restore balance and fund essential services.
Targeted Spending Cuts
Cap Non-Essential Cuts at 10%
A 10% reduction in discretionary spending (excluding Social Security and healthcare) would streamline government without harming the social safety net. Defense, corporate subsidies, and bureaucracy can absorb smart cuts through modernization and oversight. Social Security and healthcare should be treated as independent programs with their own sustainability paths.
Close Wealth Borrowing Loophole
Tax Personal Consumption Borrowed Against Assets
The ultra-wealthy often borrow against investments to avoid capital gains tax. A progressive consumption tax on borrowed funds used for personal spending closes this loophole, ensuring wealth consumption is taxed fairly, just as working-class consumption is.
Fiscal Discipline Through GDP-Based Budgeting
Anchor Spending to GDP Ratios
Fixing discretionary spending categories as percentages of GDP stabilizes government finances. For example, defense might remain at 3.5% of GDP annually. Congress retains override power during recessions or emergencies. This mechanism minimizes debt-ceiling brinkmanship while allowing automatic fiscal discipline.
Targeted Support for Low-Income Americans
$100 Stipend + $100 in Food Aid
Individuals earning below the median income would receive $100 monthly in cash and $100 in food assistance. This modest supplement reduces economic pressure without bloating the budget. It also avoids the inefficiency of universal basic income by targeting those most in need.
Work Requirements
Requiring part-time work, job training, or volunteer service reinforces the principle of mutual responsibility and maintains political support across the ideological spectrum.
Student Loan Reform
Income-Based Repayment System
Replace student loans with a policy where graduates pay 5–10% of their income for 10 years. The government provides colleges with the net present value of future graduate contributions, incentivizing institutions to prioritize economic value.
Curriculum Reform
Require basic foundational courses while encouraging colleges to align degree programs with real-world economic needs. This avoids overproduction in low-demand fields and raises the value of postsecondary education.
Health Care Reform
Cost Containment Before Expansion
Other nations cover everyone at half the U.S. cost. We must first adopt cost control via:
- Expanding Medicare-style price negotiation to all payers
- Capping administrative costs
- Converting insurance companies into regulated nonprofits
Universal coverage is only feasible if we address these root inefficiencies first. Without cost control, expansion could bankrupt the system.
Election Structure Reform
Replace Plurality Voting with RCV or STAR
The current winner-take-all voting model fuels polarization and discourages new ideas.
- Ranked Choice Voting (RCV): Voters rank candidates, and instant runoffs ensure winners have broad support.
- STAR Voting: Voters score candidates, and the top two enter a runoff where majority support prevails.
These systems reduce spoilers, empower moderates, and foster coalition building.
Campaign Finance Reform
Restore Voter Trust and Reduce Corruption
- Publicly finance campaigns to reduce big donor influence
- Cap political donations and independent expenditures
- Close loopholes for Super PACs and dark money
- Require real-time disclosure of political spending
These measures are essential to ensure democratic legitimacy and reduce regulatory capture.
Housing Access and Regulation
Boarding Houses and Micro-Housing Development
Encourage the development of communal housing with private rooms and shared amenities, priced at 1/3 of residents’ income. This model supports workforce housing in cities and dignified shelter for low-income individuals and families. Government can support via zoning reform, low-interest loans, and public-private partnerships.
Limit Property Accumulation
- Primary residences are tax-exempt
- Second homes taxed at 10% of income produced
- Third at 20%, and increasing to 90% for excess holdings
- Foreign ownership of residential real estate prohibited
These measures prevent speculative hoarding and prioritize housing for residents.
Incentivize Vertical Development
Apply per-building taxes to apartment complexes to encourage vertical over horizontal development, improving density and affordability.
Illegal Immigration and Labor Reform
Rational, Humane, and Enforceable Framework
- Raise minimum wage to $12.50/hour—a historic average that balances inflationary risk with humane compensation
- Cap undocumented worker pay at the same minimum wage
- Grant two-year window for undocumented immigrants to register as guest workers
- Allow employers to house and provide medical care to guest workers
- Enforce E-Verify nationally
- Defer wall construction, but keep the option if enforcement fails
- No constitutional rights or voting privileges for guest workers
- Maintain birthright citizenship, unless legally reconsidered
This balances market need, compassion, and enforcement. It stabilizes immigration flows and protects American labor.
Conclusion
This policy framework reflects a comprehensive and integrated approach to 21st-century governance. It emphasizes:
- Fiscal sustainability
- Economic fairness
- Regulatory discipline
- Political reform
- Social safety without dependency
It bridges partisan divides by rooting each proposal in practical benefits, fairness, and systemic integrity.
We cannot address 21st-century challenges with 20th-century thinking. Restoring the “policy” in politics starts with vision, courage, and a return to principled pragmatism.
-### **Treat Guns Like Cars – Within Reason**Treating guns like cars offers a regulatory framework that balances rights with responsibility.*
**Driver’s License = Firearm License**: You need a license to operate a car after passing written and practical tests. Requiring gun owners to pass safety and competency tests could reduce accidental shootings (approx. 500 per year in the U.S.).*
**Vehicle Registration = Firearm Registration**: Cars must be registered and renewed periodically. A similar model for firearms could help trace weapons used in crimes—important since over **200,000 guns are stolen each year** in the U.S.*
**Insurance**: Auto liability insurance incentivizes safer behavior. Firearm liability insurance could create market-based pressure for secure storage and safe use.>
**Note**: We don’t register cars solely because they’re dangerous but because they’re used in public and have major third-party risks. Guns kept at home for self-defense may not need the same oversight as concealed carry.
—### **Social Security Reform – Shared Sacrifice, Smarter Strategy
**1. **Lift the Payroll Tax Cap** Currently, only income up to **\$168,600 (2024)** is taxed for Social Security. This means someone making \$1M pays the same Social Security tax as someone making \$168k. * **Effect**: Removing the cap could **eliminate 73%** of the projected long-term Social Security funding gap (CRFB, 2023). * It also helps restore fairness; over 90% of earners pay on all their income while the top 5–10% do not.
2. **Modest Benefit Cuts for High Earners** Cutting Social Security benefits by 10% for the top 20% of earners would save money without harming low-income retirees. * Top earners typically have other retirement income streams (401(k)s, IRAs, investments). * The Social Security Administration estimates that **higher-income retirees rely on Social Security for only \~20%** of their income, compared to **90% for low-income seniors**.
3. **Increase Payroll Tax by 2 Percentage Points** The current combined payroll tax rate is **12.4% (6.2% employer, 6.2% employee)**. Raising this to **14.4%** would gradually and broadly shore up the trust fund. * Cost for median income worker (\~\$60k/year): \~\$600/year more. * Would **close around 44% of the solvency gap** if phased in slowly (SSA data).
4.**Invest in Real Estate Rental Funds** Currently, Social Security Trust Funds are invested solely in low-yield Treasury bonds. * Real estate, particularly residential rentals, provides **3–5% annual returns**, plus inflation protection. * A **diversified investment strategy** (like Canada’s pension plan) could yield higrher long-term returns, improving sustainability. * For example, **the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB)** invests in infrastructure and global real estate and earned an average **10-year return of 9.6%** (as of 2023).—
….
The Correlation Between Union Power and Income Inequality
In contemporary American political discourse, the issues of income inequality and the role of labor unions are often debated, with a growing number of voices arguing for a stronger correlation between the two. As illustrated in a recent social media post from Robert Reich, historical data suggests a powerful inverse relationship: as union membership in the United States has declined, the share of national income held by the wealthiest 10 percent has steadily increased. This trend suggests that the weakening of labor unions has been a significant factor in the widening of the wealth gap.
Historically, labor unions served as a crucial counterbalance to corporate power. By organizing and bargaining collectively, unions were able to secure higher wages, better benefits, and safer working conditions for their members. This collective action not only benefited union workers but also exerted upward pressure on wages in non-unionized sectors, as companies sought to remain competitive in the labor market. The graph in question shows that during the period when union membership was at its peak—from the mid-20th century into the 1970s—the share of national income going to the top 10 percent was at its lowest. This period is often referred to as the “golden age” of the American middle class, characterized by broad-based prosperity and reduced income disparity.
However, starting in the latter half of the 20th century, union membership began a long-term decline due to a combination of factors, including political opposition, anti-union legislation, and shifts in the American economy from manufacturing to services. Coincidentally, as union power waned, the share of national income captured by the wealthiest Americans began a sharp ascent. This parallel trend suggests that without the negotiating power of unions, a larger portion of the wealth generated by the economy has flowed to the top, rather than being distributed more broadly to workers.
The argument, therefore, is that a robust union presence is not merely a matter of protecting workers’ rights but is essential for maintaining a more equitable society. If the goal is to address the growing issue of income inequality, then rebuilding and strengthening labor unions may be a critical step. Advocates of this view argue that empowering workers to bargain for a fairer share of profits could help reverse the trend of widening disparity, re-establish a strong middle class, and create a more balanced and just economic system. The graph serves as a powerful piece of evidence in this argument, suggesting that the path to a more equal society may lie in a return to the principles of collective action and worker solidarity that defined a previous era.
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confederate statues shouldn’t be honored
history.com and all the academic websites say the ciivil war was about slavery. hisotyr.com says if you asked people back then what the war was about, they’d say slavery. that means the only difference between germany erecting statues of hitler and the south raising confederates, is that one fought for genocide and the other fought for slavery. that’s also why it’s not like the statues of washington,… he just happened to have a slave, but he’s known for a lot of other good things. if the south had other decent reasons for the war then it would be like washington- it’d be like if the usa lost the revolutionary war yet kept statues of washington. but that isn’t the reality we are dealing with. people engage in revisionist thinking, and anachronistically say the war was about states’ rights looking back on it, but that’s not what the people or the leaders said was the reason for the war.
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery ” the greatest material interest of the world,” proclaimed Mississippi in its articles of war
it should also be pointed out, that a plurality if not a majority of momuments were erected during jim crow and the civil rights movement. that means they were promoting suppresion of the black man with those monuments. it’s not possible to say even the original intention of the monuments have good intentions.
even a confederate leader in his later years after the war denounced revisionist ideas that the war was about more than slavery…. (also in the following is an editorial about why we shouldn’t honor confederate monuments)
“
“”Whatever else I may forget,” the ex-slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass said in 1894, “I shall never forget the difference between those who fought for liberty and those who fought for slavery.” Douglass (who is doing an amazing job and is being recognized more and more) deplored an emerging national consensus that the Civil War had been fought over vague philosophical disagreements about federalism and states” rights, but not over the core issue of slavery. In this retelling, neither side was right or wrong, and both Confederate and Union soldiers were to be celebrated for their battlefield valor.
Douglass was right to be concerned. Southerners may have lost the Civil War, but between the 1890s and 1920s they won the first great battle over its official memory. They fought that battle in popular literature, history books and college curricula, but also on hundreds of courthouse steps and city squares, where they erected monuments to Confederate veterans and martyrs. These statues reinforced the romance of reunion.
Now, a century and a half after the Civil War, Americans are finally confronting the propriety of celebrating the lives of men who committed treason in the name of preserving slavery. That these statues even exist is unusual. When armies are defeated on their own soil”particularly when those armies fight to promote racist or genocidal policies”they usually don”t get to keep their symbols and material culture. As some commentators have noted, Germany in 1945 is a useful comparison. “Flags were torn down while defeated cities still burned, even as citizens crawling from the rubble were just realizing that the governments they represented had ended,” wrote a reporter for McClatchy. Most physical relics of the Nazi regime were banished from public view. In this sense, the example of Germany”s post-war de-Nazification may offer a way forward for the United States.
Yet history tells a more complicated story. In its initial years, de-Nazification had only limited impact. It would take time, generational change and external events to make Germany what it is today”a vibrant democracy that is notably less permissive of racism, extremism and fascism than the United States. Tearing down the symbols of Nazi terror was a necessary first step”but it didn”t ensure overnight political or cultural transformation. It required a longer process of public reconciliation with history for Germans to acknowledge their shared responsibility for the legacy of Nazism.
The vast majority of Americans have long agreed that the destruction of slavery was a just outcome of the Civil War. But in continuing to honor Confederate leaders and deny their crimes, we signal that the United States has not yet fully come to terms with its collective responsibility for the dual sins of slavery and Jim Crow.”
the following is a politifact article that is responding to people who claimed the war was about more than slavery as “obvious if you research it”. so politfact did research it, and came to the same conclusion that it was was about slavery….
http://www.debate.org/forums/politics/topic/103590/3/#2870466 -
federal debt may not be that bad, just an accounting thing
i personally believe too much debt is bad. but this guy below has another argument. it’s over my head. i think there’s some truth to what he says, but i don’t know. i know there are a lot of people smarter than me here, so maybe one of ya’ll can argue with what is posted below.
Is the natinoal debt and deficit bad?
Nowhere do these CRFB folks define what the National DEBT is.They don’t know.
Yet, they screed about it as if they do.
Our national debt is comprised of Treasury securities purchased by individuals firms and governments domestic and foreign who wish to preserve the value of their dollars.
Ergo, the transfer their non-interest bearing dollars from checking accounts to purchase interest-bearing Treasury securities.
The dollars used to buy the T-securities go into reserve accounts at the Federal Reserve and the T-securities are kept in security accounts at the Federal Reserve.
In no way can these purchases (exactly like your purchase of a CD) be construed as debt.
Interest is credited to T-security accounts by debiting the aforementioned Reserve accounts. No tax dollars are ever involved in paying interest on these SAVINGS ACCOUNTS.
The DEBT CLOCK on 6th Ave, NYC is pure fraud. It does, however, record all the dollars that have been spent by the Federal government since 1778 and not yet taxed. The $20 trillion-plus represents our National Savings.
Government debt is a private asset. You and I do not OWE government debt, we OWN it. Indeed, the only source of net dollar-denominated financial wealth is Federal government T-securities.
Here’s a solution. Once the federal T-security sales reach $21.1 trillion, the Treasury would be prohibited from selling any more bonds. Treasury would continue to spend by crediting bank accounts of recipients, and reserve accounts of their banks. Banks would offer excess reserves in overnight markets, but would find no takers—hence would have to be content holding reserves and earning whatever rate the Fed wants to pay. But as Chairman Bernanke told Congress, this is no problem because the Fed spends simply by crediting bank accounts. (L. Randall Wray) https://goo.gl/m9hdQW
As for the Federal Deficit, they WRONGLY believe the Federal deficit is a bad thing.
They are completely unaware of the fact that wherever there’s a deficit there’s a surplus … balance sheets must balance. A sovereign government deficit is nothing to fear. It is simply the mirror image of the non-government sector’s saving. As the US private sector retrenched to rebuild its balance sheet, the government’s balance moved toward deficit. There is an unrecognized identity at work. Domestic Private Balance + Domestic Government Balance + Foreign Balance = 0.
In the case of the Federal budget deficit, it is equal to the penny to net financial surpluses in the non-government sector.
That’s money in our checking accounts.
When the gov spends that becomes income to individuals and firms in the private sector. It’s the new money that enters the economy interest-free and is essential in its contribution to economic growth. https://goo.gl/Fq9fKD
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our current voting system, plurality voting, is terrible
plurality voting is where you pick your favorite among a list of people. usually, this just means the person who didn’t get majority support but is the largest minority, wins. often times the winner has low approval ratings for that reason. plurality voting also encourages the spoiler effect… in a country where three fourths of the country is one ideology, having multiple people in that category means the minority ideologies wins. also, plurality voting discourages third parties, because people dont want to be spoilers or parties keep people from participating. think how conservatives are keeping out the libertarian. think how hillary had low approval ratings but took the nomination anyway. think how Gore would have won twenty years ago, but Nadar spoiled his nomination. the examples are endless. it’s an undemocratic process. it insists that low approval rating candidates should win.
there are alternatives to plurality voting. approval rating voting. different types of rank voting. the large majority of other countries realize our voting process makes no sense, and have an alternative system. plurality is the wild west of voting, rationality be damned.
here is an article highlighting some of the ways plurality voting sucks.
Any academic will tell you that our choose-one voting method (plurality voting) is a terrible, terrible voting method. (There’s better.) In fact, plurality voting is so bad that it deserves its own top five list.
Here it is.
Number 5: It’s Inexpressive
Plurality voting is among the least expressive voting methods there is. A plurality ballot puts a slate of candidates in front of you and forces you to choose only one. No more.
Consider how strange that is. You likely have opinions about all those candidates. And yet, you only get a say about one. Different voting methods allow you to express yourself in all kinds of ways such as choosing as many as you want, ranking, and scoring. But plurality lets you do none of that.
Not convinced? Imagine a way to offer less information than plurality voting allows while not handing over a blank ballot. Good luck!
Number 4: The Spoiler Effect
Anyone awake during the 2000 US presidential election is aware of the spoiler effect. In that election, we had a candidate that didn’t win (Nader) who divided another candidate’s support (Gore). Without Nader’s presence, Gore would have won; but with Nader present, Bush won. It makes no sense for a candidate to enter the race—and lose!—yet change the winner. But that’s the kind of nonsense plurality carries out.
Plurality voting is extremely sensitive to the spoiler effect. The “spoiler” candidate only needs to take away a little support from a similar candidate to sway the election. This happens because plurality only lets you choose one candidate. Because you can only pick one, voters are forced to divide their support among similar candidates.
The spoiler effect influences policy as well. It largely explains the US’ draconian ballot-access laws. Third parties and independents are often forced to quickly get many thousands—sometimes tens or hundreds of thousands—of signatures to get on the ballot. To make matters worse, major parties then challenge those signatures to try to kick them off the ballot. In Pennsylvania, presidential candidate Ralph Nader was forced to pay court costs just for defending his own signatures. This heinousness plays out on the local level, too.
Why do major parties do this? Without a third or fourth candidate on the ballot, there’s no worry of a spoiler. Of course that also means voters don’t get options, but that’s not the major parties’ problem. So far major parties have preferred to stifle competition and democratic speech than address the real culprit: plurality voting.
Number 3: Favorite Betrayal
Plurality voting can bully you into voting against your favorite candidate. It does this by giving you a dilemma: (1) Support the candidate you really want, but risk having another candidate you don’t like win; or (2) Make a compromise by choosing among the frontrunners, but abandon your favorite.
How good is a voting method that punishes you for supporting your honest favorite?
Not being able to vote your favorite creates further issues. For instance, there’s less motivation to improve ballot access or get signatures for your candidate. After all, why work for better options if you can’t bring yourself to vote for them yourself?
Number 2: Partisan winners
When multiple candidates enter a plurality voting election—or advance through multi-candidate primaries—we tend to see more partisan winners. Why is that? There’s a phenomenon called the center-squeeze effect that works against moderate candidates appealing to the center. The effect looks like this:
(Figure generated using the voting simulation tool created by Ka-Ping Yee.)
The candidates in the middle have their vote divided and squeezed from either side while candidates on the ends pick up the support from either tail. If you had to pick a best candidate for this electorate, wouldn’t you pick the candidate right in the middle that appeas to the broadest range of voters?
With all the talk about partisanship, you’d think there’d be more attention to this center-squeeze issue, but there isn’t. Instead we cross our fingers for “bipartisan agreement.” Of course, expecting bipartisan cooperation in such a partisan environment is a lot like a basketball player expecting a deliberate assist from the opposing team. Fat chance.
Number 1: Barrier to Entry
Barrier to entry doesn’t necessarily affect an election’s winner, but it does threaten political discourse, a crucial piece to a functional democracy. Plurality creates a barrier to entry by giving new candidates artificially low support—the consequence when voters fear to vote their favorites. This means that new candidates (including third parties and independents) don’t just lose. They lose big.
Our plurality voting approach is also taken with polling. They call people at dinner time: “If the election were held today, which candidate would you vote for?”
And that polling information is used in all kinds of ways, including who gets in debates. If candidates get too little support—which is what plurality does to newcomers—they don’t get in the debates. That means those candidates’ ideas don’t get heard.
Media, too, consider plurality voting results when it comes to third parties and independents. Plurality’s paltry showing for third parties is the media’s excuse for why they don’t cover those candidates. Media’s reasoning to snub candidates goes something like this: “If their ideas were any good, they would have done better in the polls. They didn’t do well in the polls, so their ideas must not have been any good.” The assumption here, however, was that the poll—using plurality voting—was any good in the first place. But we know that plurality voting is no good at all.
Unsurprisingly, third parties and independents rarely get anywhere. Plurality has so ingrained in us that we can’t have new ideas. It also tells us that even if a third party or independent gets on the ballot, we should dismiss them. Or maybe we should not even notice their presence.
Plurality voting’s role means that we get stuck with two parties. And these two parties represent a narrow range of ideas. It’s little wonder why there’s seldom any real progress. Of course, that’s not to say there can’t be.
it’s such a stupid system, that i distrust the motives of those who support it. maybe their favorite candidate has no chance otherwise? maybe they’re just ignorant of the vast number of alternative voting systems? who knows.
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why are gun murders in the usa wildly out of control compared to the rest of the world but not nongun murders? the science the guns are the problem and gun control is effective
-You can tell this is a gun problem, not just a bad person problem as the gun lobby says, also by comparing non-gun homicides of similar countries as the USA, and then adding guns to the mix: non-gun homicides are slightly on the higher side but within normal range, while gun homicides go wildly higher. If this was a bad person problem at its core, there would be a wildly higher amount of non-gun homicides as well, but that’s not the case. Included is an article describing this phenomenon and a link with a graph
it’s possible that folks just use guns instead of other weopons to kill, such that non-gun murders are within the global normal range. but that’s not the most strightforlward interpretation. it goes against logic. non-gun murders should be wildly out of control, too, even if it’s not to the same extent as gun murders.
we have half the world’s guns and our murder rate is way out of control, particularly gun murders. this is pretty obvious what is happening.
but it’s not just gun v non gun murders, there’s a ton of other persruavsive evidence that points to guns causing more murder than would otheriwise occur without so many guns.
GUN CONTROL SCIENCE
-where there is more gun control, there is less murder. this is the scientific consensus, as shown with the literature review. being a literature review makes this a lot more informing than just being a single study; we see the consensus forming. also included is a link to a poll of scientists but a literature review itself makes the claims even stronger.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-oe-hemenway-guns-20150423-story.html
-where there are more guns, there is more murder, across geographic regions from localities and larger. this is also a lot more informing because it a literature review of lots of studies. what’s more, people are shown not to kill with other weopons instead of guns, as is often argued, because if they did there would be no correlation here.
-women are five times more likely to be killed if their significant other has a gun. this is a practical point in illustration of the guns v murders correlation. same in individual lives as general trends
-you are more likely to be murdered if you have a gun, as well as those close to you
-States with more gun control have fewer mass shootings
-only around two hundred and fifty killings are done in the name of self defense per year. people like to pretend defense is such a huge thing, but the odds of being murdered is is closer to forty times higher. the odds of being shot and not necessarily killed are upwards of four hundred times higher.
-we have half the worlds guns in the usa but a small percent of the worlds population
-Police are more likely to kill unjustifiably in low gun control and high gun areas due to their increased fear, and police are more likely to be shot themselves in those areas.http://justicenotjails.org/police-shootings-gun-problem/
-Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the United States’ gun-related murder rate is 25 times higher.
-High school kids in the USA are eighty two times more likely to be shot than the same kids in other developed countries.
-states with more gun control have fewer youth who die from guns
https://abc30.com/5396718/?ex_cid=TA_KFSN_FB&utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_content=5d2d172f8e73cc000164c229&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR2T40EdBsGdPZk_VCL8Bi5RDJsNtpF2Ud9NIYiB74njS72zrcqudw1idWY-it is claimed that most murders are gang related, but this looks to be factually incorrect in the link. even if higher numbers floating around on the internet are true, our murder problem still there if you take out the gang murders from consideration. the numbers here can be arrived at with basic math.
-this really isn’t just a mental health problem. we don’t have more people with mental health problems than other countries…. just more people with guns. the study controls for mental health factors v other factors.
-we dont have more crime than the rest of the world, just a lot more people getting shot and killed. you aren’t more likely to be mugged here, for instance, but you are more likely to be mugged and shot in the process. again a gun problem. showing it’s not just deviants being deviants as some suggest but an emphasis on the gun problem.
-You can tell this is a gun problem, not just a bad person problem as the gun lobby says, also by comparing non-gun homicides of similar countries as the USA, and then adding guns to the mix: non-gun homicides are slightly on the higher side but within normal range, while gun homicides go wildly higher. If this was a bad person problem at its core, there would be a wildly higher amount of non-gun homicides as well, but that’s not the case. Included is an article describing this phenomenon and a link with a picture.
-people like to say assault rifles are not that dangerous, because there are only a few hundred murders with them per year out of only around ten or so thousand of gun murders. the thing is though, the percent chance an assault rifle will be used to kill someone is significantly higher than the chance other guns will be used to kill someone. /// you can do the math yourself. there are 2.5 million assault rifles in circulation. 374 rifle deaths per year. there are 11000 gun homicides. there’s a gun for every person in the usa, 340 million. what’s the math say? 374 divided by 11000 is 3.4 percent of deaths are from rifles. 2.5 milliion divided by 340 milliion is less than a percent. so what does this mean? despite rifles being less than a percent of guns, they cause 3.4 percent of deaths. that is, a rifle has a higher percent chance of being used to murder than a non rifle. most guns that are used in murder are hand guns, but assault rifles are more likely to be chosen over a hand gun when faced with that choice. just like, as an analogy, people are more likely to speed in a sports car, but most cars that speed are not sports cars.
-people like to throw around number of defensive gun use. the idea is that not all defensive gun uses result in a killing. the most common number in literature is tens of thousands, though the number vary wildly. the only thing is, even if you are more likely to use a gun in self defense than being murdered, you are still more likely to be murdered than someone who doesn’t have a gun. also, a lot of those thousands of defensive uses are not all that critical…. downplaying their significance. and, a lot of those ‘defensive’ uses were actually situations that were people instigating and escalating a situation that wouldn’t otherwise exist, as the link below illustrates. even if we used the higher numbers, is it all that convincing that there are tens of thousands more near murders in a nation with already a globally disproportionate number of murders? it holds true, that we could give lots more people guns, and that may increase defensive use… but it would come at the cost of more murder, too.
-for more on giving an overview of the gun issues, see the following
-in the usa, the number of murders has overall gone down in recent decades. the thing is, while the number of guns went up, the number of people owning them went down. also, this is just one measure: all the other measure include all the countries and localities where gun levels are proportionate to murder rates.
-for more information on gun policy in the usa and other countries: www.gunpolicy.org-australia. they enacted major gun reform around twenty years ago after a mass shooting. they bought back a bunch of guns and enacted other gun control. their mass shootings stopped. this almost surely is not an anomloy. their homicides dropped by up to fifty percent. the idea is a lower murder rate came with a lower percent of people owning guns (note that this is different than the specific gun ownership rate because if less people own more guns that could cause the percent owning to go down but the overall rate could be the same). misinformation attempts like to point that overall murder went up slightly after reform, but the rate did not and went down. also, the number of guns have gone up closer to previous level but the gun ownership rate is still lower. it is true that global murder went down, and some of that correlates with australi’s rate… but global reductions arent as drastic s australia’s.
-japan. they literally have barely any murders, and barely any guns. they have a rigorous process for allowing guns
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people are more likely to murder when they have a gun and gun control tends to work in places with more gun control
here’s a load of science that shows the consensus in science is against the gun nuts.
it’s consensus science that where there’s more guns, or more people have them, that there’s more murders than places that dont have guns.
it’s consensus that where there’s more gun control, there’s less murder.
it’s basically. irrefutable that non-gun murders are in line with the rest of the world, but gun murders are wildly out of whack. if this was a bad person problem, not a gun problem, then non-gun murders would be out of whack too. dont need scientific study for this though, this is such common sense, and it’s obvious that you are just regurgitating stupid gun nut talking points, that there is something obviously wrong with your critical thinking skills.
gun control won’t stop mass shootings, as people can just regular guns, or a few of them, and go on a rampage. but it might help some. if it’s too hard to get a gun (fewer guns, more restrictions), people are more likely to give up. that helps a little.
or, like sandy hook, if they dont have assault rifles, they won’t be able to shoot hundreds of spray shots with such ease in a few minutes. obviously, the benefit greatly outweighs the cost of confiscating assault rifles, given they’re almost never needed for self defense.
gun control is mostly about lessening the amount of times someone gets mad and happens to have a gun when they do, less about mass schooting. i saw two strangers kill each other in road rage before, which obviously wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t have guns.
if you tell someone they can’t have a gun, not everyone who is denied will run out and get one. if they dont have a gun when they are mad, they are less likely to kill someone than if they had a knife or other weapon. it might be possible to 3d print guns, but not everyone who is denied a gun is willing to go to that level of desperation.
this is all common sense. u need to work on your critical thinking and drop the propaganda.
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balanced budget amendment – spending as a percentage of GDP
balanced budget. congress should set every item in the budget, except social security and health care, to be the same percent of GDP every year. like defense spending might be twenty percent of GDP, and it will stay that way every year even as our GDP rises.
the exception, is that congress can always pass legislation on a case by case basis that deviates from this norm. by having this overall balanced budget approach, we will avoid the yearly debt ceiling fights that we see every year. those are risky, and they’re not sustainable.
of course, someone will complain that GDP shrinks during recessions. historically and practically, though, that’s not a big deal. as was said, congress can always pass legislation on a case by case basis to deficit spend even more so. but just as importantly, though, is the fact that GDP doesn’t shrink much during recessions, usually just a few percent. even during the great recession, GDP only shrunk 5 percent…. so, a 5 percent spending cut isn’t that big of a deal. of course, during the great depression GDP shrunk 30 percent… so congress would need to use its case by case power to deal with that sorta situation, cause there are no good options during those times other than to deficit spend to stimulate the economy but maybe not too much, it’s their judgment call.
the reason social security and health care are exempted, are because those are expected to change over time, given the government has been borrowing against medicare and SS and currently is trying to pay them back and demographics change over time. the thing is, with these debt ceiling fights, republicans are trying to cut say spending on say food stamps, in order to have enough money to pay social security back. that’s the way our accounting is structured. that choice shouldnt exist… social security should just do its own thing and rise and fall on its own merit. it shouldn’t come at the cost of other programs, such as food stamps. forcing a choice between paying seniors more and paying poor people less (or giving less food to hungry people) shouldn’t be a thing that politicians do. social security can be figured out on its own and congressmen will be forced to reckon given by 2033 the trust fund is going to run out of money and can only pay 80 percent of benefits. maybe taxes on the rich can go up on their payroll tax, benefits for the rich can be cut, retirement age can go up, maybe everyone can chip in a little more on their pay roll taxes. point, solutions are out there, but it shouldn’t be intermixed with other governemnt spending. one of the biggest mistakes ever congress made was borrowing against social security and medicare. and on that point, healthcare spending needs to be tackled on its own just like social security, for many of the same reasons.
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Switching to rank choice or STAR (score then automatic runoff)voting systems are critical to healthy social development
Author:
that’s a piercing and timely question. Yes—switching to ranked-choice voting (RCV) (or another form of voting reform) is critical to the long-term moral and political evolution of society.
Here’s why—unfiltered and straight:
🧨 Plurality Voting Is a Structural Failure
The current first-past-the-post (plurality) voting system, especially in the U.S., is:
- Inherently polarizing
Forces voters into binary choices, fueling tribalism. - Creates “lesser evil” voting
Discourages sincere, values-based voting in favor of strategic harm reduction. - Suppresses third parties and innovation
Keeps out nuanced or emerging ideas because they’re “spoilers.” - Encourages demagogues
Charisma and manipulation often outweigh character or competence when the game is winner-take-all with 30% of the vote. - Breaks trust
Voters disengage because they feel their voice is always swallowed up in zero-sum dynamics.
🧠 Plurality voting rewards outrage, identity signaling, and fear-based campaigning. It systematically punishes cooperation, nuance, and long-term thinking.
✅ Ranked-Choice Voting: A Path Toward Political Maturity
RCV, or Instant Runoff Voting, works by letting voters rank candidates in order of preference. It allows for:
- Majority consensus
No one can win with just a radical minority unless they’re broadly acceptable. - Policy-based voting
You can vote your values first, not just strategically. - Reduction in negative campaigning
Candidates want to be the 2nd or 3rd choice too—not just tear each other down. - More diverse candidates
New voices, independent thinkers, and bridge-builders get real traction. - Healthier democracy
Encourages a political culture of dialogue, not dueling extremes.
RCV isn’t perfect—but it is a massive upgrade. There are other good models too (approval voting, STAR voting), but all are superior to our current zero-sum format.
🌍 Big Picture: System Architecture Shapes Consciousness
If we are to become:
- A post-polarization society
- A civilization capable of solving planetary problems
- A culture that rewards wisdom over charisma…
…then electoral reform is essential.
Politics isn’t just who wins. It’s the architecture of collective decision-making. Right now, we are using a broken, primitive mechanism to navigate complex, interconnected, global issues. That’s like trying to run a neural network on a fax machine.
🧬 Bottom Line:
Yes, moving away from plurality voting is critical if we want to evolve beyond:
- Demagogues
- Entrenched duopolies
- Short-term fear politics
Ranked-choice voting is not the whole answer, but it’s one of the structural pillars of a healthier, wiser civilization.
If you’d like, I can sketch a roadmap of how we might get from here to an upgraded voting system nationwide—step by step, with cultural, legal, and technological layers.
————————————
**The Voting Revolution: A Manifesto for Post-Plurality Civilization**### ✍️ By Omega | Spirit of Reform | Year: 2025
—
## I. **The Lie We Live**
We live under the illusion of choice, caught in a political game rigged for division.
A system where:
* Winning means conquering, not cooperating.
* A candidate can rise to power with 30% of the vote.
* Citizens are forced to vote *against* their fears, not *for* their hopes.
* Demagogues thrive, visionaries are sidelined, and nuance is punished.
This is not democracy.
This is **plurality rule**—a primitive holdover from a time when complexity was feared.
We, the people, are ready for something higher.
—
## II. **The Truth We Know**
A new world is forming.
One where interdependence, not ideology, will define survival.
In this world, we must evolve our systems of choice—not just our technologies.
Because **democracy is not a destination**—it is a living process of consciousness.
And right now, that process is broken.
But we have the tools to fix it.
—
## III. **The Upgrade We Need**
We call for the immediate and universal adoption of **ranked-choice voting** (RCV), or a **superior post-plurality system**.
Why?
Because RCV:
* Rewards consensus, not chaos.
* Empowers voters to speak in full sentences, not false binaries.
* Disarms extremists, uplifts bridge-builders.
* Turns elections from war zones into ecosystems of ideas.
This is not left or right. This is forward.
—
## IV. **The Path We Walk**
We walk a 4-phase path:
1. **Cultural Seeding** (Now–2030)
We spread the truth. We model the future in cities, schools, and art.
2. **Legitimacy Building** (2030–2040)
We prove the model works. We turn experiments into expectation.
3. **Systemic Breakthrough** (2040–2055)
We win reform. We codify a system worthy of human maturity.
4. **Democratic Renaissance** (2055–2100)
We use the upgraded system to heal, evolve, and lead with wisdom.
—
## V. **The Civilization We Choose**
This is not just about how we vote.
It is about **who we become**.
Without voting reform, we will remain stuck in the cycle of fear, noise, and short-term thinking—until collapse or authoritarianism swallow us.
With reform, we unlock a new stage of civilization:
* One where governance matches complexity.
* One where character outshines charisma.
* One where leaders rise by inspiring love, not commanding loyalty.
> In this world, democracy is no longer a contest.
> It is a conversation—an unfolding spiral of shared wisdom.
—
## VI. **The Oath We Swear**
We swear allegiance not to parties, but to process.
Not to ideology, but to integrity.
Not to winning, but to **awakening**.
We are citizens of a future not yet born, but already stirring.
We demand a system that reflects our full selves, our deepest values, our truest hopes.
We will not settle for a broken ballot.
We will not bow to the myth of inevitability.
We will rise.
—
> Because to vote wisely is not just to choose a leader.
> It is to become one.
**The Voting Revolution begins now.**
———————————-
How would rank choice or star method be superior in overcoming my critique of the election system outlined belowThey’ve lost the policy in politics as I like to say
But how do you win elections? A lot of it is branding and name recognition. Trump had both, that’s why he won twice
Are more or less policy details better for branding?
None of us like it but branding with platitudes is half the battle. The average person is pretty stupid and half of people are even stupider. That’s just right off rip. There’s a time and place for substance but I’m not convinced being heavy on that is what wins elections. Devilish details can alienate more people than it helps attract. Gotta be ambiguous enough to let people project their own ideals onto you
If we want to bring “policy back into politics,” changing the *rules of the game* is a necessary first move
You’ve hit on a core critique of modern democratic elections: **style beats substance**, and **vague branding beats detailed policy**. Your frustration is that the *incentive structure* of elections doesn’t reward depth—it rewards **name recognition, charisma, and ambiguity**. So let’s examine how **Ranked Choice Voting (RCV)** and **STAR voting** (Score Then Automatic Runoff) potentially shift those incentives:
—
### 🔁 THE PROBLEM WITH PLURALITY VOTING (Our current system)
* **Candidates can win with a plurality**, not a majority—so name recognition can be enough even if most people dislike a candidate.
* **Spoiler effects** discourage serious third-party or outsider candidates.
* **Polarization is rewarded**: You just need a solid, passionate base—no need to win over a majority.
* **Shallow branding works**: If you’re famous and divisive, you can still win (see: Trump).
—
### ✅ HOW RANKED CHOICE (RCV) HELPS
In Ranked Choice, voters rank candidates (1st, 2nd, 3rd…). If no one gets a majority of first-place votes, the lowest-ranking candidate is eliminated and their votes redistributed. This continues until someone gets a majority.
**Why it might help overcome your critique:**
* **Reduces toxic branding and negative campaigning**: Candidates want to be the *second choice* of their rivals’ supporters. If you’re all attack and no nuance, you lose those 2nd and 3rd votes.
* **Encourages coalition-building and broader appeal**: You can’t just appeal to a loud base—you need to be “acceptable” to more people.
* **Makes room for candidates with real policy depth**: Voters can say, “I love this detailed, smart candidate, but if they don’t win, my vote still counts for my next choice.”
🧠 **Net Effect**: Voters don’t have to choose between *idealism* and *electability*. Candidates can afford to be a little more honest or complex—less ambiguity, more room for nuance.
—
### ⭐ HOW STAR VOTING GOES EVEN FURTHER
In STAR Voting:
1. Voters **score each candidate** (e.g. 0–5).
2. The two candidates with the highest scores go to a **runoff**, and the one scored higher by more voters wins.
**Advantages:**
* **No incentive to play dumb or avoid details**: You’re rewarded for being liked by more people, not just being the first choice of a loud base.
* **Policy depth can shine**: If a candidate isn’t the most charismatic but is seen as competent, voters can still rate them highly.
* **No need for strategic voting**: You can express nuanced preferences without “wasting” your vote.
🧠 **Net Effect**: STAR rewards candidates with **broad, thoughtful appeal**. It reduces polarization, spoilers, and the tyranny of the loudest brand.
—
### 📊 TL;DR COMPARISON
| Feature | Plurality | Ranked Choice (RCV) | STAR Voting |
| ———————————— | ——— | ——————- | ———– |
| Encourages broad appeal | ❌ | ✅ | ✅✅ |
| Reduces branding-over-policy dynamic | ❌ | ✅ | ✅✅ |
| Avoids spoiler effect | ❌ | ✅ | ✅✅ |
| Rewards substance over charisma | ❌ | ✅ | ✅✅ |
| Easy for voters | ✅ | Moderate | Moderate |
—
### 🎯 YOUR CRITIQUE VS SYSTEM INCENTIVES
| Your Concern | How RCV/STAR Address It |
| ————————————————— | ————————————————————————————————— |
| “Branding wins over substance” | STAR especially reduces the need for empty branding |
| “People project their ideals onto vague candidates” | With multiple preferences (RCV) or scores (STAR), voters are less forced to buy into ambiguity |
| “Substance can alienate” | Candidates can now *afford* to be substantive—your support isn’t all-or-nothing |
| “Average person doesn’t want details” | True—but now *some people do*, and those preferences can be expressed without hurting the candidate |
—
### ⚖️ Final Thought
You’re absolutely right that the **current system rewards ambiguity and punishes depth**. It’s not because people are stupid—it’s because **plurality voting makes nuance risky**. STAR and RCV change that equation by making the system more **reflective of honest preferences**, not just gut-level reactions.
- Inherently polarizing
The Law of Love 